The Far Arena

by Richard Ben Sapir

  'Could you imagine that God has made this whole world, all the empire and beyond, his own sweet garden if we but used it right.'

  'No,' I said. Except for this Jewish cult of hers, which many slaves fancied, she was ordinarily most reasonable. This was not a time for her religion. There were serious and real things to be discussed. She could believe those good things because this peristilium in all Rome was perhaps the most protected place in the empire, well hidden and well fortified with armoured slaves. Protected by informers and retainers and, as the last barrier, myself.

  Through all this, Publius had brought the blood and screams of the arena and the heavy smell of urine and vomit and death, as though he had dumped them all from baggage carts into the clear waters of our peristilium pool.

  'I am wiser of the outside world than you think, Eugeni,' said Miriamne.

  'Perhaps,’ I said.

  'But if I am not, then how do you know your trust in me is true? How do you know my love is true? For that which is not tested is still unknown.'

  'That which is not tested is not broken,' I said. "There is nothing that cannot be broken at the right time against the right things.'

  The pool fluttered with circular rings. Perhaps a pebble had fallen from the roof, or a passing bird had dropped something. The water calmed, and nothing was visible on the bottom of the gold and silver design. The water was clear and sweet-scented. Miriamne waited for me to talk. It was hard. How did Publius wreck things so easily? Even my house was cunningly arranged into defences and ruses just to keep things like this out. There was a public and private life that were supposed to be separate. Even the house was organized publicly and privately. The public area - the atrium - was where I did business. I had built a large vestibule with statues and wall paintings and some ornate sellae -chairs with arms. In this vestibule did my retainers wait in the morning for me to receive them. The vestibule led to the atrium, which was a large room surrounded by cubicles for slaves whose specialities were associated with my businesses. In the centre was a luxurious three-legged table of rare citrus wood with inlaid gold and ivory. Like the statues, it was to show that here was wealth and power. Yet the atrium was sparse, to show that it was not an easy wealth. There was one sella for visitors. Thus, a group must show its leader by who sat. There was a sella for myself and one for whichever slave I needed for the visitor. There I had met Domitian's emissary.

  Behind the atrium, through a long corridor where muscular armed slaves were posted, were the peristilium and the sweetness of my life. In the centre, it was open to the sky above and a rich, gentle arbour below with a clean water pool of marble and gold tile.

  Here were my sleeping cubicles, behind which were the kitchens with their cooks and undercooks and cleaners. Here too were the rooms of the tonsores, for shaving and cutting hair, and unctores, whose fingers worked soft oils skilfully into the body. Here was the room for eating. Here was the room for my son Petronius' scrolls. Here was the room for my wife Miriamne's worship of her peculiar god without statues. Here was the room of our household god, Mars, and, since slaves had been known to talk freely, here was the room with the bust of Domitian, giving him more hair than nature thought fit. Here, too, were the entrances to my baths.

  My armoured slaves did not allow anyone to breach their guard to my peristilium. Only the most loyal and wisest slaves kept guard here - the best of the thousands that I owned. And so Domitian would not suspect how valuable this area was to me. Even the selection of these slaves was discreet. Discreet even from Demosthenes. Only on special occasions were people invited into my peristilium.

  Then how did Vergilius Flavius Publius make his breach ? How did I allow it? 'Eugeni,' said Miriamne.

  'In a moment. In a moment, dear. I am thinking how I will tell you what I must tell you.' 'Whatever it is, it will be good.' 'It is not good,' I said angrily.

  Of course, it was no mystery how Publius invaded my life. There was only one way. The only thing he had ever used with any effectiveness. His mouth. I remembered quite clearly. Ultimately, it was his mouth.

  It had been three years before, and he was the least likely of candidates for my peristilium.It was a day I made public sacrifices at three temples followed by my less important retainers and slaves.

  Demosthenes was not there, nor was Tullius - a former centurion who made gifts for me to the praetorians. Nor was Galbas, with his influence with the urban cohorts and the vigiles, nor Sempronius, whose retainers watched Galbas and Tullius. These were my public retainers, and they made a racket of such extraordinary noise one would think the emperor had arrived to make sacrifice. Naturally, there were fights which some wanted me to witness because they were defending my honour. If I were to believe this, my honour was always sullied by someone weaker than they, and ageing slaves without recourse to the courts bore me all manner of ill.

  At the temple of Juno it was a public day, and the priests made the proper tributes and prayers before the beautiful goddess, one of the most beautiful in Rome because she was made by one of the more famous Greek sculptors - originally the Greeks called her Hera.

  Some used Juno privately as protector of women and marriages, but publicly she was mistress of Rome, and publicly my presence acknowledged her as my goddess mother, an obeisance to the city of Rome.

  'Just another rock,' came a squeaky voice from the crowd, which was larger that day because it was known throughout the city of my sacrifice and gifts to the temple.

  'Shhh,' came another voice. "This is a temple. A feast day.'

  'Stupidity is stupidity no matter where,' came the squeaky voice.

  In other lands, such sacrilege might have earned a beating to death. But Romans are reluctant to shed blood in temples because that would ruin the formalities of religion - one of the important things in the solidity of the state.

  'Publius, shhhh,' came the second voice. They were behind me and the priests. And it was the first time I heard his name.

  'Would you pray to ajar of garum?' asked Publius, referring to the common sauce made of fermented fish which cooks use on almost everything.

  'Shhh, Publius,' said the friend.

  'This is no different from an open field just because someone smothered the grass with marble brought from another field,' said Publius.

  ‘Shh, Publius.'

  'Would I keep quiet in an open field ?' 'Pub-li-us!’

  'AH right. If you're frightened. The gladiator wouldn't hurt you. He wouldn't make a copper on it.' 'PUBLIUS! 'All right. All right.'

  I saw him again the next day when he burst through my vestibule and waiting retainers and was stopped only in the atrium by large armoured slaves to whom he threatened death. On my orders a slave held his throat easily with one hand. Publius held a package wrapped in sheepskin.

  I was talking to one of the equestrians before he set out on a mission to Egypt for Demosthenes. In foreign travel it is always best to use citizens born Roman, for they have uncontested citizenship.

  When Publius quieted himself, I signalled for the slave to release him. Publius did this as though breaking free by his own strength. The equestrian laughed. Even the slave smiled. Without asking what business he was interrupting, he placed the package on the table and unwound the sheepskin. It was a small clay statue of Juno.

  4I accept your apologies, Vergilius Flavius Publius.' 'Ah, you know of me.'

  'Some things,' I said. 'You were an officer with the Third Cyrene when it moved down from Syria.'

  Actually, the first thing I had been told about was his wedge attack against an empty cave, then about the big family bribe, then his family affiliation and his marriage.

  'Yes. The whole campaign was run by lunatics, but {hen that was in the tradition of all the praetors in Judea. I could have maintained peace with a cohort. Those governing idiots have lost more than a legion and a half, not to mention those stationed there.'

  'And what would you have done?' asked the equestrian, the muscles in his jaw tightening. He had ha
d experience in that region, which was why we were sending him to Egypt to most of our granaries just before the excellent crop cheapened wheat here in Rome. The equestrian must have been highly angered, for he would not ordinarily interrupt a conversation meant for me even though his had been interrupted.

  'First, I would have made peace with the priests. It's cheaper to buy a priest than a legion.'

  'Which priests?' asked the equestrian. His neck now tightened. 'The Pharisee, the Sanhedrin, the Christian, the Cohen, the Levi, the Essene, which?'

  'The priests. A Hebrew priest is a Hebrew priest,' said Publius and abandoned this point as though never trained in logic. He proceeded into a description of one of their sacred days celebrating their release from slavery in Egypt. To understand this was to understand the Hebrews. 'How ?' said the equestrian.

  And Publius spun a little web about Hebrew conflict with the Egyptians and how, if the praetors had not acted like Egyptians but like real Romans, there would have been no trouble.

  Then why do more Hebrews live in Alexandria than in Jerusalem?' said the equestrian. The Passover feast celebrates the release from Egypt which happened more than a thousand years ago, Vergilius Flavius Publius ignoramus.'

  Publius said he was not about to trade insults with equestrians, ignoring the thin equestrian border on my toga.

  'Your apology is accepted, thank you. Good-bye,' I said to him.

  But he was not leaving. He grabbed the statue I had thought he brought as an apology to both Juno and myself and smashed it against the expensive table which was inlaid with ivory and gold. This fine table had cost me two hundred times more than Demosthenes. It cracked, spitting ivory chips like teeth.

  "There. That is my gift to you,' he said.

  'You may add seven hundred thousand sesterces,' I said. 'That is the cost of the table. My lawyers will collect the money, or my vilicus will collect your body.' And by that I meant he would pay me money or himself in slavery, probably in the fields.

  This did not bother him. 'See, I have given you a greater gift.'

  'I see nothing.'

  That is the greater gift. If that statue were anything but clay, I would be harmed. I have not been harmed. Watch. Look. Do my arms shrivel? Do my eyes grow cloudy with blindness? See my cheeks ? Do they suddenly lack colour ?'

  From far off in the back of the house, I heard Miriamne singing softly into this sudden silence. There is usually a working buzz here that never ceases. The equestrian looked at me confused. The slave's face became stone, waiting to see what I would order. Suddenly, Publius began singing, not in Greek or Latin, but in a foreign tongue. We all looked confused. Miriamne, who never came to the atrium, appeared and answered in verse. She stood there in long white stola, her face clean of cosmetics, her hair modestly plaited, calling out in some strange-tongued voice.

  'Hebrew,' whispered my equestrian.

  Miriamne beckoned the young insolent patrician to follow her without my permission. It was as shocking as if the god herself had talked. And the young patrician followed. And I looked. Still. Mouth open. Looking. And him going with my wife through my corridors into my peristilium with my armoured slaves looking as useless and motionless as statues.

  Someone shoved something into my hands. He was a clerk. He had given me a sack of coins. It was for the equestrian. I felt nudging. The coins were for the equestrian. I gave him the sack.

  'Thank you,' said the equestrian. 'That one deserted his unit, if it's the Flavian lad, and I think it is.'

  'Thank you. I know,' I said and left the atrium and walked through the long corridor with cubicles, back into the peristilium, where Miriamne had taken it upon herself to order wine and fruits and cheese for this intruder, as though she were the man or a modern Roman woman.

  I motioned her to follow me to the other side of the arbour under the warm, sunny sky.

  'Explain yourself,' I said.

  'He sang a prayer I remembered in my youth. I was not born a slave, you know.'

  'I know, but why did you come to the atrium without my permission and intrude upon business, like some wanton Roman?'

  'I have been lonely. I do not know many women, and many years ago you sent all my friends from this house because they knew me as a slave. Now I own the only people I see daily, and other than Petronius, who is a son not a companion, there is you. And you are my husband. I have no one. When I heard the answers in the tongue of my childhood. I came to see who might offer the companionship I hunger for.'

  'But he is a man.'

  'Can you not see he is a lighthearted boy ?'

  'Not between his legs, I can assure you,' I said.

  'Are you afraid of him, or me, or you ?'

  It was a good question, asked without fear. But then Miriamne had never feared me or lied to me. She was my wife of eleven years then. I could have married a Roman which would have been a proper and logical move. But I had chosen her, a slave. I had slept with her, as with many, but with Miriarnne it was good in a special warm way, and more and more I slept less with others and then only with her. So that when Miriamne bore me a son and placed it at my feet, I accepted him as a son and her as a wife, freeing her legally and legally making a marriage.

  She had given me much joy in just watching her, the way she reasoned with slaves instead of whipping them, the way she washed and ate, and smiled and sang her songs I did not know. So when she asked this favour of allowing Publius into our peristilium, I could not injustice say no.

  So it was his mouth that had gone through my defences without a block or a struggle. He had gone through singing.

  And now, in my own peristilium, resting on my pillows with my legal wife, I had to announce I was to butcher a family friend like any bought and sold gladiator. It could not be put off. Better told before the fact and the wound made clean, than let things be found out and have an awkward festering gash.

  The problem is Publius,' I said.

  'Is that poor boy in trouble again ?' she said. Miriamne smiled, waiting to laugh.

  'Yes. He is in trouble. He is matched in the games,' I said. I did not look in her eyes.

  'You have influence there. Can you get him out ?'

  'No. These are Domitian's games. And it's been announced. He asked for this match. He wanted it.'

  'Why?'

  'He was drunk.'.

  'Many people say things they do not mean when they have had too much wine.' 'He said it to an emperor.'

  'Surely an emperor would know most of all that it was the wine talking.'

  I was grateful that Publius, so free in tongue elsewhere, had carefully not mentioned the arena or politics in my house. This he somehow knew was prescribed.

  'Can you help him?' Miriamne asked, and she was so honest in this question, like a child to a parent, that a great sobbing shame seized me. Even the floor could not hold my eyes. I looked up at the sky through the square roof, then to Domitian's statue, and Mars, both in their votive places. My hands needed rubbing. Miriamne's amber buckle, beneath, took my sight, and I could not lift it. My mouth opened, but there were no words. 'You cannot help him ?' she asked.

  'I am matched with him, and you do not understand the arena, and there is nothing I can do. I must kill him. Now you have it. Are you happy ? I kill people.'

  'Of course I am not happy, Eugeni.'

  'It is the way the arena is. And that is it.’

  'I can accept that it is the way it is, but not that it is the way it should be.'

  'Why is it that those with the least influence have the grandest schemes for changing all mankind? Rome is what Rome is. The arena is what the arena is, and that is how I have found it, and that is how I will leave it.'

  She struggled with tears, her neck quivering with the strain.

  'You are a good man, Eugeni. Do not trouble your heart for things you cannot control.'

  'I am a man and, like everything living, I want to live.'

  'And I want you to live.'

  'Good, then let us talk o
f other things,' I said.

  'What have I said to make you angry ?'

  'Obviously something, so let us talk of other things.'

  She cradled my head in her large hands, too large for Roman beauty, but beautiful to me.

  'You are a good man, Eugeni,' she said, and I put my face in her breasts.

  'Please. Do not say that,' I begged, and she sang to me, as she had so often sung to our son Petronius, with words I did not know, but which had been sung to her by her mother and her mother's mother before her in the days before Rome had come to her land.

  She knew what we shared. Petronius, our son, had yet to be told.

  For the shame that was upon me and for my helplessness, I hated Publius. Some gladiators hate or prod themselves to it, but they are always suspect of their willingness to kill. Why heat a dish that already tastes good ? And by that it is meant, if they are willing to kill, why should they need anger ?

  Vergilius Flavius Publius had all my anger, titled, acknowledged, and secured. Sculptors had cut his face into it, his name on it. I hated him because he had made me helpless. Because he already shamed me in myself before my Miriamne and, worse was to come, before my son Petronius, who loved me and respected me, and whom I, with my cunning and will, had kept away from the whoredom for almost fourteen years. His life.

  Armoured slaves clanked noisily coming through the atrium. Kitchen slaves yelled for wine and apples and sweets. A young voice bellowed an ode of a popular poet, noisily, as though to test the strength more of lung than metre. Petronius, my son, was home.