The Far Arena

by Richard Ben Sapir

  For servicing her, Domitia gave me fifteen gold coins with Domitian's head on one side and his triumphs in Germany on the other. She asked if they reminded me of something, and I told her they did not. She said that was the price I had charged when I was a young man. She said my body had not changed, but was even more beautiful now.

  'I do not remember, Domitia.'

  'And now you have returned the hurt, Eugeni. May the gods give you a happier life than mine,'

  My sleep was stopped that night when I felt the cloth pulled from my mouth. A praetorian grabbed the gold, but got only thirteen pieces. I had kept two in my mouth. He did not see them, apparently. I was taken out of the palace. I was not good at judging numbers of men that accurately, but the cohorts must have been at half-strength during the dark night.

  I was marched through the night to Campus Martius where the great military ceremonies are held. My clothes were stripped from me and an iron brace put around my neck. Someone said I should be left my sandals in case I could not keep up the march. The ironworker attached a chain to the brace, and flying hot cinders burned my cheek. It was covered with salve. If they were going to kill me, they would have placed a cosmetic not a healer on the wound. I was going to live. One of the praetorians helping the ironworker saw the glint of gold in my mouth and wrested out one coin. The ironworker got the other.

  Two praetorians oiled my body. There was going to be a display. At least a full cohort in armour with sixty-pound marching packs assembled in the night under torches. The tribune spoke to five centurions who returned to their centuries and talked to the men.

  They were drawn up in neat ranks. The tribune told them they were to be addressed by the pontifex maximus. They would not cheer, nor make sounds. This was to be done in silence, therefore there were certain words on which the signifers were to move the standards, as though in battle. Signals were sent by standards because hearing is the least accurate way to receive a proper order in the fury of war.

  They marched out of the Campus Martius and back, and then they marched out again and back again. I heard some wheezing from the heavy packs. These were urban troops. A legionnaire in the field could march thirty miles and then build a camp without tiring.

  Someone suggested that the packs be left off. The tribune refused, saying they had to show a long march was coming and it was not moving the cohort through a little parade.

  'Into Domitia's cunt,' yelled a voice. The cohort laughed.

  A loud order came that the packs should be lightened. The axes and saws and extra sandals should be kept, but the tenting leather and the tenting poles were to be discarded. The extra sandals were to be carried outside the backpacks. A continubrium was told to remove its helmets because they were parade helmets.

  'This is a long march,' yelled a centurion.

  The signifer of the continubrium said it only had parade helmets, and that they were perfectly suitable for a long march and a battle. The centurion yelled it did not look like a long march. The tribune said that they were all actors pretending to be legionnaires but by the end of this they would be legionnaires. The signifer said their helmets were worth a thousand sesterces apiece and that the men did not want to give them up. Besides, no one was getting nail pay anyway, which was an extra bonus for a long march. It was called nail pay because legionnaires wore out the nails in their tough sandals on a very long march. At first it had only been for nails, but then it had been paid on every long march - even a sitting trip across the sea.

  The tribune said the helmets had to go. He wanted good Roman iron on their heads, not some merchant's gold. The centurion said they had an ironworker here and he might be able to wash the helmets in iron. The ironworker said he could not do it all in one night. The signifer suggested that the men wear hoods. It would look like they were even more prepared for a long march. Hoods were acceptable. The tribune overruled this. Everyone must wear battle helmets for this sombre occasion. They could change to parade gear if they wished once the march was under way outside the city. But in the city everyone must look like a legionnaire in the field.

  'We're not going to a festival,' said the tribune.’

  The chain on my neckbrace was attached to an ass. A legionnaire explained that I was to follow the ass as though being led by the chain. No one would touch the chain. I was to be exposed as an unclean thing. The men were told to rest. The extra gear, along with the gold-inlaid helmets, was carted off. The legionnaire told me no one would speak to me inside the city so I would have to watch him for signals if there were any. He said the mobs might, fall on me but the legionnaires would collapse around me and make a turtle of their shields, which is another virtue of a heavy scutum - men can make a marching shell of them.

  The sun came in red streaks and then a ball. It would be a hot day. At the movement of the standards, the entire cohort rose to take their neat rectangles, and this way we waited as crowds came to the edge of the Campus Martius to watch.

  I was in the centre along with the ass, which was given water and grain. I was thirsty and wanted its water, and when the sun was baking at midday I also would have stolen its grain, as I had as a young boy. I had never thought I would be hungry or thirsty again in my life. Perhaps a hard death in the arena, but hunger never.

  I heard the horns and saw the priestly procession in purple. The pontifex in his tiered crown addressed the gathering crowd and the legionnaires.

  'This morning the senate of Rome unanimously voted a gladiator guilty of a transgression against maiestas. An offence against the gods of Rome, a more grievous crime never having been committed. That gladiator's name shall never be spoken or written or carved again in Rome. Those statues of this abomination, still staining Rome, shall be smashed. Those scrolls with his name shall be burned. Those letters in clay and marble that make up this abhorrence shall be broken. The punishment for speaking his name, writing his name, or carving his name is crucifixion.'

  The word 'crucifixion' worried me briefly until I realized it had to refer to anyone using my name, not to me. For as the pontifex declared at the bequest of the senate. I was to be banished from the civilized world, my money and my lands to be confiscated in the name of the people of Rome by Domitian, their divinity on earth. I would leave as I had come, with nothing but my spatha and shield, for they too were unclean things, and the city must protect itself from their being reforged and contaminating other weapons.

  At this, a centurion marched with my spatha above his head and placed it on the back of the ass, then publicly washed his hands. A legionnaire did the same with the small shield. They had either retrieved them somehow from the arena that day, got reserves from my armourer, or made new ones. It did not matter. That the people of Rome thought they were the ones I had failed to use against Publius was the important thing.

  The standards moved. The cohort moved. A legionnaire led the ass, and I moved. It took us the full afternoon and into the evening to march through Rome. Several times the crowds packed in the streets attempted to get at me, but the legionnaires collapsed around me with their shields, and I heard rocks and garbage and pots bang against the Roman iron.

  Several hard things hit me during the march from the city, but I showed no pain. If the crowd saw me weakening, I knew the legionnaires could not contain them from the kill. There are times when showing weakness means death. Nothing inspires like the belief that something can be accomplished. So I let the pots, the rocks, and the garbage bounce off me, when the shields were not there to protect.

  The cohort looked magnificent, as though it had walked off a chiselled column. Pila erect, shields at proper chest height, iron helmets cracking along, as even as buttons on a stiff board. Rome impeccable, Rome immaculate, Rome with its legions that moved with the precision of construction machines with great wooden gears whose spokes would no more think of moving independently than would the great Roman legionnaire who had conquered the world by first conquering himself.

  The city had seen me. They had seen
the cohort in its stern magnificence, ready to march me off the end of the world because there was an order to do it. No speeches, no bribes, no games. A job to be done. The virtue of Rome. The legionnaire was doing it as he had done it against Greek, Syrian, Parthian, Iberian, Carthaginian, Jew, Scythian, German, Egyptian, and Gaul.

  The Romans might indulge themselves more today, but they were still Romans, men of iron. No frills. Discipline. Let the world look at that.

  This is what the cohort told the people of Rome by their dull, sturdy uniforms, methodical pace, and silent march. This was why the gold-inlaid helmets could not be worn. The cohort was showing them their virtuous past alive today and to be believed in as they believed in their triumphal arches with just such scenes carved in them.

  Outside the city, the whores and merchants and slaves were waiting at the first camp, along with the impedimenta carts carrying the supplies, including the accounts of the unit. Five of the gold-inlaid helmets had been stolen, as the legionnaires had feared. There was a dispute over compensation. The signifers put down the standards they carried so nobly and began settling pay disputes and allowances for this new unit.

  There was a speech by the tribune in charge, Gnaeus Cornelius Macer, who said that he would crucify any man who spoke my name. And to show those who lived within city walls all their lives what a real crucifixion looked like, he would make an example of two men who had, he said, spoken my name.

  One trudged out in chains, his massive belly hanging out over a loincloth. The other, even in the twilight behind him, showed his ink-stained fingers. They had arrested Demosthenes and Plutarch, who had obviously been my most loyal friends.

  'Forgive me,' I cried, and I yelled it as the legionnaires dug the holes for the crosses. They were not road or display crosses, which are high off the ground, but little taller than the men themselves. My two slaves and friends were standing there facing me. while legionnaires laid the crosses down behind them: the crossbeams far, the bottoms lying just over the recently dug holes.

  Two legionnaires kicked the legs out from underneath Plutarch and Demosthenes, while another pushed them back, so they went backwards like falling boards and landed with a harsh bang that briefly immobilized them. With smooth practice, the legionnaires immediately broke the arms with hammers and drove spikes into the forearms, pinning them there. They smashed one leg on each, and rammed a sharp spike first through the unbroken one and then into where their hammers had broken the other. Thus were the legs secured.

  Two legionnaires at each cross yanked them back with their suffering cargo, then up with a heave, and the crosses were planted with my friends' legs just above the earth. Plutarch let out a massive cry, and Demosthenes bit through his lips.

  'That is how a crucifixion is done by men who have served with me in the field,' called out Macer. He ordered the men into formation to watch and put me in front of my good friends, eye to eye.

  'That, for just mentioning the unclean name. I am going to execute one out of every twenty-five of you. One of the easiest ways will be talking to the unclean thing, taking one of its bribes, or even brushing up against it in a manner I do not approve of. Just so an execution doesn't come as a surprise.'

  Plutarch wept and called for his mother. He called for me, he called for mercy, he called for water, and all the time I begged forgiveness. Demosthenes would not yell, so they poured boiling dinner oil over his head. But he had also bitten off his tongue and choked on it.

  Plutarch took longer, calling out to an Eastern god, which reminded me of my wife and child.

  'Jesus,' he said. And one legionnaire answered him, 'Same as you,' and was flogged for the breach of discipline.

  'Forgive me,'I said.

  'Forgive me,' said Plutarch, which must have meant he had gone mad, for what did I have to forgive him?

  'Forgive me, Jesus.'

  And then the breath was out of him, so they broke his ribs that he might die faster from the bleeding.

  Seventeen

  Sister Olav was euphoric, Dr Petrovitch confused and depressed, and Lew McCardle was surreptitiously gathering all the Latin textbooks and history books he could without attracting attention. He had had one public relations man fired for giving him lip when he wanted to know what a geologist would want with Jaeger's Paedeia - 'We digging in ancient Greece or something?'

  The subject had sat up in bed, very suddenly, showing good use of stomach muscles, had focused briefly, and said what sounded like spitting, which, explained later, was a soft J - a breakthrough in sure understanding of the pronunciation in Latin, unless of course the subject should have a speech defect, which would have to be checked against other pronunciations.

  'He said "Jesus forgive me",' said Sister Olav. 'We may have an early Christian on our hands.'

  ‘I didn't hear Jesus,' said McCardle.

  'Because it sounded like Hesu. But that is Jesus.'

  'We're not sure what he's thinking. As you know, he is apparently repeating things said to him also.'

  ‘I know. But this is a great day. I am tempted to ask a non-Christian to assist me, just so there will be no doubt.'

  'I'll assist. We don't need more people.'

  ‘I mean more non-Christian than a non-participating one, and someone who knows Latin.'

  ‘I had a bit of Latin. Rusty, but I can revive it.'

  'Perhaps you're right. I just didn't think of Americans, especially Americans from your part of the country, with a background in Latin. But isn't this a wonderful day, nevertheless?'

  It was 8 p.m., outside it was especially black, darkness even shrouding the stars.

  'It's night,' said Lew.

  'No, only here, only briefly, but somewhere it is as bright as yesterday on the sun porch when you could not focus it was so bright. The darker the night, the brighter the sun shines on the other side of the world.'

  'Yes, ma'am,' said Lew McCardle, for the first time in his life actively putting Texas in his voice. 'You sure do say some mighty pretty things.'

  'Prettier because they are true,' said Sister Olav.

  'Dern tootin',' said Lew and gave a big old wink.

  Petrovitch was too deeply depressed for a drink. Besides, he had hidden the little boy who pissed Ballantine scotch because he didn't want Sister Olav to see it in his office.

  'What's the matter now, Semyon?'

  'The lab report came back about what our patient vomited up.' 'What? What's so bad about what's in him? Did you find out it was Coca-Cola?' 'Worse.'

  'What could be worse?'

  'Poison. Someone poisoned him. He vomited up an extremely effective poison.'

  I deserve to die. I deserve to be eaten. Let the barbarians feast. Why do they wait? Has a life in the wilderness taught them to, tame their hunger? Have they dined on Tribune Macer yet?

  Demosthenes and Plutarch are safe. But the manner they died was their punishment for loyalty to a fool. A barbarian in black, like some Eastern magician or some sneak thief in the night, assures me not to worry. She hovers over me, huge head and ugly grin and grunting the language as though she heard it in some cage in Rome.

  Let her eat. I will join Demosthenes and Plutarch. She has a black hood. Macer the tribune had a red hood. I had been sure I would be able to work something with the cohort. Many of the men had been the worst bribe-takers in the city, which was probably why Domitian wanted them out.

  Macer was a stocky man of light brown hair and weak nose who exposed himself to the sun whenever possible to make himself appear more Roman. His tonsor scraped his face clean every morning, and every morning he sacrificed to the gods, including Domitian.

  We marched north, to the sound of floggings and men with heavier packs. I should have suspected where we were going because of the size of the escort - a full cohort - and the heavy baggage, which I overheard one of the legionnaires say contained heavy furs. One of the men stole a fur, tried to sell it, and was executed before the cohort drew up in ranks.

  Macer marched t
he fat off the cohort. He marched the wine out of them. He marched the whining out of them until one day, when cracking along at its regulation legion pace before the mountains that separated us from Gaul, he drew the cohort into a parade formation and he addressed them.

  4 You have called me Vercingetorix, after the leader of the Gauls defeated and long dead. And by that you mean, away from my hearing, that I am more Gaul than Roman. But let me tell you, I have been twenty-two years as a legionnaire in the Twentieth Rapax, that legion which sweeps all before it. You have heard of it back in Rome. When his divinity told me I would be transferred from the Rapax, I wept. When I saw whom I would lead, I laughed. But after these recent days, on the march with you, I now salute you, most Roman of them all. I will this day, by my hand, and by the authority invested in me by our divinity, the spirit of the senate and people of Rome, present you with your standards.'

  The standards had the usual eagle of Rome above them, and the abbreviation SPQR, which stood for the senate and people of Rome, and beneath them the head of Domitian. The cohort would be called Domitian's own.

  Men who had once owned brothels and would set fire to a man's house for a fee cheered these hunks of iron atop poles. By common knowledge it took fourteen years to make a legion, but Macer had these men believing themselves legionnaires in twenty-two days.

  We were hitting the regulation legionnaire thirty miles a day even through the mountain passes. Still the furs were not unpacked. I walked now with a loose chain around my neck behind an ass with my spatha strapped to it along with the small shield. The heavy brown tunic had itched at first, but by now I felt nothing.