The Far Arena

by Richard Ben Sapir

  Here in the provinces, I could see the reason for Roman power, hidden in the centre of that power itself. Roads. Roads of stone, marked roads, levelled roads. Romans built roads everywhere. Port to city. City to cities. Arteries of an empire. Other peoples might have one or two roads to their capital that lazed where oxen had chosen to walk before. Romans sighted and levelled where the engineers decided.

  Into Gaul we marched and then east towards the borders of the empire. We camped the last night in civilization at a garrison on the border. That night, even I had wine.

  Heavy bags and barley were loaded into carts, the men mumbling that when this went there would be only meat. Meat for who knew how long.

  An old barbarian woman, living with the garrison as a slave to a centurion, told fortunes, but the men were warned not to ask her. Naturally, after this warning she did a wonderful business, but it stopped when she predicted nothing anyone wanted to hear. Then they paid her to predict for the unclean thing, which referred to me. She threw her bones, with hands scarcely more than the bones she read. She threw them many times, each time seeming most confused. She confessed an inability to read my future, and the legionnaires of Domitian's own said it proved the charge of maiestas was true because the gods refused me a future.

  The next morning we went east into the wilds of Germany where there were no roads but paths, and every night the cohort would build a moat and wall from the bountiful forests of this uncivilized region. Without mileposts I could not count the distance. Even away from senate decree, the Roman legionnaire honoured his word. None talked to me or mentioned my name.

  A large German band came upon us, and Macer had the cohort fortify a hill. We waited there a week until the band, like some herd with little patience, moved off. When the sun was on my right in the morning three days in a row, I knew we were march Lag north. With the cold, I saw the reason for the large carts of impedimenta. Furs and leathers for the feet and body and head. So many furs that this cohort now looked like barbarians themselves from a distance, if one did not realize they all had the same regulation pilum and scutum and short sword.

  It was here in the first frosts that I noticed an uneasiness come upon our columns. And I overheard men talking about the horrors of the barbarians, as though in Rome they did not have the arenas. Now I saw them draw lots for those who would comprise the small bands that went before us so that we should not be trapped by sudden assaults.

  It was here that Macer made a mistake. A small group of the cohort that had gone before disappeared and finally was found, its bones stripped of flesh, its furs and weapons gone. They had been eaten, and several legs had been left smouldering over charcoals when the barbarians were surprised by the full column. Macer allowed the entire cohort to march past without burial or ode. He should have stopped the column and made a great speech about the courage and discipline of the legionnaires, and said that here, in the unknown wilds of most barbaric Germany, these men, who had gone before, represented that courage and that discipline far greater than any legion marching in triumph across the pleasant and paved Appian Way. He should have made these deaths seem significant and worthy. He did not.

  Undoubtedly afraid himself, he let each man nurse his fears privately as we all walked by. That night, the moat was not fully dug nor were the walls set deeply into the ground, and men talked to me for the first time since the senate decree. It was no use telling them there was no difference between funeral pyres with trumpets and priests and answering a barbarian's hunger.

  I told them they were superior to the barbarian as long as they remembered their training. I told them I had fought barbarians, and they were but children to men who let their logic rule.

  They answered that the very pale yellow-haired ones could not be felled by the pilum because of their size and their inability to feel pain.

  I told them the pilum used in waves had conquered the world.

  They said a barbarian when hungry would eat his own arms. I told them that a long time ago this was thought of Aetheops, too. because their skin was black, and this was found to be not so.

  They said barbarians were especially fond of the hearts of young virgin girls, and that they would go insane over the liver of a Roman baby.

  I tried to speak to Macer, but he himself held true to the senate decree. He would not talk to me. I wanted to tell him the men were stripping their minds of armour.

  A young barbarian boy had been caught outside the camp, and, like wolves, the legionnaires fell upon him, cutting out his liver and trampling it. During that night, as the cohort became a mob, I found out none of the men or centurions knew where they were going or my destination. Snows came that night, white as hell and cold.

  One of the poorly planted walls caved in. The men did not form for march nor would they draw lots to precede the column. Macer spent the morning threatening crucifixion and decimation - the killing of every tenth man to restore discipline.

  We were all lucky he did not get himself murdered by these actions. Lucky for the men, because without a leader - no matter how inept - they were nothing more than frightened children with overgrown muscles. Many went to the wine that morning.

  I could have left the camp then, but my destination would only have been a barbarian's belly. And it occurred to me I might live through this if I were cautious. The barbarians were around us shortly, in great mobs, with furs and hair so light and skin so pale it looked as though the dead had come to collect our bones. Some legionnaires tried to form a maniple. Knowing their plight they now looked to Macer, but, even as they formed, the barbarians with their women and children became numerous and their grunts and growls filled the hills like a storm building.

  We were, in any way I could divine, dead anyhow, so I took a short sword and had someone wrap my left hand in leather with a piece of iron strapping, and I went outside the little log walls and stamped out a circle in the snow. My arena weapons were unwieldy in the cold. I made laughing gestures at the barbarians in the hills. I beckoned for company. It took a while, but a large one with his hair like snow and the sun wild on his face and body, huge in muscles, ran down at me with a club the size of a good sapling.

  There was little skill needed and absolutely no subtlety or misdirection. I skewered it as it went by, making an explosion in the snow, screaming its last and spreading its blood like a child attempting to make a picture with its hands. I signalled for two, and two came down with many cheers from the hills. Instead of pinning me between them, they crossed into each other with a bang and fumbled around on their knees. I finished them.

  Thereupon I made a speech to the barbarians in the hills. Of course, it was not meant for them since they undoubtedly understood nothing I said. It was for the legionnaires. And I demanded to know how they, the barbarians, dared entertain thoughts of meeting Roman steel on any equality. I told them to get other tribes, for they represented barely a morning's entertainment for a Roman cohort. I said the men needed greater training, and they would grow fat on this garbage that surrounded them now. Look well, for behind the logs of your forest set in order behind a moat are not men who hide behind walls, but use these walls to keep out your smells. Look well, for you see before you the greatest military blessings of all times, past and future: Roman legionnaires. Invincible. Men of iron.

  Cheers came from the camp, and the log walls came down, and there was the cohort in battle order. Macer had good timing. The barbarians charged full from the hills now, but the spirit was with the cohort. The barbarians left many dead. During the battle, I stayed inside the lines of men, always being the farthest from the fight.

  In the goodwill of a victory, I suggested we all march now back to civilization, perhaps even Greece where I would make every one of them rich. They had more than served Rome so far. But Macer, expressing grief, said he was Roman and under orders, the most noble thing being the following of those orders when, in all likelihood, no one would appreciate their success or even know about them. Nor could I turn th
e men against him as we marched north every day, into heavier snows and the colder weather. Macer wisely kept to himself, the only one who knew where we were.

  But he did speak to me and confided that I had not saved Publius that day in which the city went to flame. It seemed long ago because life here required so much thinking, I could not dwell on Rome, but on what was at hand.

  'According to our divinity, he was collected by scavengers who came to the arena later and found him living under a pile of bodies, and he was brought to his parents, who demanded he fall on his sword because of the shame. Apparently he was too weak, from what I hear, gladiator, and his parents had slaves do it for him. So in the end, you did not save his life.'

  'You don't understand, and I don't think you could, Tribune.'

  'I don't know the arena. I don't know politics. I know my orders. I shouldn't talk to you. But I have.'

  'Where am I going?'

  'You'll find out.'

  'I know that. But will you tell me?'

  'No. But I want to thank you for giving the men back their spirit against the barbarian.'

  'And thank you for the information about Publius. He probably was not too weak, but fell on his sword and missed.'

  'People have said that if I saw Eugeni fight I would not wish to see a sword in any other man's hand. I saw you fight. It was magnificent'

  'You are emperor here, Tribune Macer. You could grant me my freedom for the fight I gave you.'

  'I owe you something, but what you ask is Domitian's to give, not mine.'

  Human bones with the flesh gone no longer bothered the men when we came upon camps of the barbarians. One could smell the grease and odours of their bodies miles off, even in the snow that dampens odours.

  As we marched further north, the marching became more difficult. The cold was unlike any I have ever known, even beyond the depths of winters in my early youth, when I would long for the first sun smiles of delicious spring. This cold slowed and numbed and made the cohort a bobbing, loose collection of men stomping through knee-high snow. I managed better than the others.

  The entire world was cold - a true hell, as the Persians saw hell. It was in this cold that my hope of ever seeing Miriamne and Petronius - a hope resurrected when I had heard the decree of banishment - fled my mind.

  One day we marched into a bitter wind. Even in the recent days there had been nothing like this. A wind of knives and blades and points. I cried for mercy. Not since boyhood had I cried thus. This, despite my gladiatorial training. The tears froze on my face.

  Macer yelled into my numb ears that I should open my eyes.

  'I cannot. I cannot,' I yelled back into the wind.

  'A little bit, open them. Domitian demands you look out upon the German Sea.'

  With great pain I opened my eyes to a vision of horror. All was white but for the black sea, whipped at foaming points to a froth. My mouth tasted of blood and my ears heard a constant, roaring hum. I could even smell the pain of the cold.

  'You are here,' said Macer. 'This is where we must leave you with your eyes on the German Sea. Domitian has ordered that I give you this. You do not have to look. It is your spatha. The emperor bade me relay to you that you may fight the cold with it.'

  'If I had the strength I would fall on it,' I said, and even the words came with pain.

  'We do not like this task the emperor set before us, but we must follow it to the letter. There was nothing in the orders that said you may not have a drink before we leave you, and it is my suspicion that this drink is drugged to remove pain. Officially, however, I know nothing of any drug. Drink, gladiator. Drink away the pain.'

  I felt something barely touch my lips and realized it was the spout of a flask. I felt bitter, cold liquid fill my mouth, and then it went down my throat, burning like fires. Blessedly, he was giving me an easier death, dying himself. I ran full and naked to my death.

  I saw myself going down to the black sea beneath me, and then I was very warm and felt quite good about leaving the world. I had had my time, and I had loved Miriamne, and I had heard my son call me father, and I was through. It was no great thing at all.

  Even my mother was there, and exactly as she had looked back home in Greece, very young and very beautiful, and singing me songs I only now remembered.

  There was no pain, but a deep floating into a wonderful darkness. Even my father was good and proper as was everything.

  And then the incredible pain and the burning flesh and a giant bird beak stuffing down my throat and barbarian grunts.

  The barbarians were back.

  eighteen

  Fifteenth Day - Petrovitch Report

  Hail the Soviet Socialist Republics. Hail the Houghton Corporation. Hail the Dominican Order. Hail the Scandanavian Soviet Friendship Pact. Hail man. Hail twentieth-century man.

  I vomit

  I live.

  Hands wipe at my face, and I cannot lift my head. Large barbarians reach down to me and grunt their yellow-haired grunts and point. I am captured. I am high from the ground and linen surrounds me. White linen. I am on an altar. But, if I am on an altar, where are the worshipers to witness my sacrifice ? The room is white, and there is sun coming in through cracks in a curtain. A summer sun, a spring sun.

  I smell their foul incense. They wipe me so that I should be prepared for their gods, clean for their gods, whatever gods they may be.

  Their priests are white. Where are the people ? Am I to be eaten alive or burned ? Where is the cohort ? Have they been ambushed ? Are they filling some barbarian's belly? How long are they gone? A day ? A half day ? Moments ? It is spring. Why is it spring ? That is a spring sun. A barbarian woman with white cloth helmet above her head plunges a ceremonial dagger into my arm. It is glass so they must have some contact with civilization.The point is a small metal spike, beyond barbaric crafts. If they have such ceremonial instruments, they must have contact with Greeks or Romans or Egyptians.

  Perhaps they trade gold to Scythians. Their faces are so frighteningly pale. They are so large. But if they have fine instruments, then there is a way back to civilization and from civilization to the provinces of Judea. If I am not eaten, I will see you, Miriamne and Petronius. I am far craftier than any barbarian. I feel good and sleepy, and all is right with the way of things, I have won. I have beaten Domitian. I have beaten the world.

  Why do I allow such foolish confidence? They are madmen's thoughts. I will be crafty. The darkness of sleep is good.

  'Roman. Roman,' says a voice.

  I am awake. A woman speaks. But she says it as though she is talking about me, instead of to me. She is big and her skin pale white and eyebrows as white as the most northern German. Yet she stands stiffly, composed rigidly within herself. The eyes are blue. She does not smell like a barbarian, no rancid animal fats, no human flesh decomposing in a satchel on her side. She wears black. Her teeth are good, white and even. Barbarians always have good teeth, the better to tear human flesh with.

  Yet there is a quietness in her voice.

  'Roman, please be excusing me, Roman. We are friends. Friends we are of you and your people. Helpful we wish to be.'

  Two giants of men stand behind her. They wear tight-wrapped tunics of dark colours. A strand of knotted cloth hangs from each neck.

  'What is your name? Who are you? Say now this thing to us.'

  The two men dog-bark their grunts to each other and then to the woman. She wears a small black cap, and a black loose tunic with round clasps holding it around her breasts. The round clasps are in a row. They are quite orderly. Have they captured Greeks or Egyptians or Phoenicians who serve them by making these? It is always said of barbarians that, should they get their hands on the finest sculptor, they would enjoy him to the last morsel. Yet these people obviously let the craftsmen live as slaves. Otherwise, where would they get the clasps of such perfect roundness and in such order down the front of their tunics? I have never heard of barbarians saving craftsmen, however. Yet who knows what happe
ns in the far wilds of Germany.

  'We know you talk. We have heard you in your sleep.'

  How strange this one talks. She pronounces the words with hard, growling sounds, yet the order of them is relatively good. Barbarians always have trouble with this. She does not

  'We are your friends. Friends.'

  They are confused. They talk among themselves. How constrained are their hands, as though they have been drugged. Perhaps they are slaves themselves, secretly educated by Domitian. Then, even while appearing to banish me from Rome, Domitian would get me back.

  The men seem excited. One smiles briefly and quietly. Had I not negotiated with many like him, I would have lost sight of this. I have never seen that sort of smile in a barbarian. Yet there it is, so briefly and so quietly, like someone selling a lot of rebellious slaves while the buyer forces the bad deal. He must be Domitian's man. The woman is frightened and ill at ease, so she has no power here. The smaller one with the heavier features and dark hair seems honestly joyous.

  My thing pains. I cannot move my right big toe well.

  'Hello’ I say.

  The woman gasps as though copulating. The men smile broadly.

  'Who are you?' says the woman.

  I open my mouth and the word comes hard. 'Eugeni.'

  'What is your full name? Eugeni who?' she says.

  'The Eugeni. You know you are talking to me.'

  'Yes. Yes. I know. I am talking to you.'

  'The Eugeni.'

  'Yes.'

  'Lucius Aurelius Eugenianus, the Eugeni. Rome's Eugeni. The Eugeni.' They give me some more water. It is cool and good. My mouth feels as though someone has scraped it with steel brushes. The water burns as though coming into cuts. But it is good.