A Gladiator Dies Only Once rsr-11

by Steven Saylor

  "Because I took them!"

  "Where are they, then?"

  She reached into the bosom of her black gown and pulled out two handfuls of crumpled papyrus. "These were his poems to Cleon! You never saw such beautiful poems, such pure, sweet love put down in words! Cleon made fun of them, but they broke my heart! And here is his farewell poem, the one he left lying on his threshold so that Cleon would be sure to see it, when we went to his house yes-terday and found him hanging in the foyer, his neck broken, his body soiled… dead… gone from me forever!"

  She pressed a scrap of papyrus into my hands. It was in Greek, the letters rendered in a florid, desperate hand. A phrase near the middle caught my eye:

  One day, even your beauty will fade;

  One day, even you may love unrequited!

  Take pity, then, and favor my corpse

  With a first, final, farewell kiss…

  She snatched back the papyrus and clutched it to her bosom. My voice was hollow in my ears. "When you went to Mulciber's house yesterday, you and Cleon found him already dead."

  "Yes!"

  "And you wept."

  "Because I loved him!"

  "Even though he didn't love you?"

  "Mulciber loved Cleon. He couldn't help himself."

  "Did Cleon weep?"

  Her face became so contorted with hatred that I heard Sosistrides gasp in horror. "Oh, no," she said, "he didn't weep. Cleon laughed! He laughed! He shook his head and said, 'What a fool,' and walked out the door. I screamed at him to come back, to help me cut Mul-ciber down, and he only said, 'I'll be late for the games!'" Cleio col-lapsed to the floor, weeping, the poems scattering around her. " 'Late for the games!'" she repeated, as if it were her brother's epitaph.

  On the long ride back to Rome through the Campanian countryside, Eco's hands grew weary and I grew hoarse debating whether I had done the right thing. Eco argued that I should have kept my sus-picions of Cleio to myself. I argued that Sosistrides deserved to know what his daughter had done, and how and why his son had died- and needed to be shown, as well, how deeply and callously his beau-tiful, beloved Cleon had inflicted misery on others.

  "Besides," I said, "when we returned to Sosistrides's house, I wasn't certain myself that Cleio had murdered Cleon. Accusing the dead tutor was a way of flushing her out. Her possession of Mulciber's missing poems were the only tangible evidence that events had un-folded as I suspected. I tried in vain to think of some way, short of housebreaking, to search her room without either Cleio or her father knowing-but as it turned out, such a search would have found nothing. I should have known that she would keep the poems on her person, next to her heart! She was as madly, hopelessly in love with Mulciber as he was in love with Cleon. Eros can be terribly careless when he scatters his arrows!"

  We also debated the degree and nature of Cleon's perfidy. When he saw Mulciber's dead body, was Cleon so stunned by the enormity of what he had done-driven a lovesick man to suicide-that he went about his business in a sort of stupor, attending the games and performing his athletic feats like an automaton? Or was he so cold that he felt nothing? Or, as Eco argued in an extremely convoluted series of gestures, did Mulciber's fatal demonstration of lovesick de-votion actually stimulate Cleon in some perverse way, inflating his ego and inspiring him to excel as never before at the games?

  Whatever his private thoughts, instead of grieving, Cleon blithely went off and won his laurel crown, leaving Mulciber to spin in midair and Cleio to plot her vengeance. In a fit of grief she cut off her hair. The sight of her reflection in Mulciber's atrium pool gave her the idea to pass as a boy; an ill-fitting tunic from the tutor's wardrobe completed her disguise. She carried a knife with her to the gymnasium, the same one she had used to cut her hair, and was prepared to stab her brother in front of his friends. But it turned out that she didn't need the knife. By chance-or guided by Eros-she found her way into the courtyard, where the statue presented itself as the perfect murder weapon.

  As far as Cleio was concerned, the statue's role in the crime constituted proof that she acted not only with the god's approval but as an instrument of his will. This pious argument had so far, at least as of our leaving Neapolis, stayed Sosistrides from punishing her. I did not envy the poor merchant. With his wife and son dead, could he bear to snuff out the life of only remaining offspring, even for so great a crime? And yet, how could he bear to let her live, knowing she had murdered his beloved son? Such a conundrum would test the wisdom of Athena!

  Eco and I debated, too, the merits of Mulciber's poetry. I had begged of Sosistrides a copy of the tutor's farewell, so that I could ponder it at my leisure:

  Savage, sullen boy, whelp of a lioness,

  Stone-hearted and scornful of love,

  I give you a lover's ring-my noose!

  No longer be sickened by the sight of me; I go to the only place that offers solace To the broken-hearted: oblivion! But will you not stop and weep for me, If only for one moment…

  The poem continued for many more lines, veering between re-crimination, self-pity, and surrender to the annihilating power of love.

  Hopelessly sentimental! More cloying than honey! The very worst sort of dreck, pronounced Eco, with a series of gestures so sweeping that he nearly fell from his horse. I merely nodded, and wondered if my son would feel the same in another year or so, after Eros had wounded him with a stray arrow or two and given him a clearer notion, from personal experience, of just how deeply the god of love can pierce the hearts of helpless mortals.

  A GLADIATOR DIES ONLY ONCE

  "A beautiful day for it," I said begrudgingly. Cicero nodded and squinted up at the filtered red sunlight that penetrated the awning above our seats. Below, in the arena, the first pair of gladiators strode across the sand to meet each other in combat.

  The month was Junius, at the beginning of what promised to be a long, hot summer. The blue sky and undulating green hills were es-pecially beautiful here in the Etrurian countryside outside the town of Saturnia, where Cicero and I, traveling separately from Rome, had arrived the day before to attend the funeral of a local magistrate. Sextus Thorius had been struck down in the prime of life, thrown from his horse while riding down the Clodian Way to check on the progress of a slave gang doing repair work on the road. The next day, word of his demise reached Rome, where quite a few important persons had felt obligated to attend the funeral.

  Earlier that morning, not a few of the senators and bankers who gathered to watch the funeral procession had raised an eyebrow at the sight of Gordianus the Finder among them; feeling the beady gaze of a prune-faced matron on me, I distinctly overheard her whis-per to her husband, "What's he doing here? Does someone suspect foul play at work in the death of Sextus Thorius?" But Cicero, when he caught sight of me, smiled grimly and moved to join me, and asked no questions. He knew why I had come. A few years ago, facing the prospect of a ruinous business scandal, Thorius had consulted Cicero for legal advice, and Cicero had sent Thorius to me to get to the bottom of the affair. In the end, both scandal and litiga-tion were averted. Thorius had rewarded me generously, and had subsequently sent quite a bit of business my way. The least I could do on the occasion of his death was to pack my best toga, spend the night at a seedy inn in Saturnia, and show up at his funeral.

  We had followed the procession of musicians, hired mourners and family members to the little necropolis outside Saturnia, where, after a few speeches of remembrance, Thorius's remains had been set alight atop a funeral pyre. At the soonest opportunity to do so without seem-ing impolite, I had turned to leave, eager to start back to Rome, when Cicero caught my arm.

  "Surely you're not leaving yet, Gordianus. We must stay for the funeral games."

  "Games?" I meant to load the word with irony, but Cicero took the question in my voice literally.

  "There's to be a gladiator show, of course. It's not as if Thorius was a nobody. His family wasn't rich, but they'll have spent whatever they can afford, I'm sure."

 
"I hate watching gladiators," I said bluntly.

  "So do I. But they're a part of the funeral, no less than the procession and the eulogies. One has to stay." "I'm not in the mood to see blood spilled."

  "But if you leave now, people will notice," he said, lowering his voice. "You can't afford to have them think you're squeamish, Gordianus. Not in your line of work."

  I glanced at the faces around us, lit by the funeral pyre. The prune-faced matron was among them, along with her husband and numerous others from the same social set back in Rome. Much as I might hate to admit it, I was dependent on the trust and good will of such people, the sort who had occasion to call on my services and means to pay for them. I ferreted out the truth, and in return they put bread on my. table.

  "But I have to get back to Rome," I protested. "I can't afford another night at that seedy inn."

  "Then you'll stay with me," said Cicero. "I have accommodations with a local banker. Good food. Comfortable beds." He raised an eyebrow.

  Why did Cicero want so badly for me to stay? It occurred to me that he was the squeamish one. To watch the gladiators, he wanted the company of someone who wouldn't needle him about his squeamishness, as so many of his social equals were likely to do.

  Begrudgingly, I acquiesced, and so found myself, that fine after-noon in Junius, seated in a wooden amphitheater constructed especially for the funeral games to honor the passing of Sextus Thorius of Saturnia. Since I was with Cicero, I had been admitted into the more exclusive section of seats beneath the shade of the blood-red awning, along with the bereaved family, various local dignitaries, and important visitors from Rome. The local villagers and farmers sat in the sun-drenched seats across from ours. They wore brimmed hats for shade and waved brightly colored fans. For a brief moment, bemused by the fluttering fans, I had the illusion that the crowd had been covered by a swarm of huge butterflies flapping their wings.

  There were to be three matches, all fought to the death. Any less than three would have seemed parsimonious on the part of the fam-ily. Any more would have begun to look ostentatious, and added to the cost. As Cicero had said, the family of Sextus Thorius, while eminently respectable, was not rich.

  The three pairs of gladiators were paraded before us. Helmets hid their faces, but they were easy to tell apart by their different armor and their contrasting physiques. One stood out from all the rest because of his coloration, a Nubian whose muscular arms and legs shone beneath the hot sun like burnished ebony. As the fighters strode before us, each raised his weapon. The crowd responded with polite cheering, but I overheard two men behind us complaining:

  "Pretty obscure outfit. Owned by some freedman from Ravenna, I'm told; fellow called Ahala. Never heard of him!"

  "Me neither. How did the family settle on this crew? Probably came cheap. Still, I suppose the Nubian's something of a novelty…"

  There followed the ritual inspection of weapons for sharpness and armor for soundness, performed by the local magistrate in charge of the games, then the gladiators departed from the arena. The magistrate invoked the gods and delivered yet another eulogy to Sextus Thorius. A few moments later, to a blare of trumpets, a pair of gladiators reemerged and the first bout commenced. The shorter, stockier fighter was outfitted in the Thracian manner with a small round shield and a short sword. His tall, lumbering opponent wore heavier Samnite armor and carried an oblong shield.

  "Samnite versus Thracian-a typical match," noted Cicero, who often fell to lecturing when he was uneasy or nervous. "Did you know that the very first gladiatorial matches took place right here in Etruria? Oh, yes; we Romans inherited the custom from the Etruscans. They began by sacrificing captive warriors before the funeral pyres of their leaders-" Cicero gave a start as the sword of the Samnite struck one of the iron bosses on the shield of the Thracian with a resounding clang, then he cleared his throat and continued. "Eventually, instead of simply strangling the captives, the Etruscans decided to have them fight each other, allowing the victors to live.

  We Romans took up the custom, and so developed the tradition of death matches at the funerals of great men. Of course, nowadays, anyone who was anyone must be honored with games at his funeral. I've even heard of gladiator matches at the funerals of prominent women! The result is a tremendous demand for fresh gladiators. You still see captive warriors among them, but more and more often they're simply slaves who've been trained to fight, or sometimes con-victed criminals-murderers who'd otherwise be executed, or thieves who'd rather take a chance in the arena than have a hand chopped off."

  Below us, the Thracian thrust past the Samnite's shield and scored a glancing cut across the man's sword-arm. Blood sprinkled the sand. Cicero shuddered.

  "Ultimately, one should remember that it's a religious occasion," he noted primly, "and the people must have their religion. And quite candidly, I don't mind watching a death match if both the combatants are convicted criminals. Then at least there's something instructive about the bloodletting. Or even if the fighters are captured warriors; that can be instructive as well, to take a good look at our enemies and to see how they fight, and to celebrate the favor of the gods, who've put us in the stands and them down there in the arena. But more and more the trend is to have trained slaves do the fighting-"

  The tall Samnite, after a staggering retreat under the Thracian's relentless assault, suddenly rallied and managed to score a solid thrust at the other's flank. Blood spattered the sand. From behind his helmet the Thracian let out a cry and staggered back.

  Behind us, the two men who had earlier complained now both roared with excitement:

  "That's how to turn the tables! You've got him now, Samnite!"

  "Make the little fellow squeal again!"

  Cicero fidgeted in his seat and cast a disapproving glance behind us, then looked sidelong at the young woman seated next to him. She was watching the bout with narrowed eyes, one hand touching her parted lips and the other patting her heaving bosom. Cicero looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "And then there's the unwhole-some glamour which these gladiators exert on certain women-and on more than a few men, as well, I'm sad to say. The whole culture has gone gladiator-mad! Roman boys play at being gladiators instead of generals, Roman ladies swoon whenever they see one, and do you know, I've even heard of Roman citizens who've volunteered to fight as gladiators themselves. And not just for the money-although I understand even some slaves are paid handsomely if they can survive and make a name for themselves-but for some sort of perverse thrill. I can't begin to imagine-"

  His objection was abruptly drowned out by the roar of the crowd. The stocky Thracian had rallied and was once again relentlessly pushing the taller Samnite back. Sword clanged against sword, until the Samnite, tripping, fell backwards. The Thracian stepped onto the shield the Samnite had drawn over his chest, pinning the man down. He pressed the tip of his sword against the Samnite's wind-pipe. The Samnite released his sword and instinctively grasped the blade, then drew back his hand, flinging blood from the cuts across his fingers.

  The Samnite had been worsted. From behind the visor of his helmet, the triumphant Thracian scanned the stands, looking to the crowd for judgment. Following the ancient custom, those who thought the Samnite should be spared would produce handkerchiefs and wave them, while those who wanted to see him put to death would raise their fists in the air. Here and there I saw a few fluttering handkerchiefs, all but submerged in a sea of clenched fists.

  "I don't agree," said one of the men behind us. "I rather liked the Samnite. He put up a good fight."

  "Bah!" said his friend, shaking his fist in the air. "They're both amateurs! The whole match was barely acceptable; I wouldn't give a fig to watch either of them fight again. Send the loser straight to Hades, I say! Anything less would dishonor the memory of Sextus Thorius."

  "I suppose you're right," said the other, and from the corner of my eye I saw him put away his handkerchief and raise his fist.

  The Thracian looked to the magistrate in charge of
the games for the final judgment. The man raised his fist and nodded curtly, and the Thracian drove the sword into the Samnite's throat. A great fountain of blood spurted from the wound, gushing across the Samnite's helmet and chest and onto the sand all around. The man thrashed and convulsed, very nearly throwing the Thracian off-balance. But the Thracian steadied himself, shifting more weight onto the shield that confined the Samnite and bearing down on his sword until it penetrated the back of the Samnite's neck and was driven firmly into the packed sand beneath.

  With a roar of triumph, the Thracian stepped backed and thrust his fists in the air. The Samnite bucked his hips and thrashed his limbs, pinned to the earth by the sword through his neck. The Thracian performed a victory strut in a circle around him.

  "Disgusting!" muttered Cicero, pressing a clenched fist to his lips and looking queasy.

  "Delightful!" uttered one of the men behind us. "Now that's more like it! What a finish!"

  Then, as a single body-myself included-the crowd drew a gasp. With one of his thrashing hands, the Samnite had managed to grab hold of the Thracian's ankle, and with his other hand he had somehow managed to regain his sword. He pounded the pommel against the sand, as if to still that arm from thrashing, so that the blade pointed rigidly upright. The Thracian lost his balance and, making circles in the air with his arms, began to tumble backward.

  For a long, breathless moment, it looked as if no power in the heavens or on the earth could stop the Thracian from falling back-ward directly onto the upright blade of the Samnite's sword, impaling himself.

  Even Cicero bolted forward, rigid with suspense. The woman next to him swooned. The men behind us bleated with excitement.

  The Thracian swayed back-regained his balance-and swayed back again. The upright sword glinted in the sunlight.

  Making a tremendous circle with his arms, the Thracian at last managed to propel himself forward. Wrenching his ankle from the Samnite's grasp, he took a few staggering steps forward, then wheeled about. The Samnite had stopped thrashing, but the sword in his fist still pointed skyward. Approaching cautiously, as one might a snake that seemed to have writhed its last but might yet strike, the Thracian squatted down and snatched the sword from the Samnite's grip-then jerked back in alarm as a bizarre noise emerged from the Samnite's throat, a gurgling death-rattle that froze my blood. Gripping the pommel in both hands, the Thracian pointed the sword downward. As one might strike a last blow to make sure that a snake was finished, he drove the blade deep into the Samnite's groin.