The gloominess had another source, which emanated from the couch beside Gelina. Tonight Marcus Crassus was in attendance, and his presence seemed to swallow up all spontaneity. His lieutenants Mummius and Fabius, reclining next to each other at his right hand, seemed unable to shake their taciturn military bearing, while, from their shifty glances and grim faces, it was evident that neither Metrobius nor Iaia felt at ease in the great man’s presence. Olympias was understandably distracted; considering the shock she had received at Lake Avernus, I was surprised to see her in attendance. She dabbed at her food, bit her lips, and kept her eyes lowered. She wore a haunted expression that only enhanced her beauty by the muted glow of the lamps. Eco, I noticed, could not take his eyes from her.
Gelina was in a state of fretful agitation. She could not be still and was constantly waving at the slaves and then, when they scurried to her side, could not remember why she called them. Her expression shifted from haggard despair to a timorous smile for no apparent reason, and far from averting her eyes she looked from face to face around the room, fixing each of us with an intense, inscrutable gaze that was unnerving. Even Metrobius could not cope with her; he occasionally took her hand to squeeze it reassuringly, but avoided looking at her. His wit seemed to have run dry.
Crassus himself was preoccupied and aloof. Most of his conversation was reserved for Mummius and Fabius, with whom he exchanged curt observations on the state of his troops and the progress made towards completing the wooden amphitheatre by Lake Lucrinus. Otherwise he might have been dining alone for all the attention he paid to his guests. He ate heartily but was pensive and withdrawn.
Only the philosopher Dionysius appeared to be in good spirits. His cheeks had a ruddy glow and his eyes sparkled. The ride to Cumae and back had invigorated him, I thought, or else he was very pleased with whatever result he had obtained by spying on Olympias that afternoon. It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps he was as stricken by her beauty as everyone else, and his purpose for following her was simply prurient. I remembered seeing him on the cliff, furtively watching Olympias from the hidden folds of his cloak, and with a shudder I imagined him secretly fondling himself. If the smile on his face that night was the afterglow of satisfying his peculiar sexual appetite, then the gods were granting me a far more intimate look into the man’s soul than I cared to see.
Yet, for a man obsessed, Dionysius seemed quite capable of ignoring Olympias and her distress, even though she reclined at his right hand. Instead he focused his attentions on Crassus. As on the night before, it was Dionysius who finally picked up the reins of desultory conversation and sought to entertain us, or at least to impress us, with his erudition.
‘Last night we talked a little about the history of slave revolts, Marcus Crassus. I was sorry you were not here. Perhaps some of my research would have been new to you.’
Crassus took his time to finish chewing a crust of bread before replying. ‘I seriously doubt it, Dionysius. I’ve been doing my own research into the subject during the last few months, chiefly into the mistakes made by unsuccessful Roman commanders when confronting such large but undisciplined forces.’
‘Ah.’ Dionysius nodded. ‘The wise man takes an interest not only in his enemy, but in, shall we say, the heritage of his enemy, and the historical powers at his enemy’s disposal, no matter how seamy or disreputable.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ said Crassus, hardly looking up.
‘I mean that Spartacus did not exactly arise from nowhere. I have a theory that among these slaves there are whispered legends about the slave revolts of the past, stories built about the likes of the doomed slave-wizard Eunus and embellished with all sorts of mock-heroic details and wishful thinking.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Faustus Fabius, pushing back a lock of unruly red hair. ‘Slaves do not have legends, or heroes, any more than they have wives or mothers or children they can call their own. Slaves have duties and masters. That is the way of the world as the gods have designed it.’ There was a general murmur of agreement around the room.
‘But the way of the world can be disrupted,’ said Dionysius, ‘as we have seen all too clearly for the last two years, with Spartacus and his rabble cavorting up and down the length of Italy, wreaking havoc and inciting more and more slaves to join them. Such men thumb their noses at the natural order of things.’
‘And so the time has come for a strong Roman to reassert that order!’ boomed Mummius.
‘But surely it would be helpful,’ Dionysius pressed on, ‘to understand the motivations and the aspirations of these rebellious slaves, all the more surely to defeat them.’
Fabius curled his Hp derisively and bit into an olive. ‘Their motivation is to escape the life of service and labour that Fortune has allotted them. Their aspiration is to be free men, though for that they lack the requisite moral character, especially those who were bom slaves.’
‘And those who were reduced to slavery, because they were captured in war or made destitute?’ The question came from Olympias, who blushed as she asked it.
‘Can a man degraded to slavery ever become wholly a man again, even if his master should see fit to free him?’ Fabius cocked his head. ‘Once Fortune has turned a man into property, it is impossible for him ever to recover his dignity. He may redeem the body, but not the spirit.’
‘And yet, by law���’ Olympias began.
‘The laws vary.’ Fabius tossed an olive pit onto the little table before him. It bounced off the silver tray and onto the floor, where a slave hurried to retrieve it. ‘Yes, a slave may purchase his freedom, but only if his master allows him to do so. The very act of allowing a slave to accumulate his own price in silver is a legal fiction, since a slave can truly own nothing - anything he may possess belongs to his master. Even after emancipation, a freedman can be reduced to slavery again if he shows impertinence to his former master. He is politically restricted, socially retarded, and barred by good taste from marriage into any respectable family. A freedman may be a citizen, but he is never truly a man.’
Gelina glanced over her shoulder at the slave who had retrieved the olive pit, and who now was retreating with a tray towards the kitchens. ‘Do you think it’s wise to carry on such discussions, considering
Crassus snorted and leaned back on his couch. ‘Really, Gelina, if a Roman cannot discuss the nature of property in the presence of property, then we have come to a sad pass. Everything Fabius says is true. As for Dionysius and his notion about some sort of vague continuity between slave revolts, the idea is absurd. Slaves have no link with the past; how can they, when they don’t even know the names of their ancestors? They’re like mushrooms; they spring from the earth in vast numbers at the whim of the gods. What is their purpose? To serve as the tools of men greater than themselves, so that those men can realize their greater ambitions.
Slaves are the human implements given to us by that divine will which inspires great men and enriches a great republic like our own. They have no past, and the past does not concern them. Nor do slaves have a sense of the future; otherwise Spartacus and his ilk would know that they are doomed to a fate far worse than the one they thought they were escaping when they turned on their masters.’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Mummius tipsily, banging his cup on the table. Metrobius shot him a withering glance and started to speak, then thought better of it.
‘The common slave who labours in the fields lives from day to day,’ Crassus continued, ‘conscious of very little beyond his immediate needs and the necessity of satisfying his master. Contentment, or at least resignation, is the natural condition of slavery; for such men to rise up and kill their betters is in fact unnatural, or else it would happen all the time and slavery could not exist, which means that civilization could not exist. The revolt of Spartacus, like that of the wizard Eunus and a handful of others, is an aberration, a perversion, a rent in the fabric of the cosmos woven by the Fates.’
Dionysius leaned forward, gazing
at Crassus with cloying admiration. ‘You are truly the man of the hour, Marcus Crassus. Not only a statesman and a general, but a philosopher as well. There are those who would say, however perversely, that Spartacus is the man of the hour, that he dictates the agenda of our hopes and fears, but I think that Rome will soon forget about him in the splendour of your victory. Law and order will be restored and all will be as if Spartacus never existed.’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Mummius.
Dionysius leaned back and smiled coyly. ‘I wonder where the wretch Spartacus is at diis very moment?’
‘Holed up near Thurii,’ said Mummius.
‘Yes, but what is he doing even as we speak? Does he gorge himself on stolen victuals, gloating to his men about stolen victories? Or has he retired to bed already - after all, what kind of conversation can uneducated slaves enjoy to keep them up past dark? I imagine him lying awake in the darkness, restless and far from sleep, vaguely troubled by an intuition of what Fortune and
Marcus Crassus have in store for him. Does he he within a tent that reeks of his own foul smell? Or upon hard stones beneath a starry sky - no, surely not, for then he would be naked to the sight of the gods who despise him. I think such a man must sleep in a cave, burrowed into the dank earth like the wild beast he is.’
Mummius laughed curtly. ‘There’s nothing so awful about sleeping in caves. Not from the stories I’ve heard about a certain great man in his younger days.’ He cast a shrewd eye at Crassus, who grudgingly smiled.
Dionysius pursed his lips to suppress his own smile of triumph at this turn in the conversation, which he had obviously intended and in which Mummius was his unwitting accomplice. He leaned back and nodded. ‘Ah, yes, how could I have forgotten such a charming tale? It was in the bad old days before Sulla, when the tyrants Cinna and Marius, enemies of all die Licinii, spread terror through the Republic. They drove Crassus’s father to suicide and killed his brother, and young Marcus ��� you must have been no more than twenty-five? ��� was forced to flee to Spain for his life.’
‘Really, Dionysius, I think that everyone here has heard the story too many times already.’ Crassus tried to sound bored and disapproving, but the smile at the corners of his lips betrayed him. It seemed to me that he was as aware as I that Dionysius had contrived to bring up the subject to make his own as yet unspoken point, but the memory of the story clearly pleased Crassus too much for him to resist having it told again.
Dionysius pressed on. ‘Surely not everyone has heard the tale - Gordianus for one, and his son Eco. The tale of the cave,’ he explained, looking at me.
‘It sounds vaguely familiar,’ I admitted. ‘Some bit of gossip overheard in the Forum, perhaps.’
‘And Iaia and her young protegee - surely the story of Crassus in the sea cave would be new to them.’ Dionysius turned toward the women with a look that was strangely like a leer. Their reaction was equally strange. Olympias blushed a deeper red while Iaia blanched and drew herself up stiffly. ‘I know the story quite well,’ she protested.
‘Well, then, for Gordianus’s sake it should be told. When the young Crassus arrived in Spain, a fugitive from the depredations of Marius and Cinna, he might have expected to be warmly greeted. His family had old connections; his father had served as praetor in Spain, and Marcus had spent time there as a youth. Instead he found the Roman colonists and their subjects overawed by their fear of Marius; no one would speak to him, much less help him, and indeed there was considerable danger that someone would betray him and deliver his head to the partisans of Marius. So he fled the town, but not alone - you had arrived with some companions, had you not?’
‘Three friends and ten slaves,’ said Crassus.
‘Yes, so he fled the town with his three friends and ten slaves and journeyed down the coast, until he came to the property of an old acquaintance of his father’s. The name eludes me …’
‘Vibius Paciacus,’ said Crassus, with a wistful smile.
‘Ah, yes, Vibius. Now there happened to be a large cave on the property, right on the seashore, which Crassus remembered from his boyhood. He decided to hide there with his company for a while, without telling Vibius, seeing no reason to endanger his old friend. But eventually their provisions ran out, so Crassus sent a slave to Vibius to sound him out. The old man was delighted to learn that Crassus had escaped and was safe. He inquired after the size of the company and, though he did not go himself, he ordered his bailiff to have food prepared each day and to deliver it to a secluded spot on the cliffs. Vibius threatened the bailiff with death if he poked his nose any further into the business or started spreading rumours, and promised him freedom if he carried out his orders faithfully. In time the man also brought books, leather balls for playing trigon, and other diversions, never seeing the fugitives or where they were hidden. The cave itself���’
‘Oh, that cave!’ interrupted Crassus. ‘I had played there as a boy, when it seemed as mysterious and haunting as the cave of the Sibyl. It’s very near the sea, but safely high above the beach, surrounded by steep cliffs. The path that leads down to its mouth is steep and narrow, hard to find; inside, it opens to an amazing height, with chambers off to each side. A clear spring emerges from the base of the cliffs, so there’s plenty of water. Fissures pierce the rock, so there’s plenty of daylight but also protection from wind and rain. Not at all a damp or dank place, thanks to the thickness of the stone walls; the air was quite dry and pure. I felt like a child again, free from all the cares of the world, safely hidden. The months before had been a terrifying ordeal, with the death of my father and my brother, and the panic in Rome. There were melancholy days in the cave, but there was also a feeling that time had stopped, that for the moment nothing was wanted of me, neither grief nor revenge nor struggling for a place in the world. I think my friends grew quite bored and restive, and there was hardly enough for the slaves to do, but for me it was a time of rest and seclusion, sorely needed.’
‘And eventually, so the tale goes, every need was met,’ said Dionysius.
‘Alethea and Diona,’ said Crassus, smiling at the memory, ‘One morning the slave who had been sent to fetch our daily provisions came running back, flustered and tongue-tied, saying that two goddesses, one blonde and one brunette, had emerged from the sea and were strolling towards us down the beach. I crept down the path and had a look at them from behind some rocks. If they had emerged from the sea, they were curiously dry from head to toe, and if they were goddesses, it was a strange thing that they should be dressed in common gowns much less beautiful than they were themselves.
‘I let them see me and they came forward without hesitation. The blonde stepped forward and announced that she was Alethea, a slave, and asked if I was her master. I realized then that Vibius had sent them, knowing that I had not been with a woman since leaving Rome and wanting to be the best host he could to a young man of twenty-five. Alethea and Diona made the rest of those eight months far more pleasurable.’
‘How did your sojourn end?’ I asked.
‘Word came that Cinna had been killed and Marius was vulnerable at last. I gathered up all the supporters I could find and went to join Sulla.’
‘And the slave girls?’ asked Fabius.
Crassus smiled. ‘Some years later I bought them from Vibius. Their beauty had not yet faded, nor had my youth. We had a most amusing reunion. I found a place for them at my house in
Rome, and they have served me there ever since. I have made sure they are well provided for.’
‘A charming episode in such a turbulent and fascinating life!’ said Dionysius, clapping his hands together. ‘How that story has always fascinated me, especially in recent days. There is something so lovely and elusive about its incongruous elements ��� the idea of a cave on the sea used for a hiding place, the image of a beautiful girl bringing sustenance to the fugitive, the beguiling improbability of it all. It’s almost too much like a fable to have actually happened. Do you imagine that such a thing c
ould ever take place again? That such a strange circumstance could be twisted a bit askew and occur in another place, another time?’
Dionysius was quite full of himself, purring like a cat in the delight of his own rhetoric, but I found myself looking instead at Olympias, who was visibly trembling, and at Iaia, who reached for her protegee’s hand and squeezed it, not too gently to judge by the way the girl’s flesh turned white in her grip.
‘Are you posing some sort of conundrum?’ asked Crassus, growing bored again.
‘Perhaps,’ said Dionysius. ‘Or perhaps not. There are many peculiar things afoot in the world today, the alarming sorts of things that happen when the will of the gods is distorted and the line between slave and free becomes blurred. Amid such chaos, unnatural alliances are forged and wicked betrayals flourish. Thus we come to have a man like Gordianus in our midst. Is he not here to uncover truth and melt away our distrust? Tell me, Gordianus, would you object if I decided to pose as your rival in this quest for knowledge? The philosopher versus the Finder? What would you say to that, Crassus?’
Crassus looked at him darkly, trying, as I was, to fathom his purpose. ‘If you mean that you can solve the mystery surrounding the murder of my cousin Lucius���’
‘That is exactly what I mean. Along with Gordianus, parallel with him, you might say, I have been conducting my own investigation, though along somewhat different lines of inquiry. I have nothing to reveal at this moment, but I think that very soon I shall be able to answer all the questions that have arisen from this tragic event. I consider it my duty as a philosopher, and as your friend, Marcus Crassus.’ He set his jaw in a rigid, mirthless smile and looked from face to face around the room. ‘Ah, but the meal must now be over, for my concoction has arrived.’
Arms of Nemesis - Roman Sub Rosa 02 Page 18