by George Green
‘Well, if, and I say if, your men are in the crowd then they aren’t doing their fucking job,’ growled the Senator. A turnip hit the column to Otho’s left and rolled across the floor towards Claudius Appius. The Senator looked at Otho maliciously and again pointed a plump finger at the face of the Master of Games. ‘I want to see men’s heads on spikes after this is over, either those of the drunken peasants down below turning this place into a grocery stall, or else those of the cretins who should be stopping them.’ His cheeks were flushed a dull red and a sheen of sweat covered his face. ‘Come to think of it, I want to see both.’ He gestured towards the toiling men below them and wine slopped onto the ground. He thumped the cup down on the armrest and the slave stepped forward smoothly to refill it. ‘I am approached every day by informers clamouring to tell me about how their brother-in-law showed disrespect by being so drunk that they couldn’t raise a toast to the Emperor when one was called.’ A large cabbage came bowling up and over the parapet and would have landed in the Senator’s lap if Otho had not leapt forward to catch it. The Senator looked at him with almost closed eyes. ‘Could not some of those informers be employed to tell me who the market traders below are who seem so eager to share their produce with us so generously?’
‘I’ll see to it,’ stammered Otho, hastily putting the cabbage behind his back. Lucius took it from him silently and dropped it over the edge of the box, enabling Otho to clasp his hands in front of himself again. The Senator beckoned him forward. As the Master of Games came within arm’s length, the old man reached out and grasped his cloak at his throat. He jerked Otho down until their faces were level and a hand’s length apart.
‘Start the fucking games,’ snarled the Senator, his spittle landing on Otho’s cheek. ‘Now.’
‘But…’
Claudius Appius suddenly leant forward, pushing his face almost against the other side of Otho’s face. His voice was a malevolent hiss. ‘My father has spoken. Tell those morons down there that the show starts right now, or else tell them that they will be the highlight of the main event in a colourful demonstration of synchronized slow bleeding to death, and I can assure you that you will be leading them by vivid example. Clear?’
Otho swallowed with difficulty and nodded once. ‘It is done, Excellency.’ He leaned back again and looked down at the toiling men. Cornelius looked up at him with an anxious face. Otho held up one finger and then drew it sharply across his neck in a universally understood movement. Cornelius raised his hands in a gesture of frantic resignation and began yelling orders. Otho didn’t catch his words, but resolved to ask him later what he had said, for it had the effect of a burning torch thrown into a drain full of rats soaked in fresh pitch. All around the foreman men stopped what they were doing. Dozens of others appeared at a hard run from the passages nearby. At the foreman’s screamed command every one of them threw himself with grim enthusiasm at the jammed equipment. The giant lever moved slightly. Cornelius bawled encouragement, so loudly that Otho could hear him above the shouts of the crowd, offering rewards for success and promising – at much greater length and with far more vehemence – an imminent and hideous end for all of them in the event of failure. The sweating men heaved frantically. Yet more men arrived and added their weight to the effort. There was a paralysed moment of immobility, and then the lever moved, slowly and then a little faster, and it kept moving. The foreman looked up at Otho and signalled success. Otho smiled and turned back to the Senator.
‘We are ready, Excellency. With your permission…?’ Catullus agreed with a peremptory gesture, as a large hunk of the bread that his slaves had distributed earlier to the crowd came careering over the balcony edge and bounced off the breastplate of one of the Senator’s guards. Otho kicked it quickly to one side and moved to the front of the box overlooking the arena. He raised his arms. An ironic cheer started immediately below him and spread quickly around the arena. People stopped drinking, fighting, arguing and throwing food and cushions as they realized that at last something was about to happen. The water now reached to just a few feet below the first rows of seats. The front three or four rows tended to be occupied by those just below the first – businessmen who had yet to buy rank and their families and mistresses, and groups of the younger sons of the senators and knights a few rows behind them. These rows tended to be the most drunk and the most hysterical of all. Now hands reached down towards the water to help those who had been pushed in – or had fallen – to get out. Otho waited while a couple of very drunk young men dived in and retrieved one of their number who had become so overcome that he was now floating motionless and face down in the turbid water. There was a loud cheer as the rescued man came back to at least some of his senses as he was dragged back over the edge of the lake. He stood up on the edge to take an unsteady bow. Otho waited patiently until the drama was played out, and then spoke in his best rhetorical cadences.
‘By the grace of my master Senator Catullus Appius, and his son Claudius Appius,’ Otho turned and indicated them both with a flourish, ‘by your gracious favour the next Tribune of the People, we offer you, the good citizens of Rome, a spectacle that even yourselves, the most sophisticated audience in the world, will appreciate for its magnificence and attention to historic detail.’
‘Very good, but no one can hear you,’ slurred the Senator from behind him. ‘Let’s get on with the killing and be done. I want to go home.’ Claudius didn’t speak, as, now that people were no longer throwing vegetables at him, he had stepped forward next to Otho and had struck another patrician pose at the front of the box.
The Master of Games looked around the arena. Catullus had a point. The people on the other side of the arena could not have heard him even if the place had been empty and silent, whereas there were thousands of screaming men and women everywhere he looked.
‘The Battle of Actium, then,’ he said in a conversational tone. ‘For all you care about it.’
He raised his arms high, paused, then brought them down dramatically. The crowd howled their approval. They couldn’t hear him, but everyone knew what his gesture meant.
At intervals around the arena, soldiers carrying long bows with arrows already notched took up their positions. Otho watched approvingly, then spun on his heel and went to the back of the box to check on progress. Below him perhaps fifty men were holding the door closed with all their strength. The foreman was standing with an enormous axe, looking upwards with an expression that mixed desperation and resignation. Otho signalled with a downward gesture. The foreman brought the axe down on the jammed mechanism with all his strength.
Whatever the remaining problem with the launching apparatus was, the axe solved it. As fast as the men had flung themselves onto the machinery earlier they now scrambled frantically to get off it as ropes flew around wheels, cogs ground, gears creaked. With a lurch and a scream of tortured wood and metal, the top of the gate opened and the ship behind it slid down a ramp into the water-filled arena. A few moments later, an identical ship appeared on the other side of the lake.
The crowd stood and pressed forward with excitement, craning forward to get a good view. The two ships were half-size near-replicas of the sort of galleys in which Antony and Octavius had opposed each other a few decades before. Long rams protruded forward from the bow at the water line. In order to allow them to float in the shallow water of the arena lake the galleys had been built without masts or keels, and so were wider-bottomed in order to prevent capsizing. Apart from that, they were the same design as the originals. Or at least, as the head carpenter had replied to an amateur historian who had pointed out a list of inaccuracies, the design was ‘Near enough to the real thing for a lot of drunken illiterate city-dwellers who wouldn’t know a Republican war-galley if they woke up to find one fucking them.’
Octavius had always favoured the colour red, and so one of the ships flew a red flag from its stem and was completely painted in that colour too. Mark Antony’s ship flew a green flag and was painted green, for no
reason Otho knew other than that it was different to red. Each ship was crammed with naked men, also painted with either green or red dye. There were nearly as many men aboard as there would have been on the original full-size ship, and so they were closely packed on the rough-cut planks of the decking. Each man was equipped with either a sword or a spear, but had no armour. The Senator looked down at the ships incuriously and then leant forward with sudden interest. He curled a languid finger. Otho bent to hear him. The heavy odour of unwatered wine surrounded the Master of Games as the Senator pointed at the boats and spoke unsteadily.
‘Otho, does my memory fail me, or did our gallant soldiers at Actium really go into battle without any armour?’
Otho smiled. ‘Your memory is excellent, Excellency. However, I am reliably informed that, while as a general rule the crowd does appreciate some attention to historical detail, when it comes to watching men kill each other they are firmly of the opinion that armour – and indeed clothing of any sort – is an unnecessary hindrance.’
The Senator raised an eyebrow. ‘Indeed? One might have thought that they would prefer some armour, make the soldiers take a bit longer about it, put up a bit more of a show?’
Otho continued to smile, ignoring the impending cramp in his jaw muscles, and shook his head. ‘Once that was undoubtedly true, Excellency, at a time when the crowd was more knowledgeable and, shall we say, more appreciative of quality than quantity. However, for better or worse, nowadays the crowd like to get to the point as quickly as possible.’ He leant close to the Senator’s ear. ‘And there was the cost to consider, too.’
The Senator nodded. ‘Indeed, a very good point. The people have spoken, in their wisdom, as always. Naked it is then.’ He lifted an arm and waved to the crowd. There were a few cat-calls. The rest of the audience was too busy laying bets on the outcome of the fight in front of them to pay attention to their benefactor.
‘Fuck ’em,’ muttered the Senator, and raised the cup to his lips again.
The two ships rowed straight across the arena and collided almost head on. Both rams splintered and shattered. The red ship managed to gain a slightly favourable angle as the ships collided and was almost undamaged. The green ship was badly holed in the bow on the side nearest the Senator. The crowd roared with excitement as it began to list and take on water.
The men inside the green ship were presented with an unenviable choice. In front of them, the men on the red ship stood on their gunwales, yelling defiance, jabbing at them with their spears, their swords held out, daring the green men to jump across. The green men knew that to jump into the water and swim away was not an option. At the first sign of a prisoner leaving the battle the archers around the arena would fire at them. The prisoners knew anyway that, without a good fight to sate their appetites, the crowd would throw them back in or even tear them to pieces rather than let them escape.
And their situation was about to get worse.
There was a loud creak of wooden sluice-doors, and after another moment the crowd let out a howl that defeated all their previous choruses. Antony’s men on the sinking green boat unenthusiastically eyed the jeering men on the red boat opposite, and the waiting archers above them, and then, hearing the noise of the crowd change and knowing that, whatever the new factor in the equation was, it was almost certainly not going to make their lives simpler or more pleasant, glanced back and knew that their minds had been made up for them. Triangular waves were closing in from every side.
‘Crocodiles!’ shouted the crowd gleefully to each other.
The men on the green ship now knew that their only hope was to take over the red ship; their red opponents were determined not to surrender it for the same reason. The sinking ship was a poor platform from which to launch an attack, and the red men were prepared and determined to resist. Nevertheless, encouraged and organized by some of their number who had been soldiers, the green men mounted a concerted assault. Many of them died immediately on the red men’s swords but some broke through and the defenders had to turn to fight them. Suddenly there were gaps in the line of swords, and the remaining green-painted men poured across the gap between the two boats just ahead of the arrival of the crocodiles below them.
In moments men were everywhere screaming, dying, falling from the boats. The crocodiles thrashed their great tails and stirred up the sand as they tossed the bodies of dead and half-dead men around in the water.
The crowd watched the pitched battle on the deck of the red ship with a mixture of fascination and ribaldry. There was little technique to admire or skill involved in the fight; the two sides hacked and chopped at each other like drunken woodcutters competing to demolish a forest. Only strength and speed counted for anything. The desperation of the attack by the green men carried the fight before them, and for a time it seemed that the day was won. Then a huge red-stained man with the long fair plaits of a Gaul hanging around his shoulders yelled ‘Octavius!’ in a voice which carried all around the arena. He rallied the remaining red fighters around him and, placing himself at their front and carrying an axe in one hand and a long sword in the other, led them in a purposeful attack across the length of the ship. The deck was slippery with blood and humped with corpses, hindering both sides, and none of the fighters wanted to get too close to the edge for fear that they would get knocked overboard. The crocodiles circled menacingly below. The red soldiers fanned out in a spearhead formation behind the Gaul and picked off their enemy individually. The crowd soon saw the way that the fight was going and a roar of support began to build up. By the time the steady march of the red phalanx was half-way up the length of the ship the green men’s cause was lost and the crowd was baying hysterically. The green men could only try and stay alive until the fight was finished, and hope that the crowd would spare them. To this end each man fought desperately, so that from the seats in the top tiers of the arena far above them the group of advancing red men resembled a hedgehog attacked by green wasps. The green men fought well, but eventually every one of them was either dead or lying helpless on the deck.
The Gaul walked wearily to the prow of the boat and faced the Senator. The red ochre covering his naked body was streaked with darker patches of blood. He raised his arms in the gesture of victory and the sun overhead caught his pale hair and surrounded his head in light. The crowd stood up at this sign of divine favour and howled its own approval.
Standing behind the Senator, Otho bent slightly to whisper, ‘They honour you, sir.’
The Senator’s eyes were nearly closed. He did his best to smile, almost managed to sit up, and made a gesture something like a salute of recognition. ‘Of course. Well done. Very good.’ He slumped back in his chair again, took a large mouthful of wine and rested the cup on his chest.
The red-painted Gaul pointed with his sword at the dozen or so opponents still left alive.
Otho leant forward again. ‘They ask for the lives of the survivors, sir.’
The Senator belched loudly and looked at Otho through narrow red-veined eyes. ‘Oh? Shall I… oh, do what you think best.’
Otho walked to the edge of the box. The crowd cheered, and as always Otho allowed himself a few moments of silent satisfaction on a successful event. He pointed down towards the shivering men in the boat and raised his other arm in an enquiring gesture. The noise increased in volume. Otho’s thumb was parallel to the ground. The crowd cheered and booed in equal measure. Otho waited for a few moments, then looked back at the Senator. His master was comatose in his chair, out of sight of most of the crowd. A thin trickle of wine-coloured saliva was running from one corner of his mouth onto his toga. Otho hesitated briefly, then nodded as if he had received an instruction. He turned back to the crowd, waited for a few more moments to allow the tension to build, and then turned his thumb slowly in the symbol for death. The roar of the crowd became deafening. Otho saw the Gaul nod, then reach down and take the first captive by the hair. He pulled the man’s head back to bare his throat and drew the serrated edge of
his sword across it in one smooth movement. The death was too quick for some of the crowd, who screamed for Antony’s soldiers to be thrown overboard to the crocodiles, but the red men despatched their prisoners quickly and efficiently. In a few moments it was done.
They were, after all, merely prisoners. Had they been gladiators, professionals, then Otho would have spared them. Gladiators were expensive to buy and ruinous to train. It was rare to see one killed. Prisoners, on the other hand, would be freely available as long as there were border wars. And there were always border wars.
The green ship was by now sitting on the sand at the bottom of the arena. The red ship was now also sinking, but more slowly, the water reddening as it lapped over the gunwales onto the blood-soaked deck. At a signal from Otho the drains were opened, and with a sucking rush the water flooded to the sewers. While the water drained away the archers amused the crowd by shooting at the crocodiles. Otho watched the spectacle with disapproval.
‘Criminal waste. They took months to bring back.’
The trumpets blew. The crocodiles lay immobile on the sand, arrows spining their hides. The corpses of dozens of men lay around them. The crowd stood up, grumbling cheerfully. They knew that it would take an hour or so to drain the water, lay fresh sand and get the arena in a fit condition for the races in the afternoon. They had plenty of time for more of the Senator’s food and drink, and the opportunity to stretch their legs before the main event. The great market held every ninth day was in full swing outside, surrounding the arena and spilling over into the side streets, providing every imaginable type of item for sale. They left their cushions and a slave behind to guard their seats, and for a while the whole arena was almost quiet. The sun reached its highest point and steam rose in clouds from the wet sand as the boys dressed as Mercury dragged the last of the bodies away and the markers were put into place in readiness for the afternoon’s races.