The silence, broken only by the rhythmic pounding, forms the tender womb of the forthcoming war, the greatest and most spectacular that has ever been fought inside an arena.
The waves ripple and gusts of warm air wash over the sweat-soaked crowd.
The ships make their entrance.
In no hurry, which is as it should be.
The first trireme emerges from the south entrance: it is simply immense.
A prodigious ship, carved at the river yards, masterfully polished and painted in the colors of Corinth. The bow bears the eyes of a sea monster and a Greek smile, tattooed onto the wood with paintbrushes and chisels just above the waterline. The mast has been lowered using an extraordinary mechanism in order to facilitate its entrance beneath the low-hanging gateway: an iron-hinged elbow joint permits such a movement. In war, a real war, it would be considered a liability, but today all is theater. In the end it does not matter who emerges victorious; all that matters is a copious flow of blood into the water below.
The curved prow rises, an impetuous curl facing the make-believe sea, protecting the small army that fills the deck. When the mast is raised through ninety degrees to its full height, and the square sail unfurls, revealing its full extent, the crowd can finally see the teeming mass of heads and bodies, ready for the fight.
Three banks of oarsmen, three hundred and sixty pairs of arms, to cover the trifling distance to the center of the pool.
The ships have lain hidden in the lower floors of the Amphitheater, ready to join the action and raised by the artificial current, allowed to rise a little at a time to ensure they floated without any problems. Greek-style triremes have an extremely shallow draft; despite their bulk they can sail or row just about anywhere, even in the colossal bathtub of his majesty Titus Augustus.
Corinth’s adversary does not hesitate to show itself: the opposing vessel looks nothing like the one actually used by the valiant defenders of Epidaurus to defend their city from the attacking fleet, but nobody complains. After all, it is the will of the Emperor. Titus has organized things properly, and knows that clarity is everything. He decided the second ship would be white, with the intention of maximizing the visual impact. Looking down at the ivory splendor, it is hard to fault his choice. Master shipwrights caulked the seams with pitch before expert decorators went to the trouble of dolling the vessel up like a noblewoman at a court feast. But in this case too, it is when the ship’s sail opens that the crowd is left truly breathless: the canvas square raised on the mast is as black as night, creating a spectacular contrast.
The oars match the sail, and the gently lapping waters of the pool are churned into foam beneath the slaves’ forceful strokes.
The ships circle one another in an imitation of the maneuvers that preceded the historic encounter.
Almost nobody on the terraces would remember much about the mythical war that pitted Corcyra and Athens against Corinth, in the bloody defense of the colony of Epidaurus; Greek history from too many centuries ago. But Titus selected it more for practical than didactic reasons. The best known fact of this titanic encounter to have survived the passage of time is that both sides declared themselves the winners. Once battle was joined, twenty Corcyran ships chased the right wing of the Corinthian fleet as far as the shore, where they tore it to pieces, massacring even the hoplites deployed on dry land. In the meantime the left wing fell upon the remaining Corcyrans and the Athenians were forced to step in to help their struggling allies. In this slaughter too, no quarter was given.
The remains of the two fleets were preparing themselves for the final battle when the Corinthians retreated, believing the Athenian ships to be the vanguard of the Delian League and deciding that they really did not have the stomach to face an enemy of such strength.
Half a victory each way then, and no clash between the land forces. Each side returned home believing it had defeated its adversary.
In other words, the ideal scenario for what Titus has in mind: a reconstruction of the past, simplified due to the limited space available and so contested by only two ships. Enormous triremes in a meager pond, each overflowing with men ready to tear each other apart, but still only two ships.
Who will get through it alive? History has given only an ambiguous answer to this question.
But surprise is the very essence of wonder.
May the spectacle commence.
The crowd holds its breath while the two warships move to the long sides of the basin.
Anchors are dropped to steady the craft, oars pulled back inside.
The crush of bodies on both ships is striking. A hundred and eighty luckless men on each, eighty of them decked out as hoplites and archers. The rest are semi-naked, bruised and dirty.
None of those taking part in the naumachia is a professional warrior. They are wretches, servants and slaves: the scum of the Empire ready for slaughter, Rome’s rotten meat thrown to the hungry populace.
The drums fall silent.
The torches flicker.
It begins.
Bows are tensed on the Corcyran ship. Sixty shafts pointed at chest-height, strings strain to breaking point, archers kneeling with simple, bare-chested soldiers standing behind them.
Hundreds of pairs of gritted teeth wait on the Corinthian vessel. The lowly know that today is the perfect day to die. But they will sell their lives dearly, you can bet on that.
Corcyra looses, Corinth takes cover.
Blood is at the gates, spurting this way and that in no time at all.
The front row absorbs the impact somewhat, but from the second row back there are dozens of victims. Many die instantly—a shot from that range would kill even a Cyclops—but others are left wounded. Their fury mounts. Hatred pumps through the veins of the wounded throng of muscles, and the wretches’ commander shouts ferociously for them to return fire.
Corinth too is prepared for its own long-range attack, which it unleashes without a second thought.
The distance between the two ships shrinks; it is hard to stay floating separately in a puddle when you are both as big as a whale. The attraction between two evils is too strong: the unlucky warriors have been summoned here to die. If it is not today it will be in a week’s time, their flesh burnt by red-hot pokers or their necks broken by Rome’s jailors.
Might as well have a bit of fun and go out in a blaze of glory. This is why every slave fights with merciless fervor: it is the last chance that they will be granted to be men.
Corinth’s spears pierce Corcyra’s flesh. The white deck is stained red and the hoplites are itching to get into the action, while the archers are forced to fall back and the rowers have already left their oars to break a few bones with their bare hands.
The brawl is lethal and the commander makes a snap decision: “Throw the bodies overboard!”
Corpses plunge into the water from over the gunwale, floating motionless like fallen nymphs, wooden darts pointing out of their hearts, straight up to the heavens.
The crowd, on their feet up on the terraces, is going wild.
Blood clouds the water, staining the wonder with horror. As it should be.
The time for measuring up the foe is over. Grappling ramps appear all over the decks, skillfully maneuvered by the oarsmen until the devastating impact between the two ships’ hulls.
The hoplites on both sides, standing on the swaying wooden decks, are quick to get down to business. The wretches are dressed up like ancient warriors, with decorative helmets, pikes and brass shields, but they boast neither the grace nor the determination of the heroes they are called upon to imitate. Here, today, at the center of this imperial washtub, suspended between two toys weighing in at sixty thousand pounds, the fight is for survival and the rules are non-existent.
A wild cry goes up, metal clashes against metal: spears and shields, serrated swords stabbing into flaccid flesh.
Many end up in the water, and before long the arena has turned into a pond brimming with squirming tadpoles. The
boldest manage to gain the prow with a few powerful strokes of their arms and climb back up, hunting for blood. But many do not know how to swim and they make a pitiful sight as they drown in a few feet of water. One at a time, the bodies of the reject sons of the Empire add themselves to the constellation of death reflected back at the crowd, a mirror in which to read their destiny.
In the meantime, back up on the decks of the triremes, the battle rages furiously. “Hold him still!” shouts a slick, blond-haired brute to his companion, who has just grabbed a Corcyran oarsman on the point of fleeing, before slicing his head off with a double saber blow. The blond man’s company gain the upper hand: there are five of them, all scars and undamaged muscle, thieves or slave merchants who must have been doing alright until a few days ago because they show none of the usual signs of emaciation. The one they call Filth is bigger than the rest, slashing this way and that with a two-handed ax, smashing skulls as he goes. He must have brought it from home—there is no way it forms part of the arena’s equipment. At a sign from his captain, he begins chopping into the mainmast. A pair of his companions comes to lend a hand and the great pole that supports the jet-black sail begins to sway.
From a tactical point of view, the move is irrelevant: there is not much point in depriving a hundred-oared ship of its sail, much less one floating in an artificial pool. But this is the realm of chaos: causing pain and destruction is what counts, not winning.
Filth and his boys deliver the final blow, and bellow as if they had just defeated Jupiter himself.
The pole falls inexorably, breaking the backs of those unlucky enough to be standing in its way. But it is the sail that really tips the balance of the match: the black cloak covers everything, endless and undiscriminating as only death can be. The Corcyran warriors find themselves imprisoned in a colossal shroud and attempt to escape, but the descending sheet sharpens the combat, spreading panic and unleashing their enemies’ full fury.
Those looking down from above can make out nothing more than an indistinct mass covering half the ship: it is the very belly of Pluto, churned from within by the souls of the departed, a black sack filled with writhing cockroaches.
The effect is terrible and magnificent. Every so often a blade tears through the fabric and a head emerges for an instant, only to be instantly skewered by those left outside the sail.
Filth’s move has undeniably given Corinth the advantage.
Now that half of the enemy ship has been covered, the surviving sailors lift their siege and return to their own trireme to target the wounded vessel from a distance.
There is no distinction now between oarsmen and hoplites now, crushed together in a pitiless assault: arrows, spears, swords, ramps, hooks and splinters of the enemy’s ship. It seems that no one, or almost no one, has survived the infernal rain by the time it lets up, down beneath the battered sail.
But the blow that brings the battle to its conclusion comes not from the Corinthian ship. Once again, it is the Empire that decides the fate of the downtrodden.
Titus has watched the contest carefully. Deep down he was rooting for the whites’ ship, for the simple fact that it cost him a fortune to have it painted. But that was the way it went and what matters now is a fantastic finale.
He need not even get to his feet to give the command; it is enough for him to raise his right hand. When, on the other side of the Amphitheater, a wise master at arms seated among the senators and the vestal virgins spies the signal, he nods and hurriedly prepares himself. He fishes a curved horn of polished brass out of the sack on his lap and sounds it three times, then waits with arms crossed over his chest. The long, deep notes are almost lost in the din of aquatic combat, but those they are intended for hear them loud and clear.
In the second row, hidden until now in black cloaks among the equestrians and nobles, a dozen or so hounds of the Praetorian Guard get to their feet. The soldiers quickly rid themselves of their dark capes, revealing sparkling breastplates and murderous gazes. They all have a long bow and a quiver filled with special arrows. They form up, glancing down at the Corcyran ship; the longer the fight goes on, the more it looks like a caterpillar curled up in its cocoon, a hybrid condemned never to emerge in adult form. The imperial arrowheads are quilted with rags and dipped in tar, and a slave passes before each archer to light the tip, much to the wonder of the gawping crowd. The master at arms, who has overseen the operation with a watchful eye, lowers his right arm, held aloft since the soldiers notched their arrows.
The salvo of twelve darts slices through the sky of the Amphitheater, stabbing into the black sail that boils with pierced death. The flames do not take long to gain a foothold. The mob on the terraces falls silent for a couple of seconds. Then, as the blaze chews into wood and flesh, puffing out its chest like a wild beast, it is greeted by a roar from the crowd, like rain in the desert.
Up in their niche, side by side with his companions, Verus’s broken heart gives a start. He has barely drawn breath since the ships entered the arena, up to his neck in aquatic ecstasy. Engulfed.
But with the first flicker of flame his feet are back firmly on the ground: the god of fire demands his attention.
The curse of the flames dies hard.
Red on the dirty water, black smoke staining the blue of the heavens.
The imperial intervention has decided the outcome of the naumachia, but the Corinthians must act quickly if they do not wish to come to an equally sticky end. The blond man, Filth, and the rest of the victorious vanguard rush to get back on board their ship. Despite the pyre and the loss of half its crew, the Corcyrans continue to acquit themselves with honor: the hoplites intend to go through Pluto’s gates still brandishing their weapons.
The Corinthians retreat en masse, cutting ropes and pulling up ramps and anchor, the oars and arms of a hundred desperate men proving just sufficient to escape the fury of the pyre.
Now there is only hush and sighs, as Vulcan gets the better of Neptune, shredding through wood and life.
The spectacle is horrible and incredible: the survivors, on the craft that flies the colors of Corinth, watch as their enemies burn.
They look like maddened demons, twisting in the flames like dry leaves. One hoplite seems possessed, eyes crazed and skin ablaze. He throws himself into the water, laden with iron, a fiery star in free fall. The flames are quenched and his eyes now thirst for revenge, roasted eyelids unable to conceal his homicidal gaze.
The white ship is a fireball, its timbers giving way beneath the weight of lifeless bodies, while the melting tar used to caulk the seams serves only to feed the flames. Leaks spring open and water spurts up impetuously while the shroud that was once a sail soaks up water and blood.
The Corcyran trireme sinks, as much as it is possible to sink in a puddle of water. It settles, broken, onto the bottom and is consumed by the flames, filling the air with a dark mist. The basin is filled with corpses and detritus, the black stain expanding outwards.
Rome heaps the wretched victors with liberating praise.
Corinth, the survivor, paddles its way to the exit.
Titus, infinite in his greatness, has filled the popular craw with surprise, he has broken hearts and conquered souls with the surprise he hid so well.
He is satisfied.
Satisfied rotten.
The acclaim echoes long and avid, while the attendants are already working to set the next phase of the wonder in motion. The noise from the terraces is too great to hear the clanging of pipes, but the belly of the beast is changing its form once again, and the water that stunned an entire city is slowly draining away.
The basin empties, the fire peters out, the corpses are picked up and tossed into carts that crisscross the soggy sand, spraying it all over the place, including onto the spectators in the front rows. The members of the crowd stretch their legs in anticipation of the final act, the part that will ensure this day goes down in history: the gladiator fights will begin shortly. Just the time it takes to put out
a fire and drag the wreckage of a majestic boat to oblivion.
Even the feverish activity of the assistants and slaves, intent on clearing the arena beneath the wrathful sun, puts Caesar Augustus in a good mood. Titus watches calmly as the lanistasget up off their terraces and lead their teams back down to the belly of the Amphitheater. To get ready.
Verus and Priscus find themselves walking side by side down an endless corridor. Ircius and Daimon have just informed them that they wish to speak with both of them.
“Meet us in the dressing room next to the cells. But not right away. First we have some business to discuss.”
“Yes, master,” the Gaul and the Briton answered together, slowing their pace to let the rest of their gang past, still busy discussing the most exciting parts of the naumachia and landing tremendous slaps across each other’s shoulders.
Verus and Priscus know there is no escape. In that stone silence, immersed in the lingering humidity that still fills the air, there is a whole life, or rather two. Priscus’s passion for Verus, a pure and unspeakable love. Torn by affection and hungry for his touch, but also blinded by rage and jealousy at what was snatched away from him. Rancor, remorse. And still that crazy desire, now that the fire is so close. The ice-man’s heart is in his throat, Verus’s breath a stiletto to his heart.
But nor can the Briton stand the forced silence in the narrow corridor. He wants to ask forgiveness, to talk.
To explain that he knows what lies at the bottom of his companion’s heart. That he has thought about it over and over, stirring his soul like some infernal soup, dredging up thoughts burned and broken. He gets it, and has stood aside. He has struggled against the thought of running away, against unthinking anger. He has missed his friend. He has missed him so much it hurts. And it does not matter if the son of the Island does not have the same fire in his heart that burns inside the Gaul’s chest. It does not matter because now he is here, just inches away.
Colosseum Page 30