Steven Saylor - Arms of Nemesis

'Who else would take it? Every politician in Rome with military experience is quaking with fear. They want Spartacus to be someone else's problem.'

'What about-'

'Don't even say his name! If I never heard it again, I could die happily.' Crassus slumped against the table. His expression softened. 'Actually, I don't hate Pompey. We were good comrades, under Sulla. No one can say that his glory is unearned. The man is brilliant — a great tactician, a splendid leader, a superb politician. Handsome as a demigod, too. He really does look like a bust of Alexander, or used to. And rich! People say that I'm rich, but they forget that Pompey's as wealthy as I am, if not wealthier. Pompey, they say, is brilliant, Pompey is handsome, but rich is something they say only about me — "Crassus, Crassus, rich as Croesus."' He reached for the wine and poured himself another cup. He offered more to me, but I showed him that my cup was still half full. 'Besides, Pompey has his hands full in Spain, mopping up that rebel Sertorius. He can't possibly get back in time to put an end to Spartacus. Actually, he could, but he won't, because I'll have done the job already. What do you know about Spartacus, anyway?'

'No more than the merchants down at the Subura markets know, when they tell me their prices have tripled because of someone called Spartacus.'

'It all comes down to that, doesn't it? They can burn a whole town in the countryside and hang the city fathers by their ankles, but the real rub comes when Spartacus and his nasty little revolt start making life uneasy for the rabble in Rome. The situation is so absurd that no one could have invented it; it's like a nightmare that won't go away. Do you know where it started?' 'Capua, wasn't it?'

Crassus nodded. 'Just a short ride from here, up the Via Consularis from Puteoli. A fool named Batiatus ran a gladiator farm on the edge of town; bought his slaves wholesale, weeded out the weak, trained the strong ones and sold them to clients all over Italy. He came into a number of Thracians — good fighters, but notoriously temperamental. Batiatus decided to put them in their place from the very start, so he kept them in cages like beasts and fed them nothing but thin gruel and water, letting them out only for their exercises and training. The idiot! Why is it that men who would never think of beating a horse or salting a patch of good earth can be so reckless with their human property? Especially a piece of property that knows how to carry a weapon and kill. A slave is a tool — use it wisely and you profit, use it foolishly and your efforts are wasted.

'But I was talking about Spartacus. In the normal course of things these Thracians would have been broken to Batiatus's will, one way or another, or they might have revolted against him and been killed on the spot, putting a sorry end to a sorry episode. But among their number was a man called Spartacus. It happens sometimes that even among slaves you'll find a man of forceful character, a brute with a way of making other brutes gather around him to do his will. There's nothing mystical about it — I suppose Dionysius has babbled on to you about his history of the supposed magician Eunus and the slave revolt in Sicily sixty years ago, a thoroughly disgusting episode; at least it was contained on an island. They're already saying the same sort of rubbish about Spartacus, that before he was sold into slavery he was seen sleeping with snakes coiled around his head, and the slave he calls his wife is some sort of prophetess who goes into convulsions and speaks for the god Bacchus.'

'So they say down in the Subura markets,' I admitted.

Crassus wrinkled his nose. 'Why anyone would live in the

Subura when there are so many decent neighbourhoods in Rome-'

'My father left me a house, up on the Esquiline,' I explained.

'Take my advice and sell whatever sort of rattrap you've got on the Esquiline and buy a newer place outside the city walls; out on the Campus Martius beyond the Forum Holitorium there's a lot of new building going on, by the old naval yards. Close by the river, clean air, good values. More wine?'

I accepted. Crassus rubbed his eyes, but from the way he ground his jaw I could see he was not sleepy.

'But we were talking about Spartacus,' he said. 'In the beginning there were only seventy of them — can you imagine, just seventy miserable Thracian gladiators who decided to escape from their master. They didn't even have a plan; they were going to bide their time and look for an opportunity, but then one of their number betrayed them — slaves always betray one another — and they acted on impulse, using axes and spits from the cookhouse for weapons. The goddess Fortune must have looked down and been amused, because on their way out of town they came upon a driver with a cart full of real weapons, headed for Batiatus's gladiator farm. From then on it seemed that nothing could stop them. To be sure, the threat was badly gauged at the start; no one in Rome could take a revolt of gladiators seriously, so they sent out Clodius with a half legion of irregulars, thinking that would be the end of it. Ha! It was merely the end of Clodius's career in politics. Victory feeds on victory; every time he triumphed over Roman arms Spartacus found it easier to incite more slaves to join him. They say he now commands a movable nation of over a hundred thousand men, women, and children. And not only slaves; even freeborn herdsmen and shepherds have cast their lot with him. For one thing, they say he hands out the booty with no regard for rank or station; his foot soldiers get as great a share as his generals.'

Crassus curled his lip as if his wine had gone sour. 'The whole affair is perverse! To think it should come to this, that I should be scrambling for glory by pitting myself against a slave, a gladiator. The Senate won't even allow me a triumph in Rome if I win, never mind that Spartacus is a greater threat to the Republic than Mithridates or Jugurtha ever were. I'll be lucky if they give me a garland. And if I should lose…' A shadow crossed his face. He muttered a prayer of supplication, dabbed his fingers in his wine cup and tossed the drops over his shoulder.

It seemed a good time to change the subject. 'Was it true, the story that Dionysius told this evening, about the sea cave?'

Crassus smiled, as he had at dinner. 'Every word. Oh, I suppose it's become a bit embellished in the retelling over the years, given a nostalgic polish. In many ways those were terrible times for me, miserable months of anxious waiting. And grief He swirled his cup and studied its depths. 'It is a hard thing for a young man to lose his father, especially to suicide. His enemies drove him to it. And an older brother, assassinated only because Cinna and Marius were bent on destroying the best families in Rome. They would have wiped out the nobility altogether if they could have. Thank the gods, and especially Fortune, that Sulla rose up to save us.'

He sighed. 'Do you know, stuck in that miserable cave day after day, month after month, I made a vow to myself every morning: they won't get me, I said. They struck down my father, they struck down my brother, but I will not be struck down! And so far I haven't been.'

He swirled his cup and blinked, squeezing his eyes shut and opening them wide, looking weary but far from sleep. 'I did the right thing, you know, the pious thing. I honoured the gods and the shades of the dead. I paid my father's debts, though it left me with nothing, and I took up his cause, and when the times became more settled I married my brother's widow. I married Tertulla for piety, not love; even so, I have never regretted the choice. Not all of us can indulge ourselves in cheap sentiment, like Lucius Licinius. Or Mummius!' he snorted. 'Now Lucius is dead, and I–I am either the man of the hour, as Dionysius will gladly tell you, or else a man who is marching steadily and without the slightest hesitation towards his utter ruination at the hands of a slave. I would rather see my wealth vanish than to hear them whisper behind my back in the Forum: "He was brought low by a mere gladiator…" '