Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

The grand undertaking had foundered. Left in the possession of Spartacus was the part of the army marching with him up to the sources of the Tanagrus River; that, and Aluso, and his son. When his defeat of Quinctius and Scrofa proved indecisive because their cavalry fleeter by far than infantry mustered and allowed the Roman foot to withdraw, Spartacus made no move to leave the area. Three little towns had provided his men with ample food for the moment, but what the next valley and the one after that held, he no longer had any idea. It was approaching spring; granaries were low, no vegetables had yet formed and plumped after the hard winter, the hens were scrawny, and the pigs (crafty creatures!) had gone into hiding in the woods. An obnoxious local from Potentia, the closest town, had taken great pleasure in journeying out to see Spartacus in order to tell him that Varro Lucullus was expected any day to land in Brundisium from Macedonia, and that the Senate had ordered him to reinforce Crassus immediately. "Your days are numbered, gladiator!" said the local with glee. "Rome is invincible!" "I should cut your throat," said the gladiator wearily. "Go ahead! I expect you to! And I don't care!" "Then I won't give you the satisfaction of a noble death. Just go home!" Aluso was listening. After the fellow had taken himself off (very disappointed that his lifeblood had not streamed out upon the ground) she moved close to Spartacus and put her hand gently upon his arm. "It finishes here," she said. "I know, woman." "I see you fall in battle, but I cannot see a death." "When I fall in battle I'll be dead." He was so very tired, and the catastrophe at Scyllaeum still haunted him. How could he look his men in the face knowing that it had been his own misguided carelessness which had ended in their being penned in by Crassus? The women and children were gone and he knew they would not reappear. They had all died from starvation somewhere in the wild Bruttian countryside. With no idea whether what the man from Potentia had told him about Varro Lucullus was true or not, he knew that it cut him off from Brundisium nonetheless. Crassus controlled the Via Popillia; the news of Castus and Gannicus had reached him even before he ambushed Quinctius and Scrofa. Nowhere to go. Nowhere, that is, except one last battlefield. And he was glad, glad, glad.... Neither birth nor ability had tailored him for such an enormous responsibility, the lives and welfare of a whole people. He was just an ordinary Roman of Italian family who had been born on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, and ought to have spent his life there alongside his father and his brother. Who did he think he was, to attempt to give birth to a new nation? Not noble enough, not educated enough, not grand enough. But there was some honor in dying a free man on a battlefield; he would never go back to a prison. Never. When word came that Crassus and his army were approaching, he took Aluso and his son and put them in a wagon harnessed to six mules far enough away from where he intended to make his last stand to ensure that they would elude pursuit. He would have preferred that they leave immediately, but Aluso refused, saying she must wait for the outcome of the conflict. In the covered rear of the vehicle lay gold, silver, treasures, coin; a guarantee that his wife and child would prosper. That they might be killed he understood. Yet their fates were on the laps of the gods, and the gods had been passing strange. Some forty thousand Spartacani formed up to meet Crassus. Spartacus made no speech to them before the battle, but they cheered him deafeningly as he rode down their ranks on beautiful dappled grey Batiatus. He took his place beneath the standard of his people the leaping enameled fish of a Gaul's fighting helmet turned in the saddle to raise both hands in the air, fists clenched, then slid out of the horse's saddle. His sword was in his right hand, the curved saber of a Thracian gladiator; he closed his eyes, raised it, and brought it down into Batiatus's neck. Blood sprayed and gushed, but the lovely creature made no protest. Like a sacrificial victim it went down on its knees, rolled over, died. There. No need for a speech. To kill his beloved horse told his followers everything. Spartacus did not intend to leave the field alive; he had dispensed with his means of escape. As battles went it was straight, uncomplicated, extremely bloody. Taking their example from Spartacus, most of his men fought until they dropped, some in death, some in utter exhaustion. Spartacus himself killed two centurions before an unknown in the struggling mass cut the hamstrings in one leg. Unable to stand, he fell to his knees, but fought on doggedly until a huge pile of bodies by his side tumbled over and buried him. Fifteen thousand Spartacani survived to flee the field; six thousand went in the direction of Apulia, the rest south toward the Bruttian mountains.

"Over in just six months, and a winter campaign at that," said Crassus to Caesar. "I've lost very few men all considered, and Spartacus is dead. Rome has her eagles and fasces back, and a lot of the plunder will prove impossible to return to its original owners: We'll all do quite well out of it." "There is a difficulty, Marcus Crassus," said Caesar, who had been delegated to inspect the field for men still alive. "Oh?" "Spartacus. He isn't there." "Rubbish!" said Crassus, startled. "I saw him fall!" "So did I. I even memorized exactly where the spot was. I can take you straight to it in fact, come with me now and I will! But he isn't there, Marcus Crassus. He isn't there." "Odd!" The general huffed, pursed his lips, thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, what does it really matter? His army's gone, that's the main thing. I can't celebrate a triumph over an enemy classified as slave. The Senate will give me an ovation, but it's not the same. Not the same!" He sighed. "What about his woman, the Thracian witch?" "We haven't found her either, though we did round up quite a few camp followers who had huddled together out of the way. I questioned them about her and found out that her name is Aluso but they swore she had climbed into a red hot, sizzling chariot drawn by fiery snakes and driven off into the sky." "Shades of Medea! I suppose that makes Spartacus Jason!" Crassus turned to walk with Caesar toward the heap of dead that had buried the fallen Spartacus. "I think somehow the pair of them got away. Don't you?" "I'm sure they did," said Caesar. "Well, we'll have to scour the countryside for Spartacani anyway. They might come to light." Caesar made no reply. His own opinion was that they would never come to light. He was clever, the gladiator. Too clever to try to raise another army. Clever enough to become anonymous.

All through the month of May the Roman army tracked down Spartacani in the fastnesses of Lucania and Bruttium, ideal locations for brigandry which made it imperative that every surviving Spartacanus be captured. Caesar had estimated those who escaped southward at about nine or ten thousand, but all he and the other hunting details managed to find were some six thousand six hundred all told. The rest would probably become brigands, contribute to the perils of journeying down the Via Popillia to Rhegium without an armed escort. "I can keep on going," he said to Crassus on the Kalends of June, though the catch will become progressively smaller and harder to snare." "No," said Crassus with decision. "I want my army back in Capua by the next market day. Including the consuls' legions. The curule elections are due next month and I intend to be back in Rome in plenty of time to stand for the consulship." That was no surprise; Caesar in fact did not consider it worthy of comment. Instead he continued on the subject of the fugitive Spartacani. "What about the six thousand or so who fled northeast into Apulia?" "They got as far as the border of Italian Gaul, actually," said Crassus. "Then they ran into Pompeius Magnus and his legions returning from Spain. You know Magnus! He killed the lot." "So that only leaves the prisoners here. What do you want to do with them?" "They'll go with us as far as Capua." The face Crassus turned upon his senior tribune of the soldiers was its usual phlegmatic self, but the eyes held an obdurate coldness. "Rome doesn't need these futile slave wars, Caesar. They're just one more drain on the Treasury. Had we not been lucky, five eagles and five sets of fasces might have been lost forever, a stain on Rome's honor I for one would have found unendurable. In time men like Spartacus might be blown up out of all proportion by some enemy of Rome's. Other men might strive to emulate him, never knowing the grubby truth. You and I know that Spartacus was a product of the legions, far more a Quintus Sertorius than a maltreated slave. Had he not been a product of the legions he could never have gone as far as he did. I do not want him turning into some sort of slave hero. So I will use Spartacus to put a stop to the whole phenomenon of slave uprisings." "It was far more a Samnite than a slave uprising." "True. But the Samnites are a curse Rome will have to live with forever. Whereas slaves must learn their place. I have the means to teach them their place. And I will. After I finish with the remnants of the Spartacani, there will be no more slave uprisings in our Roman world." Used to thinking so quickly and summing men up so well that he had arrived at the answer long before anyone else, Caesar found himself absolutely unable to guess what Crassus was up to. "How will you accomplish that?" he asked. The accountant took over. "It was the fact that there are six thousand six hundred prisoners gave me the idea," Crassus said. The distance between Capua and Rome is one hundred and thirty two miles, each of five thousand feet. That is a total of six hundred and sixty thousand feet. Divided by six thousand six hundred, a distance of one hundred feet. I intend to crucify one Spartacanus every hundred feet between Capua and Rome. And they will remain hanging from their crosses until they rot away to bare bones." Caesar drew a breath. "A terrible sight." "I have one question," said Crassus, his smooth and un lined brow creasing. "Do you think I ought to put all the crosses on one side of the road, or alternate between both sides?" "One side of the road," said Caesar instantly. "Definitely on one side of the road only. That is, provided by road you mean the Via Appia rather than the Via Latina." "Oh yes, it has to be the Via Appia. Straight as an arrow for miles and miles, and not as many hills." "Then one side of the road. The eye will take the sight in better that way." Caesar smiled. "I have some experience when it comes to crucifixion." "I heard about that," said Crassus seriously. "However, I can't give you the job. It's not a fitting one for a tribune of the soldiers. He's an elected magistrate. By rights it belongs to the praefectus fabrum.'' As the praefectus fabrum the man who looked after all the technical and logistic factors involved in army supply was one of Crassus's own freedmen and brilliant at his work, neither Caesar nor Crassus doubted that it would be a smooth operation. Thus it was that at the end of June when Crassus, his legates, his tribunes of the soldiers and his own appointed military tribunes rode up the Via Appia from Capua escorted by a single cohort of troops, the left hand side of the ancient and splendid road was lined with crosses all the way. Every hundred feet another Spartacanus slumped from the ropes which cruelly bound arms at the elbow and legs below the knees. Nor had Crassus been kind. The six thousand six hundred Spartacani died slowly with unbroken limbs, a soughing of moans from Capua to the Capena Gate of Rome. Some people came to sightsee. Some brought a recalcitrant slave to look upon Crassus's handiwork and point out that this was the right of every master, to crucify. But many upon looking turned immediately to go home again, and those who were obliged to travel on the Via Appia anywhere between Capua and Rome were grateful that the crosses adorned only one side of the road. As the distance rendered the sight more bearable, the popular spot for those who lived in Rome to see was from the top of the Servian Walls on either side of the Capena Gate; the view extended for miles, but the faces were blurs. They hung there for eighteen months enduring the slow cycle of decay that took them from living skin and muscle to clacking bones, for Crassus would not permit that they be taken down until the very last day of his consulship. And, thought Caesar in some wonder, surely no other military campaign in the whole history of Rome had been so rounded, so neat, so finite: what had begun with a decimation had ended with a crucifixion.