The Artifact (47 page)

“You must have brushed death several times during the past few years,” Fabian observed.

“A few.”

“You understand, however, that the lifespan of any
bestiarii
is brief.”

I had seen that with my own eyes and acknowledged the inescapable truth by lifting my shoulders.

“If I bought you from your present circumstances,” he said, “and trained you to fight in the

arena, you might live a while longer.”

Fabian leaned back on his stool and laughed. “A Jew would bargain with Charon
^46
.
to avoid Hell!”

I acknowledged his mirth with a smile. “We are speaking only of money.”

“Training for the arena is far more difficult than fencing with Vespasian. If you complete that and live through your first engagement, we shall discuss salary. If you do not, yet survive, I will sell you to the highest bidder.”

“A wounded man down on the sand with your sword at his throat, the hands of the crowd pointing to their chests demanding your thrust of death?”

I shrugged at remembered thoughts I had entertained many times during my enslavement. “I refuse to kill unarmed slaves, women, or children.”

“You know the oath?”

I placed my palm against my breast, repeating the gladiator’s promise that had rung in my ears during the past three years: “
Uri, vinciri, uerberari, ferroque necari.”
⁴⁷

Fabian purchased me that same day. I was allowed a bath, a clean tunic and was measured for a new leg brace by the circus
doctore
⁴⁸
and ironsmith. My gladiator training also began that same afternoon in an open practice area on the outer perimeter of the stands. It began by pairing me against a scarred Celtic giant with long yellow locks, hairless body of pronounced muscles beneath smooth skin slick with perspiration, wearing a red loincloth secured by a wide belt of leather.

My blue cloth was cinched by a piece of rope. We were both armed with wooden swords and the small shields of a
secutor
⁴⁹
Fabian hovered behind us giving instructions, urging me on to greater aggression, at first telling my opponent to pull his blows, then in apparent frustration at my timidity, letting him go, that release swiftly resulting in my sword skittering from my hand, my back on the sand and the wooden tip of my blond opponent’s sword at my throat.

As I lay there under the presumed threat of death, I realized that this was truly not the benign practice sessions I had enjoyed with Vespasian. I was engaged in an effort designed to preserve my life against a ferocious enemy determined to take it or surrender his own. Since I had always been small in stature, most other men appeared tall to me, and I had long ago ceased to compare how much bigger one was than another, ignoring their size as a fact of life, like my leg. From my early youth I had espoused David’s example by using my sling to gain my equality, so any threat from a bigger man never daunted me. They were all bigger.

At a command from Fabian the blond giant let me stand, and the
lanista
ordered us to clash again. My anger at my previous laxity and being overpowered made me belligerent, enabling me to force the giant to retreat a few times, landing a blow or two in the process, which angered him. Despite Fabian’s instructions, the giant disarmed me again, this time pressing the wooden sword point into my neck hard enough to draw blood.

We continued that session through the afternoon in much the same manner, except I was able to cut the blond man’s arm, once even tripping him off balance with my good leg, to sprawl on the ground, from which he immediately rolled and sprang erect before I could get my foot on his sword wrist or my blade at his throat. Toward the end of the day, Fabian fitted us with the traditional heavy bronze helmets, dull and battered, shorn of plume, and dented
greaves
⁵⁰
worn in combat, the first of which was much too large, encumbering my vision, the latter hindered my movement. We spared again for a short time before Fabian waved a halt to our practice day and disappeared behind a barricade.

Despite my opponent’s forceful congratulatory slap on my shoulder as we walked off the practice field, I felt completely inept, an abject failure for the first time I could recall. As we walked into the gladiator’s quarters, I was certain that one of my prior guards would accost me and lead me back to the damp, lower depths without a word from the
lanista
. Yet after a meal of roasted meat, bread, cheese and wine, I fell into a deep sleep on the first dry mat I had felt under me in years, waking only in the gray, pre-dawn light to the prodding foot of Fabian. He handed me bread and fruit as we walked through the tunnel into the training area. “I think I misjudged your ability to become a successful
secutor,
even a
myrmillo
⁵¹
or
Thracian
⁵²
.” I awaited his concurrence in silence, chewing a mouthful of apple.

“You are too slow on your feet, too weak to disarm an opponent, have too little reach and are so short that you will always be on the defensive from bigger men, never able to batter them down from above.”

I took another bite of apple, my only hope then was to finish eating the fruit before he took

me back to the slave quarters. Instead, we emerged into the training field where Fabian led me to a
retiarius
⁵³
dressed for combat, and like all other gladiators, fought with bare feet in the loose sand. A duplicate set of equipment was propped against a padded practice post.

“Marcus,” Fabian told me, gesturing at the phlegmatic
retiarius
, “will show you how to

don the gear and instruct you in the basic moves using the net.”

As Marcus pondered how to fit the
greave
over my old leg brace, the
doctore
approached again with the iron craftsman who carried a hinged metal support with a raised contoured sole designed as an improvement to their first effort, to be worn under the
greave
on my crippled leg. Although Fabian suggested additional modifications to the device, it already felt far better than previous braces constructed by Father and me.

Learning to handle the net on the practice pole under the guidance of Marcus required three days of hard, frustrating work. I finally mastered throwing and retrieving the deadly device that was meant to ensnare an opponent who was then dispatched with the
fascina
⁵⁴
I was initially pitted against an opponent armed as a
Thracian
, with whom I worked for several weeks improving my skills, absorbing shouted tactical directions from Marcus and Fabian until neither my stature, reach, strength nor agility posed a hindrance to my ability to master the killing tools of the
retiarius
, whose chance of long-term survival was allegedly greater than other
gladiatorii
⁵⁵
swordsmen.

Contrary to popular belief, the lives of most gladiators are not promiscuously squandered. With the exception of
noxii
⁵⁶
and incompetent slaves--ex-soldiers condemned for some military offense, burly prisoners of war from defeated lands, pressed men and even volunteers, make up the

majority of the fighting spectacle for practically every circus throughout the Empire. These cadres of vicious contestants are usually members of a
familia
⁵⁷
gladiatorii
owned by a
lanista
who

bought each one at a substantial price. For that reason, these fighters are well fed and cared for, diligently trained, practice consistently, engage in a tough regimen of physical exercise and are scheduled to fight in the arena before spectators only once or twice a month. Most of us were in our eighteenth to twenty-fifth year.

Provocators
⁵⁸
and other blade-wielding, helmeted combatants were large, hard-muscled and powerful. Most of the
retiarii
, like myself, were slender and lithe with the nimble minds required to execute tactical ploys necessary to foil their brute opponents. With a thick pallet for sleep, adequate food, and regular visits from prostitutes—except for the prospect of death at the hand of one of my peers once or twice a month--my life of enforced slavery had turned almost bearable. Popular gladiators were occasionally requisitioned for sexual services by women and men of the aristocracy enthralled by the their ability to dominate professional killers in their beds, whose murderous activity or death they might witness on the morrow. The few female gladiators who fought each other with tightly wrapped breasts to avoid offending the sensibilities of bloodthirsty Roman spectators, were regularly sought out for orgies by provincial officials and wealthy merchants.

The lives of highly valued gladiators, therefore, were sometimes preserved by faking a kill, when two men of the same
familia
⁵⁹
fought, or through arrangement between two
lanista
. This subterfuge was difficult to achieve, however, under the gaze of thousands of spectators clamoring for blood, because the traditional killing stroke severed the spinal cord at the back of the neck while the doomed man knelt grasping the knees of his executioner. To further discourage false killings some arenas had adopted the practice of slitting the throat of every loser carried off the sand. If the artifice were successful, however, the
lanista
would not schedule the saved gladiator to fight until they moved on to their next circus engagement.

Because the procurator Pontius Pilate, several divisions of troops, countless administrators, servants, freedmen and settlers from Rome lived and worked in Caesarea, the games were frequent, and the stadium filled to capacity, which prompted Fabian to remain in that metropolis of fifty-thousand people for two months. He kept me at training, practice and exercise during our time there and our month’s stay in Ramat Gam, until we traveled to the city of Beersheba at the southern extremity of Palestine. At the end of those several grueling months of punishing work, exercise, nourishing food and nights of refreshing sleep, my diminutive body had filled out appreciably, my new musculature solidity of chest, arms and legs serving to make me as strong as some of the taller gladiators, yet more agile, and I believe more wily, the combination making my abrupt movements in combat unpredictable.

Each
lanista
arranges the engagement of his
familia gladiatoria
with
editor
^60
.
or arena managers, whereby a nominal bribe can result in the pitting of one gladiator against another of lesser or equal skill. My first combatant was a novice
myrmillo
from another
familia
who had lost two previous bouts, both of them
missus
⁶¹
, indicating the crowd was impressed by his audacity or courage.

I slept not at all the night before that match, contemplating the forbidden suicide of my religion, by which many men in my position choose to escape the torment of our inhumane lives. The next morning, the sounds of boisterous spectators above my cell conjured up the slaughter of a hundred or more wild animals by
bestiarii
who had opened the games, chariot races that elevated from a contest of speed to bloody spectacles of collision, overturned vehicles, maimed horses and trampled men, and the mass slaughter of
noxii
.

My body felt weak throughout as I entered the arena in blinding sunlight from the dark
carcare
^62
.
to a tumultuous roar from thousands of voices anticipating the assured bloodletting of the preliminary single combat of the day. A slave handed me my
fascina
as I tried to adjust my vision to the brilliant light, taking in the flailing arms of spectators in multicolored togas surrounding me on all sides on tiered benches, wealthy and titled citizens of Rome lounging in the front seats in the shade of striped awnings wafting lazily in the hot breeze, Pilate and his entourage in a special section among them, my nostrils suddenly filled with the stench of blood and gore from earlier events.

My opponent emerged from a
carcare
on the opposite side of the arena in a glinting bronze helmet and red
subligaculum
⁶³
brandishing a large rectangular shield. He grabbed his only weapon from a slave, thrusting his hand through the loop of the thong on the hilt of the sharp double edge
scutum
and ran to the center circle waving the sword in the air to the delight of the crowd.

I walked to meet the man, favoring the new brace to a querulous murmur from the stands and a pompous strut from my opponent. People come to games to witness spilled blood, hacked and dismembered torsos, and prolonged battles displaying courage and skill. They do not appreciate a short fight and quick kill, which we are instructed to avoid, even at the risk of losing. I will not describe that first encounter, except to confess that the initial ferocious charge of that tall
myrmillo
in his terrifying, plumed fish-scale helmet sent a bolt of energy through my body, crouching in fear before that long sword held high, poised to slash down at my bare neck. My subsequent reaction was more the result of instinct and training than skill or bravery, which culminated in my exit from the sand amid derision from the crowd and censure from Fabian.