CHAPTER XL THE SPOLIARIUM

‘Sanguinem quoque gladiatorum bibunt, ut viventibus poculis, comitiales morbi ... At hercule illi ex homine ipso sorbere efficacissimum putant calidum spirantemque, et una ipsam animam ex osculo vulnerum.’—Pliny, N. H. xxviii. 2.

A few days before the scene described in the last chapter there had been gladness in the bright but humble home of Pudens. He had risen to the rank of a primipilar centurion, and was now in a position to ask the British king Caradoc for the hand of his lovely Claudia. He had only delayed his nuptials until he felt himself able to give his bride a secure and fitting home. Everything was fresh and beautiful in the adornments of the house. The atrium was full of flowers and statues, the door was hung with garlands, the frescoes in the tablinum and triclinium were all new. No mythological scene had been admitted, but the walls of the triclinium were painted with festoons of fruit and flowers and trellises of roses, among which little winged genii held their sports; and the tablinum with scenes of street life and the toils of agriculture, and purple vineyards, as perfect as the pencil of Dorotheus could make them. One little corner of the fresco was universally admired as a masterpiece. Pudens had asked the painter to imitate one of the vases of iridescent glass which were then in fashion, and, in honour of Claudia, to fill it with lilies. Pudens had greatly admired a similar painting on the wall of the house of Germanicus on the Palatine (where it may be seen to this day), and in reproducing it Dorotheus had surpassed himself.

The betrothal had taken place some time before, and on that occasion Pudens had given to his future bride a golden necklace of old Etrurian workmanship, with pendants of amethyst. It gleamed round her fair neck as she sat waiting for the bridal summons in her father’s house, trying to dispel the gloom which fell on the old king when he recalled that he was losing for a time the light of his home.

All the ordinary conventions of a Roman marriage were carried out, except such as were purely pagan. Claudia was dressed in a long white tunic with purple fringe, bound round the waist with an embroidered girdle. Her bridal veil and her shoes were of bright yellow, as custom required, and the long fair hair which fell over her shoulders had been duly parted with the point of a spear. It was evening, and the three youths who were to accompany her stood laughing in the vestibule, and ready to start. One of them was Titus, who was to carry before her a torch of white-thorn; the other two were Flavius Clemens and young Aulus Plautius, who walked on either side to support her arms. The fourth lad, who was called the camillus, and who carried in a vase some of the bride’s jewels and childish playthings, was Marcus, the bright little son of Seneca. She herself bore in her hand a distaff and spindle full of wool, as a type of domestic industry. Outside the door waited her friends, five of whom carried wax candles and the others pine-wood torches. And so, with songs and laughter and snatches of the old Thalassio, the happy procession made its way through the streets till they reached the door of Pudens. When she had wound wool round the doorposts and touched them with wolf’s fat, his groomsmen—who were chiefly his brother-officers—lifted Claudia across the threshold to prevent any ill-omened stumble. Within the vestibule stood Pudens, with fire and water. These she had to touch, as symbols of purification, which might be regarded as Christian no less than pagan; and then she spoke the marriage formula—‘Where thou art Gaius I am Gaia.’ After this she was led to a seat upon an outspread sheepskin, and Pudens handed to her the keys of the house. The bridal supper followed, and its mirth was none the less sparkling from its perfect innocence.

By the wish of both Pudens and Claudia, the slaves of the household were invited to have their share in the festivities, which lasted for several days. But the newly wedded pair had in store for Nereus and his daughter Junia a bliss which they had not dared to anticipate. At the close of the week of rejoicing he bade them, with a smile, to accompany him to the Prætor’s tribunal. The order could have but one meaning—that he meant to set them free. The tears rushed into the old slave’s eyes. Nereus and Junia had, indeed, learnt to be content with any condition to which God called them, but now that liberty had spontaneously been offered they felt an almost incommunicable joy.

Pudens sympathised with them in their emotion, and, with a few cheering words, bade them walk behind him towards the Forum. The ceremony of emancipation was very brief. The centurion stated to the Prætor that he wished to manumit Nereus and Junia—of whom the latter had been born in his house—for their great merits and long faithfulness. The Prætor’s lictor laid a rod on each of their heads, with a slight blow, and turned them each round; then the Prætor declared them free in accordance with the right of citizens, and they became liberti. On their return home, the rest of the familia, formerly their fellow-slaves, received them with showers of sweetmeats and clapping of hands and congratulations, and were allowed to hold one more humble banquet in their honour.

Nereus still wished to serve Pudens and Claudia as their freedman; but it was arranged that he should live in lodgings near the house. He and Junia soon made the new home of their freedom look as pleasant as their circumstances admitted, and one evening they were sitting hand in hand thanking the Lord of their life for His mercy, when a timid knock was heard. Opening the door, Junia saw a pretty slave-girl, who asked to speak with her in private. Junia had known her as one of the slaves of Pedanius Secundus, and felt the deepest pity for her because she was afflicted with epilepsy—a disease which among the ancients was so ill-omened as to be the cause of endless trouble and distress.

There was but one remedy for the disease which the ancients thought perfectly efficacious, and it is conceivable that the desperate nature of this remedy may have had some mysterious effect upon the nerves, and have proved in some cases to be a real cure through its influence on the mind of the sufferer. It was to drink blood from a recent wound.

The consequences of a fit of epilepsy were disastrous. It was called the comitial disease, because its occurrence put an end to the most important business of the commonwealth by necessitating the dissolution of any public assembly. Consequently, persons so afflicted were condemned to a life of misery, and could never move about with freedom. Their presence in a house was regarded as a misfortune, and they were sometimes got rid of to save trouble. The pretty face and winning ways of poor young Syra had saved her, but since she heard of the supposed cure for her malady her one desire had been to avail herself of it.

This had made her go frequently to the games of the amphitheatre, and linger near the gate of Libitina, through which the confector, who had, when necessary, to give the finishing stroke, dragged the dead and wounded gladiators into the spoliarium. She had thus attracted the notice of the young slave Phlegon, who held this horrible office.

That he did so was not his own fault. He too was a slave of Pedanius, who had cruelly degraded him to this place in the amphitheatre as a punishment for a trivial offence, followed by an outbreak of resentment, when, in his younger days, he had been a favourite cup-bearer of his master. It would be useless to aver that his character had not been somewhat brutalised by the hideous duties forced upon him; but he regarded himself as the victim of necessity, and therefore as not responsible—a view not without a grim element of truth in the case of a pagan slave. Seeing Syra as she lingered about the amphitheatre, he had been struck by her helpless prettiness, and she had learnt to admire a face which still retained its good looks, if not its good expression. They fell in love with each other; but when she was forced to tell him of her misfortune, he declared all question of marriage to be impossible unless she were cured of her comitial disease. He had himself persuaded her to come this evening to the spoliarium after the games, and to try the remedy which alone seemed to offer any chance of success.

But poor Syra dared not go alone through the darkening, crowded, and vicious streets, and thought that Junia, as she was now a freedwoman, could protect her. Junia was always actuated by the principle as well as by the instinct of kindness. Not guessing the object of the girl’s errand, but knowing her hapless love for Phlegon, she consented to accompany her. It cost her a pang to leave her father on that happy evening, but she knew that with him, no less than with herself, the claims of charity were paramount, and all the more towards those who seemed to need it most.

‘Could you find no better youth to love than one of so dire a trade, Syra?’ she gently asked the girl, as, with their heads covered with shawls, they went in the deepening dusk down the Via Sacra towards the amphitheatre.

‘It is not his fault, Junia. He hates it. His heart is naturally pitiful. He was brought up in the midst of luxury in the house of Pedanius, where he was a favourite. But Pedanius is a wretch, and once he treated Phlegon so cruelly that, in a fit of rage, the boy struck him. He might have been crucified for it, or flung to the lampreys; but, instead of that, Pedanius made him take to this work in the amphitheatre. How else could he live?’

‘There are some lives worse than death,’ said Junia.

‘Well,’ answered Syra; ‘many a time he has longed to stab himself with his own sword; but ... he loves me.’

‘I did not mean that he should have killed himself,’ said Junia; ‘none of us have a right to fling away the life which God gives us. I meant that it would be worth while facing any risk to escape doing wrong.’

‘Nothing can be wrong which our masters make us do,’ answered Syra simply; and Junia could only sigh, for she knew that this was an axiom with both slaves and their masters.

By this time they had reached the outer door of the spoliarium, and, in answer to a whispered watchword, Phlegon admitted Syra, who promised to return very speedily, while Junia waited for her outside.

A few moments only had elapsed when Syra sprang out of the door agitated and breathless.

‘Oh, Junia!’ she cried; ‘I did it! I did it!’

‘Did what?’

‘I have drunk some blood from a fresh wound, and I am cured.’

‘Horrible!’ said Junia, with a shudder, now for the first time understanding what Syra had come for.

‘Yes; it was horrible,’ said the girl; ‘but how could I help it? Every one who saw me in a fit, however slight, used to spit so as to avert the omen. I tried everything first. I tried galbanum, garlic, hellebore; I ate some young swallows; I tried to get a bit of the liver of an elephant, or the brain of a camel, which they say is a certain remedy.83 But how could I? Never mind! I am cured now. But oh, Junia!’ exclaimed the girl, ‘as he lay there’—

‘As who lay there?’

‘The young gladiator who fought so bravely to-day, and was dragged out by the hook as dead—well, he is not dead! His limbs were warm. I put my hand on his heart; there was a faint pulse.’

‘But who is he?’

‘I thought you knew him, for he was once a slave in your house—that young Phrygian.’

‘Onesimus!’ exclaimed Junia, with a startled cry.

‘Yes; that was his name. Did you not know that he fought as a net-thrower to-day?’

‘No,’ she answered faintly. ‘We never go to the games. I had long lost sight of him, and thought that he had left Rome, or was dead. Syra, save him!’

‘Phlegon will be glad to save him, if it can be done undiscovered. He loathes stabbing the poor gladiators when they have not quite been killed. Yet, if it were discovered that he spared but one of them, he would certainly be torn to pieces or crucified.’

Junia’s mind was instantly made up. At all costs, Onesimus should have such chance of life secured to him as nature rendered possible. She told Syra to let Phlegon speak with her. Entering the spoliarium, and repressing the awful sense of repugnance which almost made her faint as the dim light of his lamp glimmered over the heap of mangled corpses, she recognised the features of Onesimus, and convinced herself that the spark of life was not wholly quenched in him. Then, putting into the hand of the confector a gold coin which had been the gift of Claudia, she entreated him to let her come back and remove the hapless youth. He consented, and touched by her anguish, he himself took the body of the gladiator in his arms, laid him on his own pallet of straw, and poured some common Sabine wine down his throat. Junia, meanwhile, thankful now for the slave-girl’s company, went to the house of Linus, which was near at hand, and implored his aid. The good old pastor readily consented, and, when it was quite dark, took a mule and went with the two girls to the door of the spoliarium, where Phlegon awaited them.

He had not been idle. With such rough kindness as was possible to him he had washed away in tepid water the stains of blood from the breast and face of the poor gladiator, and had bandaged the deep wounds in his breast.

With tender care they lifted the still unconscious Phrygian upon a bundle of soft clothes which they had laid upon the mule. Linus, though the task was not without peril, agreed to tend and give him shelter for that night.

Then Junia fled back through the deserted streets. Nereus had begun to be anxious at her long delay, and listened to her story with a grave face. He had never liked Onesimus, and the youth’s many sins and errors might well have shaken his confidence. But he and Junia had read not long before the letter which Paul of Tarsus had written to their brother-Christians in Corinth; and, if he wavered for a moment, he was decided in the cause of mercy by Junia’s whispered words, ‘Love suffereth long and is kind; love thinketh no evil; beareth all things; believeth all things; endureth all things; hopeth all things.’

It was agreed that after dark next evening Nereus should remove the dreadfully wounded sufferer from the house of Linus. Pudens, to whom he told the whole story, arranged, with Claudia’s full consent, that Onesimus, as a former member of the household, should be concealed and tended in the hut of one of their country slaves who had charge of a little farm not far from Aricia. This peasant was a Christian, and he carried out the injunctions of his master with faithful kindness.

For many weeks Onesimus hung between life and death; at last, slowly, very slowly, he began to recover. Youth and the natural strength of his constitution, aided by the fresh air of the country, the pure milk, the quiet, the simple wholesome food, and the fact that there was nothing to thwart the recuperative forces of nature, won the day in the battle, and once more Death released the victim whom he seemed to hold securely in his grasp.