CHAPTER XXXVIII THE GLADIATORS’ SCHOOL

‘Commorabor inter homicidas, inclusus turpiore custodia et sordido cellarum situ.’ ‘In ludo fui, qua pœna nullam graviorem scelera noverunt, cujus ad comparationem ergastulum leve est.’—Quinctilian.

Although the intervention of the vestal and the kindly ruse of Pudens had saved the life of Onesimus, his condition was far from enviable. He was once more—now for the third time in his life—in overwhelming disgrace. It is true that all the legal customs were observed, in a house controlled by that respect for archæology which the fashion had been set by Augustus. The chains were taken off his limbs and flung out of the court through the impluvium. None the less he felt that he was marked and shunned. One day, after his escape, Nero passed him in one of the corridors, and, struck by the appearance of a handsome youth, beckoned him to approach. He came forward trembling, and the Emperor, peering into his face, recognised the purple-keeper of Octavia. Inspired by sudden disgust at the memories thus called to his recollection, he summoned his dispensator Callicles into his presence, and ordered him to get rid of ‘that worthless Phrygian.’

‘Shall I put him in prison, or have him sent again to the ergastulum at Antium?’ asked Callicles.

‘Neither,’ said Nero. ‘The City Prætor, Pedanius Secundus, is about to give some votive games of beasts and gladiators. Make a present to him of this youth.’

Onesimus heard the words, and his heart sank within him. But resistance was useless. On his way he passed the door of Acte’s apartments, and not without peril ventured to sing a few notes of the old Thyatiran ballad which had first attracted her notice. She heard it, and came out.

‘That youth comes from my native land,’ she said to the dispensator. ‘Step back a few paces and let me have a word with him.’

Callicles would hardly have granted the favour to any one else, but every one loved Acte, and he only said, ‘If Nero should come?’...

‘I will hold you clear,’ said Acte.

Onesimus, overcome with shame, knelt on one knee, kissed the fringe of her robe, and whispered, ‘Oh, Acte, I am condemned to be a gladiator.’

‘In which school?’

‘Under Rutulus, the trainer of Pedanius Secundus—the cruellest man in Rome.’

He told her something of his story, and she saw that to help him was beyond her power. All she could do was to slip into his hand her own purse, and to tell him that if ever the day came when she could befriend him she would do her utmost. More she dared not say, for the suspicious eyes of Callicles were upon her, and she had to repress the emotion which agitated her frame.

In the school of Rutulus, Onesimus experienced a phase of misery even deeper than in the slave-prison of Antium. Once more he was the companion of felons of every dye and fugitives of every nationality. Every day came the severe drill, the coarse food which was worse than hunger, the odious society of hardened ruffians, the recounting of the brutal tragedies with which they were familiar. Among them all he found but one whose society he could tolerate. He was a dark-haired, blue-eyed Briton, young like himself, but in all other respects unlike him. For Æquoreus, as they called him, was full of manly pride and hardihood, and had none of the subtle softness of the Asiatic in his temperament. He had been reduced to his hard lot for no other crime than the outburst of a passionate independence. He had been brought over with Caractacus, as one of the Britons pre-eminent in stature and beauty to grace the ovation of Claudius and Aulus Plautius. He had not been treated cruelly, for the admiration inspired by the dauntless bearing of the British king had secured protection to his countrymen; but Glanydon—to give him his Silurian name—loathed the effeminate luxuries of Rome, and, forgetting that he was a captive, had once struck in the face a Prætorian officer who insulted him. For this offence he had been first scourged and then handed over to the master of the gladiators. It was ordered that he should fight, as soon as he was trained, in some great display. Onesimus saw that the young Briton shared his own disgust at the orgies of ribald talk in which their fellows indulged. The two had no other friends, and they were drawn together for mutual defence against the rude horse-play of their comrades. Glanydon was one of the class of gladiators called Samnites, who fought in heavy armour, while, after various trials, the trainer (lanista) decided that the exceptional activity of Onesimus marked him out for the work of a net-thrower (retiarius). Their training had to be hurried on at the utmost speed, for the games were to take place within a month.

The other gladiators sometimes talked of their lot with pretended rapture. They spoke of the liberal supply of food, of the presents sent them, of the favour with which they were regarded by fair ladies—even by the wives and daughters of great patricians—of the fame they acquired, so that their prowess and the comparison of their merits was one of the commonest topics of talk at Roman dinner-parties. They boasted of the delight of seeing their likenesses painted in red on the play-bills; of the shouts with which a favourite fighter was welcomed; of the yell of applause which greeted them when they had performed a gallant feat; of the chance of retiring with wreaths and gifts and money, when they had earned by their intrepidity the wooden foil.74

‘Poor wretches,’ said Onesimus to Glanydon; ‘they do not talk of the panic which sometimes seizes them, and how they are howled at when, in ignominious defeat, they fly to the end of the arena to beg for their lives; how, when they see overwhelming odds against them and grim death staring them in the face, they are still driven into the fight with cracking scourges and plates of iron heated red hot; nor—but what is the use of talking of all this, Glanydon? you know it all better than I do.’

‘Brutal, bloody, slaves and women, are these Romans,’ cried Glanydon. ‘The Druids of my native land served the gods with cruel rites, but they did not play with death as though it were a pretty toy, as these weaklings do. And to think that by arms and discipline they conquered my countrymen! Oh, for one hour again under Caradoc or under Boudicca! I would never leave another field alive.’

‘You do not, then, fear death?’ said Onesimus.

‘Why should I? What has life for me? The maiden I loved is in her hut on my Silurian hills. I shall never see her more, nor set foot on those purple mist-clad mountains. I shall be butchered to amuse these swine. Death! No,’ he said, while he indignantly dashed away the tear which had burst forth at the thought of his home—‘I do not fear death, but I hate to die thus.’

‘Did your Druids think that death ended all?’

Glanydon turned his blue eyes on the speaker. ‘I do not think they did. There were mysteries which they hid from us. But’....

With amazement Onesimus saw him sketch in the dust the helmet of a mirmillo, of which the crest was a dolphin. The Phrygian said nothing, but scratched in the dust the same symbol. Glanydon started up and seized his hand. ‘A Christian?’ he asked in amazement; ‘and yet here?’

‘You too are here,’ said Onesimus, hanging his head.

‘Ah, yes!’ said the Briton; ‘but surely for no crime. What could I do but strike a wretch viler than a worm? Nor have I been illuminated—my teacher would not baptise me till he could see proof that I had controlled the fierce outbursts of passion.’

‘Your teacher?’

‘There came from Jerusalem an old white-haired man. They called him Joseph. He had seen the Christ; he had buried Him in his own tomb.—But you, Onesimus?’

‘I am no better than a renegade. My own follies have brought me here. There is no more hope for me. Ask me no more.’

‘Do you fear death?’ asked the Briton. ‘If so, I pity your lot.’

‘The gods—or God if there be but one God—cannot be worse than men,’ answered Onesimus gloomily.

Glanydon was silent. After a pause, he said, ‘I am a rude barbarian, as they call me here; yet he who taught me spoke much of “love for all and hope for all.”’

Onesimus sat with bowed head, and the Briton was moved. ‘We are brothers,’ he said. ‘Even in this hell we can love one another.’

But one sickening thought was in the breasts of both of them. They had sat side by side in daily intercourse; their common friendlessness, their common sympathies, had thrown them together in the closest bonds, and those bonds had been strengthened by the discovery that both had been taught at least the rudiments of a holy faith. But the day of the games was rapidly approaching, and the chances of the lot, or the caprice of the Prætor, might easily cause them to be pitted against each other. It was horrible to think that either of them might be compelled to drive sword or dagger into the throat or heart of his friend.

‘Supposing that we are matched together?’ said Glanydon, the evening before the display.

‘Then we must fight,’ said Onesimus. ‘Have we not taken the oath “to be bound, to be burned, to be scourged, to be slain,” or do anything else that is required of us as legitimate gladiators, giving up alike our souls and our bodies?’75

‘Which of us will win?’ asked Glanydon, with a sad smile.

‘You,’ said the Phrygian. ‘You are stronger than I am, and taller.’

‘Yes, but you are quicker and more active, and you can’t tell how I hate that net of yours. I know you will catch me in it—’

‘If I do, you will still have fought so well that the people will all turn down their thumbs, and you will be spared. A tall fine fellow like you is just the gladiator whom the Roman ladies like to look at, and they won’t have you killed in your first fight. But as for me—a mere Phrygian slave!—Yes, Glanydon, to-morrow your short sword will perhaps be red with my blood.’

‘Never!’ said Glanydon. ‘I will fight because I must, and will do my best; and when my blood is up I might kill you or any other opponent in the blind heat of the combat; but as for slaughtering in cold blood I could not do it—least of all could I murder the friend I love.’

‘You won’t be able to help yourself, Glanydon. And we netsmen (worse luck!) have our faces uncovered. Many of the spectators, like the late “divine” Claudius, as they call him, like to see us killed, because our dying expression is not concealed by a helmet.’

‘But why should we not both escape?’ asked the Briton. ‘Perhaps before this time to-morrow we may each be the happy possessor of the ivory ticket with “Sp.”76 upon it, or even of the palm and the foil. Who knows but what by our bravery we may be rude donati?’

‘Don’t you know, then, that to-morrow’s games will very likely be sine missione? We must either die or kill.’

The Briton had not been aware of it. He sank into gloomy silence. Onesimus gently laid his hand on his friend’s shoulder, and said, ‘Well, perhaps, like Priscus and Verrus, we may both be victors and both vanquished. Pugnavere pares, succubuere pares.’

Glanydon shook his head. He said, ‘Let us talk no more, or we shall both be unmanned. Life—death—to-morrow; the rudis or the stab? Which shall it be?’

‘It is in God’s hands,’ said Onesimus, ‘if what we have been taught is true.’

With that awful issue before them, overshadowed by misgivings and almost with despair, finding life horrible, yet shrinking from the death which neither of them dared to regard with full Christian hope, the two youths lay down on their pallets. Before they closed their eyes in sleep, each of them had breathed some sort of unuttered cry into the dim unknown.