Oracle of the Dead(40)
Most unusually, Sabinilla showed us her personal gladiator troupe. Many wealthy Campanians invest in gladiators, but seldom keep them in their own houses. The schools are usually located in the countryside, well away from the towns. She had a barracks for twenty of them, and an oval exercise yard surrounded by a low stone wall lined with seats. For our amusement she had them come out and go through their paces, mock-fighting with wooden practice swords. They fought almost naked, wearing only the bronze belt and brief subligaculum traditional to Campanian gladiators, their skins oiled to catch the torchlight prettily. They were all Gauls, which was no surprise. Caesar’s wars had flooded the market with cheap Gallic slaves, many of them warriors too dangerous for domestic service. They were armed in their native fashion, with a long, narrow, oval shield and a long sword. They wore no protective armor at all save for a simple pot-shaped helmet.
“How can you sleep,” Julia asked, enthralled, “with such men so nearby?”
“Oh, these fellows seem quite content with their lot,” Sabinilla assured her. “You should have seen them when I bought them: filthy and verminous and wearing enough chains to anchor a ship. Once I had them washed, barbered, and fed decently, and I assured them all they had to do was fight, they couldn’t have been more grateful.”
“I could name you their tribes,” I said. “These are warriors, Julia. Gallic warriors do no work, unless it involves horses. All their lives they do nothing but fight and train to fight. They are aristocrats, by their own reckoning. Their lands are worked for them by slaves. To them, fighting to the death is nothing. Being set to work would be an unthinkable degradation. They’d commit suicide before they’d pick up a shovel. No, these men wouldn’t want to be doing anything else, since they can no longer be warriors in Gaul. Sabinilla, who is your trainer?”
“Astyanax. He’s the best trainer in Campania. In his fighting days he contended as a Thracian, but he’s expert at all the styles. He had fifty-one victories. He comes here three days in ten to work with my men. He trains several of the small private troupes in the district.” This evening her nails were silver-gilt, and she wore all silver jewelry in place of the bronze she had worn earlier. Her gown was a shimmery white, about as close to silver as you can get with cloth.
Dinner was the usual lavish affair, with a huge number of guests. Sabinilla couldn’t resist showing all her neighbors that she had the Roman praetor under her roof. There were local officials, some of whom I’d already met, priests from various temples, the most prominent equites, even a few senators who had villas in the area. As it Romanized, the district was becoming more and more popular with the Roman elite, with its resorts, its beautiful landscape, and its wonderful climate. After all the meeting and a lengthy dinner, at which I was uncharacteristically moderate, I found myself huddled with the senators. This was inevitable. No matter the location, Roman politicians have to get together to talk politics and intrigue.
“Praetor,” began a man named Lucullus, who was a distant relation to the great Lucullus, “what do you think Caesar will do next?” As ranking man, they all deferred to me. Plus, through Julia, they expected me to know all about Caesar’s doings.
“He’ll cross the Rubicon and he’ll bring his army with him and there will be civil war.” I was heartily sick of the subject and wanted to keep my answer short.
“Surely not!” all of them chorused.
“Surely so,” I said.
“It will be the days of Marius and Sulla come again,” said one, his face pale. “All Italy will be devastated. The carnage will be terrible.”
“That I rather doubt,” I said, enjoying the offshore evening breeze. We stood on a beautiful terrace behind the main house. It stood at the very tip of the spit of rocky land, high above the sea, and was rimmed by a marble balustrade topped with beautiful Greek statues of heroes, also of marble. The surf crashed musically below, foaming over jagged rocks.
“How can that be?” said the pale-faced one. “The minute Caesar crosses that river, the Senate will declare a state of civil war and Pompey will raise his legions to meet him.”
“Pompey has not seen Caesar move and I have. He’ll come down on Italy faster than the Gauls or the Carthaginians or the Teutones or Cimbri ever did. Pompey won’t have time to get his troops together, much less drilled and provisioned for war. He’ll have to run for it and have his men join him elsewhere, maybe Greece, maybe Illyria. There will be plenty of fighting and it will be bloody, but I doubt there will be much of it in Italy.”