Colosseum: Arena of Blood

289 Pages·2014·1.33 MB·English

by  Sarasso Simone

Colosseum
Arena of Blood
A Novel
Simone Sarasso
Translated by Ross Alexander Nelhams
Contents
Prologue
Torn Roots
The Fire of the Gods
From mare nostrum to the Eternal City
Wood, Sweat and Leather
The Black Death
The Blood Remains on the Blade
Rich Bastards
Coming and Going
Burning Hate
Let the Games Begin
Naumachia
Only One Will Remain
Author’s Notes
Acknowledgments
Colosseum
All great buildings pale before Caesar’s Amphitheatre, a single work will stand for the fame of all.
MARTIAL, Liber de spectaculis, I
For Mary, the love of my life
Prologue
The gods are on the side of the stronger.
TACITUS, Historiae, IV, 17
Rome, AD 80, August
THE MAN HAS sadness in his eyes, on his tongue the taste of destiny.
As bitter as a foul day.
Deep down in those blue eyes of his, not a trace remains of the boy he used to
be. The boy left a long time ago, devoured by flames and fear.
He kneels on the floor of his cell. He tests the sand with his hand, letting it run
through his fingers.
Blood and sand, time passing.
And a blade awaiting him at the end of the race.
That is a gladiator’s whole existence. A life exalted by many, but one nobody
would dream of living.
He secures the shin guard to his left leg, a lucky charm of leather and cloth
stuffed with matted wool.
Sandals strapped on tight, belt just as it should be.
On your feet, for Hercules.
On your feet; the hungry crowd is baying for death.
In the man’s head an entire life, a few years that seem centuries: his cold,
windswept homeland, the ivory cliffs he will never see again. The freezing sea,
so far away a man could lose his mind.
The Amphitheater erupts. These are the last hours of the first day of the
inaugural games. Another ninety-nine will follow, but none will compare to
today. He can hear the echoes from the arena and from the surging terraces of
bodies and sweat even down here, in the darkness of a cage as hot as the
antechamber of Hades.
The dream of Vespasian and Titus, the hollow mountain, the behemoth of
marble and bare stone.
Never before had anyone dared to imagine such grandeur.
There has always been fighting in Rome, the blood of the righteous spilled to
mark the deaths of the powerful. The history of the games is as old as that of the
She-wolf: a tribute to honor those who leave and will never return.
Once, gladiators had been mere servants, pawns to be sacrificed for the
greater glory of their illustrious masters. Four hundred years of wounds and
want, the atrocious spectacle of life at the end of life.
The elders tell that the first fights were timid or ferocious. No rules.
Innocent slaves fought one another in the streets as though there were no
tomorrow, to commemorate the departure of men immortalized by glory or
riches, by hubris or simple superstition. Nobody cared about the miserable ends
met by individuals because they served to exalt the memory of others. Soon
though, sacrifices to honor the corpses of funeral pyres were no longer enough
for people. And nor were the tears of the women in black veils. They longed for
bloody spectacle because courage, the authentic proof of a magnificent and
fleeting afterlife, can only be found on the sand. It glistens on the oiled muscles
of the warriors, slips slowly into their flesh along with their opponents’ swords.
And so the crowd began to demand heroes in their own image and likeness:
gods to pray to in shouts and spit, without haruspices or vestal virgins getting in
the way. And the slaves—armed with leather, wood, and rusted iron—were
transformed into heroes.
Every wretch from the humble insulae began to daydream and to bet, every
woman with children under her feet and knuckles calloused from the washbasin
started to repeat, like a chant between one breastfeeding and the next, those
names that smacked of legend: Ferox, Leon, Tigris, Aureolus…
The most daring of these fools began writing the names everywhere: stone
inscribed stone, the walls of the Empire became the bearers of history, sellers of
cut-price dreams.
That was how it started.
And it was not long before politicians, from senators up to the Emperor
himself, noticed the sensational fortune sprouting up from among the sunbaked
cobblestones.
What better than a glorious show of death to distract the masses from their
own destiny?
Panem et circenses: a disillusioned orator, a cliens with a stomach swollen
with bile, will coin the term “bread and entertainment” just a few years from
now.
A loaf of bread and just the right dose of violence in the arena.
While those at the top, as always, deal with the fate of the world.
A deep shudder rattles the cell, and the roar breaks against him like a wave.
Thousands of throats reddened with dust and frenzy chant his name: “Ve-rus!
Ve-rus! Ve-rus!”
He knows nothing of the historical path that has led him here. He knows
nothing of those first gladiator battles in honor of the illustrious deceased, or the
makeshift arenas.
What he knows is that in a few moments someone will lift the grate and order
him to carry out what he came into this world to do.
What he knows is that today he will have to kill his best friend.
Or, if he is lucky, it will be he that is struck down, quenching the treacherous
sand with his own blood. A bitch of a destiny for the man everyone calls Verus.
Here in the arena, either you win or you lose.
Tertium non datur. There is no third way.
The man secures the manica armguard to his right arm: tarnished bronze and
high hopes.
He tests the curved shield, a good ten pounds of metal.
The weight of a baby a few months after it is born. The baby he will never
hold in his arms.
He pulls on his helmet and the roar swells, the heart of Rome thrashes and
screams, the crowd is not sated yet. All day long they have been bellowing from
the bleachers. There have been battles between beasts, executions at lunch time,
dazzling entertainments.
But for them it is not enough.
It is never enough.
Only the blood of the righteous can appease the monster.
As the man takes up his gladius, the lanistaappears to tell him the wait is over.
“Your turn, Verus.”
The cell door swings open. The sun is low and the shouting endless.
In the empty eyes of the man dressed for slaughter, not a trace remains of the
boy he was.
Of his violated past, of the innocence torn away from him too soon.
A sea of memories assails him, but there is no time.
Three years in a single second. His memory is like a slit artery, everything is
bleeding out of him fast.
There is no time.
There never has been.
No hope and no mercy, now.
All or nothing, Verus.
All or nothing.
Torn Roots
As it frequently happens, that men, by endeavoring to shun their fate, run directly upon it.
LIVY, Ab urbe condita, VIII 5,24
Britain, AD 77, three years earlier
THE VILLAGE IS not much, but it is his whole world.
The boy has never known anything else. He barely had time to draw breath
before his mother had gone, dying in childbirth. So he grew up alone with his
father, while there was the war, may the gods curse it. For all the boy knows,
there has always been the war.
For more than a century, Rome has longed for his land of grass and wind, a
prize just beyond its reach. The Island across the sea, the heathlands that keep
senators and generals awake at night. The shining dream of a new province, yet
another notch on the She-wolf’s sword.
Britannia, a name that leaves ice in the blood and fire in the eyes.
The legions of the Eagle landed before the boy was born. His people were not
ready. Who could be? The procession of plumes and metal, horses and machines
of death had broken the spell, the wind had sown fear like some dark sickness.
The Island’s blood is tar, so much has been spilt.
The boy knows that war is a living thing, a wild beast stalking through the
woods, ready to tear you to shreds without notice.
The boy has a name that carries weight: Calgacos, “He with the sword.”