Crixus

Sure, I know who you are. I read the book you wrote about Spartacus. But I suppose you don’t believe an uneducated barbarian can read Latin.

Marcus Terentius Varro

If you read my book, you must know that you’re in it, too: Crixus the Gaul, Spartacus’ legate, his most trusted associate.

Crixus

That just proves you don’t know as much about what happened as you think you do.

Varro

Which is just the reason I want to speak to you now. It’s been thirty years since Spartacus burned Rome. In all the city’s history, even more than Hannibal, he was the most dangerous enemy we ever faced.

Crixus

You forget about Brennus. He sacked Rome. A barbarian Gaul did what Hannibal never could.

Varro

That was three hundred years ago, and no one wrote the history of his wars. Brennus is almost forgotten, except for his name. But Spartacus fought his war in our lifetime and we still know so little about him. He’s an enigma. I’m an old man now, you’re an old man, but you were with Spartacus from the beginning. You may be the last living man who can speak for him, tell us who he really was, what he did.

Crixus

Enigma–that’s one of those Greek words, isn’t it?

Sure, I fought with Spartacus, and you fought against him. If you wanted to know who he was, why didn’t you ask him while he was alive? Why should I tell you now?

Varro

So that two hundred years from now, men will know the truth about him, instead of lies. Is that what you want for the memory of Spartacus? Would you rather all his deeds were forgotten, lost to history, just as Brennus was?

Crixus

Irony–isn’t that the word for it? That after all we did, it’s left for a Roman to tell how it happened. I thought you were supposed to leave all that to the Greeks, writing histories and books.

Varro

I think the Latin language is at least as well-suited as the Greek to write of war.

Crixus

Well, I’m just an uneducated barbarian. But I know what happened and what didn’t. For one thing, you wrote in your book that Spartacus set out to make war on Rome from the beginning, when we broke out of the gladiator pens in Capua.

We were only a few dozen gladiators–who could imagine us sacking Rome? All we wanted was to stay out of the arena. I figured we’d hide in the mountains and live out our lives as bandits. Maybe things would have been a lot different, then, if Rome had only let us go.

Varro

But you couldn’t really expect Rome to ignore an armed slave uprising.

Crixus

That’s what Spartacus told us. He said Rome would send soldiers after us, and more soldiers after them if they had to. But it was Rome coming after us, that’s how we started to fight.

It was that Roman praetor, Clodius Glaber, who followed us all the way to Vesuvius. See, Spartacus, he knew how Romans fight. He was a Thracian auxiliary, served years fighting Roman wars for pay. He was the one who could see how Clodius made his mistake, thinking he had us trapped up on the mountain. You know there’s only one road down off Vesuvius. Well, he stationed his guards on the road, but he never bothered to surround the mountain. He was just going to sit down there in his camp and wait and starve us out.

But Spartacus had other ideas. He was the one who saw how we could take them from behind, by surprise. We made ropes out of vines and used them to climb down over a sheer drop, where Clodius hadn’t even stationed any guards. Spartacus led us off that mountain, then around behind the Roman camp to attack it from the rear. Me, I would have just rushed them straightaway and got us all killed doing it. We knew fighting from the gladiator school, but most of us had never heard of tactics. That’s the difference Spartacus made.

And then there we were, in the middle of the Roman camp, full of dead legionaries. Dead Romans. The ones we didn’t kill ran away. It was Spartacus who told us to throw away our own gear and strip the armor off the legionaries, to arm ourselves as soldiers, not gladiators.

That was when we swore the oath: to die together, fighting, as free men. Not gladiators, not slaves.

Of course Rome sent more of them after us, to hunt us down, just the way Spartacus said they would. Two praetors commanding two full legions. But they were just as careless as Clodius, they figured it wouldn’t take much to wipe out a band of escaped slaves. That was the mistake the Romans always made–they told themselves we were only slaves.

Varro

But you know those weren’t experienced troops. In those days, we didn’t keep a regular standing army in Rome. All our legions were off on campaign in the provinces, in Hispania and Asia. I remember I was with Pompeius in Hispania, fighting Sertorius and his rebels. The only soldiers the senate had to send after Spartacus were new conscripts, not even properly trained.

Crixus

That’s what Spartacus kept telling us. He was always warning us not to get overconfident, that one day we’d come up against a real veteran legion and learn the difference. But even then, you know, we had the advantage of numbers. More men kept coming every day to join us, desperate men. Maybe we weren’t a real army yet, but a month after we escaped from Capua we had more than ten thousand men. A lot of them were herdsmen, mostly Gauls and Germans–big, strong men. They knew the mountains, the best places to hide, where to set an ambush. That’s how we fought, from the mountains, from ambush. When the Romans thought they were hunting us, we hunted them. Our men made spears from sharpened tree branches, they wove shields out of wicker. We forged their leg-irons into blades. Anything that we could use as a weapon. We taught them, we gladiators did, how to hold a sword, how to use it, how to kill Romans. No better sword instructor than a gladiator, you know.

Varro

Tell me, is the story true that Spartacus killed the praetor Lucius Cossinius, making him fight as a gladiator?

Crixus

No, I was the one who killed Cossinius. But it wasn’t in the gladiator ring. Cossinius was careless. Some of our scouts came on him while he was visiting a bathhouse with just a few guards. He tried to escape, but I pulled him from his horse and took his head. I kept it as a trophy for a while.

Varro

The way the Gauls do.

Crixus

I am a Gaul. A barbarian, and that’s all I’ll ever be to a Roman.

Varro

So it’s not true that Spartacus made Roman prisoners fight each other as gladiators? Men have told me they witnessed some of those games. Did they lie?

Crixus

Oh, sure, we did it. Our people loved to see Romans in the gladiator ring, hacking at each other. But you mixed up the praetors in your book. It was the other one who died in the games–Varinius, I think his name was.

Varro

Publius Varinius. He’s the one Spartacus killed in the arena?

Crixus

No, not exactly. I’ll tell you how it happened. It was after we beat the rest of Cossinus’ legion, the ones who didn’t just run away after he was dead. By that time we had almost thirty thousand men, slaves and free men, too, joining us. We were operating in Samnia and Lucania then, harrying the Romans through the mountains, the rough terrain. Varinius had lost about half of his men, some to us and some to desertion. It was getting later in the year, and the weather had turned bad.

He’d gone into quarters, waiting for reinforcements to come from Rome. His camp was on one hill, we were on the next, close enough that the sentries on both sides could hear each other on watch. He had a strong camp in a good position over there–and plenty of provisions, which we never had. We had to send men out every night to forage.

Well, Varinius tried one assault on our walls, but we beat him off, and after that his men were afraid to try it again. And the longer he delayed, the more of them were deserting. We could have waited them out, but we were getting hungrier, and sooner or later their reinforcements might show up.

So Spartacus decided to force the issue. He said it was time we got a taste of open battle. Like a real army, not just a mob of escaped slaves. We used a ruse to make the Romans think we’d abandoned our camp, and when Varinius marched his men out after us, we attacked.

And we beat them. A Roman legion, and we beat them in the open field, man to man, sword to sword.

Oh, it was good! I had my victories in the arena, but they were bitter, and that moment was so sweet it went to my head like a jar of the best Falernian wine. I really did think we were ready to conquer the world. Or Rome, at least, which amounts to the same thing. That’s when we first started to think about it, marching on Rome, if you want to know.

I think the Greeks call it hybris, don’t they–what happens to a man just before the gods strike him down.

The women were already busy with their knives, cutting throats, the men stripping the prisoners and driving them under the yoke. In the Roman camp we found the cartloads of chains they brought to use on us–ten-pound leg irons and collars. We thought we’d see how the Romans liked wearing them for a change. That was when we discovered the praetor Varinius in with the rest of the prisoners, hiding in an ordinary legionary’s armor.

Not a happy man, your friend Varinius, to find himself in chains and a slave collar. It offended his dignitas. It offended him to see me sitting there with my barbarian backside in his ivory curule chair. It offended him that we captured his legion’s eagle. It offended him to see Cossinius’ head stuck up on a spear–my personal battle standard; you could still recognize him then. Varinius cursed us. He said we were only a mob of insolent slaves and he’d see us all crucified as we deserved.

You’d think a man in chains ought to be more careful what he says. But this is something a slave knows a lot better than a Roman praetor.

Now, I’ll tell you one thing about Spartacus–he never really enjoyed bloodshed, not the way a Roman does. He always said he had enough of that in the arena. But there were times you wouldn’t know it. Too bad for Varinius that he picked one of those times. Because Spartacus had just been counting our dead, and Oenomaus was one of them.

You probably don’t recognize his name, but he was famous in his day. Eighty-two fights in the arena, eighty-two wins. He already had his wooden sword, his freedom, by the time we broke out of Capua, but he took the oath with the rest of us, to stand together and fight until death.

Well, Death finally found him. Of course, he finds all of us in the end. But when Spartacus heard what Varinius was saying about crucifixion, he looked over the Roman prisoners, then said to me, "We have at least two hundred pairs here. Oenomaus can have Roman blood for his funeral games."

The funeral, it was for all our dead, not just Oenomaus. We lost over a thousand in that battle. People were already bringing in the bodies and gathering wood for the pyres. It was the first time we’d ever had casualties on that scale. Not so many dead as the Romans, of course, but it darkened my mood to see them all piled up together, ready for the fire. The Roman dead–we left them for the Romans. Or the crows and wolves, it didn’t matter to us. We knew this wasn’t going to be one of those wars the Greeks like to tell stories about, where both sides send heralds back and forth under truce so they can give their dead a proper funeral. Romans don’t make truces with slaves.

Next morning, Spartacus made sacrifice to the gods and gave a funeral speech before we lit the pyres. I remember what he said. "Morituri–that’s what we called ourselves in the gladiator arena, men who are going to die. Of course all men are doomed to die. But these brothers of ours died fighting as free men instead of slaves, and for that, I salute them."

That was the kind of speech he made.

Then it was time for the games. Our people were all looking forward to the spectacle.

The Romans didn’t want to cooperate, but we knew all the ways to force men into the ring to fight–the metal-tipped scourge, the hot irons. In Capua, that pig Lentulus Batiatus at the gladiator school liked to crucify a gladiator from time to time as a lesson to the rest of us. We gave the same lesson to the Romans, to teach them what would happen if they didn’t give us a good show. The threat of the cross offended their dignitas even more than fighting as gladiators. Crucifixion is supposed to be a death for slaves, not Roman praetors.

Varro

You crucified him? Publius Varinius?

Crixus

Our people always liked the sight of a Roman up on a cross, the higher the rank, the better.

So there was Varinius looking down from his cross (he should be honored, we told him as we were raising it, we were giving him the best view from up there) while we staged the games. We sent the Romans out to fight naked, not even letting them keep a loincloth. All they had to protect themselves was a sword. Ten pairs at a time were matched up for the first round, then we paired the survivors.

To those of us used to the arena, it wasn’t very good sport. Varinius’ legionaries weren’t much better as gladiators than they’d been as soldiers. That pig Batiatus would have sold them to the mines. They just didn’t know what to do. They had no shields, and they didn’t have the notion of parrying or blocking with their blades. That’s the difference between legionaries and gladiators, and like you say, Varinius’ men weren’t even properly trained as soldiers. But most of our people knew nothing about the finer points of fencing, and they were enjoying it. The sight of Roman blood being spilled for a change was good enough for them.

Once the first few rounds were over and we brought on the surviving pairs one at a time, the betting got serious. Nobody knows how to handicap fighters like another gladiator. In the arena, though, we never bet on each other. It would be ill-wishing a man, to do that. But now we were the spectators and letting the Romans do the dying.

It was Spartacus who picked the man with the gray hair. "That one looks like a centurion," he said. "My money’s on him."

We all said no, he was too old, but Spartacus shook his head. "No, look how he moves." And he was right. The centurion was just waiting there in the center of the ring while the other one was wearing himself out circling around him, afraid to close in. I could see how the centurion was watching for his opening. The people were cheering on both fighters, but those of us who knew the arena had no doubt what the end would be. The centurion took his man down with a single sword thrust.

Then Gannicus had the idea, "What do you say we each pick out a man, and if he’s the last survivor, the winner takes him on in the ring?"

Spartacus agreed. His man was the centurion, the one with the gray hair.

The last round, it was still the centurion and one of the military tribunes–just a boy, but his tutor must have showed him how to handle a sword, because he could hold his own. The crowd was worked up by then, everyone yelling for one or the other of the fighters. A lot of bets were riding on that contest.

I’ll tell you something. There are times, in the arena, when the crowd can wake up a spark in you. You’re not just trying to stay alive, you want to win, you want the applause and the victory crown. I don’t know if it was like that for those two Romans that day. Maybe they just wanted to live, maybe they thought we might spare the last survivor. Whatever the reason, it was finally a decent fight. Not up to the standards of Capua, but those two both knew what to do with a sword. It wasn’t faked, either–I can tell the difference.

Then it was finally the centurion standing alone, the last man. Spartacus’ man.

So he stood and said, "My turn, now."

The people saw him and started to cheer, they started to chant his name. But Spartacus took his time. He wanted to give the Roman some rest. He ordered our men to let him have water, or posca, whatever he wanted. He called for someone to bring him a Roman sword and stripped down to meet the Roman on even terms. Of course, he had every advantage. Twenty years younger, and taller than the Roman, tall for a Thracian, with a long reach on him. I remember he was popular in the arena, in his day. The women, especially, liked him.

We all joked, "I’ll bet on that one." But there were no takers.

When he stepped out to meet the Roman, the crowd went wild with applause, cheering and calling his name. Spartacus! Spartacus!

Just about then Gannicus leaned in my direction and whispered, "Do you think they’d cheer for Crixus the same way, if it had been you going out there?"

I shrugged it off, at the time, but his remark darkened my mood.

The handlers had to prod the Roman to get him back on his feet, and I could see he was stiff and hurting. He had to know he was going to die, but he went out to the center of the arena with his head held up high. A brave man.

I tell you, it happens often enough. You cheer for a man, and you start to take his side a little, even if he is a Roman. The centurion didn’t have a chance against Spartacus, of course, but I was thinking I’d like to see him make a good end. Maybe I might even put my thumb out to spare him.

I think Spartacus might have felt the same way. He went out there naked with only a sword in his hand, to give the Roman every fair chance he could. He stood in the center of the ring to face him and give him the gladiator’s salute. I don’t know what he said then, the crowd was making too much noise to hear. But I saw how the Roman answered him. He spat on him.

After that–gods, it was beautiful to watch how he played that bloody Roman, leading him like it was a dance. One cut, another cut, and another. He was in complete control with every stroke. The Roman had to know that Spartacus could have killed him at any time, with any one of those cuts, if he’d wanted it that way.

I tell you, in Capua, they would have sold their own mothers to see that fight!

The thing is, it wasn’t like Spartacus to play a man that way. I knew a lot of other men who enjoyed that kind of thing, or they’d do it in the arena just to please the crowds, but never Spartacus. Our people were all cheering themselves raw, watching it, but I saw his face, and it was like it had turned to wood or stone, like that story the Greeks tell about the Gorgons.

Of course the centurion never had a chance. He never touched Spartacus, not a scratch, but you know, even when he was so blinded by his own blood he couldn’t see, he never dropped his sword, never let up his guard. I still almost had to admire him for it, even after what he did.

Varro

What was the centurion’s name? Do you know it?

Crixus

Maybe Spartacus asked him just before they fought, but he never said.

He was drunk at the funeral feast afterward, and that wasn’t like him, either. But everyone was drinking that night, to honor our dead, to celebrate our victory, and there was more than one brawl on the Gaulish side as men bragged about their deeds on the battlefield. We barbarians do that, you know. We don’t have Roman manners.

But from Spartacus, not a word, not even to his woman.

Only once, when the feast was almost over, I happened to see him look over at Varinius, still up there on his cross. Everyone else was either eating, drinking, fighting, or groping the women. It came to me then why the Romans think crucifixion is the perfect punishment for slaves. A man means nothing once he’s up there on the cross. All that suffering, day after day until you die, and no one notices. If you’re a slave, they just nail you up and forget you.

So I got up and went over to piss on Varinius’ cross. Then on the way back to my seat, I stopped and said to Spartacus, "Did you ever think, that day in Capua when we broke out of the pens–did you ever think a mob of gladiators and slaves would end up beating three Roman armies and crucifying their commanders? One day we’ll have the whole damned Roman Senate up on crosses right next to this one!"

He turned on me, he said, "Crixus, you’re a fool! Do you actually think we beat a real Roman army yesterday?"

It was just what he’d been saying all along, but I didn’t like to hear it, not in the middle of a victory feast, not with all the wine inside me. And no man likes to hear himself called a fool. I grabbed Cossinus’ head from my spear and threw it down on the table in front of Spartacus. "This was a real Roman praetor! So is that one, up on the cross. Look around! We already have enough men here to make up three legions, and more of them coming in every day. We’ll beat them, because there are always more slaves than there are Romans. And for every Roman we kill, more slaves come to join us!"

"You don’t know," he said. "You just don’t know Romans. They won’t ever give up. No matter how many times we beat them, they’ll just send another army after us. There’s always another Roman army! Always!"

Varro

He was right, of course.

Crixus

Of course he was. And I knew it then, even if I wouldn’t admit it.

Fact is, I was the one who almost tore our army apart. Hybris, like I said. Mine. I was drunk on victory. What Spartacus said offended my pride, it darkened my mood. But he was right–I was a fool. And I almost lost us the war.

Varro

What do you mean?

Crixus

Spartacus was determined to make us into a real army, a force to match the Romans on even terms. We had proper arms, that we took from the Romans. Even while we were burning the dead, our smiths were already setting up forges where they could repair the holes in armor and refit spearheads to their shafts to make them ready for the next battle.

A month after we beat Varinius, our numbers had doubled, from thirty thousand to sixty. Men never stopped coming to join us–I was right about that, at least. Our army always outnumbered the Romans. But it was Spartacus’ army. He trained them, he took slave herdsmen and shepherds and formed them into cohorts, the cohorts into legions. The basic training was a lot like the gladiator schools, but Spartacus went further than that. He wanted us drilling in formation, keeping in line, learning group maneuvers–all the Roman methods of fighting. Wherever we stopped for the night, he insisted on building a regular camp like the Romans did, too, with ditch and wall and watchtowers.

"Discipline," he kept saying. "With discipline we’re an army, without it we’re only a mob of slaves."

The trouble was, not everyone thought as much of discipline as he did. The men complained they didn’t run away from slavery to trade their overseer for a centurion or dig latrines after a long day’s march. Men like the Greeks or Syrians were easier with that kind of discipline, but it came harder to the Gauls and Germans–we barbarians are used to a different way of fighting. Some days, I thought Spartacus was going to tear out his hair a hundred times, trying to get it through to them that they had to keep in formation, not run out ahead of the line waving their swords and screaming, trying to be the first one killed. He said, "Why else do you think you were the slaves and they were the masters? You lost and they won."

Well, men don’t like to hear that kind of thing, even if it’s true. It offended their pride.

The thing is, I still think that man to man, the odds say the Gaul is going to beat the Roman. It’s the training that makes the difference. The discipline of the cohort. I just wish I understood that, back then.

And right after we beat Varinius, it seemed for a while there were no more Romans to fight. We roamed all over the south of Italia, pillaging everywhere, and there was no one to stop us. It made us overconfident.

"They’ll send more legions," Spartacus kept warning us. "They’ll conscript more men, or call for volunteers, or bring some of the veteran legions back from the provinces. We have to be ready to meet them."

Varro

Then he knew what he was talking about. I saw the dispatches from Rome. As soon as the senate got word about Varinius’ defeat, they ordered both the year’s new consuls into the field to raise another army. All the landowners were remembering the slave revolts in Sicily. They ran to Rome screaming they were going to be murdered in their beds. The problem was that raising yet another army took time. In fact, the senate was already talking about recalling some of the legions from the provinces, from the wars with Sertorius and Mithridates, but nothing came of it, not then. By the time they finally did, it was too late.

Crixus

But all that time we had no opposition. It was hard for a lot of the men to think about training and discipline when there was so much more plunder over every hill. And we had to keep on the move. It was winter, too late in the year for campaigning, but we had no choice, with the numbers of men we had–it was either loot or starve. We’d swarm onto one of those big plantations in Lucania, break into the barracks and strike the chains off the slaves. Then we’d roast a few hundred cattle and sheep, drag out the wine and have a feast. A day or so later, we left with everything we could carry, along with the slaves who wanted to join us. What we couldn’t haul along, we burned.

It was the same thing when we came to a town. A lot of our men could think of nothing but killing the Romans and raping their women, taking whatever they could find. Sometimes Spartacus tried to stop them, but how could he? It was what the men all wanted, plunder and revenge. I can’t say I didn’t do my own share of it, either. But it got to the point where Spartacus said he hoped to see a Roman army marching down on us, because it was the only thing that might sober our men. And I admit it, the Gauls were maybe the worst. Gauls and Germans–the barbarians.

Then there was something else. A lot of the men who joined us then weren’t slaves. Free men came, mostly landless men, Samnites and Lucanians, and they hated Rome. Some of them were bandits out of the mountains and hills, looking to join in the looting and kill Romans with the rest of us. But for a lot of them, revenge was even more important than plunder.

Varro

Samnites were always enemies of Rome. Thousands of them were outlawed after the civil war, when they took Marius’ side against Sulla. It hadn’t been so long ago, and men still remembered.

Crixus

Well, that’s where the trouble came from. Between us and the Samnites. They knew the Roman way of war, the discipline and training. Most of them had their own armor and weapons, too, up there in the mountains where they were bandits. It was like they’d been waiting for somebody like Spartacus to come along and lead them against Rome again.

Most of us, Gauls and Germans, thought we were doing just fine the way we were. There were plenty of towns we hadn’t looted yet, plenty of plunder.

So there were arguments. Before long, fights were breaking out–fights over loot, over women, over one man stepping in another man’s shadow. I know, you put that many men together in an army camp, you’re always going to have a few brawls. But this was different, most of the fights were barbarians against the Samnites, and it was getting so there was bad blood between us. A man alone didn’t dare go over to the other side of the camp. Spartacus was tearing out his hair. He tried to stop it, he had men flogged for brawling, but the mood in the army only got worse.

It seemed to me and some of the other Gauls that Spartacus was starting to prefer the Samnites to us, appointing them to command, passing over men who’d been with him since the night we broke out of Capua. A man named Trebatius, one of the bandit leaders, was the worst of them. He seemed to think he was some kind of Samnite king.

Varro

There was a Samnite commander named Trebatius during the Social War. Could this be the same man?

Crixus

His son, I think he said. Pontius Trebatius.

Of course I didn’t like it. Or him. Ever since Oemomaus was killed, I’d been second in command after Spartacus. Now it was this Samnite taking my place. And men were coming to me, men like Gannicus and Castus, saying, "Who are these Samnites? Who’s this Trebatius? Why does Spartacus listen to him instead of us? Instead of you?"

Gannicus even said, "Why do we have to follow Spartacus? Why should a Thracian lead this army and not a Gaul? You’re the one with the head of a Roman praetor on your spear. You’re as good as him, or better."

I listened to him. That’s what hybris does to you. I even started to believe him.

The break between us came when we sacked some little mountain hamlet in Luceria. See, Trebatius wanted to revive the old Samnite wars with Rome, and he had Spartacus convinced these towns might join us. But to the rest of us any town just meant plunder, it meant women and gold. And it turned out, none of the Lucerians wanted to join another revolt against Rome, or at least not a revolt led by slaves.

Varro

They probably remembered the civil war. It had only been ten years since Sulla tried to exterminate the Samnites for siding with Marius. They lost a whole generation of men.

Crixus

Oh, you couldn’t get Trebatius to stop talking about the Samnite wars with Rome, and especially Sulla. But the men in those towns by then were half Romans, and Trebatius wasn’t much more than another bandit to them.

So we surrounded this village, and while they were negotiating at the front gate, sending heralds back and forth, some of us fired their walls. It was only a wooden palisade. As soon as the rest of our army realized what was going on, they rushed in and joined us sacking the place.

Spartacus was furious. He ordered the looting to stop, but the whole army ignored him, even most of the Samnites once they realized they were missing out on the best plunder. His face got that stone look to it, and you can’t argue with a stone. He kept saying, "I gave orders." And, "If we don’t have discipline, we don’t have an army, we only have a mob!"

Maybe I’d heard that one too many times. And worse, it was Trebatius agreeing with him, saying yes, men should be flogged, men should be executed to set an example to the rest of the army, to teach the barbarians what discipline means.

That was the moment the gods of hybris were waiting for. I pulled my sword and challenged Trebatius. "If you want executions, why don’t you just start with me, here and now?"

Well, Trebatius was either stupid or brave, because he started to pull his own weapon, but Spartacus pulled him back before I could spit him like a pig for roasting. Then it was Spartacus and I facing each other, both with drawn steel, and Spartacus was saying, "Maybe I should start with you, Crixus. They were your men who started the looting. Maybe killing you will teach them to follow orders, for a change."

And I answered him, "Maybe you ought to try it. Maybe we’ll see who really ought to be leading this army."

I don’t know what would have happened then if Castus hadn’t got between us and pulled us off each other. Only another gladiator could have done that, and lived.

Varro

Then you didn’t fight?

Crixus

No. I thank the gods for that.

Varro

Do you think you might have killed him?

Crixus

I don’t know. He was good with a Thracian sword, I was good. We only met once in the arena, and I had the victory, that time. But there’s no way to tell, now. My blood was up. I think even then I knew he was right, but I wouldn’t admit it, not to myself, not to him, not in front of the others.

Varro

Sometimes I think there are moments in the affairs of men when events are balanced on a cusp. As if you were to throw a boulder into a stream and alter its course. All events from that point on would happen differently, and history as we know it would never have taken place.

Crixus

You mean if I’d killed Spartacus that day, you wouldn’t be writing your history books now? Maybe so. But then who could ever know how things would have come out, otherwise? Except maybe the gods.

And maybe he might have killed me, instead.

But it didn’t happen. They pulled us apart, we finally cooled off enough to talk, and I decided to take my men and leave his army. Spartacus agreed.

At the time, it seemed the best idea. To both of us. But we were breaking the oath that we took together on Vesuvius, to fight together until death. The gods don’t forgive men so easily for that.

So here you see where you were wrong in your book. We didn’t plan all along to split our forces and trap the Romans between us, we split our forces because I was a fool, just what Spartacus had called me.

Varro

You’re talking about the battle on Mount Garganus now.

Crixus

That’s right. The real fact is, I almost got half our men killed on Garganus, I almost destroyed our army. None of us knew at the time that Rome had just raised four new legions to hunt us down, that they were already on the march. But I doubt if I would have cared. I was full of hybris then, thinking I was another Brennus. I had thirty thousand men under my command, all Gauls and Germans, we’d beaten the Romans before, we could beat them again. So I told myself.

We raided and plundered our way across Apulia, and the smoke of burning villas led the Romans right to us. They took us completely unprepared. We never bothered to set up a walled camp the way Spartacus had trained us to do–that was too much trouble. We had no sentries posted to keep watch–everyone wanted to be in on the looting, instead.

It was the Roman cavalry that hit us first, at least five hundred of them. They charged through us, killing right and left. Worse, they drove off most of our horses with them. My men were running for their weapons, for their armor and shields, but the thought of taking formation was nowhere in their minds.

Of course five hundred cavalry against thirty thousand of us–they weren’t really a threat. But I wasn’t a complete fool; I knew they were only scouts and that somewhere, close by, there must be a whole Roman army. The horsemen would be leading them right to us. I didn’t know how far away they were, how long we had. Finally, I did what I should have done all along. I gave the signal to form up and tried to get the men into order as fast as possible.

We were in open country, which always favors the Romans in battle. The villa and the farm buildings we might have used for a defensive position were already ashes. Digging in might take too long–the Romans might be on us at any minute. But I could see Mount Garganus to the east, not more than twenty miles away–less than a day’s march. Fighting in the mountains was what we were used to. I decided to retreat to the hills.

Only I couldn’t get the men into order. They all had too much baggage. Every man was weighed down with plunder–carts full of it, sacks loaded with it, slaves–and none of them wanted to leave any of it behind, even when the Romans had driven off their pack animals. They wouldn’t listen to orders, not until the Roman cavalry came back for another strike. That got them moving, at least.

The damned cavalry harried us every step of the way, trying to cut us off, trying to delay us until their legions could march up in force. Time and again, they attacked–charging in, picking off a few men, then riding off. We had too few horsemen of our own to go after them. There was nothing we could do to stop them, no time to halt and take a stand. That was what they were trying to make us do. And all the baggage was slowing us down even more than the Romans, the ox carts and the donkeys loaded with it could only plod along. The men–loaded with it–couldn’t keep a close formation on the march, and strung out the way they were, they were easy targets for the Roman cavalry.

I was all in a sweat, afraid that the next time I looked back, it would be a whole Roman army marching down on us. I finally ordered my men to abandon all the spoils, leave the baggage behind, every bit of it, except for provisions. I rode up and down the line of march, forcing men to get rid of their loot, to pick up the pace. I took the heads off a few of them who tried to argue with me. There just wasn’t the time for it. For twenty miles, our back trail was marked by discarded baggage, strayed cattle, and the bodies of stragglers.

Most of the men who lived, learned. To keep up with the march, to keep formation. I could only think how Spartacus had told us, over and over: a cohort in good order, armed with spears, can fight off any cavalry attack. The Romans knew it, too. They concentrated on picking off the stragglers, the men who dropped out of line, the men slowed down by trying to carry their plunder with them, against orders. I’d lost hundreds of them by the time we’d reached the Garganus hills, but they were already a better army because of it.

We reached a good defensible position before the Romans caught up with us, and we started to dig in. I knew we wouldn’t be safe until we put up a wall between us and the enemy. This time, even after the whole day on the march, even when night fell, I heard no complaints from the men about digging ditches, building up ramparts, cutting wood, and hauling stone.

The Roman army marched up in formation the next morning and started to put up their own camp near the foot of the mountain. I wasn’t too worried, not even then. We had more than twice the men they did and we had the high ground.

Maybe I was overconfident. Maybe if it was Spartacus in command instead of me, everything would have been different. But I was looking down at the Romans with their camp only half-started, and it seemed to me I’d never have a better chance to attack, to hit them first. To take them off-guard if I could. It had to be quick, it had to be sudden. My men were tired but eager to fight, to strike back after the cavalry harassment on the march.

Because of the terrain, with a ravine on our right, we were crowded together on a narrow front. There wasn’t room to keep the cohorts in order, we were massed hundreds of men deep. I ordered the men to spread out and form up when we reached the bottom of the slope, but by then things were too confused.

We charged in a body down the mountainside. The first thing that went wrong was, the Roman lookouts spotted us coming and gave the alarm. The legionaries dropped their shovels and tools, grabbed their weapons and shields, and formed up before we could reach their position. Then in some places, especially on our left, the slope was too steep and our men couldn’t keep together. The center and right were still bunched up deep, and men were running into each other, fighting each other for a chance to get out front and be one of the first to strike the enemy. No one was thinking about taking formation.

When we hit them, their center buckled and fell back under the weight of our numbers, but they didn’t break. Our right was pushing them back, too, and for a while the momentum seemed to be with us. But before we could crush them, the damned Roman cavalry came charging out of nowhere and hit our left flank. We had plenty of men in the rear who hadn’t got into the battle yet, and I tried to order them over to the left and reinforce the breach. But behind the cavalry it looked like it was another entire Roman legion coming up. I tried to get my men turned around to face them, but they were too slow to react, or they never heard the signal. The reinforcements gave the Romans heart and stiffened their spines. And some of my men started to lose theirs.

I decided to retreat while we could. We fought our way back up the mountain to our walls and held them off when they came after us. I still wasn’t too worried. Our position was good, and even though we’d lost a lot of men, so had the Romans.

But then they started to work–digging ditches, raising walls below us at the foot of the mountain. I tried to send a cohort out through the ravine to get behind their position, but it was so narrow and choked with brush the men could only go single file. And the Romans had the other end blocked already. Before I knew what was happening, we were trapped. They surrounded us, they put up their own walls around us to keep us from breaking out. What’s that called, in Latin?

Varro

Contravallation.

Crixus

Right. A Roman word. Even before the walls were done, they brought up catapults. The stones struck our walls or flew over them and killed the men behind them. One of them killed Gannicus. We picked up the stones and used them to build our own walls higher, but we had no way to throw them back, no catapults and no way to make them, no tools.

I knew we couldn’t stand a siege. There wasn’t shelter on the mountain against the cold, that time in the season. More important, provisions were short. Too much baggage abandoned on the road, and I can’t tell you how many men had filled their packs with gold instead of corn. I sent out foraging parties at night, but most of them never came back–whether they were caught or deserted, I don’t know. And every day we waited, the Roman ditch just got deeper, their walls higher.

I still had one advantage: from the top of the mountain we could spot the Romans whenever they tried to infiltrate our lines. We fought them off, more than once. Then a sentry came to me one morning and said he’d spotted a new army approaching from the north-west. At first I thought it was more Romans, come to finish us off. I ordered the men to stand ready for another assault on our walls, but I was sure that this time it would be the last.

Then I saw it wasn’t a Roman army. It was Spartacus. Somehow, he’d learned the Romans had us under siege and marched all that way across Apulia to relieve us. That was the first time we killed a Roman consul in battle. Gellius, wasn’t that his name?

Varro

Lucius Gellius Publicola.

Crixus

When it was over, I swallowed all my hybris and got down on my knees in front of Spartacus. I swore a new oath: wherever he wanted to lead, whatever orders he gave, I would follow. I’d thought that I’d wanted to be a commander, lead an army of my own, but I’d learned better and almost lost thirty thousand men doing it. From that day, I left the command to him.

Varro

What did he say to you?

Crixus

He said, "What did you think I’d do when I heard the Romans had you under siege? Should I turn my back and let you all be killed? Don’t you remember, we swore an oath together."

Gods, I loved that man. He was right, I was a fool. But I never left him again. Not while he was alive. The gods know I would have died to save him, but I didn’t get that chance.

After Garganus, there were no more complaints about discipline. No one could say we weren’t a real army, a hundred thousand men strong, all armed and equipped and trained. We crossed back over the Apennines, back into Samnite country. There was another consular army waiting for us there in the mountains, trying to block the passes that lead to Rome. We managed to trap them there instead. We didn’t bother to hunt down the survivors, there were so few of them. The consul escaped, though. That’s one head I never got.

Varro

That was Lentulus. He made it back to Rome, but the senate stripped him of his command. That’s when they started talking seriously about recalling armies from the provinces. There was no Roman army between Spartacus and Rome. The city was almost undefended.

Then, of course, Crassus stepped in.

Crixus

Crassus, I remember him. The man who was going to save Rome from Spartacus. It was a different kind of fighting, once we met him. It was what Spartacus had been telling us all along, one day we were going to come up against veteran legions.

Varro

Crassus raised his own army. He was the richest man in Rome, so he could afford to pay for volunteers, retired legionaries to fight under his command.

Crixus

I think I’d be ashamed to be a Roman if I demanded pay before I’d defend my own city.

Varro

Crassus had political ambitions. He wanted to recruit an army that would be loyal to him after the war. The man who defeated Spartacus and saved Rome could be sure of election as consul the next year. There was even some talk in the senate of making him dictator, but they settled for appointing him to take the rest of Gellius’ term as consul.

Crixus

Well, Crassus did put up a good fight. I don’t suppose he had much choice in his strategy. He had to stand between us and Rome. Between us and Capua first, as it happened. Capua–back where we started from. Less than a year after we broke out of Batiatus’ gladiator school.

Varro

You crucified more Romans at Capua.

Crixus

Capua . . .

I’ll tell you about Capua. Just a few days before we got there, we took Pompeii. You know, when you’re a gladiator, they send you around on the circuit to the big shows: Capua, Pompeii, Rome. We had men who knew the streets in Pompeii–Castus and Felix did. They led a few dozen men over the walls at night, straight to the biggest gladiator schools, and broke them out, hundreds of the best fighters in the world with all their arms and weapons. They took the gates from the inside and held them open for the rest of us. We hardly lost a man taking Pompeii.

We were heading north straight up the Appian road, so it was just a couple days’ march before we got to Capua. Well, Crassus had his army there to meet us in front of the city gates. He had six or eight legions, I think, besides the Capuans who came out to stand with him. We had almost three times that number, and they were all battle-hardened men by that time. And disciplined, after what happened at Mount Garganus.

Of course most of us knew Capua–the gladiators, I mean. This time I was the one who led the strike force to break into the city where the walls weren’t so well-defended, the way we’d done at Pompeii. But when we got to the gladiator schools, they were already dead. Every gladiator in the city. The Capuans murdered them so they couldn’t escape and join us. And not just the gladiators. They killed the public slaves, even some of their household slaves, the able-bodied men. I don’t know how many altogether. Thousands. Thousands of them murdered.

Varro

But of course they were afraid to have so many dangerous men at large inside their walls.

Crixus

I still call it murder, to slaughter men when they’re locked up in chains and defenseless. Not for what they did, but what they might do.

Well, our blood was up, then. We took off our legionary gear and armed ourselves as gladiators. The main battle was still going on outside the city, near the front gate. Crassus had his army formed up with the walls at his back. He was holding off Spartacus’ assault, but when the Romans saw the gates open behind them and a horde of gladiators charging out, they panicked and broke.

Crassus got away, himself, but we captured his pay chest–it was too heavy for two strong men to lift. And the loot from Capua–that whole town was rich on gladiators’ blood, and we took it back. We figured we deserved it.

We burned Capua to the ground, but before that we sacked the place and crucified every citizen we could find. Then we staged another set of games in the Capuan arena, the same place so many of us had fought as slaves. This time, though, we let the Crassus’ legionaries do all the dying.

I remember what you called it in your book–an atrocity, an outrage. It was justice, to us. A just revenge.

Varro

A few of the survivors made it to Rome. They told the senate what had happened there. Some people started to kill their slaves in Rome, too.

The whole city was in a panic like a nest of ants under a rotten log, when you lift it up. The senate was offering sacrifices, consulting the Sibylline books to find a prophecy that might save Rome.

Crixus

That reminds me–one strange thing that happened in Capua. You know Spartacus’ woman was a seeress?

Varro

I know men said she was.

Crixus

She called herself Olympias and said she was a priestess of Bacchus, one of those Greek cults. But she was just a Thracian, a barbarian like the rest of us. Her arms were tattooed with snakes. Her breasts, too–she liked to wear them bare when she led the rites. When we were still in the gladiator school, she had a vision of Spartacus crowned with a snake. Then, she said it meant victory in the arena. But later she claimed he was destined to conquer Rome.

Well, at Capua we took a prisoner who was one of Crassus’ legates, one of your patrician class. This one was arrogant even for a Roman. When we sent him into the arena to fight, he refused–unless he was matched up with Spartacus himself. He challenged Spartacus to single combat!

Then he made all kinds of crazy threats, said he was going to crucify us all–he said he was captured once by pirates, and after he was ransomed he came back with his own army and crucified every one of the pirates, and he’d do the same to us.

Varro

I think I know who that had to be–young Caesar. That sounds like something he’d do. Gods, there’s another one who was ambitious, well beyond his years! That story about the pirates was true, you know. So, did Spartacus fight him?

Crixus

No, at Capua this Caesar was the one who was crucified. I never heard a man curse the way he did, hanging nailed up on a cross. I think he invoked every dark god in Tartarus! It made my hair stand on end to hear him.

That night, while he was still up on the cross, Olympias had a dream about him–Caesar, if that was his name. She saw snakes crawling out of the eye sockets of his skull. The vision bothered her so, she wouldn’t leave Capua until she saw them put a spear through his belly to make sure he was dead. I think she laid some kind of spell to bind him in his grave, too.

Varro

Did you know he was one of Rome’s high priests?

Crixus

Was he? At his age? Does that make his curse more potent? Well, he cursed Spartacus and Spartacus is dead, but so is he, for all the good it did him and his ambitions.

Varro

Did you believe in her prophecies, this seeress? Did you think Spartacus was destined to conquer Rome?

Crixus

A lot of us believed it, at the time. It always makes you feel good to think you have Fate on your side. I don’t think Spartacus ever really did, though. But the rest of us, by that time we were all ready to march on Rome behind him.

Varro

I remember all the messages coming from the senate. Every day they expected Spartacus to show up in front of the walls.

Crixus

Well, we could hardly just march right up to the walls. Don’t forget, Crassus was still out there with the rest of his army. Retreating ahead of us, doing everything he could to delay us. He was persistent, Crassus was. He slowed us down. Until he was killed at Praeneste, we had to fight for every mile. But still he didn’t save Rome.

Varro

They made him a hero of the Republic, you know, even so. His statue is right next to Fabius, who saved the city from Hannibal. Every year there’s a festival in his honor.

But I’ll tell you something. Thirty years ago, when I wrote my book, I couldn’t say this. But now I almost think it might have been for the best that Crassus was killed before he could seek the consulship. He was too ambitious. He had the money, but it wasn’t enough for him–he wanted power. With those legions he’d bought, I’m afraid he might have made himself another Marius, another Sulla. The Roman Republic survived Hannibal and Spartacus, but I don’t know if we could have survived another civil war.

You see, I remember when Magnus got the order from the senate to break off his operations against Sertorius and come back to defend Rome from Spartacus. He threw it into the fire.

Crixus

Wait a minute. Who is this Magnus?

Varro

Pompeius. That’s what we called him then, Magnus–Pompeius the Great. I was on his staff in Hispania during the campaign against Sertorius and his rebels. After five years of war, he was finally getting the advantage of Sertorius. He was already planning his triumph. And at first, as I said, when he got the recall order from Rome, he refused to go. He thought it was a plot by his enemies in the senate to rob him of his triumph, just to put down a slave uprising. He burned the order and said he’d run his sword through any man who mentioned it again. He cursed the senate, but most of all, he cursed Crassus, for trying to steal his glory.

What I’m saying is, Magnus wasn’t the kind of man to let Crassus take place ahead of him. And his legions were loyal to him even more than Crassus’ men were. I think it would have been another civil war between those two, Pompeius against Crassus. Marius and Sulla all over again, fighting over Rome like dogs over a bone.

Crixus

If Crassus had saved Rome, you mean. If he hadn’t been killed, trying.

Varro

Of course Magnus didn’t know at the time that Crassus was dead. After he heard that Spartacus had burned Rome, it was another matter. Then, he couldn’t wait to be one who put an end to the threat of Spartacus. But he still vowed he was going to come back to Hispania after he’d crucified all the gladiators, and take on Sertorius all over again.

Crixus

It sounds like he was afflicted with hybris, too.

Varro

It’s been very common in Rome, I’m afraid.

But what about Spartacus? What were his ambitions? This is the question I’ve spent thirty years trying to answer, and it’s still an enigma. He was at the gates of Rome. Crassus was dead, his army broken. The city was defenseless at his feet. But he torched it and marched away. Why?

Crixus

It wasn’t easy to decide, I can tell you that. Of course some of us wanted to take Rome. But what then? What if we took Rome? We couldn’t keep it, couldn’t hold it. We all knew by that time that the senate was recalling the legions from the provinces. We would have been trapped there, behind the walls, surrounded. That wasn’t the kind of war we knew how to fight.

Varro

Even Hannibal never tried to take Rome.

Crixus

Hannibal, when he got tired of fighting Rome, he could pack up his army and go home to Carthage. We had nowhere, that was the problem. We started out just a few dozen gladiators trying to escape from Capua. By the time we reached Rome, we had an army of a hundred thousand men, we could beat any legion they could send against us in the open field, but we still had nowhere to go.

So sure, some of the men–barbarians and bandits, most of them–they wanted to sack the place, they kept talking about all the gold and women in Rome. But I’ll tell you something, there’s a limit on how much plunder you can carry. After we sacked places like Pompeii and Capua, we had to leave half the loot behind us, there weren’t enough carts and pack animals to haul it with us. Not to mention the fodder for them.

You should know what I’m talking about, you’ve been on the march in enemy territory, you know what it takes to keep an army going. You need someplace to take all that loot, someplace secure to pile it up, otherwise it’s no good to you. And that’s what we didn’t have.

At the worst, you could have marched back to Rome, but where could we go?

Some men wanted to go back to the mountains, to Samnite territory, but we already knew the towns there wouldn’t support us. Some–mostly the Gauls and Germans–wanted to go north to the Alps, out of Italia, back to their homelands, out of the reach of Rome. Only there was no place out of the reach of Rome. Roman armies in Gallia, Romans in Thracia, Romans in Syria, Africa, Graecia. And nearly half of our people were Samnites, Italians–where could they go?

Worse, it would have split up the army. If there was one thing I learned at Mount Garganus, it was before everything else, the important thing is to keep the army together, no matter what. As long as we were together, there wasn’t a Roman army that could beat us.

Varro

But you were beaten, in the end.

Crixus

It wasn’t any Roman army that beat us, it was treachery.

Varro

All right, now we come to it. You set Rome on fire and marched away, heading for Hispania. To join Sertorius there. Why? What made Spartacus decide to trust Sertorius?

Crixus

Well, like I said, we needed a place to go, a place where Rome couldn’t reach. We needed to keep the army together. That meant joining Rome’s enemies. We either had to go east to Mithridates in Asia or west to Sertorius in Hispania.

Trebatius argued for Sertorius. The Samnites had fought for Marius in the civil war against Sulla, and everyone knew that Sertorius was Marius’ man. The Samnites all wanted to go to Hispania and join Sertorius.

Varro

Do you blame Trebatius for what happened?

Crixus

There was no way he could have known Sertorius would betray us all. And the Samnites died along with the rest of us. He sold them out, too.

But you’d know about Sertorius–you said you were there, you fought against him in Hispania, with Pompeius. He was a traitor to Rome. Was he used to betraying his own allies?

Varro

Even his enemies always considered Sertorius an honorable man, despite everything. It’s another irony, if you’d have it: Sertorius was a Roman, first of all, but his loyalties in the civil war made him a traitor to Rome. As you say, he was always Marius’ man. The very last of Marius’ men. When Marius fell, they were all either killed or outlawed by Sulla–I suppose some had turned to banditry like this Trebatius of yours, but the rest had nowhere to go but Africa or Hispania.

What I don’t think Spartacus and the rest of you understood at the time was that Sertorius was having a hard time of it by the time you escaped from Capua. For years, he’d been ruling Hispania as if it were his own kingdom, wearing out one Roman army after another, but Pompeius Magnus was finally a match for him. His people were growing tired of war. There was even a conspiracy among some of the officers on his staff to mutiny. This was something I didn’t learn until years afterward, but if it’s true, the very same day they meant to carry out the mutiny, Sertorius got word from Rome about a slave uprising in Italia and never came to the banquet where they were planning to kill him. It saved his life.

Crixus

We did know he was losing ground to Pompeius. That was one reason we chose to join him–we figured Sertorius needed our army as much as we needed him. And he promised us lands of our own. Good land, that the Romans had settled. It’s a fine country, Hispania. I could have lived there the rest of my life. In peace, if the Romans would have let us.

But Sertorius lied. He sold us out to the Romans.

Varro

There’s one story about Sertorius I think you should have known before you trusted him.

During the civil war, when Marius was hard-pressed by Sulla, he freed about four thousand slaves to fight on his side. They helped him take Rome, they became his personal army, called the Bardyiae. His personal executioners. Marius turned obsessive in his old age, obsessed with revenge on his enemies. He executed anyone he even suspected of plotting against him. The Bardyiae did that work for him. Eventually they got out of control and murdered indiscriminately, anyone they pleased, without permission. They killed men in their own homes, raped their wives and butchered their children. No one in Rome was safe from them, no one dared act against them or even complain, for fear of Marius. Not until Sertorius surrounded their camp one night with his own men and slaughtered them all. No one else would have dared, for fear of Marius.

The story wasn’t widely known. Sertorius didn’t want it told at the time, because Marius was still alive and . . . not rational. Then, not long afterward, Marius died, Sulla took power in Rome and started to kill all his enemies. Sertorius fled to Hispania to save himself. But ever since that time he always had the strongest possible antipathy to the notion of armed slaves, of freeing slaves to fight. He never availed himself of this expediency, even when he was hard-pressed by his enemies.

But I don’t suppose Spartacus knew. Or I doubt if he would have trusted Sertorius.

Crixus

None of us knew that. You’re right, it would have made a difference. We could have gone east, instead, to join up with King Mithridates and his armies. We should have. Everything would have been different, then.

Varro

The thing is this: all those years in exile, fighting Rome, Sertorius never really wanted his own kingdom. All he really wanted was to go home, to take his place again at Rome. He was growing old. His mother had died. And his enemy Sulla was finally dead.

Few people know this, but more than once while we were campaigning against him, Sertorius sent letters to Magnus offering to surrender if only he could have a pardon and return to Rome. Not just at the end, when he was starting to lose everything. Even after his victories. I know, I read the letters. I would rather live as the lowest class of Roman citizen than remain in exile, even as the ruler of the world. All he needed was a way to expiate his treason and clear his name.

Crixus

By betraying us. And betraying the men of Hispania who fought for him so long–selling them back into the hands of Rome. But I suppose it’s not treachery to a Roman if his victims are only barbarians and slaves.

Varro

Of course Magnus had always turned his offers down, before. The senate would never have agreed to pardon Sertorius. But when he offered us Spartacus and his whole army, the price was finally high enough.

And to Magnus, it was as if the gods had come down from Olympus to guarantee his triumph, giving him Sertorius and Spartacus at one blow.

Crixus

You were there, weren’t you? You fought in that battle.

Varro

Yes, I was there. The hardest fighting I ever saw–and the last. I almost lost this leg, and from then on, I let it be my excuse for staying home and writing my books.

Crixus

I could tell. From your book, I knew you had to be there. Any man who lived through that day had the gods looking out for him. The crows must have feasted for months afterward!

Varro

So I got that part right, at least?

Crixus

Reading it, it was like I was there again, seeing the same battle from the other side, while you stood there and waited for Sertorius to make his move.

Of course we never knew what was coming. We trusted Sertorius. We did have one warning, though. From the gods.

The night before, Spartacus’ woman Olympias had a dream: she told him that if he fought the next day, it would be his last battle, he would be killed.

He told her, "It doesn’t matter if I die tomorrow, if it’s really our last battle, as long as we never have to fight another. As long as we win." Which turned out to be true, that it was his last battle, but not in the way he meant it.

Because he trusted Sertorius.

Varro

Magnus didn’t trust Sertorius. Not entirely. That’s why he held six cohorts out of the battle in reserve, just in case. He knew the old fox too well. After all, if he could betray one side, he could betray the other.

It all went according to plan, but it wasn’t just waiting, I can tell you that! Remember, we had to stand there and let Spartacus’ whole army charge into us! I’d never come up against an army that size! We were all remembering those reports of Spartacus’ victories in Italia, the men crucified, the other atrocities. I could feel my guts churning the whole time you were advancing. But of course I couldn’t put any of that in a book.

We watched you march closer and closer to us, while Sertorius held his own army back on your right flank. Then you charged the last distance, crushed our front lines. Before Sertorius finally made his move, even Magnus was getting worried.

Crixus

But your Romans stood fast. I’ll say that much for them, Pompeius’ army was the hardest we ever fought. Harder than Crassus’. Still, we could have won that day. We could have beat Pompeius.

Varro

I won’t say you’re wrong. You were pushing us hard. We were trapped between the river on our right and Sertorius’s army on the left, while you crushed the center.

Crixus

Instead, we were the ones who were trapped. We kept waiting for him to wheel his army around into position to hit your left flank. That was supposed to be the key to the whole battle.

I remember thinking, what was he waiting for, what was the delay? I saw him give the signal, I saw his army start to charge, I thought–We’ve got them now!

Then, at first, I couldn’t quite figure what was wrong, what he was doing. Then he hit us. With his cavalry first–he had good cavalry. By the time we got regrouped and turned around to face him, it was too late. The Romans broke through the middle of our lines–but you know all that. You were there.

We got Sertorius, though. I wish I could say I killed him myself, but I did see his head, while it was still recognizable.

Varro

And Spartacus? What happened to him?

Crixus

In your book, you say he was killed in the battle.

Varro

We assumed he was. But we never found his body. We searched for him–even the river, downstream. Some men said they saw him go down fighting, but we were never sure.

Crixus

He would have died fighting. That was our vow. And the prophecy. As far as I ever knew, he was killed in the battle that day. I do like to think he might have been the one who killed Pompeius, though.

Varro

I suppose he could have been. I didn’t see it. Things were confused after Magnus was killed, and I was on the ground with my leg half-off, trying not to bleed to death.

At least we got him his triumph, posthumously. His bones driven in his gold chariot along the Sacred Way, while the crowds cheered. It was what he wanted more than anything, the last thing his men could do for him. But there weren’t many prisoners in his parade. And no Spartacus.

Crixus

Better to die fighting, better than surrender to face a cross. That’s what we always told ourselves.

Varro

It took a while to persuade the senate to allow the triumph, but I suspect most of them were relieved that Pompeius Magnus was gone. Someone–I think it was Cicero–said a triumph was a small price to pay for keeping Rome free from another king, to preserve the Republic.

It would have come to that, I think, if he’d returned alive to a triumph with both Sertorius and Spartacus in chains. I don’t think anything could have stopped him then. Another king of Rome, in my lifetime.

But it didn’t happen. Rome was spared another civil war, and the Republic still stands, because of Spartacus.

Crixus

And if Spartacus still lived? Would that change anything?

I think about twenty thousand of us survived the battle and made it all the way to Asia.

We enlisted with King Mithridates to fight the Romans, and I’ve been fighting them ever since. The way Spartacus would be, if he was still alive. The way my sons are, now.

Maybe it would have all ended differently if we’d never trusted Sertorius, if we’d gone east instead of west, to Asia instead of Hispania. Maybe Mithridates would have made Spartacus commander of all his armies, and we would have conquered Rome. Maybe I would have married Queen Cleopatra of Egypt and I’d be sitting next to her on the throne right now.

But I think the gods spin out the thread of our fates from the beginning, and there’s no changing it. I can’t believe in your boulder blocking the stream of events.

The gods don’t let it happen. The stream just flows past the boulder and follows the same bed all the way to the sea.

We burned Rome, we killed a lot of Romans, but what real difference did it make? Everything we did, all our battles and victories from Capua to Hispania, and Pompeius had his triumph, after all, even after we killed him.

Now it’s thirty years later and Rome is rebuilt, richer than it ever was. Capua, too, and the gladiator shows are even bigger than they used to be. Crassus and Pompeius are both dead, but their sons are still both trying to rule the Roman Republic, and they’re still making war on the sons of Mithridates in Asia.

And tomorrow I’ll be going back in the arena again so Roman crowds can see the last surviving Spartacanus fight to the death, even if he is an old man.

Everything we did, and nothing has really changed at all.