Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire

by Edward Lucas White

The bystanders fairly fell over backwards in their panic as they scattered. I stood by the leopard, and when she had exhausted the supply of hot blood, succeeded in caging her; but dropped limp on the earth once I had fastened her in her cage, for a beast of prey which had just tasted human blood was a ward with which I had felt very uncertain of being able to cope.

After that no one attempted to molest me while out catching the escaped beasts. But the night before my last day of beast-catching, as I lay abed very fast asleep at a villa fully ten miles from the Imperial villa where I belonged, I became gradually aware of some noises, then slowly I wakened. There was a fight going on at my door. Soon after I got out of bed our host and my master, the Villicus, came with a light and three or four slaves. The light revealed One of my fellow-slaves flat on his back and another throttling him. A dagger lay on the floor. Evidently the one had saved me from the other.

Late next afternoon, far up in the hills near Helvillum, I caught and caged the last hyena. These, being smaller and more cowardly than the nobler animals, were harder to locate. It was after sunset when we reached the villa where we found the procurator in charge of the beast-train; and along with, him and his men were welcomed and entertained.

After our bath and a lavish dinner the Villicus exchanged a few whispered words with our host and then he and I had a long conference alone. He explained that my life was in danger, not only from local friends of Bulla and partisans of the King of the Highwaymen who all not merely regarded me with detestation and hatred as a traitor but suspected me of being a government spy, but also from the King of the Highwaymen himself, who was certain to be informed by Bulla of how they had been discomfited and who had a long arm and countless capable and intrepid agents. He was of the opinion that the three attempts at assassination which I had escaped were a mere beginning. He was emphatic that I could not remain on the Imperial estate and survive many days. He advised me strongly not to return to the villa.

Then he told me that the procurator of the beast-train had sent to Rome by an Imperial courier, whom he had managed to intercept at a change-station, a letter setting forth my powers over fierce animals and asking that an order be sent for my transfer from the horse-breeding estate to the Beast Barracks attached to the Colosseum, where the animals are housed from their arrival in Rome, until their display in the arena; that this letter had come into the hands of the same officials who already had under consideration the requisition for me made by the procurator in charge of the Beast Barracks; that somehow these same officials appeared to know nothing of my identity with the slave who had foiled the conspirators who were fomenting a mutiny in the ergastulum at Nuceria, and for whose manumission a request had been made by the aldermen of that town, and indeed appeared to know nothing of any such request for manumission; that a requisition for my transfer from the horse-breeding estate to the Beast- Barracks at Rome had been made out, approved by the higher officials, sealed, stamped and sent out by an Imperial courier and received that very afternoon by the procurator of the beast-train, who consequently had authority to take me to Rome with him as one of the attendants on the animals of his train, which was now again in order, I having recaged all the four hundred escaped beasts, except five hyenas, one panther and one lion which had been killed by stock-owners and their slaves while attacking stock.

The Villicus went on to say that this fell out very advantageously for me, in his opinion. He advised me not only to go with the procurator without demur, but to arrange with him that I drop the name of Felix and adopt some other. He pointed out that, if it was known that Felix the Horse-wrangler of Umbria had gone to Rome as Felix the Beast-Tamer, then the King of the Highwaymen would be able without difficulty to trace me and set on me his ruthless agents until one of them assassinated me.

I felt that he was right. The danger to my former self as Andivius Hedulio, implicated in a conspiracy against Caesar, appeared now far off and unimportant, in spite of the fact that the secret service might still be keen to catch me and the hue and cry out after me from the Alps to Rhegium; the danger to my present self from the enmity of Bulla, of his ruffians, of their partisans in Umbria, of their Chief, the King of the Highwaymen, whoever he might be, appeared close and menacing. A change of name would make it impossible for Tanno and Vedia to carry out her plan for my manumission by the fiscus, my clandestine journey to Bruttium and my comfortable and unsuspected seclusion there until some other prince succeeded our present Emperor. I had grasped eagerly at the thought of this plan and had built much on it. But I realized that Bulla's admirers or the agents of the King of the Highwaymen would make an end of me long before Vedia's influence could obtain my manumission; and that, if she did accomplish all she expected, I could never hope to escape the vigilance of the tenacious and expert pursuers who would inevitably dog my footsteps.

I thought the advice of the Villicus good. I regretted that I was not to say farewell to Septima; she deserved a most fervent expression of my esteem, gratitude, regard and good wishes; but, after my encounter with Vedia, Septima seemed of very little importance. I had my amulet-bag on its thong about my neck and my coin-belt about my waist. I agreed to go with the procurator and thanked the Villicus for his solicitude for me, for his good offices and for his advice.

He said that it would be best that he should not know what name I meant to adopt. Also he said that, if I was to escape the vengeance of the King of the Highwaymen, it would be imperative that I be thought dead; he would give out that I had been killed by one of my fellow-slaves and everybody would assume that I had perished at the hands of some partisan of the outlaws; Bulla and the King of the Highwaymen would feel their animosity satiated.

I reflected that whereas news of my supposed assassination would fill Vedia with grief and would probably, after her grief abated, leave her feeling free to marry, yet, if a false report of my death was not spread abroad, a genuine report of my actual death soon would be. It was a choice between a lesser and a greater evil. I acquiesced.