“You are jesting, father. Shall the Roman empire, borne by the eagles of her legions to the uttermost ends of the earth, the unconquerable daughter of Ares,[297] tremble before her own slaves?”
“She has trembled before now,” replied Titus Claudius. “Read the chronicles of the historians. The gladiator, who escaped with a handful of rabble from the school at Capua, collected an army, before the Senate had realized the fact. He beat the praetors, he defeated the quaestor Thoranius, he overran almost a third of the peninsula....”
“Then, and now; think of the difference,” exclaimed Quintus, to whom the unexpected turn taken by the conversation was most painful. “That was possible in the time of the Republic, but the strong hand of Caesar will be able to protect us. Besides, the slaves of our day lack the one thing needful—the irresistible Spartacus.”
“He will be forthcoming, when the time is ripe. Indeed, from all I hear, I fancy a candidate for the honor has already been discovered. He is called Eurymachus.”
“Really?” cried Quintus, who was fast losing all his presence of mind. “Do you really think....?”
“Yes, my son, I do think.... Does not the very mode of his rescue show how great and dangerous his personal influence must be? And I hear on all sides of this man’s defiant tenacity, contempt of suffering, strength and endurance. It is out of such rough wood as this, that a Spartacus is hewn. And a Spartacus to-day is more dangerous than his prototype; he can command a more mischievous force, against which sword and spear are wielded in vain: that of superstition. I cannot fail to see this plainly; for years I have watched the tendencies of the commonalty with all the keenness of suspicion. The creed of the Nazarenes ferments and spreads—the next Spartacus will be a Christian.”
“Father,” Quintus began after a pause, “I know that in this instance you are mistaken. This slave—I happen to know certainly—never conceived such a scheme. Besides, it seems to me, that the acumen of our statesmen is somewhat at fault, when it makes that sect responsible for everything that shocks or shakes society....”
“You do not know them,” interrupted his father, “and I do. Enough—we have digressed. What connection has all this with your request? Speak, for my time is precious.”
Quintus stood undecided. What could he hope for in this state of things? Well—he could but try.
“Father,” he began hesitatingly, “I came to speak in behalf of the very man, whom you are making every effort to brand as a Spartacus. I saw him two or three times in Baiae; he pleased me greatly, and I then determined to buy him of Stephanus. Then this most unlucky business occurred, and I lost the slave whom I had already begun to think of as my own. When I tell you, that Stephanus deliberately and maliciously tortured and punished him; when I swear to you solemnly, that the sentence of death....”