Darkness and Dawn; Or, Scenes in the Days of Nero. An Historic Tale

by F. W. Farrar

Callicles would hardly have granted the favour to any one else, but every one loved Acte, and he only said, ‘If Nero should come?’...

‘I will hold you clear,’ said Acte.

Onesimus, overcome with shame, knelt on one knee, kissed the fringe of her robe, and whispered, ‘Oh, Acte, I am condemned to be a gladiator.’

‘In which school?’

‘Under Rutulus, the trainer of Pedanius Secundus—the cruellest man in Rome.’

He told her something of his story, and she saw that to help him was beyond her power. All she could do was to slip into his hand her own purse, and to tell him that if ever the day came when she could befriend him she would do her utmost. More she dared not say, for the suspicious eyes of Callicles were upon her, and she had to repress the emotion which agitated her frame.

In the school of Rutulus, Onesimus experienced a phase of misery even deeper than in the slave-prison of Antium. Once more he was the companion of felons of every dye and fugitives of every nationality. Every day came the severe drill, the coarse food which was worse than hunger, the odious society of hardened ruffians, the recounting of the brutal tragedies with which they were familiar. Among them all he found but one whose society he could tolerate. He was a dark-haired, blue-eyed Briton, young like himself, but in all other respects unlike him. For Æquoreus, as they called him, was full of manly pride and hardihood, and had none of the subtle softness of the Asiatic in his temperament. He had been reduced to his hard lot for no other crime than the outburst of a passionate independence. He had been brought over with Caractacus, as one of the Britons pre-eminent in stature and beauty to grace the ovation of Claudius and Aulus Plautius. He had not been treated cruelly, for the admiration inspired by the dauntless bearing of the British king had secured protection to his countrymen; but Glanydon—to give him his Silurian name—loathed the effeminate luxuries of Rome, and, forgetting that he was a captive, had once struck in the face a Prætorian officer who insulted him. For this offence he had been first scourged and then handed over to the master of the gladiators. It was ordered that he should fight, as soon as he was trained, in some great display. Onesimus saw that the young Briton shared his own disgust at the orgies of ribald talk in which their fellows indulged. The two had no other friends, and they were drawn together for mutual defence against the rude horse-play of their comrades. Glanydon was one of the class of gladiators called Samnites, who fought in heavy armour, while, after various trials, the trainer (lanista) decided that the exceptional activity of Onesimus marked him out for the work of a net-thrower (retiarius). Their training had to be hurried on at the utmost speed, for the games were to take place within a month.

The other gladiators sometimes talked of their lot with pretended rapture. They spoke of the liberal supply of food, of the presents sent them, of the favour with which they were regarded by fair ladies—even by the wives and daughters of great patricians—of the fame they acquired, so that their prowess and the comparison of their merits was one of the commonest topics of talk at Roman dinner-parties.They boasted of the delight of seeing their likenesses painted in red on the play-bills; of the shouts with which a favourite fighter was welcomed; of the yell of applause which greeted them when they had performed a gallant feat; of the chance of retiring with wreaths and gifts and money, when they had earned by their intrepidity the wooden foil.[74]

‘Poor wretches,’ said Onesimus to Glanydon; ‘they do not talk of the panic which sometimes seizes them, and how they are howled at when, in ignominious defeat, they fly to the end of the arena to beg for their lives; how, when they see overwhelming odds against them and grim death staring them in the face, they are still driven into the fight with cracking scourges and plates of iron heated red hot; nor—but what is the use of talking of all this, Glanydon? you know it all better than I do.’

‘Brutal, bloody, slaves and women, are these Romans,’ cried Glanydon. ‘The Druids of my native land served the gods with cruel rites, but they did not play with death as though it were a pretty toy, as these weaklings do. And to think that by arms and discipline they conquered my countrymen! Oh, for one hour again under Caradoc or under Boudicca! I would never leave another field alive.’