A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow - By Levkoff, Andrew Page 0,47

I began our training all over again.

Chapter XI

56 - 55 BCE Winter, Rome

Year of the consulship of

Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus

It was several weeks after our mission to the balnea Numa before lady Cornelia and Livia could both be released from their social and medical obligations to travel together into town. The streets were still unsafe, and would remain so until after the elections, which Crassus would continue to have postponed until Januarius. I forbid Livia from this outing; she laughed. Why is it I will not be taken seriously? Neither her personal safety nor the threat of rain would make her see sense, and I could not bring myself to have the guards confine her. She argued her position with a whispered kiss against my ear. “You’ll thank me next time you suffer from one of your migraines.” The headache would arrive either way, for the thought of her out and vulnerable in the city was making my temples throb and the cords in my neck turn to iron.

After a promise that our itinerary would have a single destination and no impulsive excursions, Malchus, Valens, the lady’s man, Buccio and I escorted the women to the herbalist’s, a tiny shop down a crooked street little more than an alleyway. Betto had wanted to come as well, but domina was out preparing for the parties that would festoon Sulla’s Victory games like banners. Crassus had sent so many men to guard her, including Betto, that you could barely see her litter, let alone get near it. We opted to abandon the use of such a carriage, as it would attract more unwanted attention than our paltry guard could comfortably accommodate. As for Hanno, he had discovered the stables, and the horses had discovered him. Love grew unbridled, if you will forgive the pun, by horse and boy alike.

The games were of particular importance to the Crassus household, since they were held to honor Sulla’s victory against Marius and Cinna in the Civil War a generation earlier. There was not a Roman alive older than forty who did not remember that the battle at the Colline Gate would have been lost had it not been for Marcus Crassus and his 2,500 Spaniards. Sulla’s forces were about to be overwhelmed when my master, right beneath the very walls of the city, broke through Marius’ Samnite defenders, allowing Rome to be taken into the loving but brutal arms of its conqueror. Some of the older optimates could still be heard to murmur that had Crassus been just a little older (he was thirty-three at the time) the city and the dictatorship might have gone to him. Rome loves nothing so much as a hero.

I have reminded you on several occasions that I am no Roman. While Crassus would be the man of the hour for the last week of October, this celebration, of all the dozens of festivals held throughout the Roman calendar, was most reviled by this chronicler. Before Sulla had himself declared dictator of Rome, he and his armies had been preoccupied with the sacking of Athens, abducting everything of value, from our books, to our art, to our greatest minds. To whit, me. To be fair, at nineteen, my mind still had some small way to go before it would come fully into its season. That point aside, this festival had special significance for me: not long after the butchery had abated I was captured, brutalized and chained; given as a gift of gratitude from the victorious general to his young lieutenant. While Rome drinks, eats and whores itself into a stupor to mark the occasion, for me this holiday must in perpetuity commemorate the end of my freedom and the beginning of my life as a slave.

If this were not reason enough to abhor these games, I have another. For over 700 years the festival that honored mighty Zeus was held in Olympia near the town of Elis, a celebration of man’s feeble but worthy attempt to mimic the gods in prowess and speed. It is no coincidence that these two festivals, one infant, the other ancient and venerable, are held at the same time of year. As I have previously perhaps overstated, when Sulla’s armies trampled our fair city, the dictator transported everything he could lay his hands on to Rome, including the Olympic Games themselves. Fortunately, he died two years later and no one objected when the official competition quietly stole back to Greece,