WINGED WORDS
The gladiators were pausing from their toil. Brawny chests heaved and
panted, deep voices laughed and swore with returning breath; strong arms
looked heavier and stronger as the athlete rested his wide hands upon his
hips, and not unconsciously brought his huge muscles into full relief in
the attitude. Esca and his late antagonist were wiping the sweat from
their brows, and looking at one another with wistful eyes, as if by no
means loth to renew the contest, so equally had the last bout been waged.
Hirpinus laid down the weighty clubs he had been wielding, with a grunt of
relief. No unpractised arm could have lifted those cumbrous instruments
from the ground, yet they were but as reeds in the hands of the gladiator;
nevertheless, he lamented piteously the tendency of his mighty frame to
increasing bulk, which rendered such heavy and uninteresting work
necessary to fit him for the arena.
“By the body of Hercules!” complained the giant, “I would I were but such
a half‐starved ape as thou, my Lutorius! See what the master calls
training for a man of some solidity, and thank the gods that an hour’s
girls’‐play with sword and buckler is enough to keep that slender waist of
thine within the compass of a knight’s finger‐ring.”
“Girls’‐play, call you it?” answered Lutorius. “In faith ’tis a game that
would put thy fat carcass on the sand, from sheer want of breath, in a
quarter of the time. No more girls’‐play for us, my lads, till after the
feast of Ceres. The school will be thinner then, or I am mistaken. How
many pairs are promised by the Consul for this coming bout? I heard the
crier tell us in the street, but I have forgotten.”
“One hundred at least, for sword and buckler alone. And twenty of them out
of the Family!” answered Euchenor readily, and with a malicious smile. His
profession as a boxer freed him from any fatal apprehensions; but he took
none the less pleasure in recalling to his comrades the more deadly nature
of their encounters. Rufus alone looked grave; perhaps he was thinking of
his wife and children while he listened; perhaps that humble cottage in
the Apennines seemed farther off than ever, and the more desirable on that
account. The others smiled grimly, and a wolfish expression gleamed for an
instant from their eyes—all but Esca, whose glowing young face displayed
only courage, excitement, and hope.
“Bird of ill‐omen!” said Hippias sternly. “What do you know of the clash
of steel? Keep to your own boys’‐play, and do not meddle with the game
that draws blood at every stroke. I think I am master here!”
Euchenor would have answered sullenly, but a knock at the door arrested
his attention. As it swung open, to the surprise of all, and of none more
than Esca, Calchas stood before them.
“_Salve!_” said the old man kindly, as he looked around, his venerable
head and calm dignified bearing contrasting nobly with the brute strength
and coarser faces of the gladiators. “_Salve!_” he repeated, smiling at
the astonishment his appearance seemed to call forth.
Hippias was not lacking in a certain rough courtesy of the camp. He
advanced to the new‐comer, bade him welcome as a stranger, and inquired
the cause of his visit; “for,” said he, “judging by your looks, O my
father! it can scarcely be a mission connected either with me or my
disciples here, whose trade, you may observe, is war.”
“I too am a soldier,” answered Calchas quietly, looking the astonished
fencing‐master full in the face. The gladiators had by this time gathered
round; like schoolboys at play they were ripe for mischief, and, like
schoolboys, it needed but the merest trifle to urge them into any extreme,
either of good or evil.
“A soldier!” exclaimed Euchenor, “then you fear not steel!”—at the same
moment he snatched a short two‐edged sword from the wall, and delivered a
thrust with it full at the old man’s breast. Calchas moved not a muscle;
his colour neither rose nor fell; his eyelash never quivered as he looked
steadily at the Greek, who probably only intended a brutal jest, and cared
but little how dangerous might be its result. The point had reached the
folds of the visitor’s gown, when Rufus dashed it aside with his hand,
while Hippias dealt the offender a buffet, which sent him reeling to the
opposite wall.
“What now?” exclaimed the professor, in a tone with which a man rates a
disobedient hound. “What now? Am I not master here?”
The others looked on approvingly. The jest was well suited to their
habits. They were amused at the discomfiture of the Greek, and pleased
with the coolness shown by an old man of such unwarlike exterior. Esca,
however, strode up to his friend’s side, and glared about him in a manner
that boded no good to the originator of any more such aggressions, either
in sport or earnest.
“Thou hast hurt the youth,” remarked Calchas, in as unmoved a tone as
would have become the fiercest gladiator of the school. “Thou hast hurt
him, and he was but in jest after all. In truth, Hippias, I have not seen
so goodly a buffet dealt since I came to Rome. That arm of thine can
strike to some purpose, and thy pupils are, like their master, brave, and
strong, and skilful. I have heard of the legion called Invincible, surely
I have found it here. My sons, are you not the Invincibles?”
He spoke so quietly they knew not whether he was jesting with them; but
the flattering title tickled their ears pleasantly enough, and the
gladiators crowded round him, with shouts of encouragement and mirth.
“Invincibles!” they laughed. “Invincibles! Well said, old man! yes, we are
the Invincibles. Who can stand against the Family? Hast come to join us?
We shall have plenty of space in the ranks ere another moon be old.”
“Give him a sword, one of you!” exclaimed Rufus; “let us see what he can
do with Lutorius. The Gaul has had a bellyful already; press him, old man,
and he must go down!”
“Nay, let him have a bout with the wooden foils,” laughed Hirpinus. “He is
but young and tender. He would sicken at the sight of blood.”
“Or a cast with the net and trident,” continued Manlius.
“Or a round with the _cestus_,” observed Euchenor; adding with a sneer, “I
myself am ready to exchange a buffet or two with him, for sheer goodwill.”
“Hold! my new comrades,” interposed Esca, with rising colour. “In my
country we are taught to venerate grey hairs. If ye are so keen for
_cestus_, lance, and sword‐play, here am I, untried and inexperienced,
willing to stand against the best of you, from now till sundown.”
The gladiators gathered round the last speaker somewhat angrily; the
challenge was indeed a bold one in such company, and a contest begun in
play amongst those turbulent spirits, might end, not improbably, in too
fatal earnest; but Hippias cut the matter short by commanding silence, in
loud imperious tones, and, turning to the new‐comer, bade him state at
once the business that had brought him there and have done with it.
“I came here,” said the old man, looking round with a glance of mingled
pity and admiration; “I came here to see, with my own eyes, the band of
Invincibles. I have already told you that I too am a soldier, whose duty
it is to go down, if need be, daily unto death.”
There was something so quiet and earnest in the speaker’s manner, such an
absence of self‐consciousness or apprehension, a sincerity and goodwill so
frank and evident, that the rude fierce men whom he addressed could not
but give him their attention. There was all the interest of novelty in
beholding one whose appearance and habits were so at variance with their
own, thus throwing himself fearlessly on their forbearance, and trusting,
as it were, to that higher nature, which, dormant though it might be, each
man felt to exist within himself. Even Hippias acknowledged the influence
of his visitor’s confidence, and answered graciously enough—
“If you are a soldier, I need not tell you that we are but on the drill‐
ground here. You will see my band to better advantage when they defile by
Cæsar at the games of Ceres.”
Calchas looked inquiringly round.
“And the chorus,” said he, “that I have heard ring out in such a warlike
tone, as your ranks marched past the imperial chair; are you perfect in
it, my friends? Do you practise the chant as you do your sword‐play and
your wrestling?”
He had fixed their attention now. Half‐interested, half‐amused at his
strange persistency, they looked laughingly at each other, and their deep
voices burst out into the wild and thrilling cadence of their fatal dirge—
_Ave, Cæsar! Morituri te salutant!_
As the last notes died away, silence pervaded the school; to the rudest
and most reckless, there was something suggestive in the sounds they knew
too well would be the last music they should hear on earth. Calchas turned
suddenly upon Hippias.
“And the wages Cæsar gives your men?” said he; “since he buys them body
and bones, they must be very costly. How many thousand sesterces doth he
pay for each?”
A brutal laugh echoed round him at the question.
“Sesterces!” answered Hippias. “Nay; Cæsar’s generosity provides
handsomely for the training and nourishment of his swordsmen.”
“True enough!” added Rufus, at which there was another laugh. “He finds us
in meat, and drink, and burial!”
“No more?” said Calchas. “Yet I have been told that in Rome everything
fetches its price; but little did I think such men as these could be
bought for less money than a Syrian dancing‐girl, or a senator’s white
horses. So you are willing to toil day after day, harder than the peasant
on the hillside, or the oarsman in the galley, to live simply,
temperately, ay, virtuously, for months together, and then to face certain
death, often in its ghastliest form, for the wages a Roman citizen gives
his meanest slave—a morsel of meat and a draught of wine! If you conquer
in the struggle, a branch of palm may be added to a handful of silver, and
you deem your reward is more than enough. Truly, I am old and feeble,
these hands are little worth to strike or parry, yet would I grudge to
sell this worn‐out body of mine at so mean a price.”
“You told us you were a soldier,” observed Rufus, on whom the argument of
relative value seemed to make no slight impression.
“So I am,” replied Calchas; “but not at such a low rate of pay as yours.
My duties are not heavy. I am not forced to toil all day, nor to watch all
night. My head aches with no weighty helmet; breastplate and greaves of
steel do not gall my body nor cumber my limbs. I have neither trench to
dig, nor mound to raise, nor eagles to guard. I need not stand, like you,
against my comrade and my friend, with my point at his throat, and slay
the man who has been to me even as a brother, lest he slay me. Yet, though
my labours be so easy, and my service be so deficient and inadequate, all
the gold and jewels you have seen glistening in a triumph, all the
treasures of Cæsar and of Rome, would not equal the reward I hope to
earn.”
The gladiators looked from one to the other with glances of astonishment
and curiosity. This was a subject that spoke to their personal interest,
and roused their feelings accordingly.
“Are there vacancies in your ranks, comrade?” asked Hirpinus, using the
military form of speech habitually affected by his profession. “Will you
enrol a man of muscle like myself, who has been looking all his life for a
service in which there is little to do and plenty to get? Take my word for
it, you will not long want for recruits.”
“There is room for all, and to spare,” answered Calchas, raising his voice
till it rung through every corner of the building. “My Captain will enlist
you freely, and without reserve. Only you come to Him and range yourselves
under His banner, and stand by Him for a few short watches, a week, a
month, a decade or two of years at the most, and He will stand by you when
Cæsar and his legions are scattered to the four winds of heaven; ay, and
long after that, for ages and ages rolling on in a circle that has no end!
Will you come, brave hearts? I have authority to receive you, man by man.”
“Where is your Captain?” asked Hirpinus. “He must needs have a large
following. Is he here in Rome? Can we see him ere we take the oaths and
raise the standard? Comrades!” he added, looking round, “this old man
speaks as though he were in earnest. Nay, he would scarcely dare to laugh
in our very beards!”
“You might have seen Him,” answered Calchas, “not forty years ago, as I
myself did, on the sunny plains of Syria. You will not see Him now, till a
pinch of dust has been sprinkled on your brow, and the death‐penny put
into your mouth. Then, when you have crossed the dark river, He will be
waiting for you on the other side.”
The gladiators looked at one another. “What means he?” said they. “Is he
mad?” “Is he an augur?” “Doth he deal in magic?” Rufus reared his tall
head above the throng. “Would you have us believe in what we cannot see?”
was the apposite question of that practical swordsman. The old man drew
his mantle round his shoulders with the air of one who prepares for
argument. All he wanted was a fair hearing.
“Which is the nobler gift,” he asked, “a strong body, or a gallant heart?
Ye have fought many times, most of you, in the arena. Answer me
truly—which is the conqueror, courage or strength?”
“Courage,” they exclaimed, with one voice; all except Euchenor, who
muttered something about skill and good fortune being preferable to
either.
“And yet you cannot see it,” resumed Calchas. “Will you therefore argue
that it cannot exist? Is there one of you here that doth not feel a
something wanting to complete his daily existence? Why do you long for the
smiles of women, and the bubble of the winecup? Why can you not rest when
the training of to‐day is over, for thinking of the labours of to‐morrow?
Why are you always anxious, always anticipating, always dissatisfied?
Because a man consists of two parts, the body and the spirit; because his
life is made up of two phases, the present and the future. Your bodies
belong to Cæsar, let him have them to do with them what he likes, to‐day,
to‐morrow, at the games of Ceres, at the feast of Neptune, what matter?
But the spirit, the man within you, is your own. He it is who doth not
wince when the javelin pierces to the quick, or the wild beast rends to
the marrow. He it is who quails not when the level sweep of sand seems to
rock beneath him, and heave up against his face; when the white garments
and eager faces of the crowd spin round him faster and faster as they fade
upon his darkening eye. He is the better man of the two, and he will live
for ever. Shall you not provide for _him_? What is your present? Much
trouble, many hours of toil. A foot or two of steel in the hand, and a
dash at a comrade’s throat, then a back‐fall below the equestrian benches,
and so the future begins. Do you think there is nothing better there than
old Charon’s ferry‐boat, and the pale misty banks of the uncertain river?
I know the way to a golden land far brighter and fairer than the fabled
islands of the West. There is a high wall round it, and the gate is low
and narrow; but the key stands in the lock, and you need no death‐penny to
purchase entrance for the poorest of you. Go to the door in rags, with no
other possession but the hope and trust that you may crawl in upon your
knees, and it opens ere you have knocked.”
Something in each man’s heart told him, as he listened, that if he could
but believe this, the conviction was worth more than all the treasures of
the empire put together. Liable as were these gladiators to stand in the
jaws of death at a day’s notice, there was something inexpressibly
elevating in the idea that the supreme moment which the most careless of
them could not but sometimes picture to himself, was the mere passage to a
nobler state of existence. The words of a man who is telling what he
himself implicitly believes to be the truth, carry with them no small
amount of persuasion; and when Calchas paused, the swordsmen looked
doubtingly at him with eyes in which incredulity and admiration were
strangely mingled; not without a certain wistful gleam of hope. Hippias,
indeed, whose tastes inclined him to materialism, and his reflections to
utter disbelief in everything save the temper of a blade, seemed disposed
to cut the matter short, as being a waste of valuable time; but the
anxiety of his pupils, and especially of Esca, to hear more of the glowing
promises held out, induced him to fold his arms and listen, with a smile
of conscious superiority, not devoid of contempt.
“And the Captain who leads us?” asked the Gaul, after a whisper and a push
from Hirpinus. “What of him? Your promises are fair enough, I grant you,
but I would fain know with whom I serve.”
Not one of them but noted the gleam on the old man’s face, as he replied—
“The Captain went up to death with a patient, calm, and kindly face, for
you, and you, and you, and me—for those who had never seen Him; for those
who mistrusted Him; for those who failed Him, and turned back from Him at
His need. Nay, for those who tortured and slew Him, and whom He forgave
with the free full forgiveness of a God!—ay, of a God! Which of your gods
has done as much for you? When did one of them leave their Mount Olympus,
save for some human need, or some human mission of bloodshed and crime?
Where is the king who would give up an earthly throne, and go voluntarily
to a shameful death for the sake of his people? You are men, my
friends—brave, resolute, hearty men; what would you have in him whom you
serve? courage, patience, mercy, goodwill to all? What think ye of Him who
left the rulership of the whole universe, and went so willingly to die,
that He might buy you to be His own here and hereafter? Come and range
yourselves under His standard. I will tell you of Him day by day. There is
no jealousy amongst His soldiers. The service is easy; He has told us so
Himself; and neither mine nor any mortal tongue can calculate the reward.”
“Enough of this!” interrupted Hippias, noting the eager looks and excited
gestures of the swordsmen; interpreting, as he did, the words of Calchas
in their literal sense, and fearing lest he might, indeed, lose the
services of the daring band, on whose blood it was his trade to live.
“Enough of this, old man! We have heard you patiently, and now begone! My
gladiators have enlisted under Cæsar, and they will not desert their
standard for any inducement you can offer. I know not why I have listened
to you so long; but trespass not further on my forbearance. This building
is no Athenian school of rhetoric; and the only arguments acknowledged by
Hippias, are those which may be parried with two foot of steel.
Nevertheless, go in peace, old man, and fare you well.”
So Calchas went out from amongst these fierce and turbulent spirits,
unharmed and well satisfied. He had sown a handful of the good seed, and
knew that somewhere it would take root. More than one of the gladiators
was already pondering on his words; and the young Briton, with his ardent
nature, his kind heart, and his predisposition in favour of Mariamne’s
kinsman, had resolved that he would hear more of these new doctrines,
which seemed to dawn upon him like light from another world.