But the night ended.
In the morning he was trussed and cleaned and brought before Tigelanius, Commander of the Garrison of Jerusalem.
Tigelanius sat in day dress, not wearing his uniform. He was wrapped in a toga of state, one with the purple border to show his touch of royal blood. His sword was beside him. Beside him, also, a scribe stood, with the charges written down. Two other officers of the Tribuni Militarium stood as advisers to the court.
Turning his cultured and sensitive face to the accused, Tigelanius looked at the prisoner in distaste. Making a wrinkle in his nose, he said, ascetically, 'You still stink' and ordered the officer of the day to have the jailer given ten lashes. Turning his attention back to Casca, he called for the scribe to read off the charges…
This done, Tigelanius asked Casca if he had anything to say in way of defense before sentence was passed.
Casca said nothing. He stood motionless, his mind full of wonder. Today the scab on his arm was gone, and only a thin pink line showed where he had dug out enough meat to fill up a thimble.
Tigelanius made a motion to the scribe. 'Note that the accused has nothing to offer in his defense.' Rising to his full height, the tribune stood in front of Casca. 'You, Casca Rufio Longinus, are hereby relieved from the rolls of the Tenth Legion, and your name shall be stricken from her rolls of honor. Your awards for valor are taken from you and do not exist. As of this moment, you are no longer a person. You are the property of the emperor and are to be sent to the copper mines in Achaia. There you will be permitted to serve your emperor, and Rome, for whatever time you have to remain on this earth. You are dismissed.'
And, turning away from the prisoner, he made the comment to one of the witnessing officers: 'Now, let's get on to some important matters. Mettelius, how many will you be bringing to dinner tonight beside yourself and your lovely lady?'
Casca was stripped down and issued a loincloth and robe in place of his legion dress. His manacles were replaced by simple leg irons, and the medallion with the likeness of Tiberius on it was put around his neck. To be caught without the medallion being worn as it should be was to be killed immediately.
He was hooked up into a coffle of some twenty other slaves who were to be sent to the same copper mines in the distant northern provinces of Greece. There they would dig the greenish red ore from the side of the mountains until they died.
They were marched the fifty kilometers from Jerusalem to the port of Joppa. There they were loaded on a bireme, a twin-banked coastal ship that would take them to the port of Cenchrea.
The crossing was uneventful, but the quarters were crowded and the food scanty. They were fed once a day and watered twice, but there was no unnecessary cruelty. The Romans did not torture their slaves needlessly, just as most people would not beat their domestic animals without reason.
One small squall had several of the slaves throwing up, but Casca did not seem to be bothered by it at all, and indeed the food seemed to be enough for him, too. At least it seemed that he had less trouble adapting than many of the others. They credited that to his being a former legionnaire and therefore used to diet restrictions. Only one man died on the voyage, a merchant who had been foolish enough to be caught with rigged weights when he was selling supplies to the garrison at Samaria.
The ship made all the coastal stops along the rim of the Mediterranean toward Greece, stopping to let off passengers at Caesarea and Tyre and taking on a cargo of wool at Sidon. At Sidon they also picked up the governor of Cyprus and took him on to Paphos. His Excellency had been to a conference of governors at Antioch, and like all such politicians on an expense account had made a little side trip to meet with some old friends in Sidon for a couple of weeks before returning to his governmental duties on his own miserable little pigsty.
From Crete, the bireme made a straight approach to Rhodes for a two-day stop during which Casca and the others were allowed to exercise themselves on deck (the crew used them to help load a cargo of skins and other items into the hold next to the slave section). The ship made one more stop at Ephesus, and then it was on to Cenchrea at Achaia, the southernmost province of Greece, home of the legendary Spartans and supposedly a former resting place of the great Ulysses. All in all a nice tour for tourists, but damn little fun and games for slaves.
During the voyage Casca had his first real taste of what it meant to be a slave. No longer a man. Not even human. Just property. But being property had some surprising overtones.
They were not put on the oars because they did not know how to row properly, and it would take too long to train them. Those on the oars were a combination of slaves and free men working for hire. The slaves were not beaten except when one was caught slacking off-and then not enough to cripple him. After all, slaves were property and worth something. Even if they were not good oarsmen, they could still be traded in for new stock. But a disabled slave brought nothing. So, as long as the slaves did their jobs with no trouble, they were treated relatively well-if being ignored could be called good, and Casca realized that it could.
After the disembarkation at Cenchrea, the slaves destined for the mines were separated from the others and hooked into a new coffle and headed up into the hills where the mines were. They trudged along, quickly learning to keep in step with each other so as not to stumble. Casca found that the rhythms of slavery came quick and easy… not letting yourself think was another way to stay sane. Unthinking, the coffle marched like some crookedly jointed centipede up into the rocky hills of Greece toward the pits where they would spend the rest of their lives underground, digging copper for the wealth of the Caesars and for the profit of the proconsul governing there. By now the chains had cushions of calluses to rest upon and no longer ate away at the skin. Pads of calluses would develop in other areas, too.
They could smell the mines before they reached them. The sound came also, but it was the smell that came first. After the relative cleanliness of the galley, the smell of thousands of sweating, unwashed men assailed their nostrils. The first slaves they saw were carrying baskets of red earth to the dumping ground. They seemed part of a seemingly unending line of dirt-encrusted humanity. Like the legendary worm that ate itself, they never stopped. They were one continuous great circle of misery. Here the whips cracked frequently on the backs of the slaves. These were the expendable ones. The mine superintendent needed a certain death rate just to have room for all the newcomers he was being sent. He had complained to his superior in Athens at this constant overload he was forced to contend with, and how difficult it was to maintain a balance. He had cut their rations to a third-and still the animals wouldn't die fast enough. Now, here came a new batch. Where the hell was he to put them? The latest war had thrown thousands of slaves on the market, and they were a glut. He got all the rejects… the troublemakers and murderers. Damn top management… don't know what they're doing.
Casca was numbered in by the number on his slave tag, and he was chained to his new work mate. The leg irons here were longer than they had been on the march., A slave in the mines needed a little more slack.
Casca and his mate were assigned to a pit on the northwest side of the mountain. He was lucky. Here he would at least have some fresh air and sun. Below, in the shafts that ran down a thousand feet below the surface, the slaves might not see the light of day again for the rest of their lives.
Casca fell into the routine of his job and soon learned how to avoid the overseer's whip. The one third rations did not seem to bother him very much. What he didn't know at the time was that his system's metabolism was simply adjusting itself to whatever intake it was receiving and making the most efficient use of it. Casca had a bowel movement less than once a week, and then it was small. Everything he ate was turned to energy. His body grew dark from the sun. His muscles became bands of steel. He not only did his own work but much of his chain mates' chores as well.
The days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, and yet he worked, and his chain mates died. He had gone through three of them and was now with his fourth. Four years had passed, and he grew ever stronger. Yet, even with careful planning, he could not avoid entirely the lash of the overseer, and his back looked like a street map because of the thin scars of the whip. But he survived while others died.
And always the Jew's voice came to him when he was attached to a new slave by the iron umbilical cord: 'Until we meet again… ' There were times, too, when the voice came to him in his sleep… when he would curl up in the little hole he had dug for himself and his chain mate for protection against the worst of the storms that periodically raged over the island.
Casca kept silent, talking little to his mates or the others around him, but they knew something about him was different. And after a time even the overseer began to stop by and touch him for a bit of luck.
