“Here,” he said. “And slowly. I want you to see the moment that your blade makes a difference.”
The boy carefully placed his blade at the allotted spot and began to push. The flesh puckered beneath the knife’s slow advance, then suddenly gave way with a loud pop. The injured man snarled in anguish, began to scream, until Charon silenced him with a hand on his mouth. The noise continued, muffled, while Charon carried on with his lesson.
“Now,” he said, “see how his chest still moves. You have barely pierced the flesh. There would be more blood, but he is near bled out. Push on… push on, and see now how he flinches. And here… there!”
There was a sudden upwelling of blood, and the struggling ceased.
“You have pierced the heart,” Charon explained. “Measure well the depth required with such a blade.”
Some were already leaving as the acclamation of the primus died down. Cicero had seen retreating backs ambling down the steps, even as Verres and Batiatus made their closing announcements. The rabble had already forgotten Marcus Pelorus, if they had ever remembered him. They had forgotten many of the gladiators, too, and the reason that ten fought against four. But there was talk of the remarkable turnabout in fortunes during the fight with the lions, and much gossip of the painted woman who had lived to see her sentence postponed. It was, he heard patrons saying to each other, a fine day of games put on by Gaius Verres, in memory of Someone-or-Other. Pilorux or Plorus or something like that, may he rest in peace.
As Cicero stumbled down the steps after Timarchides, he heard some children giggling about some business with rabbits, which Cicero was grateful to have missed.
“A woman without worth,” Timarchides said to him.
“A judgment made by me alone,” Cicero said.
“As you seem judge of all things,” Timarchides muttered.
“Your meaning?” Cicero said sharply.
“Coming to Neapolis in search of a… what was it? A foretelling of a foretelling? Picking over the spoils of plundered cultures.”
“It is necessary, for the continued well-being of Rome.”
“Is the past, present and future of Rome not already inscribed in Sibylline Book?”
“A matter of some sensitivity,” Cicero sighed.
“Why is that?”
“For the reason that we no longer have them in our possession.”
Timarchides turned to look quizzically at the quaestor.
“But they reside in the Temple of Jupiter, on the Capitoline Hill!” he said.
“Burned ten years hence, the books destroyed with it.”
Timarchides stood, speechless for a moment. Then he looked about him at the firm, unyielding stone of the arena.
“So Rome is ended? Your history is over?”
“Fortunately, it appears that there is a window in the wall of Fate.”
“I would hope so,” Timarchides laughed humorlessly.
“The books may be restored.”
“You jest!”
“The priests maintain a prophecy is neither created by words inscribed upon a scroll, nor destroyed by burning.”
“Really? That is not what I have been told.”
“Regardless of what you have been told, no doubt by uneducated Libyan nurses and ill-informed Bithynian house-slaves, the future of Rome may be preserved through solicitation of replacement oracles from around the world.”
“If only the late King Tarquin the Proud had been told such a thing, he might have saved himself much grief.”
“Do you mock me?” Cicero bristled.
“Of course not,” Timarchides smirked. “I mock the priesthood,” Timarchides declared, “conniving swindlers with interest only in lining their own coffers.”
“Enough! The Sibylline Books can be replaced. Prophecies have been sought from all edges of the known world. They are to be collated in Rome and examined by the assigned priests. History will go on.”
“Thank the gods for that.”
“And gratitude to you for preserving one.”
“Of what do you speak?”
“The woman Medea.”
“She is not preserved.”
“I would buy her from you.”
“She will die for her crime, and soon.”
“Then may I at least examine her tonight?”
“Unfamiliar words for familiar request.”
Batiatus found himself descending the steps at the same pace as Verres, with little hope of speeding or slowing his progress.
“I envy you your governorship,” he said, after a pregnant pause. “Such opportunities await.”
“Perhaps,” Verres said. “Opportunitiy to be the object of hatred. The Sicilians are as yet unprepared for Roman government. They still yearn for the rule of the whip.”
“Why so?”
“Sicilia was that part of the Greek world where the old ways endured the longest. Their cities once ruled by tyrants-the strongest of men, the worst of men. Perhaps, in rare moments of fortune, also the best men suited to the task.”
“And how does one achieve status of tyrant?” Batiatus asked.
They paused to let a veiled woman pass before them. Her head turned to stare at Verres, her hand raised as if to say something, but then she hurried ahead of them, weaving through the dawdlers on the steps so that she was soon receding from sight far below.
“Application is simple,” Verres was saying. “Requiring only that you kill the previous incumbent. But it is not a responsibility that most mortal men would relish. The constant threat of similar attacks upon oneself? The constant need to make the toughest of decisions about one’s people and one’s supplies. A tyrant’s life is not easy, and a successful tyrant might come from the lowest of the ranks. Might alone endures the worst that fate has to offer, refining him through such hardship, honing him as a whetstone does a blade, until he is the fittest for the job.”
“I see no problem.”
“And when the tyrant dies. Who succeeds?”
“His son?”
“But the tyrant has fought his way up from nothing. He has learned the justice of the battlefield and the honesty of misfortune. He has clawed his way to the pre-eminent position in his domain, and that is what has made him what he is. But what is his son?”
“The son of a tyrant?”
“The
“The tyrant should anticipate such obstacles. He should ensure his offspring suffers the correct hardships.”
“You are serious? You think it possible to create some form of ideal hardship?”
“Gladiators train body through exercise. Why not train mind through rigour? Banish him, perhaps? Force him to be raised by shepherds, unaware of true heritage? It might work…”
“And if it does not?”
