The clown Medea stopped suddenly, alone in the arena, as if hearing the crowd for the first time. “She” looked about her and began to point threateningly at the crowd, in a way that had been seen before.
“Charon,” Varro said. “It is the same old bastard who plays Charon in the arena.”
“You are famous,” Spartacus said.
“I am infamous. And your clown was more handsome than mine.”
Spartacus laughed.
“Gladiators, already your legend supersedes your fleshy reality,” Batiatus said, appearing behind them. He gestured toward the stairs downward. “Perhaps it is time that you returned to the cells, and leave the guests to their phantoms and delights.”
At the far end of the courtyard, Verres and Timarchides were locked in a futile argument. They bellowed and pointed at one another, such that men who did not know them well assumed that they were about to come to blows.
“Do you suggest the love of women is natural?” Timarchides said, already somewhat the worst for wear.
“Do you suggest that it is not?” Verres sputtered.
“Women serve to bear and rear children. But when it comes to fucking, there is no comparision to the real thing.”
Some of the assembled guests laughed nervously. Cicero stood among them, had a pained look on his face as the contest continued.
“Spoken like a Greek!” Verres scoffed.
“Spoken like the greatest warriors the world has ever known!”
“Are we really going to have discussion of this now?”
“The Sacred Band of my native Thebes! A phalanx of fearsome warriors that drove all Greece before them. The most beautiful youths on the front line. Their older lovers bearing spears behind them, encouraged to fight all the more in order to protect the ones they loved so dearly.”
“Were not the Sacred Band annihilated at the battle of Chaeronea? Killed to a man? Not a single one left alive.”
“Killed by Alexander the Great!” Timarchides cried, slurring victoriously. “Whose love of his male companion Hephaestion surpassed that of man for any woman. Whose ‘Persian boy,’ Bagoas-”
“Enough! My ears grow weary of this,” Verres said. “You are drunk beyond coherent speech.”
“Quite so,” Cicero said. “Citing occasional exceptions to a general rule is no argument worth using, except to fool the gullible and easily persuaded. Not an exercise in rhetoric, rather two drunks shout at one other. If you seek to duel with words, then do so with some panache! As the gladiators of good Batiatus, here, duel with their blades!”
Batiatus, ascending the stairs from the now almost-deserted ludus, brightened at the sound of his name spoken with approval.
“I have gladiators under my command,” Batiatus said, “who subscribe to the same obscenities as Timarchides describes. Their performance in the arena uneffected.”
“My concern rests with the claim that these foreign lovers of men are ‘the greatest warriors in the world,’” Cicero said. He appealed to the crowd. “Will nobody answer this? At a dinner in the heart of Italia, will nobody stand up to defend the honor of the Republic?”
“The Republic needs no defence,” Verres said. “History is its shield. Free Greece is no more. Conquered by Romans. And Timarchides knows this, for it was a Roman that set him free.”
The house shook with laughter, and the chastened Timarchides staggered away, laughing himself, as Cicero and Verres clasped arms in friendship and approval.
“Let us argue on another topic!” Verres proclaimed, to extended cheers. “I would see how quaestors approach true debates!”
“Apollo’s shit pipe,” Batiatus muttered to himself. “Not more talk!” he crept from the gathering as carefully as he could, feigning an interest in a retreating platter of fruits and the slave that bore it.
“Name your argumenta,” Cicero declared, “and I shall speak upon them.”
“Concerning slavery!” a red-faced Timarchides shouted, leaning on a statue of Pelorus, barely able to stand himself. “Let Cicero argue that all should be as liberated as I!”
There was a hushed murmur of approval among the other guests, and scattered outbreaks of applause. Cicero mimed shock, and then deep thought, and then turned to address the crowd with a smile.
“In nature, we are all born as squalling infants, unable to fend for ourselves,” he began. “We are all born in need of succour and sustenance. This is natural. But we are not born equal, and it is a fallacy to suggest otherwise. Why? I shall tell you why…”
“I cannot stay!” Ilithyia proclaimed. She collapsed onto the couch and grabbed an entire bunch of grapes to pick at. “I leave tonight in hope my bearers may convey me to Atella while I sleep. So this is farewell, till reunion in Capua.”
“What can possibly have tired you?” Lucretia said. “You have done nothing all day but watch other people exert themselves for your entertainment.”
“Good Verres spat wine all over me at the arena. My dress destroyed, I was forced to search for another for hours in Neapolis. Weary hours passed waiting for the slaves to model it. Dickering with the merchants. Such efforts!”
“I see you found suitable replacement, eventually,” Lucretia noted.
“It will do, though it is not of the latest fashion,” she said. “I chose blues and greens, to resemble the seas of the bay of Neapolis.”
“Were they without grays and browns, decorated with fish-heads and floating shit?” Batiatus asked.
“The waters as I imagine them to be,” Ilithyia continued, undaunted. “In summer before such autumnal upheavals.
“And you chose wisely,” Lucretia said. “You look most becoming.”
“I do,” Ilithyia agreed. “But that is not what has taxed me most! Have you heard?”
She pointed over at the menfolk in the middle of the room, where Verres and Cicero were engaged in heated debate. Other guests lurked around them in rapt attention, piled onto couches and chairs, leaning on arm-rests, seated on tables in row after serried row.
“They look like they are reconvening the senate in the atrium,” Lucretia observed.
“Indeed they are!” Ilithyia giggled.
“They drone of politics and faraway lands,” Batiatus said, “of men and legends I never heard. Bringing reminder of two senile old men striving to remember the past. And they will brook no interruption.”
“I think they find you rude,” Lucretia said.
“I am the very model of fucking politesse.”
“You interrupt.”
“I await suitable opening for discourse,” Batiatus protested.
“You do not! One can barely get a sentence out before-”
“Cicero can wag tongue all day. He is a fucking lawyer. Every time he opens his mouth his tongue speaks another argument for the defence.”
“It is a considered example of superb rhetoric from a master of the form,” Ilithyia said.
Batiatus’s eyes bulged.
“It is a-? It is a what?”
“Can you not hear it when he speaks?” Ilithyia said. “Everybody hangs upon his every word. His speeches provoke new thoughts, and report ideas from educated men all over the world. It is a performance rarely seen outside the Senate itself!”
“Hold tongue and let him speak!” Lucretia agreed. “Look at them. Hearing of distant countries and mad ideas. The guests entertain themselves, and still proclaim they have had the best of times.”
“Timarchides has engaged the dancing girls already at great cost,” Batiatus protested. “Unless Cicero is going to strip off…”
“All will go home speaking of the wonders of this night.”