GLAUCUS OF KORINTHOS OR THE SPOILS OF WAR Chapter 3: "Enslavement and Crucifixion"
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This is a story of erotic fiction meant for adult readers over the age of eighteen years.
Written by Jean-Christophe (Chris) March, 2012.
An archive of my stories can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Jean-Christophe_Stories
"The characters and ideas in this story are the writer's and shouldn't be used without permission. Please respect the integrity of the story and don't do any rewrites, make alterations or add pictures"
Chapter 3: "Enslavement and Crucifixion"
Crucifixion: "The cruellest and most disgusting penalty. The extreme and ultimate punishment of slaves" - Cicero
The goddess, Fortuna has indeed smiled on me. Upon my return to Rome, I will visit her temple in the Forum Boarium and pay homage to her for her abundant gifts to me. She has brought me safely through this final war of my career and now I can retire honourably from my military service to the Roman Senate and people.
I am the Tribune Flaccus Marcus Bruscius of the patrician class and I can trace my ancestry back through the mists of time to one of the Founding Families of Rome six centuries ago. My membership of the 'gentes maiores' has dictated that I live my life in the service of Rome. My family is of the Senatorial class and it has a long and proud tradition of providing senators some of whom have even held the exalted office of princeps senatus or Speaker of the Senate. And within my lifetime both my grandfather and father have held the Consulship. From my earliest recollections, I know my family has the ambition that I too will be a Consul and it has groomed me for that eventuality.
To that end, I have served in Rome's army and fought in many of her battles all of which I am proud to say were victorious and added to her prestige and power. And my booty or the 'spoils of war' from those battles has made me very wealthy and financially independent of my family.
By an accident of birth, I was born into the ruling class and therefore my future was pre- ordained by the gods. One day, like some of my ancestors, I too will be a Senator of Rome.
As a young man I had the choice of two paths leading to the Senate Chamber. I could serve in an administrative role - and this in no way assured me that I would sit in that august body - or I could serve in the Army which could automatically see me become a senator. Family honour and personal ambition saw me choose the military option.
Mine has been a long and distinguished military career which has brought dignitas and gloria not just to me but also to my illustrious family. My rise through the legion was meteoric. I served as a Centurion and later as the Camp Prefect which saw me promoted to the rank of Tribunis, one of the six senatorial tribunes in my legion. I was the most senior of the six tribunes and this placed me second-in-command to the Legate.
However, my chief regret is that our legion isn't fighting alongside those of Publius Cornelius Scipio -honoured by the Senate with the cognomen Africanus - in North Africa as he finally destroys Rome's hated enemy, Carthage.
Instead I find myself in Greece helping in the destruction of Korinthos about which I have very mixed feelings. As a boy, I'd had a Greek pedagogue - a slave - who'd exposed me to the Greek language and culture and like so many Roman patricians I have great affection for all things Greek.
Graecia has given Rome so much. We speak Greek as a second language and indeed, many of us prefer to converse in it as though it is our mother tongue. We marvel at her architectural wonders, we debate her philosophies and we absorb her sciences and the arts. We read her literature and recite her poetry; in our theatres our actors play out her comedies and Roman audiences weep at her tragedies. We mimic Greece's magnificent artworks: we fill our homes with faux Greek sculptures and decorate the walls of our villas with scenes from her glorious past. We have even stolen her gods and goddesses; we bestowed upon them Latin names and then added them to our own pantheon.
So in a sense, it can be said that I love all things Greek almost to the point where I am more Greek than the Greeks. Therefore this destruction of Korinthos distresses me. Korinthos is without doubt one of the most beautiful cities in Macedonia and rivals both Athens and Thebes for beauty and culture. I watch in dismay at the wanton destruction of her temples, public buildings and the homes of her citizens.
I have no qualms about seeking out and putting to the sword all those who dare to defy Rome's edicts or challenge her might. The Achaeans who'd taken up arms against us are fair targets for Rome's vengeance. But to see Korinthos's blameless citizens slaughtered without mercy or enslaved leaves me with a sense of unease.
But our General, Lucius Mummius, appointed by the Senate in Rome to smash the Achaean League, has decreed that Korinthos is to be punished and made an example of to all other rebellious Greeks. She is to be depopulated - her venerable elders put to the sword and her young men, women and children dispersed to distant slave-markets - and her buildings razed to the ground. When we have finished our work there will be very little to show the world where once proud Korinthos had stood.
Her destruction is just a precursor to the fate that now awaits Carthage. If the Carthaginians were to visit Korinthos and see the fate that awaits them surely they would be moved to sue for a merciful peace with Rome. But then, I recall that the Roman Senate and people are in no mood to bargain with their long time enemy. The Senate will demand the same cataclysmic destruction of Carthage as the one it decreed for Korinthos. Soon Carthage, like Korinthos, will be no more.
But Korinthos will arise once more from its ruins. Some one hundred years from now Julius Caesar will establish a new town, 'Colonia Laus Julia Corinthiensis' amid Korinthos's ruins and populate it with conscripts and freed slaves from such faraway places as Italy, Egypt, Syria, Judea and other parts of Macedonia. But until then, Korinthos will remain a pile of overgrown ruins inhabited by itinerant peasants and the ghosts of her slaughtered inhabitants.
It takes time for an all-conquering army to obliterate a city and its citizens. Inevitably the initial bloodlust of the victorious soldiers is satiated and the insane slaughter and wanton destruction give way to a more ordered reality. And so on this, the third day after our entry into Korinthos, our army moves with cool detachment laying waste to the city and depopulating it.
Sadly, as I go about my allotted duties, I reflect on that cruel euphemism 'depopulation' and its true meaning. I watch with disquiet as small death squads of legionnaires scour the burning and crumbling buildings searching for and summarily executing any surviving supporters of the defeated Achaean League and its allies. I look on with a measure of disgust as the elderly, the infirm and the lame are quickly dispatched with a sword thrust by these same death squads.
How glad I am that this duty didn't fall to me or my soldiers. The duties that Lucius Mummius has demanded of me and my men is more sanitised but no less distasteful. I have the duty of seeking out all able-bodied young Greek men and women suitable for enslavement. Already thousands of new slaves are herded together at marshalling points where they are stripped naked, placed in chains and prepared for their shipment to the slave market on the island of Delos. Korinthos's two harbours are full of vessels waiting to transport their living cargoes of human misery to this the biggest and best known of the Mediterranean slave markets.
Lucius Mummius has placed a cordon of troops around the city's perimeter and its wretched citizens have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Human nature is indeed mysterious. Some flee in panic scuttling from one hiding place to another avoiding the inevitable while others are more fatalistic and await the arrival of my men who'll round them up and march them off into slavery.
There is a pattern to this that is almost ritualistic. After capture a new slave is taken to one of the marshalling areas adjacent to the harbours - and the waiting ships - where he is quickly processed into his slavery. Of course the first thing that happens to him is that he is stripped naked and placed in chains. And usually at this point he is introduced to the instrument that will define his slavery - the whip.
The soldiers charged with the oversight of the newly enslaved are all armed with whips which they freely use on their helpless charges. There is no room in their hearts for pity. They are dealing with Rome's enemies and the new slaves are to pay the price for that enmity. And so they aren't spared the lash. This may seem unnecessarily cruel but if considered in the light of their new lives as slaves it can be seen almost as a kindness.
The whip is an integral part of a slave's life. It will spur him to greater effort in his labours and it will punish him for his misdemeanours. And the sooner he feels the whip's fiery bite and feels its fearsome pain the better able he is to adjust his thinking to his new circumstances.
Once he is stripped and placed in chains, the new slave is questioned to determine his age, his position in society, his education or any crafts or other skills that he might possess. Often his answers will define his slavery. An educated slave or one with some skill usually finds a master who will use these attributes to his - the owner's - benefit. An unskilled slave usually finds himself working on agricultural latifundia, in a quarry or worst of all in the gold mines of Africa or the sulphur mines of Sicilia.
Finally, together with other slaves similar to him, the new slave is placed into a group which can number from ten to twenty and sold as a lot to a slave dealer. As I watch the slavers haggle over the hapless new slaves, I am reminded of vultures squabbling over carrion. I can ill disguise my utter contempt for these pedlars of human flesh. They truly are the pariahs of our society!
And yet, despite my open disgust for all slave merchants, they do serve a useful purpose; for Rome and her wellbeing depend on a never ending supply of new slaves. They provide us with the raw, physical energy for the ploughs of agriculture and the wheels of commerce and they lighten our lives by serving us in our homes. The educated slave serves as a tutor to our sons or as a scribe in our business enterprises. The brawny, illiterate slave carries the litters of his master or mistress through the congested, narrow streets of Rome and the warlike prisoner-of war entertains us in the gladiatorial games of our arenas.
Slaves are Rome's lifeblood! Without them Rome would be without her wealth and her glory.
As I watch these hapless new slaves being whipped down to the wharf and loaded onto to overcrowded, reeking, sea-going vessels, I wonder how many are destined for Rome's slave- markets. How many of these wretches will find themselves in the Graecostadium or Greek slave market so named as the place where Aemilius Paulus profited from the sale of 150,000 Greek prisoners sold into slavery after the Battle of Pydna.
They will stand with their legs painted white and with wooden tituli setting out their nationality, place of origin, age, education, abilities and either their good or bad points hanging forlornly around their necks. I know that the skilled slave will sell for twelve times the value of the unskilled. I know that the surly and the rebellious among them will be made to wear the pillei skullcap as a sign of 'buyers beware'.
In my mind's eye, I see them subjected to the most degrading of inspections by prospective buyers. No respect will be shown to them. Their nude bodies will be pummelled and their muscles squeezed as a test of their fitness. No concessions to their modesty will be observed as their most private and intimate parts are minutely inspected.
The more comely youths and virtuous maidens will be spared the horrors of the open slave market as they are sold privately at the "arcana tabulate catastae". However, their sense of humiliation will be no less than that of their less fortunate fellows in the Greek Market. In fact, their shame could be greater as they are examined and sexually stimulated by the lecherous and the lustful.
How do I know these things? I know because, in the past, I too have purchased slaves of my own in the Graecostadium.
Rome's continual wars have made me very wealthy. It is a wealth divorced from the hereditary wealth of my family and it has enabled me to secure an independent future for myself.
In recent times, I have bought considerable property in Sicilia which will be the provider of the money to fund my future life of service to the Senate and people of Rome. Public office carries with it much prestige - but little or no monetary rewards - and yet as a member of the Senatorial class I carry on my shoulders the obligation to be of service to the Republic and the expectation of my proud family that I will add to the dignitas and gloria of our noble lineage.
Today, Sicilia is new territory ripe for exploitation and with limitless opportunities for the wealthy entrepreneur. Much of it lies empty as the Carthaginians and their supporters abandon their farms, homes and businesses and leave the island to the Romans. Latifundia lie abandoned, uncultivated and weed infested while the homes of the former elite and merchants are empty and crumbling. The quarries and mines are without the slaves necessary to work them and the tree-feller's axe is silent in the forests. Towns and villages are half-empty and the remaining inhabitants live in mortal fear of the lawless bands of rebellious slaves who roam the countryside unchallenged, murdering and pillaging at will.
The god, Vulcan has blessed Sicilia with a deep, fertile soil spewed up from the bowels of the earth over the millennia which is capable of growing the wheat that Rome needs to feed her masses. For richness of soil and the frequency of crops, Sicilia's farms rival the best of those on the slopes of Vesuvio and around the Bay of Neapolis; and yet on today's value they are but a fraction of the cost.
Recognising this, I bought three large, adjacent latifundia and combined them into one in the vicinity of the ancient Greek town of Tauromenium. Here I plan to grow wheat and olive oil for sale in Rome.
Additionally, I purchased an abandoned marble quarry and a vast tract of virgin forest which will provide me with marble and timber to be sent to Rome to supply her insatiable demands for new building materials. And to transport my farm produce and my marble and timber to Rome, I will use my own fleet of galleys to carry my produce from Tauromenium to Rome's port of Ostia.
Once my army duties are finished, it is my intention to settle at Tauromenium and to consolidate my enterprises thus securing my financial future for my eventual return to Rome and the taking up of public office. I estimate that this will take five to six years of hard work on my part.
Tauromenium surprised me on my first sighting of the town. Although founded as a Greek colony several centuries ago, I'd expected it to be more provincial than it is. I had expected it to be uncultured and inhabited by coarse, uneducated peasants. Imagine my surprise therefore when I discovered a vibrant cultural community centred on the magnificent Greek Theatre perched high on a rocky crag towering above the town and the sparkling blue waters of the Ionian Sea which also laps at the shores of Southern Italia and stretches all the way to far distant Graecia.
I was entranced by the Theatre and its location. If the Greek gods on mythical Olympus had given themselves the task of creating a location for Tauromenium's theatre then they have excelled themselves for nowhere else in my wide travels have I seen a more idyllic spot?
And within a stone's throw of the theatre, I discovered a deserted villa that is to become my town residence. Obviously abandoned in a hurry, it has been ransacked by the poorer townspeople and roving bands of lawless slaves. Stripped of all its furnishings it is just a shell of its former grandeur.
I'd enquired about it and its former owner and discovered it had belonged to a rich Carthaginian merchant who'd fled the island for the safety of Carthage. Given that Carthage is now under siege and inevitably doomed to fall to Scipio Africanus, there is irony in that. The merchant won't find safety within the crumbling walls of Carthage. The best he can hope for is a quick death by the sword thrust of a vengeful Roman soldier or, at the very worst, to be carried off into slavery.
The local magistrate was a friend of my father's and he enthusiastically welcomed my plans to settle at Tauromenium. He'd told me I was the type of young, entrepreneurial Roman settler that Sicilia needed and he'd given me the empty villa as an incentive to stay. And of course, he'd used his gubernatorial connections to assist me in buying my farms, the quarry and the tract of virgin forest for the proverbial song.
I stayed in Tauromenium for several weeks while I finalised my business dealings and the magistrate had used my army experience in restoring a measure of law and order to the region. In recent times, the area had been terrorised by gangs of rampaging ex-slaves, who abandoned by their former masters, freely roamed the countryside killing and plundering at will.
Indeed, some of my first images upon my arrival at Tauromenium were of a terrified citizenry and burnt out homesteads. And it has to be said even the magistrate considered it unwise to venture too far from the safety of the city's walls.
But gangs of disorganised slaves are no match for the might and precision of the Roman army and even though the number of troops at my disposal was small we soon rooted them out from their boltholes and subjected them to Rome's righteous punishment.
Being slaves - and runaways at that - negated any claims to mercy they might have hoped for. The mandatory sentence for a slave, who commits the offences of which they were guilty, is death by crucifixion. And this unhappy task fell to me. All up I crucified one hundred and thirty seven male slaves. And an almost equal number of female camp- followers were returned to slavery
I am ambivalent about crucifixion as a means of execution. Its description as the 'extreme and ultimate punishment of slaves' is most apt. On the one hand, I do see that the manner of execution should serve as a warning to other slaves to behave and submit themselves to their owners. And crucifixion serves that purpose admirably for there is no more degrading or so painful a death than for a slave to hang naked on a cross waiting for Mors to cut the thread that binds him to this life. Yet I'd always hated working on crucifixion detachments as a soldier. Put simply, it is hard work to crucify a criminal or a slave.
Despite the inevitability of his fate, the naked victim fights furiously right up to the moment the spikes are driven through his wrists and ankles. And having to listen to the vain pleas for mercy and the heartrending sobs of the crucified can be emotionally taxing. They only fall silent as the cross is raised skywards when all their energies are then spent in extending their lives by raising their sagging bodies to avoid drowning as their lungs fill with their blood.
It always amazes me how, even when nailed to a cross and suffering indescribable agony, a victim will struggle to stay alive until his very last gasp. It would seem that life, even to a crucified slave, is a precious commodity not to be abandoned without a fight. Depending on his physical endurance, a crucified slave's determination not to give up the ghost can last for a few hours or even days.
I have heard stories of slaves surviving for almost ten days hanging on the cross. Popular myth has it that these slaves were regularly given water and kept alive by enterprising officials who invited bets from gamblers as to when the slave would finally succumb. Personally, I very much doubt the truth of the longevity of these lotteries of death. It is hard to imagine even the strongest slave having the will or the endurance to survive the horrors of crucifixion over such a protracted period.
The crucified victim's writhing on his cross can be hard to watch even for the battle- hardened soldier and I derived no pleasure from such cruel suffering. Alternatively, the victim will draw on his diminishing strength and use his legs as levers to raise his body to drain the bodily fluids from his lungs become succumbing once more to the intolerable stress placed on his tortured body and slumping forward.
The macabre death dance on the crucifix is indeed horrible to watch!
Whenever, I was in charge of a crucifixion, I'd usually take compassion on the condemned and after a short period of suffering - to satisfy the dictates of the law - I would break both his lower legs to hasten his death.
But in this instance, I couldn't extend such mercy. These slaves were guilty of the most heinous crimes and must pay the full penalty for their offences. Some would succumb quickly; others would linger for days but all would die in excruciating agony. Their suffering was to serve as a warning to all other of Sicilia's slaves to conform or suffer the dire consequences of their rebellion against Rome's authority.
Nor could I save them from the traditional scourging before crucifixion. The magistrate was most insistent that the slaves be flogged with the three thong leather flagrum. However, rather than the cruel 'scorpion', with its knotted pieces of bone and with the sharp hooks at the end of each thong capable tearing flesh and muscle from the backs of its unhappy victims, I used a simple knotted scourge.
Even after death, there is no dignity for the crucified. Rome never buries the victims of the 'unhappy tree' and their sun-blackened, bloated bodies become feeding grounds for carrion birds and scavenging wild dogs and are left hanging as a reminder of her intolerance of slave insurrections.
Bearing in mind that the Sessorium or Rome's crucifixion ground was outside the city walls beyond the Esquiline Gate, I'd chosen my crucifixion site well away from the town - so that the stench of the decaying bodies didn't impact on Tauromenium or her citizens - but in an area where I knew other slaves were hiding. I'd prevailed upon the magistrate to offer a thirty days amnesty to these remnant bands of runaways conditional on them not having murdered a free person. If they surrendered within that time their lives would be spared and if their former owners had fled then they would be sold to new owners at a special magistrate's auction.
Most of these abandoned slaves were aware that order had been restored and they left their hideaways deep in the forests and the rock strewn mountains and surrendered to the magistrate. Few, if any, were returned to their absent masters and all were sold to new owners for give-away prices.
Needless to say, I took advantage of this and bought some slaves notable only for their brute strength and put them to work clearing away the debris of neglect from my farm and preparing my marble quarry for re-opening. And if they prove satisfactory, I will appoint these same slaves to be my overseers on the farm and in the quarry.
By the time I left Sicilia to return to Rome, I'd restored law and order to Tauromenium and its surrounding areas. This was greatly appreciated by the magistrate who wrote glowing reports of my exploits and forwarded these to Rome and within the wider community my reputation stood high in public esteem. Upon my return as a permanent resident of Tauromenium I will be elevated to the position of their magistrate to replace my father's friend when he returns to Rome.
When I returned to Rome from Sicilia the Pax Romana reigned over Tauromenium. I'd acquired my properties and appointed a steward who worked under the direction of the magistrate to manage my affairs and to begin the restoration of my newly acquired villa.
I was sorry to leave Sicilia - and I eagerly looked forward to my return. However, my foremost duty is to Rome and her interests and today these see me serving in Korinthos.
But Fortuna continues to smile upon me and despite the carnage raging all around me I have turned this to my advantage.
My farm will require many fit slaves to toil in my fields. Similarly, my quarry and the forest will require strong slaves to hew the marble and to fell the trees.
The fall of Korinthos has proved a boon for me. Instead of taking gold and silver as part of the victors' spoils, I have chosen instead to take as my booty portion five hundred of the strongest and fittest of Korinthos's young men as my slaves.
Tomorrow, they are to be loaded on galleys and transport to Tauromenium. Already, I have written ahead to my steward - and the magistrate - advising them of the imminent arrival of my slaves and asking that they be put to work immediately clearing away the debris of the recent neglect.
And the gods continue to favour me for they have just now delivered into my hands the young Greek aristocrat, Glaucus and his two Keltoi slaves.
They walk behind me in single file, naked and securely bound with torn strips of their own clothing.
I have plans for them too.
Glaucus will now serve me as my body slave and minister to all my needs. We will converse at length in my beloved Greek; he will provide me with the intellectual and stimulating conversation I so crave and he will act as my scribe in my business dealings. He will warm my bed on cold Sicilian, winter nights and he'll lighten my mood as my pleasure slave.
The two Keltoi brothers will also serve me as slaves. The younger one, Diagoras will serve in my household while the older one, Perimedes will be my chief overseer with authority over all my other slaves.
And as I look at the deliciously rounded curves of the shapely asses of my three, new slaves, I see I will have ample opportunity to indulge another of my Greek inspired predilections.
Greek love!