Spartacus

i8 SPARTACUS
to-morrow came up with the self-same sun, the
night went down with the self-same stars, there were
neither Gods nor beginnings nor ends, plan in the
blood and pain of birth, plan in the blood and pain
of death, only an oft-told tale that went on and knew
neither reason nor rhythm nor right, men as beasts
that the herdsman goads, the Herdsman himself but
a slavering lout. And he thought of his captured
stores of books, and the dream the great Athenian
dreamt, of Herdsmen wise in the perfect state ; and
he knew it only an idle dream, yet he loved it and
turned to it for ease ; or woke and pulled the woman
in his bed and buried his face in the peace of her
breasts.
And the years went by like a fading breath, till he
woke one dawn and found himself, in company with
a score of others, redeemed the cross because of their
strength, standing with white-painted feet in the
ergastulum of the Roman slave-market. They had
been captured by a disguised galley in an attempted
raid on the Alexandrian wheat-route.
The overseer of Lucius Julius Pacianus bought him
and three others and took them to the villa on the
Palatine. Pacianus himself came out to inspect them.
He had dull eyes and a grave mien and believed that
he should have been made a consul. Standing in
the sunlight, his green tunic edged with silver, his
beard combed and oiled, he pointed first at Kleon and
then at another.
‘That one and that. They will be safer so.’
Not until two grinning Libyans approached, and
seized him and threw him on his back, did Kleon
understand. Then he saw that they had brought an
iron bowl where water steamed, and with it two
small knives.
And suddenly, vividly, with an intensity that