Spartacus

90 S P ART ACU S
that Age did to our own ancestors long ago, letting
loose on the world a cruelty and rapine unknown to
the Simple Men. If Hiketas tells true this Spartacus
is all men in one, with the Golden Age lost.’
Meantime his soldiers, grown lax, slept on their
rounds at night and the winter drew on. Kharmides
was sent back to Rome to bring warm robes and skins
from the villa on the Palatine ; also, Cossinus gave
orders that if the roads were not impassable his
mistress, Lavinia, should join him.
The autumn seemed to pass reluctantly. Days of
warm weather intervened and in these Cossinus,
a strong swimmer, would hold far out into the bay
and then return to lie on the sands and think of his
mistress. And thinking of her, his desire would
mount, bitter and sweet, and his hands grow unsteady.
She had been his mistress a bare three months, having
abandoned Fulvius when that merchant was broken
by the failure of his wheat-ships to escape the galleys
of Thoritos.
CI shall send him a talent for that service,’ Cossinus
thought. ‘Even though it seems my Lavinia brings
death wherever she bides, like Helen of old. But that
was no fault of hers—Fulvius and his gushing veins.
Soon Kharmides will bring her, this slave-hunt end,
and I’ll buy the Thracian Spartacus, make him my
body-slave and debate the life of the Golden Age while
he rubs me in my bath. And I’ll take him and Lavinia
to Sicily, and leave Rome for ever and forget it. I’m
weary of the false faces that sneer at one in the Forum,
the base faces of the plebs, the thin-faced slaves,
the cruel dull faces of my kin who rule. Out on them
all! I’ll till the olives of Sicily and watch my slaves
at the wine-press and swim in the blue Sicilian seas.
And all will be well with me at last.’
And he closed his eyes, dreaming of Lavinia.