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from Rome.

    “Yes, we did, and we’re going on to Capua tomorrow.”

    “You didn’t mind the tokens of punishment?”

    “We were very curious to see them,” answered Caius. “No, as a matter of fact, we didn’t mind them particularly. Here and there, you would see a body that the birds had torn open, and that did become somewhat unpleasant, especially if the wind was coming to you, but that can’t be helped, and the girls simply drew their curtains. But, you know, the litter-bearers were affected, and sometimes they were sick.”

    “I suppose they identified,” the general smiled.

    “Possibly. Do you think there is that sort of feeling among slaves? Our litter-bearers are stable-bred for the most part, and most of them were whip-broken in childhood at the school of Appius Mundellius, and while they’re strong, they’re not much better than animals. Would they identify? I find it hard to believe that there would be such uniform qualities among slaves. But you would know better. Do you think that all slaves felt something for Spartacus?”

    “I think most of them did.”

    “Really? You can get quite uneasy over that.”

    “Otherwise, I wouldn’t like this business of the crucifixion,” Crassus explained. “It’s wasteful, and I don’t like waste for the sake of waste. Also, I think that killing can backfire—too much killing. I think it does something to us that may hurt us later.”

    “But slaves?” Caius protested.

    “What is Cicero so fond of saying—the slave is the instrumentum vocale , as distinguished from the beast, the instrumentum semi-vocale , as distinguished from the ordinary tool, which we might call the instrumentum mutum . This is a very clever way of putting it, and I’m sure that Cicero is a very clever person, but Cicero did not have to fight Spartacus. Cicero did not have to estimate Spartacus’s potential for logic because he did not have to lie awake nights, as I did, trying to anticipate what Spartacus was thinking. When you fight against them, you suddenly discover that the slaves are something more than instrumenta vocalia .

    “Did you know him—I mean personally?”

    “Him?”

    “Spartacus, I mean.”

    The general smiled reflectively. “Not really,” he considered. “I made my own picture of him, putting this and that together, but I don’t known that anyone knew him. How could you know him? If your pet dog suddenly ran amuck and did so intelligently, he would still be a dog, wouldn’t he? Hard to know. I made my image of Spartacus, but I wouldn’t presume to write a portrait of him. I don’t think anyone can. Those who might have are hanging along the Appian Way, and already the man himself is like a dream. We will now remake him back into a slave.”

    “Which he was,” said Caius.

    “Yes—yes, I suppose so.”

    It was difficult for Caius to pursue the matter. It was not that he had so little experience in war; the truth of the matter was that he was uninterested in war; yet war was the obligation of his caste, his class, his station in life. What did Crassus think of him? Could the politeness and the considerate attention be real? In any case, Caius’s family could not be ignored or belittled, and Crassus had need of friends; for ironically enough, this general who fought the bitterest war in perhaps all Roman history had little enough glory out of it. He had fought against slaves and defeated them—when those slaves had almost defeated Rome. The whole thing was a curious contradiction, and the humility of Crassus might very well be real. About Crassus, the legends would not be made nor the songs sung. The necessity of forgetting the whole war would belittle his victory increasingly.

    They climbed out of the bath, and the slave women waiting there enveloped them with the warm towels. Many a more ostentatious place than that of Antonius Caius would not have been fitted one half so well with everything to anticipate and satisfy the needs of