WITHIN a month she did far worse. She perpetrated, in fact, a deed with the fame of which not only the city, but the Empire rang; made herself notorious everywhere.
It was on the occasion of her introductory visit to the Colosseum when, for the first time, she was a spectator at an exhibition of fighting gladiators. She was in a high-strung state of elation and anticipation. Going to the Amphitheatre, in itself, was a soul-stirring experience. Meffia, to Brinnaria’s joy, had been on duty that day, along with Numisia. This alone was enough to put Brinnaria in a good humor. Meffia’s presence spoiled for her any sort of pleasure. Then, besides, they drove to the Colosseum, not in their light carriages, but two by two in their gorgeous state coaches, huge vehicles, of which the woodwork was elaborately carved and heavily gilded and whose cushions and curtains were all of that splendid official color, the imperial purple. The name conveys to us a false impression, for the hue known then as imperial purple was not what we should call a purple, but a deep, dark crimson, like the tint of claret in a goblet. Against a background of this magnificent color, the Vestals, habited all in white, showed conspicuously. Their stately progress through the streets, gazed at and pointed at by the admiring crowds, was conducive to high spirits. Still more so was it to be ushered obsequiously through cool corridors and up carpeted stairs to the Vestals’ private loge, a roomy space immediately to the right of the imperial pavilion. To be inside the Colosseum at last set her eyes dancing and her heart thumping; the anticipation of actually viewing the countless fights of many hundreds of gladiators increased her excitement; to be seated in front seats, with nothing but the carved stone coping between her and the arena was most exhilarating of all. She was delighted with her great, carved arm-chair, deeply cushioned and so heavy that it was as firm on its solid oak legs as if bolted to the stone floor. She settled herself in it luxuriously, gazed across the smooth yellow sand, glanced up at the gay, parti-colored awning, and then conned the vast audience, line after line of rose-crowned heads rising tier above tier all about her.
She scanned the faces in the front row to left and right as far as she could make them out clearly. She peered across the open space of the arena, puckering her eyes to see better. When she caught sight of what she was looking for she turned timidly, leaned past Manlia and asked Causidiena:
“May I wave my hand to mother?”
“Certainly, my child,” Causidiena assured her.
Brinnaria waved her little hand and was seen, and felt the thrill of a general family handwaving in reply.
Suddenly she experienced a qualm of bashfulness, as if every one in the enormous gathering were looking at her, watching her. She cast down her eyes, wrapped her white robe close about her, hiding her hands under it, and shrank into her arm-chair. For a while, for a long while, she fanned herself nervously, very slowly, and striving to appear calm. Gradually she became calm and laughed to herself at her own folly, realizing that nobody was noticing her.
Nobody noticed her. Many spectators noticed the Vestals, but no one noticed her individually. This she realized acutely before the day was over.
At about the time when she began to feel herself at ease the entrance of the Emperor and his suite distracted her attention from herself. When the trumpet blew, announcing the approach of the Imperial party, a hush fell on the vast audience and all eyes turned towards the grand pavilion. When the trumpet blew the second time, just before the Emperor came in sight, the hush deepened and the spectators watched intently. When his head appeared as he mounted the stairs the audience burst into the short, sharply staccato song of welcome, something like a tuneful, sing-song college yell, with which Roman crowds greeted their master. This vocal salute, a mere tag of eight or nine syllables, each with its distinctive note, was repeated over and over until the Emperor was seated.
Then the audience settled themselves into their seats. Brinnaria had instinctively started to rise when she caught sight of the Emperor. Manlia had put out a restraining hand. The Vestals, alone of all Romans, remained seated in the presence of the Emperor, not even rising when he appeared.
Marcus Aurelius was a tall, spare man of over forty years of age, with abundant hair curling in long ringlets over his chest and shoulders, and a full beard mingling with the carefully disposed curls. He was a serious-faced man, careworn and solemn.
Brinnaria regarded him with interest. She had never seen him so close and she felt a sudden fellow-feeling for him from the sense of semi-equality with him that flooded through her at having remained seated. She recalled vividly the half-dozen times she had watched from balconies the passage of processions in which the Emperor took part, how her mother had made her stand up the moment he came in sight and had kept her standing until he was far away. Her sudden exaltation in social position was borne in upon her with startling emphasis. Not even her carriage rides had impressed her so tellingly with the sensation of her own importance in the great world of Imperial Rome.
“How does he look to you?” Manlia asked. They were seated in the order of their seniority, Causidiena on the right, then Gargilia, Manlia next Brinnaria.
“He looks crushed under his responsibilities and anxieties,” Brinnaria replied. “He looks depressed, even sad.”
“He is all that, poor man,” her neighbor agreed, “and no wonder in these days. The Parthians are at us on the east, the Germans in the north, and there have been more than twelve deaths in the palace each day for twenty consecutive days now. This pestilence is enough to make anybody sad.”
“More than that,” Brinnaria countered. “He looks irritated and bored. Everybody else is alert and keyed up with anticipation. His eyes are dull and he looks as if he wished that the show was over and he could go home.”
“You have read him right,” Manlia told her. “He detests all kinds of spectacles, takes no interest in races and hates beast-fights. Most of all he loathes gladiatorial combats. Father has told me about it more than once and Causidiena says the same thing. I can’t understand it. I never get tired of sword-fighting, myself. What I like about it is its endless variety. I never saw any two fights exactly alike, never saw two closely alike. Each fight is a spectacle by itself, entirely different from any other. I don’t mean the difference between the fighters in respect to their equipment and appearance, though that contributes to the variety also; I mean the difference in posture, method of defense and attack, style of lunge and parry, and all that; and the countless variations in form in the men, the subtle differences of character which makes them face similar situations so very differently. You’ll get the feeling for it in a half a dozen shows and be as keen on it as the rest of us.
“But the Emperor is different. Perhaps it’s because he is such a booky man and spends so much time in reading and study. But I think not. There never was anybody more of a bookworm than Numisia and she is as wild over the shows as any street-boy in Rome. Anyhow, whatever the cause is, that is the way he is. He was more than surfeited with shows before he was Emperor. While he was nothing but a boy, soon after he was adopted and made Caesar, he often had to preside in the Circus or here, when Hadrian was away travelling and Antonius and Verus were on the frontiers. He used to bring his tutors with him and have two of them sit on each side of him a little behind him. Then, after the shows had started, he would put a tablet on his knee and write a theme or work out a problem in geometry and when he had finished it, would pass it to one of his tutors for comment, or he would have them make out sets of questions on history or something else and he would write out the answers the best he could. Sometimes he would read. All this he did as calmly as if he were alone in a closed room with nothing to call off his attention. Yet he was most careful to seem to watch the shows and would look up every little while and gaze about the arena. But nothing ever distracted him from his lessons. That is the kind he is. He simply never cared for this sort of thing. He says that what oppresses him is the maddening monotony of gladiatorial shows. Fancy anybody thinking sword-fighting monotonous! But he does. He says every combat is just like every other. All he sees in a fight is two men facing each other and one being killed. He gets no thrills from the uncertainties of the outcome, no pleasure from the dexterity and skill of the fighters. To him it’s just butchery, and the same kind of butchery over and over. He says he might get some enjoyment out of a show if something novel would happen, something he never saw before, something unexpected. But nothing ever does.”
Brinnaria regarded curiously this grave, earnest man, who derived so little pleasure from the most coveted position on earth. She continued to watch him until everybody turned to the procession around the arena of all who were to fight that day, the invariable preliminary of a gladiatorial show and always a splendid spectacle. When the fights began Brinnaria felt at first an unexpected tightening of the chest, as if a band were being drawn tight just under her armpits. Her breath came short and hard and her heart thumped her ribs.
The first sight of blood made her feel faint and the horrible contortions just below her of a dying man, who writhed in strong convulsions like a fish out of water, made her qualmish and sick. But all that soon passed off. She was a Roman and the Romans were professional killers, had been professional killers for a thousand years. Success in hand to hand combat with any individual foe was every male Roman’s ideal of the crowning glory of human life; the thought of it was in every Roman’s mind from early childhood, every act of life was a preparation for it. Their wives and sisters shared their enthusiasm for fighting and their daughters inherited the instinct. Combat on the field of battle was felt as the chief business of a man, to which all other activities merely led up. By reflected light, as it were, every kind of combat acquired a glamour in the thoughts of a Roman. The idea of men killing men, of men being killed by men, was familiar to all Romans, of whatever sex or age. Brinnaria was not affected as a modern girl would be by the sight of blood or of death. The novelty revolted her at first, but only briefly. Soon she was absorbed in the interest of the fighting.
Almost at once her eye was caught by a young and handsome fighter who reminded her strongly of Almo.
His adversary was that kind of gladiator known technically as a secutor, a burly ruffian in complete armor, with huge shin-guards like jack-boots, a kilt of broad leather straps hanging in two overlapping rows, the upper set plated with bronze scales, a bronze corselet, and, fitting closely to his shoulders, covering head and neck together, a great, heavy helmet. He carried a large shield, squarish in shape, but curving to fit him as if he were hiding behind a section of the outer bark of a big tree. He was armed with a keen, straight bladed Spanish sword.
Facing this portentous tower of metal was a gladiator of the sort known as a retiarius, equipped solely with a long-handled, slender-shafted trident, like a fisherman’s eel-spear, and a voluminous, wide-meshed net of thin cord. His only clothing was a scanty body-piece of bright blue. His feet were small with high-arched insteps. Brinnaria particularly noticed his perfectly shaped toes. His bare legs, body and arms were in every proportion the perfection of form, the supple muscles rippling exquisitely under his warm tanned skin. His face was almost beautiful, with a round chin, thin curled lips, a straight nose, and a wide brow. Its expression was lively, even merry, almost roguish, his lips parted in an alert smile, his blue eyes sparkling. He seemed to enjoy the game in which he was engaged, to be brimming over with self-confidence, to anticipate success, to relish his foretaste of combat with a sort of impish delight.
Roman children heard as much talk of gladiators as modern children hear of baseball or cricket. Brinnaria knew perfectly well that the betting on a set-to between such a pair was customarily five to three against the secutor and on the retiarius. Yet she felt the sensation usual with onlookers in such a case, the sensation purposed by the device of pairing men so differently equipped, the sensation that the mailed secutor was invincible and the naked retiarius helpless against him. She was keyed up with interest.
In fact the combat was interesting. The secutor, of course, could have disposed of his antagonist in a trice, if he had only been able to reach him. But a clumsy, heavy secutor never could reach a nimble, agile retiarius. The one Brinnaria was watching was more than usually light-footed and skipped about his adversary in a taunting, teasing way. Again and again he cast his net intentionally too short, merely to show how easily he could recover it and escape his opponent’s onset. He danced, capered, pretended to be lame and that he could not avoid being overtaken, led his pursuer on, out-manoeuvred him, derided him; twice he lunged through the flapping straps of his kilt and grazed his thigh. The secutor was barely scratched, but his blood trickled down his shin-guard and he was limping.
Then, all in a flash, the retiarius pirouetted too rashly, slipped on ton the sand, fell sprawling, failed to rise in time, and was slashed deeply all down one calf. He rolled over in a last effort to escape, but the secutor kicked him in the ribs and, before he could recover, sent the trident spinning with a second kick and set his foot upon his victim’s neck. So standing he rolled his eyes over that part of the audience nearest him to discover whether it was the pleasure of the lookers-on that the defeated man should be killed or spared.
Now it so happened that nearly all the spectators in that part of the audience were watching a far more exciting contest farther out in the arena, where two Indian elephants, each manned by a crew of five picked men, were clashing in a terrific struggle No one, except Brinnaria, had any eyes for the plight of the young retiarius below them The secutor beheld indifferent faces gazing over his head The few thumbs he could see pointed outward. Brinnaria, to be sure, was holding out her right arm, thumb flat, and doing her best to attract the secutor’s attention. She failed. He glanced, indeed, at the Vestals, but as three of them sat impassive he missed Brinnaria’s imperious gesture. He prepared to put his foe to death. First, however, he looked further along the front rows to make sure that he had the permission of the general audience, since the occupants of the Imperial box and of the Vestals loge seemed to ignore him.
Brinnaria perceived that he would probably not look again in her direction; that as soon as his roving eyes came back from their unhurried survey of the audience, he would deliver the fatal blow. She quickly knotted the corner of her robe to the arm of her chair, squirmed out of it, and threw it over the parapet. The robe of a Roman lady was sleeveless and seamless, rather like a very long pair of very thin blankets, all in one piece. Tied, as she had tied it, by one corner, it made a sort of rope as it hung. She had acted so quickly that no one noticed her, not even Manlia, who sat next her, staring fascinatedly at the spectacle of the wrestling elephants and their warring crews.
Grasping her robe firmly with both hands, escaping by a hair’s-breadth the despairing clutch of the horrified Manlia, Brinnaria half vaulted, half rolled over the parapet, swung sailor-fashion to the rope her robe formed, went down it, hand over hand, raced across the sand and faced the victorious secutor.
He, although a foreigner and a savage, had been long enough in Rome to know perfectly what a Vestal was and he recoiled from her in a panic no less than he would have felt had the goddess Vesta herself come down from the sky to balk him of his prey.
The next instant no one was regarding the death-struggle of the elephants, nor any other of the scores of fights ended, ending, under way or just begun. Every human being in the audience was staring at the amazing spectacle of a Vestal virgin, clad only in her thin, clinging tunic, standing over a fallen retiarius and facing an appalled and dumbfounded secutor.
The place fell very still. So still that the shrill voice of a street-gamin, a boy from the Via Sacra, was audible throughout the vast enclosure from gallery to gallery. He yelled in his cutting falsetto: “Good for you, Sis!”
But his neighbors silenced him at once and not even any other ragamuffin lifted his voice. The audience were startled mute. They were quite ready to applaud the girl’s daring, but the shocking impropriety of her breach of decorum struck them dumb.
The Emperor, roused from his meditations by the sudden hush, looked about him for the cause of it and saw the situation. He leaned forward, arm out, thumb flat against the extended fingers. The secutor sheathed his sword.
Manlia, with great presence of mind, untied the dangling robe and dropped it over the parapet. One of the arena attendants carried it to Brinnaria and she put it on. But she would not stir and stood straddling the fallen lad until one of the Emperor’s aides came out of one of the low doors in the arena-wall, crossed to her and assured her that the defeated retiarius would be spared and cared for. Then she suffered herself to be led back to her seat, by way of the door in the wall and passages and stairs never meant for any Vestal to tread.
Not until they saw Brinnaria move off in charge of the staff-officer did the audience let loose their pent-up feelings. The place pulsated with a roar like that of a great waterfall in a deep gorge, salvo after salvo of cheers swelling and merging. The deep boom of their applause pursued Brinnaria and made her cower. The people would never forget her now. They were in ecstasy. She was their darling.
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