Spartacus by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page B

won’t have your Claudia tonight in any case. I know my husband.”

    “She isn’t my Claudia, and I don’t want her tonight.”

    “Then—”

    “All right,” he said. “All right, Julia. We won’t talk about it now.”

    “You don’t want to—”

    “It isn’t that I want to or don’t want to, Julia. I just don’t want to talk about it any more now.”
     

XI
     
    The evening meal at the Villa Salaria demonstrated, as did other practices of the household, a certain resistance to changes already common in cosmopolitan Rome. On the part of Antonius Caius, it was less an ingrained conservatism than a desire to separate himself from the new class of rich merchants who had made their fortunes out of war, piracy, mining and trade—and who lapped eagerly at every Greek or Egyptian innovation. As far as eating went, Antonius Caius could not enjoy a meal sprawled out on a couch; it impaired his digestion and diverted him from real food to the little tidbits of sweet-and-sour delicacies which were becoming so fashionable now. His guests sat at the table and ate from the table, and while he presented them with game and fowl, with fine roasts and elegant pastries, with the best of soup and the most succulent of fruits, there were none of the weird concoctions that were showing up at the boards of so many Roman noblemen. Nor did he favor music and dancing during a meal; good food and good wine and good conversation. His father and his grandfather had both been able to read and write fluently; himself, he considered an educated man, and while his grandfather had gone out to work the fields of the farm alongside of his slaves, Antonius Caius ruled his great latifundium much as a minor Eastern prince might have ruled his little empire. Nevertheless, he was fond of thinking of himself as an enlightened ruler, well versed in Greek history, philosophy and drama, able to practice at least competent medicine, and a person of political affairs as well. His guests reflected his taste, and when they reclined in their chairs after the meal, sipping their dessert wine—the women having repaired to the fern room for the moment—Caius recognized in them and his host the cream of the quality which had made Rome and which ruled Rome so tenaciously and so ably.

    Caius admired it less than he recognized it; he had no ambitions in that direction himself. In their opinion, he was of no value and of no particular importance, a young wastrel of good family with real talent only in the direction of food and stud; which in some respects was a new direction, a product of only the last generation or two. Yet he had some importance; he had family connections which were enviable; when his father died, he would be very wealthy, and it was even possible that some twist of fortune would turn him into a person of political consequence. Thus, he was a little more than tolerated and treated a little better than one might treat a young, perfumed fop with good features, oiled hair, and little brains.

    And Caius feared them. There was a disease in them, but the disease did not appear to weaken them. Here they sat, having eaten their fine food, sipping their mellow wine, and those who contested their power were crucified for miles and miles along the Appian Way. Spartacus was meat; simply meat; like the meat on the cutting table at a butcher shop; not even enough of him to crucify. But no one would ever crucify Antonius Caius, sitting so calmly and surely at the head of the table, speaking of horses, making the extremely logical point that it was better to harness two slaves to a plow than one horse, since there never was a horse which could stand the half-human treatment of slaves.

    A slight smile on Cicero’s face as he listened. More than the others, Cicero disturbed Caius. How could one like Cicero? Did he want to like Cicero? Once Cicero had glanced at him, as if to say, “Oh, I know you, my lad. Top and bottom, up and down, inside and out.”