And again over the slave army that vast sigh ebbed.
Black roof on roof, palace and tenement, the Romans crowded to look at this terror at their doors. Old men, patricians, were borne to their roofs to look on the coming of the slaves. The Senate thronged to look. Slaves peered from the sweating-dens by the Porta Fontinalis across the shoulder of the Collis Viminalis at that far halted massing of lines they had heard were the Criminals of Capua. How long, O Gods, how long?
Then they saw a strange thing, a thing that Rome might not believe, the army of the slaves in motion, at first it appeared at the legionaries’ run upon the City. Then they saw it halt and split again; and then – the lines wheeled round, flashing their stolen armour in the sun.
The slaves were in retreat!
[iv]
That seemed in a day and an hour long past. Yet only another night had come, though it seemed to Kleon the space was bridged with days of fighting and pleading since that moment when the slave legions turned about, with a strange unanimity, and marched away from the sight of Rome at their feet – marched swiftly away, heart-broken and in despair, frightened with a fear that had no name, marching and marching, the cloudy gathering of horse at their heels, the tribunes riding to and fro the disordered lines, pleading, commanding, even slaying here and there. But in such places of killing the slave march broke and became no more than a streaming rout, they kissed the hands of Spartacus, of Gannicus, of Castus and even of Kleon the eunuch, they cried that these were the greatest of strategoi and that they would follow and obey them for ever – but not against the City that no men might take, where the Masters lay waiting to trap and torment.
Only the Bithynian legion wavered and shook and yet stood fast, Gershom of Kadesh riding its ranks, smoothing with a cool hand now at his beard, cursing the frightened in their Asian tongues, wary as a panther, unfrightened at the shining Wolf below. Yet presently when he sent a mounted messenger to bear the news to Spartacus that the Bithynians stood fast and so would stay while the other legions were reformed from their panic, the answer came back that Gershom was to march his legion in the wake of the slaves, acting again as its rearguard.
And at that, seeking this venture less than most, ill-omened of its success, hating and despising this life of the sword in Gentile lands, something stirred black to a tremendous anger in the heart of the Jew. For a moment indeed he sat and looked down on Rome and weighed the chances of seizing the City by himself – ill-garrisoned, fearful, rich with spoil, of seizing it or setting to it such a flame that it and its Masters would empyre the world. Then he looked over the patient troubled ranks of his legion, and tore at his beard again, that he might not weep. ‘We march as rearguard,’ he told his tribunes.
Only then did he remember Judith and his son, with the main body of the fleeing slave army.
Only another night. Night indeed, Kleon knew, riding to that night and their camp on the borders of Picenum, to the dream that he and the Thracian had dreamt, an end to the dream that the slaves would ever march through the Forum of Rome, seize Rome and build it anew. And he did not think that ever again, such was the thought of his bitter despair, that dream would be dreamt by men, they would cower in acquiescence to the lash and mutilation till the world ended, power and freedom put by as dreams, together with dream of the Golden Age of which Hiketas had sung.
Hiketas?
But none knew of him as the night fell; and Kleon rode hither and thither through the voiceless, marching legions, seeking in vain for sight of the Greek, or his sister and lover, or the great machines they had made in and dragged from Umbria. Then at last he heard from a centurion in the Bithynian legion that the machines had been abandoned at the Halt on Rome, and Hiketas had refused to leave them. He and t