Free Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage by David Gibbins Page B

lesson.’ He stomped off out of the room and down the corridor, the bang of his centurion’s staff receding into the gloom as he headed off towards the arena.
    Gaius Paullus stood stock-still, his face and tunic spattered with the man’s blood, staring at what he had done. Scipio brought a bucket of water from by the door and a wet towel, which he tossed to him. ‘Clean yourself up. You and I need to be presentable for a temple dedication by the gens Aemilii in the Forum in an hour. And, by the way, welcome to the academy.’

3
    At the appointed hour they stood waiting for the centurion to enter the room and lead them out into the arena, where Brutus had been training hard all afternoon. Scipio and Gaius Paullus were wearing the purple-hemmed tunics they had donned for the ceremony in the temple, but had removed the laurel garlands that marked them out as viris principes, young men within their gens who were nearly of age to lead the rituals themselves. Fabius looked over the balustrade and into the arena, a smaller, practice version of the oval arenas surrounded by raised wooden stands that were erected for gladiatorial contests in the Field of Mars. In the early days of Rome, fights had taken place on the Sacred Way in the Forum, even within the temple precincts – in any open space where spectators could assemble on surrounding walls and balconies. But as space in the Forum became constricted and the crowds grew larger, the contests had been held in the Circus Maximus and then in the temporary arenas on the Field of Mars, next to the military training ground. Neither venue was satisfactory, and there was even talk of building a permanent stone structure with tiered seating and underground holding pens, so the animals would no longer have to be dragged snarling though the streets and threaten the lives of spectators as much as the gladiators who fought them. But the idea had been scoffed at by the more conservative senators who controlled public works, those who thought that building a structure on that scale solely for the purpose of entertainment was a frivolous use of money and smacked of Greek effeminacy: they harked back to the time when their Etruscan and Latin ancestors had created the boundary of the arenas with their own bodies, and revelled in the sweat and blood of the contest. They said that a structure large enough to accommodate all of those who would attend the contests would destroy the majesty of Rome, dwarfing the temples of the Forum and making a mockery of the gods and the pietas and dignitas on which the city had been built.
    In the academy the gladiators were used as sparring partners for the boys, all of whom bore scars from the hours they had spent in the afternoons moving from one opponent to another, testing their skills and weapons against enemies of Rome who had been taken prisoner in wars of conquest: Iberians and Celtiberians, Gauls and Germans from the north, Balearic slingers and Cretan bowmen, and swordsmen from all of the regions of the east encompassed by the former empire of Alexander the Great. Brutus’ opponent today was a giant Thracian named Brasis who had been captured as a mercenary in Macedonia some ten years before, but his fighting skills had meant that he was spared by a Roman commander with an eye to bringing back a prisoner who could excel as a gladiator to increase his popularity among the plebs. Brasis had won enough contests to secure his freedom but had remained in the Gladiator School, and still fought lions with his bare hands and his vicious Thracian knife when he was sober enough to do so. Fabius had seen slyness behind the glazed-over eyes, and wondered whether Brasis was truly still here because he had nowhere else to go, as he claimed, or whether he was in the pay of the faction in the Senate who opposed the academy and wanted an insider strongman for when the time came to clear it out. All that was certain was that the man was an