ROMA
(Rodrigo Peñaloza, 2012)
In the Flavian amphitheatre, the mob already waited to be satiated by blood. Alas, the condemned infames [1] to be killed are brought to the beasts for the sake of the games. To the noxious [2] and the captives condemned to the arena, this moment is the time of the ultimate punishment. To the viewers, it is the time of the pleasurable show and the meridian spectacle [3]. Right before noon, being a Greek slave condemned to death by a crime I had not committed, I am taken by the lanista [4] to the Libitine gate, the smallest one by the rail that separated the captives from the arena of the circus. Halfway, I saw the corpses of the gladiators who were killed in the day before lying on the spoliarium [5]. I saw as well the wandering ghosts of the auctorati [6] horribly regreting their perdition and vain death. I got horrified and shouted out loud: “Why do you terrify me, perditi [7]? You have not hesitated to lose your life in the show for monetary reward! You became gladiators for a monetary reason, but to me no choice was given nor will be! You have not become sacred soldiers by the sacramentum [8], just infames for nothing!” Tortured uninterruptedly for three days, I got marked by the numellae [9] and the whipping. Suddenly I remembered my owner mistress saying: “Your Greek heritage, Demetrius [10], will bring you pain”. Before god Hermes took me to the infraworld, I cried out loud in the language of philosophers: “Oh, leontophorous [11] death, would I, being a slave to a Roman mistress and up to be killed by the lions, possibly get the fair judgement of the gods? The nauseating smell of sand and blood already suffocates me. I hear the roar of the lions and catch a glimpse of the Sun, the Divine, at the zenith. I am finally ready!”
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Notes:
[1] “Infames” were the victims condemned to death in the Roman arena.
[2] “Noxii” were the victims that Roman society considered the most abject, usually non-citizens, and were regarded inferior than military prisoners.
[3] The “meridian spectacles” were the moment of the day in which the capital execution of victims took place. In the morning, the noxii were thrown defensiveless onto the beasts (lions, leopards, hienas and bears). After midday it was the time of the victims who could at least fight back with weapons, though not professional gladiators. These were Roman citizens of certain nobility.
[4] “Lanistae” were the entrepreneurs who organized the gladiatorial games.
[5] “Spoliarium” was the place in the Roman Coliseum where the corpses of dead gladiators were deposited.
[6] “Auctorati” were the Roman citizens that chose to fight as gladiators for money. In general, an auctoratus was a Roman citizen that got into unbearable debts and who saw in the gladiatorial fight the only chance to get money. Though Romans accepted such behavior, the auctorati were in fact extremely disregarded and were seen as someone who chose freely to become an abject person.
[7] “Perditi” was how the condemned people were called. The Greek slave shouts in Latin to the ghosts of the Romans killed in the gladiatorial combats.
[8] A Roman citizen that decided to fight as gladiator had to make an oath, called sacramentum, in order to get into the actual contract, which was called auctoramentum. Many expected to become sacred soldiers by so doing. Though the reasons for auctoramentum were generally financial, there was a religious aspect involved. Romans valued too much the military honor. In the text I wrote, I made the victim say to the ghosts that they were not turned into soldiers by just making an oath. Though a slave, he recognizes that military honor requires more than a mere oath.
[9] “Numella” was a kind of chain of torture used around the neck.
[10] The slaves were named after the place they had come from. Demetrias was an actual place in Eastern Greece, halfway between Thessalonica and Athens, by the Aegean sea. Having come from Demetrias, the slave up to die was named Demetrius.
[11] Leontophorous is a neologism I created to mean lion-bringing.