A Voice in the Wind

Marcus walks through the loud, foul-smelling streets to visit his friend, Antigonus. Over wine and food, they discuss the fall of Jerusalem and the ferocity with which the Jews defended their homeland. Later, Marcus and Arria, his current lover—though he has grown tired of her company—stroll through Antigonus’s garden admiring the statues. They argue when she accuses him of infidelity with a Senator’s wife. She tries to seduce him, but he no longer has an appetite for her charms. They return to Antigonus’s parlor where Marcus and his friend solidify agreements that will make Marcus even richer than his father.

By the time Titus reaches Antioch, fewer than half of his Jewish captives remain alive. Most have died from hunger, from sickness, or in makeshift gladiatorial contests along the way. Hadassah is one of the few survivors. Standing before an Ephesian slave trader, she is inspected for possible servitude in a Roman temple, an ignominious fate, serving a pagan god. A Roman soldier dissuades the slaver from purchasing her, a gesture for which she is grateful. However, the next day, she is bought by a Greek slaver as a domestic servant.

Hadassah and the other enslaved women are led to the docks and loaded onto a ship. Forced down to the lower decks, one of the women is sexually assaulted by another prisoner, and Hadassah offers her comfort. Days and nights pass in the fetid darkness. Hadassah prays for relief. When the ship encounters rough seas, the captives panic, fearing they will drown. As bodies jostle in the ship’s hold, Hadassah is knocked against a beam and falls unconscious. When she awakens, she and another woman share food and pray, until the woman realizes Hadassah is Christian, not Jewish. Angered, she moves away, leaving Hadassah alone.

Once offloaded from the ship, Hadassah is taken to the baths where she is deloused and scrubbed clean. She is dressed, collared, and taken to the slave market where she is auctioned off to the highest bidder, but he immediately regrets his purchase, so he leaves her with another group of enslaved women bound for Rome. 

Atretes is unloaded from a cart and put on display. Beaten for his multiple escape attempts but not cowed, Atretes surveys his situation. Chained and confined behind thick walls and iron doors, escape seems unlikely. After some haggling, a merchant Scorpus buys Atretes for his personal gladiatorial games. As he is unchained from the other captives, Atretes lunges for Malcenas, the slave trader who sold him, but Scorpus’s guards subdue him. Scorpus orders Atretes—now his property—to take the “oath of a gladiator” (86), and any disobedience will be punishable by beatings or death. Atretes remains defiant.

After Atretes is branded and locked in a tiny cell, claustrophobia nearly overwhelms him. He tries to hold on to his rage as a bulwark against the fear. Two days in a lice-infested cell with no food or water does not break his spirit, and he cries to Tiwaz, the German war god, for strength. Days pass in darkness until Atretes is dragged from his cell, given water, and thrown into a bath. One of the guards, a former enslaved German himself, tells Atretes he can earn his freedom by fighting in the gladiatorial games as he himself has done, but Atretes is unconvinced.

The next morning, Atretes and a group of other men are brought before Tharacus for gladiator training. Tharacus tests Atretes’s fighting ability, but the long march, the lack of food and water, and days spent in a cramped cell have weakened him, and Tharacus bests him easily. He then coerces Atretes, under threat of castration, to take the gladiator oath. Atretes complies and is assigned to another officer for physical conditioning. After morning training, the men undergo an agility test; it involves dodging sheathed swords spinning on a large, wooden wheel. Atretes does well until he loses his focus for a moment, a sword slamming into his face and breaking his nose. After his nose is reset and the bleeding stopped, he returns to training, easily outpacing his fellow trainees. That night, Atretes ponders his fate: destined to kill, not for honor or self-defense, but for the entertainment of his enslavers.