Heart of Gladiator

The Banquet (Part 2)

Guests reclined on three large beds placed in a U shape in the triclinium (dining room) of the house.  The middle bed (lectus medius) was for the high-status guests and offered a very good location. Guests reclining on this middle couch spoke easily with the host to their right on the low couch (lectus imus) and also looked out at a view of the home’s garden, a view carefully designed to impress. In contrast, diners on the high couch (lectus summus), low-status guests, to the left of the important ones could only see the opulent wall paintings that decorated the Roman triclinium.

  Elite men lied back, propped on pillows, drank, for drinking was part of the dining experience, conversed, and overindulged till they’d throw up five or seven times or more and then return again for another round.  Respectable women and those of the household were also invited to join the party- some even stretched out with the men.

  The dinner was accompanied by background music and lots of conversation. Later on there was the entertainment of acrobats, dancers, jugglers and mimes. After the dinner, there were games, such as the host would pick a number and the guests would have to have that number of drinks. The evening surely had a very lively atmosphere to it, with a lot of mirth, playfulness and energy in the mood of every guest.

  Aurelius had been among the group of diners, but didn’t participate much in their drinking and jollity. He’d privily waited for Gwenor to appear once more and take part in the celebrative dinner, but she had never come. The space on her family’s couch where she should’ve been seated was left empty throughout the night.

  At the beginning of the klatsch when Mattson Partier eventually noticed his daughter’s absence, Aurelius had noticed him whisper a question into his wife’s ear and had seen the slight look of disappointment on his face when his wife had replied him. He then turned to ask something once again but his wife had only shaken her head and patted his hand in a gesture of reassurance.

  Under the noise of the loud-speaking voices of various men and women, Aurelius couldn’t grasp the words Gwenor’s parents whispered to each other. He also wanted to know why she had never showed up. Did it have to do with the person she didn’t want to make her presence known to? And if so, who was this person?

  In the course of the night, the Bacchanalia gradually took its toll- a wild, drunken and licentious feast of horny men and women taking part in orgies. Aurelius never engaged in such revelry, and so he stood up from his seat, made his parting known to the Partiers, and left for his chamber which they had offered him for the night.

  Before Aurelius finally exited the room, Mattson’s hand landed on his shoulder, bringing him to a halt.

  “I will be waiting for you out in the courtyard tomorrow morning,” he told Aurelius, “to discuss about all the things that will be required of you as our guard.”

  “Alright, sir,” Aurelius said. “I will meet you just an hour or two after daybreak if that’s convenient for you.”

  “It is,” Mattson guaranteed him.

  “Good night then, sir.”

  As soon as Aurelius was about to leave, Mattson asked, “Don’t you want to stay behind? You know you are allowed to have any woman you wish for the night as long as she is not a citizen.”

  “No sir,” Aurelius said, boldly rejecting the proposal. “I do not involve myself in such things.”

  “Is money the problem?” Mattson asked. “If it is I can lend you some for the night. You’ll repay me back when you can.”

  Aurelius let himself simper. He knew that Mattson Partier was offering all this to him simply out of kindness and hospitality. As far as the law was concerned sex with slaves was not adulterous. Or at least not for men. And sex with a free-born man or woman was only adultery if they were not doing it for money. Thus, sex with a prostitute did not constitute adultery. And for this reason, prostitution was legal, public and widespread. However, adultery with a free-born was a crime, stuprum. And for this there was only one punishment: death. So as long as one steered clear of committing stuprum, anything was allowed.

  “Money is not what restrains me from participating in this,” Aurelius spoke frankly, “but my personal ethic, sir, which does not permit me to.”

  At this statement Mattson stared at Aurelius with a high regard, appearing quite taken aback. Definitely any man in Rome who didn’t take part in exploring his sexual fantasies and receiving various entertainments and pleasures of such nature was considered quite atypical in the face of the public. But something in the way Mattson looked at Aurelius told him that his master didn’t consider it so, but instead was quite pleased by it.

  “Well, Aurelius, I have never met any man of such decency and self-control until now,” Mattson confessed, his voice sounding warm and compassionate towards Aurelius. “Go then and retire, my friend. The night has been long and weary for us all. I shall do the same with my wife now.” Mattson then patted Aurelius’s shoulder, smiling cordially at him, before walking away to meet his wife, Lolita, who stood by the doors of the corridor, patiently waiting for him.

  Later that night, while Aurelius lied down in bed, attentively listening to the rain outside his window, he relived through the talk he’d had with Gwenor and brought back to mind all the things she’d said.

  He had feelings partaking of both joy and regret. Joy for having shared a moment with her, and regret for having said what he did last. He shouldn’t have started such an intimate topic the way he did, which deliberately pried into her personal thoughts. It definitely frightened her and it was completely out of place.

And according to the apparent difference between the positions they held in society, although she was a woman, he didn’t really have the right to have approached her so. After all, she was the beloved daughter of a senator while he was a   slave who’d just been released from the confinement of its cage.

  And although he tried to fall asleep, waiting for both his mind and body to surrender to the unconscious state of slumber, he could not get her image out of his mind. The subtle outlines of the ethereal features of her face were engraved at the back of his eyelids like he’d been brusquely blinded out of the darkness by the coruscating flashes of light of a blazing sea of flames.

  She was like the sun that lit up everything that’d been hidden for so many centuries in the deepest depths of the cave he was.