Barbarian

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The imperial gladiator blinked sweat from his eyes and watched the stadium officials drag away the dead bodies carpeting the arena floor.

From his position in the shadows of the passageway, Gaius Naevius Capito had a panoramic view of the aftermath of the mock battle. A crude reconstruction of a Celtic settlement stood in the middle of the Statilius Taurus amphitheatre, which was littered with the dead. Capito lifted his eyes to the galleries. He could see the new Emperor at the podium, flanked by a cabal of freedmen jostling for attention, with the senators and imperial high priests seated at the periphery in their distinctive togas. Above the podium the crowd was squeezed shoulder to shoulder on the stone seats lining the upper galleries. Capito felt a shiver in his bones as the crowd roared. He looked on as a pair of officials prodded a slumped barbarian with a heated iron. The man jolted. The crowd jeered at his attempt to play dead and one of the officials signalled to a servant wielding a massive double-sided hammer. A second official finished sprinkling fresh white sand over the blood-flecked arena floor. Then they retreated to the passageway, resting in the shadows a few paces away from Capito.

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