The Fruit of the Fields.

One of the advantages of being the plantation owner's son is that young Master LeBron has unrestricted access to his father's slaves.

Today, as he supervises them toiling in a field, he gazes at their upturned asses and wonder which cherry to pluck next.

Ahh, the problems that confront virile, young men!

Picture sourced from the internet: text is mine.

Eunos and the First Servile War 138-132 BC

Sicily is a fascinating place full of history and to my mind it is a microcosm of the Mediterranean world from antiquity up to the present time. From antiquity, the island was home to the original Siculi tribes followed by early Greek colonists, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Moslems and Normans.

In places like modern-day Taormina (ancient Tauromenium) it is possible to see the layers of all these civilisations as one walks the streets of this glorious city. I have had the privilege of visiting Taormina twice and I was fascinated with its natural beauty, its setting high on Mount Tauro overlooking the Ionian Sea and looming large on the near horizon is Mount Etna. However, Taormina's crowning glory is the magnificent red brick, Graeco-Roman theatre which is still in use today. And because of it, I was moved to include Tauromenium in my writing of "Glaucus of Korinthos"

My last post, the crucifixion of the rebellious slaves by the Tribune Flaccus Bruscius, was prompted by historical fact. Long before the Spartacus rebellion, the man whose statue is featured above - it stands in the city of Enna in the centre of Sicily - led a revolt against Rome in the First Servile War fought between 138-132 BC.

His name is Eunos and he was a Syrian slave owned by a Greek master, Antigenes who lived in Enna. Eunos was said to be an oracle imbued with mystical powers and he soon emerged as the leader of the slave revolt. He successfully defeated the Romans a number of times and eventually styled himself "King Antiochus Eunos". He was reported to be an able administrator and even minted coins showing him as a king.

Naturally, Rome couldn't allow such a slave rebellion to succeed and in 132 BC Eunos was defeated by the Roman Consul Publius Rupilius near Messina.

Twenty-thousand slaves were crucified as a result of Eunos' defeat.and this figure far surpassed the six thousand put to death by Marcus Licinius Crassus after the Spartacus revolt. Some Roman observers estimated a Sicilian slave population of 200,00 at that time and this, no doubt, influenced Rome's savage response in the slaughter of the recaptured slaves.

Eunos was captured by Consul Rupilius and taken to Rome where, no doubt, he was to be humiliated and eventually put to death. However, it is said he died of an illness in a Roman prison and therefore, he was spared the indignity of being publicly paraded through the streets and executed.


Picture sourced from the internet; text is mine

 

Crucifixion: "The cruellest and most disgusting penalty. The extreme and ultimate punishment of slaves"      -      Cicero 

Note: Crucifixion, although not invented by the Romans, was enthusiastically adopted by them as their preferred form of execution of slaves. It is hard to imagine a more gruesome of shameful death than to be nailed alive and naked to a cross and allowed to die a slow, painful death. Imagine the victim’s terror as he deals with the “agony of the cross” while he is subjected to the jeers and taunts of passers-by, as he is  tormented by flesh-eating insects, and watches as the carrion birds circle overhead while packs of opportunistic, mongrel dogs wait for their chance to feast on him.

The following is an extract from my story, “Glaucus of Korinthos” which was mentioned by a reader in the last day or so. It is told through the person of the Tribune, Flaccus Bruscius who serves with General Lucius Mummius in the destruction of Korinthos and the enslavement of her citizens. 

Flaccus has i\recently acquired property in Sicilia; a place where he intends to live once his military service is complete. Sicilia was a part of Carthage but is now a Roman province governed by authoritarian governors appointed by Rome which resulted in a slave rebellion long before the one instigated by Spartacus on mainland Italia 

Although I try to keep my stories as historically accurate as possible, I do, at times, resort to “writer’s license” as I have done here.



                                                   >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>



Tribune Flaccus  Bruscius: 

Tauromenium surprised me on my first sighting of the town. Although founded as a Greek colony several centuries ago, I’d expected it to be more provincial than it is. I had expected it to be uncultured and inhabited by coarse, uneducated peasants. Imagine my surprise therefore when I discovered a vibrant cultural community centred on the magnificent Greek Theatre perched high on a rocky crag towering above the town and the sparkling blue waters of the Ionian Sea which also laps at the shores of Southern Italia and stretches all the way to far distant Graecia 

I was entranced by the Theatre and its location. If the Greek gods on mythical Olympus had given themselves the task of creating a location for Tauromenium’s theatre then they have excelled themselves for nowhere else in my wide travels have I seen a more idyllic spot? 

And within a stone’s throw of the theatre, I discovered a deserted villa that is to become my town residence. Obviously abandoned in a hurry, it has been ransacked over the years by the poorer townspeople and roving bands of lawless slaves. Stripped of all its furnishings it is just a shell of its former grandeur. 

I’d enquired about it and its former owner and discovered it had belonged to a rich pro-Carthaginian merchant who’d fled the island for the safety of Carthage.  Given that Carthage is now under siege and inevitably doomed to fall to Scipio Africanus, there is irony in that. The merchant won’t find safety within the crumbling walls of Carthage. The best he can hope for is a quick death by the sword thrust of a vengeful Roman soldier or, at the very worst, to be carried off into slavery. 

The local magistrate was a friend of my father’s and he enthusiastically welcomed my plans to settle at Tauromenium. He’d told me I was the type of young, entrepreneurial Roman settler that Sicilia needed and he’d given me the empty villa as an incentive to stay. And of course, he’d used his gubernatorial connections to assist me in buying my farms, the quarry and the tract of virgin forest for the proverbial song. 

I stayed in Tauromenium for several weeks while I finalised my business dealings and the magistrate had used my army experience in restoring a measure of law and order to the region. In recent times, the area had been terrorised by gangs of rampaging, rebellious slaves, who freely roamed the countryside killing and plundering at will. 

Indeed, some of my first images upon my arrival at Tauromenium were of a terrified citizenry and burnt out homesteads. And it has to be said even the magistrate considered it unwise to venture too far from the safety of the city. 

But gangs of disorganised slaves are no match for the might and precision of the Roman army and even though the number of troops at my disposal was small we soon rooted them out from their boltholes and subjected them to Rome’s righteous punishment. 

Being slaves – and runaways at that – negated any claims to mercy they might have hoped for. The mandatory sentence for a slave, who commits the offences of which they were guilty, is death by crucifixion. And this unhappy task fell to me. All up I crucified one hundred and thirty-seven male slaves. And an almost equal number of female camp-followers were returned to slavery 

I am ambivalent about crucifixion as a means of execution. Its description as the ‘extreme and ultimate punishment of slaves’ is most apt. On the one hand, I do see that the manner of execution should serve as a warning to other slaves to behave and submit themselves to their owners. And crucifixion serves that purpose admirably for there is no more degrading or so painful a death than for a slave to hang naked on a cross waiting for Mors to cut the thread that binds him to this life. Yet I’d always hated working on crucifixion detachments as a soldier. Put simply, it is hard work to crucify a criminal or a slave 

Despite the inevitability of his fate, the naked victim fights furiously right up to the moment the spikes are driven through his wrists and ankles. And having to listen to the vain pleas for mercy and the heartrending sobs of the crucified can be emotionally taxing. They only fall silent as the cross is raised skywards when all their energies are then spent in extending their lives by raising their sagging bodies to avoid drowning as their lungs fill with their blood. 

It always amazes me how, even when nailed to a cross and suffering indescribable agony, a victim will struggle to stay alive until his very last gasp. It would seem that life, even to a crucified slave, is a precious commodity not to be abandoned without a fight. Depending on his physical endurance, a crucified slave’s determination not to “give up the ghost” can last for a few hours or even days. 

I have heard stories of slaves surviving for almost ten days hanging on the cross. Popular myth has it that these slaves were regularly given water and kept alive by enterprising officials who invited bets from gamblers as to when the slave would finally succumb. Personally, I very much doubt the truth of the longevity of these lotteries of death. It is hard to imagine even the strongest slave having the will or the endurance to survive the horrors of crucifixion over such a protracted period 

The crucified victim’s writhing on his cross can be hard to watch even for the battle-hardened soldier and I derived no pleasure from such cruel suffering. Alternatively, the victim will draw on his diminishing strength and use his legs as levers to raise his body to drain the bodily fluids from his lungs become succumbing once more to the intolerable stress placed on his tortured body and slumping forward 

The macabre death dance on the crucifix is indeed horrible to watch! 

Whenever, I was in charge of a crucifixion, I’d usually take compassion on the condemned and after a short period of suffering – to satisfy the dictates of the law - I would break both his lower legs to hasten his death. 

But in this instance, I couldn’t extend such mercy. These slaves were guilty of the most heinous crimes and must pay the full penalty for their offences. Some would succumb quickly; others would linger for days but all would die in excruciating agony. Their suffering was to serve as a warning to all other of Sicilia’s slaves to conform or suffer the dire consequences of their rebellion against Rome’s authority. 

Nor could I save them from the traditional scourging before crucifixion. The magistrate was most insistent that the slaves be flogged with the three-thronged, leather flagrum. However, rather than the cruel ‘scorpion’, with its knotted pieces of bone and with the sharp hooks at the end of each thong capable tearing flesh and muscle from the backs of its unhappy victims, I used a simple knotted scourge 

Even after death, there is no dignity for the crucified. Rome never buries the victims of the ‘unhappy tree’ and their sun-blackened, bloated bodies become feeding grounds for flesh-eating insects, carrion birds and scavenging wild dogs and are left hanging as a reminder of her intolerance of slave insurrections. 

Bearing in mind that the Sessorium or Rome’s crucifixion ground was outside the city walls beyond the Esquiline Gate, I’d chosen my crucifixion site well away from the town – so that the stench of the decaying bodies didn’t impact on Tauromenium or her citizens – but in an area where I knew other slaves were hiding. I’d prevailed upon the magistrate to offer a thirty days’ amnesty to these remnant bands of runaway slaves conditional on them not having murdered a free person. If they surrendered within that time their lives would be spared and if their former owners couldn’t be found then they would be sold to new owners at a special magistrate’s auction.

Most of these rebellious slaves were aware that order had been restored and they left their hideaways deep in the forests and the rock-strewn mountains and surrendered to the magistrate. Few, if any, were returned to their missing masters and all were sold to new owners for give-away prices.

Needless to say, I took advantage of this and bought some slaves notable only for their brute strength and put them to work clearing away the debris of neglect from my farms and preparing my marble quarry for re-opening. And if they prove satisfactory, I will appoint these same slaves to be my overseers on the farms and in the quarry. 

By the time I left Sicilia to return to Rome, I’d restored law and order to Tauromenium and its surrounding areas. This was greatly appreciated by the magistrate who wrote glowing reports of my exploits and forwarded these to Rome and within the wider community my reputation stood high in public esteem. Upon my return as a permanent resident of Tauromenium I will be elevated to the position of their magistrate to replace my father’s friend when he returns to Rome. 

When I returned to Rome from Sicilia the “Pax Romana” reigned once more over Tauromenium. I’d acquired my properties and appointed a steward who worked under the direction of the magistrate to manage my affairs and to begin the restoration of my newly acquired villa.

I was sorry to leave Sicilia – and I eagerly looked forward to my return. However, my foremost duty is to Rome and her interests and today these see me serving in Korinthos. 

But Fortuna continues to smile upon me and despite the carnage raging all around me I have turned this to my advantage.

My farm will require many fit slaves to toil in my fields. Similarly, my quarry and the forest will require strong slaves to hew the marble and to fell the trees.

And Korinthos’ young men will make fine slaves! 

Picture sourced from the internet: text is mine.

"Glaucus of Korinthos"

In response to a question as to where my, as yet, incomplete story "Glaucus of Korinthos" can be found, it is posted to nifty.org under my writer's name "Jean-Christophe". You can access it under Gay male/authoritarian/historical along with my other continuing story with a similar Roman theme, "Nova Baiae"

Jean-Christophe

Tales from the Crusades

Part Three

The Scholar 

Written by Jean-Christophe 

Slavery doesn’t sit well on Malik’s whip-striped shoulders. He has been enslaved for three years; the chattel of his Franj owner, the Crusader knight, Philippe de Montaillou. 

Malik had been a stripling of fifteen years when, in 1103, the Crusader army of Raymond de Saint-Gilles, Count of Toulouse had laid siege to the city of Tripoli. For the next two thousand days he, together with his fellow Tripolitanians, endured ever increasing hardship. Caught between the blockading Franks at its walls and a Genoese fleet anchored off its coast, Tripoli managed to withstand the siege for as long as she could. Vainly, the citizens of Tripoli waited for their squabbling co-religionists to put aside their political differences with one another and to mount a counter offensive against the Crusader army.  When this didn’t eventuate their final hope rested with a fleet of war vessels dispatched from Fatimid Egypt to disperse the Genoese ships at sea and to engage the Franj on land. 

The besieged citizens of Tripoli anxiously waited for the fleet’s arrival and, as each day passed without any sign of its sails on the horizon, their hopes sank a little lower. Finally, with all hope abandoned, the city fell to the unbelievers on 12 July, 1109. Eight days later, the Fatimid fleet arrived too late to save them. 

With its fall, Tripoli, the city of goldsmiths, scholars and libraries, became the third Christian colony in the Moslem world after Edessa and Jerusalem 

The ascetic Malik had wept over the loss of Tripoli to the Crusaders. It, more than any other Moslem city, had stood as a beacon of beauty and knowledge. Tripoli, with its magnificent port, was described by one Arab chronicler as “the jewel on the Arab coast” 

Malik had been a scholar studying with the wisest qadis in the Dar-al-Ilm known throughout the Arab world as the “House of Knowledge”. Malik loved the Dar-al-Ilm as a second home and he was there as the city fell to the marauding Franks and their Genoese allies 

Caught unaware, Malik wasn’t able to return to his family and remained sheltering in the Dar-al-Ilm with the terrified qadis and his fellow students. Surely, he thought, even the uncultured Franks would respect the library’s one hundred thousand books which were an extraordinary repository of human knowledge. 

He wasn’t aware that, even before the city fell, the Franj had divided Tripoli into three parts with one part given to the Genoese and the other two to the Franks. And it was the Genoese who invaded the Dar-al-Ilm! 

The coarse Genoese sailors respected neither life nor property. The venerable qadis were quickly dispatched and the terrified students rounded up and made ready to be marched away into slavery.
As Malik was driven out of the library, he wept to see the priceless books destroyed by the Genoese as “impious” and its other treasures looted or smashed 

The days following the fall of Tripoli were chaotic. From his hastily improvised prison, Malik could hear the sounds of raping and pillaging. He heard the vain pleadings for mercy from a traumatized citizenry and the agonized cries of those cruelly put to the sword. Despite his own fear, Malik anguished over the fate of his parents, his younger brother and his two sisters. Were they safe or had they too been killed? As he thought about their fates, he hoped that his sisters had been killed rather than raped. Better a quick death than the slow, lingering shame of despoliation 

In succeeding days, the city grew quieter as order was restored. The conquerors quickly divided up the spoils of war among them seizing both city homes and businesses while the aristocratic knights took the fertile farm lands just beyond the city’s walls. Over successive years, these farms would take on the characteristics of the feudal fiefdoms the knights had left behind in faraway Europa; the only difference being that in Outremer, slaves replaced peasants 

Malik and his fellow students languished in their makeshift prison where the conditions were primitive and food and water scarce. As he existed on his meagre rations, Malik tried to keep track of time which proved to be a hopeless task. And he fretted about his future 

Then, one day, he and his fellow students were taken to the newly established, Genoese slave market and sold. Even after three years, the trauma of that day still haunts Malik where, within the closed confines of a courtyard, he was made to strip himself of his soiled clothes and to wash away the prison’s foulness from his naked body. Once cleaned, he was given a loincloth to wear and placed on display under the watchful eyes and whips of his Genoese captors 

Shortly after, Malik came face to face with his new master, Philippe de Montaillou who was shopping for slaves to work his newly acquired farm not far from the city’s outskirts. This was Malik’s first close, personal contact with a hated Franj warrior and what he saw frightened him. To Malik, Philippe de Montaillou was the personification of pure evil. Tall with blond hair and a thin, cruel mouth, his pitiless, blue eyes seemed to bore into Malik’s very soul and cowered him into submission. With his head bowed, he was aware that the Franj was scrutinizing his body assessing its strengths and its weaknesses 

Philippe spoke imperiously to a Genoese slaver in his incomprehensible language and to Malik’s distress the scanty loincloth was ripped from his hips exposing his nakedness to the other Franj buyers. Over the next few minutes, Malik was introduced to the demoralizing ritual of a slave inspection. There was no regard for his dignity and every part of his naked body was subjected to the minutest examination. Fear of his captors and their whips saw him stand passively as Philippe de Montaillou poked, prodded and pummeled his body gauging its strength and fitness. 

Having passed this examination, Malik stood mute as Philippe de Montaillou haggled with the Genoese over a fair price for him. Slaves were fetching low prices in the days immediately following the fall of Tripoli. So many of Tripoli’s citizens had been enslaved that the slave-pens were overflowing and an able-bodied slave could be bought for less than a pair of leather shoes. Philippe de Montaillou took advantage of this glut and on that day and subsequent days, he bought sixty strong, young slaves to labor on his farm. They were to form the vanguard of their new Master’s workforce and lay the foundations for his future wealth 

Once a price had been agreed upon, Malik was roped into a coffle and made to wait as his new master bought more slaves. When Philippe de Montaillou made his final purchase of the day, twenty-seven of Tripoli’s finest sons were driven by the whips of his overseers to their new home on an abandoned sugarcane farm. And even before they’d left the city, Malik had felt the agonizing sting of an overseer’s whip urging him onwards. It was the first of many that have been laid across his naked back since that day. 

Malik’s old life ended the day of his capture by the Genoese and his new life as a slave began with his purchase by Philippe de Montaillou. The day after his purchase, Malik and his fellow slaves were branded on their right breasts with Philippe’s coat-of-Arms by his armorer/blacksmith and fitted with the shameful, iron collars of slavery. The memory of his branding still burns vividly in Malik’s consciousness and he occasionally feels the “phantom” pain of the iron searing itself into his flesh. 

Malik recalls watching in horror as his fellow slaves were dragged one by one to the branding table and had the mark of their new owner placed on their bodies. He remembers his own futile struggling in the firm grip of two overseers as they dragged him to the branding table and how, like his fellow slaves before him, he pleaded for mercy as he was tied facing upwards for his branding.

Trembling with fear, Malik turn his head and watched wide-eyed as the blacksmith withdrew the branding iron from the red-hot coals and brought it to the table where Malik struggled uselessly in his bonds. With the approach of the red-hot branding iron, Malik began to weep and again begged not to be branded. Terrified, he waited as the branding iron was positioned over his heaving chest just above the right nipple. He didn’t feel the brand immediately; in the split second before he did feel its pain, he heard the sickening sizzle as the iron touched his body and smelled the charring of his tender flesh. His agonized scream reverberated around the closed confines of the blacksmith’s forge before subsiding into a soft weeping. 

Mercifully, for Malik, this ordeal – the first of many - was over. However, the shameful memory of the branding stays with him as a constant reminder that he is both a slave and owned property 

The new slaves were put to work immediately in making their Master’s lands profitable. During the long siege the fields had become overgrown with weeds while and the irrigation channels which carried precious water to the sugarcane became clogged with the detritus of neglect. Malik and his fellow slaves worked long and hard to restore the farm to its former condition and alternatively, he’d worked to clear the irrigation channels or was yoked to a plough preparing the fields for the planting of new sugar crops. Now his work is seasonal and includes the planting of new sugar fields, the harvesting of the mature canes and the crushing and distillation of them in the plantation’s mill.

 Over the three years of Malik’s servitude, his Master has prospered and is now the largest producer in the County of Tripoli of “sweet salt”- the name given to sugar by the Franj. Each year, Philippe de Montaillou acquires more slaves from among the captives taken in the ceaseless battles won by the Crusaders which allows him to increase his acreage under cultivation.

Today, Malik works on a noria; one of the waterwheels which keeps water flowing endlessly through to the verdant green fields of sugar cane. Shackled to the noria, he walks in a never-ending circle of mindlessness impervious to all around him. He measures time by the number of rotations he completes in a day or by the number of steps it takes do one circuit 

Sometimes his mind wanders back to those happier days when he’d been a promising young scholar at the Dar-al-Ilm. 

However, these reveries are all too brief. Always, there is the agonizing bite of the lash to bring him back to the present and to refocus his mind on maintaining the constant speed of the noria’s rotations. Malik no longer weeps for what he has lost; his tears have all dried up.

  

Artwork created by Amalaric and text written by me as a collaboration on a series for another group several years ago.




  

The Aftermath of the Battle of Hattin

1st Arab: "You have bought well, Mustafa, my old friend. These are fine slaves you have purchased."

2nd Arab: "Indeed, Hakim! As you say they are lusty animals and thanks to Saladin's glorious victory over the Franj, they were very cheap to buy. My regret is that I didn't buy more."

1st Arab. " All praise to Saladin! How good it is to see the accursed Christians reduced to slavery. Shaitan curse them and may they suffer the torments of hell as long as they live."

2nd Arab: "Have no fear , Hakim. Rest assured, these miserable dogs will suffer for they are to become pack animals in my trading caravan. They will struggle under heavy loads on their shoulders as their backs are flayed by the whips of my loyal African slave-drivers. In fact, their suffering is to begin shortly for we are on our way to the blacksmith's forge where they will be fitted with their slave collars and those pale white asses will feel the kiss of the red-hot branding iron as my mark is seared into their unworthy hides."

1st Arab: "You are right, my friend. Those Christian asses are indeed pale but nonetheless they are delicious. And, after a few days in the sun, they will tan nicely and become the rich golden colour of sun-ripened peaches and, no doubt, they will be just as luscious."

2nd Arab: "And they will be put to good use on the long caravan trail to Baghdad, Hakim. For there is nothing quite as soothing and as enjoyable as using a tight ass of a young slave to relieve the boredom of long, lonely nights in camp as one travels, is there?"

1st Arab: "Indeed not and how I envy you, Mustafa. Enjoy your travels to Baghdad."

Artwork by Amalaric: text is mine.

The Long Road to Damascus

These Christians are just a few of the survivors of the Crusader army recently defeated at the Battle of Hattin by the Moslem army of Saladin.

Stripped of their crusader uniforms, proudly emblazoned with the red cross of Christendom, their naked bodies now wear the shackles of Islamic slavery. The road from Hattin to Damascus is long and dusty and these new captives must be driven onwards by the whips of their new Moslem masters.

Awaiting them at their journeys end are the slave-markets of Damascus and fates too awful for them to begin to comprehend. They are young, strong and have the promise of several years of soul-destroying, back-breaking hard labour toiling at the tasks allotted to them by their new masters.

Normally, such robust and brawny slaves would command a high price when finally they mount the auction-block. But such is not the case currently.

Saladin's defeat of the Crusader armies has been so successful it has resulted in the slave-markets being oversupplied with captured Christians. It is reliably reported that slaves of the calibre shown here are selling for the price of a pair of leather sandals or of a small quantity of onions.

If these rumours are true, then it truly is a buyer's market!

Artwork by Amalaric: text is mine.