During the next few weeks, Theoderic endeavoured assiduously to restore his image, which had been seriously damaged by his outburst at the palace reception. Such displays of unrestrained fury were, like drunkenness, regarded with indulgence (sometimes even admiration) by his own people, but among the Romans could result in a serious loss of dignitas — the very quality that distinguished Romans from barbarians.* Dignitas implied self-control, living according to a code in which passions were always subordinated to reason — a code (according to Roman received opinion) conspicuously absent among barbarians.
Acceptance by the Romans (and ultimately any prospect of becoming their emperor) depended, Theoderic knew, on his being accepted by their representative assembly, the Senate. Despite the Senate’s apparent lack of political power, Theoderic knew it would be a grave mistake to dismiss it as a merely passive body, whose only function was to legitimize the policies of whatever ruler was in power. In the past, emperors who had continued to flout the accepted mores of SPQR† never died in their beds. The outrages of a Nero, a Caligula, a Commodus, a Heliogabalus, or a Valentinian III, ensured their violent removal. Even in the empire’s dying days, the Senate’s disapproval was enough to ensure the execution not only of Arvandus and Seronatus, Prefect and Deputy Prefect of Gaul respectively, but of Emperor Avitus, for the crime of making terms with the barbarians — the very people about to take over the Western Empire.
As ruler, Theoderic could not apologize for his loss of temper at the tricennalia, nor for depriving the Laurentian senators of Church lands. But he did the next best thing: made himself regularly attend sessions of the Senate, where he comported himself with respectful attentiveness bordering on meekness. (Shades of Theodosius I doing penance before Ambrose, Bishop of Milan.) And, employing a tried and tested gesture guaranteed to attract popularity from plebs and patricians alike, he decided to hold Games in the Flavian Amphitheatre.* (Normally, this would have been the dubious ‘privilege’ of the Western consul, but this year both consuls were Eastern appointees.)
Compared to the ‘good old days’ of high empire, Games had become a rarity in Rome. Disruption of trade routes resulting from barbarian invasions, centuries of depletion of wildlife stock, with shrinkage of state and aristocratic wealth, had made the capture, transport and maintenance of large animals an extremely difficult and prohibitively expensive business. Nevertheless, the recent thawing of relations between the Vandal and Ostrogothic kingdoms, combined with substantial disbursements from Theoderic’s treasury, ensured ships laden with crates, containing savage beasts from north Africa, unloaded at the quays of Ostia.
Outside the amphitheatre, a huge and noisy crowd was building up. ‘Ticket-holders only,’ bawled a burly security guard, whereupon those fortunate enough to possess a bone slip marked with seat, tier and entrance numbers poured into the great building through seventy-six of its eighty entrances. (Of its remaining four, two were for royalty and aristocracy, the other two, which opened directly into the arena, were the Doors of Life and Death, for the entry of contestants and the removal of dead bodies respectively.) Once the ticket-holders had been shown by locarii, ushers, to their seats in the lowest three of the four tiers of stands, divided horizontally by flat walks and vertically by flights of stairs, the guards at the entrances stood aside, and non-ticket-holders dashed in to find a seat in the aisles or a standing-place in the topmost tier. Directly below the lowest tier, encircling the arena, ran a fifteen-foot wall, its smooth marble surface topped with revolving cylinders of bronze, denying purchase to any beast attempting to climb it.
Inside, a soft glow filled the stadium — sunlight diffused through the awning which covered the vast oval’s open top. This was the responsibility of nautae, sailors, who alone possessed the skills necessary for securing the enormous sheet by means of a complex system of ropes and pulleys to a ring of masts projecting from the topmost tier. Now the aristocracy — almost all senators in their traditional togas, accompanied by their wives — filed into the first thirty-six rows of seats reserved for the upper classes. Next came the privileged guests — Pope Symmachus surrounded by a coterie of leading clergy and female admirers; members of Rome’s top families: the Symmachi, Decii and Anicii. These seated themselves in the podium on curule chairs, movable to allow their occupants to get up and stroll at will. Finally, with a flourish of trumpets, the royal party, consisting of Theoderic with his bodyguard, accompanied by Symmachus and Boethius, now his chief advisers, and the editor of the Games, Probinus, entered the royal box raised above the podium, from the rear. In a gesture of appeasement to the Laurentian senators, Theoderic had invited their leader to become the Games’ organizer, a position which carried enormous prestige, but also normally enormous cost — however, in this instance it was being borne by the king as munerator or producer.
To Theoderic’s shocked amazement, a barrage of rude comments was hurled by the plebs at the patricians in the podium and privileged seats: ‘Hi, there, Spicy. What’s the Holy Father like in bed?’ ‘Antonia, is it true you’ve worn out three new boyfriends, and you old enough to be their grandmother?’ ‘Basilius, you old goat, that little slave-girl keeping you warm at night?’ The recipients of the taunts, though doubtless raging inside, made no response, for to do so would be a breach of dignitas.
A trumpet-blast announced the entry of the venatores or huntsmen, lean, muscled men, armed variously with spears, daggers, swords, nets, and bows. Animal-fighting alone survived of the arena’s blood sports: gladiatorial combats had been ended by Emperor Honorius ninety-six years previously, after a frenzied mob had torn to pieces a monk, Telemachus, for intervening in a fight; and a generation prior to that, Valentinian I had stopped the practice of condemned criminals, noxii, being savaged to death by wild beasts. Nevertheless, the venationes or wild-beast hunts still provided enough gore and excitement to whip the mob into a frenzy of blood-lust. After circling the arena to wild applause, the procession formed up before the royal box and saluted Theoderic and Probinus in turn, before departing.
A moment’s hush, then again the trumpet sounded, and a tide of wild animals began to pour into the arena. Until this moment, they had been kept in cages deep in the bowels of the amphitheatre; the cages were hauled by a system of lifts and pulleys to passageways leading to the arena, then opened.
Thrasamund, king of the Vandals, had done him proud, thought Theoderic, looking in wonder at the multicoloured mass of swarming animals: antelopes, jackals, hyenas, ostriches, leopards, lions, cheetahs, buffaloes, a rhinoceros, even several elephants. The marriage alliance he had forged with the Vandal widower (just one example of the good relations established with other barbarian leaders in the West) — sending him his widowed sister Amalafrida as prospective bride — had paid off handsomely. Thrasamund’s Berber and Moorish hunters had done a magnificent job; they must have penetrated deep into the continent’s interior to have been able to bring back such an astonishing variety of wildlife. Fights continually broke out among the animals, but the arena was so crowded that the contestants were swept apart as the stampeding throng frantically sought for means of escape.
At a signal from Probinus, the trumpet sounded and the venatores rushed into the arena through the openings the animals had used. The air filled with brays, roars and bellows as the huntsmen set to work, despatching their quarry with incredible speed and skill, some leaping from back to back delivering fatal thrusts in motion, or loosing volleys of arrows, each shaft finding its mark. The mighty elephants were among the easiest to slaughter — killed instantly by a chisel hammered between the cervical vertebrae, or hamstrung to immobilize them, then their trunks slashed off when they quickly bled to death. When at last the crowd of animals began to thin out, the trumpet sounded for the end of the hunt. The venatores now made way for the bestiarii, animal-handlers. These, armed with lead-tipped flails and blazing torches, drove the surviving beasts back into the passageways, whose gates had been opened, with basins of water placed inside to attract the exhausted animals. When the carcasses had been dragged out through the Door of Death, and with the arena once more empty, the crowd hushed in anticipation of the next show. Word had got around that this was to be something special. .