I went walking in the evenings when purple twilight cooled the air, sitting on hot corner stones listening to street musicians and parting with my few coins to pay for the pleasure they gave me. I even sneaked into the Theatre of Marcellus to hear a famous actress sing a round of Greek songs, memorizing her every graceful gesture to practice for myself in the heat-shriveled Pollio gardens. In my mind I could see my mother smile as she said, “What a pretty voice you’ll have when you’re grown.” And then I’d fall silent and perhaps creep back inside to my blue bowl with the frieze of nymphs on the side, because my mother was no longer here to sing me lullabies, and over the years it had somehow become my fault.

I saw Arius the Barbarian, of course. His lanista flashed him all over the city like a prize stallion: dragged him into the theatre to watch the comedies, into the Campus Martius where everyone strolled to see and be seen, into the Circus Maximus to watch the chariot races. Wherever he went there was a hush of deliciously savored fear, a respectful drawing back, and afterward the buzz of speculation.

“He won’t last the next fight,” people scoffed in taverns. “Beating Belleraphon, that was a fluke.”

“And the Amazons?” his fans retaliated hotly.

“Anyone could beat a team of women!”

“No, he’s something special. Just wait till the Romani games in September—” The argument went on, even though he ignored his fans as if they were shadows and drank alone in taverns despite the hundreds who would have kept him company.

His face started to appear everywhere, painted badly on the sides of wooden buildings around the Colosseum. Crudely chalked graffiti greeted my eyes on alley walls: “Arius the Barbarian makes all the girls sigh!” Vendors hawked garish little portraits on gaudy ribbons. Taverns offered him free wine, and whores offered him free time. Arius, a slave and a barbarian, a man who would be cut up and fed to the lions when he died instead of meeting his gods in a proper tomb. Lower than sewer trash, but so important: His fights would calm the crowds when they grumbled too loudly over the Emperor’s taxes, his presence would titillate the most bored patricians at dinner parties and keep them from scheming, his blood would be sold to epileptics as a cure for their foaming fits, and brides would fight for one of his spears to part their hair on their wedding day and thus guarantee themselves a happy marriage.

All of it would vanish overnight, of course, if he lost his next fight. And I wondered how long he would last.

“Savages never live long,” an aging legionnaire said critically, slamming a mug of beer down on the table at a tavern where I’d gone to sing. “The Barbarian’s just like all those tribesmen I came up against in Britannia—throws too much into every stroke. Savages always lose in the end because they can’t keep their heads.”