Aelius Vipinas usually didn't take his son, Vitas, out on deliveries, but his slave, Festus, had been conscripted into the army being raised to march into Spain, and the iron-clad shields Aelius, the armorer, had been commissioned to forge to be used by the gladiators in Rome's colosseum were too heavy for him to carry on his own. As it was, the young man, although nineteen, was small and slender for his age and couldn't manage to heft more than two of the shields. That much extra help was enough for Aelius to meet the order, so Vitas was there with him, in the bowels of the Roman Colosseum.
It was a dangerous time to take a young man as beautiful as Vitas out on the streets of Rome. Preparing for a military campaign and the gladiator games under way in the colosseum had the juices of the men of Rome up, and the reign of the current emperor, Gaius Julius Caesar, better known as Caligula, was so free-wheeling and decadent that young men like Vitas were being whisked off the streets and onto the couches of Caligula and his friends. It was even riskier to take him into the gladiator preparation rooms, where virile and keyed-up musclemen were about to risk their lives in the arena. Aelius did mean for this third son, Vitas, to go to the couches of powerful men, but to do so in an orderly and profit-making progression.
Lucian hadn't meant to take Vitas this far into the center of the city. He had first taken the shields to the Gruppo Storico, the gladiator's school, on the Via Appia Autica, not far from the family's home and forge, but when he got there, he was told that games were on for the day at the colosseum near the Forum and that the new shields were needed there. So, it was off to a more dangerous area of the city in which to take a young man the likes of a young Apollo.
Gallus Metellus Janius, the master of the gladiators, though, was Aelius's principle client, and when he said he needed the shields today, he meant he would have the shields that day. More than needing to deliver the shields, though, Aelius needed to receive payment for them. He had spent the previous month expending nearly all of the materials he had on hand to meet his share of the armaments order for the army leaving for Spain—but serving the demands of the army did not come with immediate payment of his fees. Aelius needed an infusion of money, or his business would go under. His restock of iron was on the sea, but it was overdue to arrive.
It was this worry about keeping his business afloat and the rough time he had with Gallus Metellus Janius on payment when he and Vitas delivered new shields to the stone-clad bowels of the Roman Colosseum, where the gladiators and sacrificial animals and humans were kept during the games going on in the filled stadium above their heads, that made Aelius lose track of his son. As Aelius and Gallus dickered over payment, with Aelius following the gladiator master around the warren of subterranean stone chambers under the colosseum stands as Gallus controlled the coming and going of the gladiators and the rotation of warriors, animals, and human victims to and from the ring of sport, Vitas was left to stand over the delivered shields.
. . . To be forgotten by his father after Aelius said, "Watch these shields until the provisioner comes to take possession and then run down to the harbor master at the Emporium to see if there's any word of our supply ship arriving at Ostia. But be careful. Do not make a spectacle of yourself in the streets. These are wild times. Do not walk in the dark. If it takes you too long to get news of the supply ship at the river port, go to the house of the apothecary, Rufus Sulla Severus, our friend, and lodge there until it is light again." Aelius then spun away in Gallus's wake, giving him the thousand and one reasons Aelius needed his fee for the new shields now.
Emporium was the river port on the Tiber river between the Aventine Hill and Rione Testaccio, where goods came up from the seaport of Ostia on the Mediterranean.
Aelius wasn't so solicitous of the purity of his son, Vitas, from any special regard for the young man's feelings. Vitas was a third son, the other two already at work in pounding out iron and melting it to cover wooden cores for shields. Vitas was being protected so closely because, as a particularly beautiful young man and one not needed in the family business, he was a commodity for adding to the Vipinas family wealth or its power in the city, or both.
Vitas was an opportunity. He could go to the priesthood, which would enhance the family's standing. He was so comely, though, that, in this age of Caligula and his open excesses, Vitas could go to the bed of a powerful general or senator or he could go into one of the more refined male courtesan houses. The latter possibilities seemed the most likely and it was to this possibility that the young man was being trained into the arts of lying with and pleasing a man—but only in theory and with limited implementation so far. If Vitas was to go to a rich man or a house of pleasure, he would need to go there unused and unsullied.
Even if the times weren't as hedonist as they were in the reign of Caligula, it was recognized procedure in those days in Rome to follow the Greek custom of refined and powerful men taking comely youths into their service at table and in bed as part of a mentoring process of maturing the lads into refined and powerful men themselves later in life—ones maturing into men who married and produced children of their own, while, at the same time, being able to mentor young men by taking them into their own service at table and in bed. Having lain with older men before marrying and having children was not a taboo in Roman at that time. It was considered more as an instruction period in how to have those children with pleasure later in life. Given such instruction to younger men also was not a taboo.
Vitas was almost too old to be starting down such a career path. Mentored youths were usually taken at a much younger age. He had been a sickly boy, however, which might explain his small stature—both of his older brothers were full bodied and muscular, in keeping with their trade. And Vitas had attained his beauty late in his maturing process. He had been a mother's boy and it had only been in the recent year that his father had seen the potential in the young man and had discerned that Vitas's natural preferences went in that direction as well. He was always mooning over men. He was at a peak of his attractiveness now, however, and Aelius had found, through checking it out, that there were some men in Rome who thought that nineteen was a highly desirable age for their interests, especially if they were androgynous enough to have aspects of feminine beauty and allure.
The provisioner didn't come to take possession of the shields soon enough. Young, small, slender, and beautiful Vitas was left in a corridor where gladiators were preparing to go out into the colosseum to kill or be killed or were just returning in high bloodlust of having survived their time in the arena. It was a time of high lust for these magnificent, virile-bodied men in their sexual prime. It was a time for Vitas to feel attraction as well, as many nearly naked strong, muscular men strutted by him. If they paused long enough to give Vitas a smile or a sneer, in his innocence, he was smiling back.
"And what sweet morsel do we have here?" said one hulking gladiator clad only in leather-slat skirting, called a fustanella, and sandals laced up to his knees, as he came out to check on whether there was a more serviceable shield in this new shipment that had arrived then the one he had. He had but an hour before he was to enter the arena and fight his lion. He was all keyed up with blood lust, the emphasis on the "lust".
