Beric the Briton : a Story of the Roman Invasion eBook

if his skull be not broken.  One of you had better go for a leech to examine him; and mind, let not a word be breathed outside the school as to this contest.  We will keep it silent until it is time for Beric to enter the arena, and then we shall be dull indeed if we do not lay bets enough on him to keep us in wine for a year.  There is no fear of Lupus himself saying a word about it.  You may be sure that, roughly shaken as his conceit may be, he will hold his tongue as to the fact that he has found his master in what he was pleased to call a boy.  Mind, if I ever hear a word spoken outside the school on the subject, I will make it my business to find out who spread the report, and it will be very bad for the man who did it when I bring it home to him.”

It was upwards of a week before Lupus was able to enter the gymnasium again.  Beric had particularly requested the others to make no allusion to his discomfiture, but from that time the superiority of Lupus was gone, and Beric’s position in the school was fully established.

CHAPTER XIII:  A CHRISTIAN

While Beric thus spent his time between his exercises and the schools and one or other of the libraries, varied occasionally by paying a visit with Pollio, Boduoc and his companions were not ill contented with their life.  Most of them had, during the long journey through Gaul, picked up a few words of Latin from their guards, and as it was the language of the gymnasium, and was the only medium by which the men of the various nationalities could communicate with each other, they now rapidly increased their knowledge of it, Beric strongly urging them to become acquainted with it as soon as possible, as it might be most useful and important to them.  None of the others besides Boduoc were, Scopus thought, ever likely to be a credit to him in the more serious contests in the ring, but all showed an aptitude for wrestling and boxing, and the lanista was well content with this, as the games in the arena frequently commenced with these comparatively harmless sports, and in many of the provincial cities wrestlers and boxers were in great request.

Beric was much pleased when he heard from the master that he intended to confine his teaching to these two exercises only with regard to his companions; for although men were sometimes seriously hurt by blows given by the masses of leather and lead, which, wound round the fist, were used to give weight to the blows, a final termination to the contests was rare.  In the exercises the men practised with many wrappings of wadding and cotton wound round the caestus, answering the purpose of the modern boxing glove.  Beric himself was very partial to the exercise, and as it strengthened the muscles, and gave quickness and activity to the limbs, Scopus encouraged him in it.

“I do not see the use of the caestus,” Beric said one day.  “One could hit and guard much more quickly without it.  It is good, no doubt, for exercise, as it strengthens the muscles, but surely for fighting it would be better to lay it aside.  What is the advantage of it?  With the bare fist one can knock an opponent down, and with a very few blows strike him senseless.  What more can you want than that?”