Arena by John Jakes

spectacles. Many exalted Senators, equites and their wives, however, participated. Who was I to scruple?
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    “This is the man Cassius?” the priest inquired in a reedy eunuch’s voice. He carried a sistrum, a peculiar bronze rattle which gave off a bizarre clanging sound when he pointed it at my chest.
    The guard said gruffly that I was indeed Cassius. The priest went on. “The lady Locusta invites him within. You gentlemen remain here. Food and wine will be brought out.”
    He minced back toward the gate. Inside, the frenzy of yells and sharp cries had increased. The burly guard looked at me balefully.
    “On second thought, Cassius, I’m not positive I’d care to go in there at all. Sounds like all the black imps of the world let loose. Shout if you need help.”
    I did not tell him my own spine was crawling. The priest held open the small portal and I walked in.
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Chapter VII
    OF ALL THEstrange foreign cults that enjoyed favor in Rome, that of the Great Mother of Pessinus was by far the oldest. It dated to ancient times, when her temple was first raised in faraway Galatia. In the days when Hannibal of Carthage marched against Rome, the populace, impatient with defeats and eager to enlist the help of any and every deity available, brought from the East a great image of Cybele and erected it in the Temple. While other religions died, this one prospered, though all said its mysteries and rituals contained little of a spiritual nature. In fact, just the opposite. No doubt that accounted for its popularity.
    Still, the cult was a part of that wave of popular passion for blood and lewdness which I intended to ride to prosperity. Thus I hardened my heart while the eunuch priest with the jingle rattle led me down a maze of passages into the heart of the building.
    Cautioning me to speak no word and remain behind the stone gallery to which he led me, the priest glided away. He emerged moments later on the Temple floor below. It was a great gloomy hall. No outside light leaked in. What illumination there was came from dim lanterns set into niches. At one end rose an immense image of the Earth Mother, taller than three floors of an insula.
    Her stone eyes gazed down past gigantic carven breasts to the spectacle taking place before her.
    The carcasses of several lambs lay on a low altar. To one side, some Galli played flutes and timbrels while others leaped into the air, forming a ring of dancers. They banged together sistra and brass-handled flails.
    Nearest the stone goddess danced a dozen or more women. They were young and old, bedaubed with blood, hair unkempt and eyes vacantly rolling. Everyone was naked.
    They performed a sort of leaping, twisting ritual supplication of the goddess. Their movements perverted every posture and attitude of human love. The pipes skirled. The timbrels thudded. In the flickering light of the lamps I saw that the dancer who leaped higher than the rest, thighs and breasts smeared with blood, hair flying like a copper banner, was Locusta.
    The women were the Corybantes, the priestesses of the Earth Mother. Soon they were joined by the Galli. The priests tore off their symbolic robes, revealing their ghastly eunuch’s bodies. They sought partners among the women for the completion of the indecent ritual.
    Sour bile rose in my throat. The music reached an hysterical pitch. One of the Corybantes, a slim, black-haired girl, leaped onto the altar. She seized a dagger and with an ecstatic shriek plunged it between her own thighs.
    Though I am not by nature a prudish man, that was the most I could bear. I rushed from the gallery into a damp, stone-walled corridor where I vomited up what was in my belly.
    Coming to my senses, I realized the great Temple was quiet, empty except for the lamb corpses and the ruined body of the dead priestess. The stink of blood swam all around. Great Cybele stared down with unfeeling stone eyes on the welter of gore.
    The same priest