Since the chorus had been placed among the audience and weren't wearing any special costumes, when the song reached its refrain, they suddenly began to sing, startling the people around them.
In this scene, they sang only the first verse. When the song ended, the chorus members closed their mouths and almost instantly became audience members again.
"Hey, buddy, you know this song?" A young man with a few light-brown freckles across his nose gently tugged at the sleeve of the singer beside him and asked in a low voice.
"Yeah. We know it," the chorus member replied simply.
"This song's got real punch!" the young man exclaimed.
"There are a few more verses. They only sang one here, but the rest are even more stirring," another person chimed in. "I live nearby, and I've heard them practicing it these past few days..."
"Quiet! I can't hear the lines!" someone else complained.
The play continued onstage. Vesuvius had become too small to hold the rebels. Spartacus and another rebel leader, Crixus, disagreed over what the rebels should do next. Spartacus believed the Roman legions were too powerful. After their recent battle, they had attracted Rome's attention, and they couldn't hold out if they stayed where they were. The rebels should leave Rome before the legions on the borders could be recalled, head north, and cross the Alps. They could establish their own free country north of the Alps, then, once they had grown strong enough, march back on Rome and free all the slaves. Crixus, however, thought Spartacus was too timid. He believed the Roman legions had nothing to fear, and that the rebels should stay where they were, seize Roman cities, free the slaves there, and keep fighting to free more slaves and strengthen their ranks, until at last they destroyed the wicked institution of slavery.
Neither man could convince the other, so in the end they had to settle the matter with a democratic vote. Most of the rebel fighters chose to support Spartacus. Crixus was furious, and when Spartacus led the army north, he volunteered to command the rearguard. But once the rebels set out, he left with a group of fighters and attacked a Roman city on his own. The Romans ambushed them, and by the time Spartacus arrived, they had all been wiped out. The Romans executed every prisoner with horrific cruelty. Seeing this, the rebels were consumed with rage. They refused to continue north and demanded revenge. Spartacus couldn't persuade them, so he held another vote. This time, everyone chose to stay and fight Rome.
"Staying in Rome is a recipe for disaster. Why would Spartacus go along with democracy?" one spectator couldn't help asking. "What do those slaves know?"
"You're wrong about that," another person retorted. "If Crixus had followed democracy like Spartacus did, this wouldn't have happened. And you say, 'What do those slaves know?' The clergy and the nobles would say the same thing about us!"
The rebels stayed in Italy. Under Spartacus's command, they won battle after battle, but Spartacus grew more and more anxious. He knew their victories were only temporary. Rome's main forces were closing in. He kept trying to persuade the rebel fighters to head north at once, but they always voted his proposal down.
Crassus led a great Roman army to block the rebels' route north. As the Romans advanced step by step, Spartacus led his army south and contacted pirates, hoping to cross the sea and retreat to Sicily. But when they reached the agreed rendezvous, the pirate fleet never appeared. Crassus's army surrounded them on every side. Crassus sent Spartacus a letter urging him to surrender. He promised that if Spartacus gave himself up, he could become a Roman Citizen and a general. But when Spartacus asked about the other slaves, Crassus replied, "They'll go back to the estates and gladiator schools and continue as slaves."
Spartacus rejected Crassus's offer and led his troops in a forced breakout. They finally fought their way through, at a tremendous cost. But Rome brought in more troops, forcing Spartacus to face Crassus's army in a decisive battle in Apulia.
Before the decisive battle, Spartacus met Crassus. Crassus once again offered him the same terms as before. Spartacus rejected him again. He and Crassus agreed to settle things on the battlefield at dawn the next day.
On the battlefield, the rebels were outnumbered and eventually defeated. Spartacus fell in battle. His deputy, Oenomaus, and more than six thousand other fighters were captured. Crassus ordered them all crucified.
The play's final scene showed Oenomaus and two other rebel fighters being crucified. They were forced to carry their own crosses and raise them upright themselves. Then the Romans nailed them to the crosses. The two fighters were crucified on either side, with Oenomaus in the middle.
"This is blasphemy!" A priest clutched the cross at his chest and spoke in a low, vicious voice.
Indeed, the scene was clearly imitating the crucifixion of Jesus in the Bible. Jesus, too, had carried his own cross and been put to death between two other criminals, one on either side of him.
The two fighters on the crosses hung their heads and sobbed. Oenomaus, crucified alongside them, looked from side to side, then cried out, "What's wrong, my brothers? Could losing our lives really be worse than living as slaves? Yes, in the end, we failed to win our freedom. But at least we won this: from now on, we'll never be enslaved again! We've been defeated this time, but in the long run, our cause will never fail. The system in which people oppress and enslave one another will surely be overthrown! The name and cause of Spartacus will live forever! Brothers, let's sing our battle song one last time!"
Then Oenomaus began to sing: "Arise, ye wretched of the earth, Arise, ye prisoners of starvation..."
As he sang, the two fighters on the crosses stopped sobbing, lifted their heads, and joined in:
"The reason thunders in its crater:
It is the eruption of the end."
The Roman soldiers holding spears raised their heads in alarm, staring at the slaves nailed to the crosses. "Stop singing! Stop singing!" one shouted in panic. Another thrust his spear into Oenomaus's ribs, and blood immediately began to flow.
"This... this is truly a terrible blasphemy! Lord, may you hurl down your thunderbolts..." the priest murmured through clenched teeth.
In the Bible, after Jesus had been crucified, a Roman soldier named Longinus had thrust a spear into his side to check whether he was dead. That spear later became a sacred relic of Catholicism and was called the Spear of Longinus. Legends even sprang up claiming that "whoever holds the spear will command the submission of everyone within a hundred and twenty feet, and may even control the fate of the world—but whoever loses it will die instantly." Such tales really did fool plenty of people in later generations. Even Hitler had fervently sought its power. He was said to have possessed the holy spear for a time, but it didn't help him win the Second World War.
But Oenomaus didn't stop singing. He continued.
They had already sung this verse once before. Its lyrics and melody were very simple, so many in the theater began singing along. Only the priest, his face livid, kept his head bowed and remained silent.
Unlike the previous times they had sung together, this time the chorus sang the entire song. Of course, in the original history, the song should have had six verses. But Joseph, who had traveled through time, couldn't remember all six. In the later Red Hare Kingdom, the song was generally sung in only three verses because some of the translations were nearly impossible to sing in Chinese. So Joseph had copied only the original first, second, and sixth verses.
As the second verse rang out, the entire theater suddenly fell silent. In recent years, under the influence of people like Voltaire, the French had long since lost much of their former "piety." (Though, to be honest, France, the eldest daughter of Catholicism, had committed plenty of blasphemies in the past.) Even so, a song that so openly rejected religion startled everyone. But because people were generally dissatisfied with the Church, this extreme denunciation of religion only made them more excited. When the refrain began, more people joined the chorus.
Next came the sixth verse, even more explicit and brimming with rebellious fervor:
By then, the priest had quietly slipped out and vanished into the street.
When the song ended, the entire theater fell silent for a moment. Then a voice rang out: "Brilliant! That song was brilliant! Could you sing it again?"
Soon the whole theater filled with pleas like that:
"Sing it again! I haven't memorized all the words!"
"Please, sing it again."
"Sing it again!"
The curtain had already fallen, and the actors and chorus had been getting ready to leave. But at everyone's urging, they had no choice but to sing the song again, then again... In the end, they sang it six times in all. Clearly, the premiere had been an unprecedented success.
Some things are best left for everyone to read and move on. Don't comment, don't comment, don't comment.
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