Roman Slave Boy
Lucius Antullius usually didn’t take his fourteen-year-old son, Cotta, out on deliveries, but his slave, Aule, had been conscripted into the army being raised to march into Spain, and the iron-clad shields Lucius, 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 boy, small and slender for his age, couldn’t manage more than two of them, but that was enough for Lucius to meet the order. It was a...