Roman Son Number Three

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”.

Vitas rose from his crouched position over the stack of shields he was instructed to watch and smiled at the magnificent gladiator, which was enough of a spark at this time and in this place. Then, seeing the blood lust in the muscular, cruel-looking gladiator’s eyes, Vitas lost his smile and started to move away, in the direction from which he’d heard his father’s voice, wheedling the gladiator master for payment as they moved farther into the dark bowels of the basements under the colosseum stands. But he wasn’t quick enough or decisive enough.

The gladiator reached out with a leather-clad forearm, wrapped it around the young man’s waist, hauled Vitas off his feet, hoisted him under a beefy arm, and carried him into the darkness of the gladiator preparation and waiting cells. The young man’s cries of violation for what then transpired echoed through the cavernous stone chambers, not bringing help, but gathering other interested and keyed-up gladiators. Vitas was pushed down on his belly on a stone table, his legs dangling off one end and his arms off the two sides, as the gladiator held him down with a fist to the small of his back, ripped the young man’s loincloth under his fustanella off, knelt behind him, and pushed his face between the young man’s plump buttocks cheeks.

Vitas’s struggles didn’t last long. The gladiator was a god. Vitas’s education had been bringing him to this point, although it was meant to be initiated at another time, in another place, and by someone far richer but also far less desirable than this man-god. The young man’s writhings changed in nature and his squeals of indignation and violation changed to sighs and purrs as he went docile for the gladiator’s tongue and hands. His thoughts went to the size the gladiator’s shaft and what it would—not might—be soon doing inside him. The family’s expectations and finances might not be ready for this, but Vitas’s desires were.

The gathering gladiators, nervous for their coming turn in the arena, and full of need and lust, stood around and cheered as Vitas cried out and sobbed when the gladiator who had brought him to this cell saddled up behind the lad, mounted him, penetrated the untried-by-cock hole with difficulty but with great interest, and fucked the young man to a seeding.

The crowd was uncontrollable, and when one gladiator was finished, he gave way to the next, and then the next, and the next one after that. None cared for any consequences. None knew if the young man was of consequence or not. He was handsome and small and slim, and he had a sweet hole and channel, and he was fresh and unused—although less so with each gladiator who moved between his spread thighs, held his legs raised and spread with fists grabbing ankles, and mounted and breeded him.

They were going into the ring, many of them not to come out alive, few of them not coming out wounded and maimed. This was their chance at total pleasure between the thighs of a luscious young man or woman. It was a young man who was available in the moment. They made the most of it. Though they may be slayed in the arena, they would do their own slaying right here.

And, in his innocence and natural interest, Vitas had smiled at the gladiators as they had walked by him under the colosseum stands in the hour before. He had stood where young men offering themselves to the gladiators had stood before and would stand again. The gladiators had no more need of a signal of consent than a smile given earlier in the day.

As their numbers dwindled from being called to take their time in the arena, the survivors from arena-appearances before, even more lusting in blood from mortal combat in the colosseum and loaded for action drifted into the cell. The last one to enter, a giant of a black man everyone called The Nubian, who was so fierce and intimidating that he was a veteran of the arena and had never bowed to a foe there, brushed the others hovering around the semiconscious young Vitas away. He turned the young man over onto his back on the stone table. Vitas struggled up to being propped up on his elbows to see what man now was presenting between his legs. There had been so many that he now no longer cared—or he thought he didn’t.

But when Vitas saw the height and the bulk of the black gladiator standing between his legs, one massive hand under Vitas’s tailbone, raising his pelvis up and the other hand stroking a jet-black erection of huge proportions, the young man’s eyes rolled back into his head, his elbow props gave way, and he fell back on his shoulder blades. He gave a little cry and jerked and then jerked again and again, digging his fingers into the edges of the stone table, as the black bull of a man thrust inside him—and then thrust again and again and fucked him and fucked him and fucked him.

* * * *

Vitas lay on the stone table until it grew dark in the cell and he no longer could hear the cheers and jeers of the spectators in the colosseum above his head. Then, with a groan, he rolled over and sat up. He’d survived the assault by countless rough men. He’d done so because he’d been in training for something like this for some time, through the use of a lubricated stone phallus. He’d never felt the real thing before and certainly not from many men in succession. His fingers went to his hole and he almost hyperventilated at how dilated he was.

A passing gladiator groomer who was walking by was stopped by the sight of the beautiful young man feeling himself. He smiled, Vitas groaned and laid back on the stone table again, his legs spread, as he gave one more man the pleasure of the mounting, penetration, and breeding. Vitas been mistaken for one of the young men brought in from off the streets to serve any and all in the gladiator holding area during the games.

It was done now—not that he’d tell his father what had happened. If it were known that he was used goods now—many times over—there was no telling what his father would do with him. It might be a common brothel just to get him away from the family’s dinner table. It might be more of the same Vitas had just received—just not from men as fit as these gladiators were. In some ways, Vitas could feel some pleasure from this. It was what he had become inclined to and was being trained for. Even if he was going to the priesthood, he would be lying under men—other, more senior and dominating priests. And now he was experienced in the trade.

There just had been so many men, so many penetrations and breedings.

With a groan, Vitas put his sandaled feet on the stone floor and pulled himself erect. He was sore and bruised all over. And his mind wasn’t thinking straight. He knew he was supposed to go somewhere from here—his father had commanded it—but other than having some sense of the direction he was supposed to take—toward the Tiber River—he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be doing. What he had done most certainly wasn’t what his father had expected him to do. He didn’t remember that he wasn’t supposed to roam the streets in the dark. And it was dark now.

There were buckets of water nearby that were used to sluice down the gladiators when they returned from the arena. Vitas quickly dumped a bucket of water over his head, retied his loin cloth around his loins, pulled on his skirt, and, shaking his head to stop the buzzing—not completely successfully—stumbled out of the gladiator cells.

Somehow, he remembered the name Severus and something about lodging there if it was dark. The river port, the Emporium, flitted through his brain and he knew that the family friend, Rufus Sulla Severus, the apothecary, lived on the Via Galvani in the Testaccio section toward the Emporium. Rufus had always been very nice and attentive to Vitas when he had come to dinner at the Vipinas house. So, leaving the now-quiet colosseum, Vitas stumbled toward the river on the Via Galvani.

Vitas made it to Rufus’s door without incident and fairly fell into the doorkeeper’s arms there. When he was taken to the apothecary, Rufus immediately discerned what had happened to Vitas. The physical evidence was clear to one accustomed to seeing it. Rufus was both disappointed that he had not been first—he and Aelius had been going back and forth on the possibility of and fee for that—but he also was both relieved that Vitas had lost his virginity to men and thus could be had cheaper now and pleased that the young man had come to his doorstep.

“Come, lad,” he said. “You look totally done in. You must rest before you tell me what you have come for and what has befallen you on the way. I will show you to a bed and will give you something that will help you to sleep.”

The concoction that Rufus had to help Vitas sleep, something special of his own mixing that he used to control young men he debauched and ravished, put Vitas more into a yielding trance than into a sleep. The young man was aware of everything Rufus did with him, but he was in a state in which he didn’t much care—in fact, he enjoyed it—and couldn’t have defended himself if he did care. Rufus wasn’t as rough as the gladiators had been and he was more attentive to the young man receiving pleasure as well as he did.

With two torches burning beside the bed in a small bed chamber, Rufus laid the youth on his back, Vitas’s buttocks on the edge of the foot of the mattress, his thighs spread and his legs dangling down toward the stone floor. Vitas was naked other than his sandals that laced up to his knees. Rufus was naked too. The older man knelt on the floor between Vitas’s legs and lifted, squeezed, and separated the young man’s buttocks cheeks as he feasted on the youth’s cock, balls, and entrance. Vitas moaned and sighed and ran his fingers into the hair on the man’s head as Rufus prepared him. When the man was ready and in full erection, he stood, hovering over the small, beautiful, yielding youth underneath him and in his full control. Hands squeezing and separating the young man’s buttocks, Rufus lifted Vitas’s pelvis into position, lodged the bulb of his shaft in place, slid up and inside the young man’s still widely dilated channel, and immediately commenced a slow, languid dance of the fuck.

Vitas cried out in a groggy half objection half exultation and writhed under the man until Rufus was well saddled and had set a rhythm, and then the young man just lay there, yielding, taking more pleasure than pain from this, thanks to the special unguents Rufus was using on his passage. Rufus let his hands glide up the young man’s raised and spread legs. He grasped Vitas’s ankles and held his legs at full extension. Cooperating and now well versed in what to do, Vitas pressed his arms into the surface the bed at his sides, helping to keep his pelvis raised, and began to row with the fuck.

Rufus laughed and fucked on.

* * * *

Vitas’s descent into slavery was swift and not as his father, Aelius, had planned. Aelius had planned on a long period of “I might be persuaded to part with him” preparation, followed by playing one bidder off against the other, and then some close negotiations with two or three men, each being put with the young man for some flirting and display of Vitas’s considerable assets before finalizing a deal that would fatten the Vipinas family fortune. All of this would take Vitas at least to his twentieth birthday and considerable maturing of his body.

That didn’t happen.

On a morning less than two weeks after the delivery of the shields to the colosseum and the debauching of the nineteen-year-old Vitas both at the colosseum and in the home of the apothecary Rufus Janius Severus, events Vitas was careful not to reveal to his father, Vitas, along with his two older brothers and two sisters, were auctioned off in front of the family home right before the home itself and the family’s foundry were sold off to pay the Vipinas family debts. The family had been leveraged to the hilt upon promise of the arrival of the ship carrying the raw materials for armament production they had ordered, their own clients had not paid their bills, and their ship had not come in. It was presumed lost at sea.

The children of the family were sold as slaves, with the proviso they could be redeemed by their father should his fortunes—dependent on assets he no longer possessed—took a turn for the better. Aelius Vipinas retreated to the country estate of his wife’s family to lick his wounds and lament his losses.

The daughters went for virtually nothing as household slaves. But finding someone else to feed them was something. The two older brothers, skilled foundry workers, sold well. Surprisingly enough, bidding was steady on Vitas and he went for a high price too as a household slave, but everyone bidding and watching knew that, with the beauty of his body and his youth, “household slave” didn’t fully cover the duties he’d be put to.

And that proved to be the case.

The man winning the bid on him wasn’t his owner-to-be. He was an agent. Old African campaign general Claudius Appias Caecus did not go out in public anymore and certainly not to slave auctions. He had a particular need, though, which was to ensure his standing in the city. To do this, he needed to curry favor with those in power. He hadn’t existed as long as he had, maneuvering in the volatile political situation of the Caligula rule, without knowing how to curry favor among Rome’s elite.

The late-fifties gray, but still of military bearing Claudius Appias Caecus, his wife having died years before while Claudius was on campaign in Africa, had both a personal and a greater use for a fair, perfectly formed young man serving wine at his bachelor dinners. The old general had decided it was cheaper to buy his own male whore to entertain his friends with than to treat them to nights at a brothel.

* * * *

“Come, young man, pour me some wine.”

Vitas brought the wine ewer to the narrow couch. The general, Claudius Appias Caecus, clad only in a loincloth, was reclining on the couch. Vitas filled the man’s cup as Claudius reached out and cupped the young man’s buttocks. The general was well into his cups, but being a long-time military man, he could hold it. Claudius was a man a bit past sixty. His body was military muscular and battle scarred, if going a bit to the heavy from a retirement that included more than sufficient wine and meat and a tapering off of exercise. It was clear, however, that he still went to the gymnasium and practiced the arts of hand-to-hand combat when he was there. He had been a handsome man once. He was graying now, although there was little hair on his head to prove it. It could be seen in the salt-and-pepper matting on his chest, and Vitas would soon see it in the man’s pubic thatch.

It was Vitas’s first evening in the general’s villa. He supposedly was still a virgin—that’s what he’d been sold as, and his father hadn’t lied about that; Vitas had never told his father he’d been initiated—but the general was about to take care of that.

They were in the sumptuously decorated triclinium, the dining room, of the general’s Roman villa. The three interior walls were blood red, with scenes depicted on them that revealed the general’s interest—all of the scenes were of men pleasuring other men, all with military campaign backgrounds and armaments. A couple were of notable gladiators in the colosseum. Vitas thought he might recognize one or two of them, including The Nubian, from his own debauching there.

As the young man poured the wine, the general ran a hand up under Vitas’s fustanella, the only piece of clothing the lad wore other than a loincloth and the sandals that laced up to his waist. The hand paused long enough to unbind the loincloth, which fell away to the mosaic-tile floor, and then cupped one of Vitas’s buttocks cheeks again. The young man faltered only momentarily in pouring the wine, but he did not spill a drop.

“Your name is Vitas Vipinas, is it not?” Claudius asked.

“Yes, master, it is.”

“And you are how old?”

“Nineteen, master.”

“Felix tells me that you stood out at the slave auction as a saucy young man? Are you a saucy lad?”

“I’m not sure, master. I am who I am.”

“A newly designated slave?”

“Yes, master.”

“From a previously freehold family—in the honest trades?”

“Yes, master.”

“You seem to know how to serve at couch.”

“I have been trained in that service. My family had hopes for me—before they fell on bad times.”

“The training extended to that of a fully servicing house slave?”

“I think so, master.”

“Do you understand what I’m asking, Vitas?” Two fingers of the strong hand the general was squeezing Vitas’s buttocks with wandered into the young man’s crack and found and began rubbing the newly minted slave’s opening. He smiled to find that the rosebud of an opening dilated open for him. He fully owned the young man, so he wasn’t taking liberties, and a slave had nothing to say if his master wanted to lay him—or to mistreat him while laying him—but the general was finding it pleasurable that the slave seemed to know what was expected of him. Vitas trembled a bit, but he held in place. The general’s other hand was moving over the front of the young man’s skirt, finding the young man on the rise through the material of the fustanella. The general was on the rise as well.

Vitas knew where this was going. He knew what attributes of his had been emphasized by the auctioneer in selling him. He had, in fact, been in training for this eventuality. The general was commanding and attractive for his age. Vitas was prepared to make the best of the situation.

“But you’re still a virgin? I paid for a virgin.”

“Yes, I was trained on how to be and what to do but it was understood that I needed to keep my value.” It wasn’t true, of course, but Vitas had no idea what the general would do if he revealed what he’d already let men do—and he had never told his father. How would anyone know if Vitas had been schooled in how it would be and how he should take it the first time to make the man think it was real?

“I cannot be so sure of that,” the general said. “You open to the touch. That is not virginal.”

“My teachers prepared me—but not with the shaft of a man.”

“I see,” the general said, satisfied with the explanation, which was not uncommon from what the young man had said about his training.

Vitas apparently had been schooled well in how to take it as if the first time, because Claudius Appias Caecus didn’t question how he then took it.

The general was a rough military man, but he was a connoisseur when it came to taking a young man’s virginity, something he put into practice as often as he could. As he was holding Vitas close to his side when the lad put the wine ewer down on the table next to the narrow dining couch with a beefy hand, fingers now in the young man’s channel, clutching Vitas’s bare buttocks under his fustanella, Claudius undid his loincloth to show that he was in hard, upcurved erection. He took Vitas’s hand and put it on his cock, saying “pleasure me.”

Vitas did as he was told as the general leaned over and started playing the young man’s chest and nipples with his lips and teeth. The supposed deflowering of the young man transpired with Claudius pulling the young man onto his lap and onto his shaft, first facing away from him, one hand palming Vitas’s belly and the other cupping his chin, while Claudius buried his face in Vitas’s throat, planted his feet on the mosaic-tiled floor on either side of the couch, and slowly worked the young man with his cock, fucking him as gently, but as totally, as he could in the supposed first taking. Vitas did all of the shuddering, groaning, moaning, and sobbing that was expected when an older male deflowered a young man. The second time Claudius reversed the young man to facing him, and one hand palmed the small of Vitas’s back and the other cupped his head, and the two kissed as, Vitas, showing more boldness, fucked himself on the old man’s shaft.

“You have pleased me,” Claudius said after they were done and before the general took the young man to his bed chamber for continued pleasure taking through the night. “You will serve the purpose for which I bought you very nicely.”

“You bought me for some other purpose than this?” Vitas asked.

“For a purpose in addition to this—a more important purpose. I need to maintain my standing in Rome and that is very hard to do in the current reign. There are two young senators, Claudius Appias Caecus and Drusus Gellius Claustus, I wish to keep pleased. I know their preferences and you fit their desires. They are both young and handsome and fit. You will serve them whenever they come here to visit me.”

“Yes, master,” Vitas answered, lowering his eyes. He had found Claudius easy to take. The man had been more lover than dominator. If these senators were as Claudius described . . .

They were. Claudius and Drusus were both handsome young men. They both were heavenly endowed and they both were delighted to couch Vitas when they came to visit the general. In fact, after Vitas took up his household slave duties in the general’s villa, the two visited more often.

The only taxing part of this arrangement was that the two young senators wanted to do everything together. They visited together and they wanted to lay Vitas together, most often with Claudius on his back on the couch, with Vitas straddling his pelvis and sheathing his hard cock and with Drusus snuggled in behind Vitas, running his hard cock inside the young man’s channel on top of Claudius’s, and the two senators riding the young man hard together.

It didn’t take Vitas that long to adjust. He became quite content with the arrangement of one old general covering him as a lover and two young studs working him together, kissing and fondling each other as much as they did the young man.

* * * *

The test of Vitas’s contentment came several weeks later when, the gatekeeper off on an errand, Vitas answered a call at the door of the general’s villa.

“Father!” Vitas exclaimed. “You’re looking well.” And, indeed, Aelius Vipinas was looking well-dressed and prosperous.

“May I talk with your master?” Aelius asked.

“What about?” Vitas asked, standing in the doorway so that his father couldn’t pass.

“Wonderful news, son,” Aelius said. “The ship with our goods wasn’t lost. It came in. And we have received payment for our arming of the troops sent to Spain. Our fortunes are saved. I have redeemed your two older brothers and I have come to buy you back. That was guaranteed when you were sold. We can go back to life as it was. We have the villa and the forge again—and our clients are paying their bills.”

“My brothers were redeemed?” Vitas asked. “And my sisters as well?”

“Yes, yes. I have bought them all back and they are all back in the home.”

Vitas was the last to be redeemed. This wasn’t lost on the young man.

“I like it here, Father. I don’t wish to be bought back. Being a slave to Claudius Appias Caecus suits me well.”

“But, son, I came to . . .”

But Vitas didn’t hear the rest. He had closed the door in his father’s face. Time was too short to converse with the man further. Claudius and Drusus were expected that afternoon.