Still naked and shackled I am put in a cage on top of a wagon after I am bought. I notice my new owner has a large travel retinue... freshly-bought slaves as well as what look like old and trusted attendants. The other slave he has bought follow behind my cage, on foot, coffled together and ladden like mules. Dominus has bought other things and the new slaves must bear them on the road. Armed guards walk on either side of the caravan. Whenever one of them looks at me my eyes drop instantly, and I shrink back like a pathetic coward. There is not an ounce of fight or resistance in me. I am a slave and I know I will die a slave.
The journey takes a couple of days.
Finally we arrive at the latifundium... I see tilled fields stretching along the gentle hills all the way to the horizon, where the forested Apennines rise like a dark wall. There is grass everywhere, the weather is lovely... and then I see them, along the road, right at the point where it branches away from the main route and enters the latifundium.
Crosses. I see ten to twelve of them, and ten to twelve bodies nailed to them. Half seem dead already, or at least unconscious. The smell of shit, piss and rusty blood fills my nose. I cower in the cage, against the bars, I hide my face in my hands. I hear one of them, a woman, wailing in agony, though I do not understand her words. Her legs are purple, bloated and misshapen; they had been broken.
The fear is like a drug. It literally makes me dizzy. I look at my hands and they do not seem my own. Only the weight of the shackles tell me it's my body. My dread and terror are suffocating. The feeling... it is like being mesmerized. It is like being spellbound. I feel detached from reality.
When they open the cage and tell me to come out I notice the crosses are far away now, yet still visible against the sun. We are before the villa. Every order I receive... I feel a pang of fear spreading cold inside me, and my body reacts before my mind. It feels as if I am just a spectator of my own actions. Because I am hypnotized by terror.
The first thing that happens is that I am tattooed. There is a workshop or shed for a blacksmith not far from the villa; an old slave woman tattooes me there, with an inked needle. She pricks my calf until I bear a name along it, on the outside: CASTVS IGNOTVS SCANIA.
Then the smith collars me. It is a band of dark, thick metal that he bends into rough shape with a pair of tongs. Then I place my head on an anvil, with the open collar's overlapping ends behind my neck. With another set of tongs he punches a rivet through the ends, closing it forever.
My collar is like this:
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