Vinicius kills Gulo and has the slaves flogged

Vinicius kills Gulo and has the slaves flogged after the party sent to retrieve Lygia returns without her. The violence does not recover her: it instead marks the limits of Vinicius’s authority, punishes those who cannot satisfy his demand, and intensifies the pursuit that follows. His response makes the conflict between possession and love visible before his later transformation begins.

The Failed Return

Vinicius waits in the atrium for the party bearing Lygia. When footsteps sound at the entrance, the slaves hurry in and gather against the wall, raising their hands and groaning. Vinicius rushes toward them and demands to know where Lygia is. The scene gives him no account of her whereabouts, only the party’s battered return and Gulo’s attempt to report that they fought.

Gulo’s words do not reach their conclusion. Vinicius seizes a bronze lamp and strikes him, killing him. The suddenness of the act turns disappointment into lethal punishment: Gulo has returned without Lygia, and Vinicius treats that failure as an offense to be answered rather than as evidence that the search has been resisted or defeated. His immediate grief and rage are bound together, but neither changes the coercive purpose driving him.

Punishment and Its Aftermath

After killing Gulo, Vinicius calls for whips. The order extends his violence from the messenger to the other slaves, who plead for mercy. The punishment continues through the house, which had been decorated with ivy and prepared for a feast; the sounds of flogging carry on almost until morning. The contrast between the intended celebration and the night’s punishment makes the household itself a setting for the collapse of restraint.

Petronius leaves the atrium rather than remain to watch. His disgusted response distinguishes him from Vinicius at this moment, though he does not stop the punishment. Once Petronius is gone, Vinicius does not sleep. He gathers more servants and rides out late at night to look for Lygia, passing through the Esquiline, the Subura, the alleys near Vicus Sceleratus, the area around the Capitol, the island reached by the Fabrician Bridge, and part of the Trans-Tiber district. The search fills the night, but he has no real expectation of finding her.

At dawn Vinicius orders Gulo’s body removed. He sends the slaves from whom Lygia had been taken to rural prisons, a punishment described as nearly worse than death. He then lies on a couch in the atrium and thinks about how to find and seize Lygia. Killing Gulo and punishing the slaves have brought him neither information nor control; the failure instead leaves him more fixated on recovering her.

What the Episode Reveals

The episode presents Vinicius’s desire as inseparable from the authority he assumes over others. He does not accept Lygia’s absence as a refusal or a limit; he regards losing sight of her as intolerable and responds by directing force at the people around him. His contradictory impulses—rage toward Lygia and longing for her—are described alongside fantasies of seizing and dominating her, revealing that his attachment has not yet become respect for her will.

The response also exposes the household’s unequal power. The enslaved people have little ability to answer Vinicius’s demand or protect themselves from his punishment. Gulo’s attempt to explain that they fought does not secure him a hearing, and the others’ pleas do not prevent the flogging. Their suffering is a consequence of Vinicius’s failed pursuit, not a means of bringing Lygia back.

Place in Vinicius’s Arc

Vinicius’s reaction establishes the severity of the conduct from which his later change must depart. At this point, he would rather imagine the city in ruins than accept that he may not possess Lygia; his pursuit is driven by a belief that desire entitles him to obedience. The night’s violence therefore forms an early measure of the distance between his existing habits and the more humane conduct he will eventually adopt.

The episode’s immediate outcome is not reconciliation or discovery but renewed pursuit. Vinicius searches through Rome, imprisons the slaves, and continues to plan how to seize Lygia. Its significance lies in this failed equation of force with love: violence can punish the people near her, but it cannot make her return or answer the question of what a relationship with her could mean.