the northwest end of Circus Maximus they veered westward and went along
the way leading across the Tiber on the ancient Pons Sublicius,
fashioned of great stones fitted together to span the swiftly flowing
muddy water. Near the bridge entrance the column turned left and
paralleled the stream to halt at the pier just below the Sublicius.
Quickly the legionaries went aboard the “Palmyra.”
Longinus’ troops were the last to embark, and within an hour the
“Palmyra” began slowly to shove its stern out into the stream. When the
ship was safely away from the pier, the hortator gave a sharp command,
and the long oars, manned by galley slaves chained to their three-tiered
benches, rose and fell in perfect cadence, with the starboard oarsmen
pushing forward and those on the port side pulling hard, so that the
“Palmyra’s” bow came around; soon the vessel was moving steadily
downstream.
Longinus and Cornelius, having stowed their gear, returned to the deck
to stand together on the port side near the stern. By now the vessel was
rounding the slight westward bend in the river and was passing the
Aventine Hill. Cornelius, watching the yellow waters churning in the
wake of the “Palmyra,” raised his eyes and pointed across the stern
toward the Imperial Palace, the western front of which they could see
jutting past the squared end of the Circus Maximus. The upper section of
the great palace was visible above the race course. “Longinus, I’m
surprised you’re leaving her in Rome. I thought that if you ever went
back to Palestine, you’d be taking Claudia with you.”
Longinus wondered if by some chance Cornelius had learned of the
Emperor’s plans for his stepdaughter and was trying now gently to probe
further. “But the night you came to her house for me was the first time
I’d seen her after returning from Germania,” he protested, laughing.
“Wouldn’t that be a little fast? She’s the Emperor’s stepdaughter, you
know.”
“Well, maybe I was imagining things.” Cornelius shrugged. “But she is a
beautiful woman.”
“I agree, Cornelius. The Bountiful Mother was lavish with her gifts to
the Lady Claudia.” He turned to lean against the rail. “What _I’m_
wondering, though, is why Herod didn’t marry Herodias and bring her
along.”
“Maybe he has married her. But I suspect that whether he has or not,
he’ll be returning to Rome for her before many months. That is, after
he’s made peace with the Tetrarchess and old King Aretas, her father.”
He grinned. “I’d wager, too, that you’ll be coming back for Claudia.”
Longinus laughed but made no comment. His friend, he reasoned, did not
know about Claudia and Pontius Pilate. Nor would he tell him yet.
Now the “Palmyra” was moving swiftly, its cadenced oars rising and
falling rhythmically to propel the vessel much faster downstream than
the current unaided would have borne it. They had come opposite the
thousand-foot-long Emporium huddled on the Tiber’s eastern bank, its
wharves crawling with slaves moving great casks and bales of merchandise
into the warehouses or bringing them out to be loaded aboard ships
preparing to slip down the Tiber and into the Great Sea at Ostia. Black
Ethiopians and Nubians, their sweating bodies shining as though they had
been rubbed with olive oil and naked except for brightly colored
loincloths, straggled at their tasks. Blond warriors brought from
Germania as part of some Roman general’s triumph, their skins now burnt
to the color of old leather, and squat, swarthy men from Gaul and
Dalmatia, from Macedonia and the Greek islands, captives of Roman
legionaries ranging far from the Italian mainland, pulled and shoved to
the roared commands of the overseers and the not infrequent angry
uncoiling of long leather whips.
“Did you ever realize, Longinus, what a comprehensive view you get of
Rome and the Empire from a ship going along the Tiber?” Cornelius nodded
toward the stern. “Look at those marble-crowned hills back there,
literally overrun with palaces, billions of sesterces spent in building
them, hundreds, thousands of lives used up, sacrificed, raising them one
above the other. The people in them, too, Longinus, and the
rottenness—smug hypocrisy, adherence to convention, infidelity,
unfairness, utter cruelty, depravity. Rome, great mistress of the world.
Hah!” He half turned and pointed toward the Emporium. “Those sweating
slaves over there would agree.” He gestured with opened hands. “Ride
down the Tiber and see Rome, glorious Mother Rome, from Viminal’s crown
to Emporium’s docks, eh?”
“You’re right,” Longinus smiled. “And it’s only because the gods have
decreed for us a different fate that you and I are not over there
heaving crates, or chained here pulling oars.” He leaned over the rail
and studied the rhythmical rise and fall of the long, slim oars. “No
doubt there are among these slaves several whose intelligence,
education, and culture are considerably greater than the hortator’s, and
I’m sure.... Look!”
Cornelius followed the direction of Longinus’ outstretched arm. One of
the oars had come up beneath a floating object and sent it spinning and
twisting in the churning muddy flood. Now another oar’s sharp blade
struck the object, ripping apart its once carefully folded wrapping; as
the oar cleared the surface, the wrapping unrolled, exposing the body of
a tiny infant, chalk-white in the yellow water. It spun giddily for a
moment, then sank.
“By the gods!” Cornelius shouted. “It’s an exposed baby girl!”
But now the small, lifeless body bobbed to the surface and for one
unruffled moment lay on its back, eyes wide-open and fixed, staring
upward unseeing toward the two centurions leaning over the ship’s rail.
In that same instant the oars descended, and the knife-sharp edge of one
near the stern sliced diagonally across the drowned infant; the oar
shivered with the unexpected added burden, but it bore the mangled small
corpse beneath the thick waters, and up through them rose a trickle of
dark crimson.
“She wasn’t dead when she was thrown in,” Cornelius said, “and that
wasn’t long ago. Perhaps from one of the bridges back there, or maybe a
wharf. Or even a boat ahead.” His shoulders trembled in an involuntary
shudder. “Longinus, I could kill a man in battle without blinking, but I
couldn’t throw an infant into the Tiber. By the gods, how can any man do
it?”
“Nevertheless, hundreds do it every year, Centurion. We were speaking of
those slaves over there on the Emporium’s docks and these galley slaves
rowing us. And this drowned baby, and countless others who simply lost
when the gods rolled the dice. The fickle gods, my friend, the
unfeeling, stonehearted gods.”
“Don’t blame the gods, Longinus. Blame rather Rome’s mounting vanity and
greed, her selfishness, cruelty.”
“You know I’m not blaming the gods, Cornelius; I have no more faith than
you have even in their existence. They are nothing but pale nobodies,
fabrications in which not even intelligent children believe.”
“Fabrications, yes. Our gods are inventions, but they serve a purpose
and are necessary.”
“Necessary?” The centurion’s face had twisted into a heavy scowl. “Why,
Cornelius?”
“Because they fill a place, supply a need, Longinus. It’s the nature of
man to look to some higher power, isn’t it, some greater intelligence?
Else why would one invent these gods; why would primitive peoples carve
them from wood and stone; why would we and the Greeks and the Egyptians
raise great temples to them?”
“Do you contend then that people worship these carved sticks and stones
as symbols of some higher intelligence and power rather than the carved
objects themselves, even primitive peoples? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Some—many, in fact—have become
confused, of course, and in seeking to worship this mysterious divinity
they go through a form or ceremony of worshiping the symbol. But what
I’m trying to say, Centurion, is that it is the nature of mankind to
look to something higher, something more intelligent, more powerful,
better, yes, than man himself, better even than such an exemplary man as
our beloved”—now his tone was sarcastic—“Emperor, or his most worthy
Prefect. And if man seeks such a being to worship—and all men, mind you,
even savages, even those wild tree worshipers in Britannia do it—doesn’t
it stand to reason that there should be such a being?”
The “Palmyra” had entered the smooth bending of the Tiber and was moving
rapidly toward the river’s nearest approach to Janiculum Hill, Rome’s
Jewish quarter on the west bank of the stream. Longinus pointed to the
steep rise of the hill and the plane before it cluttered with the
densely massed homes of thousands of Jews, many of them born in the
capital, others newly settled there. “It seems to me, Centurion, that
you’ve become an adherent of the Jewish one-god religion.”
His words amused Cornelius. “Other Romans at our post in Galilee have
charged me with the same thing. It came about, I suppose, from my
helping the Jews at Capernaum build their new synagogue.”
“Then surely you must be a member of their fellowship or synagogue ...
whatever they call it?”
“No, I’m no convert to the Jews’ religion, Centurion. I don’t belong to
the synagogue. I helped them, I told myself, in order to promote good
relations between the Jews in Galilee and the members of our small Roman
post. But maybe I had other reasons, too. There are many things about
their one-god religion that seem sensible and right to me. But there are
also practices among the Jews that I don’t approve of at all, practices
that seem cruel and senseless. Their system of sacrifices, for instance.
I can see no act of proper worship in slitting the throats of
innumerable sheep and cattle to appease an angry god....”
“I agree. But we do the same thing. Doesn’t the Emperor dedicate the
games by slitting the throats of oxen?”
“Exactly. But what is the good of such worship or ceremony or whatever
you may choose to call it? If there is a god to whom the sacrifice is
being made, what good does it do him, what pleasure could he possibly
receive from it?”
“I see nothing to any of it, Cornelius. Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Jewish,
forest worship in Britannia, whatever the system is; it’s all
superstition, delusion....”
“I grant you, maybe it is. But, Longinus, don’t you feel deep down
inside yourself that there must be some intelligence, some power, far
above man’s very limited intelligence and power, that created the earth
and the heavens and controls them? Else how did they get here in the
first place?”
“I don’t know, Cornelius. You’ve gone ahead of me, my friend. I never
gave much thought to matters like this.” The lines of his forehead
wrinkled into a frown. “But even if you _should_ feel that way, how
could you ever _know_? Have you seen a god, Centurion? Have you ever
felt one or heard one speak?”
“I’ve never seen one, Longinus. But I think I have felt and perhaps
heard one. There have been times when I was confident that I was
communicating with one.” Cornelius watched the spume thrown up by the
flashing oars as they cut into the muddy waters. He turned back to face
Longinus. “That’s the difficulty, you know, communication. How can one
get a grip upon a god—the god, if there be but one, and the way I see it
that is the only sensible answer—like those slaves down there grip the
oar handles? How can one hear a god, see him, taste him? Obviously, one
cannot, for this god, whether there be one or many, must be different
from man; he must be a spiritual being rather than a physical one. But
if he is a spirit, how can we of the physical world communicate with him
and he with us? There, my friend, is the problem.”
Longinus shook his head. “You’ve got me, Cornelius. I cannot imagine a
spirit, a being without a body, a something that is nothing.”
“Many persons can’t, Centurion. And that’s the main difficulty in
accepting the Jews’ Yahweh, their one god. He is a spirit, they say,
without physical form or substance. They believe in him, but how do they
know him, how do they learn what he’s like? In a word, if he does exist,
how can he be made comprehensible to man?”
Longinus smiled indulgently. “But you say you think you have felt one
and maybe heard one. Why?”
“I don’t know if I can explain. Maybe it goes back to the fact that my
first lessons were taught me by a Greek slave. He was purchased by my
father from a lot brought to Rome after one of those early rebellions.
This man was one of the wisest I have ever known. I shall never forget
his teaching concerning the gods. When we would speak lightly of our
Roman gods, old Pheidias would scold us. ‘Don’t speak disparagingly of
the gods,’ he would say, even though he himself did not believe in them.
I can still remember his words. ‘The gods,’ he said, ‘are symbols of
man’s efforts to attain a higher life, a more noble plane of living. The
good gods are the symbols of the good attributes in man; evil gods
symbolize the base passions. Therefore, hold communion with the good
gods, and seek to avoid contact with the evil ones.’”
“But how does that teaching explain what you feel?”
“Wait,” Cornelius smiled, then continued. “Sometimes Pheidias would
confide in us and talk in more intimate terms of his own philosophy. At
such times he would tell us that his own gods were merged into one
omnipotent and omniscient good god, a spirit without a body, everywhere
present. This one god was a synthesis of the good, the true, and the
beautiful. And though he could not be felt, as I feel this rail
here”—Cornelius ran his hand along the ship’s rail—“and though he was
not to be seen or heard as one sees or hears another person, he was
nevertheless even more real. ‘For the only things that are real,’ my
tutor would say, ‘are the intangible things, and the only imperishable
things are those that have no physical being. Truth, for example. Truth
has no body. Who can hold truth in his hand? And yet truth is eternal,
unchangeable, indestructible. And love? Who can destroy love; who can
defeat it? Yet can you put love in a basket and carry it from the shop?
And who can measure a modius of love or weigh out twelve unciae?’”
Calmly he regarded Longinus. “And I ask you, my friend, who can? What,
after all, is more indestructible, unchangeable, immortal than the
intangible?”
The “Palmyra” was moving around the river’s bend now and gaining speed
as it came into the straight stretch at a point even with the
right-angled turning of the city’s south wall. “But forgive me,
Longinus,” Cornelius said lightly. “I hadn’t meant to be giving you a
lecture on the nature of the gods or the one god.”
“It has been entertaining and enlightening, my friend. And it has
convinced me that you do hold with this one-god idea. Those Jews at
Capernaum, cultivating the plant that came up from the seeds that old
tutor sowed in your childhood, have brought it along to blooming.” He
laughed and tapped the rail with the palm of his hand. “Well, perhaps
it’s an advance—from the Roman gods to the Jews’ one god—in
superstition.” But then the patronizing smile was gone, and he was
serious. “I don’t know, Cornelius. This one-god scheme does have its
merits, I can see. I would like to believe, and I wish I could, that
such an all-powerful, all-wise, all-good being rules the universe.
But”—he paused, and a heavy frown darkened his countenance—“Cornelius,”
he began again, “I keep thinking of those slaves back there on the
Emporium docks, countless slaves all over Rome and throughout the
Empire, beaten, maimed, killed at the whims of their masters, yes, and
that baby thrown into the Tiber, numberless unwanted babies exposed to
die—drowned, thrown to the beasts, bashed against walls—and yet you say
that one good god rules, one all-powerful and all-knowing god, one
_good_ god.” He thrust forth a quivering, challenging forefinger almost
under his friend’s nose. “Then tell me, Cornelius, why does your good
one god send all this ignorance, this stupidity, this cruelty, this
despicable wickedness on the world? Tell me why; give me one logical,
sensible reason, and I’ll fall down at the invisible and intangible feet
of your great one god and worship him in utter subjection.”
“I can’t tell you, Longinus. That very question has troubled me, too. I
have wondered, and I’ve tried to explain it for myself. I don’t know how
old Pheidias explained it, or even if he did. I don’t recall our ever
challenging him on that point. But it may be that this one god—if there
be one, mind you—does not ordain all the things that happen in the
world. It may be that he is even sorrowful, too, because babies are
thrown into the Tiber, because men are cruel and heartless toward other
men....”
“Then if he is all-powerful, Cornelius, why does he permit it? You say
he doesn’t will it. Then why does he allow it?”
Cornelius looked across the deck to the shore line on the starboard side
and for a long moment silently considered his friend’s question. “I
cannot say, Centurion; it’s a mystery to me. Could it be, though, that
the answer, if there be any answer, lies in this god’s determination to
give man his freedom? Could it be that even though he is hurt when man
abuses the freedom given him, he feels that his children must be free,
nevertheless, to work out their destinies? Maybe some such reasoning
might explain it. I don’t know.” He shook his head sadly. “What do you
think?”
“I disagree, Cornelius. You say that this one god would not order an
infant thrown into the river. I agree, but that is not enough. A good
god would not permit it.” His grim expression relaxed, but he was still
serious. “No, when one sees the condition in which countless men live,
the utter unfairness of things, one cannot logically believe in the
existence of such a god as you have described. Indeed, it is more
logical to believe in our Roman gods than in the god of your old tutor
or the Yahweh of the Jews, in our good ones contending with the evil
ones”—he shrugged—“with the evil ones usually winning. But it is even
more logical, Cornelius, to believe in no gods at all.”
“You have a good argument, Longinus. But it seems to me that we
invariably come back to what I said when we started this gods
discussion. If there is no higher intelligence, no supreme power, then
how did all this”—he swept his arm in a wide arc—“how did we, the world,
the sun and moon and stars, everything, how did it all come into
existence in the first place? By accident? Bah! And if not by accident,
how? Answer me that, Longinus.”
“I can’t answer you. But why should I? What difference does it make? If
this good god does exist but does not rule, if he does not enforce a
good way of living among men, if he does not protect helpless babies or
captured peoples—and obviously he doesn’t—is the world any better off
than if no gods existed in the first place?” He smiled complacently.
“But, Cornelius, I have no quarrel with your attachment to your tutor’s
strangely Yahweh-like god. Some day when I visit you in Capernaum I may
go with you to the synagogue or even the Temple at Jerusalem. I may
even,” he added with a grin, “offer a brace of doves for the sacrifices.
Or would your Yahweh insist on my offering a young lamb?”
“_My_ Yahweh? But I’m no Jew, Longinus. The god of old Pheidias has a
greater appeal to me than Yahweh. Yahweh is too stern, too unbending, as
they interpret him. But maybe they interpret him wrong, the priests who
lead the worship, or maybe I interpret their interpretation wrong. It
may be that the true one god”—he smiled—“if there be one, my friend, has
never been properly interpreted to man. Maybe we just don’t know him,
what he’s like.” He shrugged and stepped away from the rail. “But I
think we’ve had enough of gods for one day, don’t you agree? Let’s go
inside. I’ve got some work to do before we reach Ostia; you probably
have some, too.”
As they started toward the cabin, Longinus turned to look back. Rome was
entirely behind them now, off the port stern, but still clearly in
sight. Above the city wall and the Aventine Hill beyond and now lifted
clear of the Circus Maximus, the sprawling great Imperial Palace atop
Palatine Hill flaunted itself in the sunshine.
_Had Claudia arisen? Was she now in her bath or in the solarium having
her hair dressed or her nails manicured? Was she in the peristylium or
on the couch in the exedra? Was she making preparations, not too
reluctantly perhaps, for her wedding with Pontius Pilate?_
_... Yes, and back there somewhere in that press of humanity were
Pontius Pilate and the Prefect Sejanus, by all the gods. By all the
gods, indeed. Good gods and evil gods, good to Pilate, evil to me...._
Longinus abruptly faced about. Ahead, straight over the bow of the
“Palmyra,” gaining momentum now in a channel clearing of the jam of
traffic within the city’s walls, was Rome’s port of Ostia, where the
great mainsail would be hoisted aloft to catch the winds that would help
speed the vessel eastward. Ahead and many days and long Great Sea miles
distant were the coasts of Palestine ... and Caesarea. Ahead, too,
despite all the gods, real or fancied, and despite Sejanus and Pontius
Pilate, was Claudia.
Palestine
[Illustration: decorative glyph]
10
Longinus and Cornelius strolled over to the port bow rail as the
“Palmyra,” its mainsail sliding slowly down the mast behind them, swung
around the end of the north breakwater and skimmed lightly across the
harbor toward the docks at Ptolemaïs.
“I thought Caesarea would be our first stop.”
“We’re putting in here only long enough to drop some passengers and a
quantity of goods Herod’s brought from Rome,” Cornelius revealed.
Longinus looked up in surprise. “Herod’s goods?” he asked.
“Furnishings for the palace at Tiberias—bronze tables, chairs,
decorative pieces, of Herodias’ choosing, I suspect. In fact, some of it
probably came from her house, favorite things to make her feel more at
home in Tiberias. Putting those crates ashore here will save us the
trouble of carrying them on to Joppa and Jerusalem.”
“But when the Tetrarchess discovers that Herodias had a hand in
selecting the things....” Longinus grimaced, laughing. “Say, are you
letting your men go ashore here?”
“Only for a few minutes, just to let them stretch their legs while the
vessel’s unloading. Don’t worry, they’ve been told to stay in the wharf
area. If they were to get near the taverns and brothels, we’d be here
all night!”
Already the soldiers of the two centuries, impatient to get ashore ever
since they had first spotted Mount Carmel towering above the promontory
jutting out from the Phoenician coast, were lining the “Palmyra’s”
rails. Cornelius beckoned to one of his legionaries.
“Decius, call out a detachment—twelve men should be enough—to be ready
as soon as the ‘Palmyra’ docks to take charge of transporting the
shipment of goods the Tetrarch Herod is sending to his palace at
Tiberias. His steward Chuza will put several of the palace servants to
unloading it and will arrange for obtaining carts and beasts to move it.
You will be concerned only with guarding the caravan. But be on the
alert every moment, Decius. See that you aren’t surprised by some
lurking band of thieves lying in wait for you. If anything should happen
to this shipment, by the gods, we’d never hear the end of it; word would
get back to Rome and the Prefect himself would know about it.” Upon
delivering the goods at the Tetrarch’s palace, he added, Decius should
take the detachment to the garrison post and there await his arrival
with the remainder of the century, which would be escorting Herod to
Jerusalem and from there northward to his Galilean capital.
When some two hours later the unloading had been completed and the other
legionaries had returned to the ship, Decius stood with his detachment
beside the piled crates and casks and waved good-by to his comrades as
the “Palmyra” moved slowly away from the wharf and then, gaining speed,
headed on a straight course toward the harbor mouth. The next day the
vessel cleared the long breakwater thrust far out into the Great Sea to
provide a safe harbor at Caesarea, and Longinus and his century went
ashore. While the legionaries were assembling their gear, Cornelius
stood with him on the pier.
“Come visit us at Tiberias, Longinus. You can contrive some mission that
will warrant your being sent, can’t you?” he asked, then added,
“Herodias will probably be coming out from Rome before long. I suspect
Herod will be going back for her as soon as he can arrange with the
present Tetrarchess for her to be supplanted....”