The Testimonium

by Lewis Ben Smith

  The Catholic scholar turned to the lab table and looked at the ancient weapon. “The rehydration tank will be an absolute necessity to preserve that scabbard,” he said. “But, unfortunately, it would be terribly detrimental to the metal blade inside it. We are going to have to unsheathe the sword and stabilize it and the scabbard separately.”

  He turned to the tray and donned the protective gloves again. He carefully gripped the scabbard at its top, where the metal sheathing extended down over three inches. Then he took the pommel of the sword in his other hand, and firmly pulled the ancient weapon from its sheath. The blade had a few rust spots on it, but was remarkably well preserved, still gleaming for much of its length.

  Rossini gasped. “That is the best-preserved example of a Roman gladius I have ever seen,” he said. “Perhaps the best ever found.”

  “Think how many battlefields it saw, how much bloodshed, how much history!” said Josh. “I am in serious danger of losing my scientific objectivity and whooping like a crazy Cowboys fan, back when Cowboys fans still had something to go crazy over!”

  Isabella laughed. Even those who knew nothing about American football still knew who the Cowboys were. “I think we all feel like that—maybe not the Cowboys part, but the excitement, yes! The sword of Julius Caesar! That is even better than finding Excalibur!”

  MacDonald glared at them. “Could one of you quit mooning over this thing long enough to set another tray up here?” he asked.

  Josh quickly put another tray on the table, and the gladius was placed upon it. Then the Catholic antiquarian opened another rehydration tank, set the controls, and slid the first tray with the scabbard still resting on it into the tank. “Now THAT was a good morning’s work!” he said. “Let’s take a break, eat a bite, and prepare to deal with the reliquary.”

  Noble Caesar, anyone who has lived in Rome for any time has seen a Roman mob in action at some point or other. Our city is famous for its fickle masses. But I have never seen such raw hatred for any human being expressed so loudly and strongly as this crowd of Jews screamed its hate at Jesus. Ironic, since a few days before half the city had been ready to crown him as their king. Once more, they took up that awful cry: “CRUCIFY! CRUCIFY!”

  “Why?” I shouted. “What evil has he done?”

  One of the priests stepped forward—although not so far as to step past the threshold of the Praetorium. Hounding an innocent man to his death was apparently fine according to his religious convictions, but setting foot in the home of a pagan like me would have made him unclean! “We have a law,” he shouted. “And by that law he ought to die, for being a man, he made himself out to be a god!”

  The situation was deteriorating, so I removed Jesus from their sight—as well as myself. They were determined to see blood, it seemed. Very well, I would give them blood. But not as much as they wanted. I turned to the Brutus Appius, the Centurion who led my household guard. “Take him and flog him,” I said. “But don’t kill him!”

  The young Jew that had been brought in to interpret leaped to his feet in protest. I had forgotten he was there, but I looked at him now and saw his raw fear, barely held at bay in his concern for his master. “I am trying to save his life,” I said, as gently as I could, and retreated to my quarters until the deed was done.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The four archeologists stepped across the ancient flagstones to the entrance of the chamber. MacDonald looked askance at the narrow, uneven opening the earthquake had created. “One thing is certain,” he said. “We will have to widen that opening in order to remove the reliquary.”

  Isabella replied, “From the inside the original outline of the ancient door is clearly visible. It appears that Tiberius’ steward actually added an entire layer of brick to the outside of this exterior wall from one end to the other to completely disguise the opening when he sealed up the chamber. We will restore the doorway to its original dimensions when we finish our excavations.”

  They stepped inside and turned on the lights. The ancient cabinet sat in the rear of the chamber, just as it must have rested there the last time Tiberius Caesar opened it. Slowly they approached. This was the last untouched artifact from the ancient chamber. It could hold a priceless treasure trove of history, or it might be completely empty. Another moment would tell the tale! None of them wanted to step forward at first, but finally Isabella closed in, and Josh followed. She had her camera recording as she narrated.

  “We are inside the Tiberius writing chamber of Villa Jovis,” she said. “It is 1300 hours local time. The cabinet, or reliquary, that you see before you has not been opened or moved since the initial discovery three days ago. It has two doors that appear to open outwards. The seam is snug but the two doors do not quite meet in the middle. Directly below the embossed Roman eagle there appears to be a small, conventional bronze latch or clasp. I am going to now ask my colleague, Dr. Parker, to very carefully see if the latch will still open.”

  Josh put on his gloves and gently reached out to raise the top part of the latch. It was funny, he thought to himself, how some tool forms were so functional that they had not changed in 2,000 years. This latch was slightly more ornate but not that different in shape from the screen door latches on his grandfather’s old home in Oklahoma. The latch resisted very slightly, but then there was the tiniest pop as the corrosion that had started to fuse the hook and eye together gave way, and the hook rose up easily.

  He looked at Isabella, who began speaking for the benefit of the camera once more. “Now we shall open the cabinet and begin our inventory of its contents,” she said, giving him the nod. He grasped the door firmly by its top edge and pulled outwards. There was a tortured creak as the ancient hinges moved for the first time in twenty centuries, and the door swung open with a puff of dust. The shock of discovery was followed by a tremendous crush of disappointment.

  “RATS!” Josh exclaimed. “Quod sugit!!!”

  The three Latin scholars stared at him, and as they saw what he had seen first, each reacted. Isabella let out a small sob, Duncan swore in Gaelic, and Rossini just shook his head.

  “That sucks indeed, my young friend!” he finally said.

  The cabinet had been divided into numerous compartments and cubbies, and it looked as if all of them, at one time, had held scrolls and ancient documents. But the wooden partitions between them had been chewed through, and the priceless trove of information had been shredded to line the two large rat’s nests that occupied each lower corner of the reliquary. Isabella stooped and scooped up the mummified carcass of one of the offending beasts. “Stupid, roditore meno male!!!!” she screamed, and flung it against the back wall of the chamber, where it broke into pieces and settled to the floor in a cloud of dust.

  Father MacDonald finally spoke. “They are stupid, evil little rodents,” he said. “But all is not lost. I have retrieved substantial content from documents in far worse shape than these,” he said. “There is still a great deal of information here, but it will be the work of years to piece it together and decipher it. What a sad disappointment!”

  Josh spoke up. “Well, I see where the key fits in,” he said, pointing. All four of them looked to see the small compartment, lined on the sides with dull metal, which occupied about half of the space at the top right hand side of the reliquary. Its ornately carved, bronze-plated door was intact and firmly shut. There was a keyhole in the center of it.

  “Thank God!” Isabella said. “It looks as if the rats did not get into it. Unless . . .” For a moment she forgot proper field techniques. She handed her camera to Josh, grabbed the ancient cabinet with both hands, and slid it out from the wall about a foot. She shone her light on the solid wood back. There were two holes gnawed into the paneling near the bottom, showing where the rodents had gained entrance—but neither was directly behind the locked compartment. She gave a huge sigh of relief. The others stared at her, speechless. Finally she laughed. “All right,” she said, “that was one small breach of professional field pr
ocedure! Let’s do it right from here on out! I am going to suggest that we carefully remove all the shredded documents first. We’ll search for any metal or non-perishable artifacts that might have gotten buried in the rat’s nests. After the cabinet is completely cleaned out except for the locked compartment, we will transfer the cabinet to the mobile lab and see if the key still works. Hopefully the key we have actually fits that lock and not some other long-lost treasure chest from elsewhere in the Villa Jovis!”

  Over the next few hours, the three archeologists brought several acid-free cardboard boxes over from the lab and carefully lifted out the shredded ancient texts, separating papyrus and parchment fragments from wood chips, bits of straw, and the other odds and ends the rats had dragged into their nest. Their spirits lifted a bit when they saw that there were still a few decent-sized pieces of scroll amid the more finely shredded fragments. MacDonald paused as he studied a piece about three inches across. It was written in a clear, strong hand that was a marked contrast to the shaky, almost illegible Latin of the Tiberius manuscript.

  “It appears to be part of a letter to Tiberius,” he said. “Judging from context, it is from Augustus himself. It says: ‘Meum filium, meis est quod assistere Agrippa in vitali labore . . . Romani aquilae perdidit ad Parthos per Crassus, Saxa, et Antonius. Eorum damnum est ictu ad Romae dignitas quod . . . An bello aut agere, debent reversus!’ One end of the fragment is rather chewed up, but a rough translation would be ‘My son, my command is that you assist Agrippa in his vital effort’ . . . there’s a bit missing here . . . ‘Roman eagles lost to the Parthians by Crassus, Saxa, and Antony. Their loss is a blow to Rome’s dignitas that . . .’ Rats ate a few words here too . . . ‘whether by battle or negotiation, they must be returned!’ One of Tiberius’ earliest military assignments was the expedition into Armenia, where he was second in command to Marcus Agrippa, in an effort to recover the lost standards of the legions that had been defeated in Rome’s earlier conflicts with the Parthians. These were his marching orders!”

  “What a treasury of history those rats destroyed!” said Josh. “That is the one thing that none of us suspected!”

  “Years ago, I did a restoration project for a monastery in Spain,” said MacDonald. “They had a cabinet full of beautiful medieval books, laboriously copied in Carolingian minuscule during the ninth century, that had been destroyed by rats, just like these scrolls. Yet, amazingly, within ten years, eighty percent of the writing was recovered.”

  “I know that is true,” said Isabella. “But the pristine nature of the other finds in the chamber let us get our hopes up so high! I envy you your optimism. I can’t look at this shredded parchment without feeling sick to my stomach.”

  Josh studied a fragment he had recovered, slightly larger than the one MacDonald had read. It was in the same hand as the Tiberius letter, but clearer and less shaky. He read aloud: “‘Non curare quod senatus dicit, Seiani, Sit maiestatis iudiciis permanere! At Romae in putredinem et purgare intendo tantum de putredine possum antequam moriar, ut non pudeat coram Divus Iulius—Si ad illum senem triumphalem vere Dei esse!’ Hmm. This one is actually a complete paragraph from a letter Tiberius wrote. It reads something like ‘I do not care what the Senate says, Sejanus, let the treason trials continue! Rome is rotten to the core, and I intend to purge as much of the rot as I can before I die, that I may not be ashamed to stand before the Divus Julius—if the old triumphator is truly the God we make him out to be!’ It appears that Tiberius’ reputation as a tyrant may not have been an exaggeration!”

  Over the course of the afternoon, they filled three boxes with papyrus fragments and one with pieces of a parchment document. This last one was badly shredded, but the few words they were able to read appeared to be bits of erotic poetry in Greek. They also filled another box with various other scraps and pieces—some gnawed leather, two coins, and a fair amount of fabric that appeared to have been part of a woman’s gown at one time. In the heart of one of the nests was a golden chain with a cameo portrait of a Roman woman in marble, on a background of black onyx or obsidian. It was housed in a golden mount that was inscribed on the reverse side with the name “Vipsania Agrippina.”

  Isabella looked at it sadly. “I remember reading in Suetonius’ biography of Tiberius,” she said. “He married Vipsania, the daughter of Augustus Caesar’s most trusted advisor, Marcus Agrippa, and was deeply in love with her. But when Agrippa died, Caesar ordered young Tiberius to divorce his bride and marry Agrippa’s widow Julia—the only daughter of Caesar Augustus, and the young stepmother of Tiberius’ first wife! It was a miserable marriage, and according to Suetonius, Tiberius pined for Vipsania for the rest of his days and never forgave Augustus.” She gave Rossini a dark look. “That’s what old men get for meddling in the romantic affairs of their juniors!” she said.

  He laughed out loud, and Josh looked at both of them in puzzlement. They laughed at his bewilderment. “It is, how would you say in America, an inside joke!” Isabella told him.

  By the end of the day, the ancient cabinet had been carefully cleaned out and all the fragments of history boxed up for reconstruction. As near as they could tell, there had once been at least five papyrus scrolls in the reliquary, plus the parchment one, at least two garments, a few coins, and the necklace. There were also some pieces of grain and seeds that the rats had brought in at some point. These were bagged separately and turned over to Dr. Apriceno.

  When they were done, Isabella addressed the team back in the mobile lab. “I think we are done for the day,” she said. “I suggest we repair to the village for supper and then retire for the night.”

  “Who spends the night on the mountain this time?” said Josh. “I certainly don’t mind.”

  Rossini spoke up. “I slept in a five-star hotel last night,” he said, “with the most amazing room service! I feel I need to sleep in a tent to atone for such luxury! But I will join all of you at Mrs. Bustamante’s for dinner first.”

  Closing up the chamber and weighing down the tarp that covered the entrance, the four were joined by Simone Apriceno as they ambled down the trail together. She commiserated with them over the loss of the scrolls from the reliquary. But she waxed eloquent about her initial findings. “I found a very few modern spores on top of the dust deposits near the door,” she said. “Those doubtless blew in there within twenty-four hours of the chamber being torn open. But all the core samples show nothing but stone dust, soil, and a perfectly stratified series of pollen deposits scattered throughout. All the deepest samples are pure first century flora—not a bit of contamination!”

  “What about the rat’s nest?” asked Josh.

  “Those samples appear to be a bit more recent than the rest, but still pretty old,” said Apriceno. “The seeds from the nest appear to be consistent with early medieval agricultural crops. But we will be able to carbon date the rat carcass itself, despite its being flung against a stone wall and broken into several pieces!”

  “Hey!” said Dr. Sforza. “I was provoked!”

  They made their way down the trail to Dr. Rossini’s house and took turns showering in the two bathrooms. Josh turned on the American ESPN satellite feed on the living room television while the two ladies were still getting cleaned up, just to see what was happening in the world of sports. The Rangers were opening their season with a nice winning streak, thanks to improved pitching, but the Mavs were barely above .500 as they stumbled toward the playoff season with hopes dimming. As for the Cowboys—well, Josh had not had his hopes up since the mid-90s, and reports from the upcoming draft gave him no reason to change that assessment.

  Rossini came in, his hair still damp, and glanced at the screen. “I don’t know why I even get that channel,” he said. “I don’t even care for our European sports that much, and as for your American games—well!” He gave a hearty snort.

  Josh laughed. “I’m a one-town fan,” he said. “My dad’s pastorates always seemed to orbit the North Texas area, so the Mavs, the Cowboys, and th
e Rangers are my teams. I have tried watching hockey, but I just can’t seem to get into it at all. Mind if I catch some real home news?” He switched the TV over to the American CNN feed. The President, sincere and eloquent seeming as always, was pledging to reduce the deficit in a responsible manner, if only Congress would start acting in a more bipartisan manner and support his agenda. Funny, coming from a man who had borrowed five trillion dollars in his first four years, and seemed determine to pass that mark in his second administration! Josh turned the TV off. “Sorry,” he said to Rossini. “It was spoiling my appetite!”

  “Not a fan of your country’s Democratic Party, are you?” asked Rossini.

  “Not in its current incarnation,” Josh said. “They’ve had some good ideas in the past, but here lately all they seem to know how to do is tax, spend, and borrow. And some Republicans aren’t much better!”

  “Count yourself fortunate,” the Italian archeologist said. “My country has been through nearly seventy governments since World War II!”

  Josh looked at him. “Maybe you can borrow our Constitution,” he said. “We don’t use it much anymore!”

  They laughed together, and then rose to greet the two ladies as they emerged, freshly changed, from the guest room. Moments later, Father MacDonald joined them from the main bedroom. Rossini beamed at the group. “It has been entirely too long since I have entertained this many guests!” he exclaimed. “Let us go dine together and be merry!” He offered Dr. Apriceno his arm and escorted her out the door. Josh looked at Isabella and did likewise. Father MacDonald shook his head in amusement and brought up the rear as they walked down the street to Mrs. Bustamante’s restaurant.