The Roman sotk-2

by Mika Waltari

  Publius Celer raised his eyebrows and smiled crookedly.

  “Are you overcome by the strain of your duties?” he said. “Why are you so excited? Your age and your physique will not stand unnecessary emotion.”

  Junius Silanus was indeed breathing heavily and behaving very badly, as disappointed men are apt to do. But Publius Celer tried to gloss over it all in a jocular tone of voice.

  “On the way to Claudius’ funeral,” he said, “Nero, as his son, made the customary funeral oration at the forum. Whether he himself had prepared it or whether he had had help from Seneca, I could not say. Despite his youth, Nero has shown evidence of poetic talent of his own. Anyhow, he spoke in clear tones and with graceful gestures. The fathers, the knights and the people all listened attentively while Nero praised Claudius’ famous family and the consulates and triumphs of his ancestors, his own learned interests and his regime’s freedom from external strife. Then Nero skillfully changed his tone and began, as if forced by custom, to praise the wisdom, genius and statesmanship of Claudius. No one could help laughing, and gusts of laughter con-standy interrupted Nero’s memorial speech. They even laughed when he complained of his own irreplaceable loss, his grief and heaviness of heart. The funeral procession became nothing but a farce. No one tried to hide his enormous relief that Rome was at last rid of a cruel, pleasure-loving and feebleminded old dodderer.”

  Junius Silanus crashed his gold goblet down on the edge of the couch so violendy that he splashed wine in my face.

  “Claudius was my contemporary,” he snarled, “and I cannot allow his memory to be insulted. When the fathers of the Senate come to their senses, they’ll see that the seventeen-year-old son of a power-mad woman cannot rule over the world.”

  But Celer was not annoyed.

  “Claudius has been proclaimed a god,” he said. “Who can speak ill of a god? In the Elysian fields, Claudius stands divinely above criticism and insults to his person. You should know that, Proconsul. Seneca’s brother Gallio remarked, presumably in jest, that Claudius was hauled up to heaven with a hook in his jaw, in the same way we usually drag a traitor’s body from Tullianum to the Tiber. But that kind of joke only goes to show that once again we may laugh freely in Rome.”

  While Junius Silanus was still spluttering with fury, Publius changed his tone and said with a warning note in his voice, “It would be better if you drank a toast to the Emperor and forgot your rancor, Proconsul.”

  At his behest, Helius brought another gold goblet and handed it to Celer and Celer mixed the wine before us all, raised the goblet to his own lips and then passed it to Silanus, as he had dented his. Silanus emptied the goblet in two draughts, as usual, for he could not refuse to drink to the Emperor.

  After setting the goblet to one side, he was about to continue on the same theme when all at once the veins in his temples swelled, and clutching his throat, he groaned, unable to say a word, his face darkening and turning blue. We stared in terror at him. Before anyone had time to move, he fell to the floor, his fat body jerking once or twice before he let out his last rattling breath there in front of our eyes.

  We had all leapt to our feet in fright, quite incapable of speech, and only Publius Celer kept his head.

  “I warned him not to get so excited,” he said. “He was overstrained as a result of this unexpected news and took much too hot a bath before the meal. But let us regard this heart attack as a good omen rather than a bad one. You all heard with what rancor he spoke of the Emperor and his mother. His younger brother Lucius took his own life in almost the same way in his day, just to spoil the wedding day of Claudius and Agrippina, when Claudius had broken off his betrothal to Octavia.”

  We all began to talk at once of how the heart of an overweight man can burst from too much excitement, and how the face suddenly darkens. Helius fetched Silanus’ physician, who had already retired to bed in accordance with the Cos people’s healthy rules of life. He arrived looking frightened, turned the body over, asked for more light and looked distrustfully down Silanus’ throat. Then he covered his head with his mantle without a word.

  When Publius Celer questioned him, he admitted in a broken voice that he had often warned his master against gorging himself with good food, and confirmed that all the signs pointed to a heart attack.

  “This unfortunate episode should be recorded on a physician’s certificate,” said Publius Celer, “and also in an official document which we shall all sign as witnesses. An unexpected death causes evil tongues to wag when it is a question of a well-known person. So it should be noted down that I myself tasted the wine before passing it on to him.”

  We looked at one another in confusion. It had certainly looked as if Celer had first raised the goblet to his lips, but on the other hand he could quite easily have pretended to do so if the goblet had contained poison. I have described here exactly what happened, because afterwards it was said that Agrippina had sent Celer with the specific task of poisoning Silanus. Certainly his death occurred at a very convenient moment.

  Gossip maintained that Celer had bribed both Helius and the physician, and my name was also dragged into the case with a malicious reference to my friendship with Nero. The trial of Celer, which at the request of the Senate was held to investigate the matter thoroughly, was postponed year after year and was finally shelved when Celer died of old age. I should have been glad to have stood witness on his behalf. Helius was later given a prominent position in Nero’s service.

  The Proconsul’s sudden death naturally attracted considerable attention in Ephesus as well as in the whole province of Asia. There was no big funeral, so as not to cause anxiety among the people, and his body was cremated in his own beloved garden at his country property. When the pyre had burned down, we collected the ashes and put them in a fine urn which was sent to the Silanus family’s rapidly filled mausoleum in Rome. Publius Celer took over the Proconsulate until the Senate had time to choose a new Proconsul for Asia from those who were waiting their turn. Silanus’ term of. office was soon to have come to an end anyhow.

  The change of regime itself had aroused considerable unrest in Ephesus, and the death of the Proconsul worsened the situation. The city’s innumerable fortunetellers, miracle workers, sellers of black magic books, and first and foremost the silversmiths, who sold small models of the temple of Artemis as souvenirs, took advantage of this opportunity to cause disturbances in the streets and to ill-treat the Jews.

  Paul, of course, was the cause of this. I now found out that he had been sowing discord in Ephesus for two years, and it was of him that Silanus’ physician had spoken, although I did not realize it at the time.

  Paul had persuaded his followers to collect all their astrological calendars and books of dreams, worth a hundred or so sesterces, and burn them publicly in the forum as a demonstration against their rivals. The bonfire of books had aroused the ire of the superstitious people of Ephesus, and even the educated people did not like books being burned, although they themselves did not bother much with the good and evil days of horoscopes or the interpretation of dreams. But they feared that philosophy and poetry might be next to land in the fire.

  I was seized with fury when I once again heard Paul named as a disturber of the peace. I should have liked to leave Ephesus at once, but Publius Celer feared more uprisings and asked me to take over the command of the city cavalry and the Roman garrison.

  It was not long before the city council sent an anxious message to say that great crowds were on their way along the streets leading to the Greek theater, where an illegal meeting was to be held. The silversmiths had seized two of Paul’s companions in the street, but his other disciples had forcibly prevented Paul from going to the theater. The city fathers also sent a warning to Paul, appealing to him not to mix with the crowd in case it led to murder.

  When it became evident that the city council was not in control of the situation, Publius Celer ordered me to call out the cavalry and he himself placed a cohort of infantryme
n at the entrance to the theater. He smiled, his eyes cold and his mouth crooked, and assured me that he had been looking forward to a suitable opportunity of this kind to give these unruly people a few lessons in Roman discipline and order.

  With a trumpeter and a cohort commantler, I went into the theater to be able to give the signal if the crowd turned violent. The people were noisy and restless in the huge theater; many obviously did not know what it was all about and had, in the Greek way, simply come to shout as loudly as they could. No one seemed to be armed. I could imagine the panic that would ensue if the theater had to be cleared forcibly.

  The senior elder of the silversmiths tried to quiet the crowd so that he could speak, but he had already roused them to such an extent that his voice was hoarse and cracked completely when he started to speak. Even so, I managed to make out that he was accusing Paul the Jew of misleading the people, not only in Ephesus but all over Asia, into believing that handmade idols were not gods.

  “We are threatened with the danger,” he shouted in his cracked voice, “of the great temple of Artemis losing all respect and she herself her power. She who is worshiped by the whole of Asia and all over the world.”

  The huge crowd began to shout on the tops of their voices: “Great is Artemis of Ephesus!”

  The continuous roar lasted so long that my trumpeter became anxious and tried to raise his instrument to his lips, but I knocked it away again.

  A group of tasseled Jews was standing huddled nearby, and they pushed a coppersmith forward, crying, “Let Alexander speak.”

  As far as I could make out, this Alexander wished to explain that the faithful Jews were not followers of Paul and that Paul did not even have the complete confidence of all the Christians in Ephesus.

  But when the crowd saw from his clothes that he was a Jew, they did not want to let him speak, and they were right, inasmuch as the faithful Jews did not approve of idols or handmade images of such things. To stop him from speaking, the crowd broke out again with the cry: “Great is Artemis of Ephesus!” This time the roar lasted without exaggeration for two full lines on the water clock.

  Publius Celer appeared beside me with his sword drawn.

  “Why don’t you give the signal?” he snarled. “We can disperse the whole meeting in no time.”

  “Several hundred people would be trampled underfoot,” I warned him.

  The thought seemed to please Celer. So I added hastily: “They’re only praising their own Artemis. It would be both blasphemy and political foolishness to disperse a crowd for that reason.”

  When the City Chancellor saw us standing hesitandy at one of the entrances, he signaled desperately for us to wait. He even had sufficient authority to quiet the crowd gradually as he stepped up to speak.

  Now the Christians were thrust forward. They had been beaten and their clothes torn, but nothing worse had happened to them. To show what they thought, the Jews spat at them, but the Chancellor told the crowd not to act rashly, and reminded them that the city of Ephesus had been chosen to care for Artemis’ idol which had fallen from heaven. According to him, Paul’s disciples were neither temple defilers nor blasphemers.

  The more sensible people in the crowd began to glance at my red plumes and at the cavalry trumpeter and then make their way out of the theater. For a moment everything hung in balance. Publius Celer ground his teeth, for if he had found reason to attack, then in the traditional Roman way he could have set fire to and plundered the silversmiths’ shops. The educated members of the crowd fortunately remembered the frightening events of the past and hurried away. As an outlet for his disappointment, Celer let his soldiers besiege the theater and beat a few of the remaining rebels and Jews. But nothing worse occurred.

  Afterwards he reproached me bitterly, saying, “Both of us would have been enormously wealthy men now, if you hadn’t been so indecisive. Suppressing a rebellion would have taken us to the top of the roll of knights. We could have put the cause of the uprising down to Silanus’ lax rule. One must seize the opportunity as it arises, otherwise one loses it forever.”

  Paul remained in hiding for a while and then had to flee the city. After I had by devious routes sent him a serious warning, we heard that he had gone to Macedonia. Then calm gradually descended again and the Jews found other things to think about Among them were many exiled Roman craftsmen intending to return to Rome in the spring.

  The winter storms were now at their worst and in the harbor there was not a single ship due to sail to Italy. But Publius Celer had taken a dislike to me and, to avoid quarreling with him, I at last found a small ship loaded with goddess idols, which would risk the journey to Corinth under the protection of Artemis. We were fortunate enough to miss the northern storms, but several times had to shelter in island harbors on the way.

  In Corinth, Hierex Lausius had been mourning me as lost, after hearing nothing from me for so long. He had grown fatter than ever and went about with his chin in the air, talking in a droning voice. He had married his Greek widow and taken two orphan boys into the house to look after their education and property. He proudly showed me his own meat shop which was kept cool in the summer with spring water from the mountain. He had also acquired shares in ships and bought skilled slaves to use in his own bronze foundry.

  When I told him about the disturbances in Ephesus, he shook his head knowingly.

  “We’ve had trouble here too,” he said. “You remember that Paul went from here to Jerusalem to consult the elders. They considered his teaching too involved and he was not met with complete approval, we gather. No wonder he preaches even more fervently in his vexation. He must have a share of the spirit of Christ, as he has succeeded with faith-healing, but the more moderate Christians prefer to keep away from him.”

  “So you’re still a Christian, then?” I said in surprise.

  “I think I’m a better Christian than before,” said Hierex. “My soul is at peace, I have a good wife and my affairs are going well. A messenger called Apollus came here to Corinth. He had studied the Jewish scripts in Alexandria and received instruction from Aquila and Prisca in Ephesus. He’s a compelling speaker and soon had many followers. So we have an Apollo sect which holds special meetings, eats together and keeps away from the other Christians. On Prisca’s advice, he was received unnecessarily warmly here, before we had any idea of his ambitions for power. Fortunately we are visited by Cephas, the most important of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. He has traveled in many places to calm his mind and intends to go to Rome in the spring to prevent the old quarrels there being repeated when the exiled Jews return. I believe in him more than anyone else, for his teaching comes straight from the mouth of Jesus of Nazareth.”

  Hierex spoke so respectfully of Cephas that I decided to seek him out, although I was already heartily sick of both Jews and Christians. This Cephas was originally a Galilean fisherman whom Jesus of Nazareth, about twenty-five years earlier, before I was born, had taught to fish for people. It had no doubt been difficult, for Cephas was an ignorant man of the people and could speak hardly a word of Greek so that he had to have an interpreter with him on his travels. But I thought I had every reason to meet a man who had been able to make Hierex pious, for even Paul with all his Jewish wisdom and faith had not been able to perform such a miracle.

  Cephas lived with one of the Jews who recognized Christ, a man who traded in fish preserved in oil and who was by no means wealthy. When I went into his house, to which Hierex had taken me, I had to screw up my nose at the smell of fish and the grating sand which the many visitors had left behind them on the floor. It was a cramped and dimly lit room, and Cephas’ Jewish landlord greeted us uneasily, as if he were afraid my presence would sully his house.

  He evidently belonged to the group of Jews who had chosen Christ but still tried to follow the Jewish laws, avoiding contact with un-circumcised Christian Greeks. His position was more difficult than that of the Greeks, for the faithful Jews especially hated him as a deserter, and beca
use of his laws, his conscience was never at rest.

  Cephas the Jew wore a cloak with tassels at the corners. He was a big man with a thick growth of hair and gray streaks in his beard, and one could see from his broad hands that he had been used to manual labor in his day. His bearing was calm and unafraid, but I thought I saw a glimpse of some kind of peasant shrewdness in his eyes as he looked at me. He seemed to radiate a sense of security.

  I must admit that I do not remember much of our conversation. Hierex did most of the talking, in an ingratiating way, and we were troubled by the interpreter, a slim Jew called Marcus who was considerably younger than Cephas. Cephas spoke labored Aramaic, in short sentences. My childhood memories of Antioch came back to me as I listened to him, and I tried to understand what he was saying before the interpreter translated. This confused me too. And in fact, what Cephas had to say did not strike me as particularly memorable in itself. The best thing about him was the conciliatory warmth he spread around him.

  Cephas tried, somewhat childishly, to demonstrate his learning by quoting the Jews’ holy scripts. He brushed aside Hierex* flattery and urged him to praise only God, the father of Jesus Christ, who in his mercy had allowed Hierex to be reborn into eternal hope.

  Hierex became tearful and admitted honestly that although he had noticed a kind of rebirth in his heart, his body was still subject to selfish demands. Cephas did not judge him, but just looked at him, his eyes both mild and clever at the same time, as if he had seen through all human weakness but at the same time recognized a scrap of true searching for goodness in this wretched slave’s soul.

  Hierex eagerly asked Cephas to tell us how he had saved himself from King Herod, and about the miracles he had performed in the name of Jesus Christ. But Cephas had turned to look at me attentively and did not wish to boast of his miracles. Instead he gently made fun of himself by telling me how little he had understood Jesus of Nazareth when he had followed him before the crucifixion. He also described how he had not even been able to keep awake while Jesus was praying on his last night on earth. When Jesus had been captured, he had gone too, and around the fire in the prison yard he had denied knowing Jesus three times, just as Jesus had foretold when Cephas had boasted that he was prepared to share his sufferings.