The Mammoth Book of Classical Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley

  I remembered very clearly the comfortable little house on the Caelian Hill with its garden running right up to the city wall. Here, for two years, Paul had held court in a manner scarcely less busy than that of the emperor. Day after day, Roman Christians, visitors from all over the world and even men and women from Caesar’s own household visited us to receive instruction, convey gifts and messages and to pray with the prisoner. We waited for his accusers to come from Jerusalem with their false accusations of sedition but they never appeared. It was one thing to stir up mobs in Judaea and exert political pressure on weak procurators. It was quite another to confront a Roman citizen with cogent evidence before the judgement seat of Caesar himself. During the two years of Paul’s incarceration I presented several petitions to the office of the Praetorian Prefect Burrus requesting that Paul’s case be heard without further delay. However, it was only when the Prefect of the City and an official of the Praetorian guard made representations that the lawyers took action. The military and police chiefs complained about the waste of resources involved in keeping prisoners like Paul under house arrest.

  By then Gaius Ofonius Tigellinus, the emperor’s friend and no one else’s, had taken over from Burrus. He heard the case personally in the justice hall of the Palatine palace. We could expect little from a man who had already begun a purge of Caesar’s suspected enemies. Paul had prepared a detailed defence but instead had to listen to a long harangue from the Prefect. When the charge had been read Tigellinus called for the evidence to be presented. There was silence. The hall was packed, mostly with Paul’s friends, but not a single person beneath the wide, star-decorated dome spoke up.

  Tigellinus banged with his staff on the marble floor. ‘I see this is another of these disputes between rival Jewish factions. You people seem to think you can waste the court’s time with impunity. You have your own laws and legal processes. Use them! You, prisoner, stand forth!’ '

  Paul stood before the Prefect, manacled to a centurion.

  ‘All this is your doing. When this case was presented in Judaea you claimed the privileges of a Roman citizen. For some unaccountable reason the Procurator, the late Porcius Festus, supported your appeal to Rome; Why were you not content to stand trial in your own country?

  Paul spoke up in that high-pitched, cracked voice of his which held so many audiences spellbound. ‘Your Excellency, I appealed to the impartial justice of Rome from the bias and violence of the Jewish Sanhedrin. They hate the followers of Jesus the Christ. Only recently news has come from Jerusalem of the murder of the leader of the Christian church there.’**

  ‘You see, it is as I thought,’ Tigellinus shouted. ‘Petty disputes among pestilential, uncouth subjects. If I had been the Procurator of Judaea I’d have had the lot of you flogged and sent about your business.’

  ‘It is not permissible to flog Roman citizens who stand condemned of no crime, your Excellency.’

  Paul s boldness in thus addressing the chief justice shocked the entire court into silence. We all looked to see how Tigellinus would react.

  For several seconds he stared, wide-eyed at the prisoner, his colour rising, his free hand tightly gripping the braided edge of his toga. You insolent little Jew! You dare to lecture me on the law? I’ll tell you about Roman citizenship: it is squandered on vermin like you. There are far too many members of subject races granted precious privileges. People like you should be kept firmly in your place, alongside slaves and barbarians.’

  I saw the familiar smile on Paul’s face that meant only one thing, that he saw an opportunity to speak boldly about the Lord Jesus. ‘You are right, most wise Tigellinus, he began. ‘It is proper that all men should know their place. Jew and Roman, citizen and slave, civilized and barbarian — we must all stand in the judgement hall of God. And he has appointed an advocate for us — Jesus Christ. He alone can plead our cause. He alone . . .’

  ‘Silence!’ Tigellinus was not to be lulled by that voice that had persuaded many to faith. ‘There’ll be no preaching of foreign blasphemies in my court room. Hold your tongue and listen to the sentence pronounced in my judgement hall. Paul, you have twenty-four hours to leave Rome. You are never to return — on pain of death. Guard, take him away!’

  The rest of that day was a time of mingled joy and sorrow. A crowd of Paul’s friends led him to the house of old Urbanus. They celebrated his release but grieved that he was to leave them.

  Paul himself was jubilant. ‘You see, brothers, how God answers our prayers. For months I have asked to be allowed to travel to the very edge of the world, to Spain, with the Gospel. Now, God not only releases me from bondage, but he pushes me forth on my journey without another day’s delay.’

  I was unable to share his enthusiasm. Paul was a man already past his sixtieth year. His physical strength was remarkable for a man of his age but his body bore the scars of many beatings and mishaps. The enforced rest of his imprisonment had brought the four humours back into balance, so that, in most respects, he was healthier than he had been when he came to Rome. But he was almost blind. I had couched the cataracts in both his eyes in the early days of his captivity but this had provided only a temporary respite. What he laughingly referred to as his ‘thorn in the flesh’ had not proved a serious disability as long as he was under house arrest. Even when he was not chained to a guard he could feel his way around his familiar confines. If, now, he was to set out on his travels again he would be totally dependent on his companions and he would be without the advice of his physician. I had ignored several urgent entreaties from Macedonia but I could not indefinitely set aside my family responsibilities and certainly I could not journey farther westwards. Paul understood my situation. Indeed, he urged me, on more than one occasion to return home. Yet, I still felt that I was deserting him.

  The following day was the saddest of my life. Several of us brought Paul, riding in a cart, down to the port of Ostia, where he found passage on a ship carrying grain to Corsica. It was the only west-bound vessel leaving on the next tide. Paul would have preferred a more substantial ship, rigged and provisioned for a longer journey but since we were accompanied by a troop of the Praetorian Guard intent on seeing him clearly underway from Latium he had no choice. He had selected as his travelling companion Eubulus, a young Roman Christian who had been converted through Paul’s preaching. I knew him to be an educated but robust fellow well able to withstand the rigours of the journey as well as the abuse and hardship that Paul’s fearless preaching frequently attracted. More importantly I judged that he would cope with our friend’s frequent changes of mood. Paul was a visionary leader, an inspiring teacher and a bold proclaimer of the Gospel but he was certainly not the easiest of men to live with.

  An hour before the ship was due to sail Paul gathered us all on the quayside. He warned that persecutions would grow worse — and exhorted us to stand firm until the coming of the Lord Jesus. Then he prayed and bade us all farewell. Many wept, knowing that they would see him no more. Such were my memories as, five years later, I began my journey back to Rome.

  I took ship to Cenchriae on the Isthmus of Corinth, planning, like most travellers, to cross to the port of Lechaion on the opposite shore. Unlike Paul, I was never a good sailor. Impatient voyager that he was, he habitually chose the quickest route to his desired destination careless of the consequences. He sometimes boasted about having been in four shipwrecks — or, rather, he boasted of the God who had preserved him in these calamities. I am of less value to the Almighty and prefer not to put him to the test. My dreams are still haunted by the terrifying, tempest-tossed days and nights we spent being driven across the central Mediterranean from Crete, before being cast up on the island of Malta. So you will understand, Theophilus, why I had no stomach for braving the stormy southern tip of the Peloponnesos.

  My cautious itinerary involved a stay of several days in what our ancient poets aptly call ‘wealth-corrupted Corinth’. It is not a city that I like. It seems to attract the worst elements of every one of t
he cosmopolitan communities drawn there by its agricultural and commercial affluences. There are temples to every conceivable deity, both Greek and foreign. Jewish shops with their overpriced goods dominate the agora. Bath houses and their attendant vices are everywhere and, to pander to the depraved tastes of Roman settlers, they have recently built an amphitheatre for gladiatorial fights and contests between wild animals.

  It was not easy to seek out fellow Christians. Those that I knew or to whom I had introductions had either fled in the recent troubles or were cautious of any stranger who came asking questions about their meeting places or customs. It was in Corinth that I first learned of the revolt in Judaea. On my second day in the city I made my way to the synagogue, meaning to institute cautious enquiries about followers of the true Messiah. I found the small building boarded up and a notice nailed to it forbidding the assembly of Jewish people for any purpose. It was in a tavern out on the Lechaion road that I fell in with a group of centurions who reported the dismal events in Rome’s least favourite and least successful province. They explained that a decree had been issued restricting the activities of Jewish communities to prevent them sending financial aid to the rebels. They were on their way from Italy to Syria with reinforcements for Gallus, the legate, and they told of troops being hastily conveyed from Parthia (with whom peace had recently been concluded), the eastern border, Spain and other parts of the empire to the latest trouble spot.

  ‘We’ll crush them this time, for sure,’ one of them, a bulky Illyrian, insisted.

  His colleague, a red-haired giant from one of the Gallic tribes, agreed. ‘I did a tour there a dozen years back — my worst posting ever. Show me a Jew and I’ll show you a crafty, stubborn fanatic. Have you ever been to Palestine, friend?’

  I told him, cautiously, that I had visited the land.

  ‘Then you’ll know what a barren, dusty country it is. No city or town worthy of the name. The earth is so poor that it can’t support its own people. That’s why you find them all over the empire. They worship a primitive god who obviously hasn’t done much for them. Yet they refuse the benefits of civilization and actually claim to be a chosen, favoured race, destined to rule the world. I don’t know why we’ve put up with them so long.’

  ‘Well, they’re for it, now. The emperor has sent Titus Flavius Vespasian to suppress this revolt. He’s a soldier’s soldier. I served under him in Britain. He won’t stand any nonsense. Mark my words, within ten years there’ll be no Jewish land or people.’

  As we talked I noticed that one of the centurions said little. Prompted by the Holy Spirit I surreptitiously made the sign of the fish in a puddle of spilled wine. Our eyes met briefly before I brushed the liquid from the table with the back of my hand.

  He stayed behind when his companions left and we embraced eagerly. He was a young man, recently promoted, from the colony of Arles in Narbonese Gaul. I was excited to learn of his origins in the western empire and asked if he had heard anything of Paul. Yes, he said, fellow believers from his home town had written to him about eighteen months before to say that the great apostle had passed through Arles and preached in the agora. My new friend, whose name was Licinius Rufus, knew nothing of Paul’s movements after that. It mattered not. The important fact was that I had a place to start looking, a place where Paul had been seen, alive and well, as recently as eighteen months ago. Licinius gave me the name of a contact in Arles who would be able to tell me more. The soldier, for his part, was eager to learn from me all that I could tell him about Jesus and, unlike his colleagues, was delighted to be going to the land where the Lord had taught, healed, suffered, died and risen to new life. I soon discovered that the young man had received little tuition since his baptism. We talked long into the night. I told him how Jesus, over thirty years ago, had prophesied those very evils which were now befalling his people; how he had spoken of false messiahs who would only lead their followers to destruction; how he had forewarned that Jerusalem would be surrounded by armies and overrun; how the great temple would be invaded by heathen soldiers and then totally destroyed. These, along with the persecution of Christians throughout the empire, were signs of the end of all things and the return of Jesus in the clouds. When would this happen, Licinius urged me to say, but I could only pass on to him the Lord’s own instructions, ‘Watch and pray for you do not know when the time will come.’

  It was Licinius who provided my contact with Corinthian Christians. Before leaving Rome he had been given the address of a meeting place. It was in the cellar of a merchant’s house near the newly built courtyard of Apollo, a place for public gatherings. On the last day of the week Licinius and I went to locate it, so that we would be in good time for worship the following day. As we watched we observed several people, singly or in pairs, enter the shop and make their way through to the premises at the rear. Eventually we presented ourselves at the door. We were greeted civilly if warily by the Jewish tradesman and his wife who introduced themselves as Herodion and Rachel. They indicated the rows of copper and bronze vessels on shelves within but regretted that, this being their holy day, they could not serve us. We revealed ourselves as Christians but this brought forth no warm welcome.

  ‘You are Gentiles,’ the swarthy Herodion observed. ‘Have you, then, been circumcised into the faith?’

  ‘We have been baptized,’ I told him. ‘That is all the Lord requires.’

  ‘The Lord requires what is written in his holy law. What you speak sounds like the heresy of Paul, that Gentiles and Jews are equally acceptable to God. We want none of that nonsense here. We will be obliged if you will leave us.’

  We left the shop and began to walk disconsolately along the street. After a few paces Rachel hurried after us. ‘Bibulus, the potter,’ she announced breathlessly. ‘His house is alongside the east wall.’ Then she retreated to her own home.

  The following day, Sunday, we presented ourselves at the place the woman had mentioned and were joyfully received by Bibulus and over fifty believers who had gathered for the breaking of bread. It soon became clear what had happened in Corinth. The Christian community, always prone to factions and divisions, had recently been swamped by exiles from Palestine. Such Judaizers had always been Paul’s most tenacious enemies, confronting him in public, working behind his back to subvert his teaching. Now they had taken over in Corinth, forcing out those who refused their ‘purer’, law-based religion.

  We spent several happy hours in fellowship with those of the true faith. There was no one there who could give me any reliable information about Paul but I did meet a man who shared my concern for him. Manaus was an Asian Jew from the province of Lycia-Pamphylia. Like Paul he had studied in the university at Tarsus. Like me he was a doctor. I found him a charming and cultured companion with whom I had much in common. He was on his way to Rome to talk with the remarkable army surgeon, Dioscorides, and had stopped in Argolis to visit the famous Asclepieion at Epidaurus. What did I think, as a Greek and a Christian, about this ancient centre of healing associated with the pagan hero-god Asclepios, he asked.

  It was a subject I had often considered and often discussed with Paul. My own studies, long before my conversion, had, of course been based on the philosopherphysicians such as Hippocrates, Aristotle and Theophrastus as well as the cult practices associated with the god of healing. My interest in Jesus had been first aroused by the stories believers told about the cures he achieved of several bodily and spiritual disorders. They certainly resembled the miracles claimed by those who prayed and made offerings at the temples of Asclepios and especially at the great sanctuary at Epidaurus. Manaus and I obviously had much to discuss. I suggested that he accompany me as far as Rome and he accepted.

  My new companion was sympathetic to my feelings about the sea and readily agreed on the short Adriatic crossing to Brindisi rather than the long voyage around Italy to the port of Ostia on the far coast. Our journey from there along the Appian Way was, inevitably, hindered by the demands of patients. A physician cannot
appear in a town or village without the maimed, the sick and those who fancy themselves sick requiring (sometimes demanding) attention. And here were we, two doctors, travelling together. News of our approach went ahead of us and it became the settled pattern that where we had resolved to spend a single night we ended up passing two or three days, setting broken bones, issuing drugs, blood-letting, prescribing diets and even performing minor operations such as tonsillectomy and treatment of goitre. Frequently our time was wasted by customers who, dissatisfied with the diagnosis one of us had given, paid a second fee to be examined by the other. Romans may sneer about medicine being a calling only fit for slaves and foreigners but they are eager enough for our services when their own health is impaired.

  Long discussion on medical theory and observation of each other’s working practices made plain fundamental professional differences between Manaus and myself. He was a Dogmatist, one who, having learned the principles enunciated by Hippocrates and certain Jewish masters, believed in their universal application. Disease, he asserted, was physiological and, since all bodies were, medically speaking, identical, so treatment could not vary from patient to patient. When I asked how he explained the connection Jesus made between disease and sin, he insisted that the Lord had been misunderstood on the subject. Jesus, he insisted, being a man of God had an intuitive understanding of all human disorders and on this rested the healing successes which some regarded as miraculous. This was a view I had encountered among several non-Christian Jews who were happy to recognize Jesus as holy man and prophet but not Messiah. It was not surprising that Manaus should be affected by this scepticism.