city was left unprotected, all the police having been sent to the Jewish quarter. Crowds began to collect in the streets, shouting the name Christus as a password they had learned on the other side of the river.
They plundered shops and set fire to several houses, so that when the Jewish quarter was quiet again, the City Prefect had to order his men to return to the city proper. This saved me, for they had just begun a house-to- house search in the Jewish quarter.
Evening had come, I was sitting gloomily on the floor with my head in my hands, realizing I was very hungry. The Christians gathered up the remaining food and began to share it among all those present. They had bread and oil, onions, pease porridge and wine. Aquila blessed the bread and wine, in the Christian way, as the flesh and blood of Jesus of Nazareth. I accepted what was offered me and shared my bread with Claudia. I was given a little cheese too and a piece of dried meat. I drank wine from the same goblet as the others when my turn came. When everyone had eaten their fill, they kissed each other gently.
“Oh, Minutus,” said Claudia after she had kissed me. “I am so glad you have eaten of his flesh and drunk of his blood, to be forgiven your sins and lead an eternal life. Can’t you feel the spirit glowing in your heart, as if you had discarded the tattered clothes of your earlier life and put on new ones?”
I said bitterly that the only glow I felt was from the cheap sour wine. Not until then did I fully realize what she had meant and see that I had taken part in the secret meal of the Christians. I was so appalled that I wanted to be sick, although I knew I had not drunk blood from the goblet.
“Nonsense,” I said furiously. “Bread is bread and wine is wine when one is hungry. If nothing worse than this happens amongst you, then I don’t see why such lunatic stories are told about your superstitions. Still less do I understand how such innocent activities can lead to such violence.”
I was too tired to quarrel with her, aroused as she still was, but in the end she made me agree to look more closely into the Christian teachings. I could see nothing wrong in their attempts to defend themselves against the Jews. But I was fairly sure they would be punished if the disorders continued, whether they or the faithful Jews were responsible.
Aquila admitted that there had been trouble earlier, but not to the same extent as now. He assured me that the Christians usually met without attracting attention and also answered evil words with good. But the Christian Jews also had a legal right to go into the synagogues and listen to the scripts and to speak there. Many of them had taken part in the raising of the new synagogues.
I took Claudia home through the warm summer night, past Vatican and out of the city. We saw the glare of fires and heard the murmur of the crowd across the river. Wagons and carts loaded with foodstuffs on their way to the market halls were waiting, crowded together on the road. The country people wondered anxiously what was happening in the city. It was whispered from man to man that one Christus was rousing the Jews to murder and arson. No one seemed to have a good word to say for the Jews.
As we walked, I began to limp and my head ached. I was surprised that I had hitherto not felt any ill-effects from the injuries I had received in the fighting. When we eventually arrived at Claudia’s hut, I was feeling so wretched that she would not let me return, but begged me to stay the night. In spite of my protests, she put me to bed in her own bed by the light of an oil lamp, but then sighed so much as she busied herself around the room that I had to ask her what was wrong.
“I’m neither pure nor without sin,” she said. “But every word you told me about that shameless Briton girl has fallen like drops of fire on my heart, although I can’t even remember her name.”
“Try to forgive me that I could not keep my promise,” I said.
“What do I care about your promise?” wailed Claudia. “I’m cursing myself. I am the flesh of my mother’s flesh and the profligate Claudius is my father. I can’t help it if I am deeply disturbed to see you lying in my bed.”
But her hands were as cold as ice when she clasped mine in them. Her lips too were cold when she bent down and kissed me.
“Oh, Minutus,” she whispered. “I haven’t had the courage to confess to you before that my cousin Gaius violated me when I was only a child. It amused him sometimes to sleep in turn with his sisters. That is why I’ve hated all men. You’re the only one I haven’t hated, because you accepted me as a friend without knowing who I was.”
What more need I say? To console her, I drew her into bed with me and she trembled with cold and shame. And neither can I justify my action by saying she was older than I, for I must admit I became more and more ardent until she came to me, laughing and crying, and I realized that I loved her.
When we woke in the morning, we both felt so happy that we did not want to think about anything but ourselves. Radiating happiness, Claudia was beautiful in my eyes despite her coarse features and thick eyebrows. Lugunda became a distant shadow. Claudia was a mature woman in comparison to that immature, capricious girl.
We exchanged no promises and did not even wish to think of the future yet. If I were oppressed by a vague feeling of guilt, I comforted myself with the thought that Claudia knew very well what she was going. At least she had something else to think about besides the superstitious mysteries of the Christians. I was pleased about that.
When I returned home, Aunt Laelia commented acidly on the anxiety she had felt when I had been out all night without telling her about it beforehand. She looked at me carefully with her red-rimmed eyes and said reproachfully, “Your face is as radiant as if you were brooding on some shameful secret. As long as you haven’t strayed into some Syrian brothel.”
She sniffed my clothes suspiciously. “No,” she went on, “you don’t smell of a brothel. But you must have spent the night somewhere. Now don’t go and get yourself involved in some sordid love affair. That will lead to nothing but trouble for both you and for others.”
My friend Lucius Pollio, whose father had become Consul that year, nunc to see me in the afternoon. He was very disturbed by the rioting.
“The Jews are getting more and more insolent under the protection of their privileges,” he said. “The City Prefect has been interrogating arrested people all morning and has definite evidence that it is a Jew called Christus who is rousing the slaves and the mob. He’s not an ex-gladiator, as Spartacus was, but a traitor who was condemned in Jerusalem but in some way came to life after being crucified. The Prefect has ordered his arrest and has put a price on his head. But I’m afraid the man has already fled the city now that his rebellion has not succeeded.”
I was greatly tempted to explain to the learned Lucius that by Christus the Jews meant the Messiah they believed in, but I could not reveal that I knew too much about this seditious teaching of theirs. We went through the manuscript of my book once again to make the writing as clear as possible. Lucius Pollio promised to find a publisher if the book passed the acid test which public reading constitutes. According to him, the work might do quite well. Claudius would be glad to be reminded of his own successful campaign in Britain. One could flatter him by showing an interest in the affairs of Britain, and in this respect my book should prove excellent, according to Pollio.
The differences of opinion over the ownership of synagogues which had originally given rise to the rioting amongst the Jews were settled by the City Prefect, who proclaimed that all those who had contributed to the raising of them should have the right to use them. The strict Jews and the more liberal Jews had their own synagogues. But when the Jews who recognized Christ took over a synagogue, the other Jews removed the valuable scrolls and preferred to set fire to the synagogue rather than let the hated Christians take it over. From this, new troubles arose. In the end, the faithful Jews made a great political blunder by appealing to the Emperor.
Claudius was already angered by the riots which were disturbing the happiness of his new marriage. He became even angrier when the Jews dared to remind him that he would not now be Emperor but for their support. It was in fact true that Claudius’ drinking companion, Herod Agrippa, had borrowed from the rich Jews of Rome the money needed to bribe the Praetorians after the murder of Gaius Caligula. But Claudius had had to repay exorbitant interest on the money and for other reasons did not want to be reminded of this incident which had wounded his vanity.
His drunkard’s head began to shake with rage. Stammering more than usual, he ordered the Jews to leave and threatened to banish them all from Rome if he ever heard of any more disturbances.
The Christian Jews and the mob which had joined them had their own leaders too. To my astonishment, I met at my father’s and Tullia’s house the argumentative Aquila, his wife Prisca, and a few other respectable citizens
