you are happy simply that I come to you. But have you any suggestions?”
She gripped both my hands hard and looked straight into my eyes.
“There’s only one possibility, Minutus,” she said. “Let’s leave Rome. Abandon your career. Somewhere in the provinces or on the other side of the sea, we could live together without fear until Claudius is dead.”
I could not meet her eyes and drew my hands away from hers. Claudia shuddered and looked down.
“You said you enjoyed holding the lambs while I sheared them,” she said, “and fetching wood for the fire. You praised the water from my spring and said that my simple food was better than ambrosia in heaven. We could find the same happiness in any corner of the world, as long as it is far enough away from Rome.”
I thought for a moment and then said seriously, “I neither deny nor take back my words. But such a decision is too far-reaching to be decided on the spur of the moment. We can’t just go into voluntary exile.”
Out of sheer malice, I added: “And what about the kingdom you’re waiting for and the secret meals you partake in?”
Claudia looked downcast.
“I am still committing a sin with you,” she said, “and with them I no longer feel the same glow as I used to. It is as if they could see right through me and were grieving over me. So I’ve begun to avoid them. My guilt feels all the worse each time we meet. You’ll take away both my faith and my hope if everything goes on as before.”
When I returned to Aventine it was with a feeling that I had had a bucket of water thrown over me. I knew I had behaved unjusdy by using Claudia for pleasure without even giving her any money. But I thought that marriage was much too high a price to pay for mere sexual satisfaction, and neither did I want to leave Rome when I remembered how I had longed for it as a boy in Antioch and as a man in the winters of Britain.
The result was that I went to see Claudia less and less often and found all kinds of other things to do, until the unrest in my body once again drove me back to her. After this we were no longer happy together except in bed. Otherwise we constantly tormented each other until once again I left her in a fury.
The following spring, Claudius banished the Jews from Rome, for not a day had gone past without fighting breaking out, so that the disunity among the Jews caused unrest throughout the city. In Alexandria, the Jews and Greeks competed at killing each other and in Jerusalem, Jewish firebrands caused so many disturbances that finally Claudius tired of them all.
His influential freedmen were in complete agreement with his decision for they could now sell special permits for high prices to the richest Jews who wished to escape exile. Claudius did not even submit his decision to the Senate, although there were many Jews who had lived in Rome for several generations and attained citizenship. The Emperor considered that a written edict was sufficient, since he was not robbing anyone of the right to citizenship. A rumor had also gone around that the Jews had bribed too many senators.
Thus the houses on the other side of the Tiber were abandoned and the synagogues were closed. Many Jews who did not have the money hid in different parts of Rome where the district superintendents in the city had much trouble finding them. The City Prefect’s police even arrested people in the open street and forced them to show their organ to see whether they were circumcised.
Some were discovered in the public conveniences, for Roman citizens in general had no great love for the Jews, and even the slaves bore them a grudge. The captured Jews were sent to work on the harbor in Ostia or in the mines in Sardinia, which of course was a great waste because they were mostly skilled tradesmen. But Claudius was merciless.
Hatred among the Jews themselves grew even stronger as they quarreled over who had been the cause of the banishment. Along the roads outside Rome, many dead Jews were found, whether Christian or faithful it was impossible to tell. A dead Jew was a dead Jew and the road guards did not bother much about these troublemakers as long as the murder did not take place under their noses. “The only good Jew is a dead Jew,” they joked to each other as, in the interests of order, they looked to see whether the mutilated body they had found was circumcised.
The uncircumcised Christians were sorely grieved over the scattering of their leaders and they followed them for long distances to protect them from attack. They were ignorant and poor people, many of them slaves, and the disappointments in their lives had made them bitter. In the confusion that followed the banishing of the Christian Jews, they were like a flock without a shepherd.
They clung to each other in a touching way and met for their humble meals. But amongst themselves, one preached one thing and another another so that they soon separated into squabbling groups. The older ones stubbornly held to what they had heard with their own ears about the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, but others were inclined to offer other versions.
The boldest of them tested their powers by working themselves into a state of ecstasy and practicing the healing laying-on of hands. But they did not always succeed. Simon the magician was not banished, whether because he had bought his freedom or because, as a Samaritan, he was not regarded as a Jew, I do not know.
But Aunt Laelia told me that he still cured the sick with the divine powers within him. I thought he contented himself with those he had power over. I had no desire to see him again, but he attracted followers from among the wealthy and curious Christian women who believed in him more than in those who preached humility and a simple way of life, mutual love and the return to earth of the son of their god on a cloud from heaven. Strengthened by this, Simon the magician began to test his flying once more and used to disappear suddenly out of his followers’ sight, only to appear again somewhere else.
I had some trouble with Barbus, too, for sometimes he neglected his duties as doorkeeper and vanished to some unknown place. Aunt Laelia, frightened of thieves, demantled that I reprimand him.
“I am a citizen like other people,” he protested, “and give my basket of corn to the house when there’s a distribution. You know I don’t bother much about the gods. I’ve been content to make sacrifices to Hercules occasionally when in real need, but with old age creeping on, one has to put one’s house in order. Several firemen and other old soldiers have got me to join a secret society, thanks to which I shall never die.”
“The underworld is a gloomy place,” I said. “The shades will have to make do with licking the blood around the sacrificial altars. Wouldn’t it be wiser to submit to your fate and be content with the shades and ashes when your life-span is over?”
But Barbus shook his head.
“I’ve no right to reveal the initiates’ secrets,” he said, “but I can tell you that the new god’s name is Mithras. He was born out of a mountain. Shepherds found him and bowed down before him. Then he killed the great bull and brought all that is good to the world. He has promised immortality to all his initiates who have been baptized in blood. If I’ve got it right, I’ll get new limbs after death and go to fine barracks where the duties are light and the wine and honey always plentiful.”
“Barbus,” I said warningly, “I thought you’d had enough experience now not to believe such old wives’ tales. You should take a cure at a spa. I’m afraid your constant drinking is making you see things.”
But Barbus raised his trembling hands with dignity.
“No, no,” he said, “when the words are spoken and the light from his crown shines in the darkness and the holy bell begins to ring, then one trembles deep down in one’s stomach, one’s hair stands on end and even the most skeptical is convinced of his divinity. After that we eat a holy meal, usually ox meat if an old centurion has undergone blood baptism. When we have drunk wine, we all sing together.”
“We live in strange times,” I said. “Aunt Laelia is saved with the help of a Samaritan magician, my own father worries about the Christians, and you, old warrior, have become involved in Eastern mysteries.”
“In the East the sun rises,” Barbus went on. “In one way this bull-killer is also the Sun God and so the God of Horses too. But they don’t look down on an old infantryman like me, and there’s nothing to stop you learning about our god as long as you promise to keep quiet about it. In our circle there are both older and younger Roman knights who have grown tired of the usual sacrifices and idols.”
I had at that time grown tired of races and betting, the life of pleasure with vain and conceited actors from the theater, and of Pollio and his friends’ interminable talk of philosophy and the new poetry. I promised to go with Barbus to one of the meetings of his secret god. Barbus was very pleased and proud about this. To my surprise, on that day he really did fast and wash himself thoroughly. He did not even dare drink any wine and he put on clean clothes, too.
That evening he led me along the winding stinking alleys to an underground temple in the valley between Esquiline and Coelius. When we had gone downstairs into a dimly lit room with stone walls, we were received by a Mithraic priest with a lion’s head across his shoulders, who unquestioningly allowed me to take part in the
