Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [20]
'Crucified near to Jerusalem, in the twenty-first year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. But it is what happened next that is even more interesting. Just about all of the ancient prophecies about the messiah from the Torah, pertaining to his betrayal and his death, did seem to come true. After his internment, his body vanished. It was probably taken away by his followers, but a macabre rumour was circulated thereafter that he had actually been raised from his grave by the Jewish God. Resurrection, they called it.’
'These Christians believe that their saviour is a ghost?'
asked Thalius, incredulously. 'What a pathetic bunch of ignorant peasants, to base a religion on such a superstition.'
'There is a little more substance to the cult than simply that, praefectus,' noted Gemellus. 'It is said that this Jesus performed many miracles. Raised a number of people from the dead and often healed the lame and the wretched. Could turn water into wine and base metal into gold, that kind of thing. Most of it is errant nonsense, of course, as our noble general rightly points out. But there are a lot of witnesses to some of these alleged events.'
'Mere conjuring tricks,' Calaphilus noted. 'Friends of mine were within Palestine, where all of this furore was happening.
They told me that this character was nothing more than a charlatan peddling his mumbo-jumbo to the masses. No man with common sense in his brain believes a word of this Christos.’
`Perhaps,' said Gemellus. 'But as for the Christians themselves, essentially they seem to be relatively harmless.
Their creed dictates passive resistance to that which they do not regard as the word of their God and, otherwise, non-aggression. And, at least, they pay their taxes. In both of these regards, they are infinitely preferable to such as the Zealots.'
By now Calaphilus was outraged that he had been kept waiting whilst such trivialities were discussed. 'If I may make a brief observation,' he said loudly, 'I learned long ago, in Britannia, that pandering to the beliefs of indigenous savages is as sure a way as any to the path of ultimate destruction.'
He paused, aware that he was on the verge of ranting, and drew in a deep breath. 'Perhaps the praefectus would like to hear another children's story. A senator with whom I was acquainted had a wife who could not get what she wanted from him. So she slept with a sergeant of the praetorian guard and became the talk of all Rome. That is a story with much more relevance to the praefectus, I would have said.'
The implied threat to Maximus was brutally clear.’I know of this story,' replied the praefectus. 'Both the man and his woman were beheaded and spent their days on the end of spikes on the city walls. I believe our business is concluded, general.’
`So it would seem,' replied Calaphilus turning on his heels and marching noisily out of the peristyle.
Òh dear,' noted Gemellus. Calaphilus had clearly been referring to the problem of Maximus's own former wife. ‘A number of events occurred whilst you have been away, which you should perhaps be made aware of.' he told his friend.
Elsewhere within the city, in a slightly smaller (but equally opulent) home, Antonia Vinicius was in the process of discussing her former husband, and his hatred of the military, with an interested friend.
`Sometimes I so envy your life, Agrinella,' she told Marcus Lanilla's wife, as the pair of women lay on stone tables having
their backs massaged by their respective
handmaidens. 'I often wish I had but one man to think of all the time.'
'Really?' asked Agrinella, astonished.
`No,' replied Antonia. Ì am afraid to say that I lied.'
The women laughed, a long and bawdy chuckle that culminated with the pair raising themselves from the tables, wrapping their
clothing around themselves and
simultaneously dismissing their handmaidens. When they were alone, Agrinella came and sat beside Antonia, looking at the slender neck and shoulders of the woman peeking out from the loose-fitting palla.