The Last Gospel

by David Gibbins

  ‘Huh? Yeah. Cold. But great fish and chips in Newlyn.’ Costas had sat down at the computer, and was busily tapping. He turned and glanced at Jack. ‘I take it you want a scan?’

  Jack nodded, and Costas pushed away the magnifier and positioned a movable scanner arm over the margin of the scroll. Jack turned to Maria. ‘It was a Phoenician shipwreck, the first ever found in British waters, dating almost a thousand years before the Romans arrived. We found British tin ingots stamped with Phoenician letters, and a mysterious metal plaque covered in Phoenician writing. Dillen’s been working on it ever since. We called the translation project Hanno after a famous Carthaginian explorer. We don’t know it was him. Just a name pulled out of a hat.’

  ‘So you think our scroll writing is Phoenician.’

  ‘I know it is.’

  ‘So Pliny read Phoenician?’

  ‘Phoenician was similar to the Aramaic spoken around the Sea of Galilee at the time of Jesus, but that may just be a coincidence. No, I think this has to do with Claudius. You remember those scrolls on the bottom shelf of the room in Herculaneum? Claudius’ History of Carthage? It was his biggest historical work, one thought completely lost but now miraculously discovered. Well, Claudius would have learned the language in order to read the original sources, the language spoken by the Phoenician traders who founded Carthage. It was virtually a dead language by the time of imperial Rome, and it’s just the kind of thing I can imagine Claudius teaching Pliny in their off-time together after finishing their writing, over wine and dice. So when Pliny comes to make this note, he chooses a language that was virtually a code between them. Claudius is watching, and he would have been pleased and flattered by that too.’

  ‘They must have been the only people around who could read this.’

  ‘That’s the point.’

  ‘It’s ready,’ Costas said, hunched over the screen. ‘There are four words the concordance has identified as transliterations, that is proper nouns, and it’s rendered them first into Latin and then into English. One word is Claudius. The other’s Rome. All the other words are in Dillen’s Phoenician lexicon. There’s one I even know. Bos, bull or cow. I remember that from the Bosporus.’

  Jack’s heart was pounding with excitement. This could be it.

  ‘It’s appearing on screen now.’

  Maria and Jack came up behind Costas. At the top of the scan they could see that the script had been enhanced, with the Greek-style letters more clearly visible. Below it was the translation:

  Haec implacivit Claudius Caesar in urbem sub duo sacra bos iacet.

  That which Claudius Caesar has entrusted to me lies in Rome beneath the two sacred cows.

  Jack stared again. His mind was racing. Only one day after finding the shipwreck of St Paul, they had stumbled on something extraordinary, perhaps the biggest prize of them all. And now he knew he had been right to take the scroll away, to keep it hidden until they had followed the trail to the end.

  The word of Jesus. The final word, the word that would eclipse all others. The last gospel.

  ‘Well?’ Maria said, looking up at him. ‘Sacred cows?’

  ‘I think I know where that is.’

  ‘Game on,’ Costas said.

  11

  The next morning Jack and Costas stood beside the Via del Fori Imperiali in the heart of ancient Rome. They had flown the Lynx helicopter from Seaquest II to Rome’s Fiumicino airport, on the site of the great harbour built by the emperor Claudius, and had taken the train along the course of the river Tiber into the city. Despite the heat, Jack had insisted that they leave the train at Ostiense station and walk through the ancient city walls and over the Aventine Hill, and then down past the Circus Maximus towards the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. As they neared their destination, the assurance and solidity of the modern city gave way to the fractured landscape of antiquity, desolate and empty in places, in others resplendent with structures more awesome than anything built since. It was as if those ruins and the shades of monuments long gone had the power to repel any attempt to better them, an aura which preserved the heart of ancient Rome from being submerged by history. Jack knew that the impression was partly an illusion, as much of the area of the imperial fora had been cleared of medieval buildings in the 1930s under the orders of Mussolini, but even so the Palatine Hill with the remains of the palaces of the emperors remained much as it had been since the end of antiquity, ruinous and overgrown in the many places where archaeologists had still done little more than scrape the surface.

  Jack had been talking intently in Italian on his cell phone, and now snapped it shut. A van carrying their gear would rendezvous with them in two hours’ time at the foot of the Palatine Hill. He nodded at Costas, and they joined a small throng of tourists lining up behind the ticket desk outside the site of the old forum.

  ‘Doesn’t seem right,’ Costas grumbled, wiping the sweat from his face and swigging some water. ‘I mean, a celebrity archaeologist and his sidekick. They should be paying you.’

  Jack pushed his cell phone into his khaki bag and pulled out a Nikon D80 camera, slinging it round his neck. ‘I often find it’s best to be anonymous at archaeological sites. You’re less likely to be watched. Anyway, I’d never convince them with you looking like that.’ Jack was dressed in desert boots, chinos and a loose shirt, but Costas wore a garish Hawaiian outfit, complete with a straw hat and his beloved new designer sunglasses.

  ‘They must be used to it,’ Costas said. ‘Archaeologists’ dress sense, I mean. Look at Hiebermeyer.’

  Jack grinned, paid for the tickets and steered Costas into the archaeological site, down a ramp and towards the ruin of a small circular building, with fragmentary columns still standing. ‘The Temple of Vesta,’ he said. ‘Shrine, really, as it was never formally consecrated as a temple, for some reason. Where the sacred fire was guarded by the Vestal Virgins. They lived next door, in that big structure nestled into the foot of the Palatine, a bit like a nunnery.’

  ‘A pretty extravagant nunnery,’ Costas murmured. ‘So all that stuff’s really true? About the Vestal Virgins?’

  Jack nodded. ‘Even the stuff about being buried alive. There’s no more sober witness than our friend the younger Pliny, who wrote the famous letters about the eruption of Vesuvius. In another letter he described how the emperor Domitian ordered the chief Vestal Virgin to be buried alive, for violating her vows of chastity. Domitian was a nasty piece of goods at the best of times, and the charge was concocted. But being walled up underground was the traditional punishment for straying Vestals, and she was taken to the appointed place and immured alive.’

  ‘Sounds like a male domination thing, gone badly wrong.’

  ‘Probably right. After the first emperor Augustus became Pontifex Maximus, the supreme priest, the emperor and the chief Vestal were on a collision course. The goddess Vesta was very powerful, guardian of the hearth. The eternal fire, the ignis inextinctus, symbolized the eternity of the state, and the future of Rome was therefore in the hands of the Virgins. They called her Vesta Mater, Vesta the Mother. She was like the Sibyl.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, some of the similarities are pretty remarkable. Vesta was probably an amalgam of an ancient local deity of Italian origin with a Greek import, supposedly brought by Aeneas from Troy. The Sibyl at Cumae has the same kind of history. And the Vestals were chosen as girls from among the aristocracy of Rome, just as I believe the Cumaean Sibyls were. We might find out more here. Come on.’

  Jack led Costas up the Sacred Way past the Arch of Titus, where they paused and looked silently up at the sculpture of the Roman soldiers in triumphal procession, carrying the Jewish menorah. They then carried on up the Palatine Hill into the Farnese Gardens, and then to the vast ruins of the imperial palace on the west side of the hill overlooking the Circus Maximus. They were met by a refreshing breeze as they came over the top, but even so the heat was searing and Jack led them to a shaded spot beside a wall.

  ‘S
o this was Claudius’ stomping ground,’ Costas said, taking off his sunglasses and wiping the sweat from his face. ‘Before he did his Bilbo Baggins disappearing act. It seems a far cry from that monk’s cell in Herculaneum.’

  ‘This was where he grew up, then where he spent most of his time as emperor apart from his visit to Britain,’ Jack replied. ‘But the image we have of this place at that time, the Hollywood image, you can forget a lot of that. Our view of the past is so often conditioned by later accretions, anachronisms. The Colosseum wasn’t built yet, was only inaugurated in AD 80, the year after Vesuvius erupted. The imperial palace, the huge sprawl in front of us, was only begun a few years after that by Domitian, the emperor who had the showdown with the Vestals. That was when megalomania really took hold, when the emperors really did begin living like gods. But for Claudius, like his grandfather Augustus, it was crucial to maintain the pretence of the republic, the idea that they were simply caretakers. They lived in a modest house, actually smaller than the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum.’

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘You’re leaning against it now.’

  ‘Ah.’ Costas put his hand against the worn brick facing. ‘So Claudius was here,’ he murmured.

  ‘And Pliny the Elder, in AD 79,’ Jack said.

  ‘I was wondering when you were coming to that.’

  ‘Right here we’re smack in between the House of Augustus and Domitian’s palace, and the building in front of us is the Temple of Apollo,’ Jack said. ‘Hardly anything’s left of the temple now, but you have to imagine an awesome structure in white marble. It was embellished with some of the most famous sculptures of classical Greece, taken by the Romans when they conquered the east. Right where we’re sitting now was the portico, a colonnaded structure that surrounded the temple. Augustus had an enclave constructed within the portico next to his house, and it contained a library, apparently large enough to hold Senate meetings. The enclave may have had particular administrative functions, including a Rome office for the fleet admirals.’

  ‘Got you,’ Costas said. ‘Pliny the Elder. Admiral at Misenum.’

  Jack nodded. ‘Pliny would have known this place well. Augustus also built a new shrine to Vesta at this spot, probably meant to supplant the one in the forum.’

  ‘Right under his bedroom window,’ Costas said. ‘Talk about control.’

  ‘The Vestal Virgins seem to have resisted the idea of moving their sacred shrine, and continued to patronize the old one. And here’s the really fascinating thing, the reason we’re here. The shrine to Vesta in the forum contained an adytum, an inner sanctum, a hidden place where various sacred items were stored. Its contents were pretty mystical, sacred objects to do with the foundation of Rome. The fascinum, the erect phallus that averted evil, the pignora imperii, mysterious pledges for the eternal duration of Rome, the palladium, a statue of the goddess Pallas Athena supposedly brought by Aeneas from Troy. Only the Vestals and the Pontifex Maximus were ever allowed in, and these items were never shown in public.’

  ‘A secret chamber,’ Costas mused. ‘So if Augustus was planning this new shrine as a replica of the old, he would have had a chamber built into this one too?’

  ‘My thinking exactly.’

  ‘But if the sacred items remained in the forum shrine, this new one would have been empty.’

  ‘Or not quite empty.’

  ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

  Jack opened his bag and pulled out a clipboard with a blown-up photograph of a Roman coin on the front. ‘This is the only known depiction of the new shrine, the Palatine Shrine of Vesta. It’s from a coin of the emperor Tiberius, of AD 22 or 23. You can see a circular colonnaded building very similar to the old shrine in the forum, clearly emulating it. The circular shape was meant to copy the hut form of the earliest Roman dwelling, the so-called House of Romulus, which was carefully preserved as a sacred antiquity on the other side of the House of Augustus. You can still see the postholes in the rock. What else can you see on that coin?’

  Costas took the clipboard. ‘Well, the letters S and C above the shrine. Senatus Consultum. Even I know that. And the shrine’s got a column on either side, a plinth with a statue on it. They’re animals, possibly horses.’ He paused, then spoke excitedly. ‘I’ve got you. Not horses. Bulls.’

  ‘That’s what clinches it,’ Jack said excitedly. ‘We know from the ancient sources that two statues stood in front of the Palatine Shrine of Vesta. Statues of sacrificial animals, sacred to the rites of the Vestals. Both statues were originally Greek, by the famous sculptor Myron of the fifth century BC. Statues of cows.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Remember our clue,’ Jack enthused. ‘Subduo sacra bos. Beneath the sacred cows. These two statues were a unique pair. There was nothing else like them in Rome. This can only be what Pliny meant. He hid the scroll here, in the empty chamber under the Palatine Shrine of Vesta.’

  ‘Where exactly?’ Costas had taken out a GPS receiver and was looking round, eyeing the featureless ground and dusty walls dubiously.

  ‘My best guess is where we are now, give or take ten metres either way,’ Jack said. ‘All trace of the shrine is gone, but it seems clear that it would have been on this side of the temple portico, right beside Augustus’ house.’

  ‘Ground-penetrating radar?’

  ‘Too much else going on here. The place is honeycombed, building built on building. Even the bedrock’s full of cracks and fissures.’

  ‘So what do we do now? Get a shovel?’

  ‘We’ll never find it that way. At least not without a lot of money, a lot of bureaucracy, and about a year for the permit to come through. No, we’re not going to dig down.’

  ‘So what can we do?’

  ‘We might be able to go up.’

  ‘Huh?’

  Jack took back the clipboard, closed his bag and jumped to his feet. He checked his watch. ‘I’ll explain on the way. Come on.’

  Twenty minutes later they stood on a terrace on the north side of the Roman Forum archaeological precinct, with a magnificent view of the heart of ancient Rome stretching out in front of them and the vast bulk of the Colosseum in the background. ‘This is the best place to get a sense of the topography, ’ Jack said. ‘At its height this was a huge conglomeration of buildings, temples, law courts, monuments, all crowding in on each other. Strip all that away and you can see how the forum was built in a valley, with the Palatine Hill on the west side. Now look to our right, below the north slope of the Palatine, and see how the valley sweeps round towards the river Tiber. Where we’re standing now is the Capitoline Hill, the apex of ancient Rome, the place where the triumphal processions reached their climax. Just to the right of us is the Tarpeian Rock, where criminals were flung to their deaths over a precipice.’

  ‘The miscreant Vestals?’

  ‘Traditionally their place of execution is thought to have been outside the city walls, but Pliny the Younger only mentions an underground chamber. It could have been close by.’

  ‘So tell me about underground Rome,’ Costas said. ‘Not that I want to go there. Three thousand years of accumulated sludge.’

  Jack grinned, opened his bag and pulled out the clipboard again, folding back the sheet with the image of the coin to reveal a copy of an old engraving, the word ROMA in large letters at the top. The centre of the map showed topographical features, valleys, hills and watercourses, and around the edge were building plans. ‘This is my favourite map of Rome,’ he said. ‘Drawn by Giovanni Battista Piranesi in the eighteenth century, about the same time that the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum was first being explored. The fragmentary plans of buildings around the edge are drawings of chunks of the famous Marble Plan, a huge mural originally displayed in Vespasian’s Temple of Peace. Only about ten per cent of the Marble Plan survives, in fragments like this.’ To Jack, Piranesi’s map was like a metaphor for knowledge of ancient Rome, like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle with some areas kno
wn in great detail, others hardly at all, even building layouts recorded exactly but their actual location lost to history.

  ‘It shows the topography very clearly,’ Costas said.

  ‘That’s why I love it,’ Jack replied. ‘Piranesi kept the pieces of the jigsaw to the edges, swept aside the buildings, and focused on the hills and valleys. That’s what I wanted you to see.’ He angled the map so it had the same orientation as the view in front of them, and traced his finger over the centre. ‘In prehistoric times, when Aeneas supposedly arrived here, the forum area was a marshy valley on the edge of a flood plain. As the first settlements spread down the slopes of the hills into the wetland, the stream was canalized and eventually covered over. It became the Cloaca Maxima, the Great Drain, extending beyond where you can see the Colosseum now, then right under the forum, then sweeping round in front of us and flowing into the Tiber. There were tributaries, streams running into it, as well as artificial underground constructions, the channels of aqueducts. It’s all still there, a vast underground labyrinth, and only a fraction of it has ever been explored.’

  ‘Where’s the nearest access point?’

  ‘We’re heading towards it now. Follow me.’ Jack led Costas off the terrace and down into Via di San Teodoro, the ruins on the Palatine rearing up to the left and the buildings of the medieval city to the right. They veered right again into a narrow street which opened out into a V-shaped courtyard, with traffic thundering beyond. In the foreground was a massive squat ruin, a four-way arch with thick piers at each corner. ‘The Arch of Janus,’ Jack said. ‘Not the most glorious of Rome’s ruins, pretty well denuded of anything interesting. But it stands astride the Cloaca Maxima. The place where the drain disgorges into the river is only about two hundred metres away, beyond the main road.’ They went through an opening in the iron railing surrounding the arch and walked under the bleached stone. On the forecourt on the other side a van was drawn up and two clusters of diving equipment were laid out on the cobbles, with two IMU technicians running checks on one of the closed-circuit rebreathers.