False God of Rome

by Robert Fabbri

  Sabinus suddenly saw the depth of his error of judgement. ‘Whereas if we condemned him the priests would be able to appeal for calm and expect to be listened to; and that, along with a show of force by us, should be enough to stop an uprising.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Pilatus said mockingly, ‘you’ve finally got there. So, Herod, I’ve got to defuse this quickly before Yeshua’s followers start rousing the people. What should I do?’

  ‘You must go to the palace first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘To overturn the sentence?’

  ‘No, you can’t let this man live now that you’ve finally got him. You’ve got to reunite the priests with the people so that they can control them.’

  ‘Yes, but how?’

  ‘By turning a Jewish stoning into a Roman crucifixion.’

  ‘This man must die,’ the High Priest Caiaphas hissed at Pilatus through his long, full grey beard. Regaled in his sumptuous robes and topped with a curious, bejewelled domed hat made of silk, he looked, to Sabinus, much more like an eastern client king than a priest; but then, to judge by the size and splendour of the Jews’ Temple, Judaism was a very wealthy religion and its priests could afford to be extravagant with the money that the poor, in the hope of being seen by their god as righteous, pumped their way.

  ‘And he will, priest,’ Pilatus replied; never normally in the best of moods for the first couple of hours after dawn, he was striving to keep his fragile temper. ‘But he will die the Roman way, not the Jewish.’

  Sabinus stood with Herod Agrippa watching the struggle between the two most powerful men in the province with interest. It had been an acrimonious meeting, especially after Pilatus had, with great relish, pointed out the trap that Yeshua had set for Caiaphas and how he had been politically maladroit enough to fall into it.

  ‘To avoid an uprising,’ Pilatus continued, ‘which, judging from the reports I’ve had, Yeshua’s followers are already initiating, you must do as I’ve ordered immediately.’

  ‘And how can I trust you to do what you’ve promised?’

  ‘Are you being deliberately obtuse?’ Pilatus snapped, his temper no longer able to take the strain of dealing with this self-serving priest. ‘Because in this instance we are both on the same side. The preparations have been made and the orders given. Now go!’

  Caiaphas turned and walked, with as much dignity as he could muster after being summarily dismissed, out of the magnificent, high-ceilinged audience chamber, the centrepiece of the late Herod the Great’s palace on the west side of the upper city.

  ‘What do you think, Herod?’ Pilatus asked.

  ‘I think that he’ll play his part. Are the troops ready?’

  ‘Yes.’ Pilatus turned his bloodshot eyes to Sabinus. ‘Now’s your chance to redeem yourself, quaestor; just do as Herod has told you.’

  The noise of a raucous mob grew as Sabinus and Herod approached the main entrance to the palace. Stepping out of the high, polished cedar-wood doors, they were confronted by a huge crowd filling the whole of the agora before the palace and overflowing into the wide avenue at its far end that led up to the Temple and the Antonia Fortress.

  The shadows were long and the air chill, it being only the first hour of the day. Glancing up to his left Sabinus could see, on the hill of Golgotha beyond the Old Gate in the city walls, a cross that was always left standing between executions as a reminder to the populace of the fate that awaited them should they seek to oppose the power of Rome.

  Caiaphas stood on the top of the palace steps with his arms raised in an attempt to quieten the crowd. He was surrounded by a dozen fellow priests; behind them, guarded by Paulus and a group of Temple Guards, stood Yeshua with his hands bound and with a blood-stained bandage around his head.

  Gradually the noise subsided and Caiaphas began his address.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Sabinus asked Herod.

  ‘He’s appealed for calm and now he’s telling them that, because of his popularity with the common people, Yeshua is to be pardoned and released from Jewish custody in a gesture of mercy at this time of Passover.’

  A loud cheer went up from the crowd as Caiaphas stopped speaking. After a few moments the High Priest raised his arms, again asking for quiet before continuing.

  ‘He’s now asking them to return to their homes,’ Herod translated, ‘and he says that Yeshua will be freed immediately.’

  Sabinus watched, knowing that his moment to act was imminent; Caiaphas turned and nodded at Paulus who reluctantly began to untie his prisoner’s hands.

  ‘Now!’ Herod hissed. ‘And try not to say anything stupid.’

  ‘That man is now a prisoner of the Senate of Rome,’ Sabinus bellowed, walking forward; behind him Longinus led a half-century of auxiliaries out of the palace, quickly surrounding the Temple Guards and their erstwhile prisoner. From the direction of the Antonia Fortress a cohort of auxiliaries marched down the avenue and formed up behind the crowd, blocking the road and any chance of escape.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ Caiaphas shouted at Sabinus, playing his part rather too theatrically.

  ‘The Senate requires that this man, Yeshua, be tried before Caesar’s representative, Prefect Pilatus,’ Sabinus replied in a high, loud voice that carried over the agora. Angry shouts started to emanate from the crowd as those who could speak Greek translated Sabinus’ words for their fellows. As the noise of the crowd grew, the cohort behind it drew their swords and began to beat them rhythmically on their shields.

  Pilatus stepped out of the palace accompanied by a bedraggled and bruised Jew. He walked past Sabinus and, standing next to Caiaphas, signalled for silence; the shouting and the clashing of weapons died down.

  ‘My hands are tied,’ he declaimed, crossing his wrists above his head. ‘Quaestor Titus Flavius Sabinus has demanded, on behalf of the Senate, that I try Yeshua for claiming to be a king and inciting rebellion against Caesar; as a servant of Rome I cannot refuse such a demand. If he is found guilty it will be Rome that is sentencing him, not me, your prefect. I wash my hands of his blood for this is not of my doing, it is the will of the Senate.’ He paused and brought the Jew who accompanied him forward. ‘However, in a spirit of goodwill and to show the clemency of Rome I will, in honour of your Passover festival, release to you another Yeshua whom you hold dear: this man, Yeshua bar Abbas.’

  To roars of approval Pilatus ushered the freed man down the palace steps to disappear into the joyous crowd.

  ‘They’ve had their sop, priest, now use your authority over them and get them to disperse before I have to massacre the lot,’ Pilatus hissed at Caiaphas as he turned to go. ‘Herod, come with me.’

  ‘I think that I will absent myself now, with your permission, prefect. It would not be good for a Jewish prince to be associated with this man’s death, and besides I should be entertaining my Parthian guests.’

  ‘As you wish. Longinus, bring the prisoner to me once you’ve softened him up a bit.’

  ‘So you’re the man who calls himself the King of the Jews?’ Pilatus asserted, looking down at the broken man kneeling on the audience chamber floor before his curule chair.

  ‘They are your words, not mine,’ Yeshua replied, lifting his head painfully to meet his accuser’s eyes; blood, from the wounds inflicted by a thorn crown, rammed mockingly on his head, matted his hair and dripped down his face. Sabinus could see that his back bore the livid marks of a severe whipping.

  ‘Yet you don’t deny them.’

  ‘My kingdom is not of the physical world.’ Yeshua raised his bound hands to touch his head. ‘It is, like all men’s, in here.’

  ‘Is that what you preach, Jew?’ Sabinus asked, earning an angry glance from Pilatus for interrupting his questioning.

  Yeshua turned his attention to Sabinus and he felt the intensity of the man’s look pierce him; his pulse quickened.

  ‘All men keep the Kingdom of God inside them, Roman, even Gentile dogs such as you. I preach that we should purify ourselves by baptism
to wash away our sins; then by following the Torah and by showing compassion for fellow believers, doing unto them as we would be done by, we will be judged righteous and worthy to join our Father at the End of Days, which is fast approaching.’

  ‘Enough of this nonsense,’ Pilatus snapped. ‘Do you deny that you and your followers have been actively encouraging people to rebel against their Roman masters?’

  ‘No man is master of another,’ Yeshua replied simply.

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Jew, I am your master; your fate is in my hands.’

  ‘The fate of my body is, but not my fate, Roman.’

  Pilatus stood and slapped Yeshua hard around the face; with a vicious leer, Yeshua ostentatiously proffered the other cheek; blood trickled from a split lip down through his beard. Pilatus obliged with another resounding blow.

  Yeshua spat a gobbet of blood onto the floor. ‘You may cause me physical pain, Roman, but you cannot harm what I have inside.’

  Sabinus found himself mesmerised by the strength of will of the man; a will, he sensed, that could never be broken.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Pilatus fumed. ‘Quaestor, have him crucified with the other two prisoners immediately.’

  ‘What’s he been found guilty of, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know; anything. Sedition, rebellion or perhaps just that I don’t like him; whatever you like. Now take him away and make sure that he’s dead and in a tomb before the Sabbath begins at nightfall, so as not to offend Jewish law. He caused enough trouble while alive and I don’t want him causing more when he’s dead.’

  The sky had turned grey; droplets of rain had started to fall, diluting the blood that ran from the wounds of the three crucified men. It was now the ninth hour of the day; Sabinus and Longinus walked back down the hill of Golgotha. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  Sabinus looked back at Yeshua hanging on his cross; his head slumped forward and blood oozed from a spear wound in his side that Longinus had administered to hasten the end of his suffering before the commencement of the Sabbath. Six hours earlier he had been whipped up the hill dragging his cross, aided by a man from the crowd. Then he had endured, in silence, the nails being hammered through his wrists; he had seemed barely to notice the nails being pounded home through his feet, fixing them to the wood. The savage jolting as the cross was hauled upright, which had caused the screaming of the other two crucified men to intensify to inhuman proportions, had brought no more than a shallow groan from his lips. He looked now, to Sabinus, to be at peace.

  Sabinus passed through the cordon of auxiliaries who were keeping the small, mournful crowd of onlookers away from the executed men and saw Paulus, standing with a couple of Temple Guards, gazing up at Yeshua; a bandage around his head was spotted with blood from the wound to his ear. ‘What are you doing here?’ Sabinus asked.

  Paulus seemed lost in his own thoughts and did not hear him for a moment, then blinked repeatedly as he registered the question. ‘I came to check that he was dead and take his body for burial in an unmarked tomb so that it doesn’t become a place of pilgrimage for his heretical followers. Caiaphas has ordered it.’

  ‘Why were you all so afraid of him?’ Sabinus enquired.

  Paulus stared at him as if looking at an idiot. ‘Because he would bring change.’

  Sabinus shook his head scornfully and pushed past the malchus of the Guard. As he did so a group of two men and two women, the younger one heavily pregnant and carrying an infant, approached him.

  The elder man, a wealthy-looking Jew in his early thirties with a dense black beard, bowed. ‘Quaestor, we wish to claim Yeshua’s body for burial.’

  ‘The Temple Guards are here to claim it. What claim do you have on his body?’

  ‘My name is Yosef, I am Yeshua’s kinsman,’ the man replied, putting his arm around the shoulder of the older of the two women, ‘and this woman is Miriam, his mother.’

  Miriam looked pleadingly at Sabinus, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘Please don’t let them have him, quaestor, give me my son so that I can take him back to Galilee and bury him there.’

  ‘My orders are that he is to be buried before nightfall.’

  ‘I have a family tomb, just close by,’ Yosef said, ‘we will put the body there for now, then move it the day after the Sabbath.’

  Sabinus looked back at Paulus with a malicious smile. ‘Paulus, these people have the claim of kin over the body.’

  Paulus looked outraged. ‘You can’t do that; Caiaphas demands his body.’

  ‘Caiaphas is Rome’s subject! Longinus, have that hideous little man escorted away from here.’

  As Paulus was manhandled away, protesting, Sabinus turned back to Yosef. ‘You can take the body; Rome has finished with it.’ He turned to go.

  Yosef bowed his head. ‘That was a kindness that I won’t forget, quaestor.’

  ‘Quaestor,’ the younger man called, stopping Sabinus, ‘Rome may be our master now, but be warned, the final age is approaching and Yeshua’s teachings are part of it; a new kingdom will rise, new men with new ideas will rule and the old order will start to fade.’

  Recollecting the Emperor Tiberius’ astrologer, Thrasyllus, two years previously predicting the coming of a new age, Sabinus stared at the young man; he recognised him as the man who had helped Yeshua with his cross that morning. ‘What makes you so sure of that, Jew?’

  ‘I come from Cyrenaica, Roman, which was once a province of the Kingdom of Egypt; there they await the rebirth of the firebird. Its five-hundred-year cycle is coming to an end; next year the Phoenix will be reborn in Egypt for the last time and all things will begin to change in preparation for the End of Days.’

  PART I

  CYRENAICA, NOVEMBER AD 34

  CHAPTER I

  ‘HAVE YOU GOT it?’ Vespasian asked as Magnus walked down the gangplank of a large merchant ship newly arrived in the port of Appolonia.

  ‘No, sir, I’m afraid not,’ Magnus replied, shouldering his bag, ‘the Emperor is refusing all entry permits to Egypt at the moment.’

  ‘Why?’

  Magnus took his friend’s proffered forearm. ‘According to Caligula it’s on the advice of Tiberius’ astrologer, Thrasyllus; not even Antonia could get him to change his mind.’

  ‘Why did you bother coming, then?’

  ‘Now that ain’t a very nice way to greet a friend who’s travelled fuck knows how many hundreds of miles in that rotting tub at a time of year when most sailors are tucked up in bed with each other.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Magnus. I was counting on Antonia getting me the permit; it’s been four years since Ataphanes died and we promised to get his gold back to his family in Parthia.’

  ‘Well then, another couple of years or so ain’t going to make much difference, are they?’

  ‘That’s not the point. Egypt is the neighbouring province; I could have made a short diversion to Alexandria on my way home in March, found the Alabarch, given him Ataphanes’ box and made the arrangements for the money to be transferred to his family in Ctesiphon and still be back in Rome before next May.’

  ‘You’ll just have to do it some other time.’

  ‘Yes, but it’ll take much longer going from Rome. I may not have the time; I’ve got the estate to run and I plan to get elected as an aedile the year after next.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t go making promises that you can’t keep.’

  ‘He served my family loyally for many years; I owe it to him.’

  ‘Then don’t begrudge him your time.’

  Vespasian grunted and turned to make his way back along the bustling quayside through the mass of dock-workers unloading the newly docked trading fleet. His senatorial toga acted as an intimidating display of his rank, ensuring that a path was cleared for him through the crowd, making the hundred-pace journey along the quay to his waiting, one-man litter an easy affair.

  Magnus followed in his wake enjoying the deference shown to his young friend by the local populace. ‘I
didn’t think quaestors were normally treated with this much respect in the provinces,’ he observed as one of the four litter-bearers unnecessarily helped Vespasian onto his seat.

  ‘It’s because the Governors always hate it here and rightly so, it’s like living in a baker’s oven but without the nice smell. They tend to spend all their time in the provincial capital, Gortyn over in Creta, and send their quaestors here to administer Cyrenaica in their name.’

  Magnus chuckled. ‘Ah, that’ll always help people to respect you, the power of life and death.’

  ‘Not really, as a quaestor I don’t have Imperium, no power of my own. I have to have all my decisions ratified by the Governor, which takes forever,’ Vespasian said gloomily, ‘but I do have the power to procure horses,’ he added with a grin as a dusky young slave boy led a saddled horse up to Magnus.

  Magnus took the animal gratefully and threw his bag over its rump before mounting. ‘How did you know that I’d be arriving today?’

  ‘I didn’t, I just hoped that you would be,’ Vespasian replied as his litter moved forward, passing a theatre looking out over the sea. ‘When the fleet was sighted this morning I decided to come down on the off-chance, as it’s probably the last one of the season to arrive from Rome. Anyway, it’s not as if I had anything else worthwhile to do.’

  ‘It’s as bad as that here, is it?’ Magnus raised a wry eyebrow as the slave boy began fanning Vespasian with a broad, woven palm-frond fan on a long stick.

  ‘It’s terrible: the indigenous Libu spend all their time robbing the wealthy Greek farmers; the Greeks amuse themselves by levelling false accusations of fraud or theft against the Jewish merchants; the Jews never stop protesting about sacrilegious statues or some perceived religious outrage involving a pig, and then the Roman merchants passing through do nothing but complain about being swindled by the Jews, Greeks and Libu, in that order. On top of that everyone lives in fear of slave-gathering raids by either the Garamantes from the south or the nomadic Marmaridae to the east, between here and Egypt. It’s a boiling pot of ethnic hatred and the only thing that they hate more than each other is us, but that doesn’t stop individuals throwing money at me to rule in their favour in court cases.’