The Splendor Before the Dark

by Margaret George

  “Having no position in society would be fair only if half of the work of government weren’t run by freedmen,” I said. “Your fund-raising plan is an excellent one.”

  But after he left I spread out the paper again and kept staring at it, as if that would change the figures on it.

  XV

  Work proceeded apace as I scrambled to increase the treasury income to cover it. But the task seemed less onerous as I basked in the memory of the approval I had felt radiating from the people in the Forum at the propitiation ceremonies. Most dear to me was the bond between me and the Roman people, especially as the one between me and the Senate was stretched thin.

  But my peace was shattered the morning Tigellinus came to my work quarters. The burly Praetorian looked both self-satisfied and disturbed, an alarming combination. His square jaw was clenched unusually tight as he leaned close and said, “Caesar, dismiss the others present so we can talk.”

  I waved the scribes and attendants out, then turned to him. “Well?”

  “The rites have not been effective. The people are still muttering about the Fire, and this time they name you directly. My agents have heard this in numerous places—I would never credit anything whispered only once.”

  A combination of anger, sorrow, and panic took hold of me. “What did they say? Dare to speak it aloud.”

  “They are quoting what they claim is a Sibylline prophecy relating to the Fire.

  “Last of the sons of Aeneas, a mother-slayer, shall govern.

  “And that after that, Rome by the strife of her people shall perish.”

  He crossed his muscular arms. “I warned you that the people would not be satisfied by the formal rites, and now I have proof.”

  Yes, he was ruthlessly efficient at tracking down information.

  “I have done all I can,” I said. But the mention of Mother was unnerving. Long ago it had been accepted (so I thought) that she had committed suicide after her treason was discovered. The treason part was true, even if the suicide was not. She had methodically plotted to turn me off the throne, even to assassinate me—her own, her only son. As the years went on, it became clear that only one of us could survive, and I had to ensure it was I. That was five years ago, safely buried with her ashes, but now the scandal rose again to confront me.

  “Obviously you must do more,” said Tigellinus.

  “What else can I do?”

  “Find the guilty ones and punish them,” he said.

  “It was an accident . . .” I began as I had a hundred times. “But perhaps not.” Once again I remembered the torch-throwers.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “There were things I saw . . . suspicious things . . . at the height of the Fire.” I reminded him of the mysterious men, their strange words.

  “They mentioned the end of the world? Flames?”

  “I can’t recall their exact words. I was being pelted with falling sparks and timber at the time. But I do remember two of them calling on Jesus.”

  He nodded grimly, but a slight smile played on his lips. “Christians!”

  “What do you know about them?” I asked. “What would be pertinent to the Fire?”

  “I’ll find some of them and ask,” he said. “In the way I do best.”

  “No, bring them here to me. Let me ask them.” I didn’t want him to use harsh methods that would just extract false information.

  “I’ll round some up,” he said. “How many do you want?”

  * * *

  • • •

  Fifteen people were paraded before me in my audience room. They were all ages, and both men and women. As a group they looked to come from the lower classes, newly freed slaves or the very poorest segment, the ones who existed on the free grain dole and what they could earn as vendors or menial laborers. But they stood proudly, not as others in their situation usually did when facing the emperor. They looked me in the eye, directly.

  “These all belong to a group they call ‘Peter’s church,’” Tigellinus said. “It’s one of the largest in Rome. It probably has a hundred or so members.”

  “How many Christians are there in Rome?” I asked one of them, a man who somehow seemed like the leader.

  “It is difficult to say, Caesar,” he said. “Probably several thousand. But we are small compared to the Jews, who number some forty thousand or so here.”

  “Aren’t you some offshoot of Judaism?”

  “Some would call us that, but not the Jews!” He laughed. That disconcerted me; no one else being questioned by me on a serious matter would have laughed.

  “What is so amusing?” I asked.

  “Our founder, Jesus, was a Jew, and taught the Jewish law, and fulfilled the Jewish scriptures, but he was not accepted by them, and he even warned us that we would not be, either. And it has come true. So we are flattered that some still think we are accepted by the Jews, because that would mean they accept our founder’s message. But, sadly, they do not.”

  I didn’t care about their quibbles with other religions. “Explain to me your philosophy about fire.” Let us get straight to it. “Or rather what Jesus has to do with fire.”

  The leader looked perplexed, but a woman beside him with wild streaming hair was quick to answer. “Fire is a cleansing element; it purifies us.”

  The first man now said, “Peter said that sufferings are a fire to refine us, like gold.”

  “Who is Peter? I asked you about Jesus.”

  “Peter was one of his followers, and a leader in the church.”

  “What about real fire, not metaphorical fire like suffering?”

  “The world will end in flames!” a youth cried out. “It will bring the end of the age and usher in a new world, a new order.”

  “So a fire will hasten this—this new world?” I asked. “And what will be in this new world? Is there a Rome? Is there an emperor?”

  The older man silenced him. “Peter wrote about this in a letter. It was his words, not those of Jesus.”

  “What were those words?”

  He closed his eyes to conjure them up. “‘But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.’” He stopped and took a breath. “‘Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.’”

  “Ah!” said Tigellinus. “They admit it. They were ordered to speed its coming, the time of fire!”

  The man said, “There were more instructions. ‘So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless, and at peace with him. Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him.’”

  Paul! The man I had interrogated and let go.

  “I am the one blameless, not you!” I shouted. “You look forward to a fire and even want to bring it about. I wanted no such thing, yet am being blamed!” I stood up, glaring at them.

  “What more do we need?” said Tigellinus. “They have condemned themselves by their own words.”

  “But they have not admitted doing anything,” I said. “Wishing for something is not bringing it about.”

  “That is why I wanted to read you the rest of the letter,” the leader said. “We were instructed not to sin, to trust God to bring about the end of days, to be patient and wait for him to act. Our only obligation was to be ready and keep peace.”

  “But what about the ‘speed its coming’
?” I asked.

  The woman now spoke again. “It only meant that . . . that . . . we believe in it.”

  “You don’t have an answer, do you?” said Tigellinus. “Nobody would take it to mean just that.”

  “You say you have letters from your leaders?” I said. “I want to read them. I want to read your instructions. From this Peter. And from Paul.”

  Paul had been so well spoken, so persuasive, at our interview, and had convinced me he was a thoughtful man, someone I could understand and someone who understood me. We had spoken of competition and which prizes were lasting and which were not. I maintained that the prize of eternal art was the one most worthy to strive for, but he said there was one higher even than that, which was the one he sought. Still, we had parted amicably. I could not imagine him advocating setting Rome on fire.

  “There are copies in my house,” he said. “I will fetch them.”

  “No!” said Tigellinus. “You are to be detained here. Let one of these others lead me there and gather them up.”

  “We will hold you here for further questioning,” I said. Once they were let go, they might flee, for all their talk of patience. Where was Paul now, for instance?

  * * *

  • • •

  True to their word, the Christians surrendered their letters to Tigellinus, and with smug vindication he emptied a sack onto my desk and a heap of scrolls poured out.

  “They prize these missives and treat them as holy objects,” he said. “But for something sacred, they were housed dismally. The rooms—across the river in a hovel—were a warren of poverty.”

  I spread out the scrolls, lining them up like legionaries.

  “They are written in Greek,” he said. “Poor Greek, the common sort, not classical Greek.”

  “At least they can write,” I said. “But I may need a translator for some of it, as I don’t usually deal with koine Greek. Beryllus can probably do it.” In the aftermath of the Fire, my secretary for Greek letters had had little to do. But I would try it myself first. I was curious to see what these people believed, in their own words.

  There were a number of letters from Paul to his followers all over—to the Galatians, the Philippians, the Thessalonians, the Corinthians, and the Romans. The latter I would read first and unrolled the scroll.

  It began, “Dear friends in Rome” but immediately plunged into a long discourse about Jewish laws and sin and an indictment of the Romans around them.

  Therefore God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil.

  “They don’t think much of us,” I said drily.

  “The feeling is mutual,” said Tigellinus.

  “You may leave me to this,” I said. I would dutifully read on, but it promised to be heavy going.

  The letter to the Corinthians was more interesting reading. But it just confirmed what dregs the Christians drew their membership from.

  Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.

  Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral nor idolators . . . nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards . . . will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were.

  Well, I wouldn’t admit it if I were they! What strange people. But Corinth was known for its freewheeling life and gatherings of foreigners, and the Christians were recruited from that population.

  As I read along, I saw Paul’s words about competition, the very thing he had said to me in person, when we had communicated so well and he had lulled my suspicions about his sect.

  Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.

  Yes, I had understood that perfectly. How I wished he were here now so I could speak directly to him, instead of relying on these written messages. Further into the letter he mentioned the end of days.

  What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short . . . For this world in its present form is passing away.

  But he did not say anything about fire or hastening it on. I kept reading, and then I came upon something else.

  The sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink from the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons.

  There, in the words of a revered leader, was proof that Christians actually considered the Roman gods to be demons and the Roman religion utterly false. Poppaea had said they were subversive, and now I understood. She had also said they practiced magic, which was a capital crime. And here that transgression was, too.

  The things that mark an apostle—signs, wonders, and miracles—were done among you with great perseverance.

  Magicians were strictly forbidden in the empire, and that included necromancers, wizards, occultists, diviners, and sorcerers. But it apparently was practiced by their apostles. And Jesus himself was said to have performed miracles—the greatest, of course, being that he rose from the dead, a magic feat if ever there was one.

  I set the scrolls aside and called for some wine. When it was brought, I swirled it around in my goblet and looked long at its bubbles beaded around the rim. Wine. Bacchus. What did the Christians mean about sharing the cup with demons? Was Bacchus a demon to them? What sort of Lord’s cup did they share in their rituals?

  I took a deep sip, savoring the rich red liquid. If this was the cup of demons, why was it so delicious? The Roman gods gave us pleasurable things, bestowing the gifts of the earth on us—Venus gave us love, Bacchus wine, Ceres fruit and harvest—all good, not evil. Yet the Christians would condemn them all, deprive us of their beneficence.

  Restored by the wine, I opened another letter, this one to the Thessalonians. He didn’t mention sins in this one, and at last I found a reference to the apocalypse.

  For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first . . . Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly.

  There were a few other scrolls, not written by Paul or the other followers, but collections of sayings for and about Jesus. They were not histories, exactly, but notes about the founder. I waded through them, finding Jesus an enigmatic character who certainly made arresting statements, but his overall mission was incoherent. Perhaps it was the random assortment of his sayings, just jumbled together, that made them so abstruse.

  But just as patience in searching the desert for precious gems can finally yield a treasure, I saw this.

  As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

  It was us, the Romans, the city, they threw into the fiery furnace, to fulfill this prophecy.

  On another part of the scroll I finally found the last proof.

  I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!

  His baptism, whatever it was, had passed. So now, by his own words, it had been time to bring the fire to the earth.

  XVI

  For a
long time I sat motionless in front of the condemning papers. I now had the proof I needed, but that was no consolation. Many years ago, when I was first emperor, I had to sign an execution order for a notorious criminal and cried, “I wish I had never learned to write,” to the amusement of the administrators standing by my desk. Scrawling the words on the document had sent tremors through me. But it had to be. And this, too, had to be.

  I stood up and went to Poppaea’s quarters. I needed resolution, and something more than that—absolution? She was always firm and decisive and did not look back.

  The light was fading in the western windows, the scorching sun having fled the sky, and sweet warm evening was at hand. It would be the quiet time in her apartments; I hoped her barbiton player was on duty tonight. His playing was always soothing; I liked the deep tones of the bass cithara.

  I was not disappointed. As I approached the area I could just catch the low, melancholy sound of the instrument. Coming into the room, I saw him on a cushion at the far end, with Poppaea reading on a couch nearby, a half smile on her face, her feet tucked under her. She barely looked up as I walked over, but the player stopped, stood up, and bowed. Only when the music stopped did she notice me.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then why so downcast? You look as if you were robbed by brigands.”

  I sat down beside her. “I have been robbed of something. I am not sure what.”

  “Uncertainty, perhaps,” she said, signaling for the music to start up again. She reached out and stroked my cheek. “You are happiest when things are unsettled, still to come.”

  “Not now,” I said. “This uncertainty has smoldered too long after the real Fire died—the smoke of rumors, speculation, hateful accusations still hanging over us all. But now we can focus on the real culprits, who will be duly punished.”