The Roman (5 page)

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tins argument to the court, since by it the Christians would lose an irreplaceable advantage and protection. It would be more rational for them to admit that they were Jews and benefit from all the political advantages of Judaism, even if they did show little respect for circumcision and the Jewish laws. But he did not succeed in convincing these two Jews. They had their own unshakable belief that a Jew was a Jew and all others heathens, but a heathen could become Christian and in the same way a Jew could also become a Christian and then there was no difference between them, but they were one with Christ. Nevertheless, a Jew as a Christian continued to be a Jew, but a baptized heathen could become a Jew only by circumcision, and this was neither necessary nor even desirable any longer, for the whole world must know that a Christian did not need to be a Jew. My father said bitterly that this was a philosophy that was beyond his comprehension. In his day, he himself had been humbly wishing to become a subject of the kingdom of Jesus of Nazareth, but then he was not received because he was not a Jew. The leaders of the Nazareth sect had even forbidden him to talk about their king. As far as he could see, he would be wisest to continue to wait for the affairs of the kingdom to be clarified so that they would also be comprehensible to simpler minds. Clearly it was providence that was now sending him to Rome, for such unpleasantness was to be expected in Antioch from both Jews and Christians that even the best mediators could no longer offer a solution. But he promised to suggest to the city council that the Christians should not be tried for having violated the Jewish faith, since they by receiving the baptism, devised by the Jews, and by admitting a Jewish Messiah as their king, in any case de facto ii not also literally de jute, in some way or other were Jews. If lie council admitted this standpoint, then the matter could at least be postponed and the Jews� action set aside for a time. With this Barnabas and Paul were satisfied, and indeed they could hardly be otherwise. My father assured them that his sympathies in any case lay more with the Christians than with the Jews. The freedmen on their part implored my father to ask to be allowed to resign from the city council without delay, for he had enough to do with his own affairs. But my father quite rightly

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replied that just at this moment it was impossible for him to do so, for a public application for resignation would make everyone believe that he in fact regarded me as guilty of sacrilege. The freedmen began seriously to fear that my father�s obvious sympathies with the Christians would make the people suspect that he had perhaps encouraged me, his son, with the view in mind of violating the girls� innocent rites. For both Christians and Jews felt an equally implacable aversion to idols, holy sacrifices and hereditary rites. �The Christians who have been baptized and then have drunk blood with their fellow believers,� said the freedmen, �pull down and burn their household idols and destroy their expensive fortunetelling books instead of selling them for a reasonable price to people who could still use them. This impetuous intolerance makes them dangerous. You, our good patient master, should have no more to do with them, or things might go badly for your son.� In all honor to my father, it must be said that after the visit from the two Jews, he no longer pressed me to go and listen to their teachings. After disagreeing with other Jews, they also began quarreling between themselves, and they left Antioch in different directions. The faithful Jews calmed down after their departure, for the moderate Jews avoided open and public conflict and kept themselves to themselves in their own secret society. At my father�s suggestion, the city fathers refused to allow the Jews� complaint against Paul and Barnabas, and proclaimed that the Jews themselves must settle their own disagreements. With the help of some determination, it was also easier to hand over the dispute concerning me and my friends to be solved by the oracle in Daphne. Our parents paid heavy fines and we ourselves underwent purification ceremonies in the groves of Daphne for three days and three nights. The parents of the girls we had violated no longer dared press us with proposals of marriage. But in connection with the purification ceremonies, we were forced to make a certain promise to the Moon Goddess, but this I could not tell my father, nor did he ask me about it. My father, contrary to his usual habit, went with me to the amphitheater, where we seven youths were allowed to occupy the place of honor behind the city authorities at the next performance. Our lion had undergone a slimming course and was skillfully

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spurred on to conduct itself in the arena far better than we had flared to hope. With little difficulty it tore apart a malefactor who had been condemned to be thrown to the beasts of prey; then bit the first gladiator in the knee, and fell while fighting fearlessly to the end. The crowd roared with delight and honored the lion and ourselves by rising to its feet and applauding. I think my father was proud of me, although he said nothing. Several days later, we said good-bye to the tearful servants and traveled to the port of Seleucia. There we boarded a ship, my father and I, with Barbus following, to sail to Naples and from there to Rome.

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BOOK 2

Rome For I could but describe what it feels like to arrive in Rome, at fifteen years of age, when one has known since childhood that all one�s blood ties are united with those sacred hills and valleys. For me, it felt as if the very ground shook beneath my feet as it welcomed its son, as if every furrowed stone in the streets had repeated eight hundred years of history for my ears. Even the muddy Tiber was so sacred to me that I felt faint at the sight of it. I was perhaps exhausted by the excitement and lack of sleep on our long journey, but it all felt to me as if I were delightfully intoxicated, but more sweetly than with wine. This was the city of my forefathers and my city too, which ruled over the whole of the civilized world as far distant as Parthia and Germany. Barbus sniffed the air eagerly as we made our way to the house of my father�s aunt, Manilia Laelius. �For more than forty years I have missed the smell of Rome;� he said. �It�s a smell one never forgets and one notices it most in the town of Subura, just at this time of the evening when the smell of cooking and hot sausages blends with the natural smells of the narrow streets. It�s a mixture of garlic, cooking oil, spices, sweat and incense from the temples, but most of all a kind of basic smell which one can only call the smell of Rome, for I have never met it anywhere else. But in forty years the mixture seems to have changed, or perhaps my nose has grown old. Only with an effort can I regain the unforgettable smell of my childhood and youth.� We arrived at the city on foot, for vehicles are forbidden in Rome in the daytime. Otherwise, communication would become impossible because of the overcrowding. For my sake, and perhaps also for his own, my father chose a roundabout route across the forum to Palatine, so that we had Palatine hill on our left and the Capitoline in front of us. Then we took the old Etruscan road

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to get up to Palatine, alongside the great circus. My head swung from side to side as my father patiently enumerated the temples and buildings, and Barbus gaped in wonder at the vast new apartments on the forum which had not been there in his day. My lather was sweating and breathing heavily as he walked. I thought compassionately that he was an old man although he was not yet fifty But my father did not stop to draw breath until we came to the round temple of Vesta. Through the opening in its roof rose the thin spiral of smoke from the sacred lire of Rome, and my father promised that the next day, if I wished, I could go with l3arbus to look at the cave where the she-wolf had suckled Romulus and Remus and which the god Augustus had preserved as a spectacle for the whole world. The sacred tree of the wolf-brothers still grew in front of the cave. For me,� said my father, �the smell of Rome is an unforgettable scent of roses and salves, of clean linen and scrubbed stone floors, a smell which cannot be found elsewhere in the world, for the smell and soil of Rome itself has its own contribution to make. But the very thought of this smell makes me so melancholy that I can hardly bear to walk through these memorable streets once again. Let us not stop then, so that I shall not be too moved and lose the self-control which I have practiced for over fifteen years.� But Barbus objected pitifully. �Experience of a lifetime has taught me,� he said, �that a few gulps of wine are enough for my mind and for the whole of my being to take in smells and noises more clearly. Nothing has ever tasted so good in my mouth as the small spiced sausages one can get sizzling hot in Rome. Let us at least stop long enough to taste some.� My father was forced to laugh. We stopped at the market and went into a small inn which was so old that its floor lay well below street level. Both Barbus and I eagerly sniffed the air. �Blessed be Hercules I� cried Barbus in delight. �A bit of the old days is left of Rome after all. I remember this place, even if in my memory it was considerably larger and more spacious than it is now. Take a deep breath, Minutus, you who are younger than I. Perhaps you can smell the smell of fish and mud, of reeds and manure, of sweaty bodies and the incense shops of the circus.�

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He rinsed his mouth, spat out an offering on to the floor, and then stuffed his mouth with sausage, chewing and smacking his lips, his head to one side. Finally he said, �Something old and forgotten is in fact returning to my mind. But perhaps my mouth has also grown too old, for I can no longer feel the same sensual bliss as before with sausage in my mouth and a goblet of wine in my hand.� The tears rose in his old eyes and he sighed. �I am indeed like a ghost from the past,� he said, �now that the centenary is to be celebrated. I don�t know a single person here, neither a relation nor a protector. A new generation has replaced mine and it knows nothing of the past, so the spiced sausage has lost its flavor and the wine is diluted. I had hoped to come across an old comrade-in-arms among the Emperor�s Praetors, or at least in the Fire Brigade of Rome, but now I wonder whether we�d even recognize each other. Woe to the conquered. I am like Priam in the ruins of Troy.� The innkeeper hurried up, his face shining with grease, and asked what the matter was. He assured us that in his house one could find horsemen from the circus, officials of the State archives, actors, and architects who were putting Rome�s sights in order for the centenary festivities. One could even make acquaintance with nice little she-wolves beneath his roof. But Barbus was inconsolable and replied gloomily that he could not consider a she-wolf, for even that would certainly not feel the same as before. Afterwards we walked up the hill of Aventine and my father said with a sigh that we should not have turned off into the inn after all, for the garlic sausage had given him a stomachache which not even the wine could allay. He was feeling pressure in his chest and was filled with evil forebodings, which grew worse at the sight of a crow flying past on our left. In among the new and old apartment blocks, we wandered past several ancient temples which looked sunk into the ground beside the large buildings. On the other side of the hill, my father at last found the Manilianus family property. Compared with our house in Antioch, it was quite a small and neglected building which had at some time had an additional storey built on to it to provide more space. But it was surrounded by a wall and a wild

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garden. When my father saw my contemptuous expression, he said sternly that the plot and the garden alone bore witness to the age and nobility of the house. The bearers had long since arrived from the Capua gate with our luggage and Aunt Laelia was expecting us. First she let my father pay the bearers and then she came down the steps and along the garden path between the laurel bushes. She was a tall thin woman and had carefully rouged her lined cheeks and darkened her eyes. She was also wearing a ring on her finger and a copper chain around her neck. Her hands trembled as she came to meet us, her cries of joy carefully controlled. She made a mistake at first, for my father in his humble way had stood in the background to pay the bearers himself, and she stopped in front of Barbus, bowing a little and covering her head as if in prayer. �Ah, Marcus, what a joyful occasion,� she cried. �You are much changed since your youth. But your stance is now better and your figure more powerful.� My father burst out laughing. �Oh, Aunt Laelia,� he cried. �You are as shortsighted as ever. I am Marcus. This good honest old veteran is our companion l3arbus, one of my clients.� Aunt Laelia was annoyed at her own mistake. She went up to my father, peered at him with glittering eyes and fumbled over his shoulders and stomach with shaking hands. �It is not so strange,� she remarked, �that I no longer recognize you. Your face has swollen, your stomach sags and I can hardly believe my own eyes, for you used to be quite good-looking.� My father was not offended by her words. On the contrary. �Thank you for your words, Aunt Laelia,� he said. �A weight has fallen from my mind, for I have had nothing but trouble from my appearance before. As you didn�t recognize me, then hardly anyone else will either. But you haven�t changed a bit. You�re as slim as before and your features are just as noble. The years have not changed you in the slightest. Embrace my son Minutius too, then, and be as good and considerate to him as you were to me in the lighthearted days of my youth.� Aunt Laelia embraced me with delight, kissed me on the forehead and eyes with her thin mouth and felt my cheeks.

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�But Minutus,� she cried, �you already have the beginnings of a beard and are not at all a child to be hugged.� She went on, holding my head between her hands and looked carefully at my face. �You look more like a Greek than a Roman,� she said. �But those green eyes and fair hair of yours are certainly very unusual. If you were a girl, I should say you were beautiful, but with those looks you will certainly make a good marriage. Your mother of course was a Greek, if I remember rightly.� Not until she had stammered and chattered away for some time, as if she herself did not really know what she was saying, did I realize that she was in a state of utter terror. At the entrance we were greeted by a bald, toothless slave, and at his side stood lame and one-eyed woman. They both knelt in front of my father and called out a greeting which Aunt Laelia had obviously taught them. My father looked embarrassed, patted Aunt Laelia on the shoulder and asked her to go in before us as she was the hostess. The little room was f till of smoke which made us all start coughing, for Aunt Laelia had had a fire lighted on the household altar in our honor. Through the smoke I could just make out our family gods in fired clay, and their yellowed wax masks seemed to move in the swirling smoke. Nervously tripping, coughing and gesticulating, Aunt Laelia began verbosely to explain that according to the traditions of the Manilianus family, we ought really to sacrifice a pig. But as she had been uncertain of the day of our arrival, she had not acquired a pig and could now offer us only olives, cheese and vegetable soup. She herself had long since ceased eating meat. We looked at all the rooms in the house and I saw the cobwebs in the corners, the wretched couches and some other poor furniture, and I suddenly realized that our noble and much- respected Aunt Laelia lived in the depths of poverty. All that remained of Manilius the astronomer�s library were a few rat-chewed scrolls, and Aunt Laelia was forced to admit that she had even sold his portrait bust to the public library below Palatine. Finally she broke down and wept bitterly. �Just blame me, Marcus,� she said. �I�m a bad housekeeper because I have seen better days in my youth. I shouldn�t have been able to keep this household going if you hadn�t sent money from