The Eighth Veil (28 page)
He was at home when Gamaliel trudged from his house south of the Hulda Gates to the northern edge of the city.
Once seated on benches outside he said, “Loukas, forgive me for my inattention. I thought I knew you but now I am not so sure. Our conversations of late make me doubt my first impression. I have always assumed you were a Greek in fact as well as inclination. Was I wrong? Are you Jew or Gentile? I ascribed your attitude as that of ‘Fearer of the Lord’ only. So I took you for a Greek and a pagan in search of learning.”
“Did you? Well you might. For all intents and purposes I am as you thought, Greek. That is so only because of the happenstances of my childhood. My youth, you see, was wrenched from me as was my family. One day we lived together, the next we were scattered over the countryside. And as this happened to my family, no rabbi or priest came to deliver us. So, I am today what circumstances have made me. My early upbringing ceased to exist.”
“I am confused. What sort of past? Are you saying you were Jewish at one time? Are you now?”
“A fair question. Very well, I am a Jew by birth but a skeptic by inclination, if you follow me. But I have none of the fire or faith of my former co-religionists. My childhood circumcision marks me as one of the covenanted but little else. Do not look so shocked, Rabban. I am not unique in this as you must know.”
“I am not shocked, only saddened and you are right, there are many like you. I worry how the Nation will survive because of it.”
“The Nation? Come, come, Rabban, surely you know that more Jews live beyond the boundaries of Israel than within it. Alexandria alone rivals this city in its total of the children of Father Abraham.”
Gamaliel did know but it was not something he liked to dwell on. The thought of so many Jews outside the immediate influence of Jerusalem and the Temple worried him as it did the Sanhedrin. Loukas drew a breath and launched into his narrative.
“My family history is neither unique nor particularly interesting. Like many people, that is to say the marginalized of the Empire, my father was crushed by heavy taxes levied first by the Empire, then by local regents and governors, and finally, a host of agents and bullies. He was a leather worker, or tried to be. It was a skill passed on to him by his father. His survival depended on the tiny margin of profit between the cost of hides and the price he received for the goods he made from them. That margin grew smaller every year and when it finally disappeared, he could no longer pay his taxes. He borrowed from moneylenders against the hope of better times, but in the end, defaulted on his debts.
“There is no mercy to be had from either tax collectors or the moneylenders. The former are a pox on the Nation, the latter worse, but at least with them there can be no illusion about what is expected. As my father had no assets to seize and no wealthy patron to turn to, his family, my sisters, mother, all of us, were sold into slavery. I was very young so that all I remember of that day was the wailing from my mother, sisters, and even father as we were carried off in as many directions as there were of us, to live and die in strange places. I have no idea where they were sent and I have never seen any of them since.”
“This is true?” Gamaliel knew it probably was. People did not lie about those things—family being the cornerstone of the society. He also knew that this man’s story could be told a hundred times over on every street corner of the city and in every market place in every village and town across the Empire. There was only one relief from poverty. You sold yourself or you died.
“Yes, but you see I was one of the lucky ones. My master turned out to be a physician practicing his skills in Antioch—that would be the Antioch closest to us, just to the north in Syria. We have a peculiar habit of using place names over and over. It can be confusing. At any rate my master, like many of the well educated of the day, maintained a tolerance to all religions and philosophies that might be foreign to his own and, indeed, sought them out for study and discourse. I must tell you, Rabban, he was severely disappointed when he discovered that I, though a Jew, knew so little of my faith.”
“He was disappointed? Why did you know nothing of your upbringing?”
“Please understand, my father was a Jew of the Diaspora, always living on the edge of poverty, and therefore little inclined to attend synagogue or instruct his son in the faith. I knew something of the Torah and the lives of David and Solomon, but not much else about the God of Abraham. What little I now know, I gleaned later, much later as I sought to settle the unrest in my soul.”
They sat a moment. Gamaliel waited for him to continue, unsure if he intended to or not.
“My life was spent in the homes of the wealthy and privileged citizens of the Empire safe by virtue of their status from the crushing oppression borne by the rest of us. It also meant they were blind to the suffering they and their kind brought on others. They were conditioned by their society and upbringing to expect privilege as an inherent right of citizenship and birth. Wealth, as I have said to you on another occasion, insulates one from one’s actions. It is an axiom of power, I think, and the cause for most of the suffering in the world. Can you imagine a world where the rich had to share the sufferings of the poor?”
A picture, a very different picture of his friend began to form in his mind. “That is a very democratic thought, Loukas. You are a Greek after all. No, an Athenian. You are a student of…what’s his name…the teacher who is said to have drunk the hemlock for corrupting the youth of the city.”
“Socrates? Not hardly. So, when I was in my thirteenth year, when I would have become an adult had I been raised in the faith, my master made me his apprentice. I was a good student and soon found myself constantly at his side. He taught me how to compound his potions from the extensive pharmacopoeia of the time. I soon learned the subtleties of diagnosis, the treatment of agues, fluxes, and the myriad illness and traumas that plague us. I became a better than average bonesetter. By my twentieth year, I was often sent to see the sick and suffering in my master’s stead, particularly those whose financial condition suggested they might not be able to pay the Healer’s Fee. When they saw it was me and not my master, they usually did not.
“It was a good life, all things being considered. My only regret was that when that good man, in his turn, fell ill, I was powerless to save him. My inheritance, if you can call it that, was my freedom, his name,
Lucanus
in Latin, and his practice, such as it was. So, I accept no religion beyond that of Asclepius. I have no spiritual inclinations, nor have I received instruction in any of the many religious offerings of the day. But I retained, deep in my soul, memories of an angry Moses coming down from the mountain and despairing at the sight of the children of Israel worshipping a golden calf, memories of David and his sling dropping the mighty Goliath, and of a mysterious Isaiah singing about a new day and the Coming One. I read what I could find.”
“Read? In Greek? The Septuagint?”
“Indeed, the bits and pieces of it made available from time to time. Those books are costly to own, you understand, but much easier on the eyes than your Hebrew versions, if you must know. So there you have it, Rabban. I am, like so many living in David’s city, poised and waiting for what comes next, but not necessarily committed to it, whatever it may be.”
“To what comes next? I don’t understand. Something is expected?”
“You wait for a messiah, do you not? The pagans who linger at the fringes of the faith expect something to happen, are sure of it, in fact. Perhaps it is the brooding Roman presence that creates this need for something dramatic. You do not have to be a Jew to long for another Moses to lead you out of bondage, you see. There is a tension in the air, Rabban. You are too deep in your scrolls to feel it, but it is palpable to the rest of us.”
Gamaliel slouched back in his chair. Loukas was beginning to sound too much like Menahem.
“If you say so, Physician, but I did not come here to discuss the apocalypse with you. What can you tell me about Egypt?”
“Egypt? That is a sudden change in conversational direction. Why Egypt?”
“I wish to know its recent history, back six decades or so.”
“You wish to know about the Roman connection and the destruction of a great empire at the hands of Caesar Augustus, then only Octavian. Where shall I start?”
“With the battle of Actium or thereabouts and all that followed. Then you must tell me all you know of Cappadocia.”
“I don’t think there is a connection between them. Why the two?”
“I have some thoughts that need either confirmation or erasure.”
“Ah then, this may take a while.”
“It is fascinating you bring these two questions to me at the same time, Rabban. They are both tangled up in the Roman civil war that broke out after the assassination of Julius Caesar and in very similar ways. The assassins, after Brutus’ death and under Gaius Cassius, occupied the eastern provinces, while Antony and Octavian settled in the west and south. Cassius put an end to the rule of Ariobarzanes III and his brother Ariarathes in Cappadocia. But he lost the battle of Philippi to Octavian and Marc Antony, who will next be found cavorting with the Queen of the Nile. The new order, as is their habit, decided to shift the power to someone they could rely on more readily and elevated the high priest of Comana as the new king. That would be Archelaus, the father of Glaphyra, who became the wife of Alexander who…well, you see the picture.”
“I’m trying to. It is confusing to say the least.”
“More so as her mother was also named Glaphyra and she was married to an Archelaus as well at one time or another. The princess moved around quite a bit. So, Cappadocia was expanded even more when Octavian disposed of Antony and his Egyptian Queen and became Emperor Augustus and sole ruler. He added parts of Cilicia to the country. Then his successor, Tiberius, turned Cappadocia into a province of the empire and sent Archelaus packing and appointed Quintus Veranius governor. At the same time he unofficially folded portions of Cilicia, Galatia, and Antiochus into it thus making it extend from the Euxine Sea in the north to the Middle Sea. The new governor, by the way, was adjutant to Germanicus who is, I have it on some authority, that is the rumors from the city across the sea, the father or grandfather of Tiberius’ successor. The ‘Little Boots’ we spoke of before.”
“My head spins, but Cappadocia is a prize then?”
“Indeed, almost as great as Egypt. It controls the trade routes to the east and the trade routes to and from the south all the way into Africa, intersect the east-west ones as well. To control those roads that send goods east and west, north and south is a ‘pearl of great price’ in the eyes of a man whose ambitions run to kingship. And furthermore, as a land in and of itself, it is extraordinarily rich and fertile—vineyards, fruit of all kinds and its Caesarea is a capital to rival any in the Empire. And then the landscape, they tell me, has those amazing great phallic stones which the Romans seem to admire for some reason. A phenomenon I prefer not to analyze.”
“Really? I had no idea. I think I have spent too much time with my nose in books and papers. Everyone knows these things?”
“Not everyone, no, but those who need to, must.”
“Yes, I see. Some of my confusion arises from the dual practices peculiar to royalty in general, intermarriage and murderous plotting. Herod’s line in particular has several instances of nieces attached to their uncles and sometimes serially. And this Glaphyra seems to turn up everywhere in the line.”
“Perhaps she was a great beauty.”
“Perhaps. Cleopatra is said to have been rather plain.”
“But she had other attributes. Maybe Glaphyra shared some of them.”
“Are you really so carnal or do you say these things only to goad me?”
“A little of both, Rabban, You were saying?”
“I was elucidating the commonalities associated with those royal houses, Egypt’s and Herod’s—and Rome’s as well, for that matter. They all have a habit of executing perceived threats to their power. Brothers, sons, wives, mothers-in-law, and relatives in general, it doesn’t seem to matter. The mere appearance of a threat seems to be sufficient. That practice seems especially to have preoccupied the late King Herod nearly as much as the huge building programs he’d launched.”
“So now you know the substance of royalty in our time. Is there anything else you need?”
Was there? Whether to the south and east, north, or west, the exploits of these rulers—Cleopatra, Archelaus I and II, Princess Glaphyra, Antony—including those which were only rumored and did not involve a Roman of importance, were enough to make his head spin. Nevertheless, Gamaliel had taken it all in. He sat back, educated, slightly confused, but at the same time pleased with himself because he felt sure now he’d correctly figured out almost all of the important parts on his own. The few bits he did not know and had just learned either did not matter, or confirmed what he’d already surmised.
It had taken longer than Gamaliel expected for Loukas to work out the tortured history of Egypt’s last days as an empire in its own right, and almost as long to sort out the complexities of the Cappadocian royal family. But it was as if the last veil had fallen away from his dancer and he could see the naked truth at last. He smiled inwardly at the metaphor. He was certain Loukas would have envisioned a different sort of dancer and a much more graphic nakedness. He smiled and left his friend with a promise to return and speak more of his faith or lack thereof. Loukas nodded and bid him farewell.