The Roman (80 page)

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unnecessarily. I had my own reasons for this because of you. So I dressed in strong armor and a helmet, although this equipment made me pant for breath and sweat profusely. But during those days I lost pounds of weight from my plump body so that the straps soon loosened. It did me nothing but good. On my wanderings I found the Jewish execution place where Jesus of Nazareth had been crucified. The diminutive hill was indeed shaped like a skull, as I had been told, and had received its name from that. I looked for the rocky tomb from which Jesus of Nazareth had risen from the dead on the third day, and it was not difficult to find because the besiegers had cleared the ground and torn up all the bushes so that spies could not sneak out of the city. I found many rocky tombs but could not be certain which of them was the right one, for my father�s account had been vague in these details. As I dragged myself on, my lungs heaving and armor rattling, the legionaries laughed at me and assured me I should not find a blind angle which would have allowed me to approach right up to the wall in safety, since the Parthians had helped the Jews fortify Jerusalem very skillfully. The legionaries were not very keen to protect me with a shield-roof because these tortoises were usually showered with molten lead from the wall. They asked mockingly why I was not wearing a horsehair plume on my helmet, or my purple band. But I was not that mad, and since I respected the Parthian bowmen, I left my red boots in my tent to avoid boasting of my rank. I shall always remember the sight of the temple of Jerusalem as it shone on its mountain, high up above the walls, dreamily blue in the morning light, red as blood when the sun had already set in the valley. Herodus�s temple was in truth one of the wonders of the world. After years and years of work it had finally been completed shortly before its destruction. No human eye will ever see it again. It was the Jews� own fault that it vanished. I did not wish to be part of its destruction. Certain religious speculations to which I had been devoting myself at that time were naturally due to the fact that I knew I was risking my life for your future and so became softhearted in a manner unsuited to a man of my age. When I thought of Jesus of Nazareth and the Christians, I decided that I should help them

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to the best of my ability to free themselves from the deadweight of the Jews, which they still, despite Paul and Cephas, dragged along like fetters. Not that I really believed the Christians had a political future, even under the best possible Emperor, for they were too hostile and disunited among themselves. But because of my father I have a certain weakness for Jesus of Nazareth and his teaching. When my stomach complaint was at its worst, about a year ago, I was even prepared to acknowledge him as the Son of God and the Savior of mankind, if he had mercy on me. During the evenings I often drank from my mother�s worn old goblet, for I felt I should need all possible luck on my dangerous enterprise. Vespasian still had his grandmother�s buckled old silver goblet and he remembered my plain wooden mug from our time in Britain and admitted that he had begun to feel a paternal friendliness toward me then, because I respected the souvenir of my mother and had not brought silver dishes and gold goblets with me on active service, as many wealthy young knights did when they began their military careers. Such behavior only tempts the enemy and provides loot for the plunderer. As a sign of our lasting friendship, we took turns drinking from our sacred family goblets, for I had good reason to let Vespasian sip from Fortuna�s goblet. He would need all the luck he could find. I brooded over whether I should dare dress in Jewish costume when I went into the city, but then thought it would be overdoing it, although numerous Jewish merchants had been crucified all over the camp as a warning against stealing up to the walls after dark and passing information on our plans and new military machines. I wore my helmet, chest harness, armor and leg guards on the day when I finally scrambled to the wall at the place I had decided on. I thought such equipment would protect me from the first blows if I got inside the city. Our guard posts had had orders to send a shower of arrows after me, and by making a great deal of noise, draw the Jews� attention to my attempt. They did as they had been ordered so well that I was hit in my heel by an arrow and ever since then have been lame in both legs. I decided to seek out that all too zealous bowman if I returned alive and see to it that he received the severest possible punishment for disobeying clear orders. He had had orders to

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shoot beyond me, if also as close as possible. But when I finally did return, I was so pleased that I did not bother to find the man, and also my wound contributed to the fact that the Jews believed my story. After abusing me for a while, the Jews fought off with stones and arrows a Roman patrol trying to pursue and capture me. During this attempt, to my great sorrow, two honest legionaries were killed, and I took it upon myself to support their families later on. They belonged to the 15th legion which had come all the way from Pannonia and they never again saw their beloved muddy banks of the Danube, but died for me in the land of the Jews, which they had already had time to curse a thousand times over. At my entreaties, the Jews finally lowered a basket from the wall and pulled me up in it. I was so frightened in the swaying basket that I managed to pull the arrow out of my heel without feeling any pain. The barbs, however, stuck in the wound, which soon began to fester, and on my return to the camp I had to seek the help of the field surgeon, roaring with pain as a result, which is probably why I have been lame ever since. My previous experience with field surgeons had been bad enough and should have been a warning to me. But those scars were my only hope. After venting their anger at my Roman attire, they at last gave me an opportunity to explain that I was circumcised and a convert to Judaism. This they at once confirmed, after which they treated me somewhat better. But I do not like to remember the Parthian centurion, dressed as a Jew, and his fierce interrogation to determine my identity and the truth of my story before he considered he could hand me over to the real Jews. I shall only mention that torn-out thumbnails grow again quite quickly. I know that from experience. My thumbnails however were not counted as service merit. In such cases military regulations are absurd, for I had much more trouble from my thumb- nails than from my excursions around the walls within range of the catapults. Such things are counted as service merits. To the fanatics� Council I could produce a testimonial and a secret authority to negotiate from the Julius Caesar synagogue. These valuable papers I had hidden in my clothes and had naturally not shown to Vespasian, for I had been given them 597

in confidence. The Parthian could not read them either, for they were written in the sacred language of the Jews and sealed with the Star of David. The Council of the synagogue, which is still the most influential in Rome, told in their letter of the great service I had rendered to the Jewry of Rome during the persecution after the revolt in Jerusalem. As one of my services, they mentioned the execution of Paul and Cephas, for they knew that the Jews in Jerusalem hated these plague-spreaders as much as they themselves did. The Council was eager for information of what had happened in Rome, for they had not had any definite news for several months, save for bits received via a few Egyptian pigeons. Titus had tried to stop these too, with trained hawks, and others had had their necks wrung by the starving populace of Jerusalem before they reached the pigeon loft in the temple with their messages. For safety�s sake I did not reveal that I was a Roman senator, saying that I was an influential knight so that the Jews should not be too tempted. Naturally I assured them that as a new convert, which they could see from my scars, I wished to do everything I could for Jerusalem and the Holy Temple. Thus I had joined Vespasian and his troops as a tribune and let him believe that I could acquire information for him from Jerusalem. The arrow in my heel was sheer back luck, and the patrol�s attempt to catch me was a cunning feigned attack to bluff the Jews. My openness made such an impression on the Council that they believed me, as far as is possible in conditions of war. I was allowed to move freely in the city, protected by bearded guards with burning eyes, of whom I was, in fact, more afraid than of the starving inhabitants of the city. I was allowed in the temple, too, as I had been circumcised. So I am one of the last people to have seen the temple of Jerusalem from inside in all its incredible splendor. With my own eyes I could assure myself that the seven-branched gold candlesticks, the golden vessels and the golden shewbread were still in their places. They alone were worth an immense fortune, but no one seemed to give a thought to hiding them away. To such an extent did these insane fanatics trust in the sanctity of the temple and their Almighty God. However unbelievable it may sound to a sensible person they had not dared

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use more than a fraction of the immense treasures of the temple to purchase arms and fortifications. The Jews preferred to work themselves to the bone without pay rather than touch the temple treasures, which lay hidden in the middle of the mountain behind armored doors. The whole of the temple mountain is like a hollowed-out honeycomb with its myriad quarters for pilgrims and numerous underground passages. But no one can hide anything so well that no one can find it, provided that more than one man does the hiding and that the hiding place is known to many. I found this out later when I ferreted out Tigellinus� secret archives. I thought it important that they should be destroyed for the sake of the authority of the Senate, for in them the political views and personal habits of many members of our oldest families were revealed in a strange light, foolish men who were able to get the people to demand that Tigellinus should be thrown to the wild animals. He would have been incomparably more dangerous dead than alive if his records had fallen into the hands of an unscrupulous person. Naturally I handed over Tigellinus� treasure to Vespasian, keeping only a few souvenirs for myself, but I said nothing about the secret papers nor did Vespasian ask about them since he is both wiser and more cunning than his crude exterior indicates. I must admit I handed over the treasure with a heavy heart, for it included the two million sesterces of full-weight gold pieces I had given Tigellinus before leaving Rome as he had been the only man who might have doubted my good intentions and prevented my going. I well remember his distrustful remarks. �Why,� he asked, �are you giving me such a large sum unasked?� �To strengthen our friendship,� I replied honestly. �But also because I know you can use this money in the right way if evil times befall. Naturally may all the gods of Rome protect us from such things.� The money was still there, for he was a miserly man. But he knew how to behave when his time had come. It was he who got the Praetorians to abandon Nero when he realized his own skin was in danger. So at first no one wished him ill, and Galba received him well. It was Otho who had him murdered since he felt all too insecure on the tide of temporary popularity. I have always

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regretted his quite unnecessary death, for he deserved to see better days after his troubled youth. During Nero�s last years he lived under constant oppression so that he could not sleep and became even harder than before. But why do I think about him? My most important task in besieged Jerusalem was accomplished in discovering that the temple treasure was still there and intact. Thanks to the completeness of our siege, I knew that not even a rat with a gold piece in its mouth could escape from Jerusalem. You must understand that because of you and your future, I could not offer Vespasian the loan of the contents of my twenty iron chests in Caesarea to help him to the Imperial throne. I trusted his honesty, but Rome�s finances are in confusion, and civil war imminent. I had to secure my expectations which was the only reason why I risked my life and went to Jerusalem. Naturally I also collected information on the city�s defenses, on the walls, catapults, food and water supplies, for that too would be to my advantage in my report to Vespasian. The city had more than sufficient water from underground cisterns. Right at the beginning of the siege, Vespasian had hopefully cut off the aqueduct which Procurator Pontius Pilate had had built forty years earlier, and which the Jews had opposed with all their might as they did not want to be dependent on water brought in from outside. This also proved how long the revolt had been prepared, and how long the Jews had awaited a favorable opportunity. But the city had no stores of provisions. I saw shadow-thin mothers with bony children in their arms, trying in vain to squeeze a last drop of milk from their breasts. I felt sorry for the old people too, for they were given no rations. The fanatics bearing arms and fortifying the walls needed all the food. At the meat market I saw that a pigeon and a rat were treasures paid for in their weight in silver. There were whole flocks of ewes at the temple for the daily sacrifices to the Jews� bloodthirsty Jehovah, but the starving crowd did not even try to touch them. They scarcely needed guarding, for they were sacred animals. The priests and members of the Council were, of course, still well- fed. The sufferings of the Jewish people oppressed me, for in the scales of the inexplicable god, the tears of a Jew presumably weigh

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as much as those of a Roman, and the tears of children more than those of adults, regardless of language and color of skin. But it was necessary to prolong the siege for political reasons, and the Jews owed their fate to their own stubbornness. Any Jew who even mentioned capitulation or negotiating with the Romans was immediately executed and I think ended in the meat market, if I may give my own personal opinion. Josephus in his account, and only to arouse compassion, mentions only a few mothers who ate their own children. These things were so common in Jerusalem that even he was forced to mention them, to maintain at least some kind of reputation for historical accuracy. Later I offered Josephus a reasonable fee for the edition of The Jewish War which my publishing house sold, although we had a legal right to publish it. But Josephus refused the money and in the way all authors do, simply complained about the cuts which I had had made to be able to sell the book better, and my assurances would not convince him that these cuts only improved his intolerably long-winded book. Authors are always conceited. When we had agreed on what kind of misleading information on the city�s defenses I should bear to Vespasian and the ways in which the Julius Caesar synagogue in Rome could secretly support the Jewish revolt without any risk to themselves, the Jewish Council let me out of the city. Blindfolded, I was taken along an underground passage and pushed out into a quarry among rotting corpses. I scraped the skin off my knees and elbows crawling about in the quarry, and it was not very pleasant to trip and find one�s hand in a swollen corpse, for the Jews had forbidden me to remove the bandage from my eyes until a certain time had gone by. Otherwise they threatened to shoot an arrow straight through my body, without mercy. Meanwhile they covered the opening to the secret passage so well that we had great difficulty finding it again. But it was finally discovered, since I had to have every hole blocked. The way I returned opened our eyes and taught us to search for outlets from the city in the most unlikely places. With promises of rewards I got the legionaries to dig them out. Nevertheless, in an entire year we found only three. But for some time after my return