As I looked at my father’s swollen face and restless roving eyes, I was seized with great compassion. I realized that he had to find something worthwhile in his life to be able to bear living in Tullia’s house. Yet even being in the Senate would be better for his spiritual health than taking part in the secret meetings of the Christians.
As if he had read my thoughts my father looked at me, fingering the worn wooden goblet, and said, “I must stop partaking in the love-feasts, for my presence simply does harm to the Christians, as it has to Paulina. Tullia has, in her mortification, sworn to have them all banished from Rome if I don’t leave them. All this because of a few innocent kisses which are customary after the holy meals.”
“Go to Britain,” he went on, handing me his beloved wooden goblet. “The time has come for you to take over the only inheritance you have from your mother, before Tullia burns it in her anger. Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews, once drank from it, almost eighteen years ago, after he had risen from his tomb and gone to Galilee with the scars from the nails on his hands and feet and the sores from the lashes on his back. Don’t ever lose it. Perhaps your mother will be a little closer to you when you drink from it. I have not been the kind of father I should have wished to be.”
I took the wooden goblet which my father’s freedmen in Antioch maintained was blessed by the Goddess of Fortune. I thought that it had not protected my father from Tullia, if one did not consider this fine house, all the comforts of life and perhaps the honor of being a senator the greatest possible earthly success. But I felt a secret respect as I took the wooden goblet in my hands.
“Do me one more service,” my father said gently, “On the slopes of Aventine, there lives a tentmaker …”
“ …whose name is Aquila,” I said ironically. “Quite. I am taking a message to him from Paulina. I can tell him at the same time that you too are leaving them.”
But my bitterness dissolved and melted away when my father gave me his beloved goblet as a memento. I embraced him and pressed my face against his tunic to hide my tears. He clasped me tightly to him, and we parted without looking at each other again.
Tullia was waiting for me in the high-backed chair of the mistress of the house.
“Have a care in Britain, Minutus,” she said. “It will be important for your father to have a son serving the State and the common good. I don’t know much about army life, but I’m given to understand that a young officer is more quickly promoted by being generous with his wine and
101
playing dice with his men than by going on unnecessary and dangerous expeditions. Don’t be mean with your money, but incur debts if necessary. Your father can afford it. Then you’ll be considered normal in every way.” On the way home I went into the temple of Castor and Pollux to inform the Curator of the cavalry of my journey to Britain. At home my Aunt Laelia and Claudia had become firm friends and had chosen the best kind of woolen underclothes for me as a protection against the raw climate of Britain. They had gathered other things for me too, so much that I should have needed at least a wagon to take them all. But I was not even going to take my armor, except my sword, as I thought it best to equip myself on the spot in accordance with what the country and circum-stances demantled. Barbus had told me how they used to laugh at the spoilt Roman youths who brought quantities of unnecessary things with them on active service.
In the moist warm autumn evening, beneath the uneasy red sky, I went to see the tentmaker, Aquila. He was obviously quite a wealthy man, for he owned a large weaving business. He met me suspiciously at the door and looked around as if afraid of spies. He was about forty and did not look at all Jewish. He had no beard and no tassels on his mantle, so I took him for one of Aquila’s freedmen. Claudia had come with me and she greeted Aquila like an old friend. When he heard my name and the greetings from my father, his fear left him, although the uneasiness in his eyes was the same as I had seen in my father’s. He had vertical lines on his forehead like a soothsayer.
He asked us kindly to come into his house, and his fussy wife Prisca at once began offering us fruit and diluted wine. Prisca was at least a Jewess by birth, judging by her nose, a managing, talkative woman who had probably been very beautiful in her youth. Both were upset when they heard that Paulina had been denounced and that my father considered it best to leave their secret society so as not to harm them.
“We have enemies and people who envy us,” they said. “The Jews persecute us, hound us out of the synagogues and beat us in the streets. An influential magician, Simon from Samaria, hates us bitterly. But we are protected by the spirit who puts words in our mouths and so we need fear no earthly power.”
“But you are not a Jew,” I said to Aquila. He laughed.
“I am a Jew and am circumcised, born in Trapezus in Pontus, on the southeast shore of the Black Sea, but my mother was a Greek and my
102
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270