father was baptized when he was celebrating Pentecost in Jerusalem once. There was much quarreling in Pontus when some people wanted to make sacrifices to the Emperor outside the synagogue. I moved to Rome and live here on the poor side of Aventine, like many Jews who no longer believe that to follow the law of Moses absolves them from their sins.”
“The Jews on the other side of the river hate us most,” explained Prisca, “because heathens who have listened to them prefer to choose our way and think it is easier. I don’t know if our way is easier. But we have compassion and the secret knowledge.”
They were not unpleasant people and lacked the usual superciliousness of the Jews. Claudia admitted that she and her Aunt Paulina had listened to their teachings. According to her, they had nothing to hide. Anyone could come and listen to them and some were moved to a state of ecstasy. Only the love-feasts were closed to outsiders, but that was also true of Syrian and Egyptian mysteries which occurred in Rome.
They kept repeating that everyone, slave or free, rich or poor, wise or dull, was equal in the eyes of their God, and they regarded everyone as their brothers and sisters. I did not entirely believe this as they had been so depressed to hear that my father and Paulina Plautia had left them. Claudia had assured them of course that Paulina had not done so in her heart but only outwardly to protect her husband’s good name.
The following morning I was given a horse for the journey and a courier’s plaque to wear on my chest. Paulina gave me the letter to Aulus Plautius and Claudia wept. I rode along the military highways right through Italy and Gaul.
Book III
Britain
I arrived in Britain just as winter was setting in with its storms, mists and icy rain. As every visitor to Britain knows, the country can oppress any man. There are not even any towns in the sense that there are in northern Gaul. Whoever does not die of pneumonia in Britain gets rheumatism for life, if he has not already been captured by the Britons and had his throat slit in their ash groves; or been carried back to their priests, the Druids, who predict the future of their tribe from the intestines of Romans. My legionaries, who have thirty years’ service behind them, told me all this.
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I met Aulus Plautius at the trading station of London, which lies by a fast-moving river, and where he had his headquarters as there were at least a few Roman houses there. He was not angry, as I had feared he would be when he read the letter from his wife, but burst out laughing, slapping his knees. A week or two earlier he had received a secret letter from Emperor Claudius confirming his triumph. He was in the process of arranging his affairs in Britain so that he could leave his command and return to Rome in the spring.
“Oh, yes,” he laughed, “so I’m supposed to summon the family together to pronounce judgment on my dear wife, am I? I shall be lucky if Paulina doesn’t tear the few remaining hairs from my head when she questions me on the kind of life I’ve been leading in Britain. I’ve had enough of religious matters here, what with cutting down the Druids’ sacred groves, and paying for a whole shipload of idols to stop people here making their revolting human sacrifices. And then they immediately smash the clay statues and start rebelling again.
“No, no,” he went on, “superstition at home is much more innocent than it is here. This accusation is only an intrigue by my dear colleagues in the Senate who are afraid I’ll be much too wealthy after being in command of four legions for four years. As if anyone could get rich in this country. In fact Rome’s money disappears as if into a bottomless pit, and Claudius has been forced to let me celebrate a triumph so that Rome will think that all is peaceful here. No one will ever make this country peaceful, for it is in a permanent state of turmoil. If one conquers one of their kings in honorable battle, another soon appears, caring for neither hostages nor treaties. Or else a neighboring tribe comes and captures the land we’ve conquered and slaughters our garrison troops. One can’t disarm them completely because they need their weapons to defend themselves against each other. I should have been glad to return without a triumph just to get out of this godforsaken country.”
He grew serious and looked sternly at me.
“Had rumor of a triumph already spread to Rome when you left,” he asked, “for a young knight like you voluntarily to offer to come here? I suppose you hope to share in the triumph with the minimum effort.”
Indignantly I explained that I had heard nothing of any triumph. On the contrary, it was said in Rome that Claudius, out of sheer envy, would not allow any such thing for service in Britain because he himself had celebrated a triumph for quelling the Britons.
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