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  Eventually the Gaul’s wounded left shoulder wore down, and he lowered the shield enough for the taller Mansuetus to strike a hard blow across his neck, slicing into a vein. Blood came gushing out, and Celadus dropped to his knees, tottered for a second, and then dropped his sica and fell on his face.

  Mansuetus watched grimly as his adversary fell. He quickly turned to face Sejanus, and I saw a look of relief flash across Flavia’s face as she returned to her seat.

  Without waiting for a signal from the crowd, and to nobody’s surprise, Sejanus turned his thumb up, extending mercy to the fallen Celadus. The only question now was whether it even mattered.

  According to custom, Mansuetus would now head to the imperial box, where Sejanus would congratulate him, place a wreath of victory on his head, and hang a gold medallion around his neck. Spectators would shower the ring with sestertii, and Mansuetus would scoop them up. Meanwhile, a physician would attend to Celadus to see if he could be saved, stitched up, and repaired in time to fight again in six months.

  But just as the crowd was beginning to relax, it was caught off guard again. And this time, so was Mansuetus.

  The Gaul—miraculously, it seemed—had rallied enough to grab Mansuetus by the ankle and jerk him back. My breath caught as I watched Mansuetus stumble to the ground. The Gaul rose to one knee and lunged with his sica, narrowly missing Mansuetus, who rolled quickly to his right and then sprang to his feet. He grabbed the sword he had dropped just a moment earlier. As the Gaul struggled to gain his footing, Mansuetus struck, the sword landing against the Gaul’s side and driving the man to the ground face-first.

  The crowd roared again—more bloodshed!—and this time Mansuetus, without waiting for a signal from Sejanus, finished the job. He grabbed the sword with both fists and planted it with all his might between the Gaul’s shoulder blades, pinning him to the ground.

  That finish, for the first time all day, seemed to take the wind out of the crowd. The moment held, and there was an unsettling silence throughout the arena. Celadus was motionless, lying in a pool of his own blood. Mansuetus bent over, hands on his knees, exhausted.

  “Some men just don’t know when to stay down,” a voice behind me said.

  I noticed that Flavia had turned away from the sight. Only Sejanus seemed impressed. It was the first time I had seen him smile all day.

  The image that stayed with me occurred a few minutes later, after Mansuetus limped over to the imperial box and Sejanus joined the gladiator on the floor of the arena. Mansuetus knelt before the acting emperor, who crowned him with the victor’s laurels. The crowd applauded politely, but I heard none of the lustful cheers that had filled the place earlier.

  My eyes turned to the Gaul, being dragged from the arena with his own sword still planted firmly in his back. A brave man, one who had fought valiantly, hauled away to be burned with the trash.

  Greece was the cradle of civilization, I thought, and now Rome will be its grave.

  CHAPTER 13

  I didn’t sleep well that night. Gruesome images were seared into my mind—the slice of the neck, the sword in the Gaul’s back, the crowd lustily craving more. The executions at noon still bothered me the most. Men hanging on crosses or being torn apart by beasts while the crowd chatted and waited for the main event. I had been on a cross, even if only for a few hours, and it was impossible to see others hanging there without feeling some of their pain.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Flavia either. I kept playing the scenes over and over. She and the other Vestals parading into the imperial box, her beauty radiating in the sun. Her impervious expression throughout the day’s events. The surprising thumbs-down after the first gladiator fight. The way she had made eye contact with Mansuetus.

  Rethinking the day’s events, I decided that she had turned her thumb down in the early gladiator fights so that her vote might be taken more seriously if she had to urge Sejanus to extend mercy to Mansuetus. From the way she leaned forward in her seat while Mansuetus fought, and from the look of near panic on her face when he was wounded, I thought that she might have leaped over the concrete wall of the imperial box, if necessary, to keep him from dying.

  I woke the next morning exhausted. I shaved, put on my linen tunic and woolen toga, and combed my wavy hair. I was going to spend the day with Seneca, and as always, appearances mattered.

  Before heading out, I grabbed a morning snack of bread, dates, honey, milk, and a few olives. I carried my parchment and writing utensils through the narrow streets to Seneca’s house on the Capitoline Hill. As usual, his spacious front hall was crowded with morning callers anxious for the man’s patronage. His slaves had swept and polished the marble floor, and his head slave grandly announced my presence. Because of the urgency of my mission, I was placed ahead of Seneca’s other “clients.”

  Those who had been waiting longer stared ruefully as Seneca came out and greeted me warmly, escorting me back to his office. We talked about the games and the disquieting conclusion of the last contest, which had seemed to unsettle the crowd. Seneca saw it as fate smiling on us and said we should send the letter to Tiberius right away.

  For the next two hours, Seneca composed his letter while I acted as secretary and transcribed it. He gave me a crooked smile when we started and told me I might have to hold my nose for the first part. “Nobody writes the great Tiberius without a certain amount of flattery,” he explained. “He will probably skip it, but it needs to be there just the same.”

  As I transcribed the letter, I marveled at Seneca’s command of the language and doubted that Tiberius would skip even a word. Knowing the emperor, it was more likely he would have it carved into the marble of his palace.

  Eventually Seneca let the great emperor know that he had a concern and began to describe what he had witnessed.

  The games, Most Excellent Tiberius, have become pure butchery. Men constantly cry for more bloodshed. “Kill him! Flog him! Burn him alive!” The bloodlust corrupts, and the valor of the gladiators is lost on the crowd. “Why is he such a coward? Why won’t he die more willingly? Why won’t he rush to the steel?”

  Boys in the street no longer dream of being senators or generals but only of being gladiators. Those who before took the greatest pride in serving in the legions now want only to die in the arena.

  Was Rome built by bloodlust or by something nobler? A culture is known by its heroes, O great Tiberius, and how it treats them. What does it say about the impulses of the spectators when they call for the blood of the very men they seem to worship? And what does it say about our country when our slaves have become our greatest heroes, based on their ability to gut another man with the sword?

  It was, I thought as I dutifully recorded the words, a subtle and clever appeal to the emperor’s paranoia. If the crowds idolized the gladiators but still wanted to see them dead, what did that say about their intentions toward the emperor? And why should we feed this impulse?

  Our heroes should not be the strongest slaves we’ve conquered. Our heroes should be the brave generals who make our empire safe. Our greatest hero should be our greatest citizen, the Princeps, the Son of the Divine Augustus. I beg you, for Rome and her posterity, to evaluate the frequency of the games and decide if they are worthy of the patronage of such an excellent ruler.

  The audacity of the letter impressed me. When Seneca finished, I stared at him in near disbelief. Was he really going to send it?

  That wry smile appeared on his lips for the second time that morning. “You don’t think I’d be so foolish as to send such a letter without first testing the waters, do you?” he asked.

  “It does seem rather bold.”

  “Bold times call for bold action,” Seneca said. Then he tilted his head back with a knowing chuckle. “But they also call for well-placed sources who can first engage the emperor about his opinion of the games and hand him the letter only if the wind seems to be blowing in the proper direction.”

  I marveled not so much at the shrewdness
of Seneca but at the revelation that he had a well-placed source on Capri. I was beyond fortunate to have him as a benefactor.

  “In the meantime,” he said, “make a second copy of that letter so I can present it to Flavia.”

  I did as I was told and watched as Seneca sealed each letter with his signet ring. I was hoping I would have a chance to deliver the letter to Flavia myself, but Seneca handpicked a different courier. He did, however, have one more surprise for me before he sent me on my way.

  “You have two days to pack,” Seneca announced. “You’ll be receiving your commission as assessore in the province of Judea from our good friend Sejanus two days hence.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “Bold times call for bold action,” Seneca had said. Those words echoed in my head as I prepared to leave Rome and spend three years in Judea. Seneca had been talking about his letter to the emperor, but I mulled the words in the context of Flavia. Should I write her a letter? What would I say? An equestrian of my rank and age had no business corresponding directly with a Vestal.

  But I had been struck. How could I just disappear without letting her know where I was going or making sure she understood that I had helped Seneca with the letter?

  Ultimately I decided not to write. Unrestrained courage is sometimes more like suicide than valor. If the Fates meant for me to cross paths again with Flavia, it would happen. But it was not likely. I told myself to forget about her, but my heart wasn’t listening.

  It wasn’t for want of distractions. My future, both immediate and long-term, held more than sufficient peril to occupy my attention. I was going to a troubled province run by a troubled prefect. Pontius Pilate had a reputation for being moody and short-tempered—another equestrian trying to climb the provincial ranks. According to my sources, he was insecure and not at all happy that he had drawn the short straw of Judea.

  Pilate had served under Sejanus as a member of the Praetorian Guard during the days when Tiberius still lived in Rome. Though Sejanus was gruff and demanding, he knew each of his men by name and later ensured that each had a chance to make something of himself. Thus, a little over four years ago, when Tiberius withdrew to Capri and Sejanus took over many of the emperor’s responsibilities, Pilate had been dispatched to Judea as a prefect. His task was to serve as the personal representative of the great Tiberius Caesar, with strict orders to keep the peace and contain the Jews.

  It had not been a smooth journey.

  Pilate, a man of infinite bravado and limited patience, made two serious mistakes early in his prefecture. The first occurred shortly after he arrived in Judea. He ordered the troops stationed in Jerusalem to display the standards of the Roman army, including the image of Caesar Augustus, on the walls of the Antonia Fortress, overlooking the Jewish Temple. The standards were mounted at night, under cover of darkness, surprising the Jewish worshipers the next morning.

  Pilate’s predecessor, mindful of Jewish sensitivities to any graven images in the Holy City, had always left the standards of the army in Caesarea. But in Pilate’s mind, the emperor’s image was everywhere else in the empire, so why not in Jerusalem? Why not have a graven image of the emperor casting his gaze down at those worshiping in the Temple—one god keeping an eye on the worshipers of another?

  It was the middle of the winter, but that didn’t stop thousands of Jews from walking sixty-five miles from Jerusalem to Caesarea to confront Pilate. They stood outside his palace for days, begging him to take the standards down. Pilate refused. It would be an insult to the emperor.

  After five days of stalemate, Pilate agreed to meet with the Jewish leaders in the great Caesarean amphitheater. He argued with them until his patience grew thin. Neither side was willing to compromise. Exasperated, Pilate ordered his soldiers to surround the contingent and draw their swords. The Jews bared their necks and dared the soldiers to kill them.

  Astonished, Pilate backed down and gave an order to remove the standards from Jerusalem. The followers of Yahweh had won the first round.

  They would not be so fortunate in the second. It occurred after Pilate built an enormous aqueduct to bring springwater across the Judean desert to the cisterns of Jerusalem. The aqueduct stretched for nearly forty miles, beautiful new pipes that brought pure and cold water to the city.

  But the Jews protested again. Pilate had used corban money—sacred tithes from the Temple treasury—to help pay for the construction. This time he was dumbfounded by their protestations. Romans celebrated such engineering feats, heaping honors on the rulers who bestowed them. But the Jews complained! Could nothing satisfy them?

  The next time Pilate visited Jerusalem, he took his place on his judgment seat and addressed the naysayers. They seemed even more enraged than they had been about the standards. They pressed close, forming a ring around him, and shouted insults about the way he had used God’s money. Pilate maintained his composure but steadfastly refused to apologize—the aqueduct had been built for them.

  Still the Jewish leaders pressed their point. Why had he used the Temple money? It was sacrilege!

  Though it appeared that Pilate was bravely facing the crowd alone, he had in fact hidden his soldiers among them, dressed like Jews yet with daggers under their garments. When he had heard enough and felt threatened by the increasing hostility of those closest to his seat, Pilate raised his right hand and made a slashing motion across his throat. The soldiers struck, slicing their way through the crowd. They massacred hundreds, from the judgment seat through the streets of Jerusalem, even as the Jews scrambled to retreat, trampling each other in the panic.

  This was the man I would now serve. I would be his chief legal adviser, his assessore, in a province where a strong-willed people hated him with barely restrained passion. Judea was a boiling cauldron, and I was being thrown into the middle of the pot.

  I packed my stacks of white togas with the two narrow stripes, my cloaks and sandals, my household items, and my favorite books. Many of those same books had gone with me on the journey from Greece to Rome, and they were now well-worn scrolls, faded and cracked, carefully sealed in boxes designed to protect them on the journey at sea. I packed my wax notebooks and my iron pens. I said good-bye to my friends, made a sacrifice at the temple of Mars, and walked to the coast.

  Our ship would sail by way of Alexandria, heading toward the rising sun. As we left port, I stood at the stern and watched the Roman coastline fade away. It would be three years before I would see Rome again, and I already missed her. For all her shortcomings, Rome was still the center of the civilized world and the greatest city on earth. The food, the architecture, the bustling excitement of the Forum, the consolidation of power that took place there—I would find none of this in Judea.

  I found an out-of-the-way spot on the massive ship, felt the wind in my face, and listened to the chants of the slaves as their oars slid in and out of the water. I took out my most cherished scroll and read the words again. This one was from Seneca. The eloquent words formed a mission not just for my time in the land of Judea but for my entire life:

  “But how,” you ask, “does one attain the highest good?” Your money will not place you on a level with God, for God has no property. Your bordered robe will not do this, for God is not clad in raiment; nor your reputation, nor your display of self, nor knowledge of your name spread throughout the world, for no one has knowledge of God. The throng of slaves which carries your litter along the city streets and in foreign places will not help you, for this God of whom I speak, though the highest and most powerful of beings, carries all things on his own shoulders. Neither can beauty or strength make you blessed, for none of these qualities can withstand old age.

  What we have to seek for, then, is that which is untouched by time and chance. And what is this? It is the soul—but the soul that is upright, good, and great. What else could you call such a soul but a god dwelling as a guest in the human body? A soul like this may descend into a Roman equestrian as well as into a freedman’s son or a slave. For w
hat is a Roman equestrian or a freedman’s son or a slave? They are mere titles, born of ambition or of wrong. One may leap to heaven from the very slums. Only rise and mold thyself into kinship with thy God.

  CHAPTER 15

  “The role of a prefect in the province,” Tiberius once said, “is to shear his sheep, not skin them.” A governor could act with brutal force, if necessary, to keep the peace, but the goal was to be a good shepherd.

  Nobody would have used that phrase to describe Pontius Pilate.

  He didn’t even look the part. He was more Praetorian Guard than provincial governor. He was short and muscular, a committed disciple to exercising in his Caesarean bath complex before his evening meal. He was bald with an oval face, weathered skin, a furrowed forehead, small and close-set eyes, and a natural sneer. He preferred his gold breastplate and scarlet armor from his days as a guard to the long red robes of a magistrate.

  Nor was his disposition well suited to the administrative drudgery of running a province. I learned early on that he could be stubborn, inflexible, and petty. He was Roman to the core and never understood, or even tried to understand, the Jewish culture. His sole goal was to serve his time and secure an advancement to a position in Rome. And nothing was more important in achieving that goal than currying favor with Caesar.

  Ironically enough, it was this need for Caesar’s approval that allowed me to become one of Pilate’s closest confidants.

  As the personal representative of the emperor, it was Pilate’s job to maintain a detailed record of everything that happened in his province. Every day Pilate was expected to add to his commentarii and send copies to the provincial archives in Rome along with excerpts to Tiberius at Capri. When I first arrived, Pilate’s private secretary wrote the commentarii in cursive script on parchment as Pilate dictated. To prepare for these formal reports, informal notes would be jotted down during the day by Pilate’s advisers on wax tablets.