Nicias stood up and bowed deeply to Lucanus. “O Aesculapius!” murmured the physician. “You have consummated a miracle.” He reached for Lucanus’ slack hand and kissed it humbly. His eyes were full of tears.
“I did nothing, except pray for him,” stammered Lucanus.
“It was enough,” said Nicias. “Do the gods deny their brothers anything?”
“It was enough,” said Joshua. “Does God deny His chosen anything?”
Priscus heaved a deep dry sob and leaned his head against Lucanus’ arm. “In my dreams it was told me that when my brother came he would free me from pain.”
Lucanus put his hand to his forehead and rubbed it dazedly. “I do not understand,” he muttered. Then he flung the coverlets from his brother’s body and felt over his stomach and liver, and his glands. The ominous tumors had disappeared. The flesh was thin and emaciated, but also firm, and the pulse was strong.
Lucanus straightened. “It is not possible!” he cried. He looked at Nicias and Joshua imploringly. “We made an error.”
“No,” they said, and smiled at him.
“Through you God wrought His miracle, as a witness to us,” said Joshua. “As He cured men by His touch or His word, so He cured your brother at your pleading. Blessed are you, Lucanus, for you are one of His own, and we have seen with our eyes and have heard with our ears, and we magnify His Name.”
Lucanus sat down abruptly and stared before him. Then he rose and again examined Priscus minutely. No tumors resisted his fingers. Priscus lifted a bunch of grapes and ate them with heartiness, but his eyes were soft on Lucanus. “I knew you could help me,” he repeated. “I knew my illness, and it was mortal. But you cured me.”
Lucanus sat down and averted his face, and it streamed with tears. Oh, that You should have chosen me, I who hated You! he cried in himself. Oh, that You condescended to me when I reviled You! Oh, that You walked with me, when I rejected You, through all the years of my life! Forgive me, Father, for I knew not what I did!
He turned his face to the physicians, and said, “It was not I who cured my brother, but only God. It was not I who had merit, but only God. Praise Him, for He is good and merciful, and hears His children, and does not afflict them without a reason.”
Joshua dipped his fingers into wine and traced a figure of a fish upon the marble table. “In Greek what is that,” he asked Lucanus, “if arranged in an anagram?”
“Christus,” said Lucanus.
“It is the sign of the Christians,” said Joshua. “You will find them by this sign.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Though Pontius Pilate, a Roman of Equestrian rank, was invariably courteous to Hilell ben Hamram and Arieh ben Elazar, it was evident to the supersensitive Lucanus that he had no love for Jews. This was very apparent at his expression of relief when both the young Jews left for Jerusalem to gather news for Lucanus as to the whereabouts of the scattered Christians. He said to Lucanus, “I am a friend of Herod, but he is half Greek. But the Jews: I do not understand them. When I built an aqueduct, most needed for their use, and there was no money in the Treasury, I confiscated Temple funds. The gods, even this Jewish God, must bow before human needs. One would think, in this confiscation, that I had committed the vilest of crimes. There were riots, which I was compelled to put down ruthlessly, and many died. Now we Romans accept our gods with realism, also with some irony. But smile satirically at an omnipresent God, and the Jews are at your throat, even your friends! They will not jest at Him, as we jest at our gods, in a civilized manner. His Law is above all sensible human law! I have had ten years of the Jews, and am desperately weary of their fanaticism, their devotion to their God. They talk of Him, and quarrel about Him; they are full of sects where they preserve their differences of opinion.
“Let us take the Jewish intellectuals,” said Pilate, impatiently. “Do they discuss world philosophies, history, the arts, the sciences? Do they love gossip? No! They are learned. Yet I swear to you, my good Lucanus, that their discussions center almost entirely on what one of their particular commentators meant when he interpreted the most minute Law of their God! They are mad, totally mad. They despise our gods, calling them evil spirits; they denounce us as idol worshipers. I have no particular reverence for our gods, but I feel personally insulted, for it is an affront to Rome. If their God were so powerful would He not deliver them from our hand? I have smilingly brought this to the attention of the priests, and they look at me with fiery eyes and are silent.”
Lucanus listened and said nothing. Pilate sighed again; he plucked a fold of his toga restlessly. “I have asked Tiberius to recall me, and I have hope. My poor wife, Procula, is in Rome now, almost beside herself. She had a dream about the Man I ordered executed. A Jewish rabbi, or teacher, who was arousing the people against Rome. I found no fault in Him, but Herod was frantic. He and the high priests assured me solemnly that He was inciting the people, and there were many witnesses of another Jewish sect, the Pharisees, who are men of respectability. I myself believe He was only flouting the priests, whom He had offended by some looseness in His own interpretation of the Law. That Law of theirs! They are actually willing to die for their God, and give up all for Him, and that way lies madness.”
“Do not disturb yourself,” said Lucanus, quietly. “It was prophesied from all the ages that He would die so. You were only His instrument.”
Pilate stared at him curiously. Then he shook his head. “My dear Lucanus, you must not listen to these Jews! This is only another of their multitudinous and quarrelsome sects — these men who call themselves Christians. Only two weeks ago I was compelled to order the massacre of some Galileans who, when offering sacrifices, called on their God to destroy Rome and deliver their holy land from her! We have our own law, and it must be upheld.”
Lucanus looked at him with horror. “A massacre?”
Pilate shrugged. “I have told you before that the Jews are mad. And they reek with insurrection. And I fully believe that that rabbi of theirs, whom I had to have executed, put a spell on my wife, so that she had that dream of hers.”
“What of the Christians now?” asked Lucanus in a low voice.
Pilate moved angrily in his carved chair. “I have proscribed them all over Judea. The people look at me sullenly in Jerusalem, because of their new sect and their executed Leader, and they shake fists behind my back, and prophesy evil things for me. I have issued orders that His followers, who now call themselves Christians, they declaring Him the Christus, awaited through the ages, be hunted out, imprisoned and destroyed. They are a danger to Rome.”
Lucanus stood up and went to the columns of the colonnade, and he looked through them at Caesarea, glittering in the hot sun, and beyond Caesarea to the purple sea with its blinding crests of light. The harbor was very busy. But here, with the gardens below, it was fresh and cool, and bees hummed over the flowers, and the fountains danced.
“It is a relief,” said Pontius, drinking a little wine, then rubbing his hands wearily over his pale, lined face, “to talk with a sensible man, and not a Jew. I have heard much of your miracle in behalf of your brother, whom I love dearly. I am sick, Lucanus, and my flesh is a heaviness on my body. My soul is in travail, though for what reason I do not know. Of what use to the gods are men? It is presumptuous to think otherwise. Nevertheless, I feel certain that Apollo has touched you, has given you his mysterious power to cure.”
“You wish me to cure you?” asked Lucanus, not turning to him.
Pilate laughed sheepishly. “I tell you, I do not sleep any longer. Do not laugh at me! But I see the face of that rabbi, who appeared to me to be a gentle Man of no particular harm, except for His inciting of the people. Did He put a spell upon me also when I looked into His face?”
Lucanus came back to Pilate and sat down beside him and regarded him with pity. “I will give you a potion, noble Pilate, which will make you sleep tonight. I am glad you are returning to Rome, for something oppresses you here.”
??
?It is so,” sighed the procurator. Then he became a little more animated. “But enough of the Jews and their Messias! Let us talk of more important and learned matters. Do you know how long it has been since I have had an intelligent conversation with anyone? I have been studying the Aristotelian theory of the spiritual origin of all things. That theory amuses me, for are not our gods most unspiritual, though immortal? The Romans, who are realists, prefer the theory of the Epicureans, with their mechanistic explanations of the universe. Their theory of Democritus — the atomic theory of the origin of all matter — is most realistic, and appeals to the rational mind. Our Roman virtus is a moral and social quality. You will recall that our Emperor Augustus said, ‘Who will venture to compare with these mighty aqueducts the idle pyramids, or the famous but useless works of the Greeks?’ I agree with him; as a Roman I prefer our virtus to the incomprehensible aretê of the Greeks, which seeks for and demands an excellence of mind and spirit beyond the capacities of mankind.”
Lucanus smiled abstractedly. “I must disagree, for I am a Greek. Man is more than an animal. The Romans are indeed materialistic Epicureans, and so they invented democracy, which carries within itself the seed of destruction.”
Pilate’s exhausted eyes sparkled with new interest. He roused himself. “But it is said that the Greeks invented democracy, my dear friend!”
Lucanus shook his head. “Not the Roman kind. It was the democracy of the mind — the unlimited meeting together of men of intellect, and not the mere gross meeting together of the physical bodies of the mob for their own interest and the exploitation of their intellectual betters. I do not always agree with Plato, but you will remember his warning that the city will fall when a man of brass guards the gates. The Roman world is guarded by men of brass. Long after Rome has fallen, the aretê of the Greeks will continue to illuminate men’s minds. For the things of the spirit are more important to them than the things of the body.”
Pilate looked at him incredulously. “You are not serious?”
“I am, most certainly. However, do not fear for Rome.” Lucanus smiled wryly. “There will always be materialistic nations following her through time, and her virtus will continue to dominate them: the belief that aqueducts and sanitation departments, and public buildings and bread, science and circuses and highways, can satisfy the cravings of the human soul. The struggle was joined centuries ago, between the men of mind who reverence the human spirit and the gross men who not only declare that there is no spirit but that sewers and conduits and prosperous business and trading are the sole meaning of life.”
Pontius reflected. The pale shine of uneasiness was reflected on his face. He drank some more wine. He said, “I am not an obtuse and completely materialistic man. I believe in the human mind, though it perishes with the body. I believe more in the physical welfare of the people.”
His uneasiness increased. His thin features tightened as he thought. “I cannot put that Man out of my mind,” he said, restively, as though he and Lucanus had not spoken of anything else. “I shall be glad of your potions, Lucanus.” He peered at Lucanus sideways. “Your cure of your brother was certainly not in an accepted and orderly manner, in the clever way of physicians. Can you cure me, Lucanus, without potions?”
Lucanus leaned toward him, and there was such a sparkle of vivid light on his face that Pontius shrank superstitiously and felt for the amulet under his tunic.
“Yes!” said Lucanus, feeling a rapturous power in him. He extended the ring of Tiberius to the elegant Roman. “You must remove the proscription against the Christians, and at once!”
“You are insane!” exclaimed Pontius, staring at the magnificent ring. “I tell you, you do not know these God-maddened Jews! Nor do you know what Tiberius has become. He is a savage and terrible man now. He has given me but one command: to maintain order in Judea. I tell you, he is frightful!”
“The rabble have finally corrupted him, as he said they would,” said Lucanus, sternly, still extending the ring.
“If I should lift the ban against the Jewish Christians, then there would be disorder again, and rioting, and Tiberius would deal severely with me. What are these people to you, a Greek, the adopted son of a noble Roman?”
“It would take a lifetime for me to answer,” said Lucanus. “But I feel something dolorous is upon you. You have said that Jesus haunts your dreams and will not leave you in peace. Do you think you will ever have peace until you abandon your persecution of His people and His followers? I tell you, no!”
He drew the ring from his finger and pressed it into Pilate’s palm. “Send this to Caesar. Write him that I have requested that your orders against the Christians be lifted. Tell him I have begged this of you, and that you, presented with his ring, had no right to refuse my request.”
Pilate turned the ring in his palm reverently, but with fear. He was in a quandary. He said, “They will riot again, these Jews, and I shall be to blame.” He hesitated. “However, this is your request — and it is incomprehensible to me! — and who am I to dare to disobey Caesar’s wishes, implicit in this marvelous ring?”
He put the ring in his pouch, and his relief made him relax in his chair as a sick man relaxes after excellent medicine. “Frankly,” he said, “I am not happy over my orders against the Christians. I dislike this quarreling about religion, which is a petty thing. The Roman gods laugh; the Jewish God never laughs.”
He sat up. “I am already relieved! My depression is lifting, and my melancholy. And, in anticipation, I am enjoying Herod’s discomfiture.”
He talked of Herod with malicious mirth. “There was a wretched Jew who came to Jerusalem, one who was called John the Baptist, who shouted that he came as a messenger before God. He screamed that he was announcing the Jewish Messias. Herod heard of this, and his Jewish spirit brightened with excitement, though he is anything but a religious man, and is a realist. He questioned John; apparently there was some heated disagreement between them, Herod, the cultured tetrarch of Jerusalem and this wild, unlettered denizen of the desert! Why Herod condescended even to question him is beyond my understanding, except that Herod has Jewish superstitions in his mind. In any event, he prudently had John destroyed. I was in Rome at the time, and Herod, to this day, refuses to discuss John, which amuses me. I did comprehend, however, that Herod was disappointed, later, in Jesus, though he questioned Him also. His disappointment reached the point of frantic rage. Do you know what I think? Herod had hoped, in his part Jewish soul, that here indeed was the Jewish Messias, come to deliver Judea out of the hands of Rome and raise His people as kings over the world!”
Pilate was now in good spirits. He felt the returning of health and ease in his body, and a quietness in his mind. He poured a goblet of wine for Lucanus, and toasted him. “It was a good day when you visited us,” he said. “And now I know why I had my dream.”
“I do also,” said Lucanus, with an enigmatic smile.
Hilell ben Hamram wrote to Lucanus from Jerusalem:
“I have found Mary, the Mother of Jesus. She dwells without the wall of Jerusalem, and lives with a young man called John, who is as a son to her. I have heard that one Peter, the follower of Jesus of Nazareth, is in Joppa, in hiding. Come.
“You will rejoice to know, my dear Lucanus, that Arieh ben Elazar has looked with favor on my beautiful sister, Leah. There is much festivity here, since Arieh came into his father’s patrimony. Join us, and be happy with us.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Lucanus remained at the house of Pilate until he was assured that his brother was completely recovered. Priscus’ health returned swiftly; his emaciated body consumed food at an enormous rate. His face took on its old merry brownness. He was bright with enthusiasm. He and Plotius fenced in the outdoor portico, and the young man could not have enough athletic contests. Lucanus was full of happiness. Priscus would return to his estates and his family; Iris would rejoice. “I do not have much faith in my overseers,” said Priscus, darkly. “I will remain for at
least a year, if Caesar permits, before venturing on another campaign.” He attempted to persuade Lucanus to return with him, but Lucanus shook his head. “I have much to do here,” he replied, and would not explain, though Priscus and Plotius stared at him curiously.
When Priscus, one day, insisted that at least Lucanus return to Rome with him for a short while, Lucanus changed the subject. He and Priscus and Plotius were enjoying the bright evening air, cool and fresh on this mountain. Lucanus stood up and said, laughing, “I am weary of watching you clumsy gladiators wrestling.” He threw aside his robe and stood in his tunic and flexed his muscles. Though considerable grayness flecked the gold of his hair and there were ascetic lines in his Grecian face, he was like a young man in his body. Priscus hooted at him, took the wrestler’s position, while Plotius watched, smiling. Priscus approached Lucanus and stretched out his arm to seize him. Lucanus waited until the fingers clutched his shoulder, then he bent back swiftly, and Priscus flew over his shoulder and landed with a hard thump on the grass. Plotius was amazed; he could not even applaud. Priscus lay on the grass, blinking and shaking his head, while Lucanus laughed.