TCP: Our Man in the East

Nobilissima, grave and reverend Mr. Princeps and his divine and ever resourceful wife, Domina Julia Augusta Livia,

Our man in the East has fallen upon tristi tempora. Half gone are his cerebum and corpus, and that which remains consumes itself in fear, fear projected outward and subjects his populum to all his terrores. 

He sits in his garden, signing warrants of mortum and ordering murder of others by cover of nox. He's ordered me to prosecute two of his sons to mortem, and of course, the verdict is foregone. A third remains in Sheol, and I merely await instructions to sue for the death of this third. He has executed his wife's mother, and beside Mariamne has murdered the entirety of Hasmonea's line. Queen Mariamne certe knows her time comes. There is no safe portum for Judean man, woman or child is safe, a danger that very much includes me. Vassallus fidelis goes to the sword next to traitor next to communis criminalis. All are guilty in this kingdom: their crime? Not being Idumean or Philistine like our man, yet even his own tribes sit uneasily. They do not sit in the Sanhedrin, but they comprise his guard and army, and know that he may still turn the machinery on them; yet plot against the fickle domini they never do because all know that treachery is still more sure to result in ruin than loyalty. 

Because our man in the East retains some of his old virtu. Even as all Judea falls to the gladius, the Sanhedrin remain with a kind of safety. He happily executs sitting members, but they're always replaced by kin: fratres, sons, even patres. The old guard of Pharisee goes to Gahennim Valley with the rest of Sadducaic Jerusalem, but the familias themselves, the lineage, the futurum, remains entirely intact.  

There are, as ever, only two truly safe men in Jerusalem. As ever, our thorny coronae: Rabbis Hillel and Shammai. Even now among this great terror, Herod clearly knows their mortes would trigger revolt among a populatio already incensed. To execute either of them would be the equivalent to executing a Consul, something I've surely heard you confirmo that no Roman Princeps shall ever do. Men like Hillel and Shammai are not mere 'viri sancti,' these are civilibus adroit enough to debate in the Senate and win. Either of them could serve as publius and patrician Senators would rue their generatio. 

My advice, our man shall soon pass to the Elysian Fields (however unlikely that to be his destinatio). It is tempus to rescue his son from Sheol and cultivate our new asset. He shall be far more malleable than his extremely demanding and saturnine father. 

As ever your humblest eastern servant,

Nicholas of Damascus