Not 24 hours after that lethal encounter with Shammai was I ordered to set sail for Rhodes and meet none other than Octavian himself, newly consecrated Caesar Augustus; the implication clearer than marble etching that groveling was expected at the new Caesar's feet; and having collaborated with Anthony, Herod must beg Octavian's clemency to spare Judea.
Yet there were augers for hope. The symbolism of meeting at Rhodes with its Colossus seemed clear: Caesar was the colossus and I doubt Rome would make such a grand gesture if they meant to kill me. And as my ship approached the famed ruins, I heard charmingly vulgar talk between two sailors, one Roman, the other Judean, showing just what understanding was possible between two peoples whom nothing in common held. To my best ability, my memory records the conversation:
"When sailors sailed under it, they must have peered up. Did they... ,,, get a view of anything underneath?" "There's no phallus among the ruins if that's what you're implying." "How could there not be?!" "Well it's just not there." "It just seems unlikely to go to all that trouble to scare the bejeesus out of visitors who sail under it with a statue a hundred meters tall and not give it a sch.." "..I don't know what to tell you." "Maybe you Romans should... y'know... look harder." "Are you saying the fucking Colossus of Rhodes had a small..." "I'm not saying it was small, though it had to be small enough that somebody could make it disappear without noticing." "You're fucking pazzo." "Look, all I'm saying is that something must have happened, and I bet I know what did even..." "Whatdya' think?" "I think some Jewish bronze merchant a hundred years ago said getta load'a that schvantz, and sold it to a Roman senator." "...Get the fuck outa here!" "I really do!" "You think some Yid had the balls to steal a gigantic bronze phallus from the most watched site in the world?" "I think Rome helped!" "You think the penis of the Colossus of Rhodes is in Rome?!" "I think it's standing straight up on top of the fucking Pantheon is what I think."
And yet when we arrived, there were statues in the likeness of Herod and Antipater right next to the feet of the old Colossus.
Captain: "What does this mean your majesty?" Me: "It means either I will be feted as hero, or I will fall like the statue." Captain: What happens if you fall? Herod: I'll be killed, my family killed, and all of Judea sold into slavery like every other Roman province.
I embarked onto land; and my welcome? A dozen slave girls, temptingly naked, who painted my face red - as Romans thought the gods were colored. They stripped me of my clothes so they could dress me in a purple toga, and on my head they placed a laurel wreath. Still I thought I may die as a Roman sacrifice to their gods. I knew Romans didn't practice human sacrifice, but I didn't know if Rhodesians did, and maybe Caesar planned to give them a king to burn as a particularly mighty offering.
Then was I placed on a large pulled chariot straight into a triumph through the streets of Rhodes, utterly Roman-style. Behind my chariot was a town praecones, continually announcing 'Hail Herod! Rome's protector in the East! Hail Herod! Vanquisher of the Hasmoneans! Hail Herod! Ensnarer of Cleopatra! Hail Herod! Rebuilder of Jerusalem!" I saw in front of me a hundred open wheelbarrows. First an armory's worth of weapons - the short gladius, the long spatha, the tiny pugio, the enormous hasta, the aerodynamic pilum, the flying plumbata - a hundred each at least, in front of a dozen catapults of all manner: the onager, the ballista, the scorpio; and within them a thousand dolabras - the tool which every Roman soldier used for digging, along with a thousand helmets and shields. In between each caravan was another open chest of currency: gold and silver in coin and bullion. And further chests containing giant jewels of pearl, jade, malachite, amethyst, carnelian, topaz, chalcedony, obsidian, olivine, and lapis lazulli. In front of all these chests, further statues and paintings and tapestries: of Herod, Antipater, Mairiam, all the Hasmonean protectors, and all the prophets of the Bible.
At the end of the parade, six hours later, stood Flavius Jacobus, at the foot of Rhodes's Temple of Jupiter, there to bid his old friend into the temple, who silently motioned to bid me up the stairs.
And when I entered, immediately I saw, on the center wall of the Temple, sitting upon Divine Jupiter's lap, was in the flesh, Caesar Augustus.
"The Temple of Jupiter here is not much of a temple but it'll do for now. Rome and Rhodes bids welcome to its Protector in the East. I hope this trip is turning out as eventfully as you hoped?"
"Well, I don't know if I hoped for such events but..."
"...Such events you now have. We have named you Rome's Protector in the East, and we trust that you will act to Rome's benefit just as you've acted to Judea's. Do you notice all the finery in front of you in your triumph?"
"I couldn't help but.."
"..It's yours of course. Along with the slave girls."
"Well thank you, but is this a harbinger of something ominous? Isn't some slave supposed to shout in my ear to remember that I'm mortal?"
"Probably not, and you're from Judea. Nobody there forgets they're mortal."
"So this is a triumph?"
"It's very much a triumph. Yours and mine."
"Didn't you have a triumph of your own in Rome?"
"Come with me King, let's talk among the ruins."
And as in suspense I walked with Augustus to inspect the Colossus's many bronze ruins, Augustus immediately launched into conversation:
"I didn't want the triumph but it was insisted. What ruler who wants to die of natural causes ever throws himself a triumph?"
"So this is..."
"This is my celebration as much as yours. When Divine Julius wanted to celebrate, it was to places like Rhodes he came. 'My boy, when Romans go north you work, when you go east and south, you play.'"
"Your father went to Rhodes?"
"He tried to go to Rhodes, then he was abducted by pirates, just like you were."
"I wasn't abducted by pirates."
"You weren't?"
"I was shipwrecked after Cleopatra sent me to Italy to pitch something straight to you and Anthony. I honestly thought I'd be dead - either Cleopatra wanted me thrown overboard, or he sent me to Anthony so I could be killed, and if they didn't kill me, I figured you would. But instead I was shipwrecked and fell into the belly of whale where I stayed for three days."
"You mean like your prophet Jonah?..."
"How do you know about Jonah?"
"A good leader reads..."
"I swear it happened."
"If you say it happened it did. You're a king and kings write their own histories. All sorts of things happen to me that no one would believe."
"If you say so."
And strange enough Augustus began to croak and ribbit like a frog, but stranger still, within forty seconds three hundred and some frogs appeared noisily atop the ruins of Rhodes's Colossus. And all the frogs did bow to us like the kings we were.
"The Gods allow some people to do some very strange things. We great men, we're not made of the same stuff."
"In my country, I'm told there is only one god who grants such permissions."
"I've heard you believe in two."
"How did you discover that?!"
"A good leader also listens."
"I don't necessarily believe in two gods. I've only heard one."
"What god is that?"
"The 'other' God."
"The other god?"
"The God who appeared to me after the destruction of my true home country, Idumea, and told me to avenge my homeland upon the Jewish people and Yahweh."
"So it's true!"
"What?"
"You hate your people!"
"And you love Romans?"
"I'm ambivalent about them."
"You fear them!"
"Yes, very much so."
"How much more reason have I to fear mine? They killed my family, they killed the family that birthed my family, they've been killing my family since the time of Lot and Ishmael."
"Well, the Romans did just kill my father, but no, we don't have your prodigal patrimony. Rome is a city of immigrants, and immigrants come to new places to forget old hatreds."
"Hatred is history's oldest motivator. Let Roman history go on long enough there will be enough hatred to power the rest of Judea's history."
"You're probably right but don't forget Protector, you're still in the company of the only man you can't rule."
"My apologies your majesty."
"And don't you dare call me that either. I'm no king or emperor, my title is 'Mr. Princeps', Rome's First Citizen."
"You really want me to call you that?"
"It's just ridiculous enough that people won't be in awe of me."
"Whatever you say Mr. Princeps."
"I must say, I'm more impressed than I expected to be."
"What did you expect?"
"The world entire knows of Herod's Odyssian cunning, but I worried I'd encounter a spoiled killer."
"Well that's exactly who I am."
"We have spoiled killers everywhere in Rome, they all kill each other and assume they can take the spoils without another spoiled killer taking theirs; but you're different Herod son of Antipater. I can't tell whether you're just a little spoiled or just a lot a killer, but men like you kill so freely that you either build nations or destroy them."
"What charm of mine gave it away?"
"Don't you know? You, king of a people supposed so skilled in the arts of duplicity?"
"As I said, I'm not a Jew."
"Of course you are, all semites are partially Jews, and you rule over them! Were you not the most gifted among a very gifted people you'd just be another Judean prince strangled in a prison."
"I still don't understand."
"You're gifted enough that I'm scared just talking to you."
"Mr. Princeps can't be scared of a vassal king."
"I'm scared of every vassal king who knows to speak less than I do."
"Have I spoken less?"
"Had you spoken more, it would have been impossible not to read your mind, and you'd be stunned how many vassal kings speak over me in conversation."
"Ignorance is bold. Knowledge is reserved."
"Indeed, yet amid all this tact and polish, I hear that there is no German horde who can perpetrate all the atrocities it's said Herod does, and it's for that reason I trust you to pilot a project I hope to institute through the whole empire."
"What project?"
"Jew, how long did it take your people to advance from Abraham to such learning as you now have that that neither Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Syria, nor Greece could destroy you.
"I suppose it's been two-thousand years."
"How many men are there among the Jews like Flavius Jacobus?"
"Rich?"
"No, just uncannily scrupulous and unscrupulous whenever appropriate. You want revenge against your Jews, but Jewish skill gives your people at such eminence that the finance of men like Jacobus ignites the largest Empire the world's ever seen."
"I still don't see where this is going."
"So two thousand years was the amount of time it took you to evolve to such a state. This also was roughly the same time that Egypt and Sumeria learned to read, yes?"
"I suppose."
And just then, conveniently enough, we arrived upon the Colossal ruins. I would say it was a coincidence but Augustus probably knew to time it perfectly.
"Now look at this bronze Jew. Two and half centuries ago, the might of the ancient world looked upon its work and despaired, and just fifty years later, a mere earthquake took it down for all time.
"I must be stupider than you give me credit for because I still don't understand."
"Well I understand there was an earthquake none to long ago in Jerusalem?"
"One of a few."
"Two thousand years it took from Jews to go from a desert people to work at the side of an empire that dwarves every other. Prosperity never abides long in the same place, and so this, now, is a once every two millennia opportunity. The most competent nations in the world are also the most powerful."
"I suppose I see that, but I don't understand what to do with it."
"It will not be again unless we train the world to our standard."
"And you truly believe you can do that?"
"I believe YOU can do that. Rome may think it wants glory for its senate and people, but Rome must not be allowed to become an empire of bread and circuses! Your people are commanded to be a light unto nations? Well, be that light!"
"I?... Mr. Princeps, I think your ambition exceeds even your own power. Who am I that Herod should bring the world out of slavery? Does the world even want freedom?"
"The world doesn't know what it wants, the world does not know what it needs. What the world needs is for all Rome's vassal nations to be as strong as Rome herself."
"You would willingly give up your empire?"
"It was never my empire. I have neither the right to it nor the desire."
"Wouldn't so many strong nations cause permanent war?"
"Not if nations were united in alliance!"
"Mr. Princeps, you surely realize this is madness."
"It is only the mad who change the world!"
"And it is surely only the mad who seek the world's improvement."
"Then be mad with me Jew! Surely you've seen the augers. Jupiter is in retrograde for the next fifty years, every horoscope in the world predicts that our era borders a new age with new ways of looking at the world. Surely you see the evidence."
"The evidence is Roman power."
"No, the evidence is change."
"Rome IS that change."
"No. Change is Rome. Pericles built a republic in Athens, but it was a mere city-state, then it became the Delian empire during the Peloponnesian War, but once the Delian League became the Athenian empire it ruled for fifty years, then declined within in a generation. Yet Rome's republic lasted seven-hundred years! For the Republic to survive further it must create its own league of nations!"
"Won't that create the same circumstances that caused Athens's decline?"
"Not if we raise their strength to the full extent of Rome's."
"How can one possibly effect affect that?"
"By imposing new religion."
"A new religion...?"
"This is my imperial project. This is my imperial legacy."
"So you want to export the Jewish religion throughout the empire?"
"No, though I could think of worse religions. I want a religion of liberalism."
"What is liberalism?"
"Toleration, practical logic, knowledge and open exchange."
"Surely you know my people of all people would not accept such a god."
"Religions can coexist with the religion I have in mind. All the local gods can still be worshipped, but we compel their gods to embody those principles."
"I don't think people are as intelligent as you think we are."
"Jews surely are."
"Let me rephrase that. I don't think my people are as intelligent as you think we are.
"They can be if you educate them! Doesn't your bible encourage indulgence to the poor?"
"You can't interpret everything in the Bible literally."
"So many of them already read, so many of them handle money; teach them our higher maths and physic!"
"Hardly any of them read! Two in every hundred perhaps."
"Two in every hundred is more than the one in every hundred in Rome."
"I don't even know your higher maths and physic!"
"It only need begin with a couple dozen. You're Herod the builder, teach your people to build so that there are a hundred Herod the builders! We'll send the engineers!"
".... Mr. Princeps, I worry that by saying that I believe in your vision, you'll realize that I'm indulging you. So I would like to tell you a lesson my father imparted to me about his idea of the perfect government."
"Your father was an able man."
"The ablest. If I may speak freely?"
"Always."
"Were he Roman he could have outfoxed your father."
"My father said as much every time he was mentioned. Nothing would delight me more than to hear it."
"My father said the perfect government is a government were all its subjects were slaves, but thought themselves free."
"Don't you see Jew? That's precisely the government I seek."
"Then I'm afraid I still don't understand."
"Once the world is educated, they are slaves to reason, and forever compelled to make wise choices."
"Sire, I will tell you what I am thinking right now. My father gave me a Greek tutor, as I'm sure your father did."
"Of course."
"So you know your Herodotus."
"Indeed."
"Of all men's miseries, the bitterest is this.."
"'..to know so much and to have control over nothing.' Yes Jew, of course I know my Herodotus, I read it once every year and that is precisely the point. So long as Rome is me, Rome knows enough to share its hoard of knowledge, and once the world has knowledge, the world's knowledge will forever increase and it would be impossible for any man to learn its full contents."
"And you know your Thucydides."
"He's a little drier. The limits of my intelligence. I expect you're smart enough to remember every passage."
"Only because the tutor would flay me alive if I didn't. The quote is 'Most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in discovering the truth,'"
"'but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.' Yes, my father's favorite maxim. So let's make sure the story they hear from birth is the truth. But you've also read The Republic."
"Oh god that fucking Greek tyrant. Still worse would happen every time I didn't sufficiently commit Plato to memory."
"So then you know this quote Jew: Either we shall find what it is we're seeking.."
(both) "..or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know."
"Let's free these men from their caves Jew. I doubt you believe in the augers any more than I do, but the astrologers surely see the new era we all live in and predict accordingly. Let's head off this new era's ignorance and blood by creating an era of our own. You know exactly what I'm going to quote now."
"Pericles?"
"Indeed. Recite it Jew."
“For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men. Make them your examples...
"Splendidus Iudaeus. Come, let's embrace on this."
And like a nimrod I went into that embrace. He pulled me into his bearhug and the divine Mr. Princeps gave me a kiss of betrayal upon the lips. He thereupon took my hand in quite gently, patted it, and after three seconds, the gentle stroke became an iron grip. He produced a dagger, immediately severing the artery in my arm, I literally thought he would saw my forearm completely off. I spurted blood in volumes and I could not help but scream so loud the entire beach heard me. The scream turned to whimpers and I could not help but weep in front of the world's master. Caesar Augustus then whispered into my ear from half a digitus:
"We've documented every manner in which you've ordered a subject executed. Cross me on this project Philistine and you'll watch as we use all those techniques on your children, then save a technique never yet seen in Judea for you."
Wherewith Caesar reached behind one of the ruins and produced a woolen coat.
"Come, put this on. Rhodes gets cold at night and wool absorbs the blood like a bandage. No one will will even know you bleed. As a Roman protector you'll have to sacrifice to Jupiter like us all tonight, then we'll parade you in triumph back to your ship tomorrow. We'll give you golden armor to cover the wound."
At which point he hugged me again.
"Come, they're waiting for us at the temple."
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