The Secret of the Kingdom

FIRST LETTER

MARCUS MEZENTIUS TO TULLIA: Greeting.

In my earlier letter, Tullia, I wrote of my journeys along the river of Egypt. I stayed in Alexandria for the winter, after waiting for you in vain until the autumn gales set in. I was childish in my lovesickness, for not the richest merchant nor the most inquisitive citizen could have visited the harbor more diligently than I to meet the ships from Ostia and Brundisium. I hovered about the harbor all day until the end of the sailing season, so that at last I became a nuisance to guards, customs officers and port officials with my inquiries.

It is true that my knowledge was hereby increased, and I learned many and varied things from distant countries; but when one has gazed out to sea in vain one’s eyes begin to water, and after the last of the ships arrived I was forced to acknowledge to myself that you had failed me. It is now a year since we met, Tullia, and you persuaded me, with what I now see to have been false vows and promises, to leave Rome.

I was filled with bitterness when I wrote you that letter, in which I bade farewell to you forever and swore to sail for India, never to return. Greek kings still rule there, in strange cities: descendants of Alexander’s officers. Yet already I am willing to admit that I can hardly have meant what I wrote; it was just that I could not endure the thought of never seeing you again, Tullia.

A man who has passed the age of thirty ought no longer to be the slave of his love. I have grown calmer, indeed I have, and the highest flames of my passion have died down. In Alexandria that passion led me into dubious company and caused me to wear myself out. This I do not regret, for no one can alter the course of action he has followed, or the deeds he has done. Yet all the more deeply do I know that I love you, since nothing could satisfy me. Therefore I would remind you, Tullia my beloved, that one day your flowering youth too will fade, your smooth face wither, your eyes’ gaze grow dim, your hair turn gray and the teeth fall from your mouth. It may be that you will then regret having sacrificed your love for the sake of ambition and political influence. For that you did love me, I am persuaded; of those oaths I can feel no doubt. Were it not so, nothing in this world would mean anything to me anymore. You loved me, but whether you love me still I do not know.

In my better hours I think that it really was for my own good only, to save me from danger—from losing my property and perhaps my life—that you induced me with deceiving promises to leave Rome. I would never have gone if you had not vowed to meet me in Alexandria, where we were to spend the winter together. Many other distinguished ladies before you have made the voyage to Egypt for the winter, without their husbands, and will continue to do so if I know anything of Roman women. You could have returned home now that the sailing season has come round again. We might have had many months together, Tullia.

Instead I wore out both body and soul during those months, for a time I traveled, until I wearied of carving your name and the sign of my love on ancient monuments and temple columns. In my listlessness I even allowed myself to be initiated into the mysteries of Isis; but I must have been older and more hardened then than on that unforgettable night in Baiae, when together you and I dedicated ourselves to Dionysus. I found no such ecstasy. I cannot bring myself to believe in these priests with their shaven heads. Afterwards it simply seemed to me that I had paid too much for a very insignificant piece of knowledge.

Don’t imagine that I have kept company only with priests of Isis and their temple women. I have acquaintance among players and singers too, and even among bullfighters of the circus. I have also seen some ancient Greek plays, which might well be translated into Latin, and adapted, should one desire that sort of fame. I mention all this to show that time did not drag in Alexandria. It is a capital city; more sophisticated, more faded, more devouring than Rome.

Nevertheless, I spend most of my time in the Museion, the library near the harbor. It is really a number of libraries: a group of buildings which make up a whole quarter of the town. The old men there complained to me of the wretched state of the collections, for they live in the past. They declare that the library can never regain its former glory, since Julius Caesar was besieged here and set fire to the Egyptian fleet in the harbor; for some of the library buildings were also burnt, and with them a hundred thousand irreplaceable scrolls of the works of the ancients.

Yet it took me many weeks to learn to use their catalogues and hunt down the things I wanted to read. There are tens of thousands of scrolls of annotations on the Iliad alone, to say nothing of commentaries on Plato and Aristotle, each housed in its own building. Over and above this there are countless scrolls which have never been entered in any catalogue and which probably not a soul has ever read since they were added to the collections.

For political reasons, understandably enough, the authorities were not particularly eager to search out the predictions of the ancients or even help me to find them for myself. I was obliged to feel my way by indirect questioning and win their confidence with gifts and dinners. Their grants are meager and they themselves are poor, as the wisest among the learned usually are, and as those always are who love books more than their life, more than the light of their eyes.

In this way I succeeded at last in rummaging out a whole series of predictions, both famous and forgotten, from hidden corners of the library. It is clear that in all ages, among every people, the same sort of prophecies about the future have always been made. They are all as obscure and irritatingly ambiguous as the utterances of an oracle. Truth to tell, I often set aside the whole jumble of them and lost myself in some Greek tale, with its carefree lies about travel and adventure. And then I would be seized by a desire to leave these conflicting prophecies to their fate and to write a book after the pattern of those others, but out of my own head. Yet despite my origins I am too much of a Roman to start writing anything of my own.

In the library too there are writings on the art of love which would have made our old Ovid feel like a child. Some of them are Greek and others translations into Greek from old Egyptian books, and I know not indeed which should be given pride of place. Yet having read a few one soon tires of them. Ever since the days of Augustus the god these writings have been gathered together in special secret rooms, and one is not allowed to make copies of them. Only research workers may read them.

But to return to the prophecies. There are both old ones and new. The old ones have been arranged to fit even Alexander, to say nothing of Augustus the god who gave peace to the world. After reading the interpretations of these prophecies, I begin to perceive ever more clearly that the greatest temptation that besets a scholar is the temptation to interpret such writings in the light of his own times and his own desires.

Nevertheless I am convinced of one thing, and all that has happened in our own day only strengthens me in this conviction; even the stars bear witness to the same. The world is entering a new era, of which the signs are different from any that have gone before. This is so clear and evident a truth that astrologers in Alexandria and Chaldea, Rhodes and Rome are agreed upon it. It is therefore natural and understandable that one should connect the birth of a world ruler with the sign of the Fish.

Perhaps he was Caesar Augustus, who in the provinces was worshiped as a god even during his lifetime. But as I told you in Rome, my foster father Marcus Manilius in his Astronomica mentioned a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Pisces. It is true that for political reasons he omitted that passage from the book he published; but here too the astrologers bear the conjunction in mind. Yet if the coming world ruler was born at that time he would now be thirty-seven years old, and surely something would have been heard of him by this time.

You’ll be wondering why thus openly, in a letter, I remind you of something I whispered in your ear as the deepest of secrets one morning when the roses were blooming in Baiae, and when I believed that no one in the world understood me better than you, Tullia. But I am more experienced now, and can take prophecies like a grown-up man. A half-blind old fellow in the library remarked to me sarcastically that predictions belong to youth. After reading a thousand books, a man begins to sense the crushing truth; ten thousand make him melancholy.

I write openly for another reason too, and that is that in our time no one can succeed in keeping anything to himself. Even the most private conversation can be overheard and passed on, and there is no letter which cannot be read and if necessary copied. We live in an age of mistrust, and I have come to the conclusion that the best way to survive is to speak and write openly, exactly as one thinks.

Because of the Will you know of, I am rich enough to satisfy all my needs, but not so rich as to be worth killing. Because of my origins I cannot aspire to any State post, and would not even wish to. I am lacking in that sort of ambition.

The stars pointed eastward. To be rid of me, false Tullia, you made me leave Rome because I had become troublesome to you. Did I not even then swear to seek out the future ruler of the world? For it is really high time he appeared. I was to be one of his first companions; I was to enter his service and take his pay, so that one day I might be worthy to become your fourth or fifth husband. How you must have laughed at me in your thoughts!

You need not be anxious. Not even this purpose of mine gives anyone reason to seek my life. No sign of a world ruler has been seen or heard of. Such a thing would be well-known in Alexandria, the navel of the world, the center for all the world’s gossip, philosophy and intrigue. Moreover, Tiberius himself is aware of that conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn thirty-seven years ago. And he whose name it is needless to mention in a letter knows of all this. But he believes firmly and fully that the ruler of the world will not come from the east.

Tullia, my beloved, I know very well that this study of prophecies has been but a substitute for something I have lacked—a means of escaping from thoughts of you. When I awake in the mornings you are my first thought, when I fall asleep at night my last. I have dreamt of you and lain awake on your account. No man can be content with a scroll instead of the woman he loves.

From prophecies I drifted into the holy books of the Jews. There is a Jewish philosopher working in Alexandria, named Philo, who interprets these writings as parables, as Greeks and Romans interpret Homer. In this way he thinks to render the Jewish religion intelligible, with the help of Greek philosophy.

You know the Jews and their faith. In Rome too they keep themselves apart from others and do not sacrifice to Roman gods. For this reason many fear them. A number of families has already adopted the custom of setting aside every seventh day as a day of rest, in the Jewish manner. But most people despise the Jews because they have only one god, of whom so far as is known there is not a single image.

At any rate, one prophecy from the very earliest times has persistently survived in their sacred books. It relates to a future ruler of the world. Their prophets have all repeated it, so that it is the best preserved of any. This ruler they call Messiah. When he comes to power the Jews will rule the world. Such arrogance no doubt originates in the dreams of the whole race, so wretched and shameful has been its destiny, with a period of slavery in Egypt and another in Babylon, until the Persians allowed the Jews to return to their own country. Their temple too has been destroyed several times, most recently by Pompey, unintentional though this may have been. They differ from other people also in that they have only one temple. It stands in their holy city Jerusalem. The synagogues they have in every town in the world are not temples but meeting houses, where they sing their holy scriptures together and explain them to each other.

Because of this prophecy that a king of the whole world will be born among them, so that through him they will rule all nations, there are many who hate them. Therefore they no longer talk openly of it, but keep the knowledge to themselves, and hold themselves apart from others.

Yet they make no secret of the prophecy. When their scholars find that one’s attitude is friendly, they willingly help the stranger to understand their holy scriptures. At least this is so in Alexandria. Certain learned men, including Philo, interpret the Messiah prophecy as a parable; but others have assured me that it should be taken literally. To be honest, one ought I think to have been reared in their religion from a child to have any real faith in these obscure writings. Yet when I compared all the world’s confused soothsayings with each other I had to acknowledge that this Jewish prophecy was the plainest.

The Jews of Alexandria are free in thought, and there are indeed true philosophers among them who are even willing to break bread with the stranger. I became good friends with one of them and drank unwatered wine with him. Such things happen in Alexandria. When the wine loosened his tongue he spoke with great emphasis of the Messiah and of the Jewish world-sovereignty that was to come.

To prove how literally all Jews, even to the rulers, believe in the Messiah prediction, he told me that their great King Herod, a few years before his death, caused all the male children of a town to be slaughtered. Certain learned Chaldeans had followed a star and journeyed to this town, which was in Judea, and declared in their innocence that the future ruler had been born there. Herod wanted to reserve his throne for his own family. This story seems to show that he was as suspicious as a certain ruler in times gone by, who retired in solitude to an island when he grew old.

You will understand, Tullia, that this brutal tale captivated my imagination. From the year of King Herod’s death it was easy to calculate that the massacre must have taken place just at the time when Saturn and Jupiter met. The story proves that the relative positions of the stars caused as much uneasiness among the Jews and the scholars of the Orient as in Rhodes and Rome.

I asked, “Do you think, then, that the future Messiah was slain in his cradle?”

The young Jewish scholar, his beard wet with wine, laughed and said, “Who could slay the Messiah? Herod was sick, and his reason befogged.”

All the same, he was a little frightened, and glancing about him he added, “You mustn’t imagine he was born then. No time was ever mentioned in the prophecy. We should certainly have heard of him by now. Besides, in every generation some false Messiah is born, and stirs up unrest among the simple folk of Jerusalem.”

Yet the idea lingered to plague him, and when we had drunk more wine he said meaningly, “In Herod’s day many fled to Egypt from Jerusalem and elsewhere. A number stayed on here, but most returned to their homes again after Herod’s death.”

“Do you mean that the Messiah was born and carried away to Egypt, out of Herod’s reach?” I asked.

He answered, “I am a Sadducee.” This he said to emphasize that he was a man of the world and not unduly bound by Jewish traditional customs.

“Therefore I doubt,” he went on. “I do not believe in the immortality of the soul, as the Pharisees do. When a person dies he lays himself down and no longer exists. So it is written. Since we live no more than once it is only sensible to try and derive some enjoyment from it. Our great kings denied themselves nothing, although a superabundance of pleasures saddened the heart of the wise Solomon at last. Yet even in the most learned mind a corner of childish piety lies hidden. When drinking unwatered wine, especially—and that too is a sin—one believes things which one does not believe when sober. So I will tell you a story which I heard when I completed my twelfth year and became a man.”

He began:

“On our day of rest no one may work with his hands. In the time of King Herod there was an old craftsman in Bethlehem of Judea who fled with his young wife and a newborn boy. They halted in Egypt among the balsam gardens, and settled down. The man kept himself and his family by the work of his hands, and no one had any ill to say of them. But one Sabbath the three-year-old boy was caught by the other Jews in the village as he was baking clay images of swallows. They fetched his mother, because he was breaking the Sabbath and the law. But the boy blew upon the clay models, and they flew up and away as live birds. Soon after that the family disappeared from that place.”

“Do you expect me to believe that sort of nursery tale?” I demanded in amazement; for I had regarded him as a dispassionate man.

He shook his head and stared in front of him with his bulbous Jewish eyes. He was a fine-looking man, as many Jews of ancient lineage are. “I don’t mean that at all,” he said. “I simply mean that a nursery tale like that indicates that in Herod’s day a particularly pious, or—for all its unpretentiousness—a particularly noteworthy family took flight here, into Egypt. A rational explanation of the origin of such a legend might be, for instance, that the mother of that little Sabbath-breaker defended him with such winged words from the scriptures that the accusers were silenced. But the true explanation may be so complex as to have been lost in oblivion. With the help of our scriptures one can prove anything. And later, when the family had vanished as unobtrusively as it had left Judea, people embroidered the story so that children too might understand it.”

He brought our conversation to an end by saying, “Ah, had I but the mind of a child still, to believe the words of scripture as a child believes them! To live thus would be easier than to totter on the boundaries of two worlds. A Greek I can never be, and in my heart I am no longer a son of Abraham.”

Next day my head ached and I felt ill, but not for the first time in Alexandria. I spent the day at the thermae. After bath, massage, gymnastics and a good meal I was seized by a dreamlike sensation; the world of reality seemed to have withdrawn from me, and my own body had become like a shadow. This is a feeling I know well; it comes of my birth. I am not named Mezentius for nothing. It is in such a state that a man is most susceptible to omens, though even then the hardest thing is to distinguish true signs from false.

When I stepped out of the cool colonnade of the thermae the heat from the street struck up at me and the evening sun hit me in the eyes like lightning. My mood continued. I walked along the swarming streets without thinking of where I was going. As I was wandering thus absent-mindedly in the glare, I was mistaken for a stranger by a guide, who seized my cloak and began very glibly to propose a visit to the houses of pleasure in Canopus, or the lighthouse of Pharos, or the Apis bull in his temple. The guide was importunate, and I did not get rid of him until he was interrupted by a shout. Then he pointed a dirty finger at the shouter and laughed, saying, “Look at the Jew!”

At the corner of the vegetable market stood a man clad in skins. His beard and hair were matted, his face was gaunt from fasting, and his feet were sore. Over and over again he shouted the same monotonous message in Aramaic, and his eyes rolled in his head. The guide said, “I don’t suppose you understand what he’s saying.”

But since my youth in Antioch I have spoken and understood Aramaic, as you know. In those days I was seriously thinking of a career as a scribe to some proconsul in the east, before I went to school in Rhodes and gained a better understanding of what I want from life.

Thus I understood very well what this Jewish sectary from the desert was proclaiming. He was shouting again and again in a voice already hoarse with effort, “He who hath ears to hear, let him hear! The kingdom is at hand! Make the path even.”

The guide explained. “He is announcing the coming of a Jewish king. So many of these addlepates swarm in from the desert that the police do not even trouble to flog them all. Besides, it is good policy to get the Jews to quarrel among themselves. The longer they belabor one another the longer we gymnasium people are left in peace. There are no more murderous people than the Jews. Luckily for us, their different factions hate each other even more than they hate us, whom they call heathen.”

All this time the hoarse, cracked voice was shouting the same words, so that at last they were stamped on my memory. The voice proclaimed that a kingdom was drawing near, and in the state I was in I could not help taking the cry as an omen for myself. It was as if, in a single moment, the prophecies I had studied all the winter long had cast off their disguise of obscure verbiage and gathered themselves into one clear phrase: “The kingdom is near.”

The guide prattled on, still clutching a corner of my cloak. “The Jewish paschal feast is approaching,” he told me. “The last caravans and ships are on the point of leaving with pilgrims for Jerusalem. We shall see what sort of rumpus there’ll be again this year.”

“It would be interesting to see the Jews’ holy city sometime,” I remarked idly.

This so stimulated the guide that he began to yell: “A wise wish, lord, for Herod’s temple is a wonder of the world. He who has never beheld it on his travels has seen nothing. As for riots and disturbances, you need have no fear; I was but joking. In Judea the roads are safe, and in Jerusalem, Roman law and order prevail. A whole legion is stationed in that country to keep the peace. Come with me a few paces only, and I with my good connections can surely get you a passage on a ship bound for Joppa and Caesarea. Of course you will be told at first that all places are sold out for the Passover; but I will speak for you. It would indeed be a scandal if a distinguished Roman like yourself could not find room in a passenger vessel.”

He dragged me by the mantle so eagerly that I went passively with him to a Syrian shipowner’s office, which indeed lay not more than a few paces from the vegetable market. I soon found that I was not the only foreigner who wanted to go to Jerusalem for the Passover. Besides Jews from every corner of the world, there were many ordinary travelers who just wanted to see something new.

When the guide had haggled on my behalf as furiously as only a Greek can haggle with a Syrian, I became aware that I had bought myself a berth on board a pilgrim ship bound for the Judean coast. I was assured that she was the last vessel sailing from Alexandria this Easter. She had been delayed because she was brand-new and was still awaiting a few last items of equipment, but early next morning she would start her maiden voyage; therefore I need have no fear of the ingrained filth and the vermin that usually render voyages along this coast so distasteful.

The guide mulcted me of five drachmas for his services, but he was welcome to them since I had had an omen and made my decision. He stayed behind, well content, to extort a commission also from the shipowner’s clerk. By that evening I had called on my banker for a draft for presentation at Jerusalem, being a sufficiently experienced traveler not to carry needlessly large sums in cash when visiting a strange country. I paid my bill at the inn, and various other debts, and in the course of the evening said goodbye to certain acquaintances whom I could not well leave without a word of farewell. To avoid sneers I told no one where I was going, but simply said I was leaving on a journey and would return at latest in the autumn.

I lay long awake, and felt more keenly than ever before how this febrile winter in Alexandria had corroded soul and body. Alexandria, with all its sights, may be a marvel of the world; nevertheless, it seemed to me that I was leaving it at the eleventh hour. Had I stayed longer I should have succumbed to the fever that prevails in this town which is so greedy for pleasure, so wearied by the wisdom of Greece. A man who had begun to grow soft, as I had, might easily have lingered on in Alexandria for the rest of his life.

Therefore I thought that a sea voyage and a couple of days’ effortless wayfaring along the Roman roads of Judea would do me good both in body and soul. But, as usually happens, when I was roused early next morning to catch the boat, after all too short a sleep, I could only curse myself for a madman to be leaving all the amenities of a civilized life for the sake of visiting the alien, hostile country of the Jews, in search of a mirage born in my own mind of a few obscure, oracular phrases.

I was far from pacified when, on arriving at the harbor, I found that I had been cheated more outrageously than I could have imagined. I discovered the ship only after long searching and many inquiries, for at first I could not believe that this wretched, rotten old tub was the brand-new vessel described by the Syrian as being in process of fitting out for her maiden voyage. That her equipment was incomplete was true enough, for she would never have stayed afloat at all without calking and pitching up to the last moment. The smell of her reminded one of the houses of joy in Canopus, for the owner had caused cheap incense to be burned everywhere to smother the other odors on board. Pieces of colored cloth were hung over the rotten sides, and a load of withering flowers had been brought from the market to celebrate the departure.

In a word, this scantily pitched, ill-found tub looked like an old harbor drab who dares not venture into the light of day until she has swathed herself from head to foot in gaudy veils, painted over her wrinkles and seen to it that the smell of her cheap scent is wafted far and wide. I seemed to see the same crafty, cold look in the eyes of the purser when he vowed and protested that I had come to the right ship and showed me my bunk, amid yelling and bawling, tears, quarrels and shouts of farewell in many different tongues.

I couldn’t even be angry; I could only laugh. After all, no man is obliged to seek out perils; he can let his good sense lead him round them. On the other hand, by shunning every danger he makes his life unbearable. I have heard the teaching of so many philosophers as to be confirmed in the opinion that not even by the greatest caution can a man prolong his allotted span by so much as a hand’s-breadth.

It is true that even in our day there are still a number of superstitious rich people who break Roman law and sacrifice a young slave to the three-headed goddess, to prolong their own life by the life he loses. In any of the great cities of the east one can find a magician or a renegade priest who knows the magic words and is willing to perform this kind of sacrifice in return for a substantial fee. But in my view this is but self-deception and cruel error. Mankind certainly has an infinite capacity for self-deception and for putting faith in its own desires; yet I believe that not even if I live to grow old shall I fear death so much as to become the victim of such credulity.

In my ludicrous situation it was a comfort to know that the vessel would be hugging the coast and that I am a good swimmer. I was filled with mirth and bore no grudge for the fraud that had been practiced on me. I resolved to make the best of everything and enjoy the voyage, so that later I might have an amusing story to tell—with appropriate exaggerations—of the hardships and troubles I had endured.

Anchor was weighed, the rowers pulled and knocked their oars together all out of time, the stern swung away from the quay, and the captain emptied a goblet overboard in libation to the goddess of fortune. He could have sacrificed to no more suitable divinity, for he must have known that we should need good luck to arrive at our destination at all. Jewish passengers raised their hands and in their sacred language cried upon their god for succor. On the foredeck a garlanded girl begun plucking at a lyre while a young man with her played upon a pipe, and it was not long before the current song favorite in Alexandria was in full swing. The Jewish pilgrims discovered with dismay that we had a troupe of wandering play-actors on board, but it was now useless to complain. Moreover we, who in their estimation were unclean, formed the majority of the passengers, and the belated pilgrims were not rich. They were compelled to put up with the shadows that we cast and resign themselves to the incessant purifying of their food vessels.

In our day solitude is the rarest of luxuries. For this reason I have never been able to endure slaves about me, watching every step I take, and my every glance, and I pity those who because of their rank are obliged to live surrounded by slaves for twenty-four hours a day. Aboard ship I had to whittle down this luxury of solitude and share sleeping space with the most diverse and shady characters. Fortunately the Jewish passengers had their own sleeping quarters, as well as fireplaces in sandboxes where they cooked their own food. But for this they would have stepped ashore on the Judean coast in so terribly defiled a condition that they would hardly have dared to travel on to their holy city, so strict are their laws and their rules for purification.

Had we not been helped by a gentle and favorable wind, I believe we should never have reached our destination, for the oarsmen—ramshackle as the vessel herself—were wheezy, breathless, lame and maimed old men. Not all of them were even slaves, but dregs of a yet lower order who, for lack of other employment, had let themselves be hired for this hard physical labor. Yes, this mob of rowers might have formed the chorus of a satirical play. Even the overseer, beating time on his raised platform, laughed himself sick when he saw them bumping each other and themselves with their oars, or lying down and slumbering in the midst of their toil. I believe he used the whip merely for form’s sake, for it was just not possible to get any more out of them than had been taken already.

Of the voyage itself I have no more to say than that it was hardly calculated to promote piety or prepare my soul for the holy city of the prophecies. The devotion and reverence of a Jew for the temple was needed for a man to raise his arms in prayer morning, noon and night, and incessantly to chant melancholy or joyful psalms to the glory of his god. At other times of day, Greek popular songs rang out from the foredeck, where the players were rehearsing. And when the rowers were ordered to their oars for a time, the noise of their hoarse lamentations arose from the lower deck.

The Greek girl, who had begun the voyage with a wreath about her head and a lyre in her arms, was called Myrina. She was a thin, short-nosed girl with cold and searching green eyes. For all her youth, she could not only sing and play, but was also an accomplished acrobatic dancer. It was a delight to watch her daily practice on the foredeck, though the pious Jews hid their faces and wailed aloud at the abomination.

Myrina is an Amazon name. She told me quite candidly that it had been given her because she was so thin and flat-chested. She had appeared before, in Judea and beyond Jordan in the Greek cities of Peraea. She told us that there was a theatre in Jerusalem which Herod had had built, but that they had little hope of appearing there as few performances were ever given, because of the lack of spectators. Jews hate the theatre, as they hate all Greek civilization, even to water conduits, and the eminent persons in the city were far too few to fill a theatre. For this reason the players were now bound for the other side of the Jordan, where the Romans had established a furlough-town for the twelfth legion, and where there was always an enthusiastic if rough audience. They hoped to perform also in Tiberias, the seat of the Governor on the Sea of Galilee, and on their return journey they could try their luck in Roman Caesarea on the Judean coast.

After I had chatted in this friendly way with Myrina, she came stealing to my bunk that night, whispering that I could make her happy with a couple of silver coins, since she and her companions were very poor and found it hard to procure all the clothes and shoes they needed for the stage. But for this she would not have so turned to me, as she was a respectable girl.

As I rummaged in my purse in the darkness I came first upon a heavy 10-drachma piece, and this I gave her. She was overjoyed, she hugged and kissed me, and said that because of my kindness she could not resist me and that I might do with her as I would. When she saw that I wanted nothing of her—for truth to tell, I had wearied of women during my winter in Alexandria—she was greatly surprised and inquired innocently whether instead she should fetch her brother, who was still young and beardless. I have never felt drawn to this Greek vice, though naturally I had had my own Platonic admirers during my school years in Rhodes. When I assured her that I was quite content with just her friendship, she assumed that for some reason I had taken a vow of chastity for the time and importuned me no further.

Instead she told me of the moral customs of the Jews, and assured me that she had met some who did not regard fornication with foreign women as a sin, so long as they kept away from Jewish women. In proof of her words she whispered a few stories into my ear, in the darkness of the sleeping cabin, but I didn’t really believe her. After all, I had learned to respect Jews during my intercourse with their scholars in Alexandria.

When the Judean hills were already looming like a mirage above the jeweled sea, Myrina confided to me her life’s dream, as a young girl will sometimes confide in an older friend. She knew very well that for a dancer the season of blossom is a short one; therefore she hoped to save money and in due time establish a modest scent shop in some free and easy coastal town, and adjoining it a quiet house of pleasure. She regarded me with innocent eyes as she explained that the time of waiting would be shortened if she had the good fortune to fall in with a rich lover. I wished her this good fortune with all my heart. And whether because of the captain’s sacrifices, or because of a lucky chance, or because of the persistent devotions of the Jewish pilgrims, we made port at Joppa—vermin-bitten, hungry, thirsty and dirty, but otherwise unharmed—three days before the Jewish feast of the Passover. The Jews were in so great a hurry that they barely had time to purify themselves and eat a meal with their kinsfolk before setting out for Jerusalem, although night was already falling. But the air was mild, numberless stars burned above the sea, and by moonlight wayfaring was easy. The harbor was crammed with vessels, among them great ships from Italy, Spain and Africa. From this I might have gathered, if I had not already done so, that the Jews’ love for their temple is a profitable business for all the shipowners in the world.

You know that I am no snob, yet I felt unwilling to continue my journey in company with the Greek players next morning, although they begged me earnestly to do so in the hope of securing my protection, for not one of them was a Roman citizen. So I decided to finish this letter in peace and quiet at Joppa—I had begun it on board ship—to pass the time and to explain to you the impulse that sent me out upon this journey.

I have rented a private room where I am resting after the miserable voyage, and writing these words. I have had a bath and used plenty of vermin powder. The clothes I wore on board I have given away to the poor, having seen that people were offended by my intention to burn them. I am now beginning to feel myself again; my hair has been dressed and oiled and I have bought new clothes. My habits being simple, I have little baggage, though plenty of new papyrus, writing materials and a few souvenirs from Alexandria as gifts to bestow upon suitable occasions.

Both high and low can hire means of transport to Jerusalem at the market here in Joppa. I might have hired a litter and escort, or traveled in a wagon behind a team of oxen; I might even have clambered onto a camel led by a guide. But, as I said, solitude is my greatest luxury, and so I mean to hire a donkey early tomorrow morning, load it with my few belongings, a wineskin and a food bag, and set off for Jerusalem on foot, as befits a peaceful pilgrim. I gladly welcome this bodily exercise after the relaxing period in Alexandria, and I need have no fear of robbers, for the roads are crammed with people bound for the Passover feast and are guarded by patrols from the twelfth legion.

Tullia, my beloved; it was not to vex you or make you jealous that I have told you of Myrina and the women of Alexandria. If you could have been hurt by it—if it wounded your heart in the very slightest—but I fear that you feel only satisfaction at having so cunningly rid yourself of me. Yet I do not know your thoughts, and it may well be that something prevented you from sailing. Therefore I swear to await you again in Alexandria next autumn, until the end of the sailing season. I have left all my possessions there; not so much as a book have I brought with me. You may obtain my address from the Roman travel bureau or from my banker, if I should not be at the harbor when you come; but in my heart I know that I shall be going down to meet every ship from Italy, just as I did last autumn.

I don’t even know whether you have been able to take the trouble to read this letter to the end, though I have tried to make it as varied as possible. In fact I am in a more serious mood than might appear from this. Throughout my life I have vacillated between the doctrines of Epicurus and the Stoics, between enjoyment and asceticism. The exaggerated pleasures of Alexandria, the vain gluttony of body and spirit, scorched my soul. You know and I know that voluptuousness and love are two different things. In lust one can train, as for running or swimming, but lust by itself engenders melancholy. It is strange, incredible, however, to meet the person for whom one was born. I was born for you, Tullia, and my foolish heart tells me still that you were born for me. Do not forget the nights in Baiae, in the time of roses.

At any rate, do not take too seriously what I have written of prophecies. Your mocking mouth is welcome to smile and whisper “Marcus is still the incorrigible dreamer!” Yet if I were not so, you might not love me; if indeed you still do. I don’t know.

Joppa is a very ancient port, entirely Syrian. But while I have been writing this to you I have felt at home here. Tullia, my beloved, do not forget me. I take this letter with me and will send it from Jerusalem, for no ships return to Brundisium until after the Jewish Passover.