Lent Assignment

The First Assignment

So what do you want to know about me? First of all, you may have heard a rather sick rumor about my birth: That I was born up in the highlands of Britain, and that my mother was a Scottish woman who had amused the Roman ambassador. I don’t know where such a strange story originated, but I was born in Italy. My father was an ambassador to the Highlands, but the idea of him doing something as scandalous as that is absolutely insane. One of the first things that I remember is my father telling me that I came from one of the proudest families in Rome, and that my mother was a virtuous woman. He never told me much else about her (She died when I was very young), but I am certain that he would not lie to me about such an important point.
In any case, I was raised mainly by a slave from Egypt. She was my nurse and she was very kind but also very strict. Furthermore, she would sometimes tell me stories from Egypt. Stories about a god named Osiris who had been killed by his brother, Seth, but then had been put back together by his wife, Isis and had subsequently come back to life. I remember it fascinated me a bit at the time, but I also found it somewhat puzzling. She would talk about all of these gods as if they were in fact real people. Once, I asked her if she believed in the gods, Jupiter, Juno and the others which my family worshipped. She immediately said, “Yes, of course,” as if she did not want there to be any doubt in anyone’s mind about that.
“But then,” I asked, “How do you also believe in the gods of Egypt?”
She looked at me in an embarrassed way, and suggested that I not worry about things like that anymore.
Later, I decided to tell my father the same story. He smiled when I mentioned how quickly my nurse had insisted that she believed in the Roman gods, but when I asked him the question of how there can be both Egyptian gods and Roman gods, he frowned and said, “It seems that every time Rome conquers a new country, we get more gods, so, put that way, the more gods we have, the better shape our country is in,” and he laughed in that cynical way that he had of laughing at things.
After he had thought about it for a while, he looked at me again and said, “Besides, lately it has become fashionable to think of Caesar as a god, so I guess if the Empire lasts long enough, we will have hundreds of emperors and hundreds of gods to boot. I guess if nothing else, you can say that having all of these gods is a useful thing, because the competition keeps them honest.”
That made very little sense to me at the time, but I suppose that this would be a good place to transition to my father’s feelings about Caesar. You see, when I was a little bit older, I saw Augustus Caesar come parading through my homeland. To me, this was quite an exceptional treat, but my father sat in the house and seemed to have very little interest in the whole affair. Only then, did I have the courage to question my father’s patriotism. “Do you not love Rome?” I asked.
His answer has haunted me to this day. “How could anyone not love Rome? But it is not Emperors which have made Rome great.”
I was puzzled. “Are not Rome and the Emperor one?”
This actually made him spit. “On the contrary, not too long ago, Rome was a republic and it had the greatest and fairest legal code on Earth.” To that, he added, “Always remember that law is what makes the state great, not kings and emperors.”
That conversation still haunts me today when Augustus has been succeeded by Tiberius. Tiberius is hardly a leader to be proud of, but in a strange sort of way, I feel proud of the fact that both me and most of my countrymen can laugh at Tiberius. Perhaps it says something about the character of Roman aristocracy that no matter how bad our leaders are, we will still have the ability to laugh rather then degrade ourselves as the plebeians do.
Well, my father is no longer in this world. I am happily married, and gainfully employed. I cannot say that this part of the world is where I would want to live, but I do feel proud of what I can accomplish here.
The Jews, what a piece of work, they are! When I hear about how the Pharisees hate the Sadducees, and the Sadducees hate the Samaritans and heaven knows what else, I think to myself, it truly is a good thing that we are here. These people would kill each other without us. Thus, when I hear a Zealot yell at me in the streets, I laugh and say, “maybe you would like to see what happens when we’re gone.”
That is not to say that these people do not have laws. I have heard it said that they have more laws then any culture in the religious sense. They are only allowed to eat certain foods, and they will not touch pork. They cannot work on the seventh day of the week. There is something else which they do that is even more bizarre. It happens to male babies when they are eight days old. Kind of gross, if you ask me. The difference between all of these rules and the Roman laws is that Roman laws serve a good purpose. They protect the citizens both from each other and from the government. What exactly is accomplished when you chop off a man’s foreskin?
I do not know. I cannot help being pleased to hear that now other Jews, like John the Baptist, are chastising the more conventional Jews. He almost seemed to be saying that being a Jew is now no longer important for being right with the Jewish god. Maybe next, he will say that a Roman can worship this god.
With all due respect, that can never happen, and not just because we, Romans enjoy pork and value our foreskins. It goes back to what I said before about Romans not being submissive. A Roman can worship Jupiter or even Caesar, but we will not submit and degrade ourselves the way that a Jew degrades himself before Jehovah. Moreover, I do not think that I could respect someone who does such a thing.
Hmmm. . .Well, respect is not the same thing as love. I cannot believe that I said that. Well, the truth is that since I started this journey, I have met several people who wish to submit to Jehovah, and I feel something for them which I cannot characterize. I shouldn’t say that I love them. Envy them? Well, that’s wrong too. I am not sure how to put it.
All right, I am out of character, now.
Where to start? I just read a Wickipedia article on my character. It listed five possible portrayals of the character through the centuries. I am still trying to decide which one I believe. The article included the rumor about my character’s birth alluded to above, as well as an intriguing little legend about the ghost of my character which I won’t repeat for fear of giving away too many clues about my character’s identity. I mention it though, because now I am starting to wonder just where my character is today. Heaven, Hell, or maybe that beautiful section of Hell, which Dante said is reserved for good pagans. The thing is that I do think of my character as too good to deserve Hell, although based on the article, not all historians agree with me.
Playing this character has been fun, but I also believe that I have quite a bit in common with him. (At least, I have something in common with him as I believe that he was. If some of the above mentioned historians are correct then perhaps we are more different.) Anyway, his views of Rome mirror my views of my country. He makes fun of his leaders, in the way that an American makes fun of Bush or Obama, but he still feels patriotic. Partly because he realizes that while Rome is a massive empire, it is composed of ordinary people.
Today, the United States is probably the most powerful country on Earth, and many people call it “imperialistic”, but it is made up of ordinary people who mostly want to do what is right. Furthermore, one cannot help thinking that such ordinary people are better to have in power, then the realistic cultures which dominated Iraq and Afghanistan.
Lastly, there is my character’s love of others. That is sort of my feelings about some other Christians. I used to think that there was something pathetic about some Christians. Then, after I had been with them for a while, I came to feel a certain amount of love for them. If it can be called that.
To bring this back to the adventure, I am coming to love many of my fellow adventurers, or at least the characters which they play. I look forward to going further with them.