A Goat for Azazel: A Novel of Christian Origins

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Text originally published in 1956 under the same title.

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

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A GOAT FOR AZAZEL

A NOVEL OF CHRISTIAN ORIGINS

BY

VARDIS FISHER

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

I 5

II 12

III 16

IV 24

V 34

VI 42

VII 51

VIII 59

IX 71

X 80

XI 90

XII 100

XIII 110

XIV 122

XV 128

XVI 136

XVII 146

XVIII 155

XIX 166

XX 171

XXI 180

XXII 187

XXIII 197

XXIV 205

XXV 210

XXVI 217

XXVII 225

XXVIII 232

XXIX 239

XXX 245

NOTES AND COMMENTARY 253

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 299

DEDICATION

For these—JESSIE BURT, ESTHER GIPSON, THELMA, LEWIS, IRENE MEAD, MATTIE WAUGH

...the use of the dying god as a scapegoat to free his worshipers from the troubled....The accumulated misfortunes and sins of a whole people are sometimes laid upon the dying god....palming off on someone else the trouble which a man shrinks from bearing himself....the custom of sacrificing the son for the father was common, if not universal, among Semitic peoples....All over Western Asia from time immemorial the mournful death and happy resurrection of a divine being appear to have been annually celebrated.

—FRAZER

I

His father was a Greek named Pamphilus, who, before he was taken by pirates and sold as a slave in Rome, was a schoolmaster at Antioch. His mother Levana was a Roman of noble birth, but the mad emperor, Caligula, destroyed her male relatives and confiscated their property, leaving the women in beggary. She was born in the twentieth year of the emperor Tiberius and was actually a beggar when Pamphilus, then a slave, met her in the eighth year of the emperor Claudius. Damon, their only child, was born in the ninth year of Claudius, and so was fourteen years old in the year of the great fire which destroyed most of Rome, and fixed in him that obsessive interest in the Christians which was to endure throughout his life.

His father’s master, one Valerius, a distant relative of the Claudian line and a very wealthy man, was invited by Nero to a banquet, at his seaside villa in Antium, the day before the fire; and Damon went along as one of the servants, for at great feasts it was a custom with rich men to have slaves in attendance on them, to wash their feet, to fan them, to sing to them, and in other ways to minister to their whims. Valerius had been depressed and anxious for many weeks, having heard that Nero intended to trump up a charge of treason against him and confiscate his holdings. Valerius had told Pamphilus that he would give him his freedom and settle on him a substantial inheritance. He was fond of Pamphilus, who had become his tutor in rhetoric and philosophy, and his close companion. On receiving Nero’s invitation Valerius said, They always invite one to a feast, Pamphilus, before sending a messenger to give one his choice of the forms of suicide. I shall eat in preparation for my death. Pamphilus had made no reply. For one familiar with the caprices and tyrannies of the emperors there was nothing to be said. It was widely known that Nero was short of funds. An emperor who, when he journeyed, had a thousand mules shod with solid silver, hundreds of retainers robed in the finest scarlet, and a procession that stretched out for miles, was usually in need of money.

They arrived early in the afternoon at Nero’s magnificent villa. Damon had been in attendance with his master at some very sumptuous affairs but he had never been in the emperor’s palace or villa. The time was the 19th of July in the tenth year of Nero’s reign.

Damon’s first impression was of huge gardens drenched with costly scents; his second, of a bald-headed senator, being borne away by his servants, in a handsome red sedan. He thought the man was ill. His father told him later that the man had been taken away to a chamber to be bathed with scented waters and rubbed with unguents. His father said the perfumes used at feasts by the more prodigal emperors, or sometimes by patricians of great wealth, were so fantastic in their cost that guests were expected to contribute to them. Passions, Damon had learned, were so unconfined that the host or one of his aides usually challenged at the door any guest whose face was sad or cynical or sickly; for no one with an unhappy mind or a weak stomach had any business at a Roman feast. Indeed, the guests were usually given a promulsis to strengthen their stomachs: the horrible concoction, Damon’s father said, was made of boiled honey, sweet wines and strong spices. If a guest sickened on this he was hustled away to a pile of raw lettuce and cooling herbs to settle his vomit.

Sitting alone together, beyond hearing, Damon’s father had spent hours telling him about the Romans. Since Augustus, Pamphilus said, all the emperors had been prodigious gluttons. Tiberius had sat at a feast and eaten for two days and nights without rising. Caligula had been worse, Nero was certainly no better.

Nero, whom Damon had seen at chariot races or when singing in the theaters, was a man under average height, powerfully built but corpulent. He had blue eyes touched with madness, pale red hair, a freckled florid face. His neck was short and thick, his hands heavy and gross and sprinkled with large freckles. He was very near-sighted, a condition that gave him an air of morbid doubt and suspicion. The whole world knew that he fancied himself as the greatest singer alive, a delusion which the sycophants around him did much to nourish. He also fancied himself as a musician and an actor without peer, and as an athlete of extraordinary prowess. But those who knew him best, Pamphilus said, thought him thick-witted, arrogant, self-deceived and monstrously vain; but they admitted that he was popular with the common people.

A little drunk, when Damon and his father arrived with Valerius, Nero was singing in a very loud voice; and all the hypocrites whose lives depended on his whims were fawning and applauding, while in actual truth, Damon was to learn later with astonishment, plotting his death. A quiet, rather neurotic and thoughtful child, Damon in his unobtrusive way observed many things this evening: he was fascinated by a few of the guests—by Petronius because of his contemptuous silence and elegant sneers; Seneca, because of his fluent talk; Plautius, because of his incredible gluttony; and the beautiful Murdia because, though a Christian lice his own mother, she seemed to be wanton. Damon was dressed in livery and had many tasks but he also had time, as the party progressed into deeper drunkenness, to look round him and to listen. He had seen feasts but never so much food or so many kinds. As the various courses were brought on the nature of them was proclaimed by the master of the banquet, who drooled from his tongue and leered like a pimp. The first course, the gustatio or appetizer, included oysters, eggs, mushrooms, all saturated with a sauce of sweet wine mixed with heavy amber honey. Among the tidbits were tongues of flamingoes and other birds, the flesh of ostrich wings, breast of dove and thrush, livers of geese, and a concoction of sow-livers, teats and vulva in a thick syrup of figs. Of the main dishes he managed to taste chicken covered deep with a sauce of anise seed, mint, lazerroot, vinegar, dates, the juices of salted fishguts, oil and mustard seed. There were many kinds of fish, all heavily spiced, rich and dripping; thrush on asparagus; a pastry of the brains of small birds; sows’ udder floating in a thick jelly that smelled of coriander; roast venison, pig, fowl and hare; and innumerable sausages and pickled or spiced meats. A dish in great demand was a jelly of sow-livers that had been fattened on figs, an invention of Apicius, a famous gourmet under Tiberius. When the tables were wiped clean for new courses, the servants, including Damon, were expected to move in dance-rhythms and to sing. He moved his lips but he made no sound.

Of wines, Valerius had told them while riding over, Nero would have only the choicest: old crusted Alban and Setine; the famous Falernian vintage of Opimius, said to be a hundred years old; and Chian. Damon managed to taste them all. They were all very sweet. They were not, it seemed to him, the kind that would mix happily with sauces drenched with oils and with hot spices. He knew that the mansions of the wealthy had vomit-chambers, to which guests, sickened by eating, could withdraw to empty their stomachs, and so eat again. Aids were there, including long feathers with which to tickle the throat, and various emetics of mustard, salt and nauseous herbs. Servants were there to assist the glutton, cleanse his face and clothes, and give him cooling drinks or gentle herbs to settle his stomach, or medicines to promote his appetite and digestion.

Damon now and then stole near to observe Plautius, whose gluttony was legendary. It was the Roman way when eating to lie belly downward on a couch, and reach out for the food heaped on tables. When sated, the diner turned to his left side. For what seemed to Damon a long time Plautius fed ravenously with both hands, assisted by slave-boys whose long hair he used as napkins to wipe his dripping fingers. In a moment when Damon was staring at him he suddenly rolled over and sat up. He leaned forward, his elbows across his knees, his bulging eyes looking horrified and expectant. He started to rise but at once vomited, pouring out of his outraged stomach oysters stewed in garum, figpeckers, African snails, sow-udder, mussels, Lybian truffles, honey, sauces, pastries, wines, fruits. Nobody but Damon thought anything of it. Vomiting was the surest possible way to show approval of a cook’s art and a host’s hospitality. Slaves, including Damon, hastened over to clean up the mess; and the huge fellow staggered off, clutching his guts with both hands. A little later he returned, looking cleansed and fit, and began to eat, choosing first an antidote against poison, which was furnished to all guests, and then a sweet thick wine mixed with boiled honey and heavy cream. He must have drunk a pint of this when, smacking his lips, he looked over the tables and chose sorrel and peppers. These were intended to keep his stomach from heaving. But presently, Damon observed, his own stomach turning sick, the man was devouring rich hot meat dishes, raw brains in jelly, a paste made of camel-heels, and huge quantities of Falernian. After a few minutes he sat up again and stared down like a man contemplating the treacheries of his stomach. How many times this monstrous glutton ate and disgorged Damon was never to know, for his attention was drawn to other matters. Hours later a few of the guests, deathly sick, were laid out on couches, with slaves fanning them. Damon fanned one of them until the man fell asleep, when he went over to hear what Seneca was saying.

Seneca, Damon had heard Valerius say with contempt, pretended to believe in an austere life of self-denial but had never practiced what he preached. He taught against the accumulation of wealth but was himself among the richest men in the world; advocated a brotherhood of man but lent money at usurious rates; proclaimed that ambition ought to be restrained but aspired to be emperor of Rome; and in still other ways was an odious example to those whom he exhorted.

Damon saw a short man of Spanish extraction, with a great bald head, a grossly fleshy neck and jowls, and a short pointed beard that was gray. His speaking voice was not pleasant; it was nasally resonant and became shrill when he was agitated. His hands, with which he gestured to silence a disputant, were heavy and abnormally hairy; and his mouth back in his beard had, Damon thought, a number of decayed teeth.

It was Nero’s whim to invite to his feasts actors, singers, philosophers, physicians, as well as base fops with the stain of low birth upon them. They reeked of unguents and hovered attentively on the words of the powerful. Among these sycophants was an exquisite dandy named Regulus, who had painted a dark circle round his right eye and covered a part of his forehead and one cheek with patches; for this was then the fashion with fops.

As Damon moved within hearing he heard a statement and glanced quickly at his father. If God, Seneca said, had given man a rational nature, then nothing was more becoming to man than reason. He elaborated on this by saying that reason could be improved with study and the pursuit of truth, that philosophy purified a man of prejudice and superstition, promoting virtue and self-confidence. He said he was not yet wise, nor would ever be. Do not ask me to be equal to the best, but rather to be better than the base. That is enough for me—daily to take away something from my faults, and rebuke my errors. Then he made a statement that caused Damon’s father to reach down and clasp his son’s hand. There is an old proverb, said Seneca. If one should tell you that he has sought and found, do not believe him; but believe him who tells you that he found without seeking. Why, after Seneca had uttered those words, had his father squeezed his hand? Damon thought he knew but he was not sure.

Regulus interrupted to ask: What do you think of the Friends? He meant the Christians.

Seneca spoke with bitterness tinctured with contempt. He had heard of these people and he had seen a few of them; he thought them stupid, ignorant and contemptible. They were dangerous to the Empire because they would dissolve the ties of custom, home and friendship, desecrate religious institutions, encourage hatred of mankind. They despised life, they projected their whole interest into a mythical future. The doings of the wretches were illegal, for did they not live in secret societies? In fact, did they not imitate the rites of the mystery cults, the better to deceive the unwary and prey on the ignorant? He looked round him and said: I have heard that some of them eat human flesh.

Because his mother was a Christian Damon was listening with all his ears.

Great philosopher, said Regulus, impudently baiting him, they believe in a brotherhood of man. My wife is one. He turned to a group that was watching naked slave-girls dance. Murdia, come here!

There came toward Regulus a very beautiful woman. She was giddy, for she had been drinking too much; and she moved with the air of a woman who viewed with cynical indulgence her baser passions.

You’re a Friend, said Regulus. Isn’t it true that you people believe in a brotherhood of man? He turned to Seneca. You Stoics profess to believe it. You and the Friends seem to have much in common.

Seneca growled and for a few moments seemed to be listening to an inner voice. Who are these people? he said at last. Beggars, slaves, the rabble and chaff, the vulgar outcasts, illiterate, ignoble, barbarous. Is there virtue in them? Is there love of truth? Do the fools really believe in the immortality of their flesh and bones?

You say slaves? cried Murdia and poked at him with her fan. I’m no slave but to love. Do you know that one of the noblest women present tonight is a Friend?

Who could that be? asked Seneca, looking round him.

Equality and brotherhood, said Regulus, pressing his point. That’s a Stoic doctrine, even though, he added with soft insolence, it is seldom observed.

Seneca turned his dark sad eyes on Regulus. Can the stupid ever be equal with the intelligent, the cowards with the brave? Who but imbeciles believe in equality? As for brotherhood, Cicero said that nature inclines us .to love men, that such love is the foundation of law. Men, he said, are born to help one another—

That’s all very pompous and empty, said Regulus, leering round at his circle of intimates. But is that what you practice? Would you go among this rabble and chaff and call them brothers?

Yes, would you? asked Murdia, breathing in his face. No, you wouldn’t!

Seneca fixed her with his unhappy eyes. I observe your costly raiment, he said. Your speech is not that of the rabble. Why, then, are you one of these people who abhor art because their dull minds think it idolatrous? They despise life—

There’s another life! Murdia cried at him. It isn’t this corrupt life of flesh, no, but life in Christ and the Kingdom; and the Kingdom, sir, will come any day now! There is one who came and will come again, to right wrongs, to destroy evil, to punish the wicked and give fellowship to those cast out, peace to the whole earth!

Seneca rumbled, as with incredulity. Peace to the whole earth, did you say?

Peace!

Dear woman, you use the word christ but do you know its meaning? It is a common name over the whole earth for both slaves and freedmen. Greek, it means the anointed one and over in Antioch these people are called Christian, after the word christ, but the Antiochans use the term in reproach and contempt. These people—

We do not call ourselves Christians, Murdia said, her dark eyes despising him.

Why not?—if you believe in a mythical Christ? Here in Rome you call yourselves Friends. In other cities, I have heard, these people call themselves Disciples or Brethren or Saints or the Elect, or even the New Israel.

There is another life, she said.

The woman is mad, he said, looking round him.

At this moment Damon was called away and heard no more. It was also a whim with Nero, as it had been with some of the emperors before him, to seek still baser pleasures after a great feast. Sometimes he and his friends would cover their heads with the mantles of freedmen and prowl through the dark streets of a city, to insult the highborn and strip off their cloaks; to get into brawls with drunken roisterers; to enter the lowest dens of vice and make merry with harlots. Or, he had heard Valerius say, they would go to the public baths, some of which were little more than huge lupanars: on the corridors were private chambers in which men and women skilled in the erotic arts tried with caresses and blandishments to beget fresh sensations upon the old.

Nero and his friends, Damon soon made out, were preparing for such a foray. They were drenching themselves with perfumes and unguents, and with wine, which they poured over one another like water. Damon’s master, who despised such vulgar excursions, intended if possible to slip away and had called Damon to tell him to stand at readiness. But Nero’s foray this night was not to be.

There was suddenly a wild outcry. Damon slipped over to his father to learn what the trouble was. A man named Cornelius, who fancied himself assimilated to Jupiter, never had sexual intercourse save during thunderstorms. Some noise, possibly a clap of thunder, had just now plunged him into a dreadful frenzy; for he lived under the delusion that with the first roar of thunder he became Jupiter, whose duty it was to embrace all the women he could find. At once throwing off his garments he seized a woman and bore her down. Unluckily for him she happened to be the wife of the senator Scaevinus, a very virtuous lady; she took from her hair a sharp metal ornament and stabbed him. It was then that he let off the first wild shout. Bleeding from a superficial wound he rushed drunkenly from woman to women, trying to hurl them to a couch and cover them. Several men then seized him. Nero was summoned and because he had a wicked sense of humor or was himself also mad he called to a doctor named Lucius, a round and pompous toad, who, quite drunk, had been declaiming on his skill in the healing arts. Frothing and bubbling like a man in poison Cornelius lay stretched out on a couch, with men holding his hands and feet; and while Nero acted as master of ceremonies, Lucius came up to deliver a medical commentary over the patient.

Has this man constriction of his solid particles? he asked. Does he suffer from atra bilis or strictum et laxum?

Which? asked Nero wickedly. The sycophants round him took up the cry: Great doctor, which?

For years, said Lucius, gazing owlishly at his frothing victim, his atoms have been sluggish, but his Majesty’s wine has caused them to stir with such passion that his body threatens to burst open. Should the physician, as Asclepiades said, interfere with nature? Was his Majesty, the great Augustus, cured with hot baths and fomentations? Ah no! Musa doused him with cold water and filled his belly with chicory and endive—

Come to the point! Nero roared.

Your Majesty! Have invisible creatures from the marshes and bogs crawled up his penis? Shall we take Cicero’s prescription and bathe him in the urine of one who has eaten cabbage?

Cato, said Nero, who fancied himself as a man of great learning.

Your Majesty, said Lucius with a fat bow, corrects me when I err, being more learned than the physicians. Indeed it was Cato. For one who has been stabbed, said Cato, sing Huat hanat huat ista pista sista domiabo damnaustra et luxato!

There was applause, in which Nero joined.

While the wounded man frothed and slobbered and cursed, the imposter went on: What did Helio do in such cases? He castrated the man, so that lustful women could use him without fear of pregnancy. Hah, matron and maid, he said, the sex has all turned whore; to escape pregnancy and abortion women now love their eunuchs more than their husbands and pimps! See him there without his stones!

See, see!

All that the navel-string could give forth is present but his beard, and that is only a barber’s loss.

The witticism brought forth drunken shouts. Hear, hear! cried the glutton Plautius staggering up from his couch.

Tell us, great doctor, said one of the fops gravely. Is the os uteri open during menstruation? Is it then that a woman most readily conceives? And was the poet Catullus right when he said that vain women use a tampon saturated with gall to constrict themselves and so appear to be virgins?

There were ribald shouts.

Another fop took up the spirit. This is no man for he has no hair! Masculine vigor is found only in those who are hairy, deep-voiced and well-braced! The hypocrite turned to fawn on Nero, one of the hairiest men in Rome.

Nero’s laugh was low and sibilant. I recall, he said, looking at the fop, the time Caligula burst with laughter before his guests. He now looked round at several faces. Why, they asked, do you laugh so, great Majesty? And Caligula said, To think that if I raised my little finger all your throats would be cut instantly.

Whether this was a drunken sally or a threat possibly nobody knew but iced water flung over the guests could not have induced a more dreadful silence. Lucius stood frozen. Plautius sank back, slobbering and breathing hard. Valerius said later that Scaevinus and Piso exchanged anxious glances.

Come! cried Nero, having had his jest. I will prescribe for this man. He beckoned to servants to come over. Take this Jupiter away and lock him up with the twelve most beautiful whores here tonight; and see to it, Gavius, that he embraces every one of them three times before morning. Away with the dog!

Men seized Cornelius and dragged him off. A little later Damon heard Valerius telling his father that Eros slew more people in Rome than the gods Febris and Mefitis. I shudder to think, said Valerius, shuddering, of this last night on earth of Cornelius-Jupiter!

II

It was past midnight and Nero and a few of his friends, variously disguised, were ready for their foray, when one of the royal guards came rushing in to announce the fire. Damon and his father were among the first to leave the villa. It was pitch dark outside, and looking away toward Rome Damon could see no light in the sky. Then Valerius came out, calling to his coachman; and the thirty-mile ride to the city, clattering over the stone pavement through black night, was for Damon a horrible experience. Valerius was so apprehensive about his properties in Rome that he stood up all the way, exhorting the driver to flog the beasts to the last throb of their strength. Look! he cried at last, and when Damon stood up he could see the glow of fires and the clouds of smoke.

The fire, they were to learn, had begun in the wooden shops where huge quantities of inflammable materials had been stored. Embers carried by the wind soon fired the circus, whose timbers had been drained of all moisture by the hot summer sun. From the circus the flames swept up the vale between the two hills, igniting the dry houses which stood close together on the narrow winding streets. Before noon of this day the fire had roared up the Palatine and consumed the palaces of the Caesars, with their innumerable treasures and works of art; and the ancient temple of the moon, the temple of Hercules at the base of the Aventine, the temple of Vesta, the house of Numa, the shrine of Romulus—all these and many others were soon blackened stone and ash.

Pamphilus said he would help Valerius, and so Damon was left alone. His first thought was to find his mother. He hastened away through the smoke and it was long after daylight before he was able to find a path to the Christian colony in one of the poorer quarters. He stood speechless before what he saw. The Christians had gathered to watch the fires and every one of them seemed utterly bereft of his senses. Damon knew that they believed in the immediate return of their god, the Christ, to usher in the millennium; and that his coming would be proclaimed by prodigious convulsions of nature, by overwhelming catastrophes, by famine and earthquake and flood and fire—and by fire above all. His father, who did not share his mother’s religious fervours, had told him, a little wryly, that belief in fires as auguries was common among people: even Seneca had written that the world would end in heat and violence; and the votaries of Mithra believed that the final judgement would come with stupendous conflagrations and upheavals....

He stood aghast, looking at the Friends. Some were making wild animal-like cries of joy, some were shrieking in a strange jargon and he made out that they were uttering prophecies and judgments; and some were dancing with such demented abandon that they had torn their clothes off and were stark naked. He supposed they had no doubt, not one of them, that this great and awful fire was proclaiming the return of their savior, that presently they would see him, coming on clouds of glory down from the heavens. Some seemed to imagine that they now saw him, for they were pointing to the clouds and smoke and wildly embracing and kissing one another.

Damon went among them but nobody would speak to him. He could make none of them aware of his presence. These people, he realized, staring at their faces, would not have been aware of ferocious lions or of the emperor’s assassins. They were simply and utterly mad with joy. His own mother was one of them and her face was so transformed that he hardly knew her. He rushed up to her, crying, It is I, your son! and tried to force her to speak to him, to look at him; he shouted at her and pulled at her arm; but she was singing!—singing and dancing!—her radiant face uplifted, her eyes seeking the coming of her Lord. Mother! he said, seizing her arm and shaking her. Mother, it is Damon! Speak to me! She never once looked at him and after a little while he slunk away, feeling very unwanted and lost. He withdrew from the insane group and stood at a distance, observing their incredible energy and their frenzied antics; or looked up at the sky or over at the fires. He felt confused and frightened, he felt ill. What did it all mean? Why did these people have to kiss and scream and gesticulate at the sky, why did they have to run around naked? He looked over at his mother and felt afraid.

Among them was a young girl named Levilla, his mother’s friend. She was almost naked. She was dancing round and round, pointing, waving, singing. He saw her run to a man and envelop him with her arms and kiss him. The next moment she was dancing like one about to leave the earth. Feeling sick enough to vomit Damon turned away.

During the next few days he was to see such terrors and sufferings and madness as he was never to see again. There was panic as the fires developed; the confusion became appalling. Hundreds, thousands died in the flames. Some were burned alive when they were trapped; some perished when they rushed into buildings to find and save their belongings; and some, out of their minds with grief, deliberately leapt into the fires and he saw their hair burn up like torches. The third day, sleepless, white and spent, he went as close as he dared to the principal fire; he watched the panic, the suffocation, the trampling underfoot of relatives and friends. He heard the roar of flames, the shrieks, the wailing of burning children, and he felt in himself all the heat and terror and pain. When he smelled the odor of roasted flesh and of hair burned to ashes he swayed dizzily and almost fainted.

And still his mother would not speak to him because she did not know him.

At the end of the sixth day the fires momentarily abated. By this time the unburned parts of the city were the lairs of thieves and assassins, the hives of wild and baseless rumors. Everywhere Damon heard the stories about Nero. One said that he had planned the city’s destruction that he might build a greater one. Another said that one night he stood on the roof of his pavilion across the Tiber, where he had taken up quarters after his palace burned, and twanged a harp and sang a dirge, lamenting the destruction of Rome and comparing it to the burning of Troy. It was said that frenzied mobs heard his singing and resolved to kill him. Damon did not know if there was truth in any of the rumors; he did perceive that when minds were unbalanced and passions ran like fire almost any rumor was possible, almost any rumor was believed.

One of the rumors, his father told him, said that Christians had set the fires. Those who believed this pointed to one of their favorite sayings, that the end of all things was at hand. Another rumor said that it was the Jews. It was the rumor about the Christians that spread like a flame over Rome, until some of the maddened survivors, who had lost their property, their families and friends, cast about vengefully for a scapegoat.

But some, said Pamphilus, say Nero did it. Some said that Augustus lay with his own daughter. Most people believe such things.

Alarmed by the fury turned on the Christians Damon went to find his mother. His father had looked very sad when he talked about Levana, for there was nothing, he said, that he could do for her. Her soul had caught fire in this new superstition that called Rome the Beast or the Harlot and looked on the conflagration as a herald of the Lord’s return. Did they know that Roman punishment of arson was brutal?—those who burned property were themselves burned. Damon was thinking about these things as he searched for her; about their belief that the world would end soon and Christians would ascend bodily to heaven, to have eternal life and bliss, while all other people went down to perdition. Shaking his head sadly Pamphilus had asked, What kind of citizen is it who rejoices in the destruction of a great city?

He did not find his mother. He heard that she had been taken with other Christians and that they were being tortured. He saw the pitiable broken thing after she was released. Yet, he asked himself, should he think her pitiable?—for her spirit was in no way broken, nor her courage and faith. He saw her but not to speak to her. In a dark night he saw her again when she was taken with others to a vacant field, and he trailed along, sensing that some horrible thing was to be done. Standing back, hidden and looking out, he saw men set posts in the earth and bind the Christians to them, with their backs to the posts and their wrists and ankles tied behind. He saw his mother there. He saw them pile around these people wood saturated with oil and he stopped breathing when he saw them set the wood afire. He was too frightened to move. When the executioners went away he sped toward his mother, determined to break the thongs and free her. What happened then he was to spend a lifetime trying to understand.

His mother was enveloped by flames but as he rushed up to her she cried to him in a clear firm voice, Damon, stay back!

I will free you! he said, sobbing.

My son, stay back! Go back or they’ll kill you!

Mother!

My son!

O Mother, Mother! he screamed, dashing tears from blinded eyes.

My son, don’t grieve for me. I am all right.

O Mother!

She was all right! She was enveloped in flames! An incredible thing then happened and Damon was to ask himself many times if he saw it clearly. Though the flames had risen to her breast she seemed not to be suffering at all. She was smiling at him—or in later times did he unwittingly cherish and build a picture of her that was not real? Did she scream? He had no memory of it. Did she writhe and try to be free? He was convinced that she did not. He was to recall the noble words of Arria who, when her husband was commanded by the emperor to kill himself, and faltered, took the dagger and plunged it into her own breast, and drew it out and handed it to him, saying, See, Paetus, it doesn’t hurt much. His mother’s whole face seemed to Damon to be radiant, to be suffused with a light not of this world. Was what he saw the radiance of the fire shining on his tears? Was her face convulsed by agony? He would never be able to say. It seemed to him that she spoke other words, that out of the horror came gentle words of comfort and love; or did he dream it? No, he did not dream it. She kept talking to him and she kept smiling to the bitter end. She said he must become one of them—one of those in Antioch called Christians, in Rome, Friends. She made no effort at all to free herself; she kept her gaze fixed on the heavens looking for her Savior and Lord. This life did not matter, she said. My son, be brave, she said to him. And there she died.

That a person could die a death so hideous and keep her faith serene and holy was to be for him a greater miracle than any the Christians were to tell in their gospel stories. My son, be brave.... There she stood at last, a skeleton bound to a post, his own gentle mother; and then the post was burned in two and both post and skeleton fell. Damon was standing back about a hundred feet. He was numb with horror. He stood there, blinded, trying to see her frame on the post. But there was no post now. There was no post but he still heard her voice, clear and firm: Be brave. This life does not matter....

He turned at last and fled to find his father. He sobbed out his heartbroken story and Pamphilus put an arm round his son, his cheek to his hair. He heard his son whispering, Father, what does it mean?

My son, I don’t know. Pamphilus had never understood his wife’s devotion to this strange new cult. He heard his son saying that he would know, he would find out what it meant if it took his whole life to do it. Yes, my son.

Damon could never remember what he did in the first weeks after his mother’s death. The experience went so deep into him that it possessed his soul and his consciousness; he lived for a while in a nightmare of terror, but under the terror he felt that he had been a witness to something beautiful and true. But a witness to what? He asked himself that question over and over, he put it many times to his father; and always Pamphilus said gently, sadly, My son, I do not know. What was it in this new faith that crowned a person with such nobility in her last moments of agony? It was a question that Damon resolved to answer and to find the answer he became a dedicated man. Mother, Mother! he would sob, weeping, remembering. Mother, didn’t you suffer? Mother, what does it mean? He would go out to the spot where she died and he would put his lips to the earth there and would sink shuddering to the earth to touch it as though she was in it there, somehow; and out of grief almost too deep to be borne he would whisper, Mother, my dear Mother!...

III

His wife’s death broke the heart of Pamphilus and within the following year he died. Damon was an orphan and alone. He inherited enough property to make himself modestly independent but he was still only a lad and he was very unhappy. Because he had suffered such deep shock he kept pretty much to himself for a year or two after his father’s death, sitting in somber thought in the small room where he slept, or going to the libraries to read, or standing on one of the hills to watch the rebuilding of the city. For fellowship at last he turned to the Christian colony in Rome.

Murdia was one of the first Christians to become his friend. She was a riddle to him. Nearly all the Christian women scorned cosmetics and jewelry and false hair; it was their belief that when an elder laid his hands on a woman’s head to bless her, the blessing would not penetrate false hair. Christian women were told to keep quiet in meetings, that if they wished to know anything they should ask their husbands or the elders. Murdia would have none of that. Though she seemed to be devout, and possibly was, Damon reflected, in her own strange way, she dressed lavishly, adorned herself with costly brilliants, drenched herself with rare scents, and so stood in astonishing contrast to the poor ragged women, who had almost nothing at all. She would make a charming face at Damon and say, Men wear nothing on their heads in our meetings because they are the image of God and must reflect his glory; but women, the poor sinful bitches, are only a reflection of man’s glory, and so must keep their heads covered. She would gaze at Damon, her eyes wonderful and wicked. You don’t believe it?

No, he said, remembering his mother.

You think women are equal to men?

Superior, he said, remembering his mother.

You’re a darling! Murdia cried, and kissed him.

Kissing with Christians was a common form of greeting and fellowship. Murdia loved to kiss the handsomer men if they were clean and not too shabby. She kissed Damon with ardor, filling him with shame because his baser passions were stirred; yet he knew that Christian kisses were supposed to be holy and in that he found comfort.

You darling! she would say, clasping his face and kissing him with soft hot passion full on the mouth. Damon, I love you!

Damon was tall for his age and well-formed but rather unfleshed. He sensed that