Джеймс Миченер - The Source

When I was through with the old Greek palace no one could tell it had once been a Hellenistic construction, and from it the governors assigned by the king gave our region good government. In one sense it was foolish to speak of us as a Jewish town, for the kingdom of the Jews lay to the east and south; we were perched off to one side where the border of Phoenicia intruded, and we took our basic coloring from that region of the Roman empire. Like it we spoke Greek; we worshiped the Roman gods; we went to the Roman theater or to the arena in Ptolemais, where I had built a masterwork for gladiatorial combats. But structurally we were a part of the Jewish kingdom, and families like that of my wife’s played a respectable role in the town, even though the better jobs were held by Romans like me.

The dimensions of the forum were thus determined by the temple of Jupiter to the south and the governor’s palace to the north. Along the western side I built a series of three small temples, excellent work the king said, the central one of which we dedicated to Venus. It was always my favorite, a small marble thing with six Ionic columns that seemed to float in the air. It is ironic that I should now be imprisoned in this temple, but if it is true that each man in this life builds his own prison, and inhabits it the way crawling fish inhabit shells along the beach at Caesarea, then I have built for myself an exquisite jail, exactly suited to the kind of man I have always wanted to be. In the dark hours of this dawn I am content to be immured within the Venus temple, for it is a work with no error. Its stones fit without mortar. Its columns are precisely related to the façade. The view from any point within the prison is exactly as I had wanted it to be, and if I must die this day I would rather die here than anywhere else in the kingdom. Nor do I know of another spot within the empire where any of the potential prisons I built would suit me better. The palaces at Antioch are too large. The graceful forum at Jericho is too impersonal. And the loveliness of Caesarea belonged always to the king and never to me. But this quiet spot, at the edge of empire, seems to have been planned from the beginning as a proper place for me to die.

I look out from the Venus temple, past the half-sleeping guards, and see across the forum the building of which I am most proud. It runs almost the entire distance from the old Greek temple to the governor’s palace, a grave, heavy building containing neither preliminary columns nor niches for statuary. It is simply a mass of rock, perfectly proportioned, with straight and simple lines, ponderous perhaps but with that dignity I once saw when the legions of Julius Caesar were marching from Damascus to Egypt. They came forward not as ordinary soldiers but as a massive group having its own intention outside the men who comprised it; and from that day when I was in my early twenties, I tried to build into my structures the same sense of weight and dignity. In Jericho I did not succeed; the king interfered with all my plans and I made compromises whose ill effects could not be hidden. But when I decided to erect the great, solid building in Makor, the king was not at my elbow. He told me simply, “Build something to remind us of those first days when we fought together at Makor.” I am certain in my heart that the king wanted this excellent building to be named after him, but when it was finished he was apprehensive about his relationship with Rome—since he was not a Jew his kingship over the Jews depended solely upon the pleasure of Rome—so he imported a boatload of dignitaries from that imperial city and held a three-day feast during which he announced the name of my latest building. I see it now, as the sun lightens, a low, formidable work marching toward me like the leather-shielded legions of Julius Caesar, but it does not bear his name. It is called by the sycophantic name our king gave it that day—the Augusteana—and in it we have long worshiped Caesar Augustus as our god. This my wife Shelomith has refused to do, as have the other Jews, but no trouble grows out of their rejection: in our town Roman and Jew live as they do in our kingdom: in a kind of armed truce, each holding to his own gods and to his own beliefs, as do my wife and I. She loves Jerusalem and the Jewish god, and is never so happy as when I am commissioned to do additional work at the temple; I, as a Roman citizen, keep mostly to Caesarea and the worship of Caesar Augustus, and it seems to me that we Romans have the better of the bargain, for there is no city in the empire, not even Rome itself, more enticing than Caesarea, that remarkable city which we have built of white marble and the sweat of slaves.

Between my jail and the Augusteana stands the Makor construction for which I alone am responsible: a double row of marble columns, tall, with heavy Corinthian bases and beautiful capitals on which nothing rests, for I placed these columns here only to add grace to the forum and to link the various buildings one to the other. Looking at them now, I think that my life has been a series of columns, marching along like days, and I have never had enough either of columns or of days. How many marble columns did we use at Caesarea? Five thousand? Ten thousand? They were the unifying beauty of that city, and they came to us in ship after ship sailing from Italy. One night the king and I walked through Caesarea, and he said to me in Greek, “Timon, you’ve made this a forest of marble. I shall send for a thousand more columns and well build an esplanade to the theater.” In Antioch, in Ptolemais, in Jericho, how many columns have I erected—those silent marching men of marble who bring grace to the roads they walk?

Our forum has only eight, extending in two lines from the Greek temple to the palace, but they summarize the thousands we used elsewhere, for without the king’s knowing it I inspected a hundred ships coming from Italy, seeking out the perfect pillars: this one near the Venus temple is fluted, and that pair by the Augusteana are purple. A purist, say, the Greek who built the first temple, would shy from the medley I have composed and would seek a single pure note repeated seven times. I wanted this summary of my life … how beautiful they are in their variety, how perfect in their proportions. From three thousand columns I chose these eight, and had I three thousand more to choose from I could not improve upon this group. Stand there, my shimmering columns bearing nothing on your heads. If it is today that I must die …

What difference does it really make whether the messengers come from Jericho today or six days from now? I am sixty-four years old, still lean as when I fought with the king, white-haired but with all my teeth. I have seen the legions of Julius Caesar. I accompanied Cleopatra for nine days, I knew the glory of Antioch intimately and I have worked hard. More fortunate than most, and infinitely more smiled upon than the king, I found early the one woman I was destined to love, and although there were periods when I discovered joy in the slaves of Jericho or with the graceful young eunuchs of Caesarea, I always returned to Shelomith. How fortunate I was, really. She lies now on her cot, sharing my prison, and even with her whitened hair she is as attractive to me as when I first saw her on the arm of the king. He, poor soul, has known ten wives and has grown to hate them all, while I have drifted along with Shelomith as a man drifts down a river in a small boat, heading always toward the sea of obliteration but finding always new pleasure in the scenery that comes upon the river banks and perpetual new delight in the companion who shares his boat. Shelomith is like a marble column who lives, and if we die this day my eight perfect columns in the forum of this little town will be her monument, for her spirit inhabits them already.