Captain Leopard

This tale is based upon a lost work by the second-century Platonic philosopher Kelsos or Celsus, who wrote a treatise called A True Word, attacking Christianity and presenting the story of Panthera and Miriam. We know most of the content of Celsus' work because the Church father Origenes wrote a verbose attack on it, Against Celsus, which survives.

Herondas waved me to the new table and chairs in his vinarium, behind the counter."After all," he said, "you talked me into installing them. Whether they are worth the extra rent I have to pay for the space remains to be seen. Space in Damascus is hellishly costly." I had scarcely sat down when this burly, gray-haired centurion in full Roman legionary accouterments appeared. I knew he was a centurion by the transverse crest on his helmet.

Herondas instantly became the cringing courtier: "Oh, Captain! I have just the place for you!" He waved to the other chair at my little table."I have some delicious Falernian..."

When the centurion made for the vacant chair, I rose, expecting him to want the table to himself. But he carefully laid his helmet on the table and said:

"No, no, sit down, my good man! There's no sense in having one of those fine chairs go to waste." Then to Herondas: "A sextarius of that Falernian, please."

The accent of his Latin said 'Greek Alexandria! ' as plainly as if it had been painted on his forehead. Since his manners were better than one expects of an officer in an army of occupation, I said:

"Milete Hellēniká?"

"Oh, good! You speak Greek," he replied in that tongue."So there are at least two civilized men in Damascus. I am Gaius Julius Panthera, Posterior hostatus of the third cohort of the Sixth Legion Ferrata. In the original Greek it was Pardalis, meaning that big spotted cat they fetch from Africa for shows in the arena. But the Romans translated it when I enlisted. And you, my good sir?"

"Nobody; just Claudius Dion, factor for Maesius the importer. In Latin they bobtail my name to Dio. Pleased to meet you, Captain Leopard."

By now the centurion had drunk a large goblet of Herondas' Falernian, enough to affect one's balance. But the centurion, being an old soldier, showed no effects. He signaled for a second, indicating one for me as well. While waiting, he said:

"Friend Dion, you may be just the man I am looking for. You see, my twenty years are up in a few days, so I am looking for a safe place to invest my peculium." He meant his discharge bonus.

"You are not staying on, then?"

The centurion tossed back his head."Ouchi! There's a rumor that the Ironclad Sixth is to be shifted back to Judaea, and I saw all I wanted of that country when we were posted there thirty years ago..."

For a while we talked of Maesius' business, with its far-flung import accounts and its profits and losses. Somehow Panthera's service in Judaea came up again. He said:

"Besides, going back there might subject me to certain—ah—domestic embarrassments."

"Indeed?"

"Yes, sir! You see, I formed an attachment there to a Jewish girl.

She'd be an aging woman now, of course, but my present mate is looking forward to a proper wedding as soon as I'm paid off. She would take umbrage if my long-ago light-o'-love came back into our lives. My mate of many years is a fiery Galatian Celt. Are you married, Dion?"

"Yes. Three children, plus one that died of a sickness."

"Then you know what I mean."

"Sure. Who was this onetime light-o'-love?"

"Just a pretty little Jewish girl named Miriam, the betrothed of a carpenter named Joseph. During our love affair, she became pregnant. When her state became obvious, the carpenter dumped her. The Jews have an official procedure for breaking a betrothal, like a divorce, and the carpenter took advantage of it."

"What happened then?"

"She took her infant, our baby son, to Egypt looking for work. This child she named Yeshua, a good Jewish name, which becomes Jesous in Greek and Jesus in Latin, since those languages have no sh sound.

"Anyway, I understand, this kid grew up in Egypt. Miriam managed to get him an education of sorts on her slim housekeeper's pay, at one of the temples, where they worship gods with the heads of lions, hippopotami, and other beasties. The priests who tutored the lad, finding him a promising youth, taught him some of the tricks they use to beguile their worshipers into thinking they can do real magic and miracles.

"In time, Miriam and Yeshua came back to Judaea. To make a living, Yeshua showed off some of his Egyptian tricks and soon had a following who would swear he could work genuine miracles.

"So, they reasoned, he must be some sort of demigod, with a divine father. Since his followers were mostly Jews, they got the idea that this divine parent must be Yahveh, the bad-tempered, bloodthirsty Judaean chief god. I've heard that, when they asked Yeshua about it, he gave evasive answers.

"Eventually all this talk of a half-divine son of Yahveh came to the ears of the Sanhedrin, a council of Jewish priests who had jurisdiction in some criminal and civil cases. Since a main tenet of Judaism is that Yahveh is the one and only real god in existence, you can see why they would not put up with this demigod fable.

"Of course, in the Mediterranean world we are used to demigods. Asklepios, the founder of medicine, they say was the child of Apollo and the mortal maid Koronis—unless this Koronis got herself pregnant the same way my Miriam did and then blamed it on the first god who came to mind. After all, if your daughter tells you she lost her virginity to a god, you don't dare punish her severely. She just might be telling the truth, in which case the god in question might resent your chastisement of one of his light loves.

"But the Jews are funny that way. Nowadays most educated people know that men make gods in their own image. As Xenophanes said, if horses had gods, those gods would have manes and hooves. So we civilized folk don't take theological disputes seriously.

"But things are different in this part of the world. Many Jews take their theology very seriously indeed, especially those who call themselves Pharisees. I wish we had more of them in the Sixth. They are fierce fighters and, I think, more trustworthy than the general run of folk. If you give one an order, in plain, definite language, he'll carry it out or die trying.

"But the Jews have persuaded the Emperors to excuse them from military duty. The reason they give is that they would have to swear Roman oaths, which they consider against their religion."

"What became of Yeshua?"

"Lipon... It's a sad story. The Sanhedrin persuaded the Procurator, Pontius Pilatus, to arrest him so they could try him for heresy. This is a serious matter to the Jews, and one convicted thereof is deemed worthy of death.

"Pilatus was a strict disciplinarian who went by the letter of the law, and a strong believer in doing things the old Roman way. He had caused disturbances before—something about bringing army standards, with their little statues on poles, into Jerusalem. Some Jews thought that an outrage, violating their ancient prohibition of works of art. When there were riots, with people sworded to death, Rome sent Pilatus a warning to be more careful of these people's religious sensitivities.

"So his soldiers rounded up young Yeshua, who had been promoting some kind of reformed Judaism, with doctrines of extreme altruism. If someone assaulted you to rob you, he preached, you shouldn't resist but let him have his way. To any manly Greek—or Roman, either—that would seem crazy advice; but that's what they say he said.

"After a hearing, Pilatus said he did not think Yeshua had committed any offense grave enough to merit punishment. But the Sanhedrin made a fuss about the heretic's violation of their sacred creed. So Pilatus, rather than risk another riot, gave in and let the fellow be crucified."

"What became of that Procurator?"

Panthera shrugged."He was recalled to Rome when some people complained about him to the Emperor. You know how things are. Under the Empire, anyone who gets into a position of authority at once becomes the object of plots, conspiracies, and complaints, whether he has done anything wrong or not.

"Anyway, Pilatus survived until Emperor Tiberius died and Gaius, the crazy one, succeeded him. During that character's reign, Pilatus killed himself—though whether the mad Emperor ordered him to do so, or whether he simply got tired of life in imperial Rome, where everybody's hand is out for a bribe, I know not."

"What became of this Miriam?"

Panthera shrugged again."No contact for many years. Twenty-odd years ago, I was quite besotted with her. I said I'd support her as my concubine until my hitch ended, and then I would legally marry her.

"You know, I suppose, that the divine Augustus ordained that soldiers may not marry during active service. The reasons they give for the law, such as the fact that soldiers can be ordered anywhere in the Empire, you probably know. But for individuals it can become damned inconvenient. One can for a small bribe, however, usually find a centurion willing to let the soldier and his woman go through some little local barbarian rite of marriage.

"I had just been promoted to optio, but even the extra pay didn't convince Miriam. No, the real objection was that I was of the goyim, the non-Jewish nations. A proper Jew looks down upon all such people much as we Greeks look down upon all non-Greeks as barbarians. Living in sin with a real Jew would have been bad enough; but with a "gentile" it was out of the question.

"I even looked into the possibility of becoming a Jew myself. But I should have had to spend endless hours studying their hairsplitting laws under one of their teachers, follow their complicated dietary rules, and undergo that disgusting mutilation of my personal parts that they insist on. Besides, since I couldn't prove direct descent from Abraham, it would have made me only a second-class Jew and would have interfered with my military duties. So my centurion would never have allowed it.

"So there we were. When we parted finally, she said she really loved me, too; but the obstacles were imposed by their irascible god, Yahveh, and there was nothing to be done about it. She was going to Egypt, taking our little son with her, for she had heard that well-born Egyptian women don't go in for swarms of slaves the way Romans do. They will hire people like her, poor free women, as housekeepers, to sweep and clean and make the beds and mind the children and wash the dishes. Besides, the city she was going to had a substantial Jewish settlement, with a temple and all. So that was that."

The centurion gave me a funny little crooked smile."I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Miriam had remained in Judaea. I should have been—I suppose you might say—the stepfather of a demigod. It would be interesting to find out, but of course it's too late for that.

"I wonder, too, what would have happened if the Sixth had still been stationed in Judaea when young Yeshua and his mother came back from Egypt. I might have come to know the lad, and perhaps I could have steered him away from some of his impractical notions.

"Then again, perhaps not. You know how young men are, sure they know everything and that nothing a man of the older generation has to say could have anything to do with the real world of their own time.

"It might not have been so impossible if he had had a real, civilized education. But his upbringing had been narrowly Jewish. I'd wager he thought the world was flat and that he had never even heard of people like Aristotle and Demokritos, who investigated the world to find out how it actually worked."

"What of that carpenter Miriam was betrothed to before she took up with you?"

"I daresay he's long dead. He was a widower, old enough to be Miriam's father, with a houseful of children by his first wife. Needless to say, they would not have been friendly to me, or to young Yeshua either—though I believe that, after Yeshua's execution, one of that family, a certain Yakov, was converted to Yeshua's following and became a leader of the Jerusalem faction of the sect.

"This was not only after Yeshua's death, but also after that Jew from Tarsus, who Romanized his name to Paulus, went around preaching a complicated new theology to support the Yeshuites, or as they are now called, Christians, meaning followers of the Anointed One.

"This Paulus voyaged all over the Inner Sea, they say, carrying his message and starting up little groups of Christians in the cities he visited. He must have been a man of extraordinary energy and magnetic personality, though I confess the logic of his complex theology escapes me. But then, it seems likely that it would also escape anyone brought up on Aristotle, as I was. So I am sure these Christians will prove just one more little sect, which will soon fade away and be forgotten.

"Now tell me more about Maesius' business. I really should not talk so much about my personal affairs. The barbarians say that the Greek national vice is not sodomy but garrulity.

"But about Maesius' business: you understand, of course, that I would not sign any hard-and-fast agreement on the basis of a conversation in a wine bar. I shall want to look around for other possibilities first."

Panthera was evidently a cautious fellow, which made him a likely partner for Maesius. The importer was getting old and did not have a son to break in to the business. After another hour, with the help of Herondas' wine, we had pretty much roughed out an agreement, provided that I could sell the idea to Maesius. He would of course want to meet Panthera himself before committing himself to anything.

And that, essentially, is how I came to be the factor for the partnership of Maesius and Panthera. When Maesius dies, Panthera has promised me his place. When the centurion became a full partner, he asked me not to discuss the tale of him and Miriam, on the ground that it would be bad for business.

"I've dealt with religious enthusiasts," he told me."One thing I do know is that it does no good whatever to argue with them, no matter what evidence you adduce. They will brush it aside and sometimes go for you with a dagger, to punish you for casting slights on their sacred beliefs. If they kill you, Christians are sure the world is about to end any day now—certainly before Roman law could bring you to book. So what have they to lose?

"Can you imagine what it would do to the trade, with a squad of pious Jews screaming "Heretics!" at a squad of Christians, who scream back: "Unbelievers! Atheists!" Then someone starts picking up our merchandise and throwing it..."