Chapter One

He sat alone at a table in a strange, round room, windowless and having no door. A soft light faintly lit the chamber, he knew not where it came from. 

Upon the table the light revealed seven candles, unlit, standing in a circle atop bronze holders. 

Upon his wrists were iron bracelets linked by a heavy chain. 

In a corner, a shadowy figure suddenly appeared, like mist in the form of a man, a red cloak swirling behind it. 

He felt menace in that shadow, a momentary fear which gripped his heart. The fear became stronger when a sword appeared before the shade, its smoky hands taking hold of it and moving it in a circle. 

He was about to rise and flee to the furthest side of the chamber when suddenly, the candles lit up all at once, flames springing into being.

At the same moment he saw a cup and a piece of bread in the midst of the candle holders. 

The sword moved again, gleaming in the candlelight, threatening steel. He pushed down the fear it called forth from within him.

He reached for the cup and sipped from it, tasting sweet red wine. 

He then ate the fragment of bread, and as he did, he came to the realization that the chain was gone.

The figure suddenly dissipated and the sword vanished.

Shining white light like the noon day was suddenly streaming in upon him, almost blinding him.

He shielded his eyes for a moment, then stood and faced the light.

It was coming from a wide opening that had appeared in the chamber wall behind him.

Warmth bathed his body and face.

He could hear the voices of the brothers and sisters of the assembly , all murmuring in prayer as they had for years in the house of Gaius. There also came a sound of soft weeping, that of a young woman, and she repeated his name as she wept, but he could see no one.

He felt a sudden pull towards the outside and began to walk into the bright day beyond...

The woman's voice called after him.

Aristion....Aristion!

Aristion turned over upon his reed mat, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The early dawn cast thin splinters of gray light against the wall of his room, the sea smell drifting in with it from the curtained window.

The lad lay there for a moment, the dream’s details already fading like the shadows around him.

He thought for a moment upon the strange vision; it had filled him with trouble and comfort all at once. He was not given to dreaming much, none that he often recalled. Certainly none that had left such a remarkable impression upon his spirit as this one had.

Did it mean something? He knew what the cup and the bread were...he had dreamed of the Lord's Supper. He took it each week's First Day in the house of the official, Gaius. But why he had dreamed of it, and the meaning of the rest of the dream images was only a mystery to him.

At length he rose up, straightening his blankets and taking his tunic from the wooden stool upon which it hung. The stool and his mat were the only furniture in the chamber.  He slipped on his tunic, and knelt at the stool, bowing his head and clasping his hands before him.

Softly he began his customary morning prayer:

“Pater imon o en tis uranis;
ayiastito to onoma su;
elteto i vasilia su;
genitito to thelima su, os en urano ke epi tis gis;
ton arton imon ton epusion dos imin simeron;
ke afes imin ta ofilimata imon, os ke imis afiemen tis ofiletas imon;
ke mi isenenkis imas is pirasmon, alla rise es imas apo tou poniru.

Amen.”

He lingered for a moment on the final intonation—do not let us enter into the ordeal; no, keep us from the malicious one.

It was a short prayer. He prayed it as Nicanus had taught it to him; he knew it had been taught by Iesous to his disciples, and it meant everything to Aristion…to call Adonai Father.

He knew he could call Adonai this because of Iesous and his cross.

He seemed to feel the presence of the Lord as he prayed, and he wished he could spend longer in that communion, but the day’s labor called him.

 

Aristion arose and went through the curtain over his doorway into the main room of his family’s tenement. A small stone hearth was there, coals already glowing in preparation for the flat bread his mother would prepare for sale that day. The room was lit by a single, brightly burning oil lamp made of brass.

His little sister was seated at the low table in the midst of the room, and at the sound of his entrance she started. She had her back turned to him and had been busy at something with her hands, but she quickly affected a nonchalant posture and turned to him, smiling sweetly at him with twinkling black eyes framed by her long, neatly combed midnight tresses.

“Hail, Aristion,” she said demurely. “I heard you at your prayers. Sweet it is to hear your devotions to the Christos.”

He regarded her with a frank expression for a moment, then walked to the great brazen lutron in the corner, above which hung a coarsely spun towel on a peg. He cupped his hands and splashed the lukewarm water in the lutron over his face, cleaning with a vigorous rubbing. He repeated the act for his arms and legs, struck the water off his hands and dried with the towel.

He went to the hearth and took one of the pieces of barley bread his mother had left out for breakfast, picking up also a bowl with vinegar and olive oil and seasonings.

Taking it to the table, he sat down at the table across from Zoe, scooting on his bottom until he was comfortably seated. He said a grace, and dipped the bread into the vinegar, softening it, and ate a large hunk of it, savoring its texture and taste. After chewing it up, he sized up Zoe once more.

She was still beaming at him, her hands hidden under the table.

“I wish you meant that,” he said, holding her gaze with a steady stare.

She put on a look of earnestness.

“But I do, O adelphos,” she said sweetly. “Really I do.”

He ate another bite of his bread.

“So you no longer think me a fool of fools, then?” he asked. “No longer …how did you say it once…a confused Nazoraioi who prays to a hanged man on a rood?”

It was a common insult, whenever the pagans spoke of the Lord’s flock, to collectively refer to them all as being bumpkins from Nazareth, the rough back country of Palestine where Iesous had grown up in the days of his flesh.

Zoe bowed her head. “I did speak harshly, then, didn’t I, adelphos? Pardon me now. I think the Christ prayers you and mother and father pray are lovely in their way, lovely as the hymns to Pan.”

His shook his head. The mention of the aberrant goat-god in their home bothered him, but it truly grieved his heart to hear his sister compare devotions to Iesous with the rite songs of a licentious cult.

“Show me your hands, adelphe,” he said.

Her smile vanished.

“Why?” she asked petulantly.

He took the tone of authority that his position as the head of the household granted him, now that their father, Simias, was unable to provide.

“Show me.”

It was Zoe who scowled now. She hesitated a moment, then curling her lip in defiance, slowly raised her hands from under the table, holding them out at him with steady resolve.

In the lamplight, the gleam of a bronze bracelet made of beaten rectangular links glittered on one of her wrists.

He set his bread down.

“Zoe,” he said evenly, “You know that father has forbidden any charms in this home and for you to practice these things.”

She held her back stiffly, eyeing him boldly.

“It’s only a bracelet!” she said. “Am I forbidden adornments now, like the black garbed widows of your cult?”

Aristion held his spirit in check.

“It’s not just a bracelet. I saw you in the Temple Street last week. I know you bought it there, where the crafters utter dark sayings and songs over their work. I know what it is—a charm of Apollo. I know you do not yet believe in our Lord, but father and mother, patient as they are with your love of the old religion, do not permit divination or charm working in this home. It belongs to Iesous, as do we.”

Zoe became distressed, her usual tide of raw emotion breaking forth from her pretended grace.

“It’s not fair!” she said. “You all say it is one’s choice to believe or no in the Christos. I am no Jew, and no Christian! Nor shall I ever be!”

“That may be true,” he said. “But while you live here you are under authority, and must honor our parents’ wishes. I wish you would not fight so over these things.”

She put her hands on the table, leaning towards her brother.

“And your Christ prayers? Does your god ever answer? Has he healed father’s crippled legs? Has he lessened the load you and mother and I bear to bring in our little bread? At least all of Rome knows that Apollo hears his followers! Look at the glory of our Corinth and the whole Empire! Grecians we may be, and no citizens of great Rome, but it is plain the gods of Rome have power! Apollo is a healer. It is for father I work charms and pray!”

Aristion bowed his head, sighing. When he looked at her again, it was with the love he felt in his heart for her at that moment. There was in him a sudden awareness—how Iesous must at times look upon him, Aristion, and see in his ways the same petulant, stubborn child. He remembered the words that Gaius often read in the oikon ekklesia, the “house-church” where he and his parents and Nicanus met with other Christians to pray, hear the Scriptures and take the Lord’s Supper each Sunday.

He had memorized it after Gaius had held repeated readings, and he often meditated upon the words. It seemed it was most often with Zoe that he had to wear the words—a hymn of sorts—like the Pharisees wore their Shema upon their wrists.

Patient, love is, Kind it is. Believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things…

“Sweet Zoiois,” he said, calling her by her childhood nickname he had once often used, Little Life, for her name meant life.

“Don’t become angry. Know that we love you. I follow many rules all day; I do not like them all. I know you love father and wish him to walk again. But he has been a kind and loving father, as you know- so honor his wish. If you must practice these things, do not them not here.”

She softened at his tone.

“But please don’t make me get rid of it, adelphos’” she pleaded. “I have no other adornments, and I want to be pretty when I go out.”

He smiled.

“You are pretty,” he said. He thought for a moment, felt his will weaken, and inwardly berated himself for his compromising spirit.

“Very well. Do not wear it in the insula. And promise me you will not make charms again herein.”

She nodded.

A curtain moved, and their mother came bustling out of the other space in the three-room tenement.

Damaris went to the lutron, glancing at her son and daughter. She was as short as Zoe, and as diminutive and pretty, though her once black hair was now tinged with much grey and the skin was creased outside of her eyes.

“Did I miss something?” she asked, splashing her face as Aristion had done.

“No, mana,” Aristion said, finishing off his barley bread. “Zoe and I were chatting.”

“Well,” Damaris said, “You will be late to the shop if you chatter on. Nicanus will give you a good tongue lashing. He’s good at that, Lord help him.”

Aristion rose, walked over to Zoe and kissed her forehead.

He gave his mother a kiss upon the cheek.

“I was just on my way,” he said.

“Zoe,” Damaris said, preparing her utensils for the days coming batch of flatbread. “Get you up, Bug. It’s time to grind the grain. And fetch me a cruse of oil from the corner.

“Yes, mana,” her daughter replied, rising with one hand over her wrist. “Let me fetch my apron from the room.”

“Don’t wake your father,” Damaris said. “And straighten your mat and blankets up. I didn’t raise a barbarian maid, be a proper Greek girl.”

Aristion grinned as he headed past the wooden door of their flat and into the hall.

The insula they lived in consisted of three stories of cramped, two and three room rented flats. They lived on the third floor. It was filled with people of every sort, come to Corinth from all over the Empire.

Dark skinned Damascenes, other Greeks, even immigrants from Tarsus.

Aristion’s family were the only Christians in the insula—and kept a low profile on that account. He could hear others stirring throughout the insula, speaking in hushed tones. The smokey aroma of numerous oil lamps already filled the halls and stairs.

He passed from the lower stair into the bakery, finding it already bustling with employees readying the ovens and the utensils to begin the days production.  Sweet rolls and flatbreads were daily sold directly from the bakery over the top of a fold down wooden shutter which covered the entrance at night but folded down as a table for display during the day. This is where Damaris’ bread would end up, sold to pedestrians as they passed the insula.

Aristion was headed for the street when Markos, the overseer of the bread shop, waved at him to join him a corner of the bakery where he was instructing a young baker girl.

 Aristion knew what Markos wanted. He smiled and obeyed, feeling a sudden weight of his responsibility.

Markos was a short, balding man of ruddy complexion and a great belly. He was a fastidious man, dressed in a simple but clean brown toga.

 Aristion liked him well enough. He knew Markos had come to Corinth from the slave market in Rome, where Quintus Panis, the owner of their insula, had bought him.

Markos spoke Greek well but with an accent that revealed it was not his first language. He was an intelligent and educated man; Aristion often wondered how he had become a slave. Quintus, a minor Corinthian official,  was often abroad on missions of trade and left the oversight of his enterprise to his trusted servant, a duty Markos discharged with acumen.

“Ah, Aristion,” Markos said to him, “Phoebe’s blessings upon you. You’ll will have the rent for your family’s flat at end of week? It is due.”

Aristion nodded. “I will, Markos. Nicanus gives me my wages tomorrow. You are the first person I shall visit.”

Markos gave his terse, thin grimace that passed for a smile. “You’ve not been late in three years. Give my regard to Simias. How is he?”

“He is well, Markos,” Aristion replied. “His legs pain him at times, but the peppermint salves my mother makes and rubs in give him relief.”

Markos nodded. “A good Greek,” he said. “With a good Greek wife. Salute also your mother.”

“Thank you,” Aristion said. “I must take my leave now.”

“May Phoebe’s sight reveal this day’s path for you,” Markos replied.

Aristion smiled and nodded, feeling a hypocrite as he did, for he was not grateful for a blessing in the name of that goddess of the Greeks whom Markos revered, one of the Titans, daughter of Saturn and Gaia, who was now to the Romans a goddess of prophecy.

He stepped out of the insula shop and into the bright light of morning.

The air was cool and crisp and fragrant with the scent of the Ionian Sea.

The dawn sky above the narrow street was dominated by the curved towers of the Corinthian Theater, their spire shadows falling across the pebbled way.

Along this way came a troop of goddesses, ghosts and heroes—actors bound for the day’s stage plays, the Theater’s most common entertainments, adorned in costumes of the style of the epic characters they would portray.

Most were festooned in gaily dyed linen, colorfully ribboned. Some carried with them great painted masks of papier-mache or carved wood, round visages that were variously comical, pathetic or grotesque.

Aristion caught sight of a mask in lurid green hues that he recognized as an Erinye, one of the ancient Grecian goddesses of vengeance from the myths of his family’s native Thracian Coast. The Romans called them the Furies, and they were popular recurring figures in the plays.

The actors and actresses came this way each morning, bound for the yawning arches that led into the towering Coliseum. Stagehands mingled among them, chatting away or munching a hurried breakfast of a fig or an apple, craft tools dangling from their belts.

Aristion often wondered what their lives were like. He had no desire to enter the Theater since becoming a Christian.

It was a central attraction for citizens and visitors alike, who gathered there to see the many musical and stage events.

It was also a place of constant festival processions in honor of the idols of the Romans.

Political assembly was held there, and orations to the people made on important matters; and there, too, was the emperor daily honored in a public rite which made of him, in the eyes of the people, a god.

Aristion was also aware of the grim reality of the gladiator battles which took place upon the Theater sands for the morbid delight of assembled multitudes, who might number, on the busiest days, as many as fourteen thousand.

Men, and sometimes women, closed upon one another, locked in bloody combat. Many a soul had breathed his or her last under the Theater towers, gutted with blade or spear, their blood staining ground which had been unhallowed by centuries of slain human beings.

Exotic and fierce beasts were sometimes set loose upon the warriors, who either slew the hapless animal or died themselves by piercing fang or rending claw. Sometimes prisoners, condemned to die, were sent to face the caged monsters, unarmed and screaming as their last moments provided black mirth to a people calloused to magnificent violence.

Even in the plays, the part of a story’s villain was often forced upon a helpless criminal, their death being no play-act, but true and terrible as they were speared or stabbed by actors who made art and sport of murder.

No, Aristion had no wish to see that place. It was no part of Iesous.

Eastward he turned, his sandals scraping on the paved stones of a wider street, where he was almost jostled by an imposing Ethiopian who was trying to pull his mule along with the cart of vegetables bound to it by leather straps.

The beast wished no part of the transaction, and in anger the merchant struck it with his rod, drawing forth angry braying.

Into Aristion’s thoughts there came suddenly an image from one of the Scrolls which Gaius read in the house church, a rare and expensive private copy of one of the texts from the Translation of the Seventy, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures which the Jews read in their synagogues,

The fleeting memory of the account of Balaam and his wise donkey came to him, and he had to suppress the urge to laugh out loud at the thought of how the Ethiopian might react if Adonai suddenly loosed the poor beast’s tongue to answer his master with rebuke!

He continued up gentle hill towards the city center, his pace brisk; he must not be late. He’d no desire to find Nicanus displeased.

Left of him loomed the place he most disliked to pass each morning- that far-famed jewel of Corinth, the Temple of Apollo.

It’s forty-two titanic pillars dwarfed every other edifice in the city, save only the Theater. Standing a height of seven meters each, the great columns upheld a stone facia carved with swirling geometric patterns and a red terracotta roof.

Even at this distance, the wind carried to him the scent of incense, the songs of the priestesses and the dread of their idolatrous rites.

Petitioners, priests and musicians thronged its outer courts and milled about its massive tri-stepped porches, all come to invoke the Sun God whose charms and prayers his sister had undertaken that very morning in their flat.

Aristion knew she stole away there on Apollo’s sacred days, to offer some small bird bought at market, or to cast upon the brazier’s glowing coals small wild flowers she sometimes picked from the hillsides.

Inside the Temple was a great bronze image of the god; that idol’s spell and the ways of its mysteries were sweet to her, but did she never reflect that here also were housed the attendants of the Imperial Cult, and upon certain brisk days of the autumn months, citizens and officials assembled in the great hall to worship a mere man under the title Adonai?

Those Christians who refused the public rites were put to death after being beaten and sorely mocked, and that without trial if, as was the case with Aristion’s family, they were not Roman citizens.

Did Zoe never consider that such a fate might one day befall her own dear parents and he, Aristion?

He averted his eyes from that blasphemous site and pressed on, remembering another Scroll in the collection of Gaius, the Scroll of the Psalmists:

“Their idols are but things of silver and gold,

Shaped by human hands.

They have mouths but cannot speak,

And eyes but cannot see,

They have ears but cannot hear,

And noses but cannot smell,

They have hands but cannot feel,

And feet but cannot walk

And throats, but cannot make a sound,

And those who make idols are just like them,

As are all who trust in them.”

Aristion thought, too, of the Scroll of Paul’s Letter, which Gaius kept within a wooden chest, bringing out regularly to read in its entirety amid the gathered Christians, receiving questions from the brothers and sisters in Iesous concerning the meanings of its passages.

Paul had written therein the sobering words that Aristion recalled all too well—

“But I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice to idols, they sacrifice to daimones, and not to God.”

He moved his hand over his heart, whispering a prayer to Iesous for sweet Zoe and the day of her awakening to the Shepherd’s voice.

Into the great, marble-paved Central Agora he now came, passing the Northwest shops where merchants rolled back the wooden shutters of their tabernas to display baskets of produce and crafts.

“Figs! Fish! Olives!” The cries of the sellers were incessant, summoning full coin purses to their tables, mats and tents.

Aristion deftly navigated seller and buyer alike, at last coming into the scene he loved most in his daily walk to the shop.

To his right lay a wide and spacious plaza, situated within a U-shaped arrangement of three great walls, its open side facing the city streets.

The walls were set with a series of arched alcoves and porticos, some providing dark entrance to lower levels beyond the walls, others containing ornate stone benches for sitting and conversing. The alcoves were flanked by lush myrtle trees and flowering white shrubs, the walls draped in green vinery decorated by heaven with tiny red blossoms. Bees and butterflies and humming birds flitted among the tendrils and flowers, sipping their nectar. The resplendent purple flowers of the myrtles wore the morning sun and scattered shadows as a single raiment

The central feature of the plaza was a great rectangular pool that ran the whole length of the courtyard, set about with short, heavy stone blocks for a shin-high border and surrounded by smooth, time-worn pavements.

Here, the veiled and linen robed women of the city were gathered, standing in small groups beside the earthen amphorae they had carried thither, in which they would gather water for their homes. This was a place, too, to hear gossip and learn of current events in the Sea City.

Their children waded and splashed in the central pool, laughing and playing.

Here and there, the odd laborer could be seen, come to cool themselves in the shimmering waters during a rare break in their toil.

This was the Fountain of Pieren.

Its pool was fed by hidden springs, and Aristion knew that some of the arch ways set within the plaza walls led to lower chambers, where people might bathe privately, or undertake ritual washings associated with the rites of Pieren or Apollo, for the plaza was dedicated to the sun god.

There was a central shrine within a prominent recessed alcove, a shrine not unto Apollo, but for Pieren herself, the nymph for whom the Fountain was named. A stone bowl before her image was always filled with freshly picked myrtle blossoms.

Other statues of Roman gods and heroes stood along the plaza walls, gazing upon each new generation of Corinthians with stoic eyes.

Aristion could ignore the idols, though, entranced as he was by the calm, tranquil atmosphere of the place.

The precinct was a popular resort of lovers, too; the bench alcoves, overhung with curtains of greenery and flowers, offered cool sanctuary to smitten hearts, and it was common in the cool of evening, when stars first began to glimmer, to find young lovers lost in hushed conversation in the alcove shadows where a kiss or two might be stolen.

Aristion went to the border of the great pool, kneeling upon it and leaning in with a cupped hand to draw forth a draught of the cool wine of the springs. A tiny bird fluttered down to perch near him, cocking its head at him and chirping some remonstrance at him in its lyric tongue. He smiled.

Praise you, Adonai, he thought towards heaven. Your creation is beautiful.

Refreshed by a drink and a prayer, Aristion rose, departed the park, and continued out of the Agora.

He went through the grand archway named the Propylaea and onto the Lechaion Road which would lead him down to the sea, to the brass-works shop of Nicanus.

His eyes drank in the coastlines and hills on either side of his horizons and the open, shimmering waters of the Gulf of Corinth. The sun shone upon its vibrant sapphire waters, crested here and there by white ocean foam, creating a mottled quilt of glory. The endless song of the Ionian Sea which fed the Gulf murmured in his ears, borne by the temperate, salt-tinged breeze.

Aristion trod hurriedly past luxury shops set with deep arcades, wherein shoppers could take ease, shaded from the waxing orb of the day.

Many foreign sailors disembarked here from the Gulf, coming ashore from their vessels in small boats, and it was for these stalwart voyagers that the high-end shops kept the finest wares: rich Phoenician Tyrian purple silks, fine Egyptian linen, and shimmering Coan silk from the Island of Cos. Arabian frankincense and myrrh, Indian pepper and nard, and Spanish saffron. Aged Rhodian wine, spiced fish sauces, and sweet breads with plum sauce and a hundred other treasures…all a delight to the senses.

Merchants came from up and down the coast in search of the great port city’s goods.

And, of course, for the fine Corinthian bronze for which Aristion’s city was famed.

The composition of its alloy was a guarded trade secret but anyone could see that it contained gold and silver, and its dark luster, highly resistant to tarnish, gave it the smoky sheen that earned it the name of the Black Bronze of Corinth.

Aristion knew the secret of its making, for this was the material of his trade. In the threefold cycle of seasons since he’d become apprentice to Nicanus, he had learned well from his master the making and the decoration of the bronze.

In the glimmer of that bronze lay the thin line between survival and destitution, for since the day his father’s legs had been crushed by a tumbled stone that had slipped free of the hoists of the masons working on an older structure, he had plied this craft as the main income of his household. His mother’s bread helped, but without the shop of Nicanus, he would likely spend himself in hard labor for daily bread and keep.

He came to a rambling alley where the smooth marble underfoot turned back to dusty dirt.

As he approached his destination, he could already hear the rhythmic tapping of the hammers of his fellow workers, Aulus and Nikandros, tink-tink-tinking on the blackened brass of the pieces they crafted for the coming sailors.

The open face of the Nicanus’ taberna came into view. Its heavy wooden shutter had already become a table of wares that gleamed in the morning light. Behind this table, his grizzled and work worn hands upon it, stood Nicanus.

The older man had a mane of gray and black hair, tied back in a tail. Even at sixty, Nicanus was a tall, imposing brute of a man. Aristion knew he’d once been a brawler in the taverns of Corinth, when he was a worshipper of Dionysius and a lover of his god’s merry cup, before he’d met two tentmakers Aquila and Prisca, by what had seemed chance in the Corinthian market.

The husband and wife were the slaves of Iesous, and both had proven well versed in the Scriptures and the message of the cross. They were beloved names among the ekklesia of Corinth, for they were good friends and brethren of Apostle Paul, and with him they had laid, some fifteen years past, the spiritual foundations of the house churches.

Nicanus had traded a few words with the couple, and something about them seemed so different that, when they invited him to visit a Sunday gathering in the household of Stephanas and his family, he could not help but go.

Aristion well recalled his testimony, for it was told to him when fist he heard the voice of Iesous, through Nicanus’ witnessing.

Nicanus told how he had wept at the story of the Lord’s passion as he realized that it had been for him, and heard a voice in his soul say Come. Dionysius was an easy god to leave for the Christos. For what had the debauched prince ever given him but wounds and days of grief without number?

In the waters of baptism, where Aquila had called over him the name of Iesous, a new life had begun for the craftsman, and he had been a devoted slave of Iesous ever since.

Nicanus had accepted Aristion’s hopeful plea for apprenticeship, but it had not been long before the youth perceived something wonderous in the older man’s demeanor, his spirit so different from the people Aristion knew.

Soon, their talks had led to the Message, and now, these three years later, they were brothers in Iesous, and Aristion a son in the gospel of his earthly employer, yet much more a disciple of the true Master in heaven!

Still, this morning, he thought he might glimpse something of that old Nicanus in the man’s eyes as he gazed upon Aristion from under his bushy eyebrows.

Was he scowling?

Aristion grinned sheepishly.

“I’m not too late, am I, Master Nicanus?” Aristion asked.

The old man held him with a stern gaze for a brief moment, then broke into his familiar, white tooted smile. He often pretended anger and then made a joke of it.

“No, adelphos,” came his employer’s easy reply.

“Aulus has just fired up the coals and Nikandros is beginning the border stippling on those pieces we finished yesterday. It’s mostly decorative work you’ll be at today; can you handle that, Aristion?” His eyes twinkled, and Aristion was glad it was a happy Nicanus he found this day.

“Aye, Master,” he said.

‘Well then, don’t just stand there. All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.”

Aristion knew the Proverb—Gaius had them memorized from the Translation of the Seventy and quoted them frequently. The lad loved them for their elegant, ancient pith and simplicity.

And he and his fellow workers and Nicanus could speak all day of the Hebrew Scriptures, even quote them openly, without fear of recrimination, for many in the Empire among the Greeks were phoboumenoi ton Theon; “God Fearers.”

God-fearers were Gentiles conversant in the Translation, maybe even possessing a scroll or two, if they were wealthy enough to pay for scribal services and obtain permission from one who owned a text and would let it be copied.

They prayed to Adonai Elohim of the Jews. They did not keep circumcision and were forbidden from entering the Temple in Jerusalem. In their own ways, though, they maintained the moral precepts of the Torah and lived righteous lives.

As citizens they were still bound to honor the Imperial cult and whatever gods or goddesses attended their occupational sphere, but many found clever ways around such transgression in daily life.

The Empire placed no such edict of Imperial devotion upon the Jews.  

The recitation of their Scriptures would bring no judgement.

In fact, the Imperial House spent lavish sums to pay for daily sacrifices in the Temple in faraway Jerusalem.

Because Jews could never…would never…participate in the Imperial Cult, a substitutionary practice had long ago been instituted: the Jews would offer sacrifices on behalf of the emperor.

By this means, they were permitted to retain their curious and unique ancient identity, and peace and decorum were the usual order.

The Romans also gave patronage the Herodian tetrarchs, granting them lands, influence and protection from internal rebellions, so besides the religious exemptions Rome granted her Judaic subjects, their leaders had ample inducements to see to it that their people lived quiet and peaceable lives.

To speak openly of Iesous was another matter entirely.

The pagans considered the Followers of the Way to be egregiously rude, for one, owing to their refusal to engage in the normal customs of the Gentiles, embroidered as each custom was with the trappings of Roman and Greek religion.

They also suspected the Christians of dark rites, even cannibalism, and held their refusal to accept the existence of the gods as strident atheism.

The cannibal accusations came from a tragic error in the Roman mind concerning the Christian doctrine of the Lord’s Supper and the words they repeated at their ritual love meal, words which their Master had spoken on the night of his betrayal:

“Take and eat, this bread is my body-drink, all of you, for this cup is my blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for many.

The Way Followers were no more popular with the Jews, decidedly less so, in fact.

In the earliest days, the Jews had tolerated the Apostles and Hebrew Christians in the Temple Courts and the synagogues because of their devotion to the teachings of Moses and the Sabbath.

That day had long passed, and now, it was perilous speak of Iesous.

Thus, talk of the blessed Lord was confined to inside the taberna, as were the quiet prayers they undertook here at times. They would none of them ever publicly deny Iesous, but that did not mean they had to imperil themselves needlessly with the authorities and other citizens.

Aristion entered the hot darkness of the taberna, saluting Nikandros and Aulus.

They returned his salutation; both were roughly his age, both good workers, and both, like him, Christians, won to the Saviour by the old craftsman.

Nicanus was already chatting with a potential customer, so the young apprentice grabbed one of the heavy leather aprons, put it on, tied a piece of sweat cloth around his head, and strapped on his tool belt with its pouch and hammer.

He went to his usual bench and sat on a stool, picking up a gleaming piece of Corinthian “Black Bronze”. It was round, and already had its circular edges crimped so as to create a convex surface.

He set the piece down and withdrew from his pouch an iron punch tool. Slowly and meticulously, Aristion began to tap the underside of the piece’s edge, creating small, perfect dimples that produced a decorative element which would likely take an hour or more to complete. Then, he would create swirling, geometric patterns on the outer center of the brass work the same way, perfecting an art that the shop of Nicanus was known for. He would decorate some eight or nine such pieces today.

He began to sing a hymn under his breath which Adelphe Sara had taught him, when first he had been baptized and was a new face in the house church of Gaius and the brethren. Like most of their hymns, it was taken from the poetry of the Prophets and Psalms, adapted a bit to fit the new faith. This one was from Esaias:

          “I lay in Zion, for a foundation a stone,

          Yes, I lay in Zion, for a foundation a stone-

          A tried stone, a precious corner stone

          A sure foundation— Iesous a sure foundation;

          A tried stone, a precious corner stone,

          He that believes

          Shall not make haste…”

 

Aristion kept at his work, giving it his very best, for was not this was how he served Iesous each day, earning the coin that kept his family in the insula and even allowed him, at certain times, to give unto the work of the house church?

Happy he was, and favored of Adonai to have strength and heart for his task.