Chapter 1 - The Architect

1st part of Chapter 1

Chapter 1

THE ARCHITECT

303 CE

   A perfect minuscule circle of light was all that was discernible in that nothingness of primeval darkness. An invitation and an anchor to the senses. Irrecusable. Groping space, I bowed to the call, and as I set my eye to that round source of light, it revealed a plurality of dimensions, awakening the sense of sight to the innerness of what had been a perfect and minuscule circle of light.

   From that source I could now discern shapes and sounds. The light had taken hold of two of my senses. Another, was revealed involuntarily with the odor of that moldy wall, and a fourth, when I felt the stony humidity on my right brow. Only one was now missing for the moment to be absolute.

   But the primacy of sight soon masked all the others, and in the dimensional duality of colors I could glimpse the curvilinear sinuosity of diaphanous movements to the compass of languid and distant sounds. 

   I was now fully immersed in the fluid dancing of that seductive nymph.

   It was her, my muse, there, an immolation to the voluptuousness of vision, unconscious of the lust brought on by that beam of light. And in that darkness burned my desire, a visceral instinct and rationally sinful. The same ageless call of the forbidden fruit. The reason for the expulsion of man from the paradise of contentment.

   Annia was her name. A palatial odalisque. One of the courtesans in the court of our Augustan Emperor Diocletian, my master of those days. And that darkness from where I desired her, was one of the innumerable passages and corridors of the great palace of Spalatum, in the coast of Dalmatia. Hidden and secret, distant from the knowledge of almost all of the 8000 occupants of that city-palace. But I knew them. I had drawn them, and passed them from parchments into the reality of stone, brick, iron and mortar.

   I was one of the architects and builders of those edifices, one of the most magnificent creations of that Emperor of humble origin and divine inspiration. The first unashamedly absolutist ruler of the Empire, when he discarded the old symbols and ornaments of the Republic, already distorted so long ago by the mighty Augustus Caesar.

   It was also by his will that we now had the ritualisms and the adulation imported from the Satrapies of the Orient, the prolixly and ostentatious ceremonies of the mythical Pasargadae of Cyrus. Distant was now the pretentious popularity and humility of the supreme rulers of the Roman people. The Republic had flourished into a Monarchy, and the deification of the holders of the Imperium now occured in their lifetime and on this earth, no more by posthumous senatorial decree. Diocletian believed that through such devices he could shield himself from the temptation and the rebelliousness of any popular military upstart, as it had happened so often in the recent past.

   It is the era of the Dominate and we are now in the year of the consulates of Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus Augustus Jovianus and Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maximianus Herculius, Augustus of the East and Augustus of the West, respectively. Eight years since I first arrived here, and according to my calculations it is the year of my tricentenary.

   Still without aging, I am ever more a reluctant companion to Chronos, that Greek god of Time, a tired witness to the follies of man. I have had to live briefly in many places, forced to move before my inhuman nature could be discovered by my fellow men. And for that I have become that lonely being that Nikolaus - my most dear and long lost friend - once prophesied.

   In these more than two hundred years since I left my land of Judaea, I have witnessed forty different Emperors taking command of the Empire, and more than half of them butchered by their own military. From afar I accompanied the last years of holy Jerusalem and the construction of a new city under its ruins. Aelia Capitolina, dedicated to the pagan god Jupiter, and since then closed to all Judaeans by the Emperor Hadrian. The same Hadrian who had been mocked by the whole Empire with his infatuation and obsession with the young Antinous, killed in dubious circumstances on the Nile.

   After the last great uprising by the Judaean Simon bar Kosiva - another one of our self-entitled messiahs - I see my brethren increasingly spread throughout the known-world, not only within the Empire, but also throughout Persia, Kush, Arabia, Abyssinia and even in the far-distant realms of the Indies. Forbidden to sacrifice to the Lord, all that is left for us is to follow the sages and those masters of the Law who are interpreting the Sacred Scriptures for this new era. I feel, sometimes, growing increasingly apathetic with all these religious going-ons, especially when I see my fellow believers respecting and following these interpretations in detriment to the Sacred Commandments. I feel, oftentimes, afraid for what is to come from this too human pride in wanting to humanize and legislate divine designs.

   But yes, I do keep my faith in the Lord, and my total unbelief in the so-called Christians. After all, I know where they came from and how they have arrived where they are now. I spoke to their prophet and I knew quite well their most creative preacher. I witnessed the birth of that sect, I met with some of their so called martyrs, I lost my wife and my best friend to them. I even read about their many and most imaginative miracles in that codex of fables, now grown into four gospels of repeated and contradictory verbosity written in poor koiné - and even the letters of the epileptic Saul are now part of their holy book. How did it come to this?

   Curiously, more than that prophet Yeshua, I believe that Saul was the real proponent of this cult, through his innumerable voyages, his fanatical zealotry with Messianism and his tireless defense in favor of the conversion of Gentiles. He was, undoubtedly, the great apostate of my religion. But, I must admit, I find it difficult also not to admire their tenacity and fanaticism.  Their perseverance after the horrendous persecutions perpetrated by the Emperors Decius, Gaius and Valerian, their organization and their obstinacy with conversions. After two centuries of evangelization, it is almost impossible to find a city where they are not already present.

  Early in my life, I developed an interest and an admiration for Hellenism, and I have devoted a major portion of my long existence to learn the sciences that I most admire in the Greeks. 

   I began by studying rhetoric and philosophy, both inexhaustible subjects for as long as man is allowed to think rationally. Later, by necessity, I dedicated myself to the study of architecture. Philosophy these days is mostly plagiarism of the works of Plato or, once more, Cynical in nature. For the last one hundred years, the number of true and inspired philosophers has dwindled dramatically, and what I find these days is a cadre of demagogues defending creeds of arbitrary importance and fallible relevance. My own theory is that the more this Christian movement grows, the less men will think and meditate on what is truly relevant. Gone are the days of the wandering philosophers that promoted their words of wisdom and reason in the agoras of our more enlightened cities.