The consignment on offer was mediocre: sickly men with dark skin and thick lips and scrawny women, hanging around by the auctioneers’ tents; on the stand three people were examining the teeth of a woolly-haired boy, gazing into his mouth, and shaking their heads. Only the cosmetics merchant had attracted a crowd of any size, women carefully studying the varnishes and daubs before making their selections. Uri stood nibbling a lambchop roasted on an open fire (he’d asked for it to be well-done), and as he tucked into his food he found that his stylish cloak was attracting attention. Uri thought it best to make his way back, as quickly as possible, to the port, where he located a ship heading for Ostia, carrying a cargo of wool from Syria. He haggled the fare down by half, not that he couldn’t have paid, but he was a grown-up now, quite capable of driving a bargain, and what’s more an experienced traveler, and it did a lot for his spirits to show that he couldn’t be easily duped. He sold the stylish cloak as a matter of urgency, buying a shabby one instead, and also exchanged his sandals for a secondhand pair. The money he got for those he added to the sum he’d been given by the alabarch, enough to cover the annual salary of a legionnaire for two years: 450 drachmas, to be precise, money that he carried in a linen tube twisted around his waist under his loincloth.
While the ship was being loaded he strolled a bit farther along the wharf, where upon arriving he’d noticed something peculiar. He stepped out onto a bridge, which he saw — even with his poor eyesight he had noticed it — was sagging into the water at one point, though farther off other sections seemed to carry on above the tide.
The bridge — or rather, these pieces of a bridge — crossed the bay between the resort of Baiae and the naval base of Misenum; in place of pilings, ships, acting as pontoons, held girders and planks onto which stones and earth had been hauled in some rough approximation of the Appian Way. Uri strolled over to a building that stood at the other end of the bridge’s intact section; it was an inn constructed of timber, and it was in operation. There were no guests in evidence; the innkeeper greeted him jovially in Greek and led him over to a marble relief, the subject of which he started explaining enthusiastically.
Specifically, it was this very bridge.
The plump, ruddy-faced man told him proudly that the bridge had once spanned the entire distance between Puteoli and Baiae, some twenty-six stadia! It had been supported all along its length by ships similar to the few that could still be seen; some were old barks that would otherwise have been scuttled, but many dozens more had either been constructed on the spot, or were grain merchants’ crafts that had been pressed into service. But all of them had been taken away, the new ones too, because the shortage of ships had threatened the country with starvation, and now — it had to be admitted, a little late in the day — the entire fleet had been sent to Alexandria. It was a shame this had led to the bridge’s collapse because it had been built so exceptionally welclass="underline" it had been strong enough to last four or five winters.
The emperor surely could not allow a famine this year when last year the Tiber had overflowed and swept away half of Rome.
Let’s just hope Far Side wasn’t washed away as well, thought Uri.
Uri looked at the relief; it was a splendid work, with much to be seen on it.
The innkeeper pointed out that this, here, was the emperor, and this the Parthian prince Dareios, who was held hostage in Rome, and those there were the senators; that the breastplate on the emperor was not just any breastplate but the very one which had belonged to Alexander the Great; his robes had been of silk, which unfortunately could not be shown on a relief, and they had not been painted as was the case with these carvings — the silk had been dyed a pure purple. And he had worn masses of gemstones on it, which the sculptor had also not represented, but he, the innkeeper, had seen it from very close up — all Indian jewels, no mistake! Also superb were the shield and sword carried by the emperor. He had made sacrificial offerings to Neptune, and to the goddess of Envy, so that no one should be jealous of his acts, and then he rode from the Baiae end onto the bridge, accompanied by the Praetorian guard, storming across it into Puteoli as if he were pursuing an enemy! That was not the end of it, either, because the following day he had returned to the bridge on a war chariot, wearing a gold-hemmed tunic, with famous charioteers riding behind — the innkeeper did not know their names, but they were all very famous — with an immense cargo of war spoils lugged behind! Fully worthy of it, he was as well, because he was the first man in the world who had crossed a sea on foot!
Uri did not interrupt him to mention that an individual by the name of Moses had done just that some time ago.
Well, anyway, the emperor and his entire retinue had remained on the bridge for the whole night, with illumination being provided from the hills that ringed that semicircle of the bay (which if you care to look is like the waning moon), so it was almost as light as day; there was much merrymaking on the skiffs, the emperor also reveling in the bridge, though sad to say not at this inn because a drinking place in the form of a victory arch was built for him in the middle of the bridge, he’d done his celebrating there, he’d even delivered a speech from its roof, with people holding onto him so he didn’t get dizzy and fall over. He supposedly mocked Darius I and Xerxes, boasting that he had conquered greater seas than they had; the story goes that the emperor had many of his friends tossed into the sea, though he, the innkeeper could not confirm this because he had been serving guests — there was such a crush at the time, huge it was! There were many who drank in flower-bedecked clothes, and there’s no question that Neptune was scared stiff, because the sea was flat as a pancake, and no one drowned in it.
Uri nodded an acknowledgment.
Well, the emperor and his retinue went away, and the bridge stayed up for a while, and lots of people came to see it, so from the business point of view those were boom times: three thousand paces over to the other side, and the same back! (That doesn’t come to twenty-six stadia, Uri thought to himself, because that would come to about twenty-two thousand paces.) The reason the bridge was built was because Thrasyllus, the divine Emperor Tiberius’s soothsayer, once said that Gaius had about as much chance of assuming power as he did of riding a horse across the Gulf of Baiae. Well, he had become emperor, and he’d ridden a horse across the water, the innkeeper bragged, and he even admitted, after Uri had ordered wine and paid for it, that although the marble relief was placed at the Puteoli end of the bridge, he’d had it moved here so that no harm should come to it; this was a good spot, because all the other innkeepers had picked up and moved on.
The emperor must be a real head case, Uri concluded, and he was glad that he would never have to see him, just as he had never seen Tiberius.
In Ostia, he was tempted to spend a day and have a look at Matthew’s four columns, which most probably were buried in the ground somewhere south of the harbor, or perhaps the synagogue was already under construction and the columns were already standing, but then he gave the idea up; it was more important to see his father as soon as he could. He came across a vessel that was sailing right away, but it was carrying a cargo of blocks of desiccated balsam resin. Not a good portent, Uri thought, but then he shrugged his shoulders and booked passage, taking the boat along the Tiber up to Rome. He stood in the prow so that the breeze would spare him the overpowering aroma of balsam. His eyes were narrowed to slits, and he drew the shabby cloak tightly around him as the weather was cool; he had gotten quite unused to cold over the three years he had been away. When the hills of Rome came into sight, he felt an unexpected sensation of joy and triumph.