The men now marched in silence, forgoing the idle chatter and singing that often accompanies troops on the march. The sun had become hot; each day's route was long; and though morale was now higher since Julian's harangue, the troops were tense and thoughtful, and preferred to conserve their energy for the task that lay ahead.
After two days we arrived at Dura, an important trading and caravan center, which at Sapor's orders had been completely deserted. Our hopes had led us to believe that here, in the heart of Assyria, we would encounter plunder that would well compensate us for our hardships thus far — for it is said that this region was personally chosen by the Great King Cyrus, Sapor's ancestor, as his principal source of supply. Four entire villages in those days had been assigned to providing subsistence for his Indian dogs alone; eight hundred stallions and sixteen thousand mares were maintained at the public expense for the royal stables. Yet in this regard we were sorely disappointed, for the granaries were empty, the kitchen gardens plucked, and the surrounding fields burned. Our only consolation lay in the great herds of deer that also inhabited the area, which, driven to desperation by the loss of their pasturage from the fires set by the King's troops, behaved wholly out of character for such animals. They would cluster together weakly even after sighting us, staring at us with eyes glassy with hunger, and would attempt only feeble flight as we approached, allowing us to save ammunition by capturing them with nets or even by beating them over the heads with heavy oars from our boats as they attempted to swim across the river to safety. Venison was a refreshing change for the troops.
It was here, during our brief rest, that Julian accepted an offer from a local Bedouin guide to visit an ancient temple to Apollo carved into the steep sandstone banks of a dry riverbed. The narrow path that wound down along the rock walls to the structure from the plains above had long since washed out. We were forced to take a detour of several miles to an appropriate descent down into the gully, and then retrace our steps along the dry bed at the bottom. We could see the temple high above us, appearing almost as a cave but with exquisitely carved fluted columns and age-worn stone figures adorning the entrance.
Through a complicated system of ladders and ropes that had been rigged ahead of time in anticipation of the Emperor's visit, Julian was hauled up to the opening. His eyes shone with anticipation as he ascended slowly up the rocks, and he glanced at me cheerfully — how long had it been since I had seen him thus, relaxed and happy, away from the pressures of command and the visions that haunted his sleep? Even the prospect of witnessing his abominable prayers at an ill-kept shrine to an unidentifiable cave deity did not seem as horrifying to me as it once might have — for where he was content, reason and calm prevailed, and many good things, Brother, can come of reason and calm. It is not for nothing that the devil prefers chaos.
We scrambled the last few feet along a crumbling ledge that had once served as a footpath for the caretakers, ropes still fastened securely about our waists. When we arrived at the cave, however, our eyes met not with the ancient statue of Apollo and the primitive murals from Homeric times that Julian's imagination had led him to expect but rather — a Christian church.
Actually, Brother, you should not raise your hopes, for out in that desert fastness it is unlikely that any such structure is deserving of the name of 'church.' It would be better described as a hermitage, for it was inhabited by precisely one person, an emaciated, long-bearded old man wearing nothing but a dirty loincloth and as blind as a salamander from staring into the sun, which he did incessantly, seated in the entrance, facing the dry canyon before him. The room behind him was empty, scoured of all traces of past pagan presence, the only adornment being a single, tiny cross hung on the bare stone wall — which the hermit could not see, in any case.
Julian was at first dumbfounded, and then his astonishment grew to outrage. He stormed up and down the confines of the cave, poking his head and hands desperately into nooks and cracks in search of a carving, an engraving, anything that might bespeak the presence of one of his laughable deities. His Bedouin guides were terrified at his wrath, for being neither Christian nor Hellenist themselves, they had failed to understand the distinction between one Roman religion and another and had not realized that the Emperor might be offended. It was precisely at this time, just as Julian angrily gave up his search, that the ancient hermit's single daily meal arrived — dry bread and a lentil broth, brought by three Christian ascetics from a tiny community living among the rocks just below, and proffered in a bucket which the old man drew up with a frayed hemp rope.
Julian began harshly questioning the old one, though to no avail, as the man spoke only an obscure Syriac dialect which even our guides were unable to interpret. He then sent several of the guards that had accompanied us to intercept the three ascetics and haul them up to the temple for an explanation. They arrived trembling and bowing, astonished at somehow encountering a furious Roman emperor in their tiny desert chapel.
Grilling them angrily in the pidgin Greek that one of them spoke with difficulty, Julian finally turned away in disgust.
'Their motto, they say, is that old chestnut, "Forsake all and ye shall find all." That is why they live so wretchedly at this pathetic little shrine to their fisherman's religion.' He paced back and forth a moment in the tiny room, fuming. 'I have my own version of the saying to confront such nonsense.' He turned to the three bewildered ascetics. 'It's from Plotinus, whom you would do well to read, rather than your uneducated Galilean: "Remove all."'
And so saying, he ordered his guards to clear the church of everything, cross, hermit, and bucket, and prepare it for a cleansing sacrifice of blood on the following day.
I stood listening dumbfounded to his furious ranting, while the three ascetics huddled uncomprehendingly in the corner, pleading with their eyes to be let go unharmed, while the ancient mystic remained sitting where he was in the doorway, facing the dry riverbed and obliviously mumbling a prayer.
'Julian — this is madness!' I interrupted in the middle of his tirade. 'The guides say the temple had been unused for centuries before the hermits found it. No one knows whether it had ever been dedicated to Apollo, or to some desert scorpion god instead. It is just as fairly used as a church as a pagan temple. You must stop this scandalous treatment of these men!'
Julian stopped and glared at me for a moment, but then ignored my argument as he continued his angry pacing.
'"The ultimate sacrifice," they call it, and this old blind man, their leader, they call him "the sainted hermit." The hypocrisy of it all!' he raged. 'The old fool sleeps on the ground in a bare room and eats lentils and calls it a sacrifice! By the gods, I do the same thing! Yet at least I work for a living. His is not a sacrifice, it is the ultimate extravagance, for he relies completely on the service of these others. They are in his employ! They prepare all his food to be hauled up in buckets and his waste is let down the same way, and in some ill-begotten sense of holy sacrifice or just plain ignorance of basic sanitation, they use the same bucket for both tasks! What kind of a religion is this, Caesarius? Are they lunatics?'
I stood by in a silent rage, furiously clenching and unclenching my fists in an attempt to control the emotions I felt at that moment. The sullen guards carefully roped and carried the silent old man out of the room from which he had not set foot in thirty years, accompanied by the moaning and hymn singing of his distraught companions. Never again, I swore, would Julian commit such an atrocity.