When it became evident that the city council was not in control of the situation, Publius Celer ordered me to call out the cavalry and he himself placed a cohort of infantrymen at the entrance to the theater. He smiled, his eyes cold and his mouth crooked, and assured me that he had been looking forward to a suitable opportunity of this kind to give these unruly people a few lessons in Roman discipline and order.
With a trumpeter and a cohort commantler, I went into the theater to be able to give the signal if the crowd turned violent. The people were noisy and restless in the huge theater; many obviously did not know what it was all about and had, in the Greek way, simply come to shout as loudly as they could. No one seemed to be armed. I could imagine the panic that would ensue if the theater had to be cleared forcibly.
The senior elder of the silversmiths tried to quiet the crowd so that he could speak, but he had already roused them to such an extent that his voice was hoarse and cracked completely when he started to speak. Even so, I managed to make out that he was accusing Paul the Jew of misleading the people, not only in Ephesus but all over Asia, into believing that handmade idols were not gods.
“We are threatened with the danger,” he shouted in his cracked voice, “of the great temple of Artemis losing all respect and she herself her power. She who is worshiped by the whole of Asia and all over the world.”
The huge crowd began to shout on the tops of their voices: “Great is Artemis of Ephesus!”
The continuous roar lasted so long that my trumpeter became anxious and tried to raise his instrument to his lips, but I knocked it away again.
A group of tasseled Jews was standing huddled nearby, and they pushed a coppersmith forward, crying, “Let Alexander speak.”
As far as I could make out, this Alexander wished to explain that the faithful Jews were not followers of Paul and that Paul did not even have the complete confidence of all the Christians in Ephesus.
But when the crowd saw from his clothes that he was a Jew, they did not want to let him speak, and they were right, inasmuch as the faithful Jews did not approve of idols or handmade images of such things. To stop him from speaking, the crowd broke out again with the cry: “Great is Artemis of Ephesus!” This time the roar lasted without exaggeration for two full lines on the water clock.
Publius Celer appeared beside me with his sword drawn.
“Why don’t you give the signal?” he snarled. “We can disperse the whole meeting in no time.”
“Several hundred people would be trampled underfoot,” I warned him.
The thought seemed to please Celer. So I added hastily: “They’re only praising their own Artemis. It would be both blasphemy and political foolishness to disperse a crowd for that reason.”
When the City Chancellor saw us standing hesitandy at one of the entrances, he signaled desperately for us to wait. He even had sufficient authority to quiet the crowd gradually as he stepped up to speak.
Now the Christians were thrust forward. They had been beaten and their clothes torn, but nothing worse had happened to them. To show what they thought, the Jews spat at them, but the Chancellor told the crowd not to act rashly, and reminded them that the city of Ephesus had been chosen to care for Artemis’ idol which had fallen from heaven. According to him, Paul’s disciples were neither temple defilers nor blasphemers.
The more sensible people in the crowd began to glance at my red plumes and at the cavalry trumpeter and then make their way out of the theater. For a moment everything hung in balance. Publius Celer ground his teeth, for if he had found reason to attack, then in the traditional Roman way he could have set fire to and plundered the silversmiths’ shops. The educated members of the crowd fortunately remembered the frightening events of the past and hurried away. As an outlet for his disappointment, Celer let his soldiers besiege the theater and beat a few of the remaining rebels and Jews. But nothing worse occurred.
Afterwards he reproached me bitterly, saying, “Both of us would have been enormously wealthy men now, if you hadn’t been so indecisive. Suppressing a rebellion would have taken us to the top of the roll of knights. We could have put the cause of the uprising down to Silanus’ lax rule. One must seize the opportunity as it arises, otherwise one loses it forever.”
Paul remained in hiding for a while and then had to flee the city. After I had by devious routes sent him a serious warning, we heard that he had gone to Macedonia. Then calm gradually descended again and the Jews found other things to think about Among them were many exiled Roman craftsmen intending to return to Rome in the spring.
The winter storms were now at their worst and in the harbor there was not a single ship due to sail to Italy. But Publius Celer had taken a dislike to me and, to avoid quarreling with him, I at last found a small ship loaded with goddess idols, which would risk the journey to Corinth under the protection of Artemis. We were fortunate enough to miss the northern storms, but several times had to shelter in island harbors on the way.
In Corinth, Hierex Lausius had been mourning me as lost, after hearing nothing from me for so long. He had grown fatter than ever and went about with his chin in the air, talking in a droning voice. He had married his Greek widow and taken two orphan boys into the house to look after their education and property. He proudly showed me his own meat shop which was kept cool in the summer with spring water from the mountain. He had also acquired shares in ships and bought skilled slaves to use in his own bronze foundry.
When I told him about the disturbances in Ephesus, he shook his head knowingly.
“We’ve had trouble here too,” he said. “You remember that Paul went from here to Jerusalem to consult the elders. They considered his teaching too involved and he was not met with complete approval, we gather. No wonder he preaches even more fervently in his vexation. He must have a share of the spirit of Christ, as he has succeeded with faith-healing, but the more moderate Christians prefer to keep away from him.”
“So you’re still a Christian, then?” I said in surprise.
“I think I’m a better Christian than before,” said Hierex. “My soul is at peace, I have a good wife and my affairs are going well. A messenger called Apollus came here to Corinth. He had studied the Jewish scripts in Alexandria and received instruction from Aquila and Prisca in Ephesus. He’s a compelling speaker and soon had many followers. So we have an Apollo sect which holds special meetings, eats together and keeps away from the other Christians. On Prisca’s advice, he was received unnecessarily warmly here, before we had any idea of his ambitions for power. Fortunately we are visited by Cephas, the most important of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. He has traveled in many places to calm his mind and intends to go to Rome in the spring to prevent the old quarrels there being repeated when the exiled Jews return. I believe in him more than anyone else, for his teaching comes straight from the mouth of Jesus of Nazareth.”
Hierex spoke so respectfully of Cephas that I decided to seek him out, although I was already heartily sick of both Jews and Christians. This Cephas was originally a Galilean fisherman whom Jesus of Nazareth, about twenty-five years earlier, before I was born, had taught to fish for people. It had no doubt been difficult, for Cephas was an ignorant man of the people and could speak hardly a word of Greek so that he had to have an interpreter with him on his travels. But I thought I had every reason to meet a man who had been able to make Hierex pious, for even Paul with all his Jewish wisdom and faith had not been able to perform such a miracle.
Cephas lived with one of the Jews who recognized Christ, a man who traded in fish preserved in oil and who was by no means wealthy. When I went into his house, to which Hierex had taken me, I had to screw up my nose at the smell of fish and the grating sand which the many visitors had left behind them on the floor. It was a cramped and dimly lit room, and Cephas’ Jewish landlord greeted us uneasily, as if he were afraid my presence would sully his house.