Strephon Kaplan-Williams Books

Podcast - Part 2 Prologue Jesus Novel

Coming in closely now, we see from the guttered old streets that the new sewers have not reached this part of town. The cloachael discharges, the shit of the hard working, are thrown from the front windows down into the street with its cobbled gutter, and heaven help the incautious or innocent rushing by below!

This is Rome. Having firmly affixed the white-haired man upside down in his final distortion, the soldiers had hurriedly left, sure that he would not be taken down, and even if so, little life would be left in him to survive because their biggest and youngest had been made to whip him with the lead coated thongs while his soldier companions laughed, unintelligent philosophers of pain and of evil in their own right.

Their Legion Centurion had ordered more work to be done, to find that day as many of the other Christians living in this poor area of Rome, crucify some, and bring the rest to the cages at the Circus Maximus to be imprisoned there until made a spectacle punishment for "hatred of humanity" as Nero's punisher had declared. Nero, ever afraid of the populace, wanted them to believe that these stupid Christians had caused the recent fire that burned a third of Rome at its very center.

Among the striding, ever-wary people a small group of white-togaed men stopped now before the crucified victim, strung up, upside down, in the tiny park they were about to pass on their way to a market nearby.

"Whew! What a sight! Smell that!" said one of the younger men, a handsome youth in simple, white toga.

"Let's hope he has had a good life," said his companion, keener in eye, but hunched in his bowed back from years of intense reading. "For now it is the end for him and he is definitely dying."

"Yet what cruel fate could have brought him to this?" asked his good-looking companion.

"Why see it that way?" suggested the older man that was with the two younger companions. "This experience may mark the manner of his death as cruel, even disgusting, yet why see his life as similar to his dying? Indeed! This is poor logic, as if because it rained yesterday it will rain again today, and again tomorrow. Surely, if we think always in similarities we will never recognize the contrasts?"

The toga of the older man had a crimson border, as was the custom of the time, to signify status, a reputation for all to respect.

"Let us hope he has loved life and experienced the pleasures of the body," said the handsome young student. "For certainly, now he must suffer his death alone."

"We all live and die alone," said the older man, for he was now revealing himself as the philosopher he certainly was. "That is the essence of this life," he added, pulling at his toga to straighten it. "It's not important how we die, since we all die, but how we have lived!"

"A fine teaching," added a short man in brown worker's shift, tied with a rope at his waist. "Yes, we all die. That is a wonderful truth, but is it not obvious?"

The older, regal philosopher ignored what seemed to be a common worker. Though this menial might be able to read and do numbers, what could he know of high thought that the Greeks we masters in?

"You don't answer me," said the donkey man. "I might as well be talking to my ass here, and I dare say, he probably understands the problem a lot better than you think you do. I still ask you, if all men die, why is it not important how they die? Is not a man's death the result of what he has done in life? Cannot a man redeem his life even as he is dying?"

The others in the crowd began to be intrigued at the thought of a confrontation that was occurring between these obviously two men of different classes. One did not know if this man with a donkey was slave or free, but did one dare to ask?

"What did our Cicero say?" Asked the man again, obviously agitated like from the passion of morning market day. "Cicero said, " Live your life in accordance with nature. We are not determined by fate but have choice in how we live life. This man is dying not because of Roman law or Nero's decree, but because the consequences of all his actions have led him to this point."

At this, visibly angry, the older philosopher gave reply. "The State knows best, for it is the only institution that is created for the good of all and has the power to keep society together functioning in its own best interest."

"Yes, but . . ." the donkey man interrupted.

"Don't interrupt me," the older man in toga kept going, "For to interrupt me is to interrupt a true philosopher, and you, Sir, are not dressed, nor do you have the respectful manner, of a true philosopher! If this man crucified and naked before us, his shit coming out of his ass, were just a man, then we would well have pity on him. But he is more than just a man, as we are also. He is a member of society and it is to society that he must act with respect. If society condemns this man through the office of the Emperor Nero, who am I to say this is wrong? I do not have the responsibility or the power that a true emperor has, so how can I possibly know what is justice for this man since I do not have the responsibility for society as a whole."

"You disgust me!" replied the man with the donkey. "I would soon trust myself to run an empire than to trust you to take care of my animals!"

"Ah, so it goes, does it? An animal himself can presume to know how to think correctly and make judgments on philosophers and kings? I erred in judgment, I see, even in responding to you!"

"If beggars would be philosophers, then philosophers would be beggars," said the donkey man. "I find not in you the thought that a man of the people can live by."

The man dressed in his brown, rough shift had no other to talk to because the togaed philosopher had moved away a bit, but did not leave the scene with his two students. Perhaps there was more to teach here, since that was his purpose in spending the day with his rich young learners.

None of the small crowd of observers entered the dispute, perhaps tamed by the fascination of the crucified before them. After all, could this man's fate belong to any one of them, such where the times?

"Ah, Cicero," said the handsome student to his teacher, talking quietly to be out of hearing range from the man with the donkey. "Brutus had him killed, didn't he?"

"Yes," said the philosopher, also speaking softly but still irritated. "Brutus had him murdered because Cicero spoke publicly against him several times. Brutus was a cruel man. He had the assassins cut off Cicero's head and hands and nail them over the rostrum where Cicero gave many of his speeches as a great orator and politician."

"How ghastly!"

"Yet this is the body," replied the philosopher. "We must remember that the body is a work of nature and not of the gods. What man creates in art and literature and public works comes not from the animal but from the gods."

"It is hard to understand."

"Not really, when you accept all nature as it is, you also accept what is not in nature but comes from that heightened state wherein the gods inhabit the minds of true statesmen and philosophers. Brutus had the head and hands of Cicero the dead animal nailed to the rostrum, same as this man's cross here. Brutus in all his power and anger could not nail up for public ridicue the Great Man's ideas which are still living to this day."

"Well said, well said!" replied respectfully another member of the small group who stayed congregated around the dying man.

"Not to have loved fully?" the handsome student unexpectedly said to his companions. "Not to have loved fully and to come to this? It is no good way to die? I feel it in my gut, in my balls even, like they could be cut off me in an instant if enemies held me down and I could not protest or flee."

"Who says?" his companion student questioned. "I am uncomfortable here, but who knows what this man's life was like?"

"Is it not true," said his companion back, "that the manner of our death is a direct consequence of how we have lived our lives, at least after the point we have become conscious as an adult, and so have choice in what we do with our lives?"

"Who knows," answered their philosopher teacher. "I have seen all manner of death in my time. Thus this crucifixion does neither disgust me nor horrify me. Death is death, however it is meted out to one. No way to die is better than any other. When the light goes out and no one can light it again, the light is simply out and the darkness reigns. However the light is put out it is all the same to a true philosopher who has separated himself out from his animal body."

"Still," said the handsome student, "to suffer so the end of your life this way? Will he have known the pleasures of the body? Will he have found love with another man, for instance? How could he have let this cruel suffering fate happen to him? A man is his fate, or nothing makes sense!"

"Ah," said the philosopher. "Does anything ultimately make sense?"

"Everything makes sense if you believe to be true what you think. Is this not an Ordered Universe which reason, made up of the same principles and laws, can know? But this is not my concern?" stated the handsome student. "Right now we are debating about the nature of a man's life. Whether he has been with man or woman, if he truly enjoyed these experiences, would he then have let himself come to this, loving instead the pleasures of the body and the peace and harmony that often makes these possible?"

"Men don't love women. They love other men," said the older philosopher, their teacher. "This is natural. Men fall in love with those who have similar virtues to themselves. We always fall in love with that which is most alive in us."

"And women likewise?" asked the bent, less appealing of the two students.

"Women fall in love with other women for the same reasons that they can naturally celebrate together their similar virtues. To a woman another woman is the most beautiful. To a man another man, especially young, is the most beautiful. Is it not obvious from all the statues of our gods and warriors that adorn this great city that is Rome?"

"Yes, it is obvious," said both students, making their quick agreements and privately glancing at each other. "Why look over there at that naked warrior statue!" said the handsome student. "Is that Aeneas, our Roman Heroic ideal? Compare such noble perfection to the distorted and hairy body of this naked man here. Are we not attracted to the opposite sex because we do not think our own sex as beautiful?"

The crucified man's head flopped a bit because of more shuddering to his belly. He let out sounds, gasping, short sounds, maybe words.

"Let's be quiet," said a person in the crowd, "so we can hear the man. He deserves at least our respect this much!"

"In this life," the middle-aged philosopher went on, "the educated man associates with his own sex and develops the virtues that are common to men. When we as men mate together, are we not evoking the gods? Is not our sexual ecstasy our greatest communion with the gods that rule us all?"

"Shush . . ." said another of the crowd. The dying man seemed to be struggling upside down to even raise himself, impossible as that was. The anticipation to some was intense.

"What is he trying to do now?" another almost whispered.

"No one is denying that," said the handsome student in his normal voice to his teacher and companion. "Yet I can't help wondering if there is not more to life than sex? I have sex with my wife . . .."

"That is not the same thing!" interrupted their teacher. "To know the gods is the ultimate experience, don't you agree? Your wife is your companion and helper on earth. She does not lead you to the gods."

"Can't they be quiet?" said someone.

"They should respect the dying," said another. read more ... (part 3)