Strephon Kaplan-Williams Books

"We both agree that sexual ecstasy is a great experience," said the students. Then the less handsome student asked, "Are we not being cruel in discussing the ultimates of life when this man obviously is suffering his final demise?"

"On the contrary," said the older philosopher, "And maybe this is hard to take? Happiness comes from living a life of virtue. If this man has lived a virtuous life, though he suffers the pains of the body, yet can he be happy now in his dying. For through virtue he has known happiness and that will not desert him now, I do observe. Most men die like dogs being whipped and martyred by their masters. A few greater men die real deaths, not attached to their animal bodies. These few are the men of importance who can truly call themselves men!"

"Sobering words," said one student, to which the other agreed. "Yes, sobering words."

"Further," said the philosopher. "We cannot be in this person's body and soul, so we cannot be his emotions nor his fate, so why should we pity him? Answer! Why should we not pity him, as the common people here are doing?"

"There but for the gods go I?"

"You do err. You are here in your own fate and body."

"Yet the common people do identify their own lot with that of fellow other creatures?" said the other student.

"Exactly!" said the philosopher.

"And?" said both the students together.

"And? And what?," said the philosopher. "The eternal And! Why not stay with Now, now, now? Why go on? Leave your "and's" for later!"

After the pause the philosopher gave his awed students, he went on to say, " If a man fully accepts whatever is happening to him, then truly he is a happy being. Yet, if he resists whatever is happening to him, that resistance to his reality will make whatever condition he is in ten times more intense. It is the law and principle of our existence here on earth. It is how things work. We cannot question or change it. We can only school ourselves to go along with it all."

"To go along with whatever is happening," echoed the handsome student.

"To go along with whatever is given us in life and to make something of it?" said the slightly bent, almost hunchbacked student. "Is that the true philosophy?"

"The truth is what you practice and the results that come in. This is philosophy merged with experience. What you experience in this life is what you deal with, no matter what you may think about it. This is the view of our Stoic teachers of the past, Zeno, included."

The upside-down man again convulsed, sighed, farted, the stench coming from him seemingly stronger than ever to those who dared stand close by and observe his dying.

The crowd of about ten had stayed longer than they had expected, drawn not just to the dying but the debate of the three philosophers in their midst, obviously men of learning in the Greek way and not so much Roman at all, except that they seemed to speak the elevated Latin of the wealthier classes from whom they themselves took work and sustenance, except for the daily allotment of grain given to those who had proven themselves Rome's citizens.

“Who is this man who is being crucified?” asked a tall male in the group of spectators.

“I know he is called Peter," said a shorter man. "They say in the neighborhood that he knew the Christ. He knew personally the son of God and betrayed him. Now look at him, strung up on a cross like a scarecrow to frighten the birds and the likes of me!”

“He is insignificant. Don’t worry about him!” said an overdressed man from the group.

“Pity though," said still another. "What a way to die. They just dragged him here an hour ago from the house of Christians, four burley soldiers and their centurion, pulling him by the hair through the street over shit, other crap, broken pottery lying there, to this little park and strung him up. What an end! Now they have the cross set up maybe more are coming to it after this one is gone?”

“It is not how you die that is important,” said the stoic philosopher to the small crowd.

The tall spectator thought, but did not say it aloud, His students are only sixteen. Should they be seeing this? Is this a class, the place to discuss philosophy?

The middle-aged philosopher went on, while pulling at his toga again, “It is not how you die but how you live that is important. This is all that counts. In the end we are all offal and dung, not even a fit meal for the dogs that howl at us in the day and in the night. Only fit for the black devils of the sky with their crooked necks and hooked beaks to tear your dead eyes out if the soldiers leave you up there that long.”

“It must really hurt,” said the handsome one of the two philosopher's students to those surrounding them. “The pain! I could not stand the pain!”

“That is why you are entrusted in my care to learn philosophy," interrupted the philosopher, "my handsome Cassias. Your father wants me to impart the virtues with which you are to live this life so you do not just ride on your looks, or stay in love with yourself. See how this crucified man agonizes? Yet he neither screams out nor complains. Even pain, my young friend, is just pain. It is not life. We are more than life. We are what we become when we develop character.”

Some said, "Hear! Hear!" as if acknowledging the elegant philosopher was worlds above them in elevated life.

“But father teacher," said a youngster in the crowd, "He is so helpless, so out of control of his life! I could not stand it!”

“With Stoic philosophy you can stand anything once you have diligently trained your mind. Such a cross as these Christians carry is bearable, even to dying and death . . . “

“Wait! He speaks!” said the bent-shaped student.

“Our Father, glorious is your name,” slurred out the big man on the strange cross. Being pinned by his ankles, wrists and penis upside down meant too much pressure must be collapsing his lungs and insides. He had to push his words out now but seemed to want to communicate, to express himself in the company of men. Strange as the sight might be, his balls hanging loosely with their sack reaching almost to his belly button, no one who stayed looked away from him but took it all in, demonstrating that he was a person still, it seemed.

What had been done to him was Roman custom, as they well knew. Killings like this were commonplace for criminals impaled on crosses along wide avenues and in little parks like this.

Everyone there knew the custom, of course, for crucifixions were as common as weeds in those days of the demon infested, crazy Nero, whom nobody dared talk about because of his spies everywhere.

“Your Empire come on earth as it is already in heaven,” said the dying, upside down man, pushing hard to get out his breath.

Obviously, the soldiers had whipped him in the park. The lacerations across his chest and belly ran red, as if some giant of a monster in hairy, human form, but with sharp, bear claws, had, over-wrought and enraged, mauled him.

“How will I be able to buy food and eat this day?” said the handsome one of the philosopher’s students.

“Is this your first crucifixion?” asked the tall member of the crowd.

“The first I have stayed at. Any others that appeared in the streets of Rome I would look away from, hide in my father’s toga when little. I did not want to see them! I feared I could not eat for days!”

“Watch out!” said the philosopher. “Or you may become like him. Those who react to such tragedies may be seeing their own deaths in the future. I charge you, don’t identify with this man! Don’t identify with this death!”

“How can I not?” said the student to his master teacher.

Those in the small crowd who heard the exchange admired the looks of the student, slender but with wide shoulders and a classic, muscled body you could see on statues. His face had the classic aquiline nose set below magnificently keen eyes. If I made love to him, the tall man thought, I would surely be with the gods the hour or two it would last. Why do I feel so sexual, especially at this time when a fellow human being is suffering so? The rawness of the experience tightened has stomach and with volition he pushed down his diaphragm and farted. Others startled looked his way and smirked, trying to hold back their death anxiety and wanting to laugh.

The distorted man pinned to his cross was mumbling still his words. He seemed to be repeating his sentences, as if they were to help him bear the painful contractions of his body and keep his mind focused on other things. The philosopher and his students stayed silent. The crowd followed their example and listened to the dying man and not to themselves, the living and the free. It was, of course, the general tone. "There but for the graces of the gods go I," the crowd knew well for the common saying that it was.

“Give us this day,” said the dying man, “our daily bread. Forgive us our wrongs we have done others as we forgive the wrongs done to us. Deliver us from the evil one . . .”

The man choked, he spit out yellowish bile. “My head is about to burst,” he said softly in his foreign, Greek tongue.

“Shall we go?” said the Stoic philosopher to his students. “All men die. It is how we live that counts!”

The man on the cross in the little park seemed so lonely there, sharing his intimacy, his body, his private parts, but most of all his agony and his faith in something still more ultimate than life itself. His body contracted some more, pulling at the bracing holding him to the makeshift wood, causing more regurgitation and loss of bodily fluids out his upside-down throat.

"He deserves his suffering. He is a criminal," said the short man. "He might well have given the orders to his followers to fire Rome."

“Are you sure? He certainly doesn't look like a criminal,” replied a donkey dealer, his little donkey pulling at his side.

"Just what does a criminal look like?" asked a woman, clearly defined in her features. "A long nose like the Jews?"

"We Romans have long noses," said the man with his donkey.

“Don’t you know?” said the tallest among them. “They are killing Christians. The Emperor blames the Christians for the great fire we have just had, but others say he has set the fire himself!”

In an instant, those watching walked quickly away, deserting the crucified man. The donkey bayed at the jerk of his halter. A woman of the streets had also been observing, looking a bit frayed around the lower parts of her eyes. A couple of the men noticed her in her rouged up face, and the tears in her eyes, but kept walking quickly on.

Fear ran at the people like rag-tag dogs following each, lean, bone-ribbed, tongues hanging out, and mean. The philosopher and his two students also disappeared, perhaps into the local marketplace for further instruction on objectifying life.

It was the Stoic way.

Prologue - part 1

Prologue - part 2