“Sure. What I need is a hobby to take up my spare time,” I told him sarcastically. “Maybe I should go m for amateur theatrics.”
“What do you mean?”
I told him about Nero and the pageant.
“Wait a minute,” Putnam said slowly when I was finished. “Is this pageant built around the fall of Troy?”
“It’s Greek, from what I can gather. From what I saw, the theme might be the fall of Troy. Why?”
“Because your boy Nero has a great finale planned,” Putnam told me. “According to the history books, he’s going to do a solo on some kind of stringed instrument and burn Rome to the ground.”
“You mean that bit about Nero fiddling while Rome burns is for real? I always thought it was just a legend.”
“No, it really happened. But more important—and more appalling—is what happened because of it.”
“What’s that?”
“Nero will need a scapegoat to blame the fire on. He’ll pick the Christians. This will be the beginning of the persecutions of the Christians by the Romans. Among the first victims will be Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Thousands of Christians will be martyred. That pageant with its fiery musical conclusion will trigger one of the bloodiest periods of wholesale slaughter in history.”
“That’s too bad. But what can I do about it?”
“Well, you might hide his violin—-or whatever he calls the instrument he plays.”
After I hung up on Putnam, I thought about it. Once again, it seemed, I was right on the tip of one of the pivotal points of history. The slaughter of the Christians would give sanction to the most inhumane side of mankind’s nature. And that sanction would snowball down through the centuries until the logic of complete annihilation would gain acceptance. If possible, I had to stop it from happening. I had to stop Nero from setting Rome afire -- so that he would have no excuse to begin the persecution of the Christians.
The next day I saw my first early Christians. The squad of Roman soldiers I’d infiltrated was rousted out early in the morning to break up a gathering of Christians on the outskirts of the city. Although the persecutions hadn’t really begun in earnest yet—the days when Christian flesh would become a staple of leonine diet still lay in the future-—there was a Roman policy of harassment towards the sect and it was common procedure to disperse their meetings. The procedure this entailed was interesting to observe.
The Captain of the Roman legion approached the elderly gentleman who seemed to be the leader of the Christians. They had a long, polite conversation in which the ground rules were laid down for what was to follow. It was agreed that the Christians would be ordered to disperse and understood that they would refuse to do so. They would then be arrested. It was further understood that the Christians were completely committed to nonviolence and would resist arrest by nonviolent means only—which is to say that some of them might let their bodies go limp. Since they were nonviolent, there would be no unnecessary force used to make the arrests and certainly no brutality would be exercised by the Roman soldiers. A spot was agreed upon where the arrested Christians would be herded before being marched off to the calaboose. It was all supposed to come off very peacefully. At least that was the agreement between the establishment and the dissidents.
What actually occurred was this: The Christian spokesman went back to his followers and explained what was to happen. The Roman Captain went back to his men and ordered them to follow him to where the Christians were gathered. When they reached them, the Captain gave the order for the Christians to disperse. The Christians sat down on the ground, locked arms and started singing a hymn. The Captain turned to his men, waved his spear high in the air and shouted-—
“All right, men, let’s move these mothahs!”
The Roman soldiers moved in on the Christians. They would grab one who had gone limp, haul him over to the area designated for arrest, and then order him to stand up. I watched the pattern repeated a few times. “Stand up!” a soldier would order a Christian. The Christian would attempt to stand and a soldier on the other side of him would kick him in the head. “All right! If you won’t stand up, We’ll make you!” A spear would rake a set of Christian ribs.
“I love you,” the Christian would sigh, trying to get to his feet. “I forgive you.”
This would drive the soldiers to renewed fury. “Take a bath!” they’d howl. They’d kick or club the Christian each time he tried to get to his feet. And each time he fell back down again, they’d order him to stand up.
Finally, all of the Christians who hadn’t bolted had been herded into the designated area. Primitive wooden sawhorses had been set up there to keep them together. These formed a square. Then the Roman soldiers removed the sawhorses from one side of the square. A small troop of Roman cavalry—-about six horsemen—immediately galloped into the area swinging clubs.
Throughout all of this, I faked the action without actually hitting anyone. When it was over, I turned to one of the other soldiers and asked him if perhaps we hadn’t been unnecessarily rough. His responses rang down the centuries.
“They shouldn’t have attacked us,” he said. “They’re supposed to be nonviolent.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “I saw at least three Christians deliberately hitting soldiers’ billies with the tops of their heads. But was it really necessary to trample them with horses?”
“They raise that kind of fuss, the horses get skittish. They shouldn’t torment the poor beasts.”
“Then you wouldn’t say you were guilty of brutality?”
“Brutality, hell! It was a splendid example of tactical riot control! I think we behaved with admirable restraint. I’ll bet the authorities compliment us for being so restrained in the face of provocation. These dissenters have to be made to realize that the right to dissent carries with it the responsibility to behave in an orderly fashion.”
I looked at the beaten, bedraggled and blood-soaked Christians being marched away by the soldiers. I wondered if they were more aware now of their “responsibility to behave in an orderly fashion.” I marveled at the faith that kept them from rising up and smiting their oppressors, the faith that prohibited them from meeting force with force, the faith that seemed to enrage the soldiers more than anything else about the Christians. It took guts to turn the other cheek so that one could be struck upon it. It always would take guts—whether the scene was Rome in 64 A.D., or Washington, Berkeley, or New York City in 1967. Guts!
Marching the prisoners back, I eavesdropped as one of them fell into conversation with a Roman soldier. The soldier, tough, grizzled looking, one of the more enthusiastic club-wielders a short while before, was now attempting a reasonable attitude towards a young Christian whose cheek was clotted with blood. The Christian seemed completely without animosity as he talked with the soldier.
“What I don’t understand,” said the soldier, “is just what it is you agitators want.”
“Peace,” the Christian told him.
“You don’t believe in fighting for your country?”
“I don’t believe in killing.”
“Wouldn’t you defend yourself if you were attacked?”
“I was attacked. I didn’t defend myself,” the Christian reminded him.
“That makes you a coward,” the soldier decided.
“If I ran away, I would be a coward. I didn’t run away.”
“What do you want to stir up trouble for?” the soldier tried a new tack.
“We don’t. We oppose the war in Britain and the conquests in Spain. Rome isn’t defending herself there. Rome is the aggressor. We believe that aggression is wrong.”