EPILOGUE
Now you know my history, Gabrielle, and my role in the Dei and in the assassination of Domitian. I am only grateful that the wrath of Rome’s angels has not come to pass, and I pray that with the shift in caesars you will escape judgment.
As for me, I have indeed come to the end of my life, but I have failed to finish my race. I have fought the wrong fight and done more evil in the name of good and of God than I ever imagined in my former life as the hedonist and playwright Athanasius of Athens.
This is my confession as Chiron, general of the infernal order that calls itself Dominium Dei.
But even if few remember the past, and the future should be forgotten by those who come after it, I take comfort in this revelation: from generation to generation, God has granted a place of repentance to all who would listen.
There was Noah who repented and was saved with the animals. There was Jonah who repented and preached repentance to the Ninevites, and they repented and were spared. Rahab, the harlot of Jericho, signaled her repentance by hiding the Israelite spies and hanging a scarlet cord in her window, saving her family from the city’s destruction. This cord was a sign of the redemption that would flow through the blood of Jesus to all those who believe and hope in God.
You were that place of repentance for me.
You taught me how nature continually proves that there shall be a future resurrection. Day and night declare to us a resurrection, as light gives way to darkness and darkness gives way to light. The fruits of the earth also declare the resurrection, as the seed dies in the ground only to rise up again as a vine bearing many grapes.
I may not be long for this world, Gabrielle, but thanks to you I now live for the next.
May you continue to bring forth your fruit in your season and provide shade and comfort to others. To God our savior be all glory, dominion and power, both now and forever.
Clement of Rome
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Many readers will be surprised to learn that the essential events of the Dominium Dei trilogy are, in fact, historical. Even the attack on the corpse of the astrologer Ascletario by wild dogs was for real and recorded by the Roman historian Suetonius (c. 69—c.122 AD) in his book The Life of Domitian.
The Emperor Domitian of Rome died at exactly 9 o’clock on the morning of September 18th in the year 96 AD, just as the astrologers predicted at his birth and in the manner depicted in the pages of this novel. Immediately afterward, the Roman Senate condemned his memory to eternal damnation. Domitian’s name was erased from public monuments, and senators who had survived his Reign of Terror took up pens to condemn him in their histories of the era, from which much of Dominium Dei is derived.
The last apostle John was released from the island prison of Patmos under Domitian’s successor Nerva and lived out his remaining days in Ephesus, where the former “son of thunder” told anyone who would listen to love one another. Nerva, meanwhile, barely lasted as long as John, dying only two years after his reign began.
The true identity of Clement of Rome, the Church’s reputed fourth bishop after the apostle Peter, is far less certain. Jesuit scholars such as William Fulco, professor of Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, won’t even delve into speculation. Fulco is the historian of invaluable assistance to the author in the proper Latin translation and pronunciation of the title Dominium Dei, or “Rule of God.”
All the same, some historians dare speculate that Clement was actually the slain consul Flavius Clemens, and that the names became confused over the centuries. Other historians postulate that Clement was a freedman of Flavius Clemens, and still others another person entirely.
An unknown in history, perhaps, like the fictional playwright Athanasius of Athens.
Some accounts put the death of Clement close to or shortly after that of Domitian’s. But there is another account, favored by this author, that depicts Clement living a good bit longer than that.
In this account, Nerva’s successor Trajan banished Clement from Rome, and Clement went to Asia Minor, helping the churches there and performing several miracles worthy of Mucianus’s memoirs of the land. Later on, more than a decade after the events of Dominium Dei, Clement stood trial before his old friend, a very conflicted Pliny the Younger, who was now governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor. After a futile appeal on Pliny’s part to Caesar, Clement was martyred by being tied to an anchor and thrown from a boat into the Black Sea.
As for the centuries-old global conspiracy known as Dominium Dei, it doesn’t exist today in the 21st century. Never has, never will.
It’s all fiction…
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to express my deepest, heartfelt appreciation to the following individuals for their enormous encouragement and support during the extended preparation of the Dominium Dei Trilogy, beginning with my amazing wife and love of my life, Laura.
Thank you, John and Sandy Stonhouse, Stacey and Eric Wallen, Sarah and Firat Taydas, Craig and Jennifer Notari, Flint and Terrie Dille, Doug and Bonnie Lagerstrom, Jim Blew and Carole Randolph, Soon and Esther Chung, Claudia Pettit, Jimmy and Sonya Hodson, Mary Soler, and so many more.
You made the sun stand still so that I could finish this work.