Athanasius felt ill in the pit of his stomach. His head started spinning. “No, your excellency,” he said with shortness of breath. “No.”
“He shall die tomorrow morning,” Domitian announced. “After a night in the Tullianum prison.”
Well, that was that. Only those sent to die went to the Tullianum, and he had never heard of a last-minute reprieve.
“Furthermore,” Domitian said, raising his right hand in divine retribution. “Your Lord and God decrees that all inscriptions referring to Athanasius of Athens must be effaced, and productions of his work cease immediately from any public venue, and all copies of his plays be removed from every library throughout the empire and burned. May his memory be erased from our generation, and may the next never know the name of Athanasius of Athens.”
“No!” Maximus cried out and rushed to Domitian, falling to his knees. It was a spectacle that Athanasius knew only put the senator’s own life in jeopardy. “Mercy, Your Humanitas! Mercy!”
“Caesar shall show his mercy to the people of Rome by condemning to death the treacherous Chiron of Dominium Dei, who calls himself Athanasius of Athens.”
Athanasius glared at Domitian as the Praetorian moved in to take him away. If he was indeed lost, Athanasius decided to make the most of it while he still had a voice, a last chance to inspire the silent majority around him with a call to action.
“Let no one mourn for me!” Athanasius shouted, shocking the magistrates. “For surely you shall follow me, all of you, as long as this monster lives!”
He saw Ludlumus and the prefect Secundus exchange cool glances. Not that they or anyone else besides Helena and Maximus would dare intervene on his behalf.
Domitian himself looked bewildered at this public challenge, but glancing around seemed to realize he had already meted out his justice and there was nothing to be gained from arguing with a condemned man.
“The man who killed the gods in his plays can’t save himself!” Ludlumus announced to nervous laughter.
“Your gods won’t save you, Domitian!” Athanasius shouted to the back of Caesar as he was dragged out the side exit. “Neither will the stars! You mock those you will follow shortly, and we will be waiting for you!”
But the doors had closed, shutting him off from the ears of everyone forever. The last thing he saw was Ludlumus waving goodbye with an old hand signal from the theater:
Exit, stage left.
VII
The death march to the Tullianum prison ended in the Forum at the base of Capitoline Hill, where the ancients used to quarry. Indeed, the prison was really nothing but a hole in the ground to hold very important prisoners until their execution. Common-day criminals were usually marched up the hill’s adjoining Gemonian Stairs and beheaded, their skulls bouncing down the flight of stone steps like so many melons. So in some ways his stay at the Tullianum was an honor. He was about to join the ranks of foreign generals like Jugurtha and Vercingetorix, and domestic conspirators like Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura and the apostles Peter and Paul.
The prison was underground with two levels. The guards were on the upper level, the prisoners kept in the lower level. The walls were made of blocks of volcanic tuff rock. To Athanasius, who was being processed on the upper level, the effect was that of standing in the bottom of a small pyramid with a flat top.
“Interesting accommodations,” Athanasius quipped to mask his horror. “Do you have any better?”
The warden, a surly old fart with a face that looked like a smashed melon, told the Praetorian escort that the prisoner’s armor had arrived. With a mixture of dread and curiosity, Athanasius suddenly wondered what cruel fate Ludlumus had devised for him in the arena tomorrow.
The guards unlocked his chains to strip him of his toga and tunic. Now he stood naked but for his loincloth. They slipped a red tunic over his head, and over that a centurion’s subarmalis or leather armor.
“Look at this, Chiron,” the warden said, reading from a note. “You get a ‘belt of truth’ and ‘breastplate of righteousness.’ Me thinks this is some of the ‘spiritual armor’ that one of our former inmates, Paul, used to instruct his followers in Ephesus to sport in spiritual battle. Too bad it couldn’t save his head from Nero’s ax man. But I’ll bet you make a fine spectacle in it tomorrow.”
They tied a legionary belt around his waist, then strapped him into a heavy lorica segmentata with polished armored plates. Athanasius knew the gleaming plates were for effect in the arena, to shine under the beating sun and highlight his own blood once the blade of a sword or spear had slipped through the plates.
Ludlumus was going to make him fight to the death. The depths of this impending public spectacle of his humiliation had now moved him beyond self-pity and a sense of loss to pure, unadulterated rage. He knew in his heart that this was the last moment before the arena that he would be free of chains, and despite the odds of one man against four guards — two Praetorian, two prison — and a warden, he would get no better.
The warden said, “You’ll get your ‘shield of faith’ and ‘sword of the spirit’ tomorrow, just before you’re launched into the arena. For now, take the ‘helmet of salvation.’”
Athanasius took the centurion’s helmet from the warden. It had brass accents and the infamous red plume. The plume, he knew, was less for décor than for the optical effect of making a centurion look taller.
“You know, I wore a helmet like this once to a costume party with my girlfriend, the model Helena,” he told the guards, and he could tell by their response that they all knew of Helena and had probably fantasized about her every time they passed a statue in her image. “Funny thing is, my eyes still only reached the tip of her nose, and I was staring at her nostrils the whole evening.”
They started laughing at the comic playwright, who was certainly different from the usual vermin. But as they laughed, Athanasius took the helmet and smashed the warden’s head. The warden cried out as his face split in a bloody gash.
“A considerable improvement,” Athanasius said, grabbing the sword from the warden’s side and spinning around in time to drive it into the gut of the oncoming Praetorian from behind. Athanasius put his foot to the stomach of the Praetorian and pushed him into the other one. They both fell back onto the stone floor.
The two remaining prison guards circled Athanasius with a long chain between them, lingering beyond the reach of his sword. They crisscrossed him with the chain, tightening it around him.
Athanasius rushed the closest guard while he could and tackled him to the ground. He ripped off the guard’s helmet and began to smash his head with it when he heard the clank of chains. He felt something heavy and blunt hit him in the head from behind, then he blacked out.
Athanasius awoke in the darkness of the dungeon below, chained to the wall in his heavy armor. At one time prisoners had to be lowered through the floor of the upper room. But he had a dim recollection of being dragged in his armor down a flight of stone steps to this dungeon, all to the murderous threats of the bellowing warden.
His head throbbed inside its “helmet of salvation,” and his shoulders drooped from the weight of his armor. His body felt dead to the world, his spirit crushed from the realization that he was about to depart this earth with so many unfinished dreams. The end always came more swiftly than the characters in his plays ever expected, and so it was with his own life.
In the silence he heard only the distant sound of running water somewhere, and then made out a small cistern drain in the dimness. It was probably connected to the Cloaca Maxima — Rome’s central sewer known as the Great Drain.