Read Online The Chiron Confession (Dominium Dei) by Thomas Greanias - Free Book Online Page B

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
    T he 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.