the star of Abram 阿巴兰之星

1.
Pharaoh Ramses was leading his army towards Kadesh. What a great army it was; with twenty thousand men and 3000 chariots, it was the largest army yet to have set out for battle.
Each chariot has a horse dragging behind it a wheeled platform on which stood the driver and two archers, plus a large stock of arrows; a thousand of these mobile shooting platforms can quickly go into formation, shooting an enormous row of arrows at the enemy. As the column of chariots moved forward on a plain, the horse hooves and chariot wheels raised a huge cloud of dust that could be seen from far away, long before they came within arrow range. Outnumbered, the enemy could only shiver with fear, and do the cowardly act of retreating behind city walls, bringing contempt upon themselves from gods and men, leaving the Pharaoh to declare victory over an enemy too timid to come out and fight.
But this time was different; the Hittites in Kadesh had an army nearly as large, with nearly as many chariots. Further, moving an army of this size across dessert and hills was no mean task; 3000 horses and chariots needed 3000 grooms to attend to them, and many other men, horses and carts were needed to carry provisions. Even then, it would take just a few days for the horses to eat up all the hay and men the food. Further, simply to ensure the whole army would get to Kadesh quickly, the Pharaoh had to divide it into four parts, three travelling over three separate mountain passes, and one going by sea, to arrive before Kadesh at the same time for battle.
As Ramses's corps descended down its coastal mountain pass, scouts sent ahead returned to report sighting the enemy camp down below; they were not cowardly, and had come out of Kadesh to meet him! However, a second group of scouts soon brought additional information: the camp had women, children, camels and goats; it was just a nomad tribe that happened to be camping near the battle site. When asked what banner signs the tribe displayed, the scouts drew a six cornered star: two triangles one pointing upwards and one downwards, one superimposed on the other.
The Pharaoh frowned; this reminded him of something; ah yes, the compass on right angle that the workmen building the pyramids left behind from hundreds of years ago, still on the rocks beside their now unused campsite. Then a third group of scouts returned, together with the chief of that tribe and a young maid, who spoke Egyptian. The chief, who gave his name as Joseph, son of Jacob and grandson of Isaac, and his tribe's name as Habiru, "from across the river", prostrated himself before the Pharaoh and, with the young maid translating, requested permission to take his tribe across the mountain pass onto Egyptian land, so that they could graze his animals there, since the grass on this side was about to be exhausted. This was a fairly common event, and requests were generally treated with leniency, though usually not on the eve of a great battle.
"You swear to obey our laws, treat our gods with respect and send your sons to live in our palace to guarantee your tribesmen's good conduct?"
"I do, Great Pharaoh"
"What gods do you swear to?"
"One that has no name and no place, but is everywhere and the greatest"
"Greater than the Pharaoh?"
"Our God's greatness manifests itself in many ways; whatever that is wonderful and grand in this world is by His doing, and we prostrate ourselves before it"
Ramses decided to accept this as adequate recognition of his own divinity - the Pharaoh might be a god on earth, but even he did not deny there might be greater gods in heaven he did not know about
"I accede to your request, if you join our side in tomorrow's battle though not as fighters; I want you to drive your wagons and animals along the riverbank and raise dust behind some of my chariots where the Hittites can see it"
When the battle ended in the afternoon of the next day, the Egyptians declared a great victory, since the brigades marching down the inland mountain passes and arriving by sea successfully repelled the Hittites' chariots that came out of Kadesh to ambush the army they thought they saw on the riverbank, but had to withdraw in haste when they were threatened with besiegement by new arrivals on three sides.
So the Habirus received permission to use the grassland on the Egyptian side, but they did not remain in Egypt for long. When their prince Moses, who grew up in the palace, refused to pay respect to some of the ceremonial procedures, it became impossible for the tribe to live there. They returned to the east.

2.
with his kinsmen, Joseph led his camels and goats towards the Nile, passing by the great temples at Karnak. What monumental constructions these were!
Most of Egypt is dessert, but through its middle flows the great Nile river, its water creating a long oasis from south to north. Every spring as the snow melted in the Ethiopian mountains, enormous amounts of water rushed down the blue Nile, causing the Nile in Egypt to flood over the land on both sides, and fertilizing the soil on the banks with rich silt. As the flood subsided, farmers planted the season's crops as if gods had given them the signal to start. Indeed, the Nile is the god that Egyptians worshiped as the bringer of life, the goddess Isis, whose brother/husband Osiris was the god of corn, who "died" each season but was brought back to life by Isis.
in many lands, snakes were worshiped because it hibernated in winter and emerged in spring, as if to signal the time to start planting; snakes also resembled the male organ, and when they coiled together to mate, they seemed to be signalling fertility to humans; yet they were mysterious objects, their limbless slithering movement puzzling to humans, and powerful since one single bite could kill a man in a matter of minutes; Egyptian kings wore headdresses in the shape of the cobra, to signal their power; but with the Nile's regular flooding each year, there was no need to wait for snakes to signal the spring; Nile was the one deserving worship
but the kings also worshiped the eagle; the sun god Ra, (and Ramses or Ra-mi-se meant Ra-on-earth) which was supposed to be incarnated on earth as kings of Egypt, had the head of a hawk; now and then, one would see an eagle snatching a snake in its claws and flying high into the sky, the snake futilely wriggling to be free of the grasp, sometimes to be dropped onto rocks below from hundreds of feet above and dashed to death, after which the eagle may pick it apart at leisure; Joseph also remembered seeing a bird that could not even fly, but was able to kick to death a black cobra whose bite could be so deadly to humans.
Yet humans could shoot down eagles with arrows, or tame hawks to be hunting helpers; it was a circle in which each was feared by one, and feared the other in turn; an endless circle.
The Habirus believed that the snake was evil; it was condemned to crawl on its belly all its life because it tempted humans to commit sin. But then, some snakes still managed to stand up, though only for a short time, when they were about to strike with their deadly fangs...
As the men and the herd, now on the opposite bank of the Nile, passed in the distance the equally monumental temples at Thebes and entered the green valleys to its south, he recalled hearing about caves that were opened high on the cliffs to provide tombs, instead of new pyramids, for the Kings and Queens, secret sites hidden away from thieves and grave robbers; after a royal personage's demise, the coffin and funeral goods would be carried upstream along the Nile in great barges, then carted from the river bank to the cliff tops above the caves, and finally lowered into them, before the entrances were sealed forever, leaving no signs where they might have been.
But now and then the workmen that dug the tunnels and burial chambers, then decorated the walls with words and pictures that glorified the buried personalities, would carve signs of their own somewhere nearby. Joseph found himself passing a few just then: the compass to draw circles superimposed on the right angle that drew squares, forming a six-cornered star - similar to yet different from his own clan's six-cornered star, made up of two closed triangles. He vaguely remembered a grand uncle telling him, when he was still a small child, that the clan emblem used to have two open triangles like the sign in front of him, but God ordered the sides closed. God also ordered Joseph's great grandfather Abram to change his name to Abraham, and to chant during prayers IAHOUEH instead of IAOUE; why? we did not know because we were only human
Joseph saw another sign carved on a rock: four snakes with their tails entangled; then one snake coiling in such a way that it swallowed its own tail - the endless cycle of life...

3
Joseph thought of the great pyramids, near the city of Memphis, where two of his sons lived with some of his kinsmen, hostages under the direct watch of the palace, for the good behaviour of his tribe.
With the fertile soil providing abundance to the people and freeing many workmen from the field, Egypt could undertake truly monumental construction projects. To build a pyramid, enormous amounts of limestone were dug from distant mountains, hewn into the right dimensions, and dragged to the site, where they were meticulously piled on top of one another to form the four sides meeting at the tip pointing up to heaven, showing the way for the soul of the Pharaoh to return to heaven; with their compass and ruler, the engineers in charge worked out what pieces of stone were needed and how they had to be piled up; they even knew how to build a south facing tunnel into the pyramid such that, on just one day each year, when the sun rose highest over the horizon, the ray of light from the sun would reach down to the mirror at the end of the tunnel, letting light to be reflected back from inside the pyramid to the sun - earth answering back to heaven!
The Pharaoh was divine, a god that descended to earth to rule over its people for a period of time; Egyptian gods were content to leave affairs on earth to be run by one of their own, demanding little from the people, unlike gods in some other places that had to be shown respect in grand, often bloodthirsty ways; in his clan's migrations, he had encountered cities that sacrificed every family's first child to the gods, or used 30 human hearts for a single day's worship, or drowned 10 of the most beautiful maidens as brides for the river god. Egyptian gods demanded none of those horrors, but to ensure the good passage of the Pharaoh back to heaven, he had to be buried in the right way, with enormous edifices and plentiful accompanying material.
Joseph's clan seldom stayed long in one place, and could worship its own God in its own way without contamination; but now and then some of its people joined the others, maybe voluntarily, maybe forced like his hostage kinsmen near Memphis; instead of herding, they had taken up farming like the people around them; how long would they be allowed to continue worshiping in their current way? wondered Joseph
but God would decide; He would know what was to be

Laozi 老子

1.
It was morning, and Laozi was entering his reception hall in the Zhou Archival Office for his day's work; as he approached his official mat (chairs were not used in China before the Tang Dynasty; till then people knelt on cushions placed on mats, a practice still followed in Japan), his pupils and attendants standing on the two sides bowed low, and his chief clerk placed the manuscript he was to annotate on the low table in front of his cushion. As he seated himself, the clerk whispered

"Your former pupil Kong Qiu will be coming to pay his respects shortly"

"Oh yes my best student, the son of the celebrated general"
"Except that..."
"I know; his father was nearly 70 when he was born and people say his mother conceived him taking part in the Ni Hills Fertility Festival the year before"
"Quite an orgy I hear"
"It is uncommon for Zhou clansmen to pray for children at such shrines, but the Songs are not of the clan and are free to follow different customs"
They stopped talking, as Confucius was announced and entered with two attendants. He bowed low before Laozi, while his attendants prostrated themselves on the floor; Confucius made a motion to do the same but was stopped by Laozi's gesture in reply, indicating that Confucius was considered to be an equal rather than a subordinate
"Pray be seated"
"Oh Sir perhaps I ought..."
"Not at all; once I was your teacher; now you are a learned man in your own right and might even have things to teach me; no thing is constant"
"But 'nothing' is constant"
"Ah I see you have read my new book"
"I have indeed; a copy was presented to my Duke by the Royal Emissary; a truly profound piece of work"
"Well it summarizes my life's thoughts and observations, to leave behind as I retire soon from this office; I am glad you came in time to see me still here; I was hoping you could have come earlier"
"I very much wished to, but my bereavement..."
"My sympathies, and may the senior lady's rest be eternally peaceful; but I believe she passed away some years ago?"
"More than three, but we Shang desendents maintain the tradition of a three-year mourning period"
"Ah yes the great Shangs; and your clan the Kongs keep up the traditions, just as the Songs still maintain the Shang shrine and honour their heavenly ancestors; we the Li clan, domiciled in Chen State and descended from the Great Shun, try to live up to our particular past also"

2
Yes the Shangs, the cattle drovers who learned to breed horses and forge bronze weapons, rode down from the north on their chariots and was all conquering; they built their great palaces and tombs in Anyang, and filled them with bronze utensils and jade artifacts; a truly impressive tribe, but they lost their mandate of heaven one day, when the son of the King's brother in law, whom the King first promoted and then executed, led a small army to the east in vengeance and defeated the 10-times larger Shang army almost effortlessly. No thing is constant, indeed.
History is always written by the victors. Zhou historians came up with numerous accounts of the tyranicaly rule of the final Shang King, known as Shou; he was said to drink excessively (a charged also leveled against all Shang nobility), failing to perform sacrifices to his ancestors in the correct way, listening to his concubines in making decisions relating to the state, killing his vassals over trivial issues, executing his loyal ministers who tried to provide restraining advice, using cruel forms of torture and execution, opening the belly of a pregnant woman to find out the sex of the fetus, and chopping off the feet of a man wading through the river in winter without showing fear of cold to see what's so special about him.
No doubt some of charges had factual basis, but one particular charge was certainly true: he was said to amuse himself by watching naked men and women chasing each other in the woods where ponds of wine and stacks of meat were available to encourage wild abandon: this approximately described the fertility festivals of the old Shenlong tribesmen, who had lived in Northern China for thousands of years before the Zhous came along, and who had already been successively ruled by the Yellow Emperor dynasty, assuming you count Yao and Shun as his family, the Xia dynastry started by Yu, and the Shang dynasty, always maintaining their old way of life, which the Zhous found hard to understand. The practical Romans and the abtract thinking Hebrews had the same uncomprehending view of the more artistic and romantic Greeks. However, the same fertility festivals continued to be held in various of Zhou vassal states where the Shenlong descendents were predominant, and occasionally even the Zhou clan people joined in. Folk poems collected by the Zhou archival office, which Confucius later edited, had many pieces of a romantic, almost erotic, nature, which later Confucian scholars, living in a more repressed age, found highly embarrassing.
After the battle, the victorious Zhous were themselves surprised and almost unsure what to do, but the Zhou King's brother, the Duke of Zhou, had brains for statecraft as well as war. He gathered the defeated Shang subjects at a site between the Luo and Yi rivers, made them build the new city Luoyang, storing in the town the nine great bronze cauldrons for the nine territories, and distributed farming land to the Shang subjects, after putting a strong garrison in the town and putting the King's relatives as lords in surrounding states of Qi, Lu, Wei and Zheng, while setting up the Shang King's brother in Song to maintain the Shang ancestral shrine. Everyone had "face" and could live in peace thereafter.
The Duke of Zhou also devised the Zhou Conventions, specifying the right conduct for lords, knights and officials, even the King himself: he regularly received lords in audience and banquet, and went on inspection tours, to confirm their lord-vassal relationship; lords and subjects in each state together worshiped their ancestral gods, to show their family affinity; and the King/Lords all took part in the Plow Ceremony to pay respect to agriculture, the Shooting Ceremony to honour the soldier, the Drink Ceremony to bow to the Elders, the School Ceremony to honour learning and scholarship... The states sent children of lords and knights to the Zhou capital to learn from the books in the Archival Office about rituals and stately conduct, so that they went back to become state officials and perform their duty in accordance with the Zhou Conventions; unlike the Shangs, who left the various tribes to govern themselves as long as they presented the right tributes to the royal court (in bronze, jade, silk, slave workers, pretty women...), the Zhous actually had a national government
But that too fell apart; the Kings and Lords failed in their duties, most seriously in failing to always maintain the proper system of succession, because young concubines kept trying to supersede the official heirs with their own sons; it was such a sibling conflict, with the King You driving away his heir, who then received help from his maternal grandfather, and barbarians, to fight his father, that caused the Zhous to lose their wide western territories. Today the Zhou King could only command Luoyang itself.

3.
"now that your bereavement is over, will you be taking up a Lu State appointment?"
"Yang Huo suggested this to me, and I am still considering."
"That's the Steward of the Ji household?"
"That's correct; Lord Ji has entrusted the entire clan affairs to him, and as Lord Ji is the Duke's Chancellor, Yang Huo has also taken charge of state affairs on behalf of Lord Ji"
"That's quite a large role for a household steward; I believe he is well disposed towards your good self?"
"It appears to be so; he honoured my household by paying respect to my mother at her wake - it was during this visit that I heard from him about the great banquet Lord Ji gave for all the knights of his clan, though I could not be a guest myself; immediately after the end of my bereavement, his messenger presented me with a roasted hog"
"Now that is a major gift, the shrine offering category; I trust you were obliged by convention to pay him a visit to express thanks for the gift?"
"Indeed, but I visited his manor when he was absent, and merely left my calling card without an audience"
"Ah...a neutral gesture..."
"But it so happens I encountered his entourage on the way home so we did have a conversation; he reminded me of the crime of wasted talent not put at the disposal of the state, and the pressing of time"
"very earnest search for talent; I am sure he has high esteem for you; but you are still considering? perhaps you prefer to take up appointment in somewhat different circumstances?"
Confucius felt somewhat nervous at the question; he glanced at his two attendants and wondered whether any of this conversation would get reported to Yang Huo one day; Yang Huo's arrogant usurpation of the powers of his betters might soon lead to his downfall, but in the mean time one could hardly say so; now my student Yan Hui is a mere boy, scholastic and innocent, while my deputy Zi Lu might be a bit impulsive, but is surely loyal. As for Laozi's people...
"of course, as the recipient of a 1000 bushel state allowance, I am obliged to be of service, but my training classes may be considered sufficient service already"
"and I have seen the material you edited for the students' benefit; they were very well done; you have extracted the most important parts of the history, poetry and divination books and put them on just 3000 bamboo slices, so that a student can learn them all; I wish our own archive had enough students to justify that kind of effort; more students also mean more people to help out with the editing and compilation"
"In any case, any official appointment I undertake will be in accordance with Zhou Conventions"
"I am so glad to hear this; you know this might be considered old fashioned and bookish these days"
"but necessary"
"books capture the sages' words, but not their spirits, not their deeds; we read the books, but we need to feel their spirits and trace their deeds"
"to follow the Tao; but what is the Tao?"

4.
Laozi gave Confucius a toothless smile; then stuck out his tongue.
"I see that the hard has decayed, but the soft has remained"
"Very good; you see that jade dragon?"
"which swallows its own tail? the end is also the beginning? the Tao goes on and on?"
"but a step more; where does the world come from?"
"in the beginning there was the void"
"and from nothing arose everything"
"now I see what you meant by 'nothing' is constant, because nothing is everything"
"and therein lies the Tao; too much will turn into too little; clever is dumb; the strongest is the one who needs nothing"
"so it would be futile for me to aspire to office?"
"not at all; we are thing, not nothing, and we live in a world of thing; but when we have thing and do thing, our spirit should be with nothing"
"..."
"governing a state is like cooking a tender fish; turn it too many times, and it turns into a pile of mess"
"..."
"the more clever the people, the less governable is the state; only the ignorant are blissful; the wise, like yourself, are full of burden; cast off your egoistic desires and your spirits may soar free"

Pilate's clean hands 匹拉提两手干净

1.
Pontius Pilate, the Roman Pro-Consul for Judea, was in his study looking over several Greek manuscripts. Frowning, he stared at some pictures on the papyrus rolls spread out on the table before him, then read the text to see whether it explained the items he saw in the diagrams, with difficulty, since his Greek was only moderately good. Occasionally sipping from a flask of wine next to him and wiping off the sweat on his hands with a towel- after 15 years in Judea he was still not used to the summer heat - to avoid staining to sheets, he gave the picture of a person hard at work. Actually, these were not official documents at all, but books of mythology lent to him by his Greek secretary Cosius; however, mythology was about gods, and many Greek gods were found to be the same as Roman ones, so were to be treated with respect. Therefore, it was no idle pursuit either.
In fact, all gods were to be treated with respect, however primitive and ignorant the people who worshiped them might seem to be. In Judea especially there was this Yahweh/Yehover that supposedly had no name (but what about Yahweh/Yehover? was that a name or not?), no shape, no place, yet was everywhere and all powerful. It all made sense to the Jews, but was beyond a Roman mind to comprehend. But even the Roman governor, commander of its all conquering legion, dared not question the meaningfulness of such a concept; even the Greek sophists, who liked to debate about all kinds of nebulous subjects, steered clear of the topic in front of the Jews. Did not King Antiochus Epiphanius stir up serious trouble for himself when he tried, like a good Greek that worshiped the perfection of the human body (because it was in the shape of the gods), to stop Jews from disfiguring their bodies by circumcision, and to make them worship statues of himself? The Jews actually managed to expel Antiochus's army from Judea, but it was the Romans that ultimately benefited; they had a system that accommodated all the different religions, despite all the currents of discontent that lay just beneath the surface: moderation and pragmatism - you believe in your own rightness, but try not to question that of others, within certain limits; Roman peace has its price - farmers and traders are left alone to do their business their own way, but paid taxes so that the upkeep of the legions can be taken care of - but it kept all kinds of excesses in check; if not for the Romans, King Herod might still be carrying out his baby sacrifices, and his daughter Salome might still be offering up human heads to her gods in her dance rituals.
Yes the Jews kept talking about a Messiah that would come and deliver them, from the Roman rulers presumably though they did not say it in so many words. Now and then a new "messiah" would come along and make a mob get all excited, and the Roman governor had to deal with the situation; he had to judge whether the fellow presented a serious threat to peace, and one to Roman peace in particular. Most of the time, the fellows were just harmless idiots and could be left alone; when action had to be taken, he always tried to let the Jewish leaders handle the matter themselves, first because they were the people who understood the situation more closely; second because it was best not to take sides in other people's religious issues. But there were times these soft options could not be applied and the Roman fist had to take off its kid glove.
Judea was a small province, reasonably prosperous, in fact the Jews called it the land of milk and honey, but small; for other governors with larger territories, even a brief tenure might win three fortunes, one to pay your debts which you incurred to buy your way into the appointment, one to bribe the judges in case you got charged with misconduct, and one to be used to enjoy your days of retirement in a manner befitting your status; in Judea, maybe just two and half fortunes, provided you tread carefully and do nothing to upset the applecart. You need to know how to turn big problems into small, small problem into none...

2
He still remembered that charismatic young man Jesus, son of Joseph the carpenter and Mary, who, despite her age, looked like a fresh maiden. He came from Galilee with a mob of followers, and disrupted operations in the Temple. Now Roman laws did not say whether money changers should be allowed to do business in the Temple - it might be considered a useful service to pilgrims, especially those from foreign lands, to provide the right coins for making donations to the Temple; Jesus also made some speeches, but none that violated Roman peace. When asked "should we pay tax", Jesus carefully answered "give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar; give to God what belongs to God", a perfectly acceptable statement to the Caesar's representative in Judea. Rome had nothing against this man.
But the Jews thought otherwise; they demanded that he be put to death; in earlier times, they might have lynched him right in front of the temple (stoning is a bit difficult in Jerusalem - you might have to tear down a few houses to get enough rocks to kill a man), but in a Roman province, only the Roman magistrates could pronounce a sentence of death. Instead of taking this on, Pilate thought of sending the prisoner to another Roman official, who only ordered a whipping. So that matter came back to his plate and he had to deal with it. Poor fellow. Did he mean himself or Jesus? Pilate was not sure.
However, the matter did not end there; somehow the corpse of Jesus disappeared and the followers were convinced there was a Resurrection, that the Son of God had returned to heaven to join His Father; they even say He was born of a virgin, that Mary had been made pregnant by a golden shower of light in the same way Greek maidens were impregnated by Zeus. His group grew, and spread to other cities where Jews lived, even Rome itself, and even non-Jews began to profess to follow him.
Pilate recalled a story being told about Jesus's birth, that Joseph and Mary were travelling back to Galilee from the coast and Mary gave birth on the way in a barn; now why were they travelling so near to the time when the baby was due? Presumably to get away from an area where Phoenicians were still practising the sacrifice of the first child of each family. Amazing that so many years after Rome destroyed Carthage, this kind of practice was still being carried out. This story about Herod killing all the new born babies in his kingdom hoping to destroy the new King of Jews Jesus: obviously the story teller got things wrong; Herod was from a tribe that practise baby sacrifice - if he had been searching for Jesus to kill, he used a pretty lousy method and was not persistent enough to fulfil his objective.
Fortunately, the Romans and Greeks long ago gave up such savage practices. Romulus may have sacrificed his brother to appease the earth gods for his disturbing them by building the city, but now the vestal virgins are not killed as gifts to gods, they are merely priestesses in our temple, and they do not even have to work as temple prostitutes to promote fertility like they did in Babylon. Gods are satisfied with us just dropping a handful of incense before them now and then.
Now that story about Moses, that God killed all the first born sons of Egyptians to punish them for not allowing Jews to leave; surely just killing the son of the Pharaoh would be enough persuasion? obviously the story teller got things mixed up again: the Jews must have been living in a place where another tribe was living that practised the same first child sacrifice as the Phoenicians. And about those three Kings that paid homage to Jesus at his birth, reaching that barn guided by the bright star... Ah the ignorance of the people; they much prefer those stories, rather than learning the ideas, just like the Romans wanting bread and circus, forgetting what Roman citizenship was all about...
In any case there was no Roman law against the brotherhood of men, turning the other cheek, or even in giving your money to the poor; merely that these were not Roman ways. You could not rule a province that way. You might wear a pair of kid gloves, but inside...

3
The was a sound of solute by the guards outside the door; it opened and Cosius the secretary entered.
"Ah Cosius; I was just about to come and ask you about these books"
"I hope you found these interesting"
"Enormously so; and very puzzling; say, what is the meaning of these? What are the Fates doing with these craftsmen's tools?" Pilate pointed to a compass-and-square combination at the feet of the three Fates in one diagram.
"I was puzzled myself; I would have thought a weaving frame would be more appropriate"
"Quite so; after the Fates spun the yarn, dyed it and rolled it onto the spindle, the next thing ought to be to weave different coloured threads together into a cloth on a loom, and the pattern of colours would be the state of the polis with all these humans"
"I once asked my master, and he also was not sure, but said some thought the compass represented heaven because it drew round and triangle drew square and represented earth; so the Fates were spinning the lives of all humans between earth and heaven."
"Now I see earth may be square, but why is heaven round?"
"I guess I look up and see blue sky all around me; so it's kind of round"
"Something else about the Fates and their spindles; you know the other story about the spindle, that the princess touches the spindle and dies"
"Yes the curse of the uninvited fairy"
"That seems to be the same as the story of the golden apple"
"Indeed it could well be"
"But asking three fairies to prophesize the newborn's fate; seems like the three Fates? I think that's why the story has the spindle causing the princess's death"
"Yes I see what you mean; it never occurred to me before; they were so familiar to me that one never thought about these; I guess the gods do many things at different times"
"And this picture of the staff of Hermes; it reminds me of something I saw in Gaul, an ancient rock carving; actually I had my secretary at the time drew it to keep; I was told the same carving appears in many places"
"Yes I see, four entangled snakes instead of the two on the staff of Hermes"
"then I remembered this emblem of the Scythians you spoke of, with the four spokes bent at the end, just like the four snakes"
"so the Scythians were in Gaul too; they cremate their dead like the Greeks, because we both came from Scythia"
"Oh yes the Dorians who brought vowels to the alphabet; the Phoenicians only had consonants before"
"And the Jews; they wrote Yahweh as YHWH"
"Some say the four letters are all vowels, I A U A"
"Actually, I think it was meant to be all 5 vowels, I A O U E, and since they had no vowels they could not spell God's name, or God was namelesss; then I A O U E changed to Y A h O W E h, J a h o v e h"
"why did they add the 'h'?"
"I think because when you chant I A long you have to take a breath, and another breath at the end"
"Hmm...interesting; but enough of this; you have documents for me to see?"
"Indeed I do; these are for today's session; only one major case among all these; Paul of Tarsus; he came before you once."
"Really? I dont recall the name at all."
"Because he was then known as Saul; he bought a suit against those Galileans."
"You mean when those followers of Jesus disrupted the temple at Tarsus?"
"Yes, but then he changed his name and joined the Galileans; so this time a group of Hellenists accused him of insulting their gods and wanted him dead"
"Why was he bothering non-Jews? I thought Jesus only wanted to be messiah to the chosen?"
"Paul's idea was different; he says all men are born sinners and only Jesus can deliver them"
"How can a new born to have sinned?"
"We are all supposed to be descended from Adam and Eve, and we all share their sin"
"What was that?"
"They were tempted by the serpent to eat the fruit of knowledge."
"I thought that was just a metaphor about the bliss of ignorance, like Hesiod's going from the age of gold to silver, bronze, iron"
"I agree, but they take it more literally; when the evil serpent told Adam to lie with Eve for the first time, they sinned and we were the result"
"Ah but the founder of Athens was half serpent, right? and we worship Venus; I guess that's a sin for Paul and others like him"
"That what got him into trouble, and the plaintiffs ask for a death sentence"
"Now that seems excessive; surely we need not go that far?"
"But that group includes Agripinus..."
Pontius Pilate's face turned pale... "You mean..."
"Yes the nephew..."
"Let me see...what do you advise me to do?"
"Maybe we should first discuss the matter with Agripinus?"
"No; I cannot be seen to be currying favour; I need to do the deciding"
"You could delay the case"
"If necessary, but it is better to get the matter over with if possible"
"You could pass it to another jurisdiction like the case of Jesus"
"Again, maybe, but that might just buy some time"
"Paul has demanded to be tried in Rome by his rights as a Roman citizen"
"Really? Not sure his claim would stand up in a Rome court, but on the other hand it might solve our problem"
"Let's play it by the ear and see how the arguments of the lawyers go"
"Fine... Let's quickly go over the others"
"In the dispute over the Marcius land, I think the plaintiff has the stronger case"
"Let me see; yes your summary explains this very well, but I will need to look at the details too before I concur"
"And the plaintiff has offered 10 centurions to be donated to your town temple to have his merits recognized by the deities"
"I will ensure the gods of all our home towns will share in this recognition"
"I thank you for your generosity and devotion"