know now to have been India and China - silk, carpet and jewels which never reached the 
markets of Rome.
  Countless other traders came and went to Antioch. Fine roads connected it in the East 
with the Euphrates River and the Parthian Empire beyond, and to the South you could go to 
Damascus and Judea, and to the North, of course, lay all the cities made by Alexander, 
which had flowered under Roman rule.
  Roman soldiers loved it there. It was an easy and interesting life. And Antioch loved 
the Romans because the Romans protected the trade routes, and the caravans, and kept 
peace in the port.
  "You will find open places, arcades, Temples, all that you seek and such markets you 
would not believe. There are Romans everywhere. I hope to One Most High that you are not 
recognized by someone from your own background! That is one danger of which your Father 
had no time to plan."
  I waved it away.
  "Does it have teachers now, and markets of books?"
  "From everywhere. You will find books which no one can read. And Greek is spoken by 
everyone. You have to go out in the country to find some poor farmer who does not 
understand Greek. Latin has now become common.
  "The philosophers never stop; they speak of Plato and Pythagoras, names that don't mean 
much to me; they talk about Chaldean magic from Babylon. Of course there are Temples to 
every imaginable god."
  He went on, reflecting as he spoke:
  "The Hebrews? I think personally they are too worldly - they want to hang around in 
short tunics with the Greeks and go to the public baths. They are too interested in the 
Greek philosophy. It invades everything, all this thinking that Greeks did. Not good. But 
a Greek city is an inviting world."
  He glanced up. His Father was watching over us, and we were too dose together, at this 
table on the deck.
  He hastily filled me in on other facts:
  Germanicus Julius Caesar, heir to the Imperial throne, the official adopted son of 
Tiberius, had been granted the Imperium Maius in Antioch. That is, he controlled all of 
this territory. And Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso was the governor of Syria.
  I assured him that they would know nothing of me or my old-fashioned family or our 
quiet, old house on the Palatine Hill, squeezed between so many other extravagant new 
mansions.
  "It's all Roman-style," Jacob protested. "You'll see. And you come with money! And 
forgive me, but you are still beautiful at your age; you have fresh skin and you move 
your limbs like a girl."
  I sighed and gave Jacob thanks. Time for him to break away unless we wanted his Father 
coming down upon us.
  I watched the ever rolling blue waves.
  I was thankful in secret that our family had withdrawn from the parties and banquets at 
the Imperial Palace, but then I blamed myself for such thankfulness, knowing that our 
reclusiveness must have paved the way for our downfall.
  I'd seen Germanicus on his triumphal procession through Rome, a gorgeous young man, 
much as Alexander had been, and I knew from my Father and my brothers that Tiberius, 
fearing the popularity of his appointed heir, had sent him off to the East to get him 
away from the Roman crowds.
  The Governor Piso? I had never laid eyes on him. The gossip was that he was sent East 
to devil Germanicus. Oh, such a waste of talent and thought.
  Jacob returned to me.
  "Well, you go nameless and unknown into this vast city," said Jacob. "And you have 
protectors of high character who are beloved of Germanicus. He's young and sets a tone of 
vitality and gaiety in the city."
  "And Piso?" I asked.
  "Everyone hates him. Especially the soldiers, and you know what that means in a Roman 
province."
  You can look at the crashing, undulating sea from the railing of a deck forever, or 
just for so long.
  That night I had my second blood dream. It was keenly similar to the first. I was 
thirsty for blood. And enemies were after me, enemies that knew I was a demon and must be 
destroyed. I was running. My own kind had forsaken me, thrust me out unprotected to the 
superstitions of the people. Then I saw the desert and knew I would die; I awoke, sitting 
up and crying out, but covering my mouth quickly so no one heard it.
  What disturbed me so terribly was the thirst for blood. I could not imagine such a 
thing when I was awake, but in these dreams I was the monster that Romans called the 
Lamia. Or so it seemed. Blood was sweet, blood was all. Was the old Greek Pythagoras 
right? Souls do migrate from body to body? But my soul in this past life had been that of 
a monster.
  During the day, I dosed my eyes now and then and found myself dangerously on the edge 
of the dream, as if it were a trap in my mind, waiting to engulf my consciousness. But at 
night, that is when they came most strongly. You have served me before! What could this 
mean? Come to me.
  Blood thirst. I closed my eyes, curled up in bed and prayed, "Mother Isis, Cleanse my 
Mind of this Blood madness."
  Then I resorted to plain old ordinary eroticism. Get Jacob into bed! No such luck. 
Little did I know that Hebrews had been, and would be forever, the most difficult of men 
to seduce!
  It was all made dear with great grace and tact.
  I considered all the slaves. Out of the question. First off were the galley slaves, 
among whom no great "Ben Hur" was chained, waiting for me to rescue him. They were just 
the dregs of the criminal poor, fastened Roman-style, so they would drown if the ship 
went down, and they were dying, as all galley slaves do from the monotony and the whip. 
It wasn't a pleasant sight to go down into the hold of a galley ship and see those men 
bending their backs.
  But my eyes were as cold as those of an American watching color television pictures of 
the starving babies of Africa, little black skeletons with big heads screaming for water. 
News Break, Commercial Break, Sound Bite, CNN now switches to Palestine: rock throwing, 
rubber bullets. Television blood.
  The rest on board were boring sailors, and two old pious merchant Hebrews who stared at 
me as if I were a whore, or worse, and turned their heads whenever I came out on deck in 
my long tunic with my long hair swinging free.
  Such a disgrace I must have seemed! But what a fool I was then, really, living in 
numbness, and how pleasant that voyage - all because true grief and rage had not yet 
taken hold of me. Things had happened too fast.
  I gloated over my last glimpse of my Father dispatching those soldiers of Tiberius, 
those cheap assassins sent by a cowardly, indecisive Emperor. And the rest - I banished 
it from my mind, affecting the attitude of the hardened Roman man or woman.
  A modern Irish poet, Yeats, best characterizes the official Roman attitude towards 
failure and tragedy.