In the several weeks that followed he saw little of Claudia. During that period he went on a mission for Sergius Paulus to Jerusalem and upon his return took command while Sergius was away at Antioch in response to a summons from the Legate Vitellius, who commanded the Roman forces in that entire eastern region. Sergius, Longinus was sure, had been ordered to Antioch because of the Arabian king’s threat to attack Herod Antipas. The Legate, he reasoned, was planning to have his forces ready for action in the event that Aretas should challenge Rome by sending his army against the Tetrarch. The centurion presumed that Vitellius had summoned all military leaders stationed in Galilee—and possibly even the Tetrarch himself—to meet him at Antioch. Longinus learned that his guesswork had been correct; the meeting had been held, and the Legate, Sergius said, had been blunt in his conversations with the Tetrarch.
Shortly after the Caesarea garrison commander resumed his post, a message from Senator Piso for his son arrived. It instructed Longinus to set out as quickly as he could for the glassworks. Production had decreased, and the quality of the ware being manufactured was deteriorating. Morale among the slaves, his father reported, seemed at its lowest point. Longinus was to do whatever might be necessary to speed up the plant’s production and improve the quality of the glassware. The Prefect, his father added, was in complete concurrence with these instructions. A fresh supply of slaves, said the senator, was being sent out to Phoenicia by the Prefect; the slaves were being shipped aboard a government trireme that was leaving Rome within a week after the vessel bearing this letter would sail for Joppa. Longinus, the letter suggested, might even go aboard this letter-bearing vessel when it put in at Caesarea.
Little had happened in Rome since his departure for Palestine, his father reported. The Emperor was still at Capri, and Sejanus was directing the government of the Empire. His mother sent her love; she was quite well, though of late she had been disturbed at the indisposition of her little Maltese dog. But the animal, thanks be to Jove and the patient ministrations of Longinus’ mother, was now recovered.
“Try to achieve as quickly as possible a new production record at the glassworks,” his father concluded. The Prefect was keeping an eye on the figures, and it would be good business to earn the Prefect’s early approval. “Don’t spare the slaves; they are the cheapest item in the operational cost; replacements can be made quickly available.”
His eyes scanned the letter, hardly seeing the words. Ever the patrician Romans, his parents ... his mother concerned with the indisposition of that pampered, silken-haired pet, his father thinking only of pleasing Sejanus and building up for the Prefect and himself more millions of sesterces. Don’t spare the slaves; the life of a slave is the cheapest item in the production of beautiful glassware for the tables of patrician Rome and Alexandria and Antioch and Athens. Work them until they fall dead, and heave them into the flaming furnaces.
Longinus thought of the old slave. What would Cornelius think of his father’s letter, his father’s philosophy? But Cornelius’ father, too, is of the equestrian class; perhaps he shares the views of Senator Piso. Cornelius, of course, would disapprove. He would say that men are not the cheapest items in the making of glassware or anything else. He would hold with the Galilean carpenter that every man, Roman senator or Gallic slave or black savage from Ethiopia, is a son of that jealous Yahweh of the Jews and possessor of an immortal spirit.
And I, suddenly thought Longinus, do I hold with my father or with Cornelius and the Galilean?
The day after Herod’s birthday banquet Cornelius had related to him in dramatic detail what he contended was the Galilean’s miraculous healing of Lucian, but Longinus had shrugged off his friend’s fervor with the observation that once more, as in the case of Chuza’s son, the clever carpenter from Nazareth had successfully judged the hour at which the fever would break.
Of course his urbane, affluent father, rather than his Jewish-influenced friend the centurion and the Galilean mystic, was right. Even without using a stylus and tablet one can prove that a slave is the cheapest of the several things involved in the making of fine glassware; his father’s statement to that effect was quickly demonstrable. And yet....
Longinus shrugged and put away the letter. The ship, he discovered some moments later, would be at the Caesarea port only long enough to load supplies and freight; it would sail for Tyre within four or five hours.