Killing Jesus: A History

again.
    *   *   *
    The battle is done. The fighting has been as bloody and intimate as many had feared, with men literally clawing at their opponents as they struggled to murder one another in hand-to-hand fighting. Blood flows from open wounds and from those awful marks on their bodies where men have lost arms, eyes, and hands. Many soldiers have been hamstrung, the large back muscle of their legs flayed open with a sword’s blade, making it impossible for them to walk. These men will die a slow death on the battlefield.
    Thousands upon thousands of dead bodies litter the earth between mountain and swamp, soon to be picked clean—first by the hordes of nearby citizens, who will fleece the dead of any signs of wealth, and then by the great buzzards and wolves, who will enjoy a rare feast.
    Those alive from the losing army are now in chains but remain defiant. When Octavian appears, they jeer at him, showing gross disrespect.
    The losing general, Marcus Brutus, is not among them—he has persuaded his slave to kill him with the single hard thrust of a two-foot-long sword. Brutus’s head will be cut off and returned to Rome, even as the rest of the body is cremated where it fell.
    As one and all knew before that first long blare of the tubae , this day, and this battle, will decide the fate of the Roman Republic.
    And it has. That largely egalitarian institution will soon be no more, replaced by a despotic empire. And though it will take eleven long years before he stands atop that kingdom as its undisputed emperor, Octavian will know that moment of glory, just as he knows today’s. He will reign for the rest of his life, growing crueler and more callous with every passing year. And just as Jacob of Nazareth is training Joseph to follow in his footsteps, the new emperor will teach his stepson, Tiberius, to reign with an iron fist, so when the day comes that he is named emperor, he will maintain his own ruthless hold on power—brooking no opposition, crushing any rebellion, and flogging, stripping, and publicly nailing to a cross any man who poses a threat to Rome.
    That will include a humble carpenter.
    But, on this day, another general walks among the vanquished and is not disrespected. Forty-one-year-old Marc Antony strides purposely through the carnage as men on both sides admire his strength.
    Octavian and Marc Antony are the victors. But of course there can be only one ruler of this new empire. So, for the next decade, these two men will wage a long and bitter war for total control of Rome. The entire world will be affected by the outcome.
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    The final battle takes place in 31 B.C. , in Actium, just off the coast of Greece. Just before the fighting begins, one of Marc Antony’s top generals, Quintus Dellius, defects to Octavian, bringing Antony’s battle plans with him. When this leads to the destruction of his naval fleet, Marc Antony’s nineteen legions and twelve thousand cavalry desert. 4 Now hunted and without an army, Antony flees to Egypt with his longtime lover the once-powerful queen Cleopatra, who chose to ally herself with the warrior rather than Octavian. Furious, Octavian gives chase, and Marc Antony kills himself with his sword to avoid being taken prisoner, dying in his lover’s arms. Cleopatra soon follows him into death by drinking a poisonous blend of opium and hemlock. 5 She is thirty-nine years old.

    To ensure he reigns as his uncle’s undisputed heir, Octavian then orders the murder of Caesarion, Julius Caesar’s bastard child by Cleopatra. The sixteen-year-old Caesarion escapes to India but is lured back to Egypt by promises that he will be named the new pharaoh. This proves to be a lie. Octavian’s henchmen strangle the teenage pretender, putting an end to the scheme Cleopatra hatched when she first bedded Julius Caesar in those glorious years before his assassination. The devious cycle is now complete.
    So it is that the new Roman Empire is ruled by just one all-powerful man who believes himself to be the son of god: Octavian, who will soon answer to a new name.
    All hail Caesar Augustus.

CHAPTER FOUR
    JORDAN RIVER VALLEY, JUDEA
MARCH 22, A.D. 7
NOON
    The child with twenty-three years to live is missing.
    The northeast road out of Jerusalem is dusty and barren, a desolate path leading steeply downhill through the city to the Jordan River and the rocky desert of Perea beyond. There is little shade and few places to take refuge from the sun. Mary and