The doomed city
| Language | en |
|---|---|
| First published | 2025-12-11 |
| Rights | Public domain in the USA. |
| Gutenberg ID | #77443 |
Description
The opening of the provided excerpt plunges into a first‑century historical romance: the Roman patrician Crispus meets Titus Flavius on the road to Cæsarea and, at King Polemo’s bidding, secretly marries a veiled “Athenaïs” he may not see or hear, in exchange for a future claim to the throne of Pontus. Reaching Cæsarea, he attends Procurator Florus’s lavish banquet, where political and religious tensions flare among Romans, Greeks, and Jews; key figures appear (Berenice, Ananias, Terentius Rufus, Tertullus, and a soothsayer), and a public trial for the Zealot Simon is set. A staged beauty contest makes Crispus choose between Berenice and the innocent Vashti; he crowns Vashti and impulsively kisses her, then speaks with her in the garden about her guardian Josephus, genealogies, and faintly Christian-coded hints, as Berenice returns and Crispus alludes to a mysterious dream of the temple. This is only the beginning, sketching the personal entanglements and volatile climate that will drive the larger drama. (This is an automatically generated summary.)