Читать книгу The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus - David Price Williams - Страница 46

Chlorus, Constantius the Pale, whilst in the east, he appointed Galerius as his own Caesar. The result was the tetrarchy, the rule by four. I would have thought this would have been disastrous for the future of the empire, ambition being what it was, but strangely it worked, for a few years anyway.

There was an innate logic in his division. I suppose you could say the western half of the Roman Empire was more Latin in its thinking and the eastern half, where we lived, was more Greek. Patara had always been a Greek city really, although deep down we thought of ourselves as Lycians. The Greek way of life had spread all over the east after Alexander had destroyed Cyrus’ and Darius’ old Persian empire some six hundred years ago and I imagine you could consider us the remnant of that empire and by now we were Greek in every aspect of our way of life and we were very proud of it too.

And it was into that Greek half of the Roman Empire that a new religion had appeared, one which believed in one God and in the son of God, Jesus. It was a religion based on kindness and comradeship, on love and togetherness and especially on forgiveness and salvation. It was called Christianity and although Diocletian was to try desperately to destroy it and its adherents, in the end it was to change our established world mightily and for ever and no-one was more affected by that change than me.

THE JOURNEY