Читать книгу The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus - David Price Williams - Страница 79

intelligence. I couldn’t imagine how much human skill and knowledge had been lost, thanks to the vaunting ambition of imperial Rome. Aurelian only lasted a year or two after that, until he was murdered, it was said, by his own staff. Well, he went to his death with this terrible catastrophe to his name.

We carried on up the street, stopping from time to time to admire yet another Greek portico. We were walking eastwards passing some very fine buildings lining the way. There was a magnificent temple to the Muses, the nine goddesses of the arts. The marble pillars in front of the porch shone in the sunlight and beyond it, set back from the street, there was an impressive façade of a Greek gymnasium behind which was a huge palaestra, an exercise hall. Athletic young men mostly younger than me were hurrying in and out through the main entrance.

“We’re heading for the Jewish quarter,” Polios mentioned. “I have many friends there. Even from the time the city was built the Jews here were very numerous. They were fiercely independent too, both from the authorities in the city and from their own Sanhedrin. They represented the real intelligentsia of their tribe and they even translated their own holy book, the Torah and the Prophets, into Greek, against the wishes of their leaders in Jerusalem. We Christians use their book now as part of our service, Jesus being originally Jewish. We call it our Old Testament.”

“So what happened to them?” I asked.

DAVID PRICE WILLIAMS