The Moment of Truth
Lecture house was actually a bit much said. It was more like a little room in some Greek immigrants’ home, which they had converted specially for the purposes of being able to offer discourses on a wide range of topics. Romans weren’t really into all this philosophizing; that was more of a Greek thing. That being said, Aurelius had always suspected that there were alternative motives for this particular lecture premises. The Greeks who lived in Aurelius’ little civitas (or polis as they would say!) were generally business minded and this lecture house was a good way to meet and get to know new clients, not to mention offer product placement lectures. He could never forget the time they came to a talk on water purification, where people from Rome had wanted to sell bronze micro-sieves. Apparently, all the rage in the big civitae, but a bit ahead of the times for the simple populus from Aurelius’ area.
Aurelius approached it with trepidation. He’d had a good day yesterday, once he had gotten back to his cheese selling spot. He’d sold all bar one (two if you count the lost one). As he’d expected, his parents were light hearted in their response when he confessed that he had misplaced (a good substitute, he felt, for the much stronger word of lost, less incriminating and arguably not far from the truth; he could indeed have easily sat down somewhere and just let the cheese slip out of his little leather loculus without his noticing) one of the cheeses. They didn’t mind about the lost income and even said that one of the Cheeses was left over was God’s way of providing for them as that evening his mother hadn’t gotten around to preparing any Pultes Iulianae, so the cheese came in handy. Aurelius didn’t know about God’s providence, but in any case, he wasn’t a fan of his Mum’s stews, so a nice bit of cheese had gone down nicely!
When he finished recounting in his mind yesterday evening’s happenings, he turned his attention back to today. Actually, it had been his parents’ mild-mannered response to the lost cheese, which had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. He’d reflected on Lorena’s exhortations and there was certainly something in it. But it wasn’t until he got back home and reflected on the change in his parents that he made the final decision. He was going to go to the lecture and find out once and for all what this was all about.
So, here he was finally, standing before the Karagounis Papastathoupolus abode, which had the lecture hall contained within a small room annexed on to the building on the right. He was to be here that he would get to the bottom of things. Fortunately, it was possible to approach the room without drawing too much attention to yourself and indeed on this occasion there was no one much around. This particular building had a nice big doorway, and well portioned spaces which served as both windows, but also ventilation. In Aurelius’ case, they were about to serve another purpose.
Aurelius sauntered along as if he didn’t have a care in the world, and as if he was going further, but as he passed the lecture room, he casually glanced through the fenestram to see what was what. You didn’t want to turn up to these things if no one else was there after all. That was a social fax pau, and most uncomfortable as he would then have to enter into conversation with the speaker or anyone leading.
Aurelius was well skilled in this sort of subterfuge, and it worked a charm as he passed by, glanced in and to his slight sadness, but not unexpectedly, there was no one there expect for two people standing in the front. He carried on going thinking that it wouldn’t do to enter in such circumstances. He felt relieved as he went on his way, but also regretful. Maybe he’d missed something important? Maybe others had showed up?
That night, Aurelius found it had to sleep. He tried counting ovium, but whenever he got to around vx, he just felt like it wasn’t doing any good and gave up. Many a thought was going around his mind and gnawing at him. What had he missed at the lecture? Maybe he should have gone in? What was it all about this new religion? Why the change in his parents and who was this speaker?
The next day was cheese day, again. Aurelius was on holiday from scola, and it had been time enough to rest from his last cheese selling exploits, so he was now his turn to once more enter the cheese store, select some fine examples and go to the forum to try to vendo them.
As he was on his way to his usual cheese selling spot, he stopped for a short break. Ten cheese weren’t so light after all. He decided to check on them after his previous unpleasant antics searching around for a lost cheese and getting into a spiritual dilemma as a result.
So, he sat down to take a breather and then opened his loculus. To his surprise, we could even say astonishment, history was repeating itself. He was sure that he had put 10 cheeses in to the loculus, but now he could only count 9! He tried counting a number of times, but the same result.
‘How can this be?’, he thought to himself. ‘Maybe this was a divine reminder of the events of the past few days?’
He started to try and find explanations to help him dismiss this thought. He could easily have dropped the cheese or simply miscounted in the beginning, or maybe an unscrupulous person had slipped it out the loculus when he hadn’t been watching. All plausible possibilities and if it wasn’t for the next fateful turn of events, he probably would have accepted them and gone on his merry way.