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Christendom Conservatism Videos

Heimbach

“I hate Hitler” —Matt Heimbach

At the recent Council of Conservative Citizens Matt Heimbach talked about “Christian principles,” the impossibility to expel “a hundred million of non-whites” from the US either using “nuclear weapons or neutron bombs” and that “that’s not desirable either—as a Christian… we identitarians… our faith in Jesus Christ…”

In spite of all that, since Heimbach seems to put race first he may be considered in my category of “Christians that I do respect.” However, at Occidental Dissent an apparently non-Christian commenter opined about his speech:

Heimbach seems to think we can achieve this peacefully. Yeah, that’s a nice pipe dream.

Secession caused a war, as well as the German racial ethnostate. We lost both times, and that more than anything has defined our current situation.

Minus the system failing or some kind of worldwide cataclysmic event, I don’t see much hope on the horizon, unfortunately.

He seems to want to partition the US instead of conquering it and removing all non-Whites, because that’s not feasible and it’s too violent. Well how the hell does he think even partitioning and removing non-Whites that live in the area he wants is going to happen?

We face violent opposition even at the local level, Heimbach knows this himself. Even having a civil discussion with these people is difficult. How many times are these types of conferences cancelled because the location was threatened and bullied into refusing the event.

Later on the same thread, a Christian commenter added:

Matthew Heimbach proposes a quaint and peaceful ethno-state for white people somewhere within the confines of the north American continent. Nothing the Federal government could not crush in less than a week. Unless there is some kind of “Fight Club” permeating every level of our government, you are really asking for a genocide. No, Dorothy, you can’t click your heels three times and get back to Kansas. I am still amazed that Southerners like Matt just don’t get how foolish his proposition is.

However, I did like his comment that the solution to 1984 is the Spain of 1936. Unfortunately, we are living in 2013 Amerika. The scales have been tipped too far to the left. The cult of equality has blinded the well-meaning. We have been sucker-punched and will have to stand trial for defending ourselves like George Zimmerman.

It is a shame if Matt “hates Hitler”. Either his emotion has gotten the better of him or he is pandering to the left. Never hate, especially that which you do not know. If he ever studied the man Hitler, he would not “hate” him but he might learn something from him.

I would recommend Heimbach to read the articles under the heading “On the need to undemonize Hitler” at the sidebar of this blog.

Categories
Friedrich Nietzsche Psychology Stefan Zweig

Apologia for illness

That which does not kill me
strengthens me.

der_kampf_mit_dem_daemon

Nietzsche’s body was afflicted with so many and varied tribulations that in the end he could with perfect truth declare: “At every age of my life, suffering, monstrous suffering, was my lot.” Headaches so ferocious that all he could do was to collapse onto a couch and groan in agony, stomach troubles culminating in cramps when he would vomit blood, migrainous conditions of every sort, fevers, loss of appetite, exhaustion, hæmorrhoids, intestinal stasis, rigors, night-sweats—a gruesome enumeration, indeed. In all his correspondence there are barely a dozen letters in which a groan or a cry of lamentation does not go up from every page.

A time came when his vocabulary of superlatives was exhausted, and he found no words to describe his anguish. The rack called forth monotonous cries, repeated with increasingly rapidity and becoming less and less human. They reach our ears from the depths of what he described as “a dog’s life.” Then, suddenly, like lighting in a clear sky—and none of us can fail to be taken aback by so unprecedented a contradiction—he announced in his Ecce Homo: “Summa, summarum, I have enjoyed good health” (he is referring to the fifteen years which preceded his mental death)—a fine expression of faith, strong, proud, clear-cut, seeming to tax with falsehood the groans of despair that had gone before. Which are we to believe, the cries of distress or the lapidary aphorism?

His vitality was less resistant during rainy and overcast weather: “grey skies make me feel horribly depressed”; heavy clouds disturbed him “to the very inwards”; “rain takes all the strength out of me”; dampness enfeebled, drought renewed his vigor, the sun brought him to life again, winter was for him a kind of “lockjaw” and filled his mind with thoughts of imminent death. The fluctuations of his nerve-barometer were like those of April weather, rushing from one extreme to another, “he triumphed and he saddened with all weather.” What he needed was a serene, a cloudless landscape, high up on a plateau of the Engadine, where no wind came to disturb the peace and calm. In this livest of thinkers, body and mind were so intimately wedded to atmospheric phenomena that for him interior and exterior happenings were identical.

Soon, however, the “dry” climate of Nice lured him south again, and after staying there for a while he went to Genoa and Venice. Now he longed for the woodlands, then he craved for the sea; again he wished to live on the shores of a lake, or in some quiet and little town where he could procure “simple but nourishing food.”

I wonder how many thousands of kilometers Nietzsche traveled in quest of the fairyland where his nerves might find repose. He pondered over huge works on geology, hoping to find the exact place where he might win repose of body and tranquility of mind. Distance was no obstacle to its attainment: he planned a journey to Barcelona, and voyages to the mountains of Mexico, to Argentina, to Japan. Notes were made on the temperature and the atmospheric pressure at each place he selected; the local rainfall was scheduled to the uttermost exactitude.

As soon as his mind had ceased to pity his body, no longer participated in its sufferings, he recognized that his life had acquired a new perspective and his illness a deeper significance. Consciously, well knowing what he was about, he now accepted the burden, accepted his fate as a necessity, and since he was a fanatical “advocate for life,” loving the whole of his existence, he accepted his sufferings with the “Yes” of his Zarathustra and, as accompaniment to his tortures, sang the jubilant hymn “again and yet again for all eternity!”

He discovered (with the joy he invariably felt in the magic of the extremes) that he owed to no earthly power so much as to his illness, that, indeed, it was his tortures that he had to thank for his greatest blessing. “Illness itself frees me,” he wrote; illness was the midwife that brought his inner man into the world, and the pains he experienced were labor pains. Henceforward the tortured poet-philosopher sang a pæan of gratitude to “holy suffering,” recognizing that through suffering alone can man attain to knowledge. “Great suffering is the ultimate liberator of the mind, it alone constrains us to plunge into our innermost depths,” and he who has suffered “even unto the agony of death” has the right to pronounce the words: “I know life better because I have so often been on the verge of losing it.” It was out of torment, it was when he was upon the rack, that he formulated his creed.

Like all those possessed by the daimon, he was a slave to his own ecstasy. Health! Health! This was the device inscribed upon his banner. Health was the standard of every value, the aim of life, the meaning of the universe. After ten years of groping in the dark, suffocating with torments, he quelled his groans so as to intone a hymn of praise in honour of vitality, of brute force, of power-intoxicated strength.

In Ecce Homo he boasted of his unfailing health, denied that he had ever been ill; and yet this book was penned on the eve of his mental breakdown. His pæan was not sung to life triumphant but, alas, to his own death. No longer are we listening to the ideas of a scientifically trained mind but to the incoherent words of the daimon which had taken possession of its victim. The euphoria of this penultimate phase is a well-known symptom preceding the final collapse.

Ideas flowed from him like a cascade of fire, his tongue spoke with a primitive eloquence, music invaded every nook and cranny of his being. Withersoever he looked, he saw the reign of peace. Passers-by smiled at him as he roamed the streets. Every letter he wrote conveyed a divine message, glowed with happiness. In the last letter he was fated to write, he said to Peter Gast: “Sing me a new song: the world is transfigured and the heavens rejoice.” Out of the same heavens came the bolt which laid him low, mingling in an indissoluble interval of time every suffering and every beatitude.

Categories
Quotable quotes

The first commandment

The ethnostate must teach that the highest form of Wisdom consists in keeping one’s blood pure. The first commandment of the new law-table is “Thou shalt keep thy blood pure”. Another commandment must dictate the necessity of not enslaving non-whites.

Joseph Walsh

Categories
Ancient Greece Ancient Rome Blacks Egypt Miscegenation Philosophy of history Racial studies

March of the Titans (prologue)

Excerpted from the prologue of March of the Titans: The Complete History of the White Race by Arthur Kemp:


When reviewing the historical development of all nations, quite often mention is made of a “rise and fall” of a particular civilization. This poses a major question: Why have some civilizations lasted a thousand years or more, while others rise and collapse within a few hundred? Why is it, for example, that nations such as Japan, Sweden, and England—all nations with limited natural resources—could have progressive active cultures for more than one thousand years; whereas mighty civilizations such as Classical Rome, Greece, or Persia, amongst others, collapse after only a few centuries?

Politically correct historians blame the rise and fall of the great nations of the past on politics, economics, morals, lawlessness, debt, environment, and a host of other superficial reasons. However, Japan, England, and Sweden have gone through similar crises scores of times, without those countries falling into decay. It is obvious that there must be some other factor at work—something much more fundamental than just variations in politics, morals, lawlessness, or any of the other hundreds of reasons that historians have manufactured in their attempts to explain the collapse of civilizations.

Originally created by Proto-Nordics, Alpines, and Mediterraneans, and then influenced by waves of Indo-European invaders, the white civilizations in the Middle East all flourished, producing the wonders of the ancient world. These regions were either invaded or otherwise occupied (through the use of laborers, immigration, or in rare cases, by conquest) by nonwhite nations of varying races. When the original white peoples who created those civilizations vanished or became an insignificant minority (through death and absorption into other races), their civilizations “fell” in exactly the same way that the Amerind civilization in North America “fell.”

500 BC—First Turning Point

It was around the year 500 BC that the first great turning point in white history was reached. This was the decline of the first great white civilizations in the Middle East and their subsequent replacement by nations and peoples of a substantially different racial makeup.

Up until this time the development of the white race’s territorial expansion was such that they were a majority in Europe and all of Russia west of the Urals. They formed a significant component of the population of the Middle East and their rule extended into the Indus River Valley in Northern India.

In India, the invading Indo-Aryans established a strict segregation system to keep themselves separate from the local dark skinned native population. This system was so strict that it has lasted to this day and has become known as the caste system.

However, even the strictest segregation (and Aryan laws prescribing punishments such as death for miscegenation) did not prevent the majority population from eventually swallowing up the ruling Aryans until the situation has been reached today where only a very few high caste Brahmin Indians could still pass as Europeans.

Exactly the same thing happened in Central Asia, Egypt, Sumeria, and to a lesser degree, modern Turkey. Slowly but surely, as these civilizations relied more and more on others to do their work for them, or were physically conquered by other races, their population makeup became darker and darker.

Miscegenation with Nonwhite Slaves Caused Egyptian Decline

From the time of the Old Kingdom, the original white Egyptians had been using Nubians, blacks, and Semites (or Arabs) to work on many of their building projects or as general slaves.

three-phases-egypt

Egypt: Same country, different people. Above left: The white pharaoh, Queen Nefertiti, circa 1350 BC; Above center: The effects of racial mixing are clearly to be seen on the face of this coffin portrait of a Roman lady in Hawara, Egypt, 100 AD; Above right: The mixed race Egyptian, Anwar Sadat, president of Egypt in the twentieth century. Nefertiti ruled over an advanced civilization; Sadat ruled over a third world country. The reason for the difference in cultures between Nefertiti’s Egypt and Sadat’s Egypt was that the Egyptian people had changed.


At various stages the pharaohs also employed Nubian mercenaries, and ultimately Nubia and Sudan were physically occupied and incorporated into the Egyptian empire. Although the buildings of ancient Egypt are very impressive—many having survived through to the present day, their construction was dependent on the Egyptian ability to organize an unprecedented mass of human labor.

Several attempts were made to prevent large numbers of Nubians from settling in Egypt. One of the first recorded racial separation laws was inscribed on a stone on the banks of the southern Nile which forbade Nubians from proceeding north of that point. Nonetheless, the continuous use of Nubians for labor eventually led to the establishment of a large resident nonwhite population in Egypt, with their numbers being augmented by natural reproduction and continued immigration.

The region was also occupied for two hundred years by the Semitic Hyksos, who intermarried with the local population, and this was followed by other Semitic/Arabic immigration, fueled by the long existing black settlement on the southernmost reaches of the Nile River.

Once again the factors which led to the extinction of the Aryans in India came into play in Egypt: a resident nonwhite population to do the labor, a natural increase in nonwhite numbers, physical integration, and a decline in the original white birthrate.

All these factors compounded to produce an Egyptian population makeup of today that is very different from the men and women who founded Egypt and designed the pyramids.

As the population makeup shifted, so the cultural manifestations, or civilization, of that region changed to the point where the present day population of the Middle East is not by any stretch of the imagination classifiable as white. The Egyptians of today are a completely different people, racially and culturally, living amongst the ruins of another race’s civilization.

Identical Reasons for Decline in Middle East

The decline and eventual extinction of the white population in the Middle East marked the end of the original civilizations in those regions. In all the Middle Eastern countries the Semitic (Arabic) and black populations grew as they were used as labor by the ruling whites. In the case of Sumer, the white rulers were physically displaced by military conquest at the hands of Semitic invaders.

This process continued until almost all remains of the original whites in the greater region were assimilated into the darker populations. Only the occasional appearance of light colored hair or eyes amongst today’s Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians, and Palestinians serve as reminders of the original rulers of these territories.

Lesson—Role of Racially Foreign Labor in the Decline of a Civilization

The lesson is clear: a civilization will remain intact as long as its creating race remains in existence. This applies to all races equally—white, black, Mongolian or any other. As long as a civilization’s founding race maintains its territorial integrity and does not use large numbers of any other alien race to do its labor, that civilization will remain in existence.

If a civilization allows large numbers of racial aliens into its midst (most often as laborers) and then integrates with those newcomers, that civilization will change to reflect the new racial makeup of the population.

Any civilization—be it white, black, Asian, or Aboriginal—stands or falls by the homogeneity of its population, and nothing else. As soon as a society loses its homogeneity, the nature of that society changes. This simple fact, often ignored by historians, provides the key to understanding the rise and fall of all civilizations.

slaves-egypt-greece

Evidence of black slaves in Egyptian and Grecian society. Left: Nubian (African) slaves as depicted in ancient Egyptian art, and right two Greek vases, dating from the fifth century BC, show the racial types of two slaves, a Semite and a black.


History Is a Function of Race

The early white civilizations in Greece and Rome also fell to this process. The last great Grecian leader, Pericles, actually enacted a law in the year 451 BC limiting citizenship of the state according to racial descent. However, some four hundred years later this law was changed as the population shifts had become more and more evident. Certain Roman leaders tried to turn back the racial clock, but their efforts were in vain. The sheer vastness of the Roman Empire meant that all sorts of races were included in its borders, and this brew ultimately led to the dissolution of the original Roman population.

Those who occupy a territory determine the nature of the society in that territory. This is an immutable law of nature. It is the iron rule upon which all of human endeavour is built—that history is a function of race.

The Rise and Fall of Civilizations Explained

A civilization “rises and falls” by its racial homogeneity and nothing else. As long as it maintains its racial homogeneity, it will last—if it loses its racial homogeneity, and changes its racial makeup, it will “fall” or be replaced by a new culture.

______________

Note: Why I am reposting this entry is explained: here

Categories
Friedrich Nietzsche Pseudoscience Psychiatry Richard Wagner Stefan Zweig

A response to Kurwenal

Or:

Why am I reproducing excerpts of Zweig’s book?



In the other thread Kurwenal asked me:

Would it not be more enriching to find out why Rosenberg considered Nietzsche to be one of us rather than to discuss which Jewish author gives a more or less faithful account of Nietzsche’s life and theories.

I see your point, and let me say that this blog has paid due homage to Nietzsche in that sense. See these entries:

“Atheist scum”

“Quotable quote”

“Nietzsche on the Aryan race”

“Nietzsche on the institution of marriage”

Kurwenal again:

By the way, if you can spare one hour of your time, I have tried to summarize the importance of Wagner and Nietzsche for our cause [links to Counter-Currents added].

I am a huge fan of Richard Wagner too. A couple of days ago for example I had to do some driving in Mexico City and the only way I could protect my mind from the nasty surroundings was precisely by listening the complete Second Act of Parsifal. It worked! I didn’t feel so depressed even when navigating in a sea of non-white troglodytes.

But there’s something more as to why I am excerpting Zweig, and it is so important that I will promote this response as a separate blog entry.

The reason that many years ago I read Zweig’s book and Ross’ and Janz’s biographies of Nietzsche has nothing to do with the discussion in this thread. It has to do with my quest about why Nietzsche, and many other people, lost their minds.

Before arriving to the nationalist camp my field of interest was advancing a counter-hypothesis to the medical model of mental disorders, insofar as I believe that biological psychiatry is a pseudoscience. That’s what, originally, moved me to read thick volumes originally written in German about Nietzsche’s life.

One of my dreams is that, if an ethno-state is formed in North America, their architects will do tabula rasa on the fraudulent professions of mental health (a “therapeutic state” as some critics of psychiatry say). White people will have to rediscover a field of research that the current System started to bury since the late 1970s, and especially in the 80s and 90s. Presently very few remember the trauma model of mental disorders (I started a Wikipedia article under that title). And my big hope is that this model, which unlike biopsychiatry is not unscientific, will be considered very seriously in the new white nation.

The gist of this model is that biographical narrative is pivotal to understand the personal tragedies that drive some people mad. That is the reason why I am adding chapter excerpts of Zweig’s The Struggle with the Daimon. It has nothing to do with a desire to pathologize Nietzsche. As you can see in my linked posts above, he obviously had great insights on important subjects. But we also got to understand why some people with perfectly healthy brains suffer permanent psychotic breakdowns.

This is a “software” problem of the human mind, not a “hardware” problem as the current System wants us to believe. (See my book Hojas Susurrantes for a full explanation of it.)

Kikes

juden!

Categories
Friedrich Nietzsche Stefan Zweig

Twofold portrait

der_kampf_mit_dem_daemon

To obtain a real likeness of the man, we need to see him in his actual surroundings. What were they? A dinning-room in some modest boarding-house, quarters in an equally modest hotel among the Swiss mountains or on the Italian Riviera; insignificant fellow-boarders, for the most part elderly females, experts in small talk.

Quietly and even timidly he sought the place reserved to him at the table, and he remained shrouded in an uncanny silence during the meal. One felt that this was a man who dwelt among the shadows, a man beyond the pale of human society and conversation, one who winced at the slightest noise. He would bow courteously to his fellow-guests, wishing them politely “God day”; and in return his fellow-guests would with equal polite indifference greet “the German professor.” There was never any wine or beer or coffee served where he sat; he smoked neither cigar nor cigarette after meals.

Immediately the meal was ended he would retire to his room, a typical chambre garnie, exiguous and chilly and dowdy. The table was usually littered with sheets of manuscript, with jottings on scraps of paper, with proofs. Not a flower, not an ornament, hardly a book, seldom a letter would be found.

One fine day he might take a stroll, but he would invariably go alone, alone with his thoughts. Never did he encounter a soul to cheer him, never did he have a companion, never did he meet an acquaintance. He hated gray weather, rain, snow which dazzled his eyes; and during such inclement days he would remain a prisoner in his dingy room. He never paid calls, never came in touch with other human beings. Of an evening he supped on a few biscuits and very weak tea, which having swallowed, he would resume his endless communing with his thoughts. A gulp of chloral or another soporific, and he would snatch at sleep, a sleep which is the facile boon of those who do not think overmuch and who are not perpetually harassed by the daimons.

Everywhere he went, the chambre garnie was the same. The names of the towns he visited changed from Sorrento to Turin, from Venice to Nice or Marienbad, but the chambre garnie remained identical, a rented room, a room totally lacking in any feeling of home.

During all the years of his pilgrimage he never once put up in friendly and cheerful surroundings, never at night felt the warm body of a woman pressing against him; never did the sun rise to see him famous, after a thousand nights of dark and silent labour. How immeasurably vaster was Nietzsche’s loneliness than is the picturesque highland of Sils-Maria where between luncheon and tea our tourists wander in the hope of capturing some of the glamour that clings to a spot sanctified by his presence. Nietzsche’s solitude was as wide as the world; it spread over the whole of his life until the very end. Conversation wearied and irritated him who constantly gnawed at his own vitals and whose hunger for himself, and himself alone, was never satiated.


_____________

Chechar’s note:

Of course: these are only excerpts of a chapter of The Struggle with the Daimon, as in earlier or later installments of this series. A new edition of Zweig’s book, with syntax modified for readers of our century (I prefer the 1930 edition that I quote by direct typing from the text), is now available in the market.

Categories
Emigration / immigration William Shakespeare

A response to Armor

By John Martínez

What you say doesn’t invalidate my remark that people who are cowering in front of the anti-White dictatorship often misinterpret their own behavior as foolish sentimentality.

Immigrants are pouring into Western countries at the invitation of Western governments, and at the consternation of most White people. If White people had their say, for example, in a referendum, immigration would stop. So, if you would like to blame White people, you have to blame their lack of courage, not their foolish sentimentality.

Anti-White dictatorship?! I beg you pardon. Last time I checked every single Western European and Northern American government had been elected by popular, democratic vote. Who voted these governments into office and where do these politicians come from? From what you’re saying, one might get the impression that these politicians are aliens from outer space who came to Earth in order to abet the niggerization / arabization / mestization of these countries, or that it is extraterrestrials who are voting for these folks, instead of adult nationals who have had ample opportunity to see (and live with) the consequences of their stupid political choices for several decades now.

Look, I have all sympathy for the people of North Korea, for example. They certainly haven’t had any say in their government ever since the mid 50’s. Their country was kidnapped by a gang of sociopaths with the aid of a million-strong army. They are real victims. There is a real case to be made that they are not responsible for what is happening to them. But for you to refer to contemporary North American and Western Europeans as poor, oppressed folks, terrorized into cowardice by autocratic, unaccountable governments (as you take it for granted that that is the case) is disingenuous, with all due respect.

I said something to this effect on another thread and a reader, Roger, apparently an English European himself, agreed 100% with me.

Trying to argue that their stupidity and their cowardice is in fact just cowardice is beside the point. The point is that Western Whites are ultimately fully responsible for what is befalling them. And trying to exonerate them from their sin against both their ancestors and their future generations is to assure that nothing will be done about it.

white_people_are_crazy_thermos_food_jar

Whites have let the kikes in and have let them take control of their governments, finances, academia and press. Whites have allowed the inferior non White scum to colonize their societies. To blame “the elites” or “the political class” is a lame excuse because these segments of society are part and parcel of the said societies. Besides, the political class depends on votes to stay in power and what’s more, “the elites” can perfectly well be boycotted into poverty, since we are not talking about Ancient Regime aristocracy here. If stupid liberal Whites can boycott a restaurant chain because its owner said something that displeased gays (link) the reason why the treacherous elite stays where it is, is because Whites want it to be there.

To quote John Derbyshire (discussing the Jewish Question) in a context that twists the meaning of what he said (I despise his philosemitism with all my heart):

97 percent of the U.S. population [and the European one, for that matter] ended up dancing to the tune of the other three percent. If that is true, the only thing to say is the one Shakespeare’s Bianca would have said: “The more fool they.”*

If Whites can mobilize for idiotic causes like homosexual “marriage”, “human rights”, “wymyn’s rights”, “global warming” and at the same time they don’t organize to tackle real issues like Third World immigration it is because they don’t want to. They are not interested. If they are not aware of the JQ, it is because they are not interested. And if they keep voting for treacherous politicians who have [messed] their asses it is because they don’t mind it. So let them live with the consequences. At the end of the day, you have to sleep on the bed you made, right?


___________________

* In Act 5, Scene 2 of The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare there’s a line, “The more fool you for betting on my loyalty.”

Categories
Julian (novel)

JVLIAN excerpts – VIII

“Why were you so ungrateful to our gods
as to desert them for the Jews?”

—Julian, addressing the Christians

Julian

The Memoir of Julian Augustus

Some arrived on horseback, others in litters. Each was accompanied by a retinue of soldiers, clerks, eunuchs, slaves. All wore some variation of military dress, for ever since Diocletian the court has been military in its appearance, symbolic of Rome’s beleaguered state.

For six years Gallus and I had seen no one except Bishop George and our guards. Now all at once there passed before us the whole power of the state. Our eyes were dazzled by glittering armor and elaborate cloaks, by the din of a thousand clerks and notaries who scurried about the courtyard, demanding their baggage, quarreling with one another, insisting on various prerogatives. The noisy clerks with their inky fingers and proud intelligent faces were the actual government of Rome, and they knew it.

The last official to arrive was the most important of all: the Grand Chamberlain of the Sacred Palace, the eunuch Eusebius. He was so large that it took two slaves to pull him out of his ivory and gold litter. He was tall, stout and very white. Beneath the peacock blue of his silk tunic one could see the rolls of flesh quiver as he moved. Of all the officers of the state, only he wore civilian clothes. In fact, he looked like a winsome lady of fashion with mouth artfully rouged and hair arranged in long oiled ringlets. The gold thread of his cape flashed in the sunlight.

Eusebius smiled a tiny smile, exposing small dark teeth; several babyish dimples appeared in his full cheeks. He inclined his head; the neck fat creased; a long curl strayed across his brow.

Nobilissimi,” he said in a soft voice. This was an excellent omen. The title nobilissimus is used only for members of the imperial family. Bishop George never used this title with us nor did our guards. Now, apparently, our rank had been restored.

After a long scrutiny, Eusebius took each us by hand, I can still recall the soft dampness of his touch. “I have so looked forward seeing you both! And how grown up you are! Especially the noble Gallus.” Delicately he felt Gallus’s chest. This sort of impertinence would ordinarily have sent my brother into rage, but that day he was far too frightened. He also knew instinctively that his only protection was his beauty. Complaisantly he allowed the eunuch to caress him as we entered the villa.

Eusebius had the most beguiling voice and manner of anyone I have even known. I should say something here about the voices of eunuchs. They’re like that of a particularly gentle child, and this appeals to the parent in both men and women. Thus subtly do they disarm us, for we tend to indulge them as we would a child, forgetting that their minds are as mature and twisted as their bodies are lacking. Eusebius spun his web about Gallus. He did not bother with me. I was too young.

Gallus and Eusebius dined alone together that night. The next day Gallus was Eusebius’s devoted admirer. “He’s also a friend,” said Gallus. We were alone together in the baths. “He told me how he’d been getting reports about me for years. He knows everything I’ve ever done. He even knows about her.” Gallus named the Antiochene, and giggled. “Anyway Constantius does just as Eusebius tells him. Everyone says so. Which means if you have Eusebius on your side, that’s half of the battle. And I’ve got him. He’s going to make a monk out of you. Though if I have anything to say about it, you’ll be a eunuch.”

We heard trumpets. Then the cry “Augustus!” which always precedes an emperor began, at first far off and faint; then closer, louder: “Augustus! Augustus!” My legs began to tremble. I was afraid I might be sick. Suddenly with a crash the double doors were flung open and there in the doorway stood Flavius Julius Constantius, Augustus of the East… slowly and with an extraordinary dignity crossed the room to his throne. I was too busy studying the mosaic floor to get even a glimpse of my imperial cousin. Not until the Master of the Offices gave the signal for everyone to rise was I able at last to observe my father’s murderer.

Constantius was a man of overwhelming dignity. That was the most remarkable thing about him; even his most ordinary gestures seemed carefully rehearsed. Like the Emperor Augustus, we wore lifts in his sandals to make himself appear tall. He was clean-shaven, with large melancholy eyes. He had his father Constantine’s large nose and thin, somewhat peevish mouth. The upper part of his body was impressively muscular but his legs were dwarfish. He wore the purple, a heavy robe which hung from shoulder to heel.

Then the moment came. Bishop George led Gallus and me to the Master of Offices, who in turn led us up to dais and presented us formally to the Emperor. I was terrified. Without knowing how I got there, I found myself embracing Constantius’ knees, as court etiquette requires.

For an instant I was so close to Constantius that I could make out every pore in his face, which was sunburned dark as a Persian’s. I noticed the silkiness of his straight brown hair, only just beginning to turn grey. He was thirty-two, but I thought him ancient. I also remember thinking: what must it be like to be Emperor of Rome? to know that one’s face on coins, one’s monuments, painted and sculptured, is known to all the world? And here—so close to me that I could feel the reciprocal warmth of his skin—was the original of that world-famous face, not bronze or marble but soft flesh and bone, like me, like any other man.

Constantius remained at Macellum for a week. He attended to the business of the state. He hunted. Bishop George had a long interview with him on the day he arrived, but then, to the Bishop’s chagrin, Constantius ignored him. Though Gallus and I dinned at the Emperor’s table every evening, he never spoke to us.

Gallus made a good impression on everyone—somewhat to my surprise, for he was always rather sullen with Bishop George and downright cruel to me and his teachers. But set among the great officers of the state, he was a different person. He laughed; he flattered; he charmed. He was a natural courtier, and one by one he enchanted the members of the Sacred Consistory, as the Emperor’s council is known. Only with Constantius did he make no headway. Our cousin was biding his time. I wonder now what Constantius was thinking. I suspect that even then I may have puzzled him. Gallus was easily comprehended. But who was this silent youth who wanted to become a priest?

In a blaze of pageantry, Constantius departed. Gallus, Bishop George and I stood in the courtyard as he rode past. Mounted, he looked splendid and tall in his armor of chased gold. He acknowledged no one as he rode out of Macellum. In his cold way he was most impressive, and I still envy him his majesty. He could stand for hours in public looking neither to the left or the right; motionless as a statue.

“You will be gone soon enough, most noble Gallus.” Bishop George had now taken to using our titles.

Gallus said good-bye to his officer friends at a dinner to which I was, surprisingly, invited. He made a pleasant speech, promising to remember his friends if he was ever to have a military command. Bishop George then presented him with a Galilean testament bound in massive silver. “Study it well, most noble Gallus. Outside the church there can be no salvation.”

The next day when it was time for Gallus to say good-bye to me, he did so simply. “Pray for me brother, as I pray for you.”

“I shall. Good-bye Gallus.” And we parted, exactly like strangers who, having met for an evening on a post-house, take different roads the next day. After Gallus left, I wept, for the last time as a child. Yet I hated him. They say that to know oneself is to know all there is that is human. But of course no one can ever know himself. Nothing human is finally calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.

The Bishop then gave me his blessing and a Galilean testament, bound not in silver but in cheap leather; apparently I was not destined to be a Caesar! Yet I thanked him profusely and said farewell. The driver cracked his whip. The horses broke into a trot. For the first time in six years I was leaving the confines of Macellum. My childhood was over, and I was still alive.

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Note of July 2018:

Instead of a linked PDF I have now reproduced the whole text as a regular entry: here.