Under Tiberius by Nick Tosches

Author:Nick Tosches
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Religious, Fiction / Historical, Fiction / Thrillers / Historical
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2015-08-03T16:00:00+00:00

21

UNKNOWN EVEN TO JESUS, I HAD AT TYRE PURCHASED A good deal of opium from an importer who supplied the renowned Roman pharmacopolist of that city.

I was not interested in henbane, from whose death-like coma we had raised the young man of Nain as he lay bound for burial on his funeral bier. Nor was I interested in mandrake, that other stinking plant poison that in small doses brought phantoms and visions, and in larger doses eliminated political and personal enemies. These were drugs for murder, narcotics with which those of low class and ill-breeding played a dodgy game in seeking to lace the stupefying effects of their palled wine with crude illusions and apparitions.

It was the stuff of gods, opium, praise-sung and rhapsodied by Homer, Virgil, and Ovid; the wondrous stuff, opium, that, mixed with his cup of hemlock, sent Socrates smiling to his death as if entering a place of bliss; opium, banisher of pain and sorrow, bringer of enchantments—it was opium, and opium alone, that I wanted.

The opium of royalty, which was of prohibitive cost in large amounts, was that which bore the seal of Anatolia. The importer assured me that the opium of Egypt and India surpassed the Anatolian, and that the higher price and prestige of the latter had more to do with the glamour of its luxury seal than with its quality. I was also told by him that the best grades of Egyptian and Indian opium were often of higher purity than the Anatolian, whose weight was often augmented by adding undetectable shavings from the lanced poppy pods to the thick opium juice that these pods yielded.

He told me this not because he had no Anatolian opium in stock, but because I had presented myself as a potential long-term buyer, and he surmised that honesty would in the end prove more profitable than the wiles of single-purchase selling.

A libra of Egyptian opium, round and wrapped in linen, was set before me. It was expensive, he admitted, but it was also the best to be had. Pure, unadulterated, uncontaminated, from the recent harvest, which was one of the finest in years. He unfolded the linen and lightly pressed his forefinger into the black substance to illustrate how very fresh and soft it was.

The big, thick, heavy libra was far more than I wanted. Its weight was about that of an old Republican cast-bronze coin. He brought down several unciae of the same opium: much smaller rounds in smaller wraps of linen.

I asked him how much opium, taken at once, might kill a man through poisoning. He looked at me suspiciously and asked me why I wanted the opium. I told him that it was for cultic purposes, to be used in rites. I told him that I was the agent of a priest, who knew much more than I. I told him I was merely curious, and that I wanted to be party to no mistakes or mishaps.

“The cult of Ceres?” he asked casually.

“No, another,” I answered casually.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.