The Honcho Becomes Caesar (p126-p141)

(Setting:  Frustrated by his failure to become emperor of 20th Century America, the Head Honcho travels back in time to Imperial Rome to assume the personna of Julius Caesar.)

The door slammed behind Freeman's hasty retreat. Depression overcame the Honcho in his solitude. Ever since Bottomless Esophagus revealed his Bavarian Forest escapades, he was increasingly disillusioned with running for elective office. It used to be so simple. If you were an incumbent, you got re-elected, no matter what happened during your previous term. But after Nixon's Watergate mess, the voters became surly and self-righteous, and the media became skeptical and penetrating. Needing approval from voters was alien to him.

He tearfully reminisced about days gone by, when incumbents could count on the sheer weight of their office, party loyalty, and behind-the-scenes political chicanery to ensure election outcomes. He missed that old sense of power and self-determination that nowadays he only experienced as the honorary Emperor of the Bavarian Forest. Emperors don’t have to worry about elections. They hold their office for life, no matter how sorry their performance is. He desperately desired that same omnipotence. Being dependent on voters to retain power was an intolerable crock of shit. It wasn't right for a man of his stature to grovel in front of ordinary peasants to get their blessing to tax, regulate, draft, and otherwise oppress them. It was unnatural. It therefore had to change.

His recent stint as Bavarian Forest Emperor planted a mental seed that sprouted into the beanstalk of a grandiose idea. He summoned Buxomus, Freeman, Jefferson, and But Sir! into his office and announced, "I'm going to become Emperor."

"But Sir!" exclaimed But Sir!. "You can't make yourself Emperor!"

"Why not?" asked the Honcho with genuine incredulity.

"I...I'm not sure", stammered But Sir!. "There must be some sort of approval you need to become Emperor."

"Hmmmm", mused the Honcho. "Freeman, does Ismism say I can't be Emperor?"

"Absolutely not."

"There. It's settled. I'm going to become Emperor, unless someone here thinks that would be a mistake." He scowled menacingly and slowly scanned the room, searching for expression of contrary opinions. His eyes arrested on Freeman, who was trying to blend into the office decor. "What say ye, my alleged public relations liaison?"

"Can I have my own Nubian slave women if you become Emperor?"

"You can have my leftovers."

"Then I say go for it", said Freeman, drooling at the prospect of a harem.

The Honcho turned to Jefferson. "What’s your opinion, Insurrection Czar?"

"There is little difference between being an Emperor of yore and a politician of today", replied Jefferson. "You are not in need of greater power, which you already possess to an unconscionable degree. Rather, you need a populace that is more willing to submit itself to you completely and unquestionably. Americans have tasted the sweetness of liberty, and although they have forgotten much of what is required for liberty to flourish, they will never fully submit themselves to absolute tyranny again. If it was possible, it would be better for you to step backward in time, to an era when despotism was not only tolerated by citizens, it was expected. You would be happier as Emperor of Rome, for example, than as Emperor of America."

The Honcho stared quietly at Jefferson, trying to determine whether he was hearing the words of a genius or a scoundrel setting him up for acute embarrassment. While he pondered this, a strange recollection flashed into Freeman's brain. When he heard Jefferson’s suggestion to go backward in time, the haunting words of Cassandra reverberated in his head..."Although my murdered corpse is buried near the Corinthian Gulf, something uniquely 'me' lives on, does it not? History is always and everywhere, along with the men and women who lived it passionately. History surrounds us and compels us. It is lived and relived, in an unending cycle. The past becomes present, which then becomes future..."

The Honcho broke the silence. "Jefferson, I’ll take your suggestion and make myself Julius Caesar, Emperor of Rome!"

"But Sir!" interjected But Sir!. "How can you become an emperor who lived 2000 years ago! Time travel is impossible!"

The Honcho grinned like the Cheshire Cat. "You skeptics! Have you forgotten that I'm an U.S. Senator? Have you forgotten that I'm the most powerful man in America? Have you forgotten that I conquered the debilitating zero and comma shortage?"

As he launched these rhetorical questions, he rummaged in a drawer until he slowly and dramatically extricated a black leather-bound book. He blew a musty layer of dust from the tome and placed it gently on his desk. The four skeptics instinctively leaned forward for a better view of the mysterious book.

"Is that a book of black magic?" Freeman asked, half in jest and half in fear.

In a secretive voice, the Honcho revealed, "This is the 'Book of Liberal Policies, Marxist Economics, and other Occult Phenomena'."

His audience gasped. But Sir! did a sign of the cross. "What does it say about time travel?" asked Freeman breathlessly.

The Honcho frowned. "I don't know. It's been years since I've dared to open this book. Its tremendously powerful spells have proven to be unpredictable and often catastrophic. I’ll check the table of contents....let's see....Great Society....Welfare State....Progressive Taxation....Labor Theory of Value....Dialectic Materialism....ah, here it is....Time Travel!"

"Now what?" asked Freeman.

"I turn to page 317 and do as it says." The Honcho read the instructions aloud to his enraptured audience. "Compared to Marxism, Time Travel is relatively safe and understandable, and not nearly as improbable as creating wealth simply by redistributing it. All that’s required to journey through time is a suspension of reason and a quotation from a dreamy fairy tale." He looked up at his staff. "Seems pretty simple. I suspend reason every day as a Congressman. And the book even provides a quote from a fairy tale, although it sounds like a concoction by the Mad Hatter." This caused him a momentary flash of doubt, but he quickly regained his courage. "What the hell! I'm going for it! See you all earlier."

He stood on his desk cradling the "Book of Liberal Policies, Marxist Economics, and other Occult Phenomena". He took a deep breath and then recited the fairy tale:

"Imperious Prima flashes forth

Her edict 'to begin it'

In gentler tone Secunda hopes

'There will be nonsense in it!'

"The dream-child moving through a land

Of wonders wild and new,

Lay it where Childhood's dreams are twined

In Memory's mystic band,

And half believe it is true.

"And ever, as the story drained

The wells of fancy dry,

And faintly strove that weary one

To put the subject by,

'The rest next time--it is next time..."

The Honcho was drawn irresistibly into a churning vortex of millions of tiny lights that formed a brilliant funnel coiling mysteriously backward in time. He was sucked into the past like a speck of dust by a huge cosmic vacuum as the swirling lights blurred into streaks. He curiously noted that he felt no different, even though he was traversing deep into the past, decade by decade, century by century. He flirted with the realization that humans are the same, no matter what era or circumstance they’re in.

He was blinded by a ferocious blast of kaleidoscopic light a hundred fold more brilliant than the churning vortex. Then he was assaulted by an explosion that made thunder sound like a whisper. He stopped moving abruptly. He rubbed his stricken eyes vigorously to remove the fireflies flitting across his seared retinas while his other senses assessed his new world. A disgusting odor permeated the air. He smelled animals, feces, and filthy humans. He felt oppressive heat driven by a tropical breeze. Gritty dust filled his lungs. The thunder crashing in his ears subsided into a rolling rumble, like waves of hurrahs reverberating in a stadium full of spectators. Emotionally charged voices close by seemed to be addressing him. With trepidation, he opened his wounded eyes.

An astonishing vista greeted him. He was standing on a balcony jutting out from a massive coliseum with tiered expanses of stone, concrete, and marble. A crowd of 50,000 people generated the thundering sound that reverberated painfully in his stricken ears. A fishy-smelling tropical breeze swept out of a blue sky and wafted over the colonnaded peristyle of the stadium. Below him marched a motley assortment of misshapen dwarfs, loinclothed Negroes, and bearded Jewish men who looked starved and beaten. Suddenly, this procession of discarded humanity stopped and cried out in unison, "Hail Emperor! Those who are about to die salute you!" Musicians launched into a vigorous fanfare. The Honcho became acutely aware that all eyes were upon him.

Completely disoriented, he searched uncertainly for guidance. The first person he saw gave him a sudden surge of relief. He immediately recognized the wire-rimmed spectacles, the disheveled blond hair, and the tubercular face of the unpretentious little man beside him. "But Sir!", exclaimed the Honcho. "What in hell is going on here? And why are you wearing that ridiculous white sheet?"

The thin man's hollow face contorted with confusion. He glanced down at the woolen toga draped on him like a ridiculous sheet. "Has too much wine brought the wrath of Bacchus down upon you? Why did you call me But Sir!, my illustrious Consul?"

"Because that's who you are. Quit fooling around."

"I swear on the honor of the Vestal Virgins that I am not But Sir!," protested the anemic man, who was indeed a dead ringer for the Honcho’s aide.

"Then who the fuck are you?"

"I am Justinius, your chief administrator. Are you okay, my glorious Consul?"

The Honcho rubbed his temples. It dawned on him that things weren't quite as they used to be, and would probably never be again. He thought up a ruse to explain his disorientation. "Forgive me, Justinius. I bumped my head in a chariot accident this morning and lost some memory. Help me out."

"Okay", replied Justinius. "The first thing you should know is that you owe me a hundred denarii for our bet on the chariot races at the Circus Maximus last night. How else can I help you?"

"Explain what's going on here."

"I'm not sure where to begin. You're Julius Caesar. This is the Coliseum. On the field are gladiators and in the stands are spectators. They're all waiting for your signal to start the contests."

"What contests?"

"The gladiator fights!" exclaimed Justinius. "How fast was your chariot going when you fell off?"

"Never mind," snarled the Honcho. "What happens at a gladiator fight?"

"Gladiators hack each other mercilessly with gruesome weapons. Severed appendages fall to the ground. Many men die. The crowd goes wild. Then animals fight. Lions versus bulls. Hippos versus panthers. Tigers versus rhinos. At the end, deranged followers of a Judean fool named Christus are fed to starving lions. It's great fun. They actually believe Christus rose from the dead!"

The Honcho was intrigued by the submissiveness of the gladiators standing at attention below his balcony. Every time he tried to send young men off to die in foreign skirmishes to entertain his electoral whims, all he ever got in return was protests, draft evasion, and moral outrage. These Roman gladiators, on the other hand, were willing to accept their unhappy fate without protest. They even saluted him, while acknowledging they are about to die. "Tell me", he said to Justinius, "Why are they so willing to forfeit their lives to entertain this stadium of more privileged people?"

"They know it’s how things are ordained. It's in the stars. Gladiators die. Spectators cheer. Emperors drink ambrosia and smile contentedly during the carnage. If the great god Jupiter wanted them to be safely on this balcony, and you in the mouth of a voracious lion, surely he would have done so."

"And they never protest?"

"They did once, but you took care of it rather adroitly. Don’t you remember?"

"Hmmm. Refresh my ailing memory, Justinius."

"Spartacus, the famous gladiator from Thessaly, led an uprising of 70,000 enraged slaves against the Empire. They held out for three years in the crater of Mount Vesuvius, and terrorized Rome with periodic raids. Your Praetorian Guard finally captured them and hung the six thousand remaining outlaws on wooden crosses along the Appian Way, from Capua to Brundisium, as a gruesome warning to anyone else considering rebelling against their ordained servitude to us."

The Honcho memorized this tidbit. Such a clever tactic could be useful in two thousand years, especially if he ever had to send in the National Guard to shoot renegade students on an Ohio college campus, or send in the BATF to incinerate a religious cult in Waco, or send in the FBI to murder the family of a tax protester in Ruby Ridge. But, he was still perplexed by the lull that had descended upon the Coliseum. Everyone was staring at him. "How do I start the festivities?" he asked Justinius.

"Just do this." Justinius held his arms outstretched toward the crowd, with thumbs upraised from clenched fists.

The Honcho clumsily extended his arms, clenched his fists, and stuck his thumbs out. Unfortunately, he mistakenly pointed them downward.

"What are you doing?!" cried Justinius, as he yanked the Honcho's arms down. He then frantically waved and shouted at the centurions, who had drawn their swords to slay the gladiators. He eventually got their attention and signaled to them that they had received a false command from the Emperor. Fortunately, only three gladiators were slain in error. "My good consul", he said in a shaking voice, "When you give the 'thumbs down' sign, gladiators die. The 'thumbs up' sign is for beginning these contests, and for acknowledging brave performances. Please try again."

The Honcho’s upraised thumbs evoked a thunderous response from the 50,000 spectators. As the bloodletting commenced, he sat on a marble throne and absorbed his surroundings. He too was wearing a toga, which was pristine white bordered by a purple band, signifying his rank as Consul. A gray woolen tunic was under his toga, and leather sandals were strapped to his feet. Drinks were arrayed in pewter cups on a marble pedestal at his side. Another pedestal held a cornucopia of hors d'oeuvres, desserts, and entrees prepared by the royal epicure, Apicius. There were lobster, truffles, sow's udders stuffed with salted sea urchins, patina of brains, boiled tree fungi with peppered fish fat, Jericho dates, boiled ostrich, roasted parrot, dormice stuffed with pine kernels, and fricassee of roses.

A large retinue of people surrounded him. Slaves hustled hither and thither delivering wine and food. Beautiful Nubian women in long white belted stolas perpetually waved palm fronds at him. Several people carried themselves officiously. To his left was a tall man with a laconic smile who looked disturbingly like Freeman. Curious, he asked Justinius, "Who is that man?"

"That's Marcus Brutus, a city praetor. He publicly extols your virtues, although I often suspect he is condemning you with faint praise. You shouldn’t trust him, my illustrious Consul. He’s a renegade and prankster who knows no humility or respect."

The Honcho squirmed uncomfortably on his marble throne. The ominous similarities between Freeman and Marcus Brutus, who winked mischievously in his direction, bothered him. Not even two thousand years could erase Freeman’s discomforting vibes. He looked away from Brutus, whereupon his eyes fell hungrily upon a vision of feminine loveliness. She was seated on a throne and wore a diamond studded golden tiara on a glorious mane of black hair. Her lustrous skin was a sensuous brown and her eyes were wide, dark, and mysterious. She wore a white stola with a luxurious purple saffron cloak draped over her slender shoulders. Her magnificent breasts rivaled the fabulous pair that Buxomus regularly nurtured him with. When the stately lady arose and slowly strolled across the balcony, the Honcho bit his hand to ease his unrequited lust. Her voluptuous ass moved back and forth in a scintillating rhythm duplicated by only one other woman in the universe. If not for her black hair and brown skin, the Honcho would have bet an emperor's ransom that she was Buxomus. "Who is that sexy, mysterious woman? I envy the sonofabitch who lays her every night."

Justinius laughed impolitely and nudged him knowingly. "That makes you a sonofabitch, my glorious Consul. She's your mistress, Cleopatra."

The Honcho's jaw dropped in disbelief at his good fortune. "My mistress?"

Just then, the captain of the Praetorian Guard charged up and begged for attention. "What is it?" the Honcho mumbled through his teeth, which were still embedded in his skin to ameliorate his insatiable lust.

"It's the Christians, your Highness."

"What Christians?" snarled the Honcho.

"That's exactly the point, your Highness. We've run out of them, and it's not even halftime."

The Honcho glanced up at the scoreboard, where freshly hung Roman Numerals showed the score as Lions IV, Christians 0, with three minutes left on the sundial before halftime. "How could you run out of Christians in such a low scoring massacre?" he asked.

"It is indeed inexcusable, your Highness. Many centurions will be put to death because of this miserable transgression. However, it’s getting difficult to hunt down those clever Christians in the catacombs."

The Honcho was puzzled. "What should I do?" he asked Justinius.

Justinius whispered, "Forget the Christians. Tell him to round up some Gnostics and Essenes during halftime. The spectators won’t know the difference, as long as they see religious fanatics of some sort devoured by lions."

"Forget the Christians," the Honcho advised the captain. "Take your best men and round up some Gnostics and Essenes during halftime. Be quick about it!"

"Yes, my eternal Emperor!" The captain saluted sprightly and evaporated from the balcony. The Honcho nervously asked Justinius, "Are you sure nobody will notice the difference between Christians and other religious fanatics?"

"As long as bones snap and blood flows, nobody will give a damn whose god failed to save the victims. Besides, since we drape the victims in animal skins to entice the lions to gobble them up, the spectators can’t even see the zealots inside."

The first-half sundial expired. Halftime entertainment was a potpourri of odd spectacles. Trained elephants wrote Latin phrases in the sand with their agile trunks. Panthers harnessed to chariots raced around the stadium. Bears wrestled with buffaloes, and bulls collided mightily with rhinoceroses. The most intriguing spectacle was a band of dwarfs armed with daggers battling female Nubian archers. The women struggled to hit the diminutive dwarfs with arrows, and the dwarfs struggled to stab the taller women with their short arms. The battle was decided when the dwarfs cleverly hacked at the legs of the Nubian women until they were short enough to be stabbed in the heart. The Honcho, watching with bloodthirsty glee, gave a thumbs up verdict and bellowed excitedly, "This is barbaric!"

"No, this is civilized", corrected Justinius. "The Barbarians live outside the empire, which is something I should brief you on. Alaric the Visigoth, Attila the Hun, and Theodoric the Ostrogoth have deployed their barbarian armies along the Rhine and the Danube, which is currently our northern frontier. We are threatened by hordes of ragged Neanderthals who wouldn’t appreciate the sophisticated culture we’re experiencing here today."

"Sounds serious," said the Honcho, as a gladiator lopped off a foe’s head. "But can the briefing wait? I want to see if the Gnostics and Essenes stage a comeback against the Lions."

"Sure. But you should take the Lions and give the points."

"Perhaps," said the Honcho. "The Lions seem overconfident. By the way, why do we feed Christians to the lions?"

"Because the lions are hungry."

"But why feed them Christians? Shouldn't we feed them something healthy?"

"We do it because Vergil told us to."

The Honcho felt like he was solving a riddle one clue at a time. "I'll bite. Who is Vergil?"

"Vergil is the most famous and popular Roman...besides you, of course. His poems bring tears to the eyes of heroes, courage to the hearts of cowards, laughter to the lips of the despondent, and nobility to the souls of infidels. His poetic acumen is revered throughout the empire, from Carthage in the south to Londinium in the north, from Olisipo in the west to Babylon in the east. He has grown in cultural lore to mythic legend and quasi-religious hero. You recognized that his fame could be harnessed to cement your grip on imperial power. You saw in Vergil an opportunity to transform popular mythology into another chain binding unthinking people to their leaders. You understood that the key to political power is being the one who interprets the unknowable and the unprovable for the masses.

"That's why Emperors and Kings usurp religion. He who controls the mythology rules the world. He who is accepted as the interpreter of reality becomes the master of everyone else. This has been true ever since Hammurabi claimed the god Shamash handed his famous Code to him. That’s why you coerced Vergil to use his magnificent skills to write an epic poem venerating and deifying the secular heroes of Rome. It took him ten years to finish the Aeneid, and when he was done, he had such unsettling qualms about it that he wanted the manuscript burned. But, you ordered 'The Aeneid' published, and your deification began."

The Honcho was impressed with Caesar's grasp of the symbiotic relationship between mysticism and power. However, his original question remained unanswered. "You haven't yet explained why Vergil told us to feed Christians to the lions."

"Be patient, my Emperor. As I was saying, the mythology of Vergil and others transformed the Imperium into an extension of the will of the gods. Legend says that Romulus, the mythic founder of Rome, stood by the Tiber River as he christened the city and boldly shouted to all of Italy, ‘It is heaven’s will that my Rome shall be the Capital of the world.’ Ovid retold the tales of classical mythology in Roman vernacular, beginning with creation and ending with your very own metamorphosis into a god alongside Jupiter and Juno. You cemented this claim to divinity by taking the title of Pontifex Maximus, the Chief Priest of the Romans."

A huge roar rocked the coliseum. The Honcho and Justinius turned toward the playing field to watch a voracious lion shred an unfortunate Essene clad in deerskin. Despite the terrified man's pleas for his god to save him, the lion methodically bit off his appendages and then disemboweled him completely, leaving only a few large bones on the sandy ground as evidence that he ever existed. The victim's god was apparently distracted today. A new roman numeral was hung next to "Lions" on the scoreboard.

When the hubbub subsided, Justinius continued. "The religion you preside over is a flexible amalgamation of faiths absorbed from the indigenous Italians and other nations that the Roman Empire swallowed. This spiritually generic religion has no specific dogma or set of principles. It can be anything you need it to be, as long as Romans continue to recognize you as their chief priest. Thus, you are the Pontifex Maximus of many gods and isms, including Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Mercury, Diana, Minerva, Apollo, the ancient Etruscan gods, the indigenous animist spirits, Mithraism, Stoicism, and Epicurianism. These are now an interlocked latticework of popular myths that have become Rome’s universal religion, which has been distilled into a worship of Rome and of you as its Emperor."

"What does any of this have to do with feeding Christians to lions?"

"Be patient with your unworthy aide", entreated Justinius. "Rome absorbed many religions, and those religions equally absorbed Rome. Christianity, however, stands alone as the one religion that refused to absorb Rome. Christians chose rebellion, insisting that they alone possess the eternal truths. Christus even declared, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." Such a declaration of independence from the Empire is treason, and must be dealt with accordingly. The first step was to crucify Christus for insurrection, which he committed by attacking our merchants in the temple.

"If religion gets separated from politics, it would cast away the moorings of your power, because he who controls the mythology rules the world. Christus knew this when he explained to the Pharisees how a Christian should deal with Roman taxation. He pointed to your likeness on the back of a Roman coin and said, 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's.' The impudent upstart was contesting the lesson history has taught thus far, that God and Caesar are one and the same, and that the role of religion is to validate your power, not to repudiate it. Christians declared all other religions to be false, implicitly calling your title of Pontifex Maximus null and void. As this philosophical disease spread like an unstoppable plague throughout the Empire, it became imperative for us to attack."

The danger of the situation dawned on the Honcho. He had two thousand years of historical perspective to assess Justinius’ explanation. He squirmed uneasily on his throne. Such heresy was indeed a threat to his livelihood, he realized with foreboding certainty, so it had to be dealt with firmly. He preempted the punch line of Justinius' rambling dissertation. "So that’s why Vergil told us to feed Christians to the lions."

Justinius smiled. "Precisely! There’s nothing particularly odious about the Christian dogma; they simply have an attitude problem. So now we persecute them. We blame them for every disaster. We burn their homes and churches. We incinerate their women and children in furnaces. We torture them to abdicate their beliefs and declare their allegiance to you and Rome. Of course, the true believers refuse and thus become martyrs, because worshipping Caesar would be worshipping a god other than their own, which is exactly the issue. So, we feed them to the lions, because the lions can stomach them, whereas you cannot. They are rebels and anarchists. They are insurrectionists. They must be exterminated...."

The Honcho suddenly remembered the Insurrectionist that tormented him in the 20th century. He fought back tears of frustration. He couldn’t even escape the looming shadow of insurrection across a gulf of two thousand years. Was there nowhere that he could find safe haven? Life wasn’t fair, he concluded, as a lion ripped the flesh off a hapless Gnostic victim on the coliseum floor.

Despite his concern, the Honcho’s biggest threat wouldn’t be the rebellious creed of Christus. Christianity would eventually be conscripted into the profane service of worldly kings when history scrolled into the Middle Ages. Although Christianity was the harbinger of separation of church from state, a broader movement to separate mysticism from politics would ultimately be the greatest threat to the Head Honcho’s spiritual archetype.