“Fire here!” he shouted.

The legionnaire ran up with a torch, and now everyone saw that the shoulders of Varkoheba were enveloped by a large viper, as light yellow, in dark spots, as the surrounding walls and stones under their feet.

“Look!” Severus exclaimed. “He is the messenger of their god. The Jewish god himself killed him, punishing him for deceit and treachery.”

The old man muttered something barely audible.

“What are you saying?” Hadrian turned to him and said, “Translate someone.”

One of the Syrians who guarding the emperor reported, “He says that God did not kill Varcoheba, he came for his soul, as a righteous man's soul, to place it in the treasury of the throne of glory.”

Hadrian frowned.

“Does God want to take this man’s soul to heaven? Then chop off the head of this snake! Rufus,” he found with his eyes among the retinue the figure of the viceroy, “Rufus, come here! You trust the great honor of defeating the messenger of the Jewish god.”

Before Rufus immediately parted, and he had to come forward. Near Varcoheba’s body, the governor stopped, hesitantly drew a sword from its scabbard, and began fussily poking at the head of the viper. The snake hissed menacingly, sliding from the body of the murdered, but the governor still could not get into her small flat head with a forked tongue. It seemed that horror shackled him, it was one thing to anger your gods, whom you can cajole by making a rich sacrifice to them, and another thing was a stranger, an unknown god. He, Tineius Rufus, did not know what sacrifices this Yahweh received. And would he accept from him?

“How long are you going to practice, Quintus? We're tired,” sneered Hadrian, who was amused by the squirming figure of the viceroy standing on half-bent legs.

The old man again muttered something in a stubborn, loud voice, and without waiting for the emperor's question, the Syrian translated it.

“He says that God will punish the one who will kill this snake.”

The remark of the recalcitrant rebel angered Hadrian, and he, a mighty, like the majestic monumental sculpture of Trajan, standing on the Forum, hung over the puny old man.

“I alone can punish here and no one else! Remember!”

In the cave there was silence, which was broken only by Rufus's grunt. Ceionius Commodus, who had been on the sidelines all this time, decided to intervene.

“Great Caesar, let me fight the Jewish messenger!”

Grim, with angrily sparkling eyes, Hadrian waved his hand and Commodus, coming up to the snake, deftly cut off her head. After this scene, the emperor addressed Akiva.

“You will be executed, old man, by a terrible execution.”

“Talking to God is not afraid of cruelty,” he replied detachedly.

“Proud! You don't have to talk to the gods, you have to ask the gods and listen to what they're talking about.”

Hadrian wrapped himself in his purple cloak, as if an unbearable, deadly cold pierced his body and went to the exit from the musty cave, to the hot sun, to the fresh air, even if it was saturated with the smoke of war, to those pleasant and elegant things that were waiting for him to return to Athens.

On the way out he stopped for a moment, saying without turning around.

“Send the legions to the Dead Sea, where the last rebels remain. And from this Jew, remove the skin from the living!”

“… You did a little reckless, in my opinion, rekindled the decrepit Servianus with conversations about the heir. What's the point? We've talked about it. Your successor should be Marcus Verissimus, as you call him…

In the meantime, Servianus goes to the homes of patricians and convinces that everything was decided. He is so pleased, this old peacock, that it becomes funny in the eyes of many when he solemnly starts praising you. It is as if the times of the Republic have come to life at the same time as Cato the Elder and Scipio…