The Testimonium Read Online Free PDF Page B

connected.
    “By all means,” said the chief. “What are you up to in those old ruins, that you need back-up?”
    “I’m not at complete liberty to say,” replied Rossini. “But what we require at the moment is to be undisturbed for a few days. On a practical level, a more permanent roadblock at the base of the mountain, and some food and drink for the evening would do for starters. A couple of tents and sleeping bags, because I don’t think we will be coming down off this mountain tonight—and the fewer people that know something is going on, the better.”
    “Hmm, I am guessing you must have found something important, my friend! Did the tremor shake something out of the mountainside?” asked the policeman.
    “You are fishing, Chief Rosario!” laughed Rossini. “All I can say is, as soon as I am at liberty to divulge it; you will be the first person I tell. But for now, the quieter we keep it, the sooner I can tell you what we’ve found.”
    “All right,” said the chief. “I’ll play by your rules, and I’ll have a couple of tents up there, along with some bedding and food, within the hour. Then we’ll barricade the old road and leave you alone with your infernal secrets!”
    After he hung up, Rossini walked to the edge of the villa and looked to the west, with the length of the island of Capri stretched out toward the setting sun. He wondered how the view would have looked two thousand years before, as old Tiberius stood on the same marble floor, staring off across the body of water the Romans called Mare Nostrum —“Our Sea.” He had always been fascinated by the titans who had struggled for power during the last days of the Republic—Gaius Marius, the wealthy commoner who had become Rome’s greatest general and been elected consul seven times; Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the ruthless patrician who had purged the Senate of plebeian influence by a series of bloody proscriptions; and the one who surpassed them both—Gaius Julius Caesar, the soldier, writer, statesman, and reformer who had, depending on who you listened to, either destroyed the Republic in a mad fit of pride or been goaded into a needless war by his fanatical, idiotic enemies in the Senate. It had been Caesar’s great-nephew and adopted heir Augustus who built the Villa Jovis as a quiet retreat from Rome. He had, in turn, bequeathed it to his stepson and heir, the reclusive general Tiberius, who had turned it into his primary residence after leaving the city of Rome. And it was Tiberius that Rossini pondered now, the cruel, unpopular tyrant who had ruled a quarter of the earth’s population from this gem of an island off the coast of Italy. Was he the twisted monster Suetonius had portrayed in his histories, or was he a misunderstood old man who simply wanted to escape from the madness and noise of the imperial city?
    Giuseppe was so caught up in his reverie that he did not hear Isabella come up behind him until she lightly placed one hand on his shoulder. “We did it,” she said softly. “Or, more truthfully, you did it. You made the discovery that will ensure that archeologists a hundred years from now will have to learn our names!”
    Rossini laughed and kissed her young hand. For a moment, he wished he were thirty years old again. How beautiful she was! But his affection for her, for all of his banter, was more like the love of a doting father for a daughter who made him very proud. “Dear child,” he said. “There is no one on earth I would rather share this discovery with. To think that you and I were the first in two millennia to see the signature of the man who was the adopted child of Augustus himself! I’ve always wondered how Howard Carter felt when he poked his head through that hole into the tomb of Tutankhamen, or Heinrich Schliemann when he held the golden mask of Agamemnon for the first time. Now I know.” The two archeologists stood in silence and watched the sun drop into the Mediterranean.

    In order to