King of Kings

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'The other crag is lower – you will see Odysseus – though both lie side-by-side, an arrow-shot apart, Atop it a great fig-tree rises, shaggy with leaves, beneath it awsome Charybdis gulps the dark water down.' Homer, The Odyssey (12. 112-115. tr. R. Fagles) Prologue: The Syrian Desert between the Euphrates River and the city of Palmyra (Autumn AD256) They were riding for their lives. The first day in the desert they had pushed hard, but always within their horses' limits. Completely alone, there had been no sign of pursuit. That evening in camp among the muted, tired conversations there had been a fragile mood of optimism. It was smashed beyond recall in the morning.

As they crested a slight ridge Marcus Clodius Ballista, the Dux Ripae, pulled his horse to one side off the rough track and let the other thirteen riders and one pack horse pass. He looked back the way they had come. The sun was not up yet, but its beams were beginning to chase away the dark of the night. And there at the centre of the spreading semi-circle of numinous yellow light, just at the point where in a few moments the sun would break the horizon, was a column of dust.

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