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would not.
    Her beloved was a proud man who so desperately wanted to win the acceptance and respect of a Rome that spurned him. But he never would, even with his marriage to her. She knew that the only thing that made him acceptable to Rome was the popularity of his comedies—and the money they brought the state in ticket sales and merchandising. It was the same with her beauty. But Athanasius simply could not accept the reality that the mobs who flocked to the Games of the Flavian by day were the same who filled the seats of his Pompey at night.
    “Ludlumus and I are not in the same business,” he had once declared to her. “I am playing a different game, and those who see my plays are the better for it.”
    All of which led him to push the bounds of acceptability in his plays, to point out Rome’s tragic flaws and weaknesses in hopes of strengthening society. This, in turn, only raised the ire of the pontiffs, augurs and astrologers he mocked along with the gods. For all its violence and lust, Rome was actually a conservative and religious society. It could only wink at its wits like Athanasius for so long before it lost its patience. It was time for him to pick a different theme for his productions.
    Having waited until the servants confirmed to her that Athanasius had left and her attendants were waiting in the bathhouse, she turned in the opposite direction and walked past the great marble image of herself as goddess and under the peristyle into the villa.
    Helena entered the library, which intimidated her with all its shelves of books and scrolls. Athanasius had one of the largest personal collections in Rome. It was a secret part of him she could never get her arms around.
    She found a silver tray with a cup and pipe on her beloved’s desk. She picked them up, one at a time, and lifted each to her nose with a frown. He had been drinking kykeon and smoking blue lotus leaves again, no doubt to lift his senses and enhance his creative spirits while he wrote.
    “Oh, Athanasius.”
    Those creative spirits were going to ruin them. It was a miracle that
Opus Gloria
had even passed the censors, let alone get this kind of launch tonight at the palace. That scene of Zeus taking the form of a swan to rape Leda, or rather the other way around in this new telling was… so disturbing, to say the least, and certainly sacrilegious, worse even than the ridicule and death the gods had endured in his previous works. Only the intervention of his lead actor, Latinus, who reminded his friend Domitian that Athanasius took care to mock only the Greek gods, not their Roman successors, and the magistrate Pliny the Younger, who promised that the women of Rome would buy the uniquely shaped figurines of Zeus-the-Swan in droves, saved the production.
    Helena felt the old confusion rise up inside her. She adored Athanasius. He was talented, athletic and compassionate. He was also incredibly handsome and a god in bed. Yet the very qualities she loved—like his dangerous curiosity and insatiable quest for truth—were what she most feared. Even his beloved mentor Maximus had once confided to her: “You just have to control him. Sexually, psychologically, financially. For his own sake. And you’ll get by.”
    She glanced at the titles of his stacks of books and scrolls. There was Aristotle’s
Poetics
, along with the complete works of Euripedes. There were also the classic Greek comedies of Hermippus and Eupolis, and Athanasius’s favorites from Aristophanes,
The Clouds
and
Lysistrata.
There were others too: books about the arts, history. One was about the ancient Israelite invasion of what was now Judea, and another about Rome’s campaign in Germania.
    So many old books and crazy ideas that filled his head.
    The pile of scrolls collapsed from her touch to reveal a scroll hidden behind them all. This one was in common Aramaic, which she understood enough to read the title:
The Revelation of Jesus Christ
.
    She went cold. Officially banned