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Updated: June 20, 2025
THEY were sitting in the veranda of "the splendid palace of an Indian Pro-Consul"; surrounded by all the glory and mystery of the immemorial East. In plain English it was a one-storied, ten-roomed, whitewashed, mud-roofed bungalow, set in a dry garden of dusty tamarisk trees and divided from the road by a low mud wall.
She accompanied the rich bankers, when they left the table, into the shady groves on the banks of the Orontes. She gave herself to all, for she knew nothing of the price of love. But one night that she had danced before the most fashionable young men of the city, the son of the pro-consul came to her, radiant with youth and pleasure, and said, in a voice that seemed redolent of kisses
They regard as a benefactor, anybody who can rescue them from their scrape, with due form of ceremony and guarantee of dignity. My order to the Maoris, desiring peace, was obeyed. This is the Sir George Grey whose doings you follow with the keenest tingle of interest Grey, Pro-Consul. But his other activities all grouped round this signature, and they are to be read with it.
As I drew near the Emperor, he said immediately, "Do you come like the great pro-consul bearing peace or war in either hand?" By this he referred, of course, to the episode in which Quintus Fabius Maximus, chief of the Roman envoys sent to Hannibal in the Second Punic War, doubled his toga in his hand, held it up and said: "In this fold I carry peace and war: choose which you will have."
Imperator and consul, he commanded the armies and exercised executive power; pro-consul, he was supreme in the provinces; perpetual censor and princeps, he reigned over the senate; tribune, he was the master of the people.
In the Acts and Martyrdom of the Holy Apostle Andrew we are told that those who executed Andrew "lifted him up on the stauros," but "did not sever his joints, having received this order from the pro-consul, for he wished him to be in distress while hanging, and in the nighttime as he was suspended to be eaten by dogs."
If he incurred the hatred of the Italians it would not be surprising, nor would it lead us to accuse him of tyranny. "Where Narses the eunuch rules," they said, "he makes us slaves." This cry came to the ears of the emperor for whom it was meant. No doubt, being a fool, he was anxious to be rid of Justinian's pro-consul.
But he again waived the right when his consulship was over; and when, some years afterwards, he went unwillingly as pro-consul to Cilicia, his administration there, as before in his lower office in Sicily, was marked by a probity and honesty quite exceptional in a Roman governor.
There were a few bright examples of honest men, but these, by providing a contrast, only increased the discontents. The rule of Egypt was iniquitous: yet it preserved the magnificent appearance of Imperial dominion. The Egyptian Pro-consul lived in state at the confluence of the Niles. The representatives of foreign Powers established themselves in the city.
"There is a curious similarity between the position of the Jew in ancient times and what it is now. They were procurers and usurers among the Gentiles, yet many of them were singularly high-minded and pure. All, too, with an intense clannishness, the secret of their success, and a sense of superiority to the Gentile which would prevent the meanest Jew from sitting at table with a pro-consul.
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