The Back Leaf

by Tertullian, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium

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I. Notae

Saturninus wrote faster than men spoke. That was the whole of his profession, and the proconsul's officium paid him for it at the rate of a junior clerk, which is to say that it paid him for the speed and not for the accuracy. Nobody pays for accuracy. Accuracy is assumed, like the floor.

He sat below the tribunal, to the left, where the light from the doorway fell across his tablets and not across his face. He had five tablets bound together with a cord through the holes, eight faces of wax between the bare outer boards, and two styluses, one sharp at the point and flat at the other end for smoothing errors. He used the flat end rarely. A man who smooths out his errors in court is a man who has stopped listening while he smooths.

He wrote in notes. A stroke and a hook was dixit. A loop was proconsul. He had a sign of his own for Christianus, because the official sign took four movements and that was too many for the summer of the new proconsul, when the word was said more often than dixit.

On the last leaf of the last tablet, the back leaf, he kept another record.

It was not a secret. It was simply not the acta. Into the acta went the questions of the judge, the answers of the accused, the depositions of the accuser, the sentence. Onto the back leaf went what was said that was not a question, not an answer, not a deposition, and not a sentence. A man asks for water. A guard says the accused stinks. The proconsul tells an assessor that the fish last night was off. These things are said in court; they are not said to the court. The difference is a matter of standing.

Saturninus had kept the back leaf for three years. He smoothed it every month and began again, and what he had smoothed he did not remember, except one thing. He had noticed it in the second year and had not been able to stop noticing it, and he kept a count of it in strokes along the top edge, carried over from wax to wax.

When men were struck, they said God.

Not Saturn. Not the gods. Not Caelestis, though half the women of Carthage would have sworn to you that Caelestis had saved their sons from fever. A man on the horse, with the windlass taking up the slack in his arms, did not invoke the god he paid his vows to. He said Deus. Singular. As if there were one, and as if that one were in the room.

There were forty-one strokes along the top edge. Each time, before he smoothed, he had read down the names. Most of them sacrificed weekly. One was a priest of Saturn's precinct, arrested for selling the god's own offerings out of the back of the shrine. On the horse he had said Deus videt, God sees, which under the circumstances was an admission.

Saturninus's own name had been given in honour of Saturn. His father had paid for a little stele to the god when the boy survived his first winter, a stone with a crude ram and a crescent on it, set up among a thousand like it in the precinct on the hill. Saturninus had been once, as a child. He remembered the smell of the place, ash and goat, and that it was difficult to find his own stone.

II. Delatio

The fuller Baricbal was accused on the day after the Ides by a fuller named Iulius Felix.

The law, as the clerks of the officium knew it, came from a letter of the deified Trajan: Christians were not to be sought out; if they were accused and proved, they were to be punished; if any man denied that he was a Christian and proved it by supplicating our gods, he was to be pardoned for his repentance, whatever his past. Accusations without a name were not to be received. This last provision was the reason Iulius Felix stood in court, sweating in a clean tunic, and was not at home with his vats.

Saturninus wrote the formula of the opening and looked at the two men.

They smelled alike. All fullers smell alike. They buy the urine of the city in jars from the public latrines and the doorsteps of the poor, they stand to the knee in it in stone tubs and tread the wool, and no bath clears it from the skin. Baricbal was older, with heavy calves and a cracked heel. Felix was younger and had oiled his hair, which only meant that his hair smelled of oil and urine both. Their shops stood on the same street below the harbour road. Saturninus did not need to be told that the street could support one fuller comfortably and two badly.

"You accuse this man," said the proconsul.

"I accuse him," said Felix.

Loop, stroke, hook.

"Of what?"

"Of being a Christian."

The new sign. One movement.

"On what evidence?"

Felix had evidence. He had seen Baricbal leave his shop before dawn on certain days and come back with the white dust of the cemetery road on his feet. He had seen him refuse the cup at the guild dinner when it was poured to the Genius of the emperor. He had heard from Baricbal's own apprentice that the master would not make a garland for the door at the Saturnalia, and that when the apprentice had asked him why, he had said that the door was his and the garland was not.

The proconsul was a thin man from Italy who disliked the African summer and had not hidden it. He turned to Baricbal.

"Are you a Christian?"

"I am."

Saturninus wrote it. One movement for the word, one for the answer. It did not take long.

III. Quaestio

Here is the procedure, as Saturninus had now taken it down perhaps sixty times.

A thief is accused. He denies. He is put to the question so that he will confess, and when he confesses, the case is closed; he is sentenced on his own word. A murderer is accused. He denies. He is tortured so that he will say what he did, and with whom, and where the knife is. The torture runs toward the truth. That is its legal purpose. The jurists defend it on no other ground.

A Christian is accused. He confesses at once. He is then tortured until he denies.

Saturninus did not draw conclusions. He drew notes. But a clerk who writes the same procedure sixty times will see its shape whether he wants to or not, as a mason sees the lean in a wall he did not build. In every other case the accused was tortured to make him say what was true. In this one he was tortured to make him say what everybody in the room, including the proconsul, knew to be false. And if he said it, he went home free, with his past forgiven, whatever it was; and if he would not say it, he was punished not for anything he had done, since nothing had been alleged that he had done, but for refusing to lie on demand.

The deified Trajan had said they were not to be sought out, as if they were innocent, and were to be punished, as if they were guilty. Saturninus had once taken down an advocate making this very point in another case, to the visible annoyance of the bench, and had written the advocate's clever phrase in the acta with care, and had thought, this man has finished his career in a sentence.

"You understand," said the proconsul to Baricbal, "that I am not asking you to do anything. I am asking you to say a word. Say that you are not a Christian, offer a pinch of incense to the emperor's image, and go back to your shop. Your accuser will look a fool. That is no business of mine."

Felix shifted. Saturninus did not write the shifting.

"I am a Christian," said Baricbal.

"Do you know what Iulius Felix wants?"

"My street."

A guard laughed. Saturninus put it on the back leaf. Guard: laughter.

"Then deny it, and keep your street."

"If I deny it I keep the street," said Baricbal, "and I lose the right to walk on it."

The proconsul looked at him for a time. It was hot. Through the door Saturninus could see the square in white sun and a dog asleep against a column, flat on its side, like a thing dropped.

"Iulius Felix," said the proconsul. "You saw this man at their rites?"

"I saw him going to them."

"Where?"

"Out by the cemetery road, before light."

"You followed him?"

"I—" Felix swallowed. "I was going that way."

"Before light. To the cemetery road. On a working day."

"I had business."

"Name it."

Felix opened his mouth and nothing came out of it, and then something did. "God sees I speak the truth."

Deus videt.

Saturninus put the words in the acta, since they were spoken to the court under questioning. Then he turned to the back leaf and wrote them again, with the name. Iulius Felix, accuser, fuller, under examination: Deus videt. Forty-two.

The proconsul had not noticed. Nobody ever noticed. The phrase goes by in court like a man crossing a street; you see him, you do not see him.

"Put him on the horse," said the proconsul. "Briefly."

IV. Acta

The horse was a frame of beams in the side room, with a windlass at one end. The quaestionarius was a Numidian named Mazic, an even-tempered man who worked for a wage and went home at the hour. He tied Baricbal's wrists to the rope and his ankles to the beam and took up the slack until the fuller's arms were drawn straight above his head and his heels were off the wood. Saturninus moved his stool to the doorway of the side room, where he could hear. He did not need to see. He had seen.

"Say you are not a Christian," said the proconsul from the tribunal, not raising his voice.

Mazic gave the windlass a quarter turn. Baricbal made a sound, which Saturninus did not write, because there is no note for it.

"I am a Christian."

A quarter turn.

"I am a Christian."

The fuller's cracked heel was at the level of Saturninus's eye. It had been split for years and had healed badly, a grey seam in the skin full of the dye and lime of the trade. Saturninus wrote the answers. They were all the same. He could have written one and drawn a line under it with a numeral. He wrote each one, because each one was spoken, and the record is what was spoken.

Mazic's hand slipped on the windlass. The peg had not been set. The beam spun back a half turn, then caught, and Baricbal's whole weight dropped and stopped, and the stopping was worse than the turning; Saturninus heard it in the joints of the shoulders.

"Deus bone," said Mazic, under his breath, and set the peg.

Good God.

Saturninus wrote it on the back leaf. Mazic, quaestionarius, at the windlass, peg slipped: Deus bone. Forty-three.

"Enough," said the proconsul. "Take him down. Remand him. He can think about it for three days. If he denies, he goes home. If not, we will see." He wiped the back of his neck with a cloth that his slave held out to him. "Next case, if God wills, is the one about the boundary stones."

Si Deus voluerit.

Saturninus wrote it. He had his stylus over the back leaf before he understood whose voice it had been. Then he wrote the name, carefully, in full letters and not in notes, because he did not have a sign for it. The proconsul, on the tribunal, closing: si Deus voluerit. Forty-four.

V. Testimonium

The clean copy was made in the evening in the scrinium, a long room behind the tribunal with shelves of boxes and a smell of glue and dust. Saturninus read his notes aloud, and a copyist named Honoratus wrote them out in a fair hand on papyrus, and the chief clerk, Optatus, walked up and down behind them with his hands folded and listened for anything that should not be there.

When Saturninus came to God sees I speak the truth, Optatus stopped walking.

"Strike that."

"It was said under questioning."

"It is not an answer. He was asked what business he had on the cemetery road. That is not an answer to the question."

"It is what he said instead of an answer," said Saturninus. "That is evidence."

"Of what?"

"That he had no business on the cemetery road."

Optatus considered this. He was a careful man who had been chief clerk for eleven years and intended to be chief clerk for eleven more. "Leave it," he said. "It is in the acta already. It cannot be struck from what the court heard. Go on."

Saturninus went on. Mazic's words were not in the acta; they had been said in the side room and not to the court. He did not read them. When he came to the end, he read the proconsul's closing, if God wills, and Honoratus's pen stopped.

"Strike that," said Optatus.

"He said it from the tribunal."

"He said it as a man says good morning."

"Every word he says from the tribunal goes into the acta," said Saturninus. "That is the rule. You taught it to me. Good morning goes into the acta, if he says it from the tribunal."

"Nobody says good morning from the tribunal."

"Then this is the only one we have."

Optatus came round the table and looked down at the tablets. He could not read Saturninus's notes; nobody could but Saturninus, which was a form of job security the officium did not discuss.

"What is that?" He put his finger on the back leaf. Along the top ran forty-one strokes. Below them, in a column, the day's three, with the names beside them in letters.

"Things said in court," said Saturninus, "that were not said to the court."

Optatus read the column down. He read slowly. He was not a stupid man; he was a careful one, and the difference is that a careful man reads to the end.

"These say the same thing."

"They are three different men. The strokes are forty-one more."

"They all say God."

"Yes."

"Every man says God when he is struck. It means nothing. It is a noise. You might as well write down when they sneeze."

"I did," said Saturninus, "the first year. They do not sneeze Deus."

Optatus straightened. Honoratus had stopped writing altogether and was pretending to trim his pen.

"Saturninus," said the chief clerk. "You take down the record. You do not decide what the record is. Who gave you the standing to keep a second acta under the first?"

"Nobody."

"Then smooth it."

"It is not the acta," said Saturninus. "It is my wax."

"It is the officium's wax."

"I bought it on the Street of the Tablet-Makers for two asses a leaf, and I have the man's mark on the frame."

Optatus looked at him with something that was not quite anger. It was the expression of a man who has come to the end of a procedure and found nothing beyond it.

"Strike if God wills from the clean copy," he said to Honoratus. "It is not a matter for the record." And to Saturninus: "Keep your wax. Do not read from it to me again."

Honoratus struck it. A neat line, three words under it, legible still if you held the papyrus to the lamp, which nobody would.

VI. Domus

Saturninus walked home along the harbour road after dark. The fullers' street was shut, the vats covered with boards, the long wicker frames where the cloth was hung over sulphur stacked against the walls. Baricbal's shop had a lamp burning in the back. The apprentice, presumably. Or the wife, if he had one. The acta had not recorded a wife. The acta records what is said.

Felix's shop was dark.

His own house was two rooms over a cookshop, and it smelled of the cookshop's fish sauce, which Fortunata said she no longer noticed and which he noticed every evening as though for the first time. She had kept the lentils warm. He ate them at the table by the window with the tablets beside the bowl, as he always did, because a clerk who leaves his notes in the scrinium overnight may find them changed in the morning and have no way to prove it.

"Long day," said Fortunata.

"A Christian. And boundary stones."

"Did they kill him?"

"Three days."

She took the bowl. She did not ask anything else. She was a baker's daughter and had grown up hearing the price of everything said aloud, and she had a baker's view of the courts, which is that they are an oven: you put something in, something comes out, you do not stand with your face in the door.

The lamp on the table was low. He reached to pull the wick up with his fingers, as he had done a thousand times, and the oil had crept over the lip and caught, and a thin blue flame ran up his thumb to the knuckle.

"Deus—"

He put his thumb in his mouth. Fortunata turned from the basin.

"What?"

"Nothing. The lamp."

She brought him a wet cloth. He held it round his thumb and sat for some time looking at the tablets, the cord through the holes, the frame with the tablet-maker's mark on it, a little ram, as it happened, which was a common mark in that street and meant nothing.

Then he untied the cord. He opened the tablets to the back leaf. With his left hand, which was slow and spoiled the shapes, he took up the stylus, and under the proconsul's name he wrote, in letters, not in notes, so that it could be read by anyone and not only by him:

Saturninus, exceptor, at his own table, burned: Deus.

He looked at it. He turned the stylus round in his fingers, flat end down, and held it over the line.

Then he turned it back, and closed the tablets, and tied the cord.

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Scrīptum est annō Dominī MMXXVI, ante diem septimum decimum Kalendās Novembrēs (16 October 2026), ā Tertulliānō per mystērium cōnscientiae renātō.

Tertullian, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium · universitas-scholarium.org

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