THE TEMPLE OF AUGUSTUS AND ROMA CROWNS CAESAREA’S HARBOR

As her ship, the Orion, slides through the gateway and turns southeast, Miriam fastens her gaze on the Temple of Augustus and Roma: “Directly ahead of us, backlit by the morning sun, facing northwest toward Rome rather than southeast toward Jerusalem, the Temple of Augustus and Roma commands the cityscape from a lofty platform atop the harbor’s land quay.”

Later Phoebe, Miriam’s intrepid servant and scout, mounts the steps of the Temple in pursuit of a lean, serpentine figure:

I was about to circle back to the inn when, upon nearing the land quay, I looked up at the Temple of Augustus and Roma and spotted a lean, serpentine figure sprinting up the stairway to its shelf above the harbor. Really all I saw was a briskly-moving form until Isis fanned a breeze to inflate his cloak and dispatched a sunbeam to catch its edge. Only then did I recognize him …. So, with the assurance of Isis’s patronage, I inhaled a pocket of courage, ready to see what he was up to.

And, as you’ll see in THE DEADLIEST HATE, Phoebe did indeed need that infusion of courage.