It comes from the west like a huge mouth in the sky. Ready to swallow the world. More ominous than the darkness of Hades. More threatening than the black waves that drowned the Pharaoh’s armies in the Red Sea. What is it? No one has ever seen anything like it before. A cloud that does not look like a cloud. An otherworldly darkness on the horizon, galloping and covering the mountains, the sand dunes, and the caravan paths. A dark veil approaching, unnatural and grim. In a few moments, it will have arrived. It will sweep through the city of a betrayed king. At the highest point of this city, a Roman noblewoman pauses in one of the vast corridors of her apartments to listen undisturbed to the silence. There are no windows near her to see what is coming from afar. But, anyway, she is lost in her own world. She has closed her eyes and, leaning against the wall, struggles with the deep wound burning her chest.
At first glance, she appears worthy of the dynamism and grandeur that her house exudes. She wears an expensive silk tunic, a golden belt, and leather sandals embroidered with pearls. Her hair is tied back and adorned with small bronze flowers, her eyelids and lips heavily made up. Yet, she looks more like a ghost as she staggers within the shadows of the deserted corridor. Around her stretch high-ceilinged halls made of porphyry, with sparkling white columns, decorated lintels, and austere busts. The Antonia Tower. The Roman administrative headquarters, rising at the top of Mount Moriah, occupying the northeastern side of the Temple of Jerusalem. A masterpiece of luxury, casting its suffocating shadow over the dusty, earthen huts of the enslaved Jewish people.