A Voice in the Wind

The Valerians enjoy the wealth and privilege of Roman citizenship. Decimus, an astute businessman of Ephesian birth, understands clearly that citizenship buys power and status, and he uses his wealth to buy his place in Roman society, an advantage passed down to his children who are Roman by birth. His son Marcus inherits his father’s business acumen, building his own fortune at a young age. Yet as Decimus grows older, he begins to question his priorities. He wonders if a financial empire is really the legacy he wants to leave behind. As he witnesses his son’s cutthroat business practices—importing sand for soaking up blood in the arena rather than grain to feed the citizens, and advocating slave labor because it is more profitable—he wonders what values he has modeled for his children. These doubts become acute as he grows sicker and faces imminent death—so acute that he asks to be baptized before he dies as atonement for his lifetime of avarice. Even the hedonistic, live-for-the-moment Marcus experiences flickers of doubt about his own excesses. While he never renounces his lifestyle altogether, Hadassah’s simple compassion exerts a strong influence on him. She wins his love if not his faith.

The Bible has strong opinions on material wealth. Jesus famously cast the merchants and money changers out of the temple, disgusted by their use of a sacred place of worship for commercial purposes. Jesus also said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). Jesus himself lived as a humble man, gathering around him not wealthy aristocrats but fishermen, a political anarchist, and a thief; Matthew, a tax collector, was the sole apostle of means (“The disciples.” BBC. Last updated June 21, 2011, bbc.co.uk). Blessed are the poor is a common mantra echoed in Scripture, and churches have often been on the forefront of providing assistance to the poor and most vulnerable. Wealth is seen not as a virtue but as an impediment to virtue. Atretes spends the entire narrative pursuing his freedom, and when he earns it, he is also showered with money. For a brief moment, he falls victim to its allure before realizing that wealth is a false god. In a grand gesture of renunciation, he burns down his new villa and reclaims his prior life of a tribesman, forsaking material goods, wearing simple animal skins, and living in a cave. In his final incarnation, Atretes is closer to Heaven than the wealthy, pop icon of the gladiator arena.

One of the central questions posed by the narrative is: What does it mean to be free? Throughout the novel, Hadassah is labeled as “not free” because of her enslavement. Likewise, Atretes is bound to the arena, forced to fight and kill for the entertainment of the mob. While these characters may not be physically free, the narrative argues that they enjoy a very different kind of freedom—spiritual freedom—and that to define “freedom” in such a limited and pedestrian way is to exclude the freedom that Hadassah enjoys over all others. In many ways, Hadassah is the freest character in the story. Decimus bemoan, “But for Julia, I would set you free,” to which Hadassah responds, “I am free, my lord” (428). Atretes also understands that freedom is a relative term. As he prepares to enter the arena for his final match, with death a distinct possibility, Atretes says, “Either way, Sertes, today I leave the arena victorious” (433). Like Hadassah, Atretes knows that freedom cannot be given or taken by another as long it exists in the mind and heart.

The physical hardships of enslavement are quite real and should never be minimized, but the narrative would claim that physical hardships are temporal while spiritual freedom is everlasting. Indeed, Hadassah is more of a prisoner to her fear than to the Valerians, and once she proclaims her faith in public, the fear evaporates, freeing her to face the lions without fear of death. The so-called freemen of Rome are all enslaved in one way or another. Decimus is enslaved by his desire for wealth; Marcus, by his hedonism; Calabah, by her Machiavellian schemes; and even the emperor, the most powerful man in the world, is enslaved to the will of the mob. He must read their mood carefully before rendering a verdict on a gladiator’s life. Political rhetoric in the United States often rests upon vague arguments of freedom. A Voice in the Wind asserts that there is only one freedom that truly matters: the freedom of surrendering one’s life to God.