There came afterward an age which the chroniclers were reluctant to record.
For the death of Romulus had been terrible.
His resurrection had been bewildering.
But neither wounded him as deeply as discovering that those whom he loved believed the voices of strangers before they believed his own.
For ten years Romulus had spoken.
He had spoken plainly.
He had spoken gently.
He had shouted when gentleness failed.
He had written upon parchment until his fingers cramped beneath the lamp.
He had sworn before Heaven.
He had offered explanations, confessions, apologies, warnings, histories, and every fragment of truth he possessed.
And still Minerva doubted him.
And still Andromeda doubted him.
Yet let some wanderer arrive at the gates carrying a sack of rumors, and suddenly the gates were opened.
Let some silver-tongued deceiver whisper that Romulus was wicked, mad, faithless, dangerous, or false, and his accusation was received as though Apollo himself had spoken from Delphi.
This became the great madness of the age:
The King could speak for a decade and remain unheard.
A stranger could speak for an hour and become an oracle.
Romulus could not comprehend it.
Among the men who gathered around Minerva and Andromeda were flatterers, opportunists, wounded men, jealous men, and men who simply enjoyed the spectacle of a king brought low.
Some desired affection.
Some desired influence.
Some desired merely to wound him.
And whenever one discovered discord between the King and the two goddesses, he understood immediately where to place the knife.
Not into Romulus’ flesh.
Into his reputation.
For reputation is the one body a sword cannot defend.
Thus began the Procession of Witnesses.
Minerva and Andromeda sought out men and women Romulus had banished from his life.
Old companions.
Broken alliances.
Former confidants.
Those who had abandoned him when wolves gathered outside his gates.
Those who had demanded loyalty from Romulus while offering none when he required it himself.
One by one they were summoned.
And one by one their stories accumulated.
Some contained truth.
Some contained resentment.
Some contained mistakes remembered as crimes.
Some contained lies polished by repetition until even their tellers could no longer distinguish invention from memory.
But Romulus saw only betrayal.
In his fury he called some of them harlots and prostitutes—not because they sold their bodies, but because, in the King’s bitter metaphor, they seemed willing to sell allegiance to whoever offered attention.
It was an ugly word.
And once spoken, it could not be recalled.
The Sibyl later rebuked him:
“Beware, Romulus. A man falsely accused may become so consumed with defending his honor that he begins dishonoring others.”
The King hated this saying.
Therefore he remembered it.
For the gods often hide necessary truths inside words we most despise hearing.
There was another matter darker still.
Romulus had spent years descending into kingdoms where prudent men refused to travel.
He sought warriors whose hands had become accustomed to violence.
Princes of thieves.
Lords of narcotic kingdoms.
Men surrounded by guards who slept beside drawn steel.
Romulus believed that no man was beyond repentance.
When he found such men, his purpose was not to join their kingdoms but to persuade them to leave blood behind.
He would enter.
Speak.
Argue.
Pray.
Remain until some spark of repentance appeared.
Then, believing his task completed, he would depart.
It was dangerous work.
And Romulus discovered that Minerva and Andromeda sometimes spoke with these same men with a familiarity that terrified him.
Among them was a notorious lord of an underground empire, whom the fable remembers only as the Serpent King.
Minerva once spoke words to him that returned endlessly to Romulus:
“I would marry you, if I could.”
Perhaps she meant them playfully.
Perhaps affectionately.
Perhaps carelessly.
Perhaps Romulus never understood them at all.
But grief is a terrible interpreter.
To Romulus they became something much darker.
He imagined the Serpent King hearing not affection but challenge.
If Minerva desired him, Romulus reasoned, then perhaps the King himself had become an obstacle standing between a dangerous man and something he coveted.
The thought entered Romulus’ mind like poison.
Soon possibility became suspicion.
Suspicion became fear.
Fear began dressing itself in the robes of certainty.
Every stranger became an assassin.
Every rumor became conspiracy.
Every closed door concealed a council against him.
And thus the man who had survived death began fearing death everywhere.
Minerva did not understand his terror.
Andromeda did not understand his fury.
Romulus did not understand their disbelief.
Each believed the others had abandoned reason.
And each possessed enough evidence, hurt, memory, and pride to construct a universe in which they alone were innocent.
Then came the Revelations of Andromeda.
They did not descend upon tablets of stone.
They came as fragments.
A sentence remembered.
A conversation discovered.
A contradiction finally understood.
A stranger whose testimony had been accepted without question.
An old enemy welcomed because he possessed another accusation against the King.
Romulus learned how widely his name had traveled in rooms he had never entered.
He learned that judgments had sometimes been made before he was permitted to answer them.
He learned that people who scarcely knew him had nevertheless spoken with astonishing confidence about what lived inside his heart.
And something within the resurrected King broke.
“You believe them?”
His voice shook the columns.
“You believe men who met me once or not at all?”
Neither goddess answered.
“You believe those whom I cast from my gates because they abandoned me?”
Silence.
“You believe every wandering tongue in the marketplace, yet when I speak, I am called liar?”
Still silence.
Then Romulus committed the oldest error of wounded kings.
He mistook silence for confession.
His grief became wrath.
His wrath became accusation.
And accusation summoned accusation in return.
Minerva drew her spear.
Andromeda reached toward the heavens.
Romulus reached for his sword.
For one terrible instant, three beings who had once loved one another stood prepared to become enemies.
The poets later wrote that Minerva and Andromeda attempted to destroy the King.
Romulus himself believed it.
But the wisest manuscripts preserve another possibility:
Perhaps each believed they were defending themselves from the others.
Such is the horror of mistrust.
Eventually no villain is required.
Fear performs the villain’s work perfectly well.
Romulus lowered his sword first.
Not from surrender.
From exhaustion.
“I died thousands of times already,” he said.
Neither goddess moved.
“I will not spend my second life proving myself to every stranger who speaks my name.”
Andromeda looked upon him.
For the first time Romulus saw neither the celestial sovereign nor the goddess he had imagined within his heart.
He saw someone capable of error.
And perhaps Andromeda, looking back, saw the same.
That was her greatest revelation.
Romulus had made her divine.
Therefore every wound she inflicted seemed supernatural.
Every rejection became judgment from Heaven.
Every doubt became condemnation.
Every silence became prophecy.
But Andromeda had never asked him to surrender his reason at her altar.
Nor had Minerva.
Romulus had done that himself.
He had mistaken love for certainty.
Loyalty for obedience.
Fear for knowledge.
And suspicion for revelation.
The King turned toward the western heavens.
Andromeda’s constellation remained there.
Beautiful.
Unreachable.
Silent.
Exactly as before.
Yet for the first time he understood that the stars did not testify in mortal disputes.
They offered no verdict.
They named no traitor.
They condemned no king.
They simply shone.
Romulus removed his crown.
He placed it upon the earth between Minerva and Andromeda.
“If I have lied,” he said, “let truth expose me.
“If others have lied, let truth expose them too.
“But I will no longer make hatred my oracle.”
Then he departed alone.
Behind him stood Solomon’s Wisdom.
Above him stood Aphrodite’s Love.
Before him stood Truth.
And for the first time Romulus understood that these three goddesses were not always allies.
Wisdom may doubt what Love believes.
Love may forgive what Truth condemns.
Truth may destroy the comforting stories upon which both Wisdom and Love have built their temples.
Therefore the resurrected King entered his third exile.
Not exile from Rome.
Not exile from Minerva.
Not exile from Andromeda.
Exile from certainty.
And this became the Third Law of Romulus:
A lie believed by a thousand tongues does not become truth.
But beside it he carved another law, because suffering had finally made him wise enough to distrust even himself:
Neither does a fear become truth merely because a wounded king believes it.
Thus began the hardest resurrection of Romulus.
Not the resurrection of his body.
Not the resurrection of his kingdom.
But the resurrection of his judgment.
And somewhere beyond the western horizon, Andromeda waited for the day when King and Goddess might finally meet without strangers standing between them.