A crushing disappointment

     It's hard to write about the events of today - it was a real emotional roller coaster!
     Dr. Apriceno stayed up late last night cleaning the last of the stone dust from the chamber.  This morning we were able to walk in for the first time and see it exactly as Tiberius Caesar left it in 37 AD.  Isabella and Giuseppe got back from Naples this morning, and both were thrilled to see the sword, leaning against the wall like it was left there yesterday.  Removing it from the chamber was our first priority - the ancient leather was in risk of crumbling after being exposed to the air.
    So Father MacDonald and I carried it very gingerly to the lab, where we were finally able to see and photograph both sides of the scabbard.  The question of who the gladius belonged to is resolved - on the side of the scabbard that we couldn't see inside the chamber was a small silver plaque with an inscription that read "To Rome's Finest Son, Wield it with honor - Aurelia Cotta Caesar".  Aurelia was the mother of Gaius Julius Caesar himself, so this blade belonged to the greatest Roman of them all.  I have no doubt that it was the sword Caesar carried during his conquest of Gaul and throughout the Civic Wars. 
     In order to stabilize the scabbard, it had to go into a rehydration tank - which would have been terrible for the metal blade.  Therefore, we removed the sword from its sheath - to think it was last unsheathed by the Emperor of Rome!  I got that honor, and I am not ashamed to say that the hair on the back of my neck stood up as I drew the ancient blade from its scabbard!  It was perfectly preserved, with only a few rust spots down the blade.  Once sword and scabbard were stabilized, we returned to the chamber to look at the reliquary that stood against the back wall.
     It is a beautiful piece of wooden furniture, ornately carved with the Roman eagle, and embossed with the "SPQR" of the Republic and an invocation to Jupiter to protect the honor of the Julii.  It was originally designed to hold the funeral masks of the Julian family - it was Roman tradition to make a mold of a person's face while they were still alive, and use it to craft a precise mask that would be worn by hired actors during the funeral procession.  But Tiberius, in his letter, said he had transferred the masks to a new cabinet and was using this one to store his personal correspondence.  You can imagine how excited we were to finally open it!
   The doors were not locked - there was only a simple latch holding them shut - but when we opened them, all five of us let out cries of disappointment.  Sometime in the last twenty centuries, rats had gotten into the cabinet and shredded every scroll to make their nests.  Hundreds of bits of papyrus filled the bottom of the cabinet and spilled out onto the floor as we opened the doors.  Most of them are the size of postage stamps, although some are bigger.  Maybe in ten years, a dedicated crew of manuscript experts can piece them together - but it was still a crushing blow to our hopes of retrieving the intact correspondence of a Roman emperor!
     There is one bit of hope left, though.  In the top right hand corner of the cabinet is a compartment that is locked tight.  We are hoping that the "horse head key" from the leather purse we found might fit it.  Maybe that is where old Tiberius kept his most important scrolls!  We can only hope . . .