Unlike Confucius, Jesus taught his disciples for only three years. Unlike Muhammad, Jesus died in humiliation with no armies or wealth. Yet the message of his resurrection eventually conquered an empire.
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A few blocks from the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine, a piece of plaster is mounted on a wall in the Palatine Museum. The plaster appears blank at first glance, and you might wonder why the fragment has been so carefully affixed to the wall. But then you look closer, and you notice a bit of crude graffiti gouged into the surface.
This obscene etching from the late second or early third century AD depicts a man with the head of a donkey hanging from a cross with his posterior exposed. At the foot of the cross, a man wearing the sleeveless tunic of a slave prays with an outstretched hand. Three words have been scratched around the praying figure; the misspelled Greek clause can be translated into English as “Alexamenos worships God.”
