It’s been circulating under his name for fourteen hundred years before he becomes aware of its existence, tracks down the real author and confronts him with it.
“‘Sublimity?'” Longinus snaps. “REALLY?”
“Not the best translation,” Ahasuerus agrees. “I see you’ve attempted to confuse the issue of authorship.”
Longinus glances at the title page, where he’s successively written and crossed out LONGINUS DIONYSUS CASSIUS BACH AHASUERUS SUCKS. “It won’t work,” he grumbles. “Did you have to use my name?”
“They wouldn’t publish it under mine.”
“That’s no excuse!”
“Plus,” Ahasuerus grins, “payback for the thing in Athens,” and Longinus turns bright pink.
“Ooah,” says Captain Van der Decken, pacing the poop deck, “it’s der doom what I feel upon me, ah, der crushing despair of immortality!”
“You’ve been doing it for like seventy years,” groans Longinus, and pauses to vomit. “I’m sixteen hundred and I still get seasick.”
The captain switches to his native tongue. Unfortunately, Longinus can pretty much comprehend it.
“I don’t care if this is the only ship we can both ride,” he growls at his fellow traveler, “it’s not worth the dinner show.”
Up in the crow’s nest, Ahasuerus manages to grin maddeningly right through his mouth harp solo.
There’s a church named after him in Kansas, which is hilarious. From 1922 to 1978 he made it a point to stop by the night before his own feast day, every year, and paint something obscene on the front doors–until they caught on in ’66 and he had to start writing on the grass with gasoline instead.
He would have liked to pee on the altar, but of course that would mean setting foot inside. Stupid rules. Eventually they paved the lawn and he got bored and went to Madagascar.
No way Ahasuerus is ever getting one, so, y’know, there.
Longinus started the first two cults by accident, and found them tremendous annoyances. The steppes made him as depressed as they made everyone else clingy; he swatted them away like Mongolian horseflies (but smaller and less determined).
The third he assembled deliberately, and for a specific reason: he hadn’t slept with anyone in a hundred and thirty years. Just a run of bad luck, which didn’t get any better, as the name “Sisterhood of Love Divine in Flesh” somehow managed to attract eighty-nine eunuchs.
The fourth cult got stolen by Ahasuerus and that just ruined the whole thing for him.
Okay look the whole reason they got Spanish Inquisited is because Ahasuerus wouldn’t tell him how he lost half his nose. A simple question! But the little prick would just snigger through his remaining nostril and say he’d used it as bait.
So Longinus brought the matter to some people who knew how to get answers and, here’s the tricky part, turns out that accusing someone else is technically saying they led you into heresy, so you’re both screwed. Which, y’know, come on. Longinus pointed out that compared to him, his investigators were the real heretics.
They really didn’t like that.