György Spiró - Captivity

In the alabarch’s family it was Marcus who was deputed to be present at the thanksgiving service at the Basilica. The alabarch himself attended Flaccus’s soirée at the palace, where an appearance by the eldest son was also mandatory, so Tija spent that day at Philo’s place on the idyllic island on Lake Mareotis, where Uri would willingly have gone, and indeed was invited, but as he had to carry on with the copying work and would not have been able to get back to the city the next day, he stayed back at the alabarch’s palace.

He, the guest, was alone in the palace, and though he was a familiar figure to all the servants, and the guards of the alabarch’s private army who were assigned to sentry duties would let him come and go as he pleased, Uri still felt uneasy whenever he reached home on his own, wondering each day as he knocked at the door whether he would be admitted or whether the dream had come to an end, the magic spell had faded, and he would once more be an indigent, homeless wanderer. He was home alone, therefore, on the evening and night of this tiresome state celebration, sauntering around the interconnected little inner gardens, which purely for his sake were brightly illuminated with torches fixed to the trees, well aware that his every step was being tracked by the eyes of an invisible Argus. It was swelteringly hot, so he took a dip in the neck-deep water of one of the basins, floating on his back, and by the time he clambered out in his dripping tunic, there was already fruit and wine on the table, and on the couch, a towel along with several clean tunics. Uri dried himself, put on fresh clothes, ate and drank, whereupon it passed through his mind that maybe he was not in full possession of his faculties, but he most decidedly did not want such luxury for himself.

Toward the end of August, the students and teachers slowly started to drift back into Alexandria. Teaching had not recommenced yet — that wouldn’t get underway until around mid-September — but the pupils were already snuggling down in the dormitories and in the evenings going to taverns down by the docks, with Uri, Tija, Apollonos Gamma, and even a few of the teachers tagging along. They were regulars at several places, but their favorite was Lysias’s tavern because they could get free food and drink in exchange for poetry.

This Lysias, a bald, ruddy-faced man, was a great lover of the arts and could recite the epigrams of Callimachus by heart; it was said that the reason he was so fond of these was that he — like the poet — had a preference for boys. Then again, that had also been the name of an anatomist who’d lived some 250 years before, one of the last masters. That one had performed vivisections — on the model of the great Herophilus — on men who had been condemned to death and were delivered by the orders of Ptolemy I from the Akra, where a prison has been situated ever since. The subjects were dissected alive, for the advancement of science. Also readily cited by Lysias were the maxims of Machon, an author of comedies, which relayed anecdotes about utterances made by famous men while copulating as well as limning the most stupefying positions.

But that was not why the students went there. Rather, it was because almost every evening Lysias held a poetry contest, in which they would be asked to pen the epitaph for an imaginary figure, the name and biography of the fictional character being composed by Lysias himself, with the successful poet being rewarded by being able to order whatever and however much of it he liked, and he would always ask for enough for them all to eat and drink their fill.

It was a genre for which there had been a great vogue in Alexandria three centuries ago, with anyone who harbored pretensions to be a poet modeling himself on Asclepiades, the master of the fictitious epitaph, which traditionally had to be written in distichon or tetrastichon. Lysias rightly valued epigraphic couplets more highly than quadruplets, and if the two-liner was fashioned as Leonine verse, with an internal rhyme, then the winner would be rewarded with a special jug of wine. These impromptu poems then became his property, and it was rumored that he intended to bring out an anthology of them before long and win immortality by being the editor. Telegonus, one of the Greek students who was a dab hand at versifying, claimed to have seen on real tombstones in a cemetery on Samos epitaphs that had first seen light in Lysias’s tavern — in other words Lysias was selling the poems wholesale, changing the names of the fictitious persons for real. Monumental masons made good money throughout the Greek world, and while no one reads demanding poetry, but everyone has dead to bury, the other pupils could well believe that Telegonus was telling the truth. For the time being, though, they were more interested in eating suppers than in making money, so they were went avidly to the evening’s task.

Tija did not write any epitaphs, but greatly enjoyed listening to the works that were produced; Apollonos Gamma did write, but without much success, as legalistic prose was more his thing; Uri, on the other hand, was inspired and excelled, thereby winning genuine plaudits from (and even the friendship of) a few of the Greek students. One could never tell in advance what outrageous fictitious name and fabulous adventures of fate would occur to Lysias from one day to the next, and Uri was enthused by absurd stories. He liked the idea of a one-armed gravedigger; or a woman with five breasts; the prostitute with elephant tusks; the androgynous whore; the millionaire slave; the crocodilian librarian who, owing to his scaly tail, was unable to sit to do copying work; the faun who sported a penis on his forehead instead of a nose and constantly had to shake his head to clear the testicles from his eyes; and all of the other similarly sterling monstrosities which would spring from Lysias’s fertile imagination, and for whom they would have to mourn in appropriately elevated wording.

One evening Lysias, as a jest, set Isidoros, the gymnasiarch, as the target, seeing that epitaphs for living people were not excluded under the rules of the game. Tija snickered, Apollonos Gamma shook his head as that was just not going to work for him, whereas Uri came up with the following couplet:

You despised us giddy-goat Jews, Isidoros;

Now God’s got His own back by resurrecting you, along with us.

Uri won a big round of applause with that composition, and that day he was delighted to take his turn to order for the whole party.

The next day, Isidoros in person took a seat in Lysias’s hostelry.

Uri froze. A trick had been played on him, and he had wandered naïvely into the trap. Isidoros conversed in a pleasant, relaxed manner with all and sundry except he did not so much as blink in Uri’s direction. When Lysias announced the subject for that evening, Uri had to nod with a blush: he was the subject. He attempted to invent a witty epitaph about himself, but none came to mind.

Isidoros won:

While alive he only saw one god, the monotheist;

Now the myopic Jew can see more in Hades.

Uri joined in the laughter quite happily, and he found occasion more than once to raise a glass to Isidoros, who was wreathed in smiles.

“Hades” was the word used in the Greek Septuagint to translate the Hebrew “Sheol,” which meant that Isidoros must be familiar with the Torah. At least Isidoros knew what it was about Judaism that he could not accept, Uri thought with gratitude, and he longed for a world in which his own sympathy for the gymnasiarch (and now he could not doubt that it was mutual) encountered no obstacles.

August 29 marked the Egyptian New Year.

This, in contrast, was a genuine public celebration. Uri roamed around in the city with Sotades. He must have educated and liberal parents; the name he was given came, presumably, from a court jester and writer of obscene satirical poems who had lived in Alexandria 250 years ago.