György Spiró - Captivity

“Is that the Philip who, like Antipas, was the ruler of one fourth, a tetrarch?”

Indeed it was, but he had died young, and his former territory had since been annexed to Syria. It was thought, however, that the area could be reannexed to a big Jewish state if — through Rome’s goodwill — there were to be a king of the Jews once again.

Tiberius’s reform of the banking system to confront an ongoing credit crunch created an even bigger stir: Agrippa was but a single person, whereas any change in the system of borrowing and lending money affected everyone.

The plan was dreamed up by the emperor, bored in his isolation: a crisis in agricultural production was to be addressed by distributing millions of sesterces among specially established banks; these would extend to landowners interest-free three-year state loans, provided the land offered as collateral was worth at least twice the loan.

Of which Uri understood precisely nothing.

Marcus explained it with great passion: it was an incredible step, in effect the emperor’s true last will and testament, because it would lead to a slashing of usurious interest rates right across the empire! Of course the emperor was not on his deathbed: his mind was sound — and how!

Tija, irate, in turn added further explanations for Philo and Uri, neither of whom could wrap their minds around the point of the decree. Private banks and sources of credit had been obliged to lower their interest rates, it was curtains for the very juicy profits they had been enjoying because they could not compete with the immense private fortune that the emperor could put behind the scheme, which effectively set up a state banking system at one blow. Everyone would now borrow from these state banks, and usury was finished!

“Which from another angle is not good for us,” continued Tija gloomily, “because the Italian farmers are now going to turn to their own kind for loans, and we Egyptians will lose ground.”

Uri now began to catch on, while Philo still listened uncomprehendingly.

Uri had a go at explaining it to him. A loan, interest-free for three years, would give Italian landowners breathing room, maybe even put them in a position to produce enough to pay the loan back…

“And then three years later they would be able to apply for another interest-free line of credit!” exclaimed Tija. “That means a scaling back of Egyptian exports of grain! Tiberius is seeking to ruin us by making Rome self-sufficient!”

Marcus interjected soberly: it was going too far to say that! Rome would continue to depend on grain imports from Egypt, albeit rather less than hitherto; the real novelty would be the fall in Italian interest rates as banks across the empire‚ including those in Egypt, adjusted their own rates. A huge number of Greek and Jewish lenders would be ruined; the Romans, having plenty of capital, would buy them up, so indirectly Tiberius’s decree was going to have a favorable impact on Roman banks: that was the true meaning of the gesture, not the rescue of Italian agriculture.

“So what will happen if, despite the injection of capital, the property market is still not righted?” Uri asked.

“That is all the better for Tiberius,” Marcus responded. “Since the land is the security for the loans, the bank will acquire it. Once the whole property market is sorted out — and it will be sorted out — land prices will jump, so that any property that has been scooped up to recover unpaid debts is going to be worth more to the banks than it was previously.”

“Did Tiberius really think it through in these same terms?” Philo asked in amazement.

“You can be sure of it!” Alabarch Alexander spoke up. “He’s a very smart man: I’ve never met anyone as smart as him. He’s wise and also cunning. If the Deified Augustus had been half as smart, India would today lie on the border of the empire.”

Uri listened in amazement.

“Tiberius is the true creator of the empire,” the alabarch asserted, “not the Deified Augustus… It seems incredible what a dispassionate mind he has… Perhaps because he has suffered so much…”

He recounted how he, a nobody, a Jewish Alexander from Alexandria, had hurried with Antonia to the emperor in Rome bearing the latest Judaean rumors that Germanicus was preparing to travel to Egypt, rumors which, if true, would betoken a renewed war between Rome and Egypt.

Antonia was desperate: Tiberius disliked her cherished first-born son, the heroic commander Germanicus, who had too many supporters in the Senate. Alexander had tried to convince Antonia to send an envoy to Judaea, where Germanicus remained for the time being, to dissuade him from his plan. Antonia had shaken her head (she was still a strikingly beautiful woman, Drusus’s widow, looking much younger than her years): she believed that Germanicus was under a spell, and thinking he could become emperor, would reject envoys.

Antonia had decided that they should instead together report the news to the emperor. That had been a brilliant step: sooner or later Tiberius would come to hear the rumor anyway, so it was better if he learned of it from her. She would betray him, that was true, but it was the only way she could protect her wider kinship.

“That was the first and last occasion on which I saw the emperor,” Alexander said. “He is coarse-featured, pockmarked, and scarred, broad-shouldered and strong like a gladiator. His narrow eyes do not give many signs of his intelligence. He heard out what I had to report with a silent Antonia watching. When I had finished, the emperor asked Antonia: one or many? To which she answered: many. Tiberius smiled and told Antonia to pick for herself a territory along the Nile, in the most fertile region, as big a property as she wished. Antonia looked at me, whom she didn’t even know, and asked me to make the arrangements, to which Tiberius nodded assent.”

They listened to the alabarch in silence — Uri with interest, Philo, Marcus, and Tija with the boredom of having heard the tale many times over. It did occur to Uri, though, that maybe the alabarch should be thinking about his successor, whoever that might be, rather than bothering so much with Tiberius’s greatness.

“By taking that step, Antonia was signing her firstborn son’s death warrant,” the alabarch pronounced solemnly. “She had no choice… Germanicus would in any case have been executed, even if only for prevailing on the high priests in Jerusalem to support him against the emperor, if it came to war. But if Antonia had not hastened to the emperor, her entire family would have been obliterated along with him, perhaps herself as well. By virtue of her decision, everyone else — her second son, her grandsons — was allowed to live, though some of them, Germanicus’s deranged widow, Agrippina the Elder, for example, decided to follow her husband into death. At least the choice was left to them… That’s how I, a nonentity, was made alabarch, and how Antonia became Tiberius’s chief adviser. Tiberius knew exactly what she had sacrificed for the empire; he has never trusted anyone as much as he has Antonia. It is Antonia who has squared everything for us with the emperor ever since. Tiberius could have had a whole host of lovers, but it was Antonia who became his partner. Though after his withdrawal to Capri he never saw her again, and never ordered her to join him. He knew that in Rome there would be a loyal person whom he could trust, a wife in spirit at any rate.”

They all fell silent.

“That was not so in my case,” said the alabarch, “but then I am not as wise as Tiberius. Antonia asked what the emperor would do to ensure that Germanicus did not travel to Egypt. Tiberius just laughed, saying: Let him! It will only serve as proof against him. He laughed. But then he continued: Let him go to Egypt, that won’t serve as proof against him in any case. He was not going to pin the blame for anything on the popular Germanicus, who would die accidentally. He said that to Antonia’s face; he was in a position to do so because by then they were allies.”