György Spiró - Captivity

Now, it was rumored, Flaccus had ordered that the pavilion in front of the palace in which he resided should have curtains drawn, and he would not emerge the whole day long. He was still mourning Tiberius, some assumed. No, not mourning Tiberius but himself, concluded others.

Something was rotten in Alexandria.

The city had certainly become more malodorous since the news of Tiberius’s death: the slaves had ceased cleaning the canals, and rubbish was either not being taken away by the contractors, or if it was, the collection happened only intermittently. People simply threw their rubbish into the water rather than setting out big bags of brown papyrus before the houses for a removal. The removers were no longer removing because it had been the prefect’s job to renew their contracts on a half-yearly basis but now he was not willing to see even them to sign the documents. The half-year term had not yet finished, that was true, there were still a few weeks to go, but in the absence of renewed contracts the rubbish removers were working more slowly, if at all, just to let everyone know what an important role they played.

It was not a good thing if rubbish was tossed haphazardly into the canals, because the water, none too clean before, had now become so filthy a person would get colic from drinking it. Yet, as no wells had been bored, the canals supplied Alexandria’s drinking water, feeding the aqueducts that served the entire population. Even when the canals had been cleaner it had been necessary to boil the water, and by the end of his first weekend here any foreigner would be certain to suffer from a severe case of the trots; Uri had escaped that, though he himself did not understand why: perhaps his body had become habituated to Roman water, which was most likely about the same quality of that in Alexandria. He was accustomed to picking out dirt and debris by hand, as Rome’s municipal administration had denied the inhabitants of Far Side access to the better aqueducts — the difference being that the Jews of Far Side never drank from the Tiber, whereas the Alexandrian populace were dependent on water from the canals.

There were three main canals leading to the Eastern Harbor: the Steganos, the Poseidos, and the Tauros, and two of them, the Steganos and the Tauros were already so chock-full of debris as to be virtually unnavigable, the sailors cursing angrily as their oars did little more than stir the muck around and they made almost no progress, the prows and sides of their craft scratched by all manner of trash, which could lead to great damage. And the beggars who lived off of the rubbish dumps found their very livelihood was under threat — instead of having their pick of the relatively intact goods that usually made their way to the dump (which could be cleaned up and sold at the markets in the suburbs) there was no saving anything tossed into the canals. Any city which does not let its people tidy up is rotten to the core, and it will be stricken with pestilence.

The Poseidos canal, which flowed into the city center, was somewhat cleaner, mostly owing to the fact that for most of its course it ran beside public buildings like the Gymnasium, where less shitting was done and generally less rubbish was produced.

Flaccus had a personal physician, an important individual to whose responsibility the city’s hygiene had been delegated, but these days he also could not find the time to attend to it. His name was Strabo (he was supposedly an illegitimate child of the famous geographer, who had left the city a good forty or fifty years before, having spent five or six years in Alexandria, which he had grown very fond of). The physician was an elderly man, so while it wasn’t all that likely that he was the geographer’s illegitimate child (he had probably adopted the name while roaming around the Greek islands), obviously he was a charlatan, albeit a sage and influential man. Flaccus listened to what he said as he was, not least, a seer, having foreseen, for example, Sejanus’s fall from grace. Around that time the wonder doctor had been living in Rome, and that was where Flaccus’s father, the art-collecting equestrian, had gotten to know him. It is also quite possible that Strabo stayed on as a healer and soothsayer with the prefect to act a spy for the recently deceased emperor, and Philo, among others, was of the opinion that this fact may well have been revealed in recent days. A change of emperor meant that a lot of secret documents would be brought to light, as those who had been pushed into the background competed for the new emperor’s favors. Thus there was every prospect of a rash of unexpected, unexplained suicides. That was how it had been when Augustus died, and that, apparently, was how it would be now that Tiberius had gone.

Uri looked on in amazement: a small, gaunt, silver-haired mannequin, light as a feather. Could he perchance be floating two spans above the ground?

Strabo took the view — this was now the alabarch speaking — that Flaccus’s melancholy was only transient, for which he could only prescribe recreation, recreation, and yet more recreation, if he were able, but he was not able to because he could not even get to him. Even the sentries at his palace were loath to let him in, despite that fact they had shown him all humility and respect. Strabo did not reside in the palace but in a fine house on the border of Delta, between the palace and the Jewish quarter, so as to be handy whenever the prefect dispatched a courier for him. In recent times threatening messages had been scrawled and feces daubed on the walls of his house. Alabarch Alexander had offered to let Strabo stay with him until Flaccus came to his senses, but the physician dared not accept the offer in case the prefect took offense if he found out that he had moved farther away.

“The old guy is pretty desperate,” said Alexander. “In his place, I would clear out of here, the farther the better.”

It occurred to Uri that perhaps one reason why Strabo was still sticking around in the city was so as to call in the various sums of money that he had put out on loan at interest.

Interesting though these matters were, the city’s life was not fundamentally altered any more than was Uri’s: he studied diligently, practiced a lot on the Gymnasium’s grounds, he put on more muscle, his sprint times improved, his lungs expanded; he still did work as a copyist when time allowed, and he lived a merry life. He had now officially entered the age of majority, and when winter came to an end, having turned twenty he was initiated into the joys of paying the tax, the two drachmas (or half a shekel) a year that all grown Jewish men had to pay each year to the Temple in Jerusalem. Observing the transition was a custom among the Jews of Alexandria, and did not exist in Rome, where only the money counted. Admittedly, Uri’s ceremony did not take place in the Basilica (that would have been a bit excessive for someone who was not a member of the alabarch’s family, merely a newcomer), but in one of the houses of prayer in Beta district. Philo and Tija were present from the alabarch’s family, along with several Greek fellow students, who stood throughout without a word of protest: it was not prohibited for Greeks to enter a synagogue in Alexandria, nor indeed could the Jews have placed any ban on it seeing that they were willing to countenance mixed marriages, provided the bride converted. On very rare occasions a groom might convert, but only Greeks who were very much in love or extraordinarily greedy for money were willing to put up with the likely pains of circumcision. Uri also invited Isidoros to his initiation as a taxpayer, but the gymnasiarch did not attend, nor did he excuse himself afterward.

“Good job!” Tija exploded when he learned of that invitation after the event, before adding: “And watch out that my father does not take you for a Greek spy!”