György Spiró - Captivity

Marcus would say things like: At last! The emperor has dusted himself off and shaken off all the advisers who were leeching off of him. He’s had enough of them; Emperor Gaius is all grown up, only now is he really starting to rule. He has been patronized by them, so they deserve their fate. In front of his intimates he called Macro a sermonizer as he fumed against him; now he has no need for a schoolmaster. You’ll see soon enough that Caligula will make a great ruler — as if Germanicus were ruling henceforth.

This amounted to open revolt against his father. Before long the alabarch is going to be retired, thought Uri, with Marcus replacing him as the chief exciseman.

No one spoke about Gemellus: his destiny was his undoing, born under a bad star. The dismissed prefect continued to live in his palace, only, it was said, he transferred his seat of government to the citadel of the Akra. It was unclear whether Caligula had rescinded Flaccus’s dismissal or reconfirmed him. No one was sent out to replace Flaccus, but then that would have been difficult: the rumor was that Flaccus, wobbling drunkenly on a horse, had held an inspection of the troops at Nicopolis, and his soldiers had hurrahed him lustily and at length. So, the two legions were standing by Flaccus.

Two legions is a lot of soldiers. Where would anyone get the three or four legions that would be needed to face them, and who would lead them?

Uri imagined that Flaccus, to save his own skin, and struggling for Caligula’s favor, had declared Jews to be uniformly accountable, one and all, for the denunciation of Germanicus and was expelling them from Alexandria, thereby scoring points with the emperor, who plainly was not in a position himself to make such an order. Signs of this began to multiply: in the harbor Jewish ships were kept waiting longer whereas Greek vessels were admitted before their turn.

Wealthy Jews from the city and across Egypt paid visits to the alabarch to ask for his assistance: their produce was left to rot on board, and delays in the unloading of dry goods were causing them great financial damage. The alabarch would respond cautiously: maybe fallen Flaccus was seeking to foment Jewish turmoil to bravely quell it and keep his position; just let the Jews be patient, trust in the Eternal One and the emperor, keep to the law even if it was not respected on the other side. The Jewish merchants would depart grumbling. It’s a pity, one of them remarked agitatedly within earshot of Uri, that there are no major ports in Judaea where Greek ships could be held up in retaliation.

How to respond lies in the alabarch’s hands, thought Uri: he supervises commerce on the Nile, and he’s got his own private army to boot. All he has to do is hold back a few cargoes, have them meticulously checked to see whether they are, by any chance, rotten, make Greek merchants also suffer from the delays… But the alabarch would do no such thing: his conduct indicated that he had no appetite for a commercial war.

The guard on the alabarch’s palace was doubled, Uri was admitted without incident by the older ones but the new recruits continually raised difficulties. It occurred to Uri that his residence permit had expired about a year before, so he had a word with Philo, who brushed the issue aside as being of no importance: anyone would be able to verify that Uri was a student at the Gymnasium, and he had in any case been recorded by the Jews, but that was no reassurance for Uri. All right, said Philo testily as he felt his train of thought slipping away, I’ll have a word with the servants.

He did indeed have a word, for one of the servants later declared that he had settled the matter. There you go, said Philo. Uri had his doubts, but he did not go out to the harbor to check: in the end, he was certain, he would simply be burdened with an indifferent Greek official who could not care less whether they had a record of Uri having filed a prolongation but would just as soon have him thrown onto some cargo vessel — as they were in the habit of doing every now and again with illegal immigrants — only to awaken a few weeks later as a slave in Britannia or Hispania — that is, if he did not starve to death en route.

A dark mood hung over the celebration of Passover in Alexandria. It was not that there was any change in the trappings; it was more as if the flesh and bones under peoples’ skin had become desiccated. Uri recalled how Antonia’s birthday had been celebrated on January 31, dutifully by the Greeks and with conspicuous restraint by the Jews, lest the Greeks report to the emperor that they were overly enthusiastic in honoring the memory of the emperor’s grandmother, who had denounced Germanicus, her own son, to Tiberius. Passover was not a festival for the empire but only for the Jews, so the Greeks had nothing to report on.

That Passover also had a shadow cast over it by the fact that Flaccus, in one of his sober moments, at last received the alabarch and once again refused to allow the Jews of Alexandria to send a delegation to Rome to present their grievances. That was when the Jews awoke to the fact that a year had gone by since the prefect had first denied them this right, and they began to doubt whether the emperor had ever received their good wishes. Delegations could only leave the provinces with the permission of the prefect; that was the rule in Alexandria as well. The alabarch irately commented that of course Greek delegations bearing gifts were allowed to travel to the emperor every day; at that Flaccus smiled cynically: those are private individuals, and he could not ban travel by private individuals. Then we’ll send private individuals as well, declared the alabarch. All he achieved was that every Jew who set off for Italia thereafter was minutely searched to check if they were carrying any letters, or any article which could be considered a gift; in either case the contraband was impounded. The alabarch’s couriers to Agrippa were now forced to take ships bound for Gaza or Tyre, which entailed a detour of several weeks; no more couriers were sent to Silanus, because he was dead.

In June a new tragedy struck: on the eighteenth, Drusilla, the emperor’s older sister, died in Rome at the age of twenty-one. Again all baths and all taverns were closed, the Great Library was closed, and once again the Gymnasium ended the academic year without holding a ceremony, thus Uri failed to receive a diploma for a second time. Shops were closed, in workshops no work was done, and only essential supplies could be obtained in the marketplaces. Sombre soldiers, stone-cold sober, patrolled the streets, pulling in any drunks. Shrines and synagogues were preoccupied with grieving for Drusilla: she had been Caligula’s favorite sister, so Greeks and Jews competed in their grief, taking care that no one could accuse them of being lax in their mourning. They were reported in any case.

Anyone able to do so left Alexandria, and in the end even the theaters were closed.

The Gymnasium park was not closed, though, and given that it wasn’t fenced off the mimics found that they were able to perform there. They started off cautiously, with short sketches, and they did not even ask for money, fearing that a patrol might come along and eject them; but no soldiers came, or rather they did come, but as spectators, and they laughed. The mimics took courage and began parodying the Jews, which put the soldiers in an even better frame of mind, and even made them willing to shell out money.

Why didn’t Flaccus eject the mimics? This was a time of mourning! He could have easily prohibited gatherings in the park!

Then it occurred to Uri: it was more comfortable this way. He was pretending that nothing was happening so he did not have to do anything.

The alabarch was quite excessively appalled, and Tija explained why: in recent months, via couriers and Agrippa, his father had built up good relations with Lepidus, Drusilla’s second husband, who had stood in as deputy for the childless Caligula at the head of the empire during the emperor’s spell of illness, and was now a widower. Should Lepidus be pushed down the hierarchy, Uri reflected sardonically, all those remittances would be lost. And he would be pushed down, one could be sure of that. Tija was still hoping that Agrippina — of the emperor’s two surviving older sisters the one whom Caligula listened to, being not at all fond of Julia, perhaps because Agrippina, her name aside, reminded him of his mother — was still as well disposed toward Lepidus as had been alleged.