György Spiró - Captivity

I might make strategos in Jerusalem yet, thought Uri with amazement, though he was no more thrilled at the prospect than before. Then he dismissed it: Tija avoided him in Rome just as he had among the Greek students of the Gymnasium, as if they had never swapped ideas over drinks.

In his dinner break, which for him lasted from the fifth hour of the afternoon until dusk, Philo would chat with Uri about anything that happened to come to mind, and afterward Uri would go downstairs to the atrium and catch some sleep on a couch while the great philosopher carried on working. There was no end to Philo’s censure and bitterness toward the Jews of Alexandria for not appreciating that it was solely the alabarch’s strenuous diplomatic efforts that led to Flaccus’s arrest, thus bringing the Bane to an end. If the alabarch had not taken action, the killing of Jews in Alexandria would be going on to this day. The morons were constantly complaining that the alabarch had cravenly withdrawn with his private army instead of using them to defend the Sector. What nonsense!

“Customs men are not permitted to undertake military tasks!” Philo groaned. “That would have been unlawful! It behooves us to stick to the law even if our enemies spit on it! We cannot place ammunition against us in their hands!”

He later complained that agitators from Judaea, whipped up into a fervor and disguised as the crews of commercial ships, were arriving in Alexandria and staying. They said the Bane was a warning from God that the end of days was nigh; moreover, they asserted that the Messiah had already been born somewhere in Galilee or Judaea, and they were his disciples, having the audacity to fool the poor congregations to offer sacrifice with water, claiming that it was actually wine! It was an outrageous rebellion against the institution of the priesthood, as only a priest is permitted to make a sacrificial offering of wine during a service; ordinary Jews of nonpriestly descent were arrogating priestly dignity to themselves! That had never happened before in Jewish history! Some believers were so inebriated by this ordinary water that they imagined they really were priests and said the priestly blessing! An abomination! Thank God, subversives like that were now being harried out of Jerusalem, but they were still free to prowl around Alexandria.

Vitrasius Pollio says — and sadly it is true — he cannot interfere in the internal affairs of the Jews, but speaking as a private individual he acknowledges that such subversion is dangerous; it’s a good thing that the matter is not to the liking of the more respectable elders either, and any of these subversives caught committing such an act would be flogged.

Not that one needed to worry about the elders: they had put together a list of damages and set this before Pollio, demanding that any injury the Greeks had inflicted on shops, stock, and turnover should be recompensed with interest. Pollio did not have the funds for this (how would he?), and as his investigation had not yet been completed, it would be no easy matter to identify Greek murderers, robbers, and thieves, so from the very outset the task was futile. It would make more sense to find the instigators, who along with their main accomplices had fled to Rome and, in league with the sophist Apion, were trying to worm their way into the emperor’s entourage. Meanwhile, some radicals among the elders in Alexandria were voicing demands that the alabarch make compensation from his private wealth to the Jews who had met with misfortune, which was totally absurd.

“Alexandria is not a very nice place to be nowadays,” Philo cut off his complaints, only to start up again the next day at supper time.

Uri asked if he knew anything about what had happened to Apollos.

“He won his school certificate,” said Philo. “He gained Greek citizenship rights and went off to Corinth.”

“Why there in particular?”

“Tija believes it is because the Greeks there will likely also start killing Jews, and Apollos has not yet had enough of it… You know what Tija’s like… It’s hardly a reason for Apollos to go to Corinth, because there is more likely to be a Bane in Antioch, where Jews now make up two-fifths of the populace. In Corinth they make up only one-quarter and, as such, represent less of a threat to Greek businesses.”

Uri looked at Philo in some astonishment. It seemed he knew, after all, what lay behind the Bane in Alexandria. Why then had he not written that down?

“He said farewell before he went,” sighed Philo. “He said he never wanted to see the same thing happen again in Alexandria. The two of us together wept greatly over it… He is taking up a post as a teacher of rhetoric in Corinth, and I think there’s little prospect of his returning.”

Corinth… Go there and leave it all behind… Kidnap his son and take him off to Corinth. Raise him on his own… Teach geometry… Make the rounds of dives and bathhouses…

But it was not possible; certain women were entrusted to his care.

Philo spent a lot of time getting himself ready in the morning, relieving himself at least three times and having a bath at least twice before noon. This was when the ideas would come to his head, the ideas that he would set down in the afternoon. Meanwhile Uri would race around town, taking care of his business affairs so he could continue to provide money for his family; so long as he spent his time on that, he wouldn’t have to be at home listening to the moans of the womenfolk. They did not give him much chance to pick up and play with his son or talk to him, as those were not very manly things to do. Theo had such lustrous blue eyes that Uri wondered from whom he could have inherited them. He seemed to be a bright and happy child; Uri would try and guess when he would utter his first words and when he could at last have some fun with him. Until then, all he could do was furtively tickle the soles of his feet as long as the women let him.

He had to acquire various scrolls for Philo, and Uri had a glimpse at them as Philo slowly unrolled them. Not one scroll had been in his hands since he had gotten back to Rome: I’ll go stupid, he thought. He would either borrow the scrolls from a library or buy them using Philo’s money, and on his rounds he came across several genuine rarities. One day, when he was rolling in money, he would amass a marvelous library of his own; he would make a comfortable living from lending, and he would personally teach his children how to letter.

Since the Bane in Alexandria, scrolls on Judaica had become fashionable in Rome, so if time allowed, he might even go into book selling. He stumbled on a surprising number of scrolls in Greek and Aramaic from Judaea and Alexandria. Interest in the Septuagint had grown as people wondered what sort of lone god these heathen Jews could possibly believe in.

“We have become important in their eyes,” Philo acknowledged this. “The Latini are starting to realize that there are as many of us in the world as there are of them, and we too have our religion and our history!”

Uri remarked that it was far from certain that this was a good sign: there was considerable Roman interest in the history of Parthia because they considered it to be a hostile power; maybe they view the Jews, too, as a potential enemy.

“Bah!” said Philo, “There’s no reason for that. In my opinion, in the depths of their hearts they are starting to understand that the laws of Moses are valid for them too! The Eternal One sees that the time is ripe…”

Uri was heartily fed up with Philo’s chatter, but he was better off listening to him that he was once the alabarch set him to work. It turned out that few of the Roman senators spoke any Greek, and even those who did spoke it poorly.

“What an uncultured bunch!” exclaimed the alabarch. “Do they imagine that the whole world is going to learn Latin for their sake?”