György Spiró - Captivity

Iustus also inspected the head and, just to be on the safe side, blew on it so that not even a single speck of dust should deface it. What ran through Uri’s head was that at any moment he would be seeing a real live practicing emperor, the figurehead of a world empire. Then he recollected the bridge that had been built between Puteoli and Baiae; he was sill quite sure that sort of thing would never happen to him. His legs ought to be trembling; he still felt nothing. There’s something wrong with me, Uri thought. Startled, he realized that he was no longer like other people.

A tall, slim young man stepped out from between the bushes of the bower; he must be the emperor because the men with him followed at a respectful distance. He was carrying a sword in his left hand, on his right arm a shield, his head helmeted. As he approached Uri got an increasingly clear sight of his facial features. Yes, indeed, he resembled the statue of his father, though it could be the sculptor had exaggerated the resemblance. Emperor Gaius — Caligula — had a handsome face; there was a half-smile playing around his lips, he lifted his dreamy brown eyes, crossed, to the members of the delegation one after the other. His neck, Uri could make out through his slit eyes, was covered in boils. There was something odd about his hair; it had been combed strangely over his ears. He was tall and broad-shouldered, his waist was too long, his thighs disproportionately short, his feet, in contrast, enormous. He seemed to be wearing a silk tunic. Uri did not wait until the emperor looked him in the eyes but cast his look downward; he was just a litter bearer. In retrospect, with his inner eye he noticed that the emperor had on a tight-fitting ornamental breastplate in the middle of which was a round portrait, and his entire get-up seemed to resemble a statue. Yes, the emperor had been dressed for the reception to look like Ares.

“You bring before me my father in stone — you, the one who slew him, filthy Jew?”

Caligula screamed this hysterically, and what followed was a huge stillness.

Uri looked up.

The alabarch was stunned, groggy. Philo was trembling. Marcus looked in horror at the statue. Tija stood his ground unperturbed. Iustus dropped the poles at the front of the litter, so Uri swiftly set his down as well and the statue did not fall out.

Caligula flashed his teeth in a grin. He made a sign with his head and four or five bodyguards jumped to grab the alabarch.

“To the dungeons of the Palatine with him!” the emperor ordered.

The alabarch, paralyzed, offered no resistance and staggered away between the bodyguards grasping his arms on either side.

Caligula watched him go before turning to one of his attendants.

“I have no time for them now,” he said calmly and collectedly, no longer grimacing. “They should ask for a new appointment.”

He turned on his heels and strode back toward the bower.

Philo reeled; Uri jumped across and grasped him under his elbows.

“Take the statue back,” he heard in Aramaic. “I’ll take over the other gifts.”

It was the attendant who had spoken; Uri looked at him. The expression on the face of Homilus, the imperial counselor for delegations, was serious but not hostile; he must have gotten used to scenes like this.

Uri had the presence of mind to repeat this in Greek. Homilus glanced inquisitively at him.

A small table was brought and put down; Uri and Iustus had to unpack all the gifts, with Homilus checking them at length against the list.

Were they afraid that we brought a poisonous snake along?

Marcus and Tija were standing awkwardly, holding Philo by the arm on each side, mutely watching the unpacking. There was something infernally amusing about the whole thing and Uri found it hard to resist the temptation to laugh out loud.

“He was wearing Alexander the Great’s breastplate!” moaned Philo in distress.

So that was a portrait of Alexander the Great decorating the breastplate: he had duplicated himself by wearing himself on his chest. There was another young man who could not have been quite right in the head either; he’d died young, too. It was said of Agrippa that when he had completed his thirty-second year he threw a huge banquet, obviously paid for by a loan, to celebrate the fact that he had lived longer than Alexander the Great.

They were sprawled in the atrium of Agrippa’s house, drinking non-stop. Iustus was not there: after he and Uri had lugged the statue back to the servants waiting at the entrance to the garden so that they might transport it back to Far Side, he said his goodbyes and hurried off to his master, Honoratus, to report on the sensational incident and make sure it was spread across Far Side. Philo made no effort to detain him; people would learn about it anyway, the emperor would make sure of that.

Marcus was still seething with anger, whereas Tija sat quietly and pecked at some food. Uri stood coolly next to the statue, thinking that the embassy would soon be returning to Alexandria, while he would be left here with his unpaid and unpayable debt, to die just like his father.

“The fiend was wearing Alexander the Great’s breastplate!” exploded Philo again. That was why it looked tight-fitting: it had been made for someone else.

“Are you certain that it was Alexander the Great’s?” Uri asked.

“Absolutely!” Philo exclaimed. “I was there when it was lifted up out of the coffin and taken into the prefect’s palace! It was a huge honor that a young Jew like me was allowed to be present!”

Philo was guzzling wine, and he painted the scene for them in great detail: they had opened up the alabaster mausoleum, in which the mummified body of Alexander the Great lay. The breastplate alone had been lifted out, then the coffin was resealed. It was surprising how short and scrawny the world’s greatest military leader had been.

Philo broke into a laugh.

“What ran through my head at the time was that despite my slight build I too could have been a military leader!”

At the time Alexandria had been expecting a return visit from Emperor Augustus: they were intending to deck him out in the breastplate, and had even provided it with new straps, but Augustus never returned. Maybe it was better that way — this time he could well have knocked an ear off!

“Obviously Bassus brought it back to Rome,” Tija said.

“Presumably,” said Philo. “It will go astray! It will go astray in Rome!”

Uri was astonished to see that the alabarch’s detention, after the initial shock had subsided, did not elicit any undue despondency from members of his family. It was almost as if they were relieved, with the sole exception of Marcus, who kept on reiterating that they ought to have leapt to his defense immediately, though it was true, he added, that they would have been cut down, so that would not have made no difference. He said this again and again and drank steadily.

The emperor had avenged himself for the alabarch’s crime, but he seemed willing to receive his family, which implied that the family was absolved of the crime; indeed, it was treated as an official delegation. That meant the delegation might stay in Rome after all.

“We ought to send a courier off to Agrippa straightaway,” Marcus chimed in.

“There’s no point,” said Tija. “If he’s en route, the courier will not reach him, and if he hasn’t left for Rome anyway, then this piece of news is not going to persuade him either.”

No one said anything to this, leaving Uri to deliberate alone in silence: so this is what the life of a powerful, stubborn man who is fighting for prestige comes to?

They had seen that the emperor had dressed up as Ares in their honor, and for a while they debated what the hidden significance of that might be. Philo considered it to be an ominous sign; the emperor was girding for war against the Jews. Though that was better than if he had dressed up as Dionysus, because by showing himself as the favorite god of the Jew-baiting rabble the emperor would unequivocally have been aligning himself with the Greeks. It emerged that they had been informed in advance of the emperor’s curious habit of dressing up as a demigod, or even a god, and mincing around in his circle of admirers as if he were an actor; he was fond of dressing up as Apollo or one of the Dioscuri, Castor or Pollux, though nobody as yet had seen him as Zeus, the father of the Dioscuri — something was holding him back, for the time being, from that sacrilege.