György Spiró - Captivity

If I eventually end up cursing Kainis, he reflected, maybe I shall feel even more relieved.

He had always been scornful of non-Jews who whispered their wishes into the ears of the statues of divinities that were erected at crossroads and as a preliminary token of gratitude would place a wreath or sacrificial offering of produce at its feet; the withering wreaths and rotting food were repugnant to Uri, making him feel nauseous. He was also disdainful of people who turned to seers and paid substantial sums of money for evil or protective spells of guaranteed, dead-certain efficacy.

Now he had become just as superstitious. It was high time to extricate himself from all this.

There was no news at all about Agrippa. It seemed the king was in no hurry to get to Rome and secure the alabarch’s release; he would only reach Rome at the end of August, like everybody else. Philo was bitter in his abuse of the ungrateful Agrippa, whereas Tija hemmed and hawed, and Marcus defended him. Uri noticed that Marcus was now starting to behave like a son-in-law even though his prospective father-in-law was not yet aware that there was a suitor for his eldest daughter.

Philo could not make up his mind whether they should set off after the emperor or stay in Rome. The longer Alexander was imprisoned, the worse the condition into which he would lapse, and it wasn’t an extraneous consideration that the status of the Jewish delegation would decline in direct proportion to the length of his captivity. Maybe Caligula would receive them and be in a good mood to be merciful, in which case it might also be possible to secure admittance into the equestrian order for Marcus and Tija. On the other hand, there were things to attend to in Rome, and there were other circles to consider, aside from Claudius’s guests; there were the societies that gathered at Sentius Saturninus’s, Pomponius Secundus’s, or Annius Vinicianus’s. These were rich and highly respected senators; one could not treat them so offhandedly as Claudius, at whose place the emperor’s unquestioning supporters would usually gather, given that nowadays even they could not gain admittance to the court of the emperor himself. They were also none too well acquainted either with Sanguinius Maximus, the city prefect, who might be able to make life easier for Alexander as he languished in prison.

All that could be learned of the alabarch was the message big-hearted Homilus had sent before the summer break: he had not been consigned to the deepest dungeon, and he was being decently provided for.

That was when Agrippa and his entourage arrived, and Jewish Rome burst into activity.

The king has arrived!

True, he did not take up quarters in Far Side but in Rome proper on the other bank, in his own house on Palatine Hill, which stood beside the house of Antonia, who had passed away two years before, but the Jews of Rome had no other topic of conversation. One spine-chilling detail that was retailed was that the Palatine’s cellars reached their deepest point precisely below these two houses, which were interconnected with an exceptionally secret network of underground passageways about which no one knew, and Agrippa was living right above the imprisoned Alabarch Alexander: if the prisoner tapped, then Agrippa could hear him and even tap back. Old people could recall their grandfathers relating that Jews had sent messages from besieged towns to the outside world by tapping and signaling with fires, but then again that had been a long time ago and these days there were no wars, nor were any to be expected, so the tapping code had been forgotten, but maybe Agrippa still knew it because there were many back in the homeland who were acquainted with these things.

Agrippa had become a king; now one could say nothing but good of him, not that anything bad was said about the alabarch, because he was now in prison.

Uri listened to the gossip and said nothing.

Philo, Marcus, and Tija had lengthy talks with Agrippa and his counselors; Agrippa requested that they stay on in his house, so they did just that. Philo merely said they would soon be setting off for Campania on the emperor’s trail, and they would most certainly have a need for Uri.

Now Sarah — and even Hagar — was satisfied with him. Sarah let it be known locally that Uri would be the king’s archisynagogos; Uri pleaded with her not to use words she did not understand, but as Sarah was unfamiliar with the titles of any other high officials, she continued to prattle on about that to all and sundry.

She also spread word that the emperor had pardoned the king and had recalled him from exile. Uri blushed in shame and tried to get her to understand that was another king, but Sarah was quite sure that one thing she knew was that the Jews had just one king.

“You absolutely must demand that he pay up!” Sarah whispered confidentially into her son’s ear one morning, at dawn, as he was setting off to walk across to Rome proper, where he would be joining the king’s retinue. “If only your father had lived to see this!” Sarah sobbed as Uri, mortified, got a brisk move on in the early-morning stillness.

Agrippa and his retinue traveled in regal pomp.

The king had his own bodyguard of eight mounted men, to which he had added four of the Praetorian Guard — that much was the due a king who was the emperor’s friend. Agrippa sat in the first four-horse carriage with his counselors: a certain Fortunatus, as well as Marsyas and Stoicheus, his manumitted slaves who had been with him back at the time when he was jailed on Capri and who, through forbearance on the part of Tiberius, had been allowed to visit him there. Also traveling with them was Pallas, a fop and the late Antonia’s favorite slave, whom Claudius had left behind in his own house. Philo, Marcus, and Tija jolted along in the second coach, while in a third rode the servants with the king’s personal effects, their head, Agrippa’s favorite cook, and Iustus and Uri.

Philo said of Fortunatus that he had been Agrippa’s ambassador to the emperor at the time Antipas had appeared in Rome to demand that he be given Judaea. What Fortunatus had achieved was Antipas’s exile to Lugdunum in Gaul, in light of the number and type of weapons that Antipas had amassed in his fortresses, alleged to have been sufficient to arm seventy thousand men to the teeth. This Fortunatus, who now attended to Agrippa’s affairs in Rome, was himself a Roman Jew; he had been engaged in his service when Agrippa was living there and had long been his interpreter, as Agrippa had never learned Latin. According to Marcus, the affairs of Agrippa’s kingdom and family were entrusted to his friend Silas back home, and that was why they had not come to Rome; it seems that Agrippa was fond of traveling without his family. Philo noted that if Cypron were with her spouse she would have strictly measured out the quantity of what he ate and drank; she herself was on a diet, in fact that was a mania with her, and she checked her children’s weights on a daily basis. If she noticed any gain she would hold them to a fast that day lest they ever put on weight as their father had.

It being July, the weather was hot, and Iustus bored Uri stiff with a tale of how Emperor Caligula had made a sacrificial offering on June 1 at the Dea Dei shrine, which they would be reaching any moment now, as it was situated by the five-mile sign. He reported in great detail on the emperor’s dress — or rather costume — that day, among other matters; he had not been there, admittedly, but he had been present to hear a report that had been made to Honoratus. Uri deduced something that Iustus had seemingly not recognized: the emperor, on that occasion, must have been dressed up as one of the Dioscuri.

Iustus kept on making stubborn inquiries about Agrippa’s schedule, unable to accept that Uri had no idea what the king had planned.