György Spiró - Captivity

All the things he had heard about Caligula’s depravity passed through Uri’s head. No doubt he was no more wicked than Divus Augustus or Tiberius, it was just that all of those who surrounded him tolerated his games. “I do it because I can do it,” he would say, and indeed he could, because nobody restrained him.

What kind of end could deep-breathing Philo expect?

They entered the garden; Uri blinked. Small houses were set out between small lakes and coppices; servants were scurrying around with spades and rakes. Bodyguards led them to the emperor, who was examining the windows of one of the pavilions and declared that he wanted panes of that translucent white stone he had already talked about. Philo prostrated himself, lying with outspread arms on the ground. Uri followed his example. Caligula glanced at them.

“Augustus Imperator!” Philo bawled out.

Caligula broke into a laugh.

“So, you’re the people who detest me, you hardened atheists!” he declared. “The one people who are unwilling to believe that I’m a god. Others can see it straightaway; why can’t you? Oh, Yahweh! Oh, Yahweh!” and he raised his arms to the heavens theatrically and mockingly.

Uri shuddered: he had never heard the Name of God pronounced out loud before; now he had heard it, and in so doing he had committed a sin.

A huge guffaw burst out. Uri glanced across. Some Greeks, Isidoros and Lampo among them, were amusing themselves, whirling into a dance as they snickered; they danced around Caligula, addressing him by turns as Zeus, Apollo, Hermes, and Dionysus.

Isidoros came to a stop and said:

“Sire, you will loathe these Jews even more when you learn how little they consider you to be their lord. Every people except theirs make sacrifices to you.”

Isidoros made a sweeping gesture to indicate that he meant all of Jewry.

Philo then got up onto one knee and called out:

“It’s a lie to say we did not make sacrificial offerings! We did!”

Uri repeated that word for word.

“We made sacrifices three times over!” Philo shouted, waving his thin arms. “The first time was when you became emperor! A second time when you were healed! Then there was a third time when you won your victory in Germania! We sacrificed exactly the same number of animals as the Greeks!”

“Yes,” said Caligula, “except it was not to me that you made the offerings: for me, but to your own god!”

That is what he had already said to Agrippa. Could he have forgotten? Was that all he had been taught about the Jews? It wasn’t much. How had Agrippa brought him up?

Uri thought the time was ripe for him to produce the two scrolls but the emperor turned on his heels and hastened off, the Greeks after him. Philo and Uri got to their feet, exchanged looks, and raced after them.

The emperor first looked at the women’s room in the other pavilion, fired off some comment before tearing up the steps and taking exception to something there too. Pale-faced servants noted down what he said, the Greeks stood around uneasily, and the emperor then bawled:

“Rubbish! Rubbish! Spend more! Spend more!”

He ran down the steps and out of the house, Greeks, servants, and Jews in his wake.

The Greeks let fly a series of jeering comments after the Jews, but Caligula did not hear them.

They tore around five pavilions like this, with Uri panting to keep up; Philo withstood it better.

Then Caligula stopped dead and fixed his eyes on them.

“Why don’t you eat pork?” he asked.

The Greeks chortled uproariously, as if they had been struck by a sparkling shaft of wit.

Philo was not ready for a question like that, but Uri had enough presence of mind to respond:

“Many peoples regard various items of food as being prohibited. Many will not eat lamb even though that too is delicious.”

“You mean pork is delicious?” the emperor asked.

“Most certainly,” said Uri. “Our ancestors banned the eating of it so we would not grow soft.”

Caligula was amazed at first before breaking into a laugh. The Greeks did not laugh.

“Right then,” said Caligula. “What sorts of political rights do you have?”

He did not wait for an answer, however, nor did he take away the two scrolls he was offered but instead turned to issue an instruction that the windows of this building’s large hall should likewise be covered with the same translucent stone panes, and only after that did he turn again to the Jews.

“What do you want anyway?”

He immediately turned away again, indicating place for the curtains.

Caligula pointed toward the Jews and said to Isidoros:

“In my opinion they are not criminals, just sleepwalkers, for not seeing that I am blessed with divinity. Well, in that case I’m not letting my statue be taken into their Temple, but I’ll tell you this: every Greek has the right to erect an altar to me anywhere — anywhere at all — and if the Jews demolish it like they did at Jamnia, they will all perish.”

On that note, he ran off with the Greeks in train.

Philo and Uri just stood there. The audience had come to an end.

Philo remained silent throughout the coach ride back.

Uri was almost ready to believe that the whole thing had never occurred.

Caligula had never sought to have a statue of Zeus taken into the Temple. It was the last thing he wanted; he was not stupid and, having quarrels with the Senate, he would not withstand a general Jewish revolt.

He had wanted to humiliate his father’s friend, Agrippa, and place Petronius, the prefect of Syria, in an awkward position lest his favorites get too cocksure. He had gone about things in much the same way as Tiberius had many times. Caligula had studied him mutely for many years and had learned his lessons.

That was all beside the point.

What he had accomplished today was to make them understand that he had rescinded his order.

But then why had he issued it in the first place?

He had rescinded the order merely so that the spirit of the order should live on throughout the Greek world, from Alexandria to Antioch, and what that spirit said to the many millions of Greeks was that the emperor was their divine ruler and not that of the Jews. He had humiliated the Jews, terrified and threatened them, and that was enough, because the Greeks had a problem only with their close rivals, the Jews, in the part of the world in which they dwelt, not with the Latini, who lived far away and for whom they had no regard at all.

Fleet-footed messengers (Jews themselves who had taken fright) would be doing the work of spreading the emperor’s true message throughout the Hellenic world — free of charge at that.

Jamnia had been a provocation on the part of the emperor — now he had admitted as much.

Caligula wanted to be a Pharaoh, not just a simple Princeps. And through that rescinded order he had not only achieved that pharaonization in the minds of Egyptians, but also in the minds of Greeks: they hadn’t noticed that they had been degraded to the status of Copt slaves.

The Senate, reluctant? Unwilling to grant him a triumph? The Greeks across the empire would stand by him and smash the Senate’s power from the outside.

Caligula was counting on Alexandria taking side against Rome. That was why he had Alexander the Great’s breastplate brought to him. It was not out of some megalomania, a delusion of grandeur, but a clear political calculation. That was why he dressed up as Dionysus: once upon a time the Athenian Assembly had granted Alexander the Great the honor of Dionysiac divinity. That was why Caligula had surrounded himself with Greek counselors, and that was why he had not sent relief troops to Alexandria as soon as the Bane erupted. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that he had sent a message to Flaccus — though the prefect had already been dismissed by then — to allow the city’s Greeks to let off steam for a while.