György Spiró - Captivity

When he took his son out for some fresh air, the boy would burble as he pointed in terror at the homeless people, and Uri could not comfort him.

“We won’t be homeless,” he whispered in Theo’s ear, following with a gentle nip in the hope that it would lighten the mood, and Theo did laugh.

The presence of the immigrants was not taken kindly in Far Side. The newcomers surged to the synagogues because on the Sabbath they too had a need to worship, and the house of prayer that Uri’s family attended could not accommodate half of the congregation, so on the Sabbath they would set out trestle tables in front of the temple, just as had been done in the village in Judaea, but the celebration of the communal meal here went on in low spirits, surly and dejected, with everyone receiving a great deal less food and wine than they had in former times. The immigrants did no work; they expected fellow Jews in Rome to provide for them. The most resolute of them toiled in the harbor, some of these had been wealthy artisans for whose craftsmanship there was no demand in Rome or wealthy tradesmen who had no network of contacts here, but they kept their income quiet and they paid no tithes or dues to the communities of the synagogues here.

The mood in Far Side had never been at such a low ebb.

It was at this point that Julius, the banker, asked Uri to pay him a visit.

After a brief exchange of the customary courtesies, he got down to business: would Uri, being Philo’s right-hand man, see to it that the alabarch dug into his fortune to make some sacrifice for the upkeep of the new arrivals, and also to secure support from Agrippa, seeing that Uri was his confidant.

Uri said nothing.

Julius acknowledged that it would be no easy matter, of course, but then again it could not go on as it was.

Uri nodded.

Julius then asked what Uri was up to in Claudius’s house.

“I help with the cooking,” Uri replied laconically.

Julius could not get over his astonishment.

“A lot of high-ups go there, sir,” said Uri. “My place is among the servants.”

“But cooking?”

“So it can be guaranteed that Philo and the alabarch’s two sons receive food that is ritually clean.”

Julius nodded.

If reports are being made about me, thought Uri, and they are surely being made, they must have seen me bustling around next to Kainis at the fireplace.

“So when will Marcus and Berenice be wed?”

It was Iustus’s prime duty to report that.

“It’s not been made any of my business to know, sir.”

Uri’s answers were not at all to Julius’s liking.

“Before I forget completely,” the banker added, “Philo has not been covering your debt for months.”

Uri turned pale.

“But he promised me that he would pay half a year in advance!” he howled.

“Well, he didn’t,” Julius declared. “Press him, my son, and keep your ears open harder in Claudius’s house in case any tidbit of interest to us comes your way from the servants. You do realize, of course, that we could move three or four refugee families in with yours.”

Uri said nothing.

The ovation took place, with the emperor riding into Rome in the presence of the dignitaries, though not of Uri. The emperor’s third wife, Caesonia, had given birth to a girl to whom he gave the name Drusilla in memory of his late sister: he took the infant up to the Capitoline and placed her on the knee of Jupiter, entrusting her to the care of Minerva. He himself, he ordered, had to be referred to as “Jupiter” in the official documents.

At the beginning of his rule he had strictly forbidden that images of him be produced, but now, the story went, he himself had begun sculpting, and the leading Greek master sculptors gushed what a marvelous feel he had.

He took it into his head now to make it a capital offense to have been amused or bathed during the period of public mourning at his sister Drusilla’s demise. There were retrospective reports a-plenty, and heads rolled.

Two shrines to the emperor were constructed as well, one voted on by the Senate, the second he himself had built on the Palatine, not far from Claudius’s house: “So Claudius does not have far to walk,” it was said. It was well known that with his lame leg Claudius rarely walked and had himself taken everywhere by litter. It was also said that Caligula’s house on the Capitoline would soon be completed. He had his palace annexed to the temple to Castor and Pollux so that their statues should stand guard over the entrance. He also decided to construct yet another temple next to the Temple of Jupiter, and to have Phidias’s statue of Zeus transported there from Olympia, remodeled with his own likeness. A vast ship intended to bring the statue was built (another huge boat was constructed to bring the obelisk from Egypt), but it was caught in a storm and sank, so the emperor ordered that the statue be copied in Rome.

To celebrate the landing of the obelisk the Far Side warehouses were rebuilt and tidied up, at least externally; all Rome jostled for a place there, though Uri stayed at home to sort out the source materials for the twelfth volume of Claudius’s history of the Etruscans. Sarah and Hagar went off to the riverbank and on their return babbled on about what a marvelous column the obelisk was. It was going to be trundled on rollers to the Circus Maximus and set up in front of that. Had Uri seen any columns when he was in Egypt? He replied that he had not, as he had never visited the country. The women were confused and Uri suddenly understood that they thought of Egypt as a single city like Rome or Alexandria — a city consisting of districts like Far Side in Rome.

Uri’s second son was premature. At Hagar’s request he was named Marcellus. He looked exactly like her as well, with his round, flat, and witless features. Uri went along with the name but did ask her why she’d settled on that in particular; Hagar answered that it was because it was Latin and meant warrior. Uri sighed: his wife did not know one word of Latin, so how would she happen to know what Marcellus meant? He quietly noted that if anything its meaning lay closer to “feeble” or “drooping,” but Hagar shook her head: no, she had been told that Marcellus came from Mars, and it meant a warrior.

If the child were to take after his mother, then a lot of grief would come to this Marcellus.

Theo, by contrast, was marvelous: fair-haired, blue-eyed, and even though he didn’t talk yet he seemed to understand everything, and he adored chuckling. Uri just prayed that the boy’s eyesight would stay sharp; hopefully the German or Gaul from whom he had inherited the eye-color was also eagle-eyed.

Caligula announced that he was going to travel to Alexandria, an old dream of his, but then he stayed in Rome after all because the twenty-third of September marked the birthday of Deified Augustus and the beginning of a week-long Augustalia, which he could not miss. All delegations in Rome were invited. By now completely recuperated, Agrippa was keen to see the gladiators slaying one another and the wild beasts, and he made arrangements for Philo and the alabarch’s sons also to be allowed to go to the Circus.

Philo now promised to cover the interest on Uri’s debt for one whole year, not just six months, and sent him off with a letter to deliver to Isidoros. Uri was astonished to be the one chosen.

“Who else should I send?” Philo retorted. “He was your gymnasiarch; it won’t attract any attention.”

The two were cooking something up.

Isidoros lived at the eastern end of the old Forum in a tiny, old house on the Via Sacra, famed for its goldsmiths, with a jeweler working in half of the building. He took the letter, broke the seal and held it at a distance, throwing his head back before shaking his head resignedly: he couldn’t make it out so he requested Uri read it aloud. Uri did so. Philo was inquiring whether Isidoros happened to know of any book collection in Rome where he might get access to the works of Archilocus.