György Spiró - Captivity

“Go out and get some work, or at least beg! It’s always me alone who does the work! At least save me, with my bad back, from having to lug the bread that we get for the tessera all the way from the Campus Martius — half a day that takes!”

Hagar had by then switched off, with the look in her eyes suggesting that Uri was an intolerable character for continually yelling without any reason at all, whereas the children were amazed because why should they too have to work and lug things around.

“You’ve all been spoiled rotten!” Uri yelled, which was true, though right then they happened to be living in dire poverty and were starving, so they loathed their father all the more.

Why should I be making all of the sacrifices for them? Why don’t I just leave them to stew in their own juices? I’m going to clear off, move in somewhere with Flora, pay the fee for her manumission and give her a string of uncircumcised Ethiopian metoicosts!

Uri found out where Aristobulus lived; he was the elder brother of Agrippa and kept his distance both from Jews and from politics. Uri had to rap on the door for a long time before it was opened. Aristobulus was an old man with an intelligent, lined face; he listened with amazement to Uri’s request.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “If your father gave Agrippa a loan why didn’t he ask him for the money to be paid?”

“Because my father died prematurely.”

“You were in a position to ask, though.”

“I did, but he didn’t give it back.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Pay off a debt incurred by my elder brother, who’s no longer alive? On what grounds? It’s not me who became king! Ask Herod, Agrippa’s other elder brother; at least he’s got some pathetic little kingdom…”

This was the Herod who had married Marcus’s widowed wife, Berenice, his sister; his kingdom really was tiny, but then again Claudius had granted him oversight of the Temple’s affairs, including the appointment of high priests. But that Herod was far away.

Aristobulus, a grandson of Herod the Great, owned a large, splendid residence on Quirinal Hill, and he lived there on his own with his servants. He could see that Uri must be in trouble and suggested that he make contact with the young Agrippa, his nephew, who also lived in Rome: he was the heir to Agrippa’s fortune and also to his debts, as he was also the heir apparent to the throne of Judaea.

Uri mentioned that, as far as he knew, Cumanus had for quite some time been the prefect of Galilee, whereas the prefect of Judaea and Samaria was Felix, a one-time slave of Claudius’s who had wed Drusilla, Agrippa’s younger daughter, and if Nero had left them in those positions, then it was rather unlikely that Agrippa the Younger would become king.

Aristobulus gave a gloating laugh: the story had gone around that the circumcision had been extremely painful for Felix, as in his case they had not only removed the foreskin but also a fair chunk of the penis — so much for Felix and Drusilla. Aristobulus grumbled on a bit and then referred him to his firstborn daughter, Jotape, on the off chance that she would take pity on him.

“It’s been a long time since any soul moved my heart to pity,” said Aristobulus gloomily. “In my opinion it serves anyone who is born human right to toil to the end of his days and can only expire in dreadful agony. At least I’m fond of animals, though I do nothing for them, and have been in the habit of praying that a new deluge should come upon us, and this time with no Noah and no ark.”

Jotape was a spinster who resided in a magnificent house near the Porta Capena; she was said to gaze at the passing traffic all day long from behind a curtain, she could never have enough of that, though she was also a passionate collector of original Greek statues and pictures. Jotape was very tall, a hump-backed, bony-faced, hook-nosed amazon who looked as if she’d started developing as a man but on the way ended up in a woman’s body.

She heard Uri out, shook her head and expressed her sympathies in a deep drawl. But she regretted there was nothing she could do for him as she had no money herself.

“My father sent you here, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“That’s his way of signaling his unshakable distaste. He refers to me anyone he does not consider to be agreeable, and he never considers anyone so.”

Uri was transfixed by a panel painting propped up against a leather couch.

“Zeuxis?” he asked in wonder.

It was Jotape’s turn to be amazed:

“How do you know that?”

“I saw a copy of one of his works in Alexandria. It must have cost a fortune!”

“Six hundred thousand sesterces.”

“It’s worth at least three times that! Not that Zeuxis wasn’t reduced to giving his pictures away for free at the end of his life…”

“I bought that from its fourth owner; each of them made a fair bit of money on it.”

The picture was of fauns playing with one another, each with a human face full of character.

“Those fauns are architects!” Uri remarked to the present owner. “He completed it when the protracted planning work on the Erechtheun in Athens was in progress. I once knew their names but off the top of my head I can’t recall them right now… For a long time it was thought that the one on the far left was Phidias, but it can’t be him because then he’d have to be bald…”

Jotape pointed to another panel.

“Who do you think that is?” she asked.

Uri went closer, bent down, and inspected it. It was a picture of Hermes, he could see that now.

“How much did it cost?”

“Two million.”

Uri was silent.

“Don’t you know?”

Uri sighed.

“Not bad, but it’s a copy,” he said. “An imitation Parrhasius. The face is the painter’s, but the folds of the drapery are weak… Even his pupils did better work than that…”

“It’s an original,” Jotape snorted.

“I suppose that’s possible.”

They fell silent. Jotape took stock of Uri.

“What did you actually want from me?” she eventually asked.

Uri himself was not rightly sure. Several dozens of millions of sesterces in value was amassed in the house in the form of pictures and sculptures. Herod the Great had misappropriated the money back then by blood and iron, and his descendants were able to spend it on whatever they fancied.

“I’m going to sell off the collection,” Jotape announced. “There’s no sense in just me having the pleasure. I’ve got no heir; I’ll have a Greek-Jewish shrine put up the like of which has never been seen before, and I’ll have the collection carried over.”

Uri nodded. Philo would have been delighted by the idea.

“There’s no money I can give you,” said Jotape. “Truly not! I scarcely eat a thing, barely more than a sparrow.”

“That’s one of the secrets of a long life,” Uri said approvingly.

Jotape was interested in that subject and talked about special seeds and buds which simulate meat and pasta, indeed are healthier than anything else, and she warmly recommended to Uri that he consume these, living off them every blessed day: he would feel phenomenally well. Uri refrained from pointing out to the lady that Jews were not permitted to eat seeds on feast days, but politely thanked her for the advice and took his leave.

There were hordes of beggars in the neighborhood of the Porta Capena, including as usual a lot of grubby children from Far Side.

I will not send my children out begging; it’ll never get so bad that I’m reduced to that!

He went to pick up the four hundred sesterces that he had hidden on the building site, but his colleagues must have spied on him, because the money was nowhere to be found under the tile. They did not starve to death, but they continued to go to bed with their empty stomachs rumbling.