György Spiró - Captivity

Salutius shook his head:

“A war of the Jews? There’ll never be such a thing; there are just too many different kinds of Jews. They have different interests, a different status, in every Syrian and Greek city. The Jews of Judaea will not go into a frenzy like they did in Samaria. You’re too fond of seeing spooks, Gaius Theodorus.”

Uri extended his mud-brick house at the end of the Via Nomentana, on the outskirts of the city, with an inconspicuous, sturdy, cement-floored building that no one would imagine stored valuables, and most particularly that no one would imagine a storeroom for books.

Meanwhile the two developed a close friendship. There were times when Salutius was on the verge of talking about his family, but Uri headed that off. He had no wish to hear about the troubles his adopted son was having with his wife and children: it was of no importance. There were also times when Salutius asked about Uri’s experiences, and Uri would respond curtly and listlessly: it was of no importance. There were also times when Salutius would start to talk about the incomparable treasures he had acquired in recent weeks, ancient prophecies written on linen like the Scroll of the Lamb, the Oracle of the Potter, and rare sibylline books, but Uri did not wish to hear about them since he had no time to read them anyway.

Most likely this was what friendships with the great Greeks had been like, Uri considered: a friendship between the highly experienced man and the clever young man — it was on that they set the highest store.

Their own children had probably also been no great shakes.

It was around this time, just as he was feeling himself to be a father figure, that he also regained his virility: he procured a plump, dim young girl who cleaned the houses that were under construction and was willing to open her legs for him any time at all.

Housing and halls were constructed, imperial buildings went up on the sites of the narrow streets of old; the sun now blazed down on broad streets, and Romans, used to the tight, murky alleyways, were astonished and donned hats to protect their heads. Aqueducts were constructed, and the emperor introduced new, heavy taxation, though this did not affect the plebes. By now the emperor was also singing in Rome and, indeed, he set off with his lovers and most faithful supporters that the cities of Greece might also share in the enjoyment of his unsurpassed art, and also to complete the Great Circuit, and emerge victor at the four major festivals. The imperial freedman Helius, formerly a slave who had been chief steward in Claudius’s household, remained in Rome as the representative of imperial power: it was to him that one needed to apply for permission or to appeal in the event of a dispute, and also his palm construction bosses had to grease when they wanted to move in on ground that was contested. Nobody supposed that Uri might know Helius personally, and he did not so much as mention this to Salutius.

“It does not look good if things carry on like this,” Salutius brooded. “Rome has really come down in the world.”

Uri nodded.

Gaul, under the leadership of Vindex, a knight, broke out in revolt, and there were further battles somewhere in Britannia. Salutius related to Uri that he’d heard in Far Side about other things happening in Judaea.

Already under Felix large crowds had tramped out into the wilderness, where they did nothing, just prayed and fasted, but even that was enough for Felix to attack them, killing many in the process.

“Were they Nazarenes?” Uri asked.

Salutius was not sure.

Under Felix there had been a prophet of some kind who had attracted large crowds in Judaea. The man said he was from Alexandria and preached that these were the last days; he had prayed together with them on the Mount of Olives, and he was supposed to want to capture Jerusalem. He claimed that at one word from him the walls of Jerusalem would come tumbling down and at one word would rise again.

“Was he a Nazarene?”

“He might have been,” said Salutius.

Salutius did not know what he was called except that he sometimes referred to himself as a second Elijah and sometimes asserted that he was the second rock. An old man by the name of Simon had been called the first rock: he had been crucified in Rome after the Great Fire and counted as a sort of high priest among the Nazarenes, having supposedly been named to the position by their Anointed personally before he had been executed.

The assembly on the Mount of Olives had been attacked; four hundred were killed and two hundred seized, but the prophet and his friends had escaped.

Disaffected men prowled from village to village banding into gangs, and if they spotted a non-Jewish person they would murder him.

Greeks and Jews regularly clashed and ran each other down in Caesarea; Felix had wanted to disperse the Jews who had come out best in one of the minor frays in the market square but they had resisted, at which many of them had been cut down. Nero had therefore sent out Festus to Judaea as a replacement for Felix, and he must have been a good soldier because he wiped out the rebels wherever he encountered them and restored peace. This was at a time when Poppaea Sabina was still living; she supported Festus, but then the emperor kicked her in the belly, and Festus also died, though there is no knowing what caused his death; he was followed as prefect by Albinus, who was violent, insulting to Jews, embezzled from the treasury, released common criminals from prison if they were able to pay him, and generally behaved more like a robber chief than a prefect. Nero replaced him after the Great Fire because he had not warned him about the Nazarenes and instead sent Gessius Florus, who, rumor had it, was even more barbarous than Albinus. At the recent Passover holiday a crowd of one million had pleaded unanimously for him to be more humane, even pushing their way into his palace to plead; Cestius Gallus, the prefect of Syria, had also been there, Florus had promised all they asked, then after the holiday, after Cestius had set sail back to Antioch, he had carried on perpetrating acts of cruelty.

“What do you mean: pushed their way into his palace?” Uri snorted. “That’s nonsense! You can’t just push your way into Herod’s palace: there’s a guard and high fencing around it.”

“That’s what they say,” Salutius said apologetically.

“There’s a stone platform in front of the palace,” said Uri. “From that they usually read out announcements of public interest so that passersby in the market can see and hear, but it’s not possible to defend a prefect on it from the masses so he could not possibly have been standing there! Vitellius used it to announce that he has restored to the Temple the right to safeguard the high-priestly vestments, but then that was good news!”

Salutius also related that before Nero had set off on his tour of Greece he had received an embassy from the Greeks of Caesarea and, so it was being said in Far Side, he had recognized them as being in control of the city, whereas he revoked the Jews’ rights of citizenship.

“But in Caesarea there are more Jews than Greeks,” said Uri. “It’s not like in Alexandria.”

“Still, that’s what they say, and also that the Greeks sacrificed a chicken on an earthen vessel set bottom upward at the entrance to the Jewish synagogue, which inflamed the Jews because that ritually polluted the entire synagogue, as a result of which many, many thousands of them marched to Narbata, saying that they were not willing to go back to Caesarea.”

“Is that also untrue?” Salutius asked.

“It may well be true,” said Uri. “The largest synagogue there lies on an isolated plot of land; at the time I was passing through there a Greek owner had been unwilling to sell to the Jews the land they needed to get proper access to it.”