György Spiró - Captivity

News then came that Tiberius Julius Alexander had quelled sedition on the part of the Jews; his legions had entered Delta by force and cut down fifty thousand of them.

Hang on! That must be an exaggeration!

A further wave of refugees arrived from Alexandria and declared that it was not an exaggeration. The legions had staged terrible bloodshed on the orders of Tiberius Julius Alexander. He was a Roman, and had not been Jewish for a long time.

Uri was reminded of Philo: he would have been very happy with that number — one-fifth of the Jews of Alexandria, though if one took into account the fall in population due to the exodus of refugees, something like one-quarter had been lost. Still, the fact that it was his nephew, of all people, who had been responsible for this carnage? Compared with him Flaccus had been an innocent lamb.

In Antioch a commotion erupted in the Hippodrome over the Greeks of the “Green” faction demanding that Jews of the “Blue” faction also cheer for the “Green” charioteers, which the Jews were unwilling to do, at which they were cut down, along with another fifty thousand across the rest of the city so as Rome would not be bested by Alexandria.

However, most Jews were killed by other Jews in military actions, with anti-Romans killing pro-Romans and vice-versa. Agrippa II and his sisters sided with Rome and the high priests, with the priests and people of the land rising and fighting against them; impromptu bands of robbers pillaged everywhere, even fighting against each other. Nero dispatched Vespasian from Greece but there was no way of knowing where his legion was. Vespasian was supposed to have been sent to Judaea as a punishment for falling asleep in the auditorium during one of the emperor’s lengthy singing performances.

“Who is this Vespasian?”

“He was the commander in Britannia.”

Salutius knew nothing more about him.

“Everyone in Far Side is placing their trust in the Parthians,” he noted, “with one commercial traveler after the other heading for Babylon. If the Parthians kick aside the peace there is nothing to stop them reaching Egypt, and Syria will just fall into their lap. Without one mortar to their name they would be able to expand their empire to three times the size!”

Uri shook his head:

“The Parthians won’t disturb the peace; there hasn’t been a foreign delegation received in greater splendor in Rome than the Parthians by Nero. Nero’s not stupid. At the time there was as yet no war but he made a pact with the Parthians with the aim of their being good enough to stay calm whatever happens.”

“Was Nero banking on a revolt of the Jews?” Salutius asked in amazement.

“It’s Caligula’s recipe,” said Uri. “It’s not so much that they expect a revolt as provoke one.”

“But what interest would Nero have in the Jews being beaten down? They’re just as much his subjects as anybody else! He’s only interested in singing!”

“The impartial Athenian judges cannot have been too choosy in setting their criteria before awarding all the crowns and laurels to Nero as well as the title of victor ludorum … Still, I’ll stake my life on it that he nevertheless requested with the deepest possible respect that the Jews be given a mighty walloping. Nero would have assented with a breezy flick of a wrist: why not, if that’s the price?”

“But you weren’t there!”

“I was as good as there.”

A stillness fell before Salutius confessed that as a Roman he was deeply attached to her provinces, yet as a Jew he wanted the Parthians to win.

“The Parthians will remain neutral,” Uri reiterated. “There are too many Jews living there. If it were to annex Judaea, Galilean and Syrian Jews would become the majority population within their empire and would displace the non-Jewish Parthians. If the Persians have a grain of good sense, then out of consideration for their own Jews they will promise our Jews anything at all but in the meantime the years will pass and Rome will slaughter its own Jews.”

“So how many Jews will lose their lives, do you imagine?”

“Two or three million,” Uri estimated. “We were late in starting to collect the books together. Everything and everyone will be lost.”

Salutius could not believe that.

“You’re a born pessimist: you see the negative side of everything!” he exclaimed irately. “As quick as hatred flickers up so too it will die down from one day to the next!” He lowered his voice. “After Nero there will be an emperor in full possession of his faculties and he’ll establish order.”

“That’s when you really need to get worried, but let’s hope you’re right!” said Uri, who was already bored with the subject and began to inquire about the Nazarenes.

“They’re also keeping quiet,” said Salutius. “Anyway they are not supposed to express opinions on earthly matters; they are meant to strive for their heavenly bliss. The way they see it every horror is a certain sign of the Anointed’s drawing nigh — the worse it is, the better.”

“What about my son?”

All Salutius knew about Marcellus was that he was occupied with questioning and sounding out the refugees. He had some influence because it mattered how he judged them.

Uri nodded. It was clear that Marcellus was on the take for writing the most favorable reports possible about them; Marcellus would make a pile.

Salutius informed Uri that Iustus was in charge of the collection of the money for relief.

Uri nodded. That meant Iustus would embezzle at least half of it.

Lately Iustus had been pushing the municipal authority for an expansion of the catacombs on Monteverde and the Appian Way. The passageways now being planned for them were from the outset too narrow, because before long the numbers of the dead would be twice as high as they had used to be.

In recent times a certain tension had grown up between Salutius and Uri, so Uri sensed and no doubt his adopted son as well. True, he had not officially adopted him, but the relationship between them had come to the same thing; now, however, something had been upset. Uri noticed that he was colder and more savage in his manner of expressing himself when Salutius was around than he was when he was on his own.

At nights he rolled about restlessly on his bed. In the olden days the din of the Subura could be heard as far as the Via Sacra, and Uri had liked that clamorous, bustling, dirty, cheerful neighborhood the best of all Rome, but after the Great Fire the district had been cleaned up. Now it was spic-and-span and life had been squeezed out of it; it was now still as a grave on the Via Sacra in the evening and Uri would increasingly catch himself with tears in his eyes.

He mourned Beth Zechariah, which some group or other had sacked and put to the torch, raping the women, clubbing the elderly to death, pressing the younger men into army service, and dashing the heads of the infants against walls or throwing them into wells. He mourned Master Jehuda and the black-haired young girl. He mourned the Jews of Caesarea, cool, standoffish, and wealthy as they had been, not having the least suspicion that they would all be killed. He mourned Delta, where Tija’s soldiers were now on a killing spree: he had repaid with interest the Alexandrian Jews who had said a word against his father’s cowardice and brazen thievery. Tija was cruel and calculating, but he too had feelings; a non-Jewish prefect would have been happy with a few hundred dead. There was no human way of speaking about this, though.

He ought to write it down.

Nero was assassinated at long last: he had lived thirty and a half years. He was succeeded as emperor by aged Galba, the prefect of Hispania; after the announcement the Romans all bought liberty caps and slapped them on their noggins — that was their way of celebrating it. Dress shops ran the caps up overnight and sold them at triple the price. Galba had the ashes of the murdered progeny of Augustus placed in the Mausoleum; surprisingly he only had Helius and a few of his closest cronies executed after they had been tortured somewhat in public, but he spared the lives of both Sporus and Tigellinus, the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, despite the calls of the populace for them to be punished. He did not commit acts of cruelty, so he was laughed at as he walked with a stooped back, white hair, and a broadsword by his side. When the legions in Lower Germany shouted for Aulus Vitellius, their prefect, to be made emperor, Galba adopted Lucius Piso, appointing him imperial heir. This enraged Marcus Silvius Otho, who, expecting to be chosen, had returned from Lusitania (it was he who had passed on his wife, Poppaea Sabina, to Nero), and he turned against Galba. A messenger reported to Galba that Otho had been killed. Believing this, and expressing his sorrow, Galba then set out for the Capitoline to offer sacrifice, but he was met on the way by horsemen and footsoldiers who cut him down. His last words were “What harm have I done?” He was in his seventy-third year and had ruled nine months. Otho was then named emperor. A false Nero amassed an army and he was killed; Piso, who did not rule for even one day, was killed; Aulus Vitellius’s armies approached Rome and joined the battle with Otho’s army at Cremona, with forty thousand men falling in the fight. Otho went to meet Vitellius, resigned, then took his own life in his thirty-seventh year, after a rule of just three months. He was succeeded as emperor by Vitellius, the emperor Tiberius’s one-time catamite. His father had wanted to be the emperor, but it was the son who did so. He banqueted and caroused; Nero’s Golden House was not fine enough for him so he had an even bigger palace built for himself on the Palatine. He held games, had only Otho’s few supporters finished off, not even confiscating any fortunes. Evil omens occurred: on the Capitoline many huge footprints were seen; a comet was seen at noon. The Temple of Jupiter had opened of its own accord with great clangor. Vitellius’s days were numbered, it was whispered.