György Spiró - Captivity

The Jews could not take Roman military banners into the Temple in Jerusalem. Just one person, the high priest, was allowed in the innermost sanctum at all, and even he only once a year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which was in the autumn, whereas now it was almost spring. It was just as far-fetched to imagine that the Jews would want to stone the governor at a chariot race in the stadium; besides, the guards would have clearly been able to see the stones in the spectators’ hands. All the same, these rumors were unsettling; something had undoubtedly happened in Judaea, and that was exactly where they were headed.

When Matthew found them at the lighthouse, they began to grill him on what he knew. Matthew admitted that the delay was probably not caused by reported storms; no Jewish ships had arrived in recent days from the port of Caesarea, even though the sea was calm, as the Greek boats that had called in at Caesarea could attest; and it was, indeed, true that the Jewish fleet had a new local representative, the old one had been replaced and the new man was rather feeble, but the military commander was not biased toward the Greeks, and anyway he, Matthew, had already bribed him twice; and how was a Roman centurion supposed to put Jewish ships ahead of the Greeks if none had called in for days now?

“Wouldn’t we be better off on a Greek ship?” Iustus asked.

That was not such a bad idea; more than a few Greek ships had set off for Caesarea over the past two days, with two of them calling in at Crete. But Matthew still shook his head. The Greeks were asking exorbitant fares, and then there was the risk of getting robbed en route. They needed to find a Jewish boat; no Jews would not dare to fleece once they found out this was the delegation.

“Do you mean that if we weren’t, then they would?” Uri inquired.

“We’re no worse than other pirate peoples,” Matthew replied in a superior tone.

They all laughed, and when it was time for the noonday prayer, they all beseeched the Lord to finally send a few Jewish ships to dock in Syracusa.

Three boats did arrive soon after, but these were from Alexandria, and they were going back there; two were Greek and one Jewish. They talked with the Greek sailors. They had also heard about a furor in Jerusalem, but they thought it was highly unlikely that the local governor had ordered Roman army standards to be taken into the Temple Square. The Jewish protest would follow immediately, as he was well aware; more likely, it was an overzealous regimental commander. Several of them had heard that someone resembling Tiberius had also been taken into the Temple. Others disputed that; apparently the Jews had written a letter to Tiberius about the matter, or at least the Jewish high priest in Alexandria had done so, the president of the Alexandrian Sanhedrin, the council of Elders, Alexander the gerusiarch and also alabarchos. It was also reported that Alexander, the head of the Jews in Alexandria, said that the emperor would almost certainly reprimand the prefect, maybe even relieve him of his office, because he was not prepared to see the Pax Romana threatened in the provinces. The Alexandrian Jewish sailors spoke highly of Alexander, whereas the priestly clans of Jerusalem were worthless, an opinion they made clear, although not in so many words. The Roman delegation also grasped from the Alexandrian Jews that they should feel shame that their city didn’t have a house of prayer like the Basilica in Alexandria, which rivaled the Temple in Jerusalem — not that their co-religionists from Alexandria mentioned a single word about it. But as far as thinking goes, they were almost certainly thinking that — so surmised the Roman Jews. Plotius fancied he knew for sure that Alexander did not stem from a priestly family but was a descendant of common Jewish slaves who had settled in Egypt, so he was not rightfully entitled to the title of priest: a gerusiarch and alabarchos, yes, but in no way a priest. These Greeks were ignorant.

“What’s an alabarchos?” queried Iustus.

“The customs and excise chief,” Plotius answered.

Matthew tried to persuade the seemingly sympathetic Jewish captain to sail back to Alexandria via Caesarea, offering quite a substantial sum of money, but the captain spread his arms in a gesture of powerlessness: he sailed on a timetable, and he could not account for the four-day delay that such a detour would cause. It wouldn’t work, even if he could pick up a valuable cargo at Caesarea: there was room on the ship, but Judaea produced nothing that would be worth taking to Alexandria.

Matthew disputed that, whereupon the captain inquired why there was no regular boat traffic between Caesarea and Alexandria.

In Matthew’s opinion it was the excise rates in Alexandria, which were outrageously high and were exacted impudently on ships coming from Judaea.

The captain, being an Alexandrian Jewish patriot, held the view that this was proper; he had visited Jerusalem, and the two-drachma toll that they collected from every pilgrim was typical of the brazen extortion in Jerusalem. They made their living from fleecing pilgrims; a fee of two drachmas that was also collected for using a vessel of clean water, a mikveh, as though smaller coins were not in circulation over there, and anyone who is proven not to have ritually cleansed themselves for six days, which means twelve drachmas, is not permitted to enter Temple Square. Lodgings were also overpriced, because cheap rooms had to be booked at least a year in advance, and that was not possible for a sailor. Food was cheap, no argument there, but on the other hand it was lousy.

The indignant captain proposed that they come with him to Alexandria, and go from there over dry land to Judaea; he would take them on his ship cheaply, and the next day at that. Uri was keen to see the marvelous city of Alexandria, but Matthew did not take up the opportunity; in his view the delay would undermine their mission, and moreover he had never made the journey from Alexandria to Judaea by foot, nor did he wish to. He had no wish to ride a camel, and anyway he would not take the responsibility, because he had met people who had completed the journey with extreme difficulty and had come within a hair’s breadth of death. The Nile was unnavigable close to Alexandria. They needed to get to Nicopolis somehow and board a ship there. They would have to disembark at Thmuis and go east on foot. It was inconceivable that they would not pass through Heracleopolis and Pelusium, yet excise dues in those cities were undoubtedly high. Only at Pelusium would they be able to ford the Nile, and that was where the desert began; even at a forced march, it would take eight to ten days over arid land to reach Gaza — that is, if they did not die of thirst. Only a well-equipped military unit on iron rations or a major commercial caravan could take on the overland route from Alexandria to Judaea, not a delegation a few strong that was just delivering money.

Iustus was amazed that a navigable channel between the Nile and the port of Alexandria had not been constructed already.

“If even the Pharaohs did not build one,” Plotius ventured, “there can be only one reason.”

“And what would that be?” Iustus asked.

The others snickered, Uri included, because they knew the answer: it would have cost too much even for the Pharaohs who built the pyramids. Iustus took offense and spoke to no one for the rest of the day.

Alexandros maintained that the Pharaohs had the money to make the Nile navigable up to the seacoast, but they did not want to make it easy for their enemies, by capturing the seacoast, to penetrate into the heart of the country. It was an opinion that surprised Uri, and he looked pensively at Alexandros, the merchant.

The next day, Matthew went off early “to arrange matters”; the other six knocked around aimlessly on the pier. Hilarus, the teacher, took the line that they too ought to do something because, to their shame, they were going to miss Passover in Jerusalem.