György Spiró - Captivity

They were tied up for a whole day at Phalasarna, a port on the coast of western Crete. The slaves stowed away agricultural produce in the still-empty spaces of the hold, whereas Uri stroked the dog and talked to him, the dog occasionally looking as if he almost understood.

“Remus,” Uri would say, and the dog vigorously and happily wagged his tail. He at least recognized his own name.

“Uri,” he would say, pointing to himself. The dog would vigorously and happily wag his tail at this too, though judging from the dimming of his eyes Uri could see that he did not grasp the meaning. What a stupid dog! It could only love.

What sense is there in a dog’s life? What sense is there in a human life? What does the Creator want with us?

As he passed by, the captain would cast disapproving glances at them, the man sitting on the desk and the dog nestling on his lap. But he said nothing. Uri was one of the delegates from Rome, an important man; an idiot, but he could cause problems for the captain if he wanted to. The sailors that had stayed on the ship would tease him, sometimes in Greek, sometimes in Aramaic, “Your brood will be dogs,” but Uri paid them no attention.

He was a little disappointed that they had not stopped in Herakleion or Miletus, even though they were headed for Rhodes, where he too might disembark. But he had not disembarked even in Ithaca, where they had also stopped for half a day. He did not consider it to be his duty to retrace Odysseus’s steps, and anyway it was far from certain that this Ithaca was the Ithaca of the Odyssey, as was confirmed by Valerius, the armchair mariner, who had been seasick all the way: Homer’s Ithaca probably lay farther north, on the island of Levkas.

Uri understood less and less what he was doing on the ship. What would he do in Jerusalem? If his father had been looking to do him a favor, why had he not sent him to Athens? Knowing his son’s passion for reading, it might at least have occurred to him that Uri would be able to bury himself in the libraries there and listen to the academics. Besides, there were also Jews in Athens; he could live among them.

Or why not send me to Alexandria? The most enchanting city in the world — everyone knows.

His companions returned to the ship so drunk they could barely stand. Even Matthew and Plotius, the two men whose respect Uri most wanted to win, were reeling commendably. He did not censure them; it was more a case of his being ashamed that he had not gotten drunk with them.

There’s going to be a time when I get really drunk, he resolved. Much drunker than when I was sick in the sea at Syracusa.

After Rhodes and Cyprus, the next stop was Sidon, where part of the produce — some three quarters of the almonds — was unloaded. Uri asked where the almonds would be taken to, and Matthew gaped in astonishment.

“The whole lot ought to have been offloaded here,” he explained, enunciating deliberately so that Uri might understand, “but the captain lied that the price had gone up in the meantime, and he had only received what the merchant had given him in advance. The captain would sell off the remaining one quarter somewhere else; that was pure profit for him. The merchants yelled at him for a while, and the captain yelled back. All sides ended up pleased with themselves, but it was the merchants who broke off first; that was the custom, and it was calibrated into the calculations.”

In Tyre the cosmetics were unloaded. Here there were more prosperous towns, said Matthew, more so than any in Syria, Galilee, Samaria, and Judaea — Jerusalem and Caesarea excepted, of course.

None of them is wealthier than Rome, thought Uri, the Roman citizen, to himself.

They advanced southward right along the coast.

One week before Passover they arrived at Caesarea. It had once been called Pyrgos Stratonos, or Straton’s Tower. It had been reconstructed by Herod the Great, and he naturally had renamed it for the emperor, said Valerius, well informed as ever and happy that his stomach was no longer going to trouble him.

They were left with plenty of time to cover the two hundred stadia to Jerusalem, Matthew said cheerfully. He was thankful that the long sea voyage had reached an end and they were able to rest for a few days. Uri picked up on everyone’s sense of relief that Matthew was such an experienced seaman. Though maybe it was precisely on that account that Uri was surprised: he had never sensed any danger, even during the squall, but then he had been preoccupied with rowing, so he had no time to be alarmed. He entertained a boundless youthful confidence in his Creator, who had clearly marked him out for something if he was helping him stay alive and did not wish him to perish young.

Uri was made conscious by his companions’ shouts that they were now able to see it. They were all assembled on the port side of the ship. What they could pick out in the distance was already big enough for Uri to make out if he screwed up his eyes: a huge, round, gleaming white building on a hilltop.

“The Temple of Augustus,” said Matthew. “In front of it stand statues of Augustus and the Roman wolves. A colonnade all around! And dazzling inside as well: it’s vast, gets its light through round apertures from above. That too was built by Herod the Great, when Augustus forgave him for having earlier been in Mark Antony’s service.”

The harbor looked big. Plotius estimated that it was exactly the same size as that of Piraeus. “No, bigger!” insisted Valerius. He also noted that the harbor area was known separately as Sebastos, which was the Greek for Caesar Augustus.

Matthew chuckled: he had met some Jews from Rome who mixed up the harbor area of Caesarea with the town of Sebaste in Galilee, little knowing that Herod the Great had rebuilt the latter on the site of the town of Samaria, which had been razed to the ground by the Jews.

The harbor was truly capacious, suitable for accommodating an entire flotilla. The entrance to the harbor faced north, as in Caesarea northerly winds were the most uncommon. There was a continuous, high stone ledge that protected it somewhat from the African southerlies, which carried sand that covered everything.

On reaching the port, they saw to the port side a large, round tower, set on a wide rectangular pedestal; this was the Caesarea lighthouse and could only be approached by sea in a small boat. As it was daytime, no fire was burning on the uppermost level. The mole was two hundred feet wide, Matthew told them. Herod the Great had built it, as he had the whole town, in just twelve years. It had cost a horrendous amount, with the construction materials — the stone and marble — being brought from far off, along with the engineers. The mole rested on gigantic blocks of rock sunk twenty cubits deep and were on average fifty feet long by eighteen feet wide by nine feet high. The southern breakwater, a stone wall interrupted periodically by towers, ran off as far as they could see to starboard. Before either of the breakwaters was built, Herod had the bay dredged, so that the sandbanks disappeared and no longer presented a danger to shipping, though the dredging still had to be carried out again at intervals.

The tallest and most splendid tower was a scaled-down copy of the Pharos of Alexandria. It bore the name of Augustus’s son, Drusus, who had died young, and was known as the Druseion, Matthew explained. They were able to wonder at this truly impressive edifice as they drew nearer. It was square and comprised thirteen plus three levels. Seamen coming from far overseas would be put up in the Druseion, said Matthew. He had never resided there, sad to say, but he had visited it many times. It had four separate staircases, one on each face, and in the atrium there was a garden, and shops selling anything imaginable. The prostitutes were installed on the eighth floor, though women were very pricey there — at least that was what foreign sailors had told him. The Pharos in Alexandria also has thirteen floors in its lower block, Matthew went on, but its upper is even taller, of six floors, and above that there is yet another tower in which the light burns. It may well be that Herod had intended to copy the whole thing, but ran out of money by the time he had gotten around to constructing the upper levels of the Druseion. The tower marked the start, on the shore, of a long and broad promenade, visible even from where they were, which was bordered by palaces, all built from polished marble, above which stands the temple of Augustus with its two statues, visible from much farther away and to which a long, broad set of steps led from the harbor.