György Spiró - Captivity

“Here Monday and Thursday are also days of fasting for pious Jews,” Plotius said. “They abstain from eating until sunset, if I understand it right. Our forbears made a wise decision lest peasants, on the pretext of litigating or praying, should demand free meals in the towns.”

Uri felt tempted to sit through a whole day of court cases, but then he decided he’d prefer to wander aimlessly in the harbor area on the off chance that some more interesting diversion would arise.

He noticed a poster. It advertised two events: the theatrical performance of a play by the poet Agathon, which would have been of interest, and an appearance by the famous philosopher Makedonios, who would be speaking in the interval between chariot races.

The very man he had heard in Syracusa.

He must have set off from Syracusa a few days before them and then, after visiting several towns, arrived here after them. Would he be plagiarizing this time too, Uri wondered, or finally reading his own work?

Uri was unfamiliar with Agathon’s dramas, but he been interested in the strange author ever since reading that Aristotle had criticized his plays for breaking all the rules. There has to be something to them if Aristotle loathed them so. Definitely something to be seen.

That was all well and good, but what, he wondered, would the philosopher be saying in the interval between chariot races?

The two events were at the same time on the same day. Which should he choose? Whichever he wouldn’t have to pay for, the free one: he had no desire to ask for another loan.

He made inquiries in the harbor, and found that both productions were free.

There was also a proletariat in Caesarea, Uri concluded. It was just that, at first, he couldn’t figure out why there were no crowds of ordinary people out and about on the streets, strolling, gossiping, and acting big like back at home, in Rome. Then he finally realized why this delightfully built town was so dead: there were no dockworkers bustling in the port, no trade. Even a city like this, devised by cool heads, would burst with life if there were poor folks chatting and making a fuss somewhere in it.

He decided to go to the stadium; maybe he would get a chance to see Agathon’s work back in Rome.

It was early in the afternoon, the weather was glorious. A large proportion of the crowd streaming toward the edifice was made up of soldiers. They were not carrying weapons but they were in uniform. They marched under the leadership of their officers, with the civilians, most of them Jewish, respectfully making way for them.

Two entrances led into the U-shaped structure, and after passing through one of the vomitoria one reached a corridor separating the upper and lower stands. A separate set of steps led to each vomitorium to divide the crowd into smaller groups before they made their way into the auditorium. Uri was enchanted by the inscription that was set above the entrance passageways: VOMITORIUM I, VOMITORIUM II, and so on, as if some enormous force were regurgitating the unsavory crowd into the auditorium through these openings.

When he reached the auditorium, through the third vomitorium from the north, Uri realized he would have had a fine view out to sea if his eyesight had been any good. He would gladly have climbed up into the upper section, but he decided to find a place as low down as possible so that he could at least see something. The soldiers raced into the upper tribune; they were eagle-eyed, that was how they had been picked. Civilians took the seats next to Uri in the lower sector.

The stadium had a paved floor but was thickly covered in sawdust. Centered between the northward-pointing arms of the U was a platform running north to south, about three feet high and eight or nine feet wide, on top of which notables and the judges of the chariot race would obviously be seated. The truncated pyramid of marble that indicated the turnaround in the course was placed at the northern end of the platform; the four positions that made up the starting line were placed at the southern end.

It became clear why the soldiers had raced to the upper tribune, and the upper rows at that: the platform partially obscured the upper, western, section of the track from the view of spectators in the lower tribune.

The theater lying immediately south of the stadium had a number of ancillary buildings tacked on to it: a water tower, stables, and dressing rooms, as well as two entrances that were closed to the public and concealed by two high walls. It was through these that the competitors would later drive their chariots to the starting line.

Uri seemed to recall that it was in the stadium at Caesarea that the Jews from Jerusalem had protested against Pilate.

He shuddered.

This was the stadium.

Only a few weeks before, the Jewish protesters had lain down in this sawdust-strewn arena and demanded that their heads be cut off.

He looked around, peering with narrowed eyes.

Spectators were pouring in peacefully through the vomitoria, hungry for spectacle; not one of them had any memory of the unrest.

Those two risible characters they had encountered in Messina would have reached Rome by now and would be proclaiming to Far Side at large about the monstrous things that were happening in Caesarea. No doubt there would be some who gave credence to their reports, who became alarmed, and who plied the message bearers with food and drink.

Once he got back home he would tell his father; let him be amused.

As Uri peered around he pondered the strategic considerations that may well have played a part in choosing the location for the stadium; it stood right by the seashore, just like Herod’s palace, and could likewise function secretly as a mooring place for military craft. Herod the Great could not have put much faith in his hold on power if he had built as many as three secret harbors, Uri reflected; and then for decades on end he had ruled without any trouble, murdering notable Jews by the thousand, not to mention members of his own family, including his adored wife and all his sons.

There were fifteen rows in the upper stands, and the same number in the lower. How many could be packed into each of those rows? Around five hundred, he guessed, which came to fifteen or twenty thousand in total. Nothing when compared with the capacity of the Circus Maximus in Rome, which held some 180,000. Uri’s stomach knotted. He felt lost among the unfamiliar soldiers and civilians, much more so than he had in Syracusa, perhaps because that had at least still been in Italia, home. Here he looked around with a Roman sense of superiority: what had fallen to his lot was more, bigger, and better. Not that he would have dared set foot in the Circus Maximus; he had just heard about it and passed it many a time. He vowed that once he reached home, he would attend the Circus Maximus. He was a Roman citizen; he was entitled to.

The stadium had not filled up completely; it must have been about three quarters full. The spectators yelled to one another and to the vendors, who prowled along the corridor separating the upper and lower tribunes with their big baskets, shouting themselves hoarse as they sold wine, pancakes, olives pickled in wine vinegar, honey, and knick-knacks. Alexandros must be right: half of the town’s population was Jewish. He must have been here a few times before, thought Uri; odd, though, that a merchant should be a traveler himself.

All of a sudden, Alexandros himself popped up nearby, looking for a good seat. Uri was flabbergasted; it was as if he had just conjured him. But he was delighted as well, and he hollered at the top of his voice until Alexandros heard him. It was not delight that registered on his face so much as perplexity before he decided to break into a grin, and, pulling himself past the legs of others, he sat down next to Uri. His neighbors grumbled and squeezed to make room.