György Spiró - Captivity

This ever-swelling mass moving in the same direction was unsettling. Uri looked to the front where his feet were falling, then he moved across to the edge of the roadside beyond the ditch, which was less hard going. Plotius and Matthew were already walking there; they too must have felt their ankles aching.

Uri looked at his feet so as not to trip on a clod of earth and sprain his ankle; he avoided weathered roots and stinging weeds, and not to have to think about the world around him, he recalled mathematical problems that had given him trouble when he tried to figure them out in his recess, and which even his teacher had been unable to solve because he was weak on matters of arithmetic and geometry.

Uri puzzled over the formula for generating a prime number of any size. It was a senseless, abstract puzzle, there being no practical reason for a person to look for an integer that is not divisible by any other integer apart from by one and itself, which was why it was a good problem. When, in the afternoon, he got weary of thinking and started to feel that if he carried on thinking any longer he was going to drive himself crazy, he posed himself another task, which was to look for another perfect number aside from six, the integer that was already known, which had the property of being equal to the sum of all its possible factors — in that case: one, two, and three.

All at once, horsemen appeared behind them and bellowed something; horns rasped, the crowd pulled off the road and stopped. Even the carts came to a standstill, though they could not easily pull off the way. Soldiers jabbed people with their spears, motioning them to step aside into the ditch next to the road. Many carts got stuck, some overturned and the produce spilled onto the ground. No one moved; they would scrape it together later on.

A great number of cavalry came along. The Caesarean division, Uri heard someone say. The leading horseman proudly carried an enormous Roman eagle. Uri was standing right at the edge of the road, so he got a good look at both the eagle and the division’s standard. The horsemen carried spears, with swords at their waists; they were seated on their mounts not so much dashingly as alertly, as if they were going into battle and the crowd surrounding them was not the civilian population of a friendly allied province but rather a bloodthirsty enemy to be wiped out, longing to grab hold of their military insignia. If they had indeed been recruited from Caesarea, these horsemen were local non-Jewish inhabitants, whom, for simplicity’s sake, the Jews referred to as Greeks, though they were actually neither Greeks nor Romans but a motley population united solely by being non-Jewish and hating Jews.

Uri thought it better to pull back farther from the road in case he were to be run into by a carelessly brandished sword. If he, a Roman citizen, were accidentally to be cut down by a cavalryman domiciled in Judaea, the latter would pay with his life. The very thought of that was so comical that he was moved to laugh out loud. Peasants glowered at him with surly looks. Uri choked back the laughter and moved on; they quite likely thought he was laughing at them.

Behind the cavalry came a unit of infantry in ranks of six, marching extremely briskly, one of the cohorts. Only foot soldiers are able to move that rapidly; they were even quicker than the delegation. At their head marched their centurion, armored from head to toe, sweat running down his thighs.

“The Caesarean infantry, so Pilate will be somewhere behind,” said Alexandros, licking his lips.

The horses of the vanguard, a squadron, had detached from the ala, peeled back, and got off the highway so as to give free passage to the infantry; they would gallop ahead later on to clear the way.

They were dawdling near a military outpost, with four legionaries standing to attention before the sentry cabin. At other times it was no doubt they who collected the tolls.

The entire cohort went through, the heels of their boots ringing hard on the basalt paving, then a palanquin came into view, with horsemen bearing spears and shields trotting directly before and after.

It was carried by eight bearers, just like Simon the Magus’s litter, except these were taller and stronger: Uri guessed they might be as much as seven feet tall. They were all clothed in white tunics with a squarely twisted embroidered pattern on the hem and running uniformly at the double. Even though no one was giving any commands, the palanquin was traveling in a perfect horizontal line on their shoulders; they must be professional bearers.

It was not possible to see into the curtained window.

Inside the litter sat Pilate, the prefect. He could sleep or read, even write letters if he wished. Who knows: maybe his high-strung spouse was traveling with him.

Enchanted, Uri watched the litter bearers. They had splendid, strong bodies, like the most perfect Greek statues, and they were not even sweating or panting from the running. Their upper arms were as bulky as one of Uri’s thighs, their thighs three times bulkier, their calves as big as many people’s backsides, but their own rumps were small, their stomachs flat, their chests like barrels. Their hair was closely cropped, their faces clean-shaven. On their feet were the highest-quality leather boots money could buy. They looked straight ahead, contemptuous of the population that was clearing the way for them, well aware of their great importance.

Uri would very much have loved to be more like them: as brawny, as handsome, as brainless.

“They’re the pick of Sebaste and Tiberias,” Matthew whispered. “The parents get a small fortune for them. The boys train from the age of ten, and any who don’t make the grade are posted as regular soldiers. The youngest litter bearers are eighteen years old; by the time they are twenty-four they are replaced, and posted to a cohort. When they are thirty they can be discharged, and pensioned off as elite legionaries. Jews are not permitted to be taken on.”

“They quickly turn to flab,” said Alexandros disdainfully. “Most do not make it to thirty-five. Not gladiator material.”

Pilate’s palanquin was whisked away. In its wake a seemingly endless army streamed speedily by in ranks of six: the other two cohorts. Ahead of the troops, on horseback, rode their centurion and his escort, carrying a curious standard with a Roman eagle perched atop a menorah.

“Are they Greeks as well?” Uri inquired, finding it rather odd.

“Are you kidding!” Alexandros said. “Samaritan Jews from the Sebaste region is what they are… They loathe us at least as much as the Greeks do.”

“The officers are Greeks,” said Plotius softly. “It’s only the grunts who are Samaritan Jews… They don’t normally allow them to mix with the Greek cohorts because they are constantly brawling. Their camps are kept separated…”

“Where is Sebaste anyway?” Uri asked.

“Where Samaria once stood. Herod Antipas built it on the ruins of the old capital… When he made Tiberias, instead of Sepphoris, the metropolis of Galilee…”

“Tiberias was built on a cemetery,” said Alexandros disdainfully. “All the inhabitants are unclean…”

“Herod Antipas is far from stupid,” said Plotius. “The old elite would not have moved from Sepphoris to an unclean city, anyone could have figured that out, so Herod Antipas was obliged to set up a new elite. That was how he got rid of the old guard, with hypocritical regrets for the reasons they were unwilling to serve him…”

Plotius guffawed.

A covered chariot drawn by four horses, cavalry around it, now appeared.

“Pilate’s household gods,” Matthew whispered. “He takes them wherever he goes, even though his ancestors were not high-born; he married into a knightly order.”