Uri felt sick.
Apollos stumbled wanly beside him as they made their way along the harbor among chuckling Greeks.
It was not impossible that there was Jewish blood flowing in that revolting character, the blood of the most gutless Jews who ever lived.
Gemellus was assassinated — Tiberius’s grandson by blood, whom he had been named co-princeps in his nullified will and whom Caligula had adopted as a son.
Macro was hounded into suicide, together with Ennia, his wife and the emperor’s supposed lover. That’s why he never arrived in Alexandria to take up his post.
Silanus, the emperor’s father-in-law, also took his own life.
It was winter by now, which in Alexandria meant milder weather, with people going about in tunics except for poor Carabbas, who still capered around buck-naked on the Gymnasium grounds, and in the evenings was fed drinks in the harbor area’s taverns. Everywhere everybody was wrapped up in politicking, the Greeks and Jews sticking to their own kind.
Uri reached a decision that he would leave: he would finish this year’s studies and then go. He had no wish to be seen as Greek among the Jews and Jewish among the Greeks. Alexandria was an attractive city, but he was a Roman and he would have to go home sometime.
The alabarch continued his strong belief in Agrippa’s influence, above all confirmed by the fact that the tetrarchate of Philip — which, four years after his death, was amalgamated into Syria — had been awarded to Agrippa by Caligula, so Agrippa had become a king! That is the tip of the iceberg, said Alabarch Alexander, the rest will come soon enough; and indeed, news came through that Agrippa had also been granted the area around the town of Abilene, Lysanias’s former tetrarchy. The second step! Agrippa had been given a golden chain, the weight of his former shackles! “His shackles can’t have been all that heavy,” remarked Tija sarcastically.
“Agrippa is now by the emperor’s side, his adviser!” the alabarch would say as he diligently attended to his business.
Uri waited for the right moment to thank him for his hospitality, but no occasion of that kind arose. Agrippa’s domain was only a tiny realm, consisting of no more than a few cities: Auranitis, Paneas, Trachonitis, Gaulanitis and Batanea in northern Transjordan, but even that would do. He sometimes got to deliberating that it might be better than Alexandria if Agrippa were to take up the tetrarchy and he were to be sent there with a message of some kind. It was not far from Decapolis, and there were said to be good libraries in those ten Greek free towns. He would cast himself at Agrippa’s feet: my king, he would say, under false apprehension I was regarded as being your delegate; now here I am, I am at your disposal. He pictured a fine, dramatic scene, at the end of which Agrippa appointed him head of his library, one that was to be established, and he would travel far and wide to acquire its stock. In reality, however, Agrippa, had not yet set out for his realm and was still rotting in Rome.
Marcus would say things like: At last! The emperor has dusted himself off and shaken off all the advisers who were leeching off of him. He’s had enough of them; Emperor Gaius is all grown up, only now is he really starting to rule. He has been patronized by them, so they deserve their fate. In front of his intimates he called Macro a sermonizer as he fumed against him; now he has no need for a schoolmaster. You’ll see soon enough that Caligula will make a great ruler — as if Germanicus were ruling henceforth.
This amounted to open revolt against his father. Before long the alabarch is going to be retired, thought Uri, with Marcus replacing him as the chief exciseman.
No one spoke about Gemellus: his destiny was his undoing, born under a bad star. The dismissed prefect continued to live in his palace, only, it was said, he transferred his seat of government to the citadel of the Akra. It was unclear whether Caligula had rescinded Flaccus’s dismissal or reconfirmed him. No one was sent out to replace Flaccus, but then that would have been difficult: the rumor was that Flaccus, wobbling drunkenly on a horse, had held an inspection of the troops at Nicopolis, and his soldiers had hurrahed him lustily and at length. So, the two legions were standing by Flaccus.
Two legions is a lot of soldiers. Where would anyone get the three or four legions that would be needed to face them, and who would lead them?
Uri imagined that Flaccus, to save his own skin, and struggling for Caligula’s favor, had declared Jews to be uniformly accountable, one and all, for the denunciation of Germanicus and was expelling them from Alexandria, thereby scoring points with the emperor, who plainly was not in a position himself to make such an order. Signs of this began to multiply: in the harbor Jewish ships were kept waiting longer whereas Greek vessels were admitted before their turn.
Wealthy Jews from the city and across Egypt paid visits to the alabarch to ask for his assistance: their produce was left to rot on board, and delays in the unloading of dry goods were causing them great financial damage. The alabarch would respond cautiously: maybe fallen Flaccus was seeking to foment Jewish turmoil to bravely quell it and keep his position; just let the Jews be patient, trust in the Eternal One and the emperor, keep to the law even if it was not respected on the other side. The Jewish merchants would depart grumbling. It’s a pity, one of them remarked agitatedly within earshot of Uri, that there are no major ports in Judaea where Greek ships could be held up in retaliation.
How to respond lies in the alabarch’s hands, thought Uri: he supervises commerce on the Nile, and he’s got his own private army to boot. All he has to do is hold back a few cargoes, have them meticulously checked to see whether they are, by any chance, rotten, make Greek merchants also suffer from the delays… But the alabarch would do no such thing: his conduct indicated that he had no appetite for a commercial war.
The guard on the alabarch’s palace was doubled, Uri was admitted without incident by the older ones but the new recruits continually raised difficulties. It occurred to Uri that his residence permit had expired about a year before, so he had a word with Philo, who brushed the issue aside as being of no importance: anyone would be able to verify that Uri was a student at the Gymnasium, and he had in any case been recorded by the Jews, but that was no reassurance for Uri. All right, said Philo testily as he felt his train of thought slipping away, I’ll have a word with the servants.
He did indeed have a word, for one of the servants later declared that he had settled the matter. There you go, said Philo. Uri had his doubts, but he did not go out to the harbor to check: in the end, he was certain, he would simply be burdened with an indifferent Greek official who could not care less whether they had a record of Uri having filed a prolongation but would just as soon have him thrown onto some cargo vessel — as they were in the habit of doing every now and again with illegal immigrants — only to awaken a few weeks later as a slave in Britannia or Hispania — that is, if he did not starve to death en route.