Hedylos, who was seated opposite them, seemed to have been waiting for an opening, because he too got to his feet and, leaning over the table, shouted that the Jews could only blame themselves. They had committed many crimes against the Greeks over the centuries, a great many unforgivable crimes, cheated them out of their money, yes, every single Greek, it had been proved, not Uri, of course, who was just a newcomer, but all the same he was a Jew, and in Alexandria the Jews had always betrayed the Greeks, so no wonder they had been on the receiving end this time.
Others told him to can it, don’t do that, don’t do that, and Pamphilus argued back: What Jewish crimes, Jews are no different from anyone else! You can find white and black sheep in equal proportions among them all! One is like this, another like that! And their religion is just as stupid as anyone else’s! Everyone’s religion is stupid! Every religion is inhuman and barbarous!
At that a good-looking young boy stood up, presumably a first-year student, and declared that Apion had written that Jews worshiped an ass’s head made of gold in their Temple, and he should know, because Apion was a learned rhetorician, a pupil under Theon of Tarsus, none greater than him, and the son of this great Theon was none other than the famous orator Dionysius who was now being unfairly persecuted for his speeches, though he had never lifted a finger against one Jew.
Circling a finger around his head, Pamphilus showed exactly what he thought of the man’s mental abilities, sharply questioning in a loud voice just who had been persecuting the stump orator, when he was perfectly free as usual to prowl around wherever he wanted.
Whereupon a man strolled over from another table and declared that the Jews drank Greek blood; in the inner sanctuary of the Temple at Jerusalem they had fattened for a whole year for slaughter a Greek merchant who had innocently dropped by. No lesser a person than King Antiochus Epiphanes had been an eyewitness to this; when he conquered Jerusalem and entered the Temple to pay homage to the Jewish god he found the bloated hapless wretch tied to the altar in the inner sanctuary in the midst of a pile of human bones, and had him released.
“There’s nothing in the Holy of Holies!” yelled Pamphilus. “Nothing, nothing at all since the Jews’ Ark of the Covenant was stolen! And no humans were ever sacrificed there, or anywhere else!”
The hell they weren’t, went through Uri’s mind, what about the valley of the Hinnom, in olden times? But he kept quiet.
“Jews are treacherous, it’s in their blood,” the junior student went on. Uri did not know him. “In the fortress of Pelusium on the Nile the defenders were Jews, notwithstanding which they let in Gabinius, the Roman proconsul of Syria, and his army! They were bribed to do so by Antipater!”
“The Jews resisted the Romans, though, at Leontopolis in the land of Onias. They were alone in fighting for the Greek cause!” shouted Pamphilus.
“And then they switched sides!” came an unexpected contribution from Lysias. “They furnished provisions to the enemy! At Memphis it was they who were the first to assist Mithridates of Pergamum, then us!”
All that had happened a century ago; it was just on the tip of Uri’s tongue to call this to their attention when Hedylos bellowed:
“All Jews should be deported! Let them go to Rome! We’ve offered to pay one thousand sesterces per head for them! That would mean Rome gets three hundred million, but they’re not stupid, because they sent back the reply that they weren’t wanted even for that much! Well, in that case let them go to their allies among the blacks of Ethiopia!”
Hoots of jubilation followed.
Sotades then added:
“I truly like Jews, and I’ve given every sign of that, but now they’re trying to lord it over us with the idea that they suffered more than anyone else — that’s one thing I can’t stand about them!”
Someone then called out from the next table that the Jewish word “Sabbath” was derived from the Egyptian word sabbo, which Lysimachus had written meant a tumor of the testicles in the slang of the hetaerae — and they should certainly know.
There was a great roar of laughter; Pamphilus sat there palely, Hedylos and Sotades joined in the mirth. Sotades gave Uri a friendly slap on the shoulder. Uri got up and went back to the palace, which had never been his home.
Uri stood at the dock, in brand-new sandals and a tunic of delicate fabric and wrapped in a cloak of even finer angora wool, ruffled by the mild, early-winter northerly breeze. Commercial shipping sailed even during the winter; Uri was pleased to know that he had secured a spot on a powerful bireme with excellent rigging: he would reach Puteoli in two or three weeks, and from there he would soon get to Rome.
In his luggage he had several scrolls, including the Garland of Great Writers compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and his pupil Aristarchus, as well as the renowned Soros: an anthology of the epigrams of Asclepiades, Poseidippus, and the poet Hedylos, all bound into a bundle, as well as a volume of Leonidas’s epigrams about imaginary heroes and stupefying events. An exciseman rifled abstractedly through his sack; soldiers, bored to death, lounged to one side. The exciseman picked up the books and mentioned that Uri’s residence permit had expired long ago, so that his embarkation came up against some difficulties. Uri asked whether in that case, seeing that he had apparently been living in Alexandria without permit, would he be permitted, even compelled, to carry on enjoying Alexandrian hospitality henceforth. I’ll let you off, said the exciseman, but you cannot take these volumes with you; I am confiscating them in the name of Rome. Uri protested that he had copied these with his own hand; they were his own personal possessions. Right, said the exciseman, then I’ll also confiscate your cloak and I’ll think about what should happen to the tunic. The soldiers smirked. Uri nodded and slipped off the cloak from around his shoulders. The exciseman, astonished, gestured that Uri should move speedily up the gangplank, and in the end only the books were lost.
Uri looked back, his eyes screwed up, as the boat pulled out of the Eastern Harbor.
The morning sunshine cast a strange light on the buildings. The roofs of the massive, magnificent edifices shone yellowish white; the Sebasteion, the Emporion, and the magnetite vault of the forever-unfinished yawning block of the temple of Arsinoë glistened; the eastern semicircle of the amphitheater was shrouded in a dark shadow from which the western half of the structure emerged, with a reddish tinge, and the buildings beyond looked as if they were covered with snow.
Uri had seen snow once before, in Rome, when he was a little boy, and on that occasion he had laughed all day long.
It was not snowing in Alexandria, of course; the morning was cool, but not cold, yet it still seemed as if the entire city of wonders had been covered by something frozen, definitive, deadly.
IV Rome
At Puteoli, Uri took a look around the renowned slave market; that is to say, he looked around it in Dikaiarchia, because every inhabitant of the town spoke Greek, and Latin was hardly ever heard. Uri was even a bit apprehensive that he might have forgotten it, since it had been more than two and a half years since he had spoken a word of the language.