Captivity

‌I From Rome to Jerusalem

“You’re setting off for Jerusalem the day after tomorrow!”

Uri woke with a start.

His father was standing over him.

Uri raised himself up on his rags, picked up the scroll that had slipped from his hand to the floor, and looked up apologetically from where he was sitting. An awkward smile played across his lips, as it did whenever he was caught doing something, and he always was caught, even if it wasn’t anything bad.

His father fidgeted a bit in the gloomy nook, the gray February afternoon throwing light from the yard on his stern bearded features, his prominent cheekbones, his deeply set eyes; the little square thrown onto the wall happened to be gleaming just above Uri’s disheveled, greasy hair. His father was standing there somberly, no longer looking at him but gazing at the yard. He turned on his heels and pushed aside the carpet that hung over the doorway, so forcefully that it conveyed his deep-seated disgust at his son, at his own position, with Creation in general.

Uri had not yet fully regained consciousness; he was merely ashamed of what his father had caught him doing: falling asleep while reading. He had a habit of taking a nap in the afternoon, and even though he had nothing to do and was quite free to withdraw to his hovel and go to sleep whenever he wanted, he felt guilty about it nevertheless. It was as if reading were a penance, a humiliating duty, for some ancient sin that he had not even committed. Yet he liked reading; it was the only thing that he really liked to do.

Scroll in hand, he got up to his feet, stretched his aching back, turned his head around and cracked his neck, shrugged his shoulders repeatedly, bent down, then gazed out the window.

Uri shivered in the damp and chilly darkness of Rome in early February. Images from his dreams were still drifting around in his mind, sinking ever deeper like fish burrowing into the Tiber’s mud and merging with the murky halos in the yard. The dream cannot have been altogether disagreeable, because a pleasant feeling lingered, a hopeful image, though there was no point trying to recall it. It was as though his real living was done in his dreams. There were people sauntering around in the yard, but too far off to recognize; he saw them only in blurred outline. At this hour of the day they were probably women, because the menfolk were still going about their business.

Uri had poor eyes.

His leg was bad too. Ever since he was small, walking hurt his feet and ankles. His back usually hurt also. His right hip had turned out bigger than the left, but it was his eyes that were plagued worst of all; he was very near-sighted. It had not always been so. Up to the age of ten or eleven he had been able to do all the things the other boys his age could do, but at some point he dropped out of their games, moved less assuredly, squinted, and leaned ever closer to the scroll when he read. It had not bothered him at first, coming on so gradually that he had barely noticed; it was just that he often had headaches.

Eusebius, the teacher who took care of him and ten or fifteen other boys in the house of prayer (that was what the community paid him for), told Joseph that, in his opinion, Uri had poor eyesight. Joseph had protested: no one in his family had poor eyesight, his son included. The teacher just shook his head. Joseph’s first-born was his only son, his wife had not become pregnant again after the second girl was born, so the teacher realized that Joseph was in a difficult position.

That evening his father had interrogated him.

“Is it true that you don’t see well?” he asked pointedly.

He walked over to the farthest corner in the main room and asked how many fingers he was holding up. The main room was not all that big, but even so, the hand was a long way off, and it was dim as well. The oil lamp was barely flickering, but it gave off a lot of fumes, and that too was bothersome. Uri sighed and chose at random, “Two.” From the silence that followed, he could tell that he had guessed wrong.

That was when relations with his father started to go downhill.

He had always been the precious boy, the only whole person Joseph had managed to sire. He was the favorite. His father had been proud that his son knew how to read and write before other boys his age; he had boasted about him and had also started instructing him in the logic of business, as if he were already an adult.

His father repeated the experiment half a year later. Uri confessed then that he could not see how many fingers his father was holding up.

“Because you don’t want to see!” Joseph had shouted angrily.

That sentence had haunted Uri ever since.

From that point on, his father avoided him. He did not want to see that his son could not see. Doctors claimed that dried gum from the balsam tree had a beneficial effect on cataracts and shortsightedness, and as Joseph had once traded in, among other things, balsam and dates, and was at that moment still receiving them in shipments from Judaea, he instructed Uri to place over his eyes every evening a poultice soaked in a watery solution of powdered balsam gum. Uri diligently applied the compresses and was nauseated by the smell of the balsam, but his eyesight did not improve. Another six months, and Uri still could not see how many fingers his father was showing. Joseph hinted that he should stop with the poultices, since balsam was expensive.

Uri was relieved and also despondent.

He could read all right; indeed, if he screwed his eyes up tight he could even see farther away as well, and if he looked through a funneled hand he could even see for quite a distance, albeit only over a tiny area, but honestly quite a long distance. He tried that out a lot when he was alone, because, bit by bit, he retreated to the little hovel, rarely even stepping out into the courtyard, which he could see quite well, everything being so close. He would stare out at the yard through the cracks between his fingers, which also helped him to see the far-off corners.

It was a spacious courtyard, impossible to tell where it ended; in truth it had neither beginning nor end.

Houses on the far side of the Tiber — the Transtiberim in Latin, though the Jewish population referred to it simply as Far Side, as if they were looking back at themselves with pity from somewhere else, from the true Rome, even a bit disparagingly — had originally been built contiguous with their yards. They had formed a single elongated, complex, erratic, winding system of dwellings and alleys on the old-time Far Side. Because the Jews constructed their houses as they had in Palestine, with the windows and doorways opening only onto the inner courtyard, all that existed to the outside world was an interconnected wall. As a result, what had come into existence was an endless, seemingly impervious single-story zigzagging system of fortifications, spiked at irregular intervals with strong gates, both secretive and exotic to anyone not familiar with this part of the Transtiberim. Yet it was well known that the Jews lived a wretched existence: leprous Jews would beg around the Porta Capena, at the beginning of the Appian Way, for all to see, and many found themselves in that part of town, given that the main gateway to commerce on the southern side of the city was outside the nearby Via Ostiensis. Produce was cheaper there than around the Forum, so half of Rome shopped there. It would also have been obvious that haggard people with stooped backs swarmed around with their pitchers, bearded and in worn sandals and frayed togas: they were going for drinking water because the aqueducts supplied Far Side with polluted water, good for nothing more than irrigation, if at all. Requests had been made from one generation to the next, but they were not granted better water by the city, and in districts that were blessed with a better water supply, outsiders had to pay the locals good money for what the latter received free of charge. The water of the Tiber was drinkable in theory, but the Jews considered it unclean, especially when, from time to time, it overflowed with corpses, so they did not drink it or even wash with it. They preferred water from cisterns, and there were some benighted souls who, obeying the religious precepts of their ancestors more strictly than most, considered water from any other district impure, so their families were also prohibited from using it. There might well have been something to it, though, because the water in those lead pipes left a grayish scum on the children’s skin, who turned out slower and dimmer than the others.

Lepers, incidentally, were treated decently; they were not expelled from the community but had a fairly spacious pen designated as their dwelling place, minimal rations were provided, and they counted on tzedakah, or charitable funds, or at least on a charity bowl of victuals for immediate relief, which even the most destitute and needy visitors can count on from a Jewish community anywhere. But because lepers were impure, their family was not allowed direct contact and could only shout to them from a distance, and the afflicted were obliged to smash to pieces the single-use clay vessels provided to them by the community, and, to the great delight of pottery merchants, to bury the pieces three feet underground. That aside, they were free to move around, even go beyond the walls of the Jewish quarter to beg like any other sick person. They too were obliged to go to the house of prayer, but not only were priests forbidden to touch them, they were not even supposed to see them, lest they become unclean themselves, so the lepers had to stand throughout the services in a dark corner that was walled off by planks; they arrived earlier than the priest and left well after. Because there were so few priests, their cleanliness was safeguarded by the most ancient and stringent regulations. As descendants of Aaron, they were sent from Judaea to Rome for the more important festivals to confer blessings, and afterward they would return to Jerusalem. In the course of time they also sent out a few Levites, who could not themselves become priests but could act as priests’ assistants: it was they who blew the shofar, they who did the singing and played the music, they who collected the taxes. The ritual butchers and slaughterers also came from their ranks, so there were more of them in Rome than there were priests.

Apart from their religious activities, the priestly families and Levites had no say in the life of a community. Unlike back East, the rich and respected families in Rome did not cede important decisions, so many of Rome’s Levites asked to be sent back to Jerusalem, and the Roman municipal administration was only too happy to oblige. In their place, others came from the ranks of the lower priesthood and the lower Levites (for it seems that, even there, not everything went so swimmingly for all priests and Levites), and after a bit of administrative maneuvering they were generally allowed into Rome, especially if wealthy Jewish families vouched for their subsistence. The officials of the magistracy could breathe easily, because they would not be obliged to hand out free grain to the newcomers and their families. After all, people like that arrived with family; indeed, that was largely the point of leaving the Holy City and traveling out to the impure Diaspora. But after a few weeks or months, they would get fed up with the climate in Rome and go back to Jerusalem; then either somebody else would be sent to replace them or not. In time, a few Levite families settled down and got rich, mostly through the ritually pure oil and wine that they imported from Judaea and Galilee.

Rome’s non-Jews were not very interested, to tell the truth, in how the population on the right side of the Tiber lived.

There were many small ethnic enclaves in Rome, and outsiders had no awareness into them, and the Jewish enclave was not among the larger and most important ones either: in a city of around one million, it accounted for no more than thirty or forty thousand, the majority of them the gradually liberated progeny of the slaves who were sporadically carried off to Rome. They did have synagogues, however, twelve of them, one of which was on the Appian Way, where they also had an underground cemetery, a catacomb. Counting on eventual resurrection as they did, they did not incinerate their dead like the foolish Latini. Seven of the prayer houses were along the road to Ostia alone, the thoroughfare by which goods delivered by sea reached Rome by land.

The first of the temples, named for Marcus Agrippa, the Roman potentate who had given patronage to the Jews, was built almost a century before and was still standing. Although Uri’s family did not go there, Joseph had shown it to his young boy, telling him the tale of the first convoy of Jewish captives who refused to work until the Roman slaveholders accepted the Sabbath as the slaves’ day of rest; they would follow the law laid down by their religion at all costs, and they wanted their own temple. A number of them were killed on account of those demands, but even still the rest would not relent. Uri clapped his hands in delight at hearing this, and he resolved to be that brave if ever needed.

He also rejoiced when his father related that the lords had paired their males and females off to boost the ranks of their slaves, but the Jewish men would only go along with it if any non-Jewish women with whom they were designated to multiply first converted to Judaism. Later on, to simplify matters, women were imported from the Jewish part of the empire. Herod the Great, king of the Jews and a friend of Marcus Agrippa’s, established good relations with Emperor Augustus and managed to finagle permission to ship women in to Rome. There were prostitutes and thieves and women with the clap among them, but they were Jewish and there was no need to bother converting them.

Shipping them cost money, however, his father recounted, and that is something that no state power likes. Herod the Great and Emperor Augustus realized that, and before long this fount of women dried up.

Under Roman law, the descendants of slaves were supposed to inherit their master’s religion, but the Jews were unwilling to propagate on those terms, so an exception had to be made. Non-Jewish slaves were not granted the same concessions, so they loathed the Jews, which was nothing new; ever since Alexander the Great conquered the East, non-Jews who lived there had always resented the Jews and the special treatment that they demanded, appealing each time to prerogatives that they had won under Persian rule. It was one thing if they all fell, Greeks and Jews alike, under foreign — Persian — dominion, but another thing altogether if the Jews came under Greek sway but for centuries refused to accept it. Since both the Greeks and the Jews had fallen under Roman dominion, the Jews regarded Rome as a Babylon, paying it homage in practice more zealously than did the Greeks. The female slaves, incidentally, were glad to turn Jewish: they knew that Jews, unlike Greeks or Romans, would never abandon a child. There were even some male slaves who converted, calculating that the Jewish communities would contribute to their manumission, and there were indeed some cases of Jewish converts freed in this manner. The only thing that may have given them pause was circumcision, a painful procedure for an adult, and not without danger. The women, though, were not threatened with clitoral resection, since the Roman Jews did not demand it, so there were droves of Syrian, Greek, Arab, Abyssinian, Egyptian, German, Gallic, Hispanic, Thracian, Illyrian, and female slaves of other origins who became Jewish in Rome, to the greater glory of the One and Only God, giving birth to Jewish children in the zigzag ghetto of Far Side. And since the Transtiberim — which was not even fenced in at that time, already considered part of the city by government bodies, albeit unofficially — was inhabited not only by Jews but also by people of various conquered nations, for the surplus daughters who became Jewish converts it was often only a matter of moving a few houses away, so they were even able to visit their parental households, should they so wish. Not that they had much wish to: their non-Jewish families were generally more than happy to be rid of them, and they made that quite clear. In any case, the women became part of the husband’s family forever, with no ties of any kind to their parents’ family — on that score, Roman and Jewish laws were in accord. A girl who converted to the bosom of the One and Only God could only be thankful that her parents had not cast her out as prey for wolves or men, or strangled her at birth.

That is how a Jewish Diaspora took root in the capital of the empire.

Joseph considered it an injustice that he must live on foreign soil, as technically speaking everyone who did not live in the Holy Land was unclean, and that was a blemish no water could wash away. But, then, it was not the first time this had happened in Jewish history, he said, and he pointed out to Uri that the Roman Jews were much better off than those back home, as they well knew it; they acted rather like a sizable permanent legation in Rome, and if they traded shrewdly, and Rome and Jewry were bounded by ever more threads, as was predestined by necessity, they were only doing what the Creator had seemingly intended them to do.

The winding interior courtyard had originally been a single labyrinthine system. Fortification had arisen spontaneously in the open space — although the wealthiest, as is the custom wherever Mammon is master, were separated from the communal yard with high walls and indeed had special guards to protect them — may money be cursed eternally — especially now, because an ever increasing number of Rome’s Jews were rich, and an even greater number were getting poorer. There might have even been a connection of sorts between the two phenomena.

The original Far Side stood right in the center of the Jewish quarter, with new houses built around it, but in recent years rich entrepreneurs had started building multistory tenement blocks. Joseph feared that, one of these days, their own ramshackle shed would be cleared away, along with the small huts around it, and replaced by four- or five-story buildings. That is what had happened in the non-Jewish areas immediately next to Far Side, where Egyptians, Syrians, and Greeks from Asia Minor lived just as wretchedly as most Jews, and they went around the Jewish area just as comfortably as in their own.

The reason the yards had become a single, capricious, erratic space was because, on holy days, Jews were not allowed to wander more than two thousand cubits from their home. A cubit measured roughly forty-five centimeters, but it might be somewhat longer or shorter depending on the size of the forearm, since a cubit was the measure from the elbow to the fingertips. In other words, on holy days Jews were not supposed to go more than a meager half-mile from their home.

And the Jews had lots of holy days, starting with the four main festivals every year, each of which lasted for quite a few days. Then there was the Sabbath, each week from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Even then, people wanted to go more than two thousand cubits, which is only a few hundred paces. They wanted to visit neighbors, to chat and gossip, none of which is prohibited on a holy day as long as no work is being done. Chitchat is hardly working, as the Creator himself is well aware, and he no doubt jabbers with his archangels, since everyone knows he got his own work done in six days. So people joined their yards together, which meant that they were able to cover not two thousand but ten thousand cubits, festival or not, without leaving their own yard, or at least that was what they told their Creator, who had to accept the perfection of their reasoning. This is how the Law was outwitted by the Jews of Rome, much like the other approximately five million Jews in the world at the time; that is to say, they adhered to the Law because they respected it to the letter.

A special ordinance was laid down on this crafty sanction, a joint ruling, with various fine subclauses, one pertaining to Rome. It stipulated that the one-time Far Side counted as a single courtyard, and people were allowed to do within it anything they would do in their own home, even on the Sabbath or during festivals. There was fierce debate over whether the ruling also applied to new housing constructed outside the walls of Far Side, with some arguing that the whole of Jerusalem counted as one combined courtyard, and it was permitted to deliver certain things within it, even on the Sabbath, whereas others opposed, saying that Rome was not a Jewish city, nor was Transtiberim (or Traseteberin, as they generally pronounced it in those days, with the nasal before the “s” disappearing and the word clipped, the end result being the “Trastevere,” the name by which this district would still be known two thousand years later). The whole of Rome was unclean, Far Side too, according to those who sought a return to the basic principles of the faith, themselves being impure, just like every Jew in the Diaspora. But be that as it may, the inhabitants of the old Far Side continued to reap the benefit of the blessed ruling.

In this labyrinth of a yard that was Far Side, there was no need to resort to that pious deceit that almost every Jew in Judaea committed, before the holy day began, by setting out a meal two thousand cubits away to signal that this was the boundary of a household, so when the holy day was in force they were permitted to go a further two thousand cubits from those provisions. This way, too, they were adhering to the Law — whichever suited them. That trick could not be employed in Rome, because any food left out would have been instantly stolen. The outside world corrupts the inner; intensive Jewish society was wrecked by pantheistic (hence godless) Roman society, and lamentations could be wallowed in on that account. It was typical Latin stupidity that their first emperor was still under the misapprehension that Jews eat nothing on the Sabbath, as if it were a day of fasting! Even after decades this was still raising eyebrows among Rome’s Jews, who prayed on the Sabbath in their houses of prayer and listened to interpretations of the Torah and the scriptures of the prophets, but the essence was nevertheless the communal meal, the costs of which were covered by the communal tax. Festal food could not be skimpy; there had to be meat and wine on the menu, likewise vegetables and fruit, to say nothing of unleavened bread. Poor families would have very little to eat for the rest of the week, but on the Sabbath they could eat their fill, and for free, through the good offices of the community.

The rationale, therefore, for this singular form of architecture may have been primarily religious — to be more specific, an injunction against death by starvation — but neither was the fortified structure entirely irrational.

When the Emperor Tiberius decided, fifteen years before, that adherents to the cult of Isis and the Jewish faith should clear out of Rome, the Roman mob got wind of the news and tried to lay siege to this mysterious system of walls, but because they had no grasp of the whole, they were unable to force their way in. The Jews defended themselves by firing arrows and throwing javelins from the flat rooftops.

They had to leave their homes in Rome all the same, with Joseph fleeing with his wife and three-year-old Uri.

They withdrew to the hill village of Ariccia, twenty miles from Rome, to a stable with a leaky roof. Joseph cleaned out the manure and plowed, his wife strewed straw and litter, and Uri spent the whole day chasing poultry. But six months later, thanks to the kindly Roman notable who was their patron, the freed Joseph being a client, the father and family were able to return to their ransacked, wrecked home.

Apart from the four thousand unmarried Jewish men who were called up for military service and taken off to Sardinia, supposedly to ward off gangs of robbers — though the climate and homesickness finished more of them off — virtually all of the Jews with families drifted back, bit by bit; in total, a couple of hundred were killed by the robbers in the country, and the Emperor Tiberius was no longer issuing such strict edicts.

The houses were repaired, the furnishings slowly made good. Not that there was much to replace, given how poor the Jews of Rome already were.

Uri recalled almost nothing about being dragged away for the first time — only the smell of chicken droppings, his father placing him on his shoulders and carrying him long distances, which felt so good that he would dream about it even now, at the age of seventeen. In his dream, he wished he would wake up to see his father standing above him, saying, “Come on, my boy, hop on my shoulders again.”

All that had remained of the temporary exile was that his mother, Sarah, would still cry out from time to time at the memory of an elegant utensil she had once owned. It had been tucked away and not returned by the non-Jewish freemen, also clients of their patron. She would moan on and on about that. The truth is that several of them had been honest enough to hand back the valuables that had been deposited with them, and to this day the family still ate out of such vessels, as the father would sometimes note, though that did not hinder Sarah in her lamentations.

These days, his father no longer looked up, but dourly spooned in his food. If he ever looked at his wife, at the repulsive sight of her kerchief-covered head, profound disgust shot from his eyes: it was not the thieves he hated, but her. And he held his tongue. Divorce was difficult for a Jew in Rome: there were so few of them. Divorce was easy in Judaea, and that was not just hearsay but written law: If anyone found another woman more beautiful than his wife, that was, in itself, sufficient grounds for divorce. A man could divorce, and he could even drive his wife away if she undressed, which was not prohibited between a married couple on certain occasions. But then, Judaea was not a border castle for Jewry but the body of the nation, and all sorts of things were possible there. In Rome, Jews could marry their cousins, unlike the Latini, because their numbers were scant. In Judaea and Galilee it counted as incest and was forbidden. On the other hand, a Roman widow was under no obligation to marry her dead husband’s brother, which was still compulsory in Palestine.

Uri’s father never spoke about that half year of privation. The story went around that the whole exile was caused by four vile, thieving Jews who, by some means, were able to win over Fulvia, wife of Saturninus, the senator, and to wheedle cash from her to purchase costly carpets for the Temple in Jerusalem. They absconded with the money, of course, and an incensed Fulvia reported this to the emperor, and Tiberius in turn flew into a rage.

From other variations that Uri heard, however, he suspected it was only a pretext for expelling the Jews from Rome, on account of Germanicus.

Germanicus, the famous general, was a nephew and adopted son of the emperor’s, but Tiberius took offense at him and packed him off to the Eastern provinces. Germanicus had made the mistake of setting off from Syria to Alexandria, even though Egypt was a no-go area for all Romans of any rank, seeing that Egypt, as every street urchin in Rome knew, was Rome’s bread basket; it was the source of the free grain, of which Jews who had been granted citizenship also partook. Anyone who disturbed Egypt would bring serious famine down on Rome. Anthony had been the last to try it, but his navy was defeated at Actium by Octavian, who became the Emperor Augustus. He then prohibited Roman senators and legionnaires from visiting Egypt. Tiberius must have presumed that Germanicus, passing through Judaea, had cut a deal with the Jews living there that they would stand by him if a war were to break out with Egypt. Indeed, it is quite certain that this was his thinking. Otherwise, why not expel Egyptians, who lived separately from the Jews in Transtiberim, along with the Jews? Germanicus, subsequently, was fatally poisoned. The rumor was that the emperor had dismissed the previous governor of Judaea, Valerius Gratus, for meeting with Germanicus, although it would have been difficult for him not to meet with the emperor’s adopted son when he was wandering around Judaea. The matter was of little importance, one governor being much the same as another viewed from Rome. But this particular event did become noteworthy because the emperor waited seven years before relieving Gratus, which was not a sign of forgetfulness but rather, according to political analysts, precisely the opposite: he never forgot and sooner or later would take vengeance for sure. It was unusual, by the way, for Emperor Tiberius to replace procurators and prefects, choosing rather to leave them in place on the principle that “a well-fed tick sucks less blood than a hungry one.”

It may well be, though, that the previous prefect got mixed up somehow in the Sejanus affair.

Agrippina the Elder is another oft-cited example. She was Germanicus’s very popular widow who, fourteen years after her husband died, was starved to death by Tiberius. It wasn’t like that, interjects another political commentator: banished to the island of Pandataria, Agrippina went on a hunger strike, a centurion poked out one of her eyes, then she was force-fed, on Tiberius’s orders, but incompetently, and that’s what caused her death. What does it matter? She was murdered. The Jews are just as up on Roman gossip as any other nation, and they have just as many worthy political commentators.

Uri was interested in history; all tales with twists and turns interested him, and he read countless works of Greek and Latin authors in his little alcove. There he was left alone and could spend the whole day musing and piecing things together. The images he saw in his waking dreams were sharp and bright, almost palpable. Imagination is a great thing, if someone has it.

He could read Greek, because their neighbors in the Jewish quarter had Greek as their mother tongue, and most Jewish boys in Rome answered to a Greek name. They brought it from Palestine, where Hellenization had proved most successful in the area of language, and they had passed it on to their successors in Rome. Cultured Latini spoke more polished Greek, but this was also Greek; Jews spoke the same Greek as the Greeks themselves, it was impossible to tell them apart from their pronunciation.

Joseph and his family were exceptional in that they also spoke Aramaic at home, which was related to Hebrew, the original but by then extinct language of the Holy Scriptures. There was a somewhat calculated dimension to this: Joseph had the view that as long as it was necessary to do business with commercial agents who spoke only Aramaic, his children should learn it too.

Rome’s Jews had, for some time, spoken neither Aramaic nor Hebrew, and the Hebrew texts had been translated into Greek for the congregation in the house of prayer. A Greek translation of the Old Testament was already in existence: the Septuagint, which seventy-two scholars translated in seventy-two days on the island of Pharos in Alexandria about two centuries before. At home, left to themselves, everyone would read aloud from this Greek Torah. It was not permitted to recite the Holy Scriptures by heart, lest one commit the grave error of misremembering a text and saying something other than what was written; that might have unforeseen consequences for the whole of Creation. In the house of prayer, on the other hand, Hebrew texts were translated impromptu in front of the assembled community, and of course a person was not forbidden to learn by heart that day’s reading from the Septuagint, provided he pretend to understand the Hebrew and translate from that.

It did not occur to Uri as a child that his mother’s knowledge of Aramaic was somehow unusual, and that other mothers spoke better Greek than she did. It was only as an adolescent that he reflected on the fact that his mother was called Sarah, which was a name, as he was well aware by then, often bestowed on proselytized women who had converted to the Jewish faith. By that time, however, he was not on good terms with his father, so he did not ask if Sarah was Jewish by birth, and there was no way he was going to ask his mother, with whom he had never had a good relationship. She took such care to abide strictly by the religion of her husband and son.

If Sarah was not originally Jewish — as her religious overzealousness suggested, because fresh coverts were always that way — then she must have been born a slave and Joseph must have emancipated her. Given Joseph’s business acumen, he would have chosen a slave girl who spoke Aramaic, which meant she would have come from Syria or Babylon. Uri assumed that his father, who had been orphaned at a young age, could not have been prosperous enough to land a Jewish girl, for even if he had waived a dowry he would not have been much of a catch, and so he had been obliged to marry a slave girl. Under the laws of Palestine, this meant that he, Uri, as the son of a proselytized slave girl, would be of very lowly status over there in the Old Country, because his mother’s descent would apply to him too. He might not be a slave or new convert, and he would count as an Israelite, but one of the least esteemed. It was a stroke of luck to have been born a Jew in Rome, where only the paternal lineage was taken into account.

For Uri, learning Latin was not easy.

The young people of the Jewish quarter spoke only a broken Latin; they rarely crossed over to the other bank of the Tiber, where Rome itself lay. They contented themselves with the frenetic life of Far Side, and they could get by perfectly well with their native Greek any time they ventured over. Even the non-Jewish inhabitants of Far Side spoke Greek, or else they spoke a language that no else understood.

The Jews had a habit of writing Latin with Greek letters, which came readily to them. They learned the Hebrew alphabet as well, of course, which they called Assyrian lettering, so that they would at least be able to read the Sh’ma for themselves in their daily prayers and, when necessary, the psalms, if called upon in the house of prayer. Occasionally elements of all three alphabets would be mixed up in a single sentence, even a single word. Uri was fond of that sort of mixture, and he did not transpose Latin or Greek texts into Hebrew lettering out of negligence or ignorance or even just for fun. He devised abbreviations in all three languages for himself, to copy things more quickly if he was loaned a particularly interesting scroll for a few days. He would omit vowels or diacritical marks, so that his shorthand was legible to no one apart from himself, and a few months later, not even himself. He would write pure Hebrew texts with the left hand from right to left, Greek and Latin with the right hand from left to right, and he had no idea why that was. He was amazed when he discovered, from a scroll, that systems of Latin and Greek shorthand already existed; others had invented them just like him; he happily learned those too.

Gaius Theodorus. When he was small, he had first written down his official name this way, then as Uriel, which means “the Lord is my light,” was only used within the family; no one else knew what he was called at home.

Officially, his father was not Joseph either, but Lucius Ioses.

Gaius was the forename of their patron, while Joseph had adopted Lucius from the patron’s father, who had freed Joseph’s father. That was the custom; the forenames of Jewish freemen, which was often the only name they had, was the same as their patron’s, as a result of which the Jews of Rome had primarily Latin and, second of all, Greek names and virtually none had a Semitic name. The very fact that Joseph’s father gave him a Semitic name is significant; he found slavery hard to endure and longed to be in Palestine, though he had never seen it, as he too was a slave born in Rome, and indeed his father before him.

The Jews of Rome, then, had Latin and Greek names, but they were still Jews; they did not eat unkosher food, they observed the Sabbath and the festivals, and they prayed sedulously and in accordance with the rules.

If ever he was not reading or copying, by screwing up his unaided eyes Uri could see roughly as far as three doors along in the zigzagged, crisscross yard, and between his fingers up to six or seven doors along. He wanted to have keen eyesight, as his father’s remark had cut him to the quick and still rankled; there were times when, trying his eyes out in the morning, he may have seen more clearly, perhaps, but by evening he had to conclude that he was still not seeing well enough.

Not long before, he had fabricated a contraption for himself out of a wooden board that could rest on the ridge of the nose, so that he did not have to look through his fingers all the time: he bored two small holes to look through, and when he was wearing it on his nose and looking through the holes he did get a nice, if very restricted, view. The view was nice because everything was sharper and more stable, relatively speaking, than when he simply peeked through his forefinger and thumb; in fact, it was just as good as when he looked through the splayed fingers of both hands held in front of his eyes.

The plank had the extra advantage that it could be held in place with just one hand, but he dared not show himself outside his own hovel with the nose-board, because people would have laughed. Indeed, he did not even dare to stand close to the window, with the device on his nose or not, because it was known throughout the yard, just like everything was known, that he was in the habit of hanging around and gazing out; in fact he was mocked on that account, and even his father had told him to lay off: “Spying is despicable,” was what he said, so Uri would spend long periods of time loafing deep in his alcove, as far as he could get from the window, and he hoped no one outside could make him out in the gloom. There was a story told about a weak-eyed but rich Latini who was able to see everything clearly by skillfully holding a ground diamond before his eyes and looking through it. But Uri had never encountered anything of the kind; indeed, he had never seen a gemstone at all.

He feared going totally blind.

Blindness was not common in the labyrinthine yard, and anyone who went blind did not roam around outside, but people could sometimes be heard saying that this person or that had been struck down in that manner by the wrath of the Lord. Blind people, unless they were trachomatous, were not segregated; they were not regarded as unclean, merely unfortunate. Uri brooded for days and weeks and months on end about whether the Lord had marked him to be blind, or if it was simply a case of his having so much else to do that he was not paying attention, or maybe even Satan, or more likely Fate, intervening to cause this affliction. Uri held an assortment of Judeo-Latin-Greek notions about it because he had read a lot. What he really did not understand was why he had not been born blind from the outset, if that was his fate. Had the Lord changed his mind after he was already underway? What sort of considerations could be driving Him? he wondered. Uri raked through the memories of his childhood but could not identify a single transgression so massive that he would have to be inexorably blinded on its account; when he looked back, even with the best will in the world toward the Lord, he could find nothing in his actions.

The most obvious explanation was also the boldest: the Lord did not concern Himself with anyone, even His Chosen People; all that had been entrusted to Him was the task of the Creation and getting the stone tablets delivered by Moses to His people. That explanation was not something that came from any original thinking on Uri’s part; the Lord Almighty was cast in the same terms collectively by the Zadokite sect of Roman Jews, also called the Sadducees, who accepted only the five books of Moses and nothing else, nothing handed down in the oral tradition, and that was also the official position of the high priests in Jerusalem: the Creator had generously created the world, and mankind as part of it, that it should exist, but He had no further say thereafter; everyone was free to do with his life as he wished, within the bounds of the Law, though naturally anyone who broke the Law would be smitten down.

Man lived as best he could, then died, and there was no Hell, no Heaven, the way the primitive Jews imagined over there in Palestine; there was no transmigration of souls, as the primitive Pharisees also believed, as no one rises up from the dead, or only after the coming of the Messiah, but that was still a long way off. “We have not suffered enough yet to be forcibly washed,” his father had said once, as had gullible Palestinian Jewish “people of the land,” the spiritually impoverished am ha’aretz, with their purblind, narrow-minded, and pernicious notions, which commercial travelers returning to Rome’s Jewish quarter from Palestine would often recall, disapprovingly, with a shudder.

Uri, in his hovel, spent a lot of time mulling over resurrection, coming to the conclusion that if the Creator had just a touch of compassion He would make resurrection possible, and he, Uri, would meet with many fair, clever, and wise people who had lived before he was born, and would also live after he was dead, and they would carry on a timeless discourse, rich in ideas, in a fragrant and radiant space without time, after the Last Judgment, where bodies become weightless and painless, and human bodies that had been restored by magic would float and fly even without wings, as he pictured himself doing in his most delightful dreams as, so to speak, a foretaste of existence after the Last Judgment. It was rational, even natural, for that to be so, because if there were no resurrection with Judgment Day and the end of time, an individual’s life would not have the slightest meaning at all.

Uri passed his time either with his eyes screwed up, gazing out at the life of the yard, happy at least that he could see at all, or else he read.

He did not need to be instructed in anything; he would have been able to instruct others, but he had no desire to do so, even though his father had asked him. If he did not count as a fully able-bodied man, let the community draw at least some use from him, and anyway teachers were paid, which was not a point to be sneezed at. His teacher, Eusebius, who was fond of Uri and rated his abilities highly, had also encouraged him, but in vain: Uri hated anything to do with the community.

Others could see well, he couldn’t.

Others did not have a head and feet and back that ached with pain.

Others were able to chew well, whereas he could only chew on the right side, because the teeth on the left side did not clench and had started to come loose, which was a sign that he was going to lose them. It was terrible, on the other hand, that the permanent incisors projected so far forward that he could not close his mouth properly, though admittedly they allowed him to whistle superbly through the gap that could be formed with his tongue, and sometimes people would greatly admire that, but he would rather have had normal teeth.

Other boys the same age were not going bald, as he had been since sixteen.

Others were not born freaks, as he was. It might not have been visible to everyone, but that is what he felt like, and that is what he became.

It was not solely on account of his physical problems, however, that he shut himself away in his hovel.

Around five years ago, when his eyesight had been better, not long after his bar mitzvah — his ceremonial initiation into manhood by the synagogue — he often went on strolls on the other side of the Tiber. In Rome, Jews could go wherever they pleased, and Uri, thanks to his grandfather, who had scraped together the money from his work as a slave to pay for his manumission, got married, begot a son, then died straight after — thanks to him, the grandson, Uri, had been born a Roman citizen.

Jewish though he was, he was a Roman citizen with full rights, so he did not pay the taxes that were imposed on non-Romans and non-Italians. Indeed, he was given money by Rome: through his patron’s intervention, he was awarded the tessera, which he was entitled to under the law since the age of fourteen, although the magistrate was perfectly able to string this out for years if some big shot did not snap at them. He had drilled a hole in the small lead token and wore it hidden under his tunic, slung low on his neck so it would not be stolen, and he would feel for it compulsively at frequent intervals.

If he showed it at the biggest distribution center on the Campus Martius, he would receive the monthly ration of grain that was due to paupers of unemployed Roman freedmen, the libertines who were capable only of begetting children — plebeians, as they were also called. Meat he would obtain on the right side of the Tiber, at home, as on the other side it was not possible to procure kosher meat; that was also where he drew the wine ration. A few taverns on that side let it be known that they also held stocks of kosher food and drink, but the public was banned from those taverns by the Roman gerousia or synedrion, or Sanhedrin as it was called in Judaea, the council which met at irregular intervals to decide on the affairs of the various congregations, as it had an interest in seeing that one and all purchased the produce of the official Transtiberian Jewish slaughtermen, and should only drink wine that was sold by the powerful Jewish wine victualers of Rome. It was possible to make an even bigger profit on wine than on meat because drinking wine was compulsory on feast days; wine victualers also sold the two-handled flasks, fired from white clay and freed of impurities, from which the wine was supposed to be drunk. Romans, both Jews and non-Jews alike, drank a lot of wine because wine did not loosen the bowels, whereas water often did. Somehow, the same victualers who shipped pure olive oil from Palestine to the Roman communities, as the use of Italian oil was judged a capital offense, upheld time and time again by the leadership of the congregations, given that substantial numbers of wine and oil importers were to be found among the elders of this collective leadership.

Uri self-righteously consumed a good deal less of the ration than he was entitled by its regulators, so that he too, along with his father, could consider himself a breadwinner. On the days his ration was to be handed to him, the whole family would be with him, which is to say his father, mother, and two sisters; together they would all carry their allotment back home. The wealthier among them would go with a handcart; the rest would take sacks and wicker baskets, because a handcart was too expensive. At times like that, Uri was happy that, through chance, thanks to a grandfather he had never seen, he was able to help his family. His father had also never seen his own father, because Joseph had been just a few months old when Thaddeus died at the age of twenty-five — five years earlier than the average life span for a slave (those long years of hard labor he had sweat out to pay his redemption bond cannot have done his health any good).

If a Jew was scheduled to receive his monthly grain ratio on a Saturday, or a Jewish feast day, he was allowed, under one of the still-active decrees of Augustus Caesar, of blessed memory, to go pick it up on a Monday, or whenever the holiday ended; the decree had not been repealed by Tiberius, even after he had expelled the Jews. There were Jews with a tessera who had kept a low profile in the vicinity of Rome during those months, but brazenly stole back into the City. The municipal administrators, long faced, had to dispense their allocation, because without an order of exclusion they were obliged to do so. There were some banished Jews, it was said, who threatened to bring a lawsuit against the reluctant official, and in the end the official had given way, even though he could have called out the sentinels to arrest the hectoring Jew. The world was crazy; it always had been, and it would remain so until the coming of the Messiah.

In truth, Joseph could have been a Roman citizen himself, because three children of his had been born there, and Augustus’s decree that the parents of three children should be awarded citizenship was still in effect. Uri had tried to persuade his father to apply for citizenship, on account of his children; he would no doubt be granted it with his patron’s intervention, which would mean that he too could have a tessera.

Joseph, however, was unwilling to do that.

Things are fine the way they are, Joseph said. Uri kept nagging until his father finally said he would rather work for the money, because some very big issue might come up one day, some really important business, and he would call for Gaius Lucius’s assistance on that, but until that happened he did not want to pester him, lest they resent him for asking unnecessary favors.

Uri saw that it was no use arguing and never brought the matter up again. He wondered what the very big business might be. Did his father fear another expulsion?

Often Uri would take a stroll on his own over to the far bank of the Tiber to Rome, the “true Rome,” and gaze around. He made his way there from beyond the river. For some strange reason, the Jews always lived beyond some river or other; their very names — the Hebrew, one from beyond the river — said as much. In Babylon they had also lived on the far bank of the Euphrates, before they were allowed to head home, to the West.

He sauntered around and stared out with nothing to do, being unfit for physical labor. People finally gave up on him when the congregation’s members persuaded Joseph to try him out as a roofer: that was easy work. Uri was acrophobic, though, with no head for heights, and on the very first day of work he fell off and broke his right arm. The arm healed, and in any case his left arm was fortunately the nimbler one; he already wrote Hebrew and Aramaic with the left hand, and now he took the opportunity to learn to write Greek and Latin with it, as well. Ever since that accident, his father was left in peace.

Then Joseph came up with limeburning, also a good profession, but Uri rebelled and started yelling: not only would he not be a limeburner, he would never be a glassblower either, he would rather die. That shook Joseph, who had himself started out as a glassblower, or rather as a goldsmith, because Jews were the only ones in the Roman Empire who were able to blow glass around figures of filigree gold thread, and without another word he left his son to rant on for a few minutes longer, jumping up and down and even threatening to sign on as a longshoreman.

He was not serious about that; with his aching legs and lousy back he would not have lasted a day lugging those loads. Aside from tanning, that was the lowliest work a Jew would undertake. The pay was bad, but if you had a tessera it was possible to sustain a family with several children on the handouts and the extra income from dock work. That was to say nothing about pilfering a bit of the cargo when the supervisor was not watching, and he would not be looking, so long as he also got a share of the swag.

In principle, a Jewish worker was not supposed, on religious grounds, to steal from a Jewish consignment, but a non-Jewish one was fair game. It might be hard to tell, though, what came from Jews in Judaea or Alexandria and what had not. Anyway, goods were no longer Jewish if they were not destined for a Jew; the destination would taint them. Wages were low, families were big, and necessity teaches a man to steal; the Lord Almighty does not support those things, but they were deaf to the Word of the Lord; to harm those who deny Him can be construed as a divine action. The Jewish longshoreman, therefore, filched as much as the rest, as much as they were able. Besides, how many had already filched from a consignment while it was en route! And that was nothing compared to those who deviously pushed up the prices. No shortage of them, to be sure!

All the same, even among Jews, to be a docker was a lowly profession. Because they also had to unload impure goods, even the priests got a taste to expedite purification, although no one got around the dues for ritual bathing, which did not exist in Palestine, and even in Rome there was not a mikveh, a ritual bath, in every house of prayer.

The goods were taken up the Tiber from Ostia by skiffs and flat-bottomed lighters, bringing goods day and night, colliding as if they were wrestling one another, with a small trade war raging for landing spots. On both banks of the Tiber, as the loading and unloading went on day and night, inns and brothels prospered. Everyone was drunk on shore and on the boats, Jews and non-Jews alike, and there was no way of knowing who was what, because they all yelled and swore in Greek. It is true that block and tackle devices had been introduced on the docks, but the bulk of freight handling nevertheless proceeded by hand. Bales were unloaded and lugged to be swallowed by the enormous city without a trace and then discharged into the sewers, which likewise flowed into the Tiber. No wonder the Jews took care not to drink from it, and, as for washing, they never washed in it, and during epidemics the dockers were segregated.

Infectious diseases were diagnosed in Palestine according to a well-known formula: if on three successive days three corpses out of a community of five hundred were carried off three separate times, then it was the plague. If fewer, then it was not the plague and there was no need to impose quarantine. At times like that, the poor in some congregations would deny they had corpses, so that breadwinners could keep working, and only later would they report a death. The archisynagogoses took a strong stance against this, as did Levites, who were well-paid experts at burial. An uproar would arise over this every other day or so, as would be expected anywhere that persons lived surrounded by other persons, bound together.

Joseph made one last try to obtain a man’s work for his son.

The post of grammateus had fallen vacant in their community.

The grammateus was a scribe, a notary and secretary, the archisynagogos’s right-hand man, a man of influence, because he was in a position to whisper or suggest anything to a community leader at any time; he could be of some use and also do a great deal of harm. Fortunatus, the previous grammateus, had been ill and forgetful when he died, but nevertheless many members of the congregation had accompanied his body to the catacomb, located on the Appian Way. Joseph and Uri too had been present at the burial ceremony at the terraced entrance to the cemetery, which resembled a tiny, semicircular amphitheater.

A Jewish assembly like this was not large by Roman standards, and if one of its number should die, the five or six hundred menfolk, a small town’s worth, would be there at his burial, and it was also permitted for women and children to attend, because in Rome women were of virtually equal rank to men, unlike in Palestine, where women were of no account.

The route was a long one, not because of the distance, for there could have been no more than three or four stadia, a mile or so, between Far Side and the cemetery, which lay just beyond the city gate, but because it was necessary to stop seven times on the way, first at the Jewish bridge, the Pons Cestius, as the section on the near side of the island was officially known, or the Pons Fabricius, farther away; at each stop, someone, each time a different person, seven times over, would expound at length on the virtues of the deceased.

Not that the burial was notable for this, but in the congregation that day there also happened to be a priest from Jerusalem by the name of Philippos. He was spending Passover in Rome, and he was staying until Shavuot, or Pentecost, and since he was there, he thought he would bless the people on the occasion of the burial. A priestly blessing was a big deal, because that blessing could only be said by a priest; Uri too would get a chill every time it was recited at some big feast by a suitable person, a descendant of Aaron. Philippos was not permitted anywhere near the body. Not only was he forbidden to see the tumbrel that carried the corpse; it was not even supposed to cast its shadow on him because it would have made him unclean. Philippos blessed the mourners in the crescent entryway to the cemetery, likewise speaking highly of the deceased, expressing hope that a general resurrection was not far away, so that the living and the dead would not be deprived of each other’s company for long. He read out the prayer, those present wept and said amen, then they shepherded the priest away and only pulled the tumbril into the cemetery once Philippos was long gone. The body, wrapped in white shroud, was carried through the gate by the Levite attendants, who had been gazing off and leaning listlessly on their spades during the speech. Members of the family rent their garments as they entered the gate to see into the niche where the body was placed, onto which vault or rectangular hollow scooped into the stone of the catacomb wall they should place the thin marble plate they had brought along with them, on which stood just the name, Fortunatus, and that he had lived sixty-four years and been a grammateus. Fortunatus’s eldest son went down with the Torah scroll, tucking his head into his shoulders to pass under the low entrance, the other family members held a lit torch and oil lamps so they could see anything in the underground passages.

Joseph made an unexpected request at this point: that Uri only return to the catacomb when he, the father, was buried, but never again. He asked that Sarah and the girls stay outside. He also asked that nothing be put on the sepulchral plaque apart from a menorah; no name, no age, nothing else. Let no bird be painted or engraved on the plaque, nor shofar, nor wine flask, no lulav, no etrog — nothing.

Uri was shaken that his father was speaking about death.

Not much later, he realized that his father had marked him to step into Fortunatus’s shoes, and wanted to prepare him mentally.

His father’s emotional blackmail felt demeaning and sneaky, but he had nothing against a notary’s work. It was a cushy job; there was no need to spend all day, every day in the house of prayer; the only bad thing was that you were the servant of the archisynagogos and could not talk back.

An archisynagogos was not a priest but a layperson who had a position of esteem in the congregation, on account of his wealth, for instance, and he was generally elected to look after communal affairs for a five-year term. Annianus, the current archisynagogos, was an uptight, hysterical man, and difficult to get along with. On the other hand, a grammateus was well paid, twice as much as a teacher and four times as much as a limeburner. True, a glassblower was much better paid, and the more shrewd merchants made even more, but a grammateus was a good prospect and could take his pick of the girls. By the time he was twenty, virtually every Jewish young man in Rome was married, so Uri still had a year. As a grammateus he would have free choice of single girls older than twelve, and there were lots of those, and every father dreaded that his daughter would remain a spinster. Uri loathed the thought of marriage, but he conceded that it was a fate he could not escape. For days he was thrilled to have his choice among potential brides; he would cast a leisurely eye over girls, sizing up their charms, and at nights he would have such terrible dreams that he would have to quickly rinse out his tunic in the morning. Neither Sarah nor Joseph made any remark about the tunic that was left out to dry on the line, as if they had not noticed.

One evening Joseph announced furiously that Honoratus wanted to put up his idiot son of sixteen for the post of grammateus, even though he could barely write and knew no other language but Greek, and could not count either. Honoratus was a rich and influential man, the owner of three tenement buildings in the Syrian quarter, and his wife was a cousin of the banker Tullius Basileus. The only sort of person who might knock Honoratus’s son off his perch was someone like Uri.

Uri said nothing, just nodded. Gaudentius, the son, was so dumb that he stood no chance of getting the job as grammateus.

Joseph smiled happily, taking Uri’s silence as a sign of agreement. He left no stone unturned; yet it was still the idiot who was named grammateus, with the favor of Annianus.

Uri relaxed. Being a notary for a hysterical archisynagogos was not such a great deal; marriage could also wait.

Then two months later, Gaudentius, Honoratus’s idiot son, died unexpectedly, having lived just sixteen years, two months, and three days, as was nicely engraved on his sepulchral plaque. Uri, in his cubbyhole, said prayers for him; he genuinely felt sorry for the blockhead and could not help it if, by the grace of the Lord, he had been seen as good-for-nothing in life.

Joseph took a new lease on life and once again started to pay visits to influential members of the assembly.

Then the influential members of the assembly, on Annianus’s advice, decided that the next son born to Honoratus should be the grammateus, and, until that son was conceived and born, let the post be discharged by others, who would relieve one another every three months. Joseph was assured that Uri was highly placed on the list of substitutes, even if he was blind as a bat. Joseph had a few salty words of his own, as a result of which Gaius Theodorus, son of Lucius Ioses, was removed from the list. From that point on, Uri was left in peace and out of harm’s way, and when he was not reading in his alcove, he sauntered over to the true Rome.

There was much he saw and heard, and he would gladly have reported on these rambles to his father, but his father avoided talking with him. He would gladly have reported on them to his friends, but he had no friends. He was mocked on account of his physical defects, hated because he wrote, read, and calculated better than them and even so did not work.

He would have carried on with these pleasant, solitary wanderings for the rest of his life, scraping by on handouts from the state and his patron, dipping into books, parasitically, carefree and undemanding, had something not happened.

Unexpectedly, from one day to the next, unrest broke out over the way the Praetorian prefect Sejanus was deposed for his despotic rule as the plenipotentiary representative of Tiberius Caesar, who was living on the island of Capri (that is to say, his rule over the Latin wealthy was despotic; he did not trouble Jews, because they were simply of no interest to him). Many people were seized, and the entire leadership bodyguard was replaced; indeed, they had already been hacked to pieces. Uri happened to be poking around the street of goldsmiths, the Via Sacra, near the Forum, because he liked looking at jewelry, when people started shouting and he was carried along with the crowds to the foot of the Gemonian Stairs, where the dead bodies had been laid out for public display. That was where he saw a corpse for the first time in his life, and not just one but a dozen or more, and more than one of them without a head. Uri wanted to run off, but the crowd would not permit that; indeed, he was jostled into the front row, right in front of the soldiers who were shoving the crowd back, just as the executioner and his assistants dragged an adolescent boy and a girl of about ten years old over to the steps by their hair. Both had long fair hair, perfect for dragging.

A cry went up from the crowd.

Uri was standing near the stairs, so he had a good view.

The executioner went for the boy first, who wisely chose not to protest, and with one blow his head tumbled down.

The girl, by contrast, wailed and pleaded: she did not dispute that she had committed some sort of crime and should be punished as a child would lawfully be punished, but she never committed a capital offense and did not deserve to lose her head.

Silence fell; the executioner hesitated.

People in the crowd bawled:

“It is forbidden to put a virgin to death!”

That was true; Uri himself was familiar with Roman law, having studied it out of his own sheer diligence, because his people were only instructed in Jewish law, at their own request and in keeping with the obliging decree of the great Augustus. Not a particularly wise decision, Uri thought to himself more than a few times, unless Augustus had cunningly wanted to ensure that no Jew could ever become a lawyer.

The executioner thought for a moment before unfastening his toga. He whipped out his member from under his loincloth and kneaded it with his right hand until it became erect. He had a large tool, half a cubit long, the glans hiding the foreskin and the whole prong looking like a horizontal long-stalked mushroom cap. The soldiers set about the girl, ripping her dress off, wrestling her down, and spreading her spindly legs apart. The executioner knelt down and slammed home his member. The young girl screeched. To a rhythmic clap from the crowd, the executioner gradually sped up his movements, his buttocks flashing white, until he roared out, trembled, threw his head back, and gasped. He pulled his tool out of the girl; it was bloodied, and he showed it off proudly to the front row of the crowd, like a triumphant army commander, the still-erect bloodied member in his right hand, his left hand pointing at it. The crowd roared with laughter, then the executioner picked up his sword and began stabbing drunkenly at the girl’s body. He slashed indiscriminately until shreds were all that was left of her, and these were then tossed and kicked onto the steps, among the others corpses.

The crowd, which until that point had egged him on enthusiastically, now fell silent. That was a bit too much, even for the Roman plebes. The executioner sensed the change in mood, swiftly wrapped his toga back in place, and raced off with his assistants.

Mutely, glumly, the crowd started to disperse. There was one beggar who even climbed the steps and started to abuse a headless corpse, as the remaining soldiers hastily threw the bodies into the Tiber.

Uri was drenched in sweat, shivering, his heart hammering, dizzy, the sweat stinging his eyes, his stomach heaving. He had wanted to avert his eyes throughout but found himself unable. There were cries of “Wait, they’re bringing Sejanus’s wife now. Let’s see her mourning,” but he took to his heels and ran as fast as he could. On his way he vomited onto his own legs. He could not remember which bridge he crossed, whether it was the Pons Aemilius or the Jewish bridge, because both led to the Jewish quarter. He huddled up in his alcove and did not budge from his place for weeks.

Nor indeed could he have shown himself, because the Elders prohibited it.

Somebody had seen him on the bridge, running home, filthy and panting, and reported it. The Elders assembled and called in his father. Joseph argued that Uri had reached the age of maturity, was unable to work, and could go wherever he pleased. The Elders, of whom there were seventy to faithfully mirror the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, gathered together very rarely, only on the most vital matters, its membership being made up of the heads of eminent families in the city’s various congregations. After protracted debate, they came to the conclusion that anyone who went around in places where reprisals were raging in these grave days and weeks was putting the entire Jewish community of Rome under threat.

“We must not get mixed up in it,” they declared. “That is a matter for the Latini, we have nothing to do with it, and we should never cross their minds. Your son put us all at risk, albeit unintentionally. He is not to leave your house until we send word.”

Joseph had no choice but to acquiesce.

Following this contretemps, he exchanged a few words with his son. He explained that while others went across the river, they had not been punished with house arrest; it was typical because, as he noted, “We are the indigenous ones here, not them, and we shall never be forgiven for that.”

He never asked what Uri had seen of the upheavals in Rome, the true one.

Uri held his peace. He had already been instructed as a young boy that many tensions were mounting in Rome’s Jewish community, that a fierce rivalry was going on between the first wave of settlers in the city, and those who came after.

The first settlers were descendant from those who had arrived in Rome with the earliest convoys of Jewish captives. They were hauled from Judaea in the year Pompeius Magnus seized Jerusalem. It was not Pompey who took them captive, however, but Aulus Gabinius, who massacred three thousand Jews who had been fighting alongside the Jewish prince, Alexander, while he took another three thousand captive. Though painful to admit, there were also Jewish soldiers who fought against the co-religionists, on the orders of Aristobulus, Alexander’s brother, who was on the side of the Roman mercenaries. Herod the Great’s subsequent rise to power occurred in much the same way, with Roman help, with Jews again butchering tens of thousands of fellow Jews.

Uri’s great-great-grandfather was one of the three thousand whom Gabinius had carried off.

Compared with them, the thirty thousand whom Cassius took prisoner not much later, when he marched into Judaea from Syria and took Taricheae, counted as mere novices in Rome, though just a fraction of them reached Rome, the great bulk of them having been sold off or died en route.

Even newer waves had arrived at Rome five, ten, twenty, and thirty years later, ever newer ones, as a result of Herod the Great’s carnage. Because the newcomers came to make up the majority, they had appropriated the leading posts of fledgling organization of Jewish life in Rome from the old hands. His father complained bitterly as if he had personally had an important position snatched from him, though it was from his great-grandfather and grandfather, who, slaves though they were, had fought for the right to their own prayer house, and the slave women by whom they produced offspring should convert to Judaism. Joseph had inherited neither wealth nor office from his forebears. Uri was tired of these laments, and even more so because these tensions, which had arisen three or four generations before him, showed no sign of burning out. He could not understand why the “old hands” were so proud to boast that they had spent more years in “Roman captivity”; to his way of thinking, his ancestors had been lucky that they had, only by chance, avoided the subsequent bloodshed in Palestine. If Gabinius had not taken prisoner his great-great-grandfather, he himself more than likely would never have been conceived.

Even now the “old hands” would provoke the “new boys” by calling them the spawns of robbers and thieves, which they would fervently dispute, often shedding blood on that account. Yet everyone knew that the thieves had been sold off abroad as slaves by Herod the Great, with most ending up in Rome due to the chronic shortage of slave labor. Until then it had been the law among the Jews that thieves could be kept in servitude no more than six years, and even then only domestically, serving Jews, and they were obliged to pay back four times the value of the stuff that had been misappropriated.

Apart from thieves, Herod the Great had also sold bandits off as slaves, and in truth it was next to impossible to puzzle out what crimes these late-arriving Jews had committed to get them shipped off to Rome.

The “old hands” would use the argument to this day that they were the progeny of Jewish freedom fighters, in contrast to the “new boys,” who were the offspring of common convicted criminals, Jewish scum. Uri had his doubts about that. Alexander had recruited warriors against his own brother; it was a Jewish civil war in which Rome had, of course, been keen to have a say, and the Jewish state had come off worst that time. It was not much to Uri’s liking to create freedom fighters from people who had happened to end up on the losing side, but he preferred not to advertise that; nor did he share with anyone his question that if the forebears of the “old hands” were indeed freedom fighters who struggled against Rome, why were they, the proud descendants, so pleased they were finally granted Roman civil rights? On the other hand, he was frankly amazed to discover that the entire Jewish colony living in Rome was considered traitors in the old country. What did those lunatics want? A new war of the Maccabees? Against Rome, even though Rome was doing the Jews no harm?

When he was five or six, Uri had thought long and hard about one particular story. A person is still a genius when just six; only later on did he become dull, he thought in his cubbyhole when he read about it.

When Pompey laid siege to Jerusalem, the city was reinforced mightily, with the Jews demolishing the bridge that connected the Temple courtyard to the town so that the Roman besiegers could not use it. Only there was no wall to the north, where a ravine ran, which the defenders believed could not be filled in. Pompey started work on filling it in all the same, with the Jews dismantling from above; whatever Pompey threw up, the Jews set alight, and so it went on for five days. But then the Sabbath came around, when it is forbidden to undertake any military maneuver unless to ward off a direct attack. There was no direct attack, Pompey was not stupid, so the Jews peacefully offered sacrifices for the Sabbath, all the Jewish defenders occupied themselves with the day of rest and did not tear down the ramparts that Pompey had erected. The Romans duly broke through on the next day. That was how Jerusalem fell.

This business was cited to children in Rome’s Jewish quarter, the descendants of slaves, as a superb example of faithful devotion: “Better Jerusalem should fall, but keep true to the Law,” they would say, and tears would come to the teachers’ eyes, and all those who bequeathed the glorious memory to their descendants would shed tears, the descendants, too, valiantly shedding tears. Uri did not shed tears; the heretical thought came to his mind that perhaps it would have been better to breach the Torah and demolish the rampart Pompey had thrown up that day, then under the influence of propitiatory sacrifices, their One and only Lord would surely have forgiven them, His Chosen People, sooner or later. No doubt there were others to whom the same thought occurred, but they did not voice that opinion; Uri learned early on that it was not imperative to reveal everything that came to his mind. He said something of the sort once to his father, who heard what he was saying, because Uri still had good eyesight at the time; Joseph shook his head but did not rebuke him. Which suggested that his father had also given some thought to this sad episode.

The terror and turmoil passed, Uri’s house arrest was lifted, and he was again free to wander, which he did. The Jews escaped any physical reprisals, while most of the filthy rich Roman elite was executed and their fortunes confiscated for the state coffers, which is to say Tiberius’s private imperial coffers. But for Uri, Rome, the true Rome, had lost its allure.

Still, it was a distinctly good time to be Jewish in Rome, and not a good time to be a senator or a knight; it was good to be poor, and not so good to be rich, because anyone might be condemned, have his fortune taken and be put to death, with any denunciation given credence. There was no reason to accuse the poor, and they pulled through, unless they were made to bear witness against their patron on the rack. Although in principle it was only permissible to torture a slave, not a freedman, the law on this was widely disregarded. The retribution had been methodical, people in the true Rome later recalled, when they dared to speak; everyone had already been outlawed in advance in Sejanus’s heyday; Sejanus had shed blood freely in Rome for years, so nobody had the least pity for him or his family or his friends when Tiberius finally rid the City of him.

Everyone spoke their mind. Horror stories circulated and were embellished ever more richly. Romans had time; they did not work but gossiped and enjoyed the fact that it was possible for them to live a quiet life gratis there, in the storied center of world power. Tiberius stayed on the island of Capri; he had not returned to Rome once, running the global empire from Capri through his cronies.

The Jews lived their own lives. Joseph continued to trade, and his patron, Gaius Lucius, had managed to squeak through also, even though he was rich, very rich. His servants said that once he had invited over all the people he thought might have designs on his money; he entertained them lavishly and explained to them that it was not they who would profit from his fortune but Tiberius, and he offered them a decent monthly remittance, to the end of their days, if they did not denounce him. True or not, the main thing is that no one ever did denounce him.

Uri went over to the true Rome less and less often, closing himself up in his nook, reading scrolls in all sorts of languages, and dreaded the thought of ever again seeing those milk-white, rapidly moving buttocks, or that little girl’s bleeding abdomen and eviscerated guts, or to experience the sordid cravings evoked by that ever-present ghost.

Uri dreaded going to sleep; he had no desire to dream.

He had to go to sleep sometime, however, sometimes by night, sometimes by day. That is when he saw the ghosts, and he also saw other terrifying images in his makeshift resting place, thrown together as it was from rags and tatters; he dared not look his father in the eye, dared not look his mother and sisters in the eyes. All that showed was a troubled half-smile, which disgusted his father; he too must have been acquainted with the horrifying power of dreams.

Meanwhile Uri studied the Scriptures diligently, and he figured he was not sinning the way that Onan had done. He was not responsible for his dreams; the Creator was responsible for them. The Creator wanted all things, including evil and tormenting dreams, but the Creator was good, because the scenes in his dreams were clear and sharp, his eyesight in his dreams was good, and that too was the Creator’s will. Maybe the Creator wanted him, a Chosen one, to see Evil, to see Satan. He may have ruined his eyes but he had a purpose: so that Uri would study more scrupulously. Study the Holy Writ. The Writings.

Studying the Holy Writ was a very Jewish notion, but not studying The Writings. Many Writings existed in Rome at that time; anyone who wanted could get hold of them, and Uri wanted to; but only one Holy Writ was the Lord’s, or else none of them.

Uri collected works in Greek and Latin. Some of the goods he got through the tessera, and whatever the family did not need he would sell across the way and buy scrolls with the money. He would rather have gone without food, although at home he showed up for his share of meals, so there was no actual need to go hungry, which made it easy. He was a visitor to the splendid public libraries, where one did not have to pay much to enter, and it was possible to read all afternoon. Secretly he hoped that his father would forbid him to read, to study heathen writings, to read all the Greek and Latin poets and philosophers, but his father did not forbid him, although he must have had his suspicions about what his son was reading. He did not forbid him to do anything; he gave up on him.

Disowned him without ever saying so.

Simply because his eyesight had degenerated.

He begot me faultily, was the thought that often came to Uri’s mind; he was sloppy in begetting me, didn’t pay enough attention, and now he blames me.

Yet it was not just Uri; no better a job had been done in begetting his younger sisters either. The older of them, Hermione, was stupid, while the smaller had been born bright, but she coughed continually, snorted, and was breathless. Her hacking coughs at night would wake everybody up, and her whining drove them crazy.

However, Uri was least affected: he slept on his own in his alcove, shivering under the window, while his father and mother slept with the two girls in the main room, where there was also a fireplace for cooking. Uri thought it was no mystery why no children had not been added to the family. It was a relief, because it meant that there would be no little brother, who, if he were healthy, would stand to inherit everything if his father disowned him officially for his bad eyes. As it was, he would inherit everything, however decrepit he might be.

That small recess of four by five cubits, separated by a flimsy, rotting partition and a shoddy carpet from his sweaty parents and clammy sisters was an exceptional gift, he would have to admit, that he would never have come by had he been healthy. It was a prison cell, but a voluntary one — freedom itself.

He tossed and turned restlessly on his bed in that alcove for nights on end, an acidic sting constantly creeping into his throat, and if he eventually drifted off he would be haunted by abominable images and wake up choking, coughing, gasping for air because the sour spit would find its way into his lungs. He had nobody to cry out to, only the Lord, for whom he would gladly have been a priest, although he could not for lots of reasons, his physical ailments among them. Any one of his miseries was enough to disqualify him from the priesthood, but most of all it was that he did not descend from Aaron’s clan. His ancestors were anonymous Jewish grubbers of the land whom a blustering Alexander once press-ganged into military service. They had been taken prisoner by the Romans, just two years short of a century ago. He had no one to cry out to; even the Lord never answered his prayers. But that little cubbyhole of four by five cubits was an exceptional gift; nobody came in, he could read, dream, or ruminate to his heart’s content, peer out the window every now and then, and that too was life of a sort, and no doubt pleasing to the Lord, if he had created it.

He peered out the window, flexed his aching back, and it was then that he remembered something his father had said shortly before:

“You’re setting off for Jerusalem the day after tomorrow!”

Jerusalem, for Lord’s sake!

Me, of all people!

He huddled back on his rags and carefully set the scroll he was holding, a work written by a Syrian peripatetic philosopher who had become fashionable in Italia, onto the floor of packed earth, turned away from the window, and stared in front of him.

My father must love me after all, was the first clear thought to enter his head. He finagled a trip to Jerusalem for me! He can bother himself with me after all!

It was such a good feeling that tears sprang to Uri’s eyes.

Jerusalem! Home! Where the Temple is!

Since there was a Temple and a Diaspora, the entrance of every synagogue faced Jerusalem; it was toward Jerusalem that everyone looked who stood on a bimah, the pulpit from which the Torah is read. It was toward Jerusalem that all Jews everywhere in the world bowed when they said their prayers at home; he too bowed toward Jerusalem, to the southeast, when he said his prayers three times daily, his back to the north-facing window, in the left-hand corner beside the carpet that covered the door opening, where he did nothing else. Or rather, he did: he stared out the window from there. He could not stare out from anywhere else if he did not want to be noticed, but this corner had enormous power as a result of the prayers that had been performed there, and it mattered not that no one else knew: it was enough that he knew, and it was the Lord’s duty, even though He did not concern himself much with human affairs, to see that he, Uri, did nothing with his wretched life other than to bring it to the Lord’s attention that he existed. Should the Lord happen, one day, to peek into this nook.

He would be the first person in the family to go to Jerusalem since his great-great-grandfather had been dragged off to Italia. The attention of the indifferent Lord must have drifted toward him, finally!

His father had not reached Jerusalem, nor his grandparents, nor his great-grandparents, nor his great-great-grandparents, nobody he knew or had been told about, no one among the names he had been obliged to repeat since he was a toddler, so that the tribal memory was not lost. There were many dozens of names of dead people that he had to include in his prayers every single day.

Rome was only the center of the wide world. Jerusalem belonged to the Lord: the center of the Jewish world, the Holy City of the Chosen People, and therefore, because there was one Lord, the center of the whole Creation. That was where he was going to go.

It was an unexpected gift, all the more so because he had never asked for it, never longed for it.

He needed to think this through.

His father, whom he had supposed, stupidly and spitefully, did not care about him and would happily exchange him for a child in perfect health, had now presented him with the greatest gift that a Diaspora Jew could be given: to be sent to Jerusalem.

His conscience now began to prick at him. Why had he not asked the Lord to guide him back to Jerusalem? What sort of halfheartedness had gripped him, one of the Chosen People, so that this had not so much as entered his mind? Why had he been so content to be born in Rome and to live there?

Nonetheless, the main thing about the joy that was arising slowly and spreading to his every atom was “Father loves me after all.”

Uri was sitting under the window, facing the middle of the tiny room, brooding over things as he stared into the air before him. It was the beginning of February now. If all went well, he could reach Jerusalem in early April… Just in time for Passover, perhaps! He might be in Jerusalem for Passover!

He shivered: he understood it now.

His father had arranged for him to join the delegation that would be taking the offering of First Fruits — the Holy Money, the aparkhai.

He was going to Jerusalem with the delegation!

The Jews celebrated three major festivals each year, and by the Roman calendar Passover, the spring festival, was the first, when the autumn sowing would be ripening. This was the Feast of the Unleavened Bread; that is what the ancestors took with them when, under the direction of Moses, they were delivered from enslavement in Egypt. This was the festival for which all Jews, wherever they might be living, sent their sacrifices, or tithes, to Jerusalem. Anyone living up to three days’ walk from Jerusalem would take their own offering, whether of meat or grain or fruit; those who lived farther away would send it via their elected representatives; and those who lived very far from Jerusalem, like the Roman Jews — they also included, for instance, those living in Babylon or Parthia, on the Greek islands or in Egypt — would send a monetary redemption for the offering of First Fruits. The obligatory sacrifices of animals and grain could be exchanged for money at any time, but in such cases it was necessary to pay one fifth more than the officially established price for a sacrificial animal or produce.

The Roman Jews sent money to Jerusalem once a year, for Passover; a monetary redemption, and not just because crops would go moldy on the way but because the Roman Jews had little to do with agricultural production, and what little they did produce would be used to provide for their own Levites. They only had small gardens in which to grow anything at all, because the Jews of Rome were not permitted to own farmland, either within the city limits or beyond. Even a Roman citizen with full rights was not allowed to farm in Rome or in the vicinity of the city if he was a Jew; land could only belong to the community, and even that had to be beyond the city wall — the cemetery. Far Side itself did not belong to the Jews but to the state — that was the law. They had outgrown the cemetery on the Appian Way, and it could not easily be extended. Negotiations were in progress with the magistrates to open another cemetery somewhere; the municipal office was currently offering the Via Nomentana, which could not be farther away, whereas the Jewish magistrates were asking for a plot on nearby Monteverde, so a tug of war was underway.

The sacrificial money was taken to Jerusalem by an elected delegation. It was a large amount of money, so the undertaking was not without danger; there had been instances when those carrying it had been robbed and slaughtered, after which the Roman Jews would collect the money all over again and send it the following Passover. The aparchai covered a per capita tax of half a shekel (or didrachma, which meant two drachmas or two denarii) plus any voluntary donations. Jewish men between twenty and fifty were happy to pay the half shekel of tax, because he was either one of the Lord’s Chosen People or not, but if he was, then he could count his blessings.

The configuration of the delegation was arrived at through wise deliberation.

The entire Jewish population, all five million who happened to be alive then, was in principle divided into twenty-four portions, just like the priesthood in Jerusalem. So too was the Jewish population in Rome divided into twenty-four, with a strict rotation observed for every single religious duty. Each clan was entitled to provide, every twenty-four years, one of the money carriers headed for the festival of Passover. Precise accounts had been kept in Rome for ninety-eight years now; the only accounts more precise were the priestly records of the their own line of descent, in which the household and offspring of every priest was recorded. A priest could only marry a female descendant of a priest, and that had to be proven irrefutably with documents. Had the journey not been risky, they would of course not keep so strictly to the rotation, and, naturally, it would have been only wealthiest families that were always filling up the delegation.

Uri did not know, and neither did the residents of Far Side, how many members made up a delegation of this sort. The Elders also gave out no information when a delegation would be setting off, or from where. Of course anyone who badly wished to could find out, because there were unmistakable early warning signs, but keeping secrets has its own magic and even busybodies did not pry needlessly; it was a sacred matter, best no one knew about it in advance. Better, in any case, because there was no way of knowing what sort of evildoers might crop up: Satan was never idle, so there was no need to tip off malefactors who might report to our enemies.

Those who had returned from a trip to Jerusalem could tell their tales.

People would congregate in the yard, in some open part of the baffling labyrinth and listen with pride to how exquisite the Temple in Jerusalem was, construction of which had been started by Herod the Great and was still going on, with twenty-five thousand laborers continually at work on it.

Amazing adventures; narrow escapes from mortal danger, vicious pirate attacks, robberies, and miraculous releases — these would be recounted by the returnees, who could now spin stories as they had, after all, admirably delivered the money and would not have to do it again for at least another twenty-three years. They would tell of Judaea’s miraculous climate, the incomparable flavors of the foods, the amazing moral character and courage of the Jews over there, the wondrous beauty of the women over there, the matchless treasures of the Homeland, but also the alarming, barbaric, superstitious, and incurable mental disorders that one encountered among the Jews of Palestine that the Jewish enclave in Rome, thank the Lord, been spared to the present day and thus, it was to be hoped, to the end of time.

Uri too had listened, mouth agape, to such accounts, and although it did cross his mind from time to time to wonder why, if that distant land was so miraculous, not a single member of the delegation ever stayed behind in Judaea but had always scurried back, helter-skelter, to despised, heathen, unclean Rome and eat the sour bread of the exile, but he always reproached himself for his bad faith and would add another Sh’ma or two to his evening prayers, and might sometimes even add a Torah verse.

I’m going to be a delegate, an astounded Uri murmured to himself happily.

He remembered then that someone from his family had already been a member of a delegation, just five years before. He would not be the first, after all, to return home. Odd that he had forgotten. He must not ascribe any particular importance to the mission if he had forgotten that.

It was a third cousin by the name of Siculus Sabinus, a blacksmith, whom Uri knew only distantly and whose house he had never visited. He was a strapping oaf of a guy who was asked in vain to describe what he had seen. All he could report was that there had been enough to eat, but even so, ever since, he got more orders than before due to his celebrity. The pilgrimage had been worth it from a business angle. It was a good profession anyway; he could bank it just making shackles, getting plenty of orders from the true Rome because there was a shortage of slaves, what with the dearth of wars, and as a result the masters were even less pleased if one did escape, so they fettered them with ever more ingenious shackles.

Siculus belonged to his extended family, and because he had been to Jerusalem five years before, if the rotation rule was applied strictly, no one else from the family could go for Passover for another nineteen years. Yet someone was going anyway: him.

Something did not add up here.

Joseph had to make a huge sacrifice to get his son squeezed into a delegation of this kind. Life would toss out any rulebook, however strict, if the Creator so willed, but then why would the Creator have so badly wanted his father to finagle this trip, not so long after Siculus Sabinus’s mission, the family connection ignored?

Uri was not on cordial terms with the Elders. They were very well aware that Uri was lettered and erudite, and that if he so wished, he could put anyone in the synagogue to shame; he never did, but he could have, and for that alone they detested him. They never exchanged courtesies with him in the way they did with others. Others with poor eyesight — he was far from the only one, of course — were coddled and spoiled, but not him. Maybe they were waiting for him to turn to them, to seek their support as the weak will do, but he did not do that. Maybe they were waiting for him to transfer to one of their congregations; in theory, the heads of congregations did not poach believers from one another, but they would be delighted if something like that were to transpire. There is at least a drop of vanity in everyone, archisynagogoses more than most; they could outdo even actors. Uri was familiar with a few actors by sight, even though he never went to the theater over there, because they still lived in the Jewish quarter, and he knew that they were actors at all times and incapable of speaking in a natural voice, they never stopped orating in orotund tones. But the moment the leaders of a house of prayer put on their festive fineries, the way they strutted around, the way they held their limbs during prayers, the way they flaunted and carried themselves… It was as if they were the sole repositories of the faith, yet they were not even priests.

Clans were extended enough that someone else could be selected to go in his place, if the time had come, and Uri had no doubt that none in the leading circles of Rome’s Jews would hold him in high regard.

Why is my father sending me to Jerusalem? How did he manage that?

He had to get up early the next day, he and his father being expected at their patron’s place; they had to put in an appearance every other morning. As one of the equestrian order, Gaius Lucius kept track of the presence of each of his past slaves and their offspring, keeping a list of those who were missing, and if there were no pressing reason for the absence, he would withdraw his patronage. It was not a good thing for a client to be given the boot by his patron, because that meant being passed over for a great many critically important favors.

Like all wealthy Romans, Gaius Lucius held an official morning reception, a salutation, every day, but he had so many personal dependents — clients, that is — he was obliged to split them into two groups, otherwise they would not all have fit in the house.

Uri was unable to sleep all night. His tunic was soaked through with sweat; a cold wind had been blowing in through the window, but he hopelessly wrapped himself in his rags as he shivered.

He had no desire to see the world, no desire to accomplish a glorious mission, no desire to reach Jerusalem; he would have preferred to stay in his alcove forever.

He would be unable to stand the footslog. If his companions got way ahead of him, he would never see them again, what with his bad eyes; he would go the wrong way, fall victim to robbers and murderers.

He would not withstand the starvation; would not be able to stand the foreign food, would develop deadly runs, be carried off by the plague, catch leprosy, perish in a malarial fever; he could not hold his ground if they came under attack; he would be at the mercy of foreign hordes; he would be captured and sold into slavery.

He was going to have to declare himself unfit for the journey.

He tried to imagine standing before his father and saying this.

He could see his father flying into an uncontrollable rage and disinheriting him. That disinheritance would be made public, the community would withdraw their support from him, he would be officially cast out, which would be announced in the temple, and he would waste away from hunger and thirst and perish in a garbage dump.

In the depths of his soul, Uri almost yearned to be disinherited. It occurred to him that he would at last be free to live in the true Rome. He would enter service as a scribe for some rich man and scrape out a lonely existence like that until the end of his days. There was no need to die of starvation in Rome; that was unusual even among the destitute. He could take the tessera with him — a rotten trick maybe, but it was possible. He would never go back to the Jewish quarter, not even to pray. A Jew could pray on his own and still remain a Jew, though he would have to find nine others who were similarly disinherited to share the prayers on the Sabbath and feast days. He would send the customary tithe regularly to Transtiberim, and the Lord would have nothing to reproach him for. This was his chance to free himself from the whole kit and caboodle, his mother and his sisters; get free of his father, who did not love him anyway. All he had to do was stand in front of his father and say: I’m not going.

He cowered on his bed, his stomach ached. He pulled up his legs, linked his arms around his knees, and rocked back and forth, wordlessly, softly humming a sort of prayer; he was scared of traveling and, most of all, of what suddenly came to mind.

His heart was pounding from the terrible darkness of the freedom that seemed to be in the offing, and as his belly cramped he retched a sour vomit. As he mopped up the ejecta, easing his mental torment by occupying himself physically, he came to the decision, knowing that there was in fact no need for him to decide. He rubbed down his sweating body with the bedding and fled back into the customary logic.

No, it was not possible to reject the delegacy once the Elders conferred it, and it must have been conferred on him if his father had announced that decision. Why would they have said it directly to him anyway? He was only nineteen and had not yet paid half a shekel in dues; there was still a year to go before he reached full maturity. If he reached it, if he managed somehow to struggle back to Rome, next year would be the first time he paid the half-shekel tax. Until then he would not have the full status of an adult, though he had been initiated into manhood at his bar mitzvah. A few days ago his father had paid the half-shekel tax they had been collecting since the fifteenth of Adar, as synagogues were doing throughout the Diaspora; then the treasurer would count up the money, as in other congregations. The obligatory dues paid by all adult Roman Jewish males between twenty and fifty years of age was collected, coins were changed. They would pay back, too, the money crammed into big sacks by servants and carried off somewhere where the chief treasurer would re-count it and have the small change swapped for coins of greater value. Uri had accompanied his father to the house of prayer and seen the treasurer. He did not imagine that this year he personally would be carrying that money, and the monetary equivalent of ample other produce, to Jerusalem.

To reject this honor would be the grossest form of desecration of the faith, and Uri had no desire to desecrate the faith; he merely did not want to be a delegate. For all that, he could still remain a good Jew and wash his feet, say his prayers, and respect the laws.

To try explaining that, however, would be fruitless.

A commission like this was the greatest possible honor; it raised the prestige of the commissioned, a major injection of moral capital, which might even be exchanged for small coins. People would hustle and bustle, scramble, and even pay for an honor like this, albeit mostly to no avail, because it was necessary to comply with the rotation principle.

That principle might not have been laid out in the books of Moses, an oral tradition, like much else which had become customary since then. But it was strong all the same and it had to be admitted that rotation was now a highly venerable practice, with people living by it even in Jerusalem, so the Roman Jewish community also had to respect it. The Elders of Rome did not much care for Jerusalem’s families of high priests, because Herod the Great had brought them in from Babylon, having exterminated every last one of the old families. By then there was already a Jewish Diaspora in Rome, and the leadership of the time decided that they would not accept the new rulings of half-Jewish Herod the Great’s damned high priests. They had done so since then, of course, but the rotation principle had been decided on some time before Herod the Great’s massacres, and that principle was alive in Rome as well.

Refuse a favor from the Elders, when they had flouted the rotation principle on his behalf? Inconceivable.

He sank into a feverish light sleep.

He was in bad shape when his father stepped into the alcove.

Uri hurriedly put a toga-like sheet over his sweat-stained tunic and pulled sandals on his feet. He must have cut an even more pitiful figure than usual, because a look of disgust appeared on his father’s face.

Why is he sending me to Jerusalem, agonized Uri, and followed his father out of the cubbyhole. His stomach rumbled miserably after the sleepless night. “The whole thing feels wrong for me,” he wanted to shout and wake up the still-slumbering Jewish quarter.

In front of the house, they dangled their feet in a brass pot of stagnant rainwater before sitting down on a small bench to towel off with a damp cloth and quickly recite the Sh’ma. A parchment with biblical texts was always on hand when Jews set off on longer journeys, as they would bind a pair of small black leather boxes containing the scrolls with leather thongs to the forehead or left arm. Of course, if they were expecting to be back by the evening, they would usually not bother; only those who ostentatiously sought to draw attention to their Jewishness wore it everywhere and at all times, in which case it would be on the forehead, but many only wore it under their cloak, on the arm, if they were traveling. Uri was not in the habit of wearing a phylactery, though admittedly he had never left Rome before. The Ten Commandments were also hanging from a door post, in a mezuzah, at the entrance to the house. In Rome it did not matter if a Jew did or did not wear a sign of his faith demonstratively on his forehead, as there were so many odd sights in Rome — so many kinds of dress, cults, skin pigments, hair colors, and madness — that non-Jews paid no mind.

His father pressed a small basket into his hand.

He too was carrying one.

The sportula was for carrying the goods the clients could pick up free of charge during breakfast at their patron’s home. In Rome every plebeian, Jews included, would go around the whole day long with one of these; Jews frequently carried one woven from wicker and lined with straw to hold anything they purchased or found on the way, or they used it to take anything they wished to sell to market. No one knew the origins of the custom, perhaps from the old country, although those who returned declared that the people back home did not go around with baskets on their arms. The straw-lined basket originally served to keep food warm on a Sabbath, only that made no sense in Rome during winter and people forgot its purpose; if a custom is not recorded in a must-read matter, it loses its sense, and yet this still lingered.

Gaius Lucius personally saw to it that the sportulas of his clients were duly crammed to bursting when they departed, and if he thought one was not, he would have his servants fill them with more food and more drink while he chuckled benevolently. He wanted to be agreeable, whatever the cost. He must have something weighing on his soul, Uri surmised when he was around ten, but then he forgot ever thinking such a thing about his kindly patron.

Uri had first visited his patron fourteen years earlier, at the age of five. Gaius Lucius, the equestrian, had received him pleasantly, pinching his cheek and patting Joseph on the back — a custom he had stuck with ever since. Uri would brace himself with a respectful grin any time the great man reached toward his face. The knight had put on twice the weight in the meantime, developing a huge, flabby, oily body with vast jowls, which, together with the swollen rolls of his neck, set his ruddy features in a rotund frame like a scarf of fat, yet he wore togas made from the costliest silks and muslins, like a rich woman, having a wardrobe of several hundred of these, changing them at least five or six times a day, putting a fresh one on after every bath. It so happened that in the year Uri was born, the emperor Tiberius had banned the wearing of muslin or silk by men, but they had gone on doing so. A huge edifice with four large basins for bathing belonged to Gaius Lucius’s house, staffed with highly qualified slaves to massage and oil him and his guests. Before he acquired his taste for silk, his togas were of wool and canvas, never being willing to don cloths that had been laundered by fullers; he had a man whose exclusive job it was to procure for him three or four new togas every day. Used, furled togas would be given to clients and servants or else sold off by his stewards.

Uri abhorred silk and muslin, perhaps because a significant amount passed into the great man’s possession thanks to his father’s good offices, but perhaps most of all because they were mainly fabrics for women who bedecked their bodies in silk and muslin to show it off.

For a long time Joseph traded in much the same goods as others; he picked up handicraft goods, traded in timber, dates, and balsam and sold them on for a slight but guaranteed profit. Gaius Lucius demanded that his manumitted former slaves stay in touch, not just through the free gifts he distributed with breakfasts but also in a business sense, and to that extent he was also practicing philanthropy, because he could always be relied upon for orders, though at the same time he also limited their freedom by determining what articles they should deal in. He considered himself to be a decent man, treating his slaves well and acting no differently toward freedmen, as if he had never taken a penny of redemption money from them for their patent of release, though that had to be scraped together over twenty or thirty years from the small change that the knight gave them daily; granted, though, they did not have to pay for their board and lodging, and he did not starve them.

“You are my true family,” the knight would say every morning in the big new atrium that he had built for hosting the salutation, raising his hands dramatically to the heavens and saying a prayer for his clients. His wife and two sons would smile awkwardly because they too were obliged to show up every day for these assemblies; hundreds must have seen that Gaius Lucius was loathed by his wife and sons. In the new atrium stood the statues of the household gods, the lares and penates, the busts and masks of his ancestors. He had commissioned them from the very best Greek sculptors, being able to afford them.

Gaius Lucius had become an exceedingly rich man over the decades, and in all truth he should be a senator by now; indeed, he had been asked to join the Assembly of the Fathers, or Council of Elders, but he preferred to squander his fortune on his clients, banquets, and organizing festive games, and he put nothing aside apart from four or five thousand sesterces that he invested each year in property in the neighborhood of Rome.

As a child Uri had heard, with his own ears, Gaius Lucius tell his father, “I suspect you could make more, Joseph, if you were to import silk and muslin. I’m a ready buyer for any amount.”

This was no stray whim or polite request but a direct order. Joseph had gone pale and nodded; he had wandered around the house at a loss for days on end.

Even Uri had picked up enough rudimentary business sense to know that bringing silk and muslin in from the East was a risky enterprise. The two fine textiles had become immensely fashionable in Rome, where senators and knights who had accumulated fabulous wealth would pay any money at all to pamper themselves and their family; but if a consignment went wrong on a long journey, the investment would be lost, and extremely large amounts had to be tied up in importing these rare materials. The Silk Road stretched from distant China and India, leading back through Abyssinia in Africa or Parthia, via Asia and Asia Minor, among the lands of wild tribes, so that brigands would leave caravans untouched it was necessary to pay off the tribal leaders, of whom there was a great profusion, with the borders of the territory for any one tribe changing every ten or twenty miles, it was said. On top of which the local agents might either hand over the money or else purloin it, and in the latter case the silk would go no farther. Goods that were produced in the provinces in any case fetched a price one hundred times more in Rome, but the price of muslin or silk might be as much as tens of thousands more, so huge were the distances, the risk, and the whims of fashion. The shippers were canny enough to give the impression that they were carrying other merchandise, so the silk and muslin were rolled up and hidden in the most unlikely places, sometimes even swallowed and then excreted at the final destination, but even so, it was worth it: the price would be a multiple of what it would have been if they had swallowed the same weight of gold. They would swallow gold too, for that matter, and much else besides to fool both official and unofficial customs inspectors, who would impose duties on honest, innocent commercial travelers, on the assumption that even if a merchant did not swallow gold or gemstones or silk, he could have. As a result, it was better to swallow it anyway.

Uri could understand his father’s fears, but he also grasped that Gaius Lucius did not seek anything that was out of the question. A large population of Jews lived at one of the stations in Parthia along the Silk Road; they had not returned from Babylon to Judaea with the rest and, through the Jews of Palestine and Egypt, stayed in touch with Rome via Alexandria, and there were also Jews living in that other great eastern port, Antioch, the capital city of Syria, carrying on trade from there. The commercial links were solid, had been established within Jewry centuries before, even war being unable to disrupt it. Trading is always vital; at most, there may be a time when it is necessary to deliver weapons in place of pots, cosmetics, pans, and comestibles.

Joseph had no desire for big profits; for his whole life he had been a considerate negotiator, striving for cordial relations with each link in the commercial chain, near and far, believing this to be a long-term investment.

There was just one time he attempted to be an innovator, which was when he saw at his patron’s place a vase of unbreakable glass; whatever one threw at it just dented, like an inflated bladder, the favorite plaything of emperors and children, and one could always hammer it back to its original shape. It was of Roman manufacture, and it was easy to make contact with the glassmaker. Jews were averse to these vases of unbreakable glass, or vitrum flexile as it was called, even though they had never seen one, with the idea that it was impure, but there would be plenty of opportunity to supply them to the likes of rich men like Gaius Lucius. Joseph paid a visit to the inventor, who was none other than the engineer who a few years before had restored a collapsed old colonnade; he had reinforced the pedestals, wrapped the other parts in wool, bound them with cord, and had them hauled back into place using winches and a lot of manpower. He had been granted a large sum of money by Tiberius as a reward. For some reason, he had also been banished from Rome. Joseph reached an agreement with him on distributing the unbreakable glass when an example of one of the vases was shown to Tiberius. The emperor conjectured that the invention would lead to a steep devaluation of earthenware and golden pots, had the arrogant inventor tracked down and executed, and also banned manufacture of the unbreakable glass. There was a danger that all of the inventor’s acquaintances would likewise be hunted down and put to death on the off chance that they knew the secret of the glass’s manufacture. Joseph had to ask for the assistance of the Elders of the synagogue in effacing any trace of his connection with the inventor. The Elders had heard that the executed inventor was a Jew, and considered that was more than likely, given that glassblowing was a Jewish craft, so it was also in their interests that Judaism should come out of this awkward business with clean hands. There was no way of knowing what the Elders did, but in any event, neither Joseph nor the community was harassed on account of the unbreakable glass vase, and even the inventor’s name was forgotten as time passed.

Uri still had good eyesight when Gaius Lucius urged his father to go into silk and muslin, and being a precocious child he was not surprised when his father let him in on his doubts. Who else would he share them with if not his only son? Joseph had been uneasy yet sober in his assessment. He knew nothing about the details of the silk trade as up till then he had been concerned with quite different sorts of merchandise, but he assumed that with silk, as was generally the case with other articles from far away, there would be at least two big outfits engaged in it, with one of them being almost certainly Arab. He also assumed that the Jewish and Arab mafias would have come to an agreement some time, and that agreement was periodically renewed because there was no break in the supply of silk and muslin to Rome, although the amounts that were made available were fairly modest in spite of the huge demand — no doubt deliberately to hold the price up. That alone was indicative of some sort of gang involvement. It went without saying that he would choose the Jewish bunch, but that had the disadvantage that he, being an anonymous merchant among the Roman freedmen, carried no prestige among the Jews, and as silk was such a massive business you could be quite sure that leaders in Parthia, Syria, Judaea, and Alexandria were up to their neck in it, and those were people who would never have the time of day for the likes of him.

The Arab tribes were a different matter. Presumably, the Jews of Antioch and Alexandria had contact with these non-Jewish tribes, but the Greeks of Antioch and Alexandria would also have a cut of the business, by virtue of the fierce Greco-Judaic commercial rivalry. So what if it was somehow possible to become a link in the non-Jewish chain? How else than with money?

That was Joseph’s other big idea after the unbreakable glass vase of painful memory. He methodically haunted the premises of Greek, Syrian, Abyssinian, and Arab traders in Rome, strolling with his son over the bridge and wandering with him around the city, because it was not so easy to track anyone down given that streets had no names and houses were not numbered.

Joseph would offer immediate cash in return for a negligible and, initially, almost certainly loss-making stake in the silk business. Some, having a sound capital base, rejected the idea out of hand, but some were takers because they happened to be short on money, or maybe they were inherently greedy. There were any number of strange homes that Uri visited with his father, coming across peculiar modes of life and odd customs, and that was when the conviction grew in him that it paid to speak with everyone in his own tongue. Uri knew only Aramaic and Greek at that time, like his father, though it would not have hurt to know Arabic and Egyptian as well. A deal would be done not just for profit — Uri appreciated that even as a child — but at least as much, if not more, for the fun of it and for the sake of camaraderie.

In the course of those visits he became acquainted with the use of an abacus, those frames with several rows above each other in which would be placed pebbles; by sliding them one could make incredibly swift calculations. Uri was quicker than his father to arrive at the principle by which it worked, with the lowest row being used for single units, the next for tens, the one above that for hundreds, and so on, and this made it possible to add, subtract, multiply, and divide very speedily, without looking. Being based on the decimal system, the abacus represented local values, though that was not quite how it was put at the time. Back home Uri traced his own abacus on the ground; pebbles and twigs could always be found, and he was proud that sometimes his father, when he got tired of calculating, would trudge out into the yard and ask him to work some calculation or other. The Jews incidentally would also use letters of the Greek alphabet for making calculations, with alpha as one, beta as two, gamma as three, delta as four, and so on, so it was far from easy to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, squaring or extracting the square root with the long strings of letters this involved. Uri wanted to explain the exceedingly simple principle on which the device worked to the other children and their teacher, but they did not so much as listen: the abacus was not a Jewish custom.

His father would negotiate anxiously, doggedly, with determination, his counterparts chattering in leisurely fashion, relishing the chance to talk, whether they were inclined to reach agreement or not. They would willingly pass time with idle gossip, dismissing the serious details of a business deal with a flamboyant sweep of the hand, regaling Joseph and his son countless items of Roman tittle-tattle with quiet snickering, a gleeful giggling, or glorious guffawing, slapping their knee, marveling at life’s oddities. They would be plied with food and drink, which his father would usually decline but they would insist Uri had to drink; as a child it was not unusual for him to stagger drunkenly out of the tenements, private palaces, and shacks.

In the end it cost Joseph close to one hundred thousand sesterces to get into the silk business.

That was a staggeringly large sum of money if one considers that the annual income for a prefect running a province would be just two and a half times that, or that with a fortune of four times that a person could procure a knighthood. The one hundred thousand sesterces was not Joseph’s own money, as he never had a significant amount of working capital, the family scraping by on a few coppers and the sportula before Uri got the tessera. Part of the money was loaned at forty-percent interest by Roman-Jewish bankers (usurious rates like that were strictly forbidden, of course, under both Roman and Jewish law), and partly obtained from Gaius Lucius at an annual interest of no more than ten percent, which was two percent less than the official Roman bank rate.

Joseph lost weight, the furrows around his eyes sank and turned blue, he did not sleep for nights on end, just paced around in the yard and prayed to the Lord that the winds would favor him and his ships not sink (the ships themselves were insured, it was true, the shipping companies being rich, but in general the cargoes were not, with the merchants taking the risk), and he also prayed that the Arabs and the Egyptians and Greeks of Alexandria, the whole treacherous bunch, would stick to their agreements, to say nothing of those far-off tribes, their very names unknown to him, who would transport the goods along the sides of great mountains and desert country somewhere in Tibet, between China and India, and also that the Jewish mafia would not pay him any mind and spare him the curses of the Jewish Elders of Rome. There were attempts to do so, it later turned out, but because a fair number of the Jewish Elders of Rome had close links with Jewish bankers, indeed more than a few were themselves bankers, it was not in their interests to ruin Joseph, so they smoothed things over in anticipation of that forty-percent interest.

When the loan was due, Joseph did not have enough money to pay off both the Jews and the equestrian. He asked Gaius Lucius for a period of grace and a loan of a further thirty-thousand sesterces, which was granted, and from that and his earnings he paid off the Jewish banks, and it was only at the end of the third year that he was able to pay back his outstanding debt to Gaius Lucius. Until then, all he did was suffer and worry. He could not breathe easily for a single day, for the moment that the Jewish bankers pocketed the loan he had paid back, along with the interest, Joseph’s temporary protection came to an end and the Jewish silk mafia instantly leeched him. They demanded a cut of the trade, even though Joseph had already made a deal with the Arabs. He asked them too for a grace period, and after admitting the debt to Gaius Lucius, he was thereafter obliged to pay the Jews fifteen percent on every consignment, which meant that he barely made anything on the silk. Nobody believed him, of course; they thought he was rolling in it and was only so thrifty in the way he lived with his own family to hoodwink others. Admittedly, from that point on they did not pester him any longer, indeed there were even cases where his extortive co-religionists would take care of things when a particular shipment was held up.

Joseph struggled for years until he hit on a third route and had the silk delivered secretly from Parthia via Greece and Dalmatia, over dry land the whole way to avoid shipwrecks and even letting the proverbially unreliable Illyrians in on the business. Doing deals with the Illyrians was at least as calamitous as the worst storm at sea, but if a few shipments yearly by some miracle made it through, then it was worth it. The adolescent Uri was also let in on the plan, being sworn to secrecy, because he was taking a big risk if the news ever reached the ears of the Elders or the other Jewish merchants. The trade must have worked, to some extent, because from then on Joseph slept much more soundly at night.

It occurred to Joseph around that time that what should be imported from China was not the silk itself, but the plant from which those incredibly gossamer fibers were made. He started to poke around, but the Arab and Greek merchants simply laughed at him; he was not the first to come up with the idea, but the Chinese guarded the secret of the plant so closely that no one had yet managed to see it, and anyone who tried to get too close was killed for their trouble. There was a tale that a mad Syrian merchant from Antioch had tried to make silk from the threads of spiders, but he had not succeeded and in utter misery he had slashed his wrists; he left two million drachmas for his fatherless children. Multiplied by four that gives how many sesterces? Eight million! Even in talenta that was a staggering amount of 333⅓.

The knight was satisfied with the quality of the silk and muslin delivered by Joseph, and he even had his slave girls dress in these lavish materials, putting on short muslin robes to whip up his desires and those of honored guests. There was also a rise in the number of progeny among the slaves. It struck Uri that his grandfather was not necessarily descended from a Jewish father; Tadeus, the grandpa who had emancipated himself from slavery, might have been a bastard child, a mamzer, illegitimate. It could even be, Uri shuddered, that I am a third cousin to Gaius Lucius; maybe that is why he is so pleasant to all his former slaves and their offspring, because he suspects they might be his own blood relatives. When he tried to raise the topic with his father, all Joseph said was merely, “Slave folk are well advised not to speculate too much.” I’m half-Latin, half-Persian, and that’s how I came to be Jewish, Uri thought when he was around ten; there’s even a bit of me that is Etruscan, because Gaius Lucius figured on having some Etruscan ancestry.

Wise are the peoples that, in slavery, trace descent through the female line, concluded Uri when he was a child. There were such peoples in Rome, but the Jews were not among them. Uri was still glad that patriarchy was in force: he was horrified by his ugly and grumpy mother, much as his father was, and he did not love her, even though she was occasionally overcome by fits of affection and would slobber hysterically all over him with kisses, even when he was a teenager. He loved only his father, who gave up on him because his eyesight went bad.

So, early in the morning Joseph and Uri set off from home for the patron’s place, in their right hands an empty sportula to be crammed full, and they held their peace. The daily ration in a sportula could be exchanged for money, with a basketful being worth twenty-five asses, but the clients of Gaius Lucius waived that opportunity because they were able to stuff a basket with food that was worth a good deal more. The knight’s clients were in fact the objects of general envy, with many applying to be taken on as protégés, since a client was free to have more than one patron, and they would hold out promises of all sorts of return services, but the eques would turn all offers away, saying that he had no wish for any other clients other than the progeny of slaves who had served his ancestors. Mostly people did not know quite what lay behind this, but Joseph did, and he told Uri once: Gaius Lucius was not born to his father’s wife, because she was barren, but to a German slave girl. It was a big secret that Gaius Lucius learned from the lips of his dying father, Lucius. It would have been possible for Lucius to adopt the child born to the slave girl, and the child could still have inherited everything, but he felt there was more security in keeping it a secret. Gaius Lucius, of course, could have reacted by hating the offspring of slaves, said Joseph; indeed that would have been the natural thing, but as it happened he did not respond that way. Uri was perplexed by what his father said, but even more by the way he said it; he must know something about souls. So there is still Germanic blood in me, Uri supposed; perhaps that is why I have a shock of sandy hair.

His father trudged somberly, grave thoughts clouding his brow. Judging from his red-ringed, gummy eyes, he also had gotten no sleep the previous night. Uri would have liked to express his gratitude; some tasteful words of thanks to his father would have been for arranging his journey to Jerusalem, but the words escaped him. He was afraid of traveling.

They passed wordlessly over the bridge. The island was basically uninhabited, because floods frequently inundated it, so it provided optimal conditions for trees, shrubs, and, above all, mosquitoes to proliferate luxuriantly. A few centuries before, a temple to Aesculapius had been built to the south and its ruins still existed, but one would hardly say any healing power radiated from them. Uri had often felt an urge to climb down the gig stone flags of the old steps in the middle of the bridge and pitch a small tent to live quietly within the dense screen of vegetation. He even imagined catching fish in the river and eating them, but he was forced to recognize that even there he would not be on his own: vagabonds would install themselves on the island whenever it was not flooded, and they were in the habit of greeting intruders with a sharp blade.

They walked wordlessly next to each other, northeastward, toward the murkily dawning, mysterious, true Rome, among the huge blocks of its theaters, baths, and palaces looming darkly among the palm trees on the other side.

There were still many who slept on the banks of the river, even in winter. Some were wrapped in blankets, some not. Compared to these indigent beggars, they, the inhabitants of the wretched Jewish world of Transtiberim, counted as well-to-do; at least they had roofs over their heads.

Uri would have shared that reflection as well with his father, but they were not in that sort of mood.

His father was morose as he walked, never looking at his son, beset by onerous worries. Uri suspected that it was on his account, but he found it incomprehensible: almost as if his father did not know intuitively that he was unsuitable for such a trip. Why would he want it, all the same? To do him a favor, the biggest he could do? Or was it his way of getting rid of him?

That was how they walked in the true, sleeping, auroral Rome, the two of them, father and son, making their way to their rich patron, the fat Gaius Lucius, who lived at the foot of Capitoline Hill. There was almost no one among the Jews of the world, except the lucky and rich Alexandrian Jews, who would not have envied them on their patron’s account.

By the time they reached Gaius Lucius’s house, all Rome was on its feet, with everybody dashing to greet whatever patron outranked them: equites hurrying to senators, even the senators themselves hurrying to reach the consul at his breakfast, and there were even panting clients who had followed their patrons to the Forum, to some court case or other hearing. The city woke from one minute to the next; it became noisy and dusty, even though the sun had barely risen above the horizon.

There were already a dozen or so clients hanging around the knight at the court. Joseph came to a stop at the entrance, with Uri halting beside him.

The tables in the new atrium, built not long ago, were laden with food, and there were twenty-two of them, all told, in the enormous space. Delicacies of every imaginable kind graced the tables. It was possible to eat standing up, or one could recline on carpets and eat that way; everyone was free to race around, push, and scramble to fill his sportula with food and drink. Musicians had already struck up at one end of the atrium.

Jews were forbidden from partaking of some of this bounty: they were not supposed to consume meat or wine in such a place, but they were able to stuff their baskets with fruits, berries, and smoked or raw fish. Joseph had taught Uri not to participate in the scrum; he might pick and choose from what was left, it did not matter if the sportula was not entirely filled.

Every other day, Joseph and Uri placed sufficient victuals in their baskets to supply the family with food for two days. This included the twenty-five asses’ worth of free food in each sportula, on top of which there was the sustenance received for the past five years from Uri’s tessera.

Then again, they had substantial expenses. The rent they paid for their house to the Jewish community was high, even though Uri’s grandfather had built it with his own bare hands, and had even paid off the plot of land where it stood, while Joseph had rebuilt it with his own bare hands after they returned from the expulsion. That tax was all the more curious since the ground on which Far Side was built never passed into Jewish hands; Rome’s administrators set greater value than any sky-high rent that could be raked in by word of command on being able to expel the newcomers any time they wished without having to worry about lawsuits. The real money was made by the Levite butchers who charged brazenly extortionate prices for supplying and preparing kosher meat, and by merchants who dealt in pure olive oil and wine.

Other patrons treated their clients haughtily, seating them at separate tables and serving them food and drink of lower quality than they themselves consumed. Gaius Lucius was wont to say that his clients should not flatter him to get better fare; flatter him if they wished, but even in their dreams they would not be able to imagine better fare.

Joseph and Uri would always set aside fruits and fish dishes that Sarah and the girls liked; they would only think of their own stomachs if there was space left in the baskets and anything left on the tables. Joseph in particular would never take anything that he truly relished: he was born a hedonist, and this is how he would mortify the flesh. He would overlook it if Uri placed a delicacy in the basket, but Uri would feel his gaze, and in more recent years he too chose the more mediocre foodstuffs for himself. He would look enviously at the non-Jewish clients savoring crabs, snails, and shellfish; unfortunately, any creature that had its bony frame on the outside and did not have scales or fins was ritually unclean in Jewish eyes.

Had Gaius Lucius not been so generous, Joseph and his family would have gone hungry.

A price had to be paid for that gift; every other morning they had to make conversation with the other clients and the slaves who had not yet been able to manumit themselves, or else — and this was most common — had not the slightest intention of purchasing their freedom. They were not held back from freedom by their long years of scrimping so much as by seeing that freedom was burdensome, irritating; it meant solitude and independent decision-making, and they preferred leaving their fate to the whims of their lords and masters. An emancipated slave did not automatically become a Roman citizen, a civis Romanus, merely a metoikos, a tolerated foreigner. Even a son did not acquire full rights of citizenship, including the tessera and its guarantee of gratis food rations; that was only granted to grandchildren. Uri sometimes imagined that he had been born a slave, and he caught himself thinking that this would not have been so bad; he would be given lighter work, reasonable for his poor eyesight, bad back, and bad legs — cleaning up or cooking, for instance — and in his spare time he could recline on a couch in some corner or other and read to his heart’s content. He would do everything that he did as a freedman, and yet better; he would no longer feel the pangs of conscience that whatever he was doing was not quite right — in other words, he was not making anything of his freedom.

It was no pleasure to chat with these narrow-minded simpletons, to nod approvingly at their opinions and hosanna their sagacity. One had to feign cordiality, lest they take umbrage, lest their jealousy and envy be provoked, because other clients and slaves, if nothing else, could do harm: whisper this or that into Gaius Lucius’s ear and suddenly they were no longer welcome at the grand man’s tables. Uri had seen that sort of thing more than once by now.

It was best to appear gray in this colorful mob — stupid and harmless. Much as back home, on Far Side, among the Jews.

Ever since Joseph had become the silk purveyor to the court of knight Gaius Lucius, other clients and the older slaves never missed an opportunity to pester him for tiny, insignificant, negligible sums of money, as a token of the years of servitude they had shared with his father, Thaddeus, the many, many years of shared suffering, and also in requital for purported support and assistance given many years ago. They too, like the Jews, supposed that Joseph was rolling in money, but keeping it quiet. Gaius Lucius himself was not loath to encourage that impression, as he would proudly announce that he had talked Joseph into importing silk for him, and within two weeks Joseph had done so. It was not true, but it sounded good and served to boost the prestige of Gaius Lucius that he had such a talented client.

Hitherto the silk had hindered jealous clients, and the even more jealous acquaintances among the slaves — friends — from being able to harm him: Gaius Lucius valued highly the services that Joseph had rendered him, and even more highly that he could boast to other dignitaries about being blessed with a Jewish client who had such business expertise. As long as Gaius Lucius took delight in this ridiculous tale, trotted out a hundred times and more by now, they could never put a knife in Joseph, and everyone was well aware of that; but the moment Gaius Lucius hinted that he was would wear linen or wool, starting tomorrow, there would be wretched times ahead for Joseph and his family.

Joseph withdrew into a corner and did his best to make himself as inconspicuous as possible; Uri stood beside him and, eyes blinking, stared into thin air. They were waiting until Gaius Lucius worked his way around to them. Uri would have made a start on filling his sportula, but his father growled; Uri stopped, and Joseph shook his head. Uri did not understand but shrugged his shoulders and waited beside him.

Accompanied by a gaggle of clients, the knight, freshly bathed, freshly shaven, and clothed in one of his marvelous silk togas of shifting color, smiled benevolently at them.

“Ah! My dear Joseph! Uri, my dear boy!” he declared, pulling them in to embrace them. He prided himself on knowing the names of all his clients without fail, and not just the office they filled but also the nickname by which they were called within the family, and he never had to resort to the help of nomenclatures — that is, slaves who prompted him with the names.

Unbearable wafts of rare salves swirled around them, with Uri picking out balsam among the scents, which he particularly loathed — not because it was a product from Judaea but simply because his eyes did not tolerate it.

His father departed from custom in announcing to the parting knight, “Sire, my son will be absent from your hearth for several months: he is setting off for Jerusalem tomorrow.”

Gaius Lucius swung around in surprise:

“Jerusalem, indeed? That is a long way off.”

“He is being sent there for the big feast,” his father carried on.

“That’s as it should be,” said Gaius Lucius, and turned away to move on.

“Sire!” Joseph addressed the knight again. Gaius Lucius, now astonished and fast running out of patience, turned back once more. “May I ask you, Sire, not to mention this to anyone else; my son’s trip is of a confidential nature. He is making the trip for the feast of Passover.”

“Yes, of course,” Gaius Lucius said distractedly, and it was clear that he had no idea what Passover was, and that he was dithering for a second before asking, but seeing the pack that was with him, he chose to go onward. Joseph’s request was superfluous: the knight had already forgotten the whole thing.

Uri kept quiet. He had inferred correctly that he was going to be a delegate, that’s what his father had said. His father also kept quiet, but then he spoke:

“Bring him a gift — most definitely! Some unusual specialty. Don’t forget!”

“I won’t,” said Uri.

Some people stepped up to Joseph. Uri respectfully greeted them, and on Joseph’s face appeared a smile of forced attentiveness, as always when he had to speak to people with whom he had no business. It started off with household gossip, with servants and clients earnestly expounding and Joseph smiling, nodding, and feigning interest. Uri could see from his face that he was very tense; it must be something serious, he supposed. What is he worried about, and why do I have to go to Jerusalem?

A plump, jovial, slit-eyed, bald man joined the group. Uri looked across at him with loathing: this was Pancharius, also one of Gaius Lucius’s freedmen, a slave-trader. Unwanted children — especially girls, who were worthless, but also a good numbers of boys — would be turned out of families by Romans, Italians, all kinds of peoples, with only the Germanic races and Jews forbidding this. That is how the unwanted progeny of wealthy citizens, equites, and senators became slaves and never learned about their true descent. Ever since peace reigned in the world, because Augustus had abandoned further invasions and set his sights on maintaining the imperium’s borders, a policy that Tiberius, his son-in-law and successor, had wisely adhered to, prisoners of vanquished peoples no longer flowed into Rome like Uri’s ancestors of old had; indeed, people were now even willing to pay parents money for surplus children.

Pancharius slapped Joseph familiarly on the shoulder, but before he could utter a word Joseph growled at Uri, hurried over to the nearest table, opened his sportula, and started to pack food into it. Uri followed his example. Joseph, atypically for him, crammed food indiscriminately into his sportula; Uri tried to be a bit more selective and went over to a nearby table to pick some fruit, but his father went after him and grabbed him by the arm.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Uri squeezed a couple of dried figs into the basket and followed his father.

The guards at the entrance gazed at them in astonishment; on such occasions no one left this early.

In the street Joseph almost broke into a run so that Uri, who had become used to idleness, had a hard job keeping up and panted. Joseph came to a halt, wheeled around to face his son and, staring into the distance past his ear, announced, “The day before yesterday, Agrippa sent for me and saw me. He told me he had heard that several years ago I scraped together a few hundred thousand sesterces. He asked me to scrape together for him two hundred thousand sesterces as a matter of urgency.”

Joseph fell silent; Uri, feeling dizzy, held his peace.

Agrippa!

Agrippa was a notorious individual, a grandson of Herod the Great, a favorite of the senators — he would invite them to his carousals where he would scatter gifts around. Indeed, the emperor was in the habit of having him as his guest on the island of Capri.

“So what did you say?” Uri queried.

“What could I say?”

“So what happened?”

“I scraped it together. I handed it over to him yesterday morning.”

The world went into a dizzy spin around Uri.

His father had run up an immense debt. Who could say when Agrippa would pay off the loan, and how much interest would have accumulated by then on the money that his father had borrowed. No doubt the loan that was given to Joseph would have a fancy high-interest tag attached to it; his father would be paying off the capital and the interest on it to the end of his days, and the family would do without.

“Agrippa asked the bankers for a loan, but they refused; after some deliberation they suggested me, and that’s when he sent me word. No one would dare have asked Agrippa to pay interest; they are too scared of him, but me they are not scared of.”

Uri shivered.

“How much is the interest?”

“Twenty percent.”

They might well have crewed the interest even higher, but even so it was a full eight percent above the officially allowed rate.

“I suppose it wouldn’t be possible,” Uri started off, “to ask the knight for the money…?”

“No!” Joseph groaned and threw a sad glance at his son. “A reputable man doesn’t do things like that.”

He ought to ask for a loan from Gaius Lucius at ten percent interest and use that to pay off the bankers, but his father had already taken the hint. Uri blushed: the idea must have crossed his father’s mind, he could guess what Uri had been intending to say: “And I’m disreputable! It’s Agrippa who’s disreputable, always in debt!”

They fell silent. The whole thing was unbelievable.

“I don’t know who your companions on the trip will be,” Joseph said, “but they’ll know about the loan, and they aren’t going to like you for it. Be prepared for the very worst.”

After a short pause, he added, “I can’t help it, son. I had no choice.”

Uri wanted to say that Agrippa should have been given what he wanted, otherwise he would have his revenge, but he did not even bother because he saw that his father was paying no attention to him.

Joseph sat on the ground and, hunched over, started nibbling on a date. Uri took a seat beside him, and it ran through his mind that his father must have asked Agrippa in return that his son be made a delegate. Agrippa must have sent a message to the Elders and they quickly forgot that someone from the same clan had gone to Jerusalem no more than five years before. Agrippa was a big wheel, and bankers feared him.

My father does love me, after all!

That encouraged him, so he dipped into his sportula and took out a fig.

Passersby did not so much as glance at them; two Jews sitting in the street, even if they were ripping each other apart, were not a cause of any interest. Yet something major had happened, Uri considered: his father had just reconciled with his son.

“Did he say when he would give it back?”

“It doesn’t matter. What’s more important for you is to figure out how you are going to persist.”

His father must be aware that he would rather stay home.

“Never let yourself become stuck-up,” Joseph said. “Even if you know better than others, keep quiet about it. Better for people to think that you are stupid. They hate you anyway, so don’t give them any reason to show it.”

It was the voice of old times, when he had still seen clearly, and his father had treated him as a friend.

They chewed silently.

“It’s a big thing, getting the chance to go to Jerusalem,” said Joseph. “That is something I shall certainly never do.”

Uri did not dare sleep, he was afraid he would not wake in time; but he must have dropped off anyway, because his father shook him awake.

His first thought was the tessera, which he must not forget to hand over to his father, since it could be transferred, but his father muttered that he had already passed it on the previous evening. Uri clutched at his neck: the tessera was not there. Then a memory drifted back of those hours before he had gone to bed: he had handed over the lead token as if he were making a last will and testament.

As he tugged on his loincloth under his tunic in the dark, the thought running through his head was that the tessera was worth more without him than with him.

His father draped his gown over him. Uri protested, but his father squeezed his shoulder. It was a seamless, rectangular outer garment of cloth with a blue braided tassel dangling in approved fashion at each of the four corners. Uri had not owned a gown before; Joseph would get another for himself. If he could spare the money.

Outside, they dipped their feet in the brass bowl, dried them, splashed a bit of water onto themselves, or rather onto their clothes, then, bowing to the southeast, recited a Sh’ma. Uri did not take the teffilin off his forehead and set it back on the ground, but wound it around his left hand, after which Joseph placed his right hand on Uri’s head by way of a blessing. They stood like that for a moment and then Joseph went back in the house and pulled back the curtain over the entrance. Uri looked at the curtain, touched the mezuzah affixed to the door post; tears sprang into his eyes, but he quickly turned away and set off.

I am going to Jerusalem, after all. To Him in His Land.

He tried to be happy.

There were five standing in front of old Simeon’s house; they were purple in the moonlight. Barely had Uri reached them when they were joined by a seventh.

“I will be your leader,” said a tall, middle-aged man. “Matthew’s my name. I live in Ostia. To date I have taken five delegations to Jerusalem. You must do whatever I tell you to.”

The six of them murmured consent.

Matthew then handed out the packages lying by the house. He said this was the community’s gift and reminded them emphatically that anything durable would have to be given back on their return, so they should take care. The cloth sacks were not large or especially heavy. Uri tapped his and felt some sort of jug, then rounder forms, fruit perhaps, and a matzo biscuit cracked between his fingers.

“I have the money for travel expenses,” Matthew announced. “I’ll be the one who pays at the inns, at customs, for wagons, and for the ship. When we get back, I shall have to account for everything, and anything that is left, I shall have to hand back.”

It was on the tip of Uri’s tongue to ask who would be carrying the loads of money that had been collected by the Jews of Rome for the feast, and to whom they’d be delivered, but he swallowed the question. The others did not ask either.

Maybe they do not know quite how much money they were delivering, but without any doubt it was a huge fortune. Worth slaughtering them for.

Matthew slung his sack on his back and set off. The rest picked up their luggage and followed.

They went out through the gate; the two guards blinked sleepily after them before locking the gate again.

Beside him strong, seasoned men stepped with buoyant strides. He was the youngest, the least worthy, the weakest. How long would his legs hold up?

Being a lefty, he carried his sack on his right shoulder, bouncing it up from time to time to get a sense of its weight and to guess whether it was him carrying the money. It would have to come to hundreds of talenta, and that would have to weigh a great deal. His sack was not heavy, though, so he could not be carrying it.

Were they going to take turns?

Had it been divided up between them?

Lifting his sack, he estimated that it could not weigh more than thirty Roman libra — twenty pounds, say. Sixty to seventy-five pounds was the weight of the food that he and his father used to lug back home as the ration issued on his tessera. He wondered how many sesterces might fit into a sack, or rather how many denarii, or silver pennies, each of which was worth four sesterces? Say they were carrying a total of twenty thousand denarii between the seven of them, which would mean that he was perhaps carrying one seventh of that. One denarius would weigh ⅟84 of a libra, and his sack did not weigh more than twenty or twenty-eight pounds. That meant he might be carrying two and a half to three thousand denarii.

But where would that be?

There had to be some tried-and-true method, Uri supposed, and he marched on, completely immersed in his calculations. They were surely not making a futile trip in this, the 3,760th year anno mundi, from the creation of the world.

Up till then, the offering had always reached Jerusalem, for even when it was robbed, it was collected anew and delivered later. It had gone this way for ninety-eight years, since the first Jews landed up in Rome; a sacrifice was supposedly sent, in accordance with tradition, already in the first year, and that was surely true. It must have been a small sum, no more than a few hundred asses altogether, but it was saved at the expense of their stomachs, collected, and sent off. They themselves were unable to go: their ears were pierced and they lived their life in chains, but non-Jews could be persuaded to take it — for money. They paid and sent the money, and have every year since then. More and more, as things began to take a turn for the better for the Jews in Rome, and for a fair amount of time, they had been carrying the money themselves, with official permission.

By now they were walking over into the true Rome. Uri did not turn around to glance at the Jewish quarter on the far side, since all he would have seen anyway was fuzzy blotches.

At the Circus Maximus they swung southward. These were all familiar streets; Uri would never have imagined the day would come that he would pass that way in such an official capacity.

They tramped silently, like people who were on an important mission.

They left Rome by the Porta Capena. Wagons laden with produce were by then already creaking their way in toward the markets.

They came to a halt at the beginning of the Appian Way, at the Jewish house of prayer near the cemetery.

“Let’s take a rest,” Matthew said. “Anyone who wants breakfast may eat.”

“May we open the sacks now?” one man asked. Uri took a squint: he was a strong man with a thick, black beard.

“They are yours,” Matthew said. “A present from the community.”

Uri nibbled on a matzo; that was his favorite, and some days that was all he ate, because matzos were able to sop up the acid that would well up in his stomach.

“Let’s move off now!” asserted a thickset man.

“Our goal is not to walk ourselves into the ground,” said Matthew. “We shall have plenty of chances to walk. Just wait.”

They were silent and ate.

“Where shall we get water?” asked the thickset man.

“There will be water everywhere we stop,” said Matthew. “Wine as well.”

The day was dawning. More and more wagons appeared in the street.

Along the Appian Way came an empty wagon with two oxen in harness. Matthew got to his feet and waved; the wagon stopped.

Matthew climbed on next to the driver at the front; the other six clambered onto the back. The wagon turned and set off in a southerly direction.

The beating of Uri’s heart began to slacken when he wedged his sack under his back. Everybody was silent, and Uri did not dare give the once-over to the companions with whom he would be confined for months on the long journey. He gazed at the countryside; he could see the roadside cypresses fairly clearly but not buildings and plants that were more than 100 or 150 paces away. For him they were a blur of greenish, yellowish, and brownish blots, and the sky above, as it was February, a clear blue. Uri peered through narrow eyes, more with the left one because he saw better through that, using the right eye more for reading and inspecting small objects.

They jolted along on the wagon without a word. Uri regained his composure; the trip might be tedious and without incident, and if his companions were not talkative and did not pester him unnecessarily, he might be able to put up with them. The signs suggested that they too were awed to take part in this sacrosanct journey. Uri felt a twinge of conscience: his father had paid out two hundred thousand sesterces so he could jolt along on this wagon now, and even so, he was not truly glad. He made up his mind that he was going to be glad.

It was hard to control his outrage when he realized that his father had loaned Agrippa roughly two and a half times as much money as the total offering of Rome’s Jews that they were bringing to Jerusalem.

Better not to think about it.

He jolted along on the wagon and became sleepy.

He had the sense of being enclosed in a husk: nearby things that he could readily see were, so to speak, pressed onto his body by a fabric of colored blotches, and because there was nothing of interest in the visible world, he was in the end in the grip of a hazy trust that there would be an opportunity in the course of the long journey to reflect as he did in his little recess back at home, although without having his treasured scrolls at hand, but then the bulk of those were already committed to memory. Beyond the cage of the visible world, inside the space of these thoughts, he was filled with a sense of the security that slaves feel: he had no cares for anything, his companions would take care of him and defend him, and it seemed that he would not even be forced to chitchat with them, which was something he detested.

After all, he was the exception, he had done nothing to deserve the distinction; his companions had no doubt all done something that merited membership in the official festive delegation to Jerusalem, in adherence to the rotation principle of the Elders, in consultation with the archisynagogoses of the individual assemblies and taking their recommendations on board, or else modifying them — who could know exactly what went on in the rare sessions of the Roman Sanhedrin — had decided on these individuals, obviously with good reason; better that he spoke with them as little as possible so that his own unsuitability, both spiritual and physical, should not come too soon to light.

As Uri jolted along on the wagon with his taciturn companions, staring at the trees as they slowly retreated (the oxen pulled the wagon no faster than they would have been able to walk), and as these trees assumed ever more uncertain outlines in the distance, it dawned on him that even after his eyesight had deteriorated he had still been able to move around confidently in the true Rome and also in the labyrinthine, interconnecting inner yard of Far Side, because he could project memorized images onto the present so that he knew exactly what was where, and he only got confused in the real Rome if he was unable to find a building that had once stood but had burned down or been dismantled and another built in its place. In those cases, he would walk around the place a number of times to make a mental note of it. Now, though, these were all new places of which he had no memories or any notion, and he had to reach the sad conclusion that, indeed, someone else ought to have been sent on this big journey instead. He was not even going to see the splendor of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, not even if he was allowed to get close to it, to be sure, not even if he was allowed to stand directly beside the altar stone that is said to be situated right in front of the Temple. To be allowed close to the altar is a huge blessing; the scrimmage is fierce, and only the true elect are admitted into the small space. They might admit a delegation from Rome, perhaps, but even then maybe only the leader.

But then if I have ended up in this group, transporting money to Jerusalem, let me see that famous altar and the wondrous Temple from close to, he thought with an effort, because he did not suppose that the prospect of being able to see the Temple and the altar would fill him with any joy. However little he wanted to see, it crossed his mind that it was still possible to turn back.

Just get off the wagon and start off northward, toward Rome. It was not far. Or else he could wait for the night and take off when the others were asleep, not returning to Rome but seeking out a town and selling himself into slavery (that sort of thing was not uncommon), and, if he was in luck, even denying being a Jew. After all, they did not necessarily check if slaves had circumcised penises.

He shuddered at such thoughts, and it occurred to him that similar thoughts had already crossed his mind. He prayed silently that something utterly different should come to mind.

What came to mind was that he held Rome dearer than he would ever have thought. He was assailed by homesickness even though they were not yet far away. The future horrified him; with every hour, every day, he would be more distant from his home.

Over there, in the true Rome, exteriors were the most important; the fools attached everything to appearances, not to the vital. That would be what would bring them down; the Creator was not going to tolerate the intolerable to the end of time. But at least Uri felt that over there, in the true Rome, he was treated as an adult.

He could gaze at all the peoples that flocked to Rome from all parts of the world, slink right up close to give them a thorough lookover, and get close enough to know how their breath smells. There was every kind of man from ebony black through deep and light yellow to milk-white, costume of every kind; in certain squares and alleys there was a massive throng, an incredible bustle, and there were buildings and statues on the grand scale. Uri looked everything over from very close up to see it well, he even sniffed at the stonework and felt all over the walls, strolling around evenly and methodically, until he had registered in his head all of Rome, that enormous, magical city of one million people, along with all its smells and every tiny, barely palpable protrusion.

He knew the alleys where it was worth looking up every second or third step because it was likely that scraps or other filth would be tossed out onto the heads of those below; he knew which alleys cart drivers liked to careen, flattening passersby; he knew where brothels flourished and passersby might be knifed for no particular reason. There was one street in the Saepta, near where Roman citizens voted in the Campus Martius, that he never got to visit in the course of his rambles, because once upon a time an Illyrian giant, strong as an ox and in a quarrelsome mood, had unexpectedly attacked and almost strangled him. Uri was lucky that a military tribune happened to be going that way with his escort, and they had rescued him.

In the real Rome, his mongrel character faded into insignificance among the many hundreds of thousands of freakish people. At first sight he did not even look to be a mongrel; there were large numbers of people who were even more of a mess — sick, maimed, ulcerated, wounded, veteran legionnaires, and useless, cast-off slaves with missing limbs, wailing and begging for alms at every turn. He became acquainted with that bank of the Tiber and was witness to many things that his Jewish contemporaries were denied because, being intact, they were preoccupied with life on Far Side and did not have time to wander around in the true Rome. He, however, could wander; his father never asked what he was doing with his time, nor did anyone else.

Being a Roman citizen with full rights, he was entitled to enter into conversation with all sorts of people in the true Rome, and he tried to speak with everybody in their own mother tongue. These were wonderful language lessons, and one did not even have to pay for them. Over there, he thrived, shone, played roles, bluffed; he was just one of Rome’s malingering plebeians. Back home, withdrawn in his shack, he was a pariah among the Jews because of his poor eyesight, his bad legs and back, not fit for physical labor. Among Jews he was nobody, yet in the true Rome he was a man of equal rank to whom, should he speak, people would listen just like anyone else, and they would pay as little notice to his opinion as they did anyone else’s. At home, he did not dare offer an opinion about anything; over there, however, he chattered, passed judgments, held forth and butted in on any conversation. He had a Jewish self, and he acquired a Roman self; both sides would have been amazed to see him in the other milieu. But that they did not see.

He never denied, if asked, that he was Jewish, but nothing was made of it. “A Jew’s just like everybody else, only crazier” was the general, patronizing view of atheistic Jews and their unfounded arrogance that placed their one god above all the other gods. There was nothing hostile in that view; it was more disdainful indulgence, something that amused others. In this enormous city, citizens had gotten used to a great variety of peoples who found ways to get by in the world, and every one of them, without exception, was in Rome, with its comic superstitions and ludicrous customs. Where lanky Germanic people who barely spoke broken Latin were the emperor’s best Praetorian Guards; where philosophers descending from everywhere discoursed only in Greek, not Latin; where splendid delegations arrived from all parts of the world; where countless deposed kings were preparing to claim their throne and loafed around with their populous families; where a statue of the gods of every conquered people stood in the Forum — all except the Jewish God, the Unrepresentable One. A single Roman Jew with full civil rights counted little and raised no passions.

The only thing Uri was ashamed about was the begging of the grubby, bare-footed Jewish children running around the true Rome in gangs of four and five. The children were coached by adults — former beggar children themselves, well schooled in the psychology of prospective donors — in what they should say in Latin and Greek, how to surround a wealthy gentleman or lady and plead aggressively, and how to look even more destitute than they were. These adults would then collect the day’s take from the children. Any upstanding Jew was appalled by the practice, but the Elders did not forbid it, with some no doubt raking off a share of the income; names were flung around, often baselessly, of those who supposedly profited from the children.

When it became clear that Uri had bad eyesight, Joseph had also been approached to have his son tail after the indigent children as an overseer, so that they would not hide away the money that they had begged, but his father had chased them out of the house with cries of outrage. Uri knew precisely which of the idle Jews over there were keeping an eye on the gangs of beggar children. That was the one time he gave thanks for his bad eyesight, because when the Elders called his father in on account of his scandalous behavior, he could invoke his son’s shortsightedness and say that he had been so enraged by the suggestion because he thought they were poking fun of a well-known defect. On that occasion, no punishment had been inflicted on Joseph.

Maybe being a boss to children back home in Rome was better than being jolted along toward the unknown, he thought to himself now.

He watched Matthew’s back at length as he sat beside the wagoner. He was a sturdy, broad-shouldered man of middle age with sharp, sunburned features, thick, light-brown hair, and blue eyes, as Uri had already noticed at daybreak. It must be good to be strong like him, accustomed to traveling.

The silence must have been too protracted for Matthew’s taste, as he partly swung around and started speaking.

He begged forgiveness for rudely interrupting his companions’ sacred meditations, but he felt it was incumbent on him, as their leader, to give a short account of his life and therefore their commander, as it were, on this journey. It was a matter of regret that the delegation to Jerusalem from the community of Jewish congregations was not being led by a man of Roman citizenship; he was merely a citizen of the Italian provinces, but the Elders had found that this was the safe solution, and up till now that had in fact been so: on the occasions he had led the journey, no harm had come to them.

He lived in Ostia, as he had said before. He was proud of the town, and at least two thousand out of a population of approximately twenty thousand were Jewish. They had a house of prayer and a public bath next door, everything they needed, and there were also private baths in or next to the houses of the richer citizens.

There were a great variety of peoples living in this important seaport, the importance of which would only grow; in it there was a sanctuary to Isis and a sanctuary to the renowned Magna Mater, to Cybele, mother of the gods, and to many other Eastern deities, like Mithras, what would be expected in a port town. But it was his fervent hope that a Jewish house of prayer would eventually be built that people from distant lands would flock to admire.

The Latini in Ostia had exquisite baths, a magnificent stadium, an amphitheater that held four thousand spectators, a substantial records office, the houses of the wealthier citizens, some of the houses of Jews also, had hypocaust heating systems, and some of these were on two floors, provided with an ample balcony where it was possible to sit outside in the evening. He did not say it to boast, but his house was one of them; it had been completed not even six months ago; it is true that it was situated outside the town walls. On the sea coast to the southeast of the town itself that extramural territory — and incidentally he had not had to pay the municipal administration for it, or to be more exact, the land did not belong to the town, but he had asked for a written document, which he received, to the effect that he was permitted to build on it — would be worth something one day, perhaps even more than a plot inside the town. Previously he had lived in a tenement with his children, but they had outgrown the two rooms of that apartment and, over his wife’s protestations, he had put all the money he had saved into this villa; so far no one had attacked the house or robbed it. Not far from the house were two mausoleums and the Bona Dea sanctuary, which were likewise outside the Porta Marina. The new mausoleum had been consecrated not long before, but he had personally known the individual to whom it had been erected, the famed C. Cartilius Poplicola, slayer of the pirates who had once tried to ransack all the ships in the harbor but had all come to a bad end. Poplicola, the new mausoleum’s occupant who had passed away to an eternal peace, had been a dignified old man in his final years, who had loved company and threw large banquets; he, Matthew, had visited him on two occasions and could also say that both times Poplicola had stroked his face with his hand because in the twilight of his years he had gone completely blind.

Uri shuddered.

Ostia’s chief attraction, Matthew continued, was its public toilet, the forica, with its dozens of marble seats ornamented with statues and mural mosaics. Lots of people took shits there at any given time, all sorts of people, side by side and opposite one another, drinking, eating, chatting, making jokes, reading out loudly to each other. It was a pretty place from the outside too; if ever they went that way they should seek it out, because as far as he was aware there was no facility like it in Rome.

His wife, a good-natured soul, had given him six children. Three of the four sons had by now grown up and were sailing on ships. He himself was now in his second decade on active duty in the Jewish fleet, initially as a sailor, later as captain, and he was used to issuing orders, which is why he asked for his companions to excuse him in advance for any occasional curtness or harshness in his dealings with them; that was not due to lack of respect, merely his mind, toughened by necessity, because in the end an officer could not feel compassion if he had to direct a galley of rowing slaves. He had shipped goods most frequently to Alexandria, or else from Alexandria to Caesarea and later, to avoid paying excise in Alexandria and Egypt, he had sailed with Judaean produce straight from Caesarea to Ostia; many times he had freighted from Alexandria to Ostia and back, and sometimes also found himself going to the Greek islands as well.

Given that he had a thorough knowledge of the hazards of the port of Ostia, the high command of the Jewish fleet had asked him to settle there for good as the agent, pilot, and warehouseman for the Jewish fleet. Once he had agreed, he had taken up the posting with the speedy consent of the Roman authorities. As a person who had already settled in Ostia many, many years before, he had instantly been granted Italian citizenship and had not even had to pay for it.

Anyway, this now was the fifth time that he had led a delegation to Jerusalem, and he felt it necessary to give them a few pieces of information.

The Torah scroll was in his possession.

He had a letter with the seal of the municipal administration in his possession to the effect that he, Matthew, citizen of Ostia, and five companions were traveling on an important mission, and the Roman powers-that-be were obliged to assist and support him and his companions wherever they were.

At this point he turned to Uri and explained reluctantly that the document did not speak of six companions because Gaius Theodorus had only been added to the delegation at the last moment and there had not been time to get the safe-conduct rewritten, not that this would cause any problems, he was quite sure of that; excise men would simply be glad that there was an extra traveler to charge for. On occasions like this, they would ask for extra money, of course, though it was usually possible to haggle that down a bit.

Uri felt a numbing chill in the region of his stomach, but he forced a smile to his lips and nodded.

He was also in possession, Matthew continued, of the money that the Elders had voted to cover the costs of the delegation; that had been the case with each of his trips, and as a rule it had been spent down to the last penny; his accounts for the amount had hitherto been accepted without question, even though the Elders were somehow amazingly well informed how much things cost outside Rome.

The route, he went on, had been properly prepared. Safe places where they would be given quarters had been arranged. They would be spending their nights alternately at private houses and at hostelries as long as they were on Italian soil, though on occasion it might be outdoors, under the open sky, but only if weather permitted; it was not one of their aims to drag themselves in sickness to Jerusalem. They would land in Sicily at Messina — or Messana, as the Romans called it — then, after another dry-land journey, they would set sail from the port of Siracusa for Caesarea, near the Greek islands, whence they would take the military road to Jerusalem. Experience had shown that this was the safest and the second-shortest course, and if nothing cropped up en route, they might even cover it in as little as six weeks, but, just to be on the safe side, they always allowed an extra two weeks over and above that. One of those weeks was made up of Sabbaths, of course, when they would not be doing any traveling; the route was so devised that they would be spending the Sabbaths, wherever possible, with Jewish families who welcomed delegations and would be glad to celebrate with them.

The question might be raised, he added, why they would not be traveling by sea from Ostia to Caesarea, since that would be the simplest route and even quicker than he had outlined, if the wind was favorable, and in the spring it did tend to be favorable indeed. Well, the thing was that the boats that plied directly between Ostia and Judaea were overloaded with produce and were not really in a position to carry passengers as well, or else they were only willing to do so at sky-high prices, despite being well aware of the importance of this delegation, such that it wasn’t worth it to the Roman community. From Ostia it was possible to travel with a Greek or Latin boat to Alexandria, and from there by a Jewish ship to Judaea, but then there was a bigger risk of something untoward happening to them, and that way excise would have to be paid at Alexandria, an extortionate amount, and even then there was no guarantee that they would not be held up in the harbor for days or possibly weeks.

Finally, he expressed his conviction that it would be a good trip, and he gave his thanks to the Creator for being able to travel with such excellent companions, whom the Elders had plainly selected for this exalted task not without good reason.

Uri blushed.

Now that Matthew had finished his introduction, the others livened up and plied him with many questions.

First, a thickset man inquired as to whether Jews also frequented the public privy. On receiving an affirmative response, he became indignant at the sacrilege: only the Creator had the right to see his elect naked or in a shameful position, and a Jew shitting was absolutely no concern of non-Jews. Neither Matthew nor the others saw fit to respond to these qualms. The thickset man shook his head and growled a profanity. Uri could not even begin to imagine what his occupation might be.

Many of the questions pertained to the harbor at Ostia, with the strong, black-bearded man showing the most interest in it. Matthew said that the harbor, at the mouth of the Tiber, lay in an unfortunate position, exposed to the prevailing western winds, and the shore was not suitable to allow the bigger boats to take shelter during storms. That was a problem that had not existed in previous centuries, when boats were smaller and shallower, but nowadays they were so big that the port’s sole advantage was its proximity to Rome, no more than twenty miles. Deep-drafted craft were no longer able to pass up the Tiber; everything had to be shipped onto small vessels, which were tossed around dangerously by the waves, so that a great many accidents occurred as a result of smaller boats smashing against the sides of the big ships. The southward orientation of Puteoli’s harbor, in a gulf protected from the winds, was undoubtedly more fortunate, but he was quite certain that Ostia, once its harbor was rebuilt, would best Puteoli simply because it was much closer to Rome.

He had seen plans for how the harbor ought to be rebuilt, how the sea bottom should be excavated, what kinds of breakwaters should be constructed and where they should be located in the coastal waters, but these would be very costly operations and, in his view, the emperor, to whom the plans had been shown, was unlikely to commit himself to them. Private entrepreneurs would not finance that sort of work, as the payoff was too long-term — one or two generations, some had calculated — so the Roman state would have to put up the money. The plans would come to nothing until the day a very big storm broke up the entire fleet that were anchored off the harbor entrance, and they went down, together with their cargoes of grain, bringing Rome to the brink of starvation. Then they would get serious about rebuilding the harbor, in his view, but only then. True, he added with a laugh, it was in his interest that the harbor was not modernized, because there would be a call for experienced pilots only; he made his living from the deficiencies of Ostia’s harbor.

The black-bearded man asked if those reconstruction plans were accessible somewhere. Matthew said that he had seen them in the home of a Latin acquaintance of his, who had them on loan from the local public records office.

A soft question was then raised as to whether the wagoner was deaf, at which Matthew laughed before replying: No way! A deaf cart-driver cost a lot, with the wealthy paying as much as twenty thousand sesterces for one, but since drivers had to be relieved along the way, it would be quite impossible to engage that many deaf cart-drivers. But they should feel free to talk aloud in his presence, and that of those who would follow, because the cart-drivers were hardly in a position to pass on whatever information they had gleaned to the relieving cart-driver as they did not have enough time: they had to turn back immediately.

The conversation was conducted in Greek, and the delegation had every reason to suppose that the wagoner knew at least a smattering of Greek, but he did not react to this exchange in any way and instead dozed on the box.

It did occur to Uri that maybe it was not they who were carrying the sacrificial money but another group, and by another route, less conspicuous than them; they were nothing more than bait. Because it was written all over them that they were Jews — not so much their clothing but because they were not permitted to shave, unlike Romans, who since the end of the republic had forsaken beards so that hordes of plebeians and slaves made a living out of barbering.

Another question was raised as to whether the leader was carrying any object that qualified as a weapon. Matthew shook his head no. Experience had shown that it was more hazardous to travel with a weapon than without. “Those that take the sword shall perish with the sword,” Matthew quoted the proverb, adding that anyone who traveled with an armed escort was unnecessarily inviting attention from evil-minded parties.

By that point they had covered a good few miles along the Appian Way, on which military sentries were posted every three miles — not that there was any need for them, as there had been no war on Italian soil since the time of Hannibal, but it did no harm if everybody saw that in Rome a military dictatorship held sway. Pedestrians, soldiers, and carters showed up on the road every now and then, but they did not give so much as a glance at a wagon loaded with Jews. Uri marveled at how well the road was built; considering that they were plodding along on a wagon drawn by oxen, he might even have been able to read, had he brought any scrolls with him. He regretted that he had not thought of that in the excitement, but then he realized that the others would take it the wrong way if he were to immerse himself in reading; they might well suppose that he held them in contempt and sought conversation only with a person who was cleverer than they were — the author.

He had never been outside Rome before, and the endless strip of the Appian Way fascinated him. The others must have been feeling much the same, because one of them — Iustus was his name, he had introduced himself — remarked that his father, when he had been in slavery as a youngster, had worked in road gangs and never tired of declaring what painstaking work they had carried out. Uri squinted at him through narrowed eyes, and it struck him that this was someone he already knew by sight: he belonged to the same congregation. He was a small, weedy, quarrelsome person, uneducated and limited. One did not need much culture to be a road-maker; it was the sort of trade that strapping young guys went in for, but plainly Iustus had been driven to it because he was stupid. Maybe he was employed as a gang leader or purchasing agent. I’m at least as fit for the journey as him, Uri thought to himself with relief. Then he was struck by the unpleasant thought that Iustus might very well be acquainted with Joseph and, should the occasion arise over the coming days, might take the chance to spread gossip about him to the others.

Iustus related that a road would first be marked out by spade in accordance with the surveyors’ directions: the earth would be tamped down, a trench would be dug on both the right- and left-hand sides to drain the rain, because if the rain froze, it would crack the road; then the surface would be covered with two layers of stone flags, the gaps being filled with a material they called cement, which was composed of three parts gravel and one part lime mortar. The best limestone comes from Puteoli, but it did not always work out; gravel is sprinkled evenly on the flags — something to which special attention is paid — then a further layer of flags is laid on top of that, with the gaps filled with gravel, all of it stuffed down in such a way that it should have a little camber to both left and right, again to ensure that the rain runs off. The flagstones are hacked out by slaves in the quarries and transported from there ready for use, stacked on top of each other.

“Where is this Puteoli?” the black-beard queried.

“Off to the south,” said Iustus. “It’s a big port, one hundred and forty-three stadia from Rome.”

“We won’t be stopping,” said Matthew, “but we’ll be passing by.”

Iustus went on to relate that his father had put on a tremendous amount of muscle with the road construction, but there came a time when he badly strained his back while working and from then on, for the rest of his days, he was only able to get around with a stick. As his master could not sell him, he let him emancipate himself inexpensively. “So, my father sired me with his stick,” declared Iustus, in rather poor taste.

If it was only Iustus’s father who gained his freedom, then he cannot be a Roman citizen himself, Uri figured. Were all the rest citizens? he wondered. Not that the authorities were particularly interested which people left Rome for Jerusalem, but he was still somewhat comforted by the thought that there was someone in the delegation who was legally of lesser worth than himself.

Going south, they stopped at a hostelry, not so much to eat as to have a drink, wash their feet, and pray. A Jewish male, wherever he might be, had to wash his hands and feet and pray three times a day. Matthew brought out a big brass bowl from the inn, drew water into it from the well, then set the bowl on the ground. His companions stretched their backs, massaged their feet, and one by one followed Matthew in stepping to the bowl, fully clothed, dabbling hands and feet in the water, then stepping out. Uri, being the youngest, went last and so, by way of ritually washing himself, dabbled in everyone else’s filth. They then turned to the southeast and, after affixing the tefillin, a leather box with straps attached and a portion of the Pentateuch inside on rolled-up parchment, to the forehead or left arm, they prayed for a while with repeated bowing. Matthew emptied a cupful of fresh water into their jugs, and they drank water; they each had a bulky jug, one of those crudely finished articles sold by the dozen and surprisingly heavy given how little water they held. Uri had no difficulty imagining himself drinking from something a bit more genteel. Matthew took the brass bowl back and climbed up onto the box while they clambered onto the wagon, stuffed the phylacteries and jugs back into their sacks, and set off again.

Uri broke off a piece of matzo and started to chew it, because the middle of his chest had started to hurt, and a bit of matzo was always good for that. Now even Matthew held his peace, maybe even dozed off, but Uri was ruminating on whether he too should introduce himself, and he could not make out why, after Matthew had introduced himself, his other companions, with one exception, had not introduced themselves in turn, as would have been proper. Or had the Elders already told Matthew about the people who were traveling with him? If so, what could they have said about Uri? He feared that his companions knew one another, even though they had given no sign of it, but they had plenty of time to get acquainted even if they belonged to different congregations, they were grown-up working men after all, but they did not know him, by sight at most; they probably did not even know that he was Joseph’s son. Well, Iustus would tell them, and no doubt ply them with baseless lies.

He regretted that his father had not gone with him to the meeting-place and helped him get acquainted with his companions. Could it have been his father’s way of showing that he trusted him and was treating him as an adult, or on the contrary, conveying that his fate was of no interest? But then, if the latter were the case, he would not have given him all that advice, and he would not have wakened him at dawn, even before it had started to get light. It occurred to Uri that this had been the second night running his father had been sleepless, and he felt a twinge of remorse; his own nocturnal torments did not cross his mind.

His head drooping, he jolted on until he suddenly awoke to the fact that they had stopped. Matthew jumped down freshly and happily.

“I do love traveling in February,” he declared. “It’s still possible to get around by daylight, unlike the journeys to the other feasts. In the summer months, you are guaranteed to fry.”

They had turned in to a hostelry, where they greeted Matthew as a familiar figure. They rinsed hands and feet in a brass bowl, prayed again, then sat down at a long table, and before long were served with food: freshly baked fish, with bread and wine. The innkeeper was Latinian, but he knew precisely what he could serve to Jews: Uri ate the fish and the bread, but he offered the wine to the others because he only drank water. That statement was received with silence, though nothing insulting had been intended. Matthew, picking up on the sudden tension, took the wine from him with thanks and downed it.

Uri had figured they would be spending the night at the hostelry, but that was not what happened: their sacks on the ox-drawn wagon were shifted onto an ass-drawn trap, and after relieving themselves and praying anew, they set off on foot, still headed south. Matthew drove the ass while walking beside the trap; the others dawdled along in its wake.

Before long, Uri’s legs began to hurt, and he carried on with clenched teeth. The basalt rocks of the highway felt atrociously hard and unyielding. He had no desire to lose touch with the others, who, it seemed, were used to physical burdens and marched along effortlessly, but all the same he fell a few paces behind. He was wrapped up in his own cares and it was only after a fair amount of time had elapsed that he noticed his companions, in knots of two or three, had stepped up to Matthew at the front and were engaging in quiet conversations with him. When this happened a third time, he noticed that they were casting sly looks his way after falling back slightly from Matthew. He quickened his pace, even though both his feet were now hurting and his back was aching too. They are whispering about me, he thought.

He made an effort to reduce the pain and throbbing to a dull tingling, looking up to the sky where instead of shining stars he saw only dim, overlapping, gleaming circles and the moon, a larger and broader patch than in his boyhood days, with an indefinite, blurred outline, and he made a silent supplication to his Creator, asking him what his plan had been in leading him on this journey. Why did you not send someone else on this dark, deserted road, my Lord?

Matthew suddenly stopped, handed the traces over to Iustus and waited for Uri.

“Are you still up to it?” he asked.

“I can take it,” Uri said.

“We’ll go on a bit more before we call it a day and get some sleep.”

“I can take it,” Uri said.

They carried on without a word, Matthew treading by his side.

“I don’t want to offend you,” Matthew said finally, “but no one can figure out why your family picked you for this journey.”

“I don’t know either,” said Uri.

“Never mind,” said Matthew. “You’ll get stronger along the way.”

“No doubt,” said Uri.

They walked on.

Uri noticed that three or four of his companions were treading closer than they had been before. He thought it was a good opportunity to introduce himself. Speaking as if he were only seeking to inform, he reported that he was the son of the merchant Joseph, his mother was named Sarah, and he had two younger sisters; he did not know what else he could say about himself.

“So, your father,” the black-beard started, “he’s the one who delivers silk to Agrippa, too, is that right?”

That disconcerted Uri even more.

“I don’t know; I have no knowledge of my father’s business affairs.”

That assertion was met with a reproachful growl. That was not the answer he was supposed to give; he should have been working for his father long before now.

“I know that is not how it ought to be,” he pleaded, “but my eyesight’s not good…”

“Trading doesn’t require good eyes, only a brain,” the thickset one declared.

That was true but no comfort to Uri.

“So you know nothing about your father’s affairs,” Matthew summed up.

He may simply have been trying to end an unproductive and embarrassing conversation, but Uri sensed in his words a note of scorn, and he was anxious to make a good impression on such a strong and determined man.

“What I do know is that my father raised a lot of money for Agrippa.”

That announcement was received in silence. Uri gathered that everybody knew about the loan, probably more than he did.

“And so,” said black-beard, “that is why Agrippa persuaded the Elders to let you come with us?”

Uri said nothing. He could not be blamed for this unsolicited, awkward privilege. They probably think we are currying favor with Agrippa, he thought, and that we pay off everybody, even though we are penniless — but then no one would believe that.

“I have never seen Agrippa,” he said bitterly, “but perhaps he heard from someone that I know a lot of languages.”

As soon as he said it he realized that he had made an even bigger mistake than before. Right at the start of the journey, he had already committed the one error that his father had warned him against: flaunting his knowledge when he should have been keeping quiet about it.

The thickset one seized the opportunity. “Let’s see now. Which languages do you speak?”

There was no going back, so Uri reeled them off. There was a stony silence as they trudged after the ass trap.

“There’s no point in learning Egyptian and Hebrew; a complete waste of time,” said Matthew. “And Latin is not a necessity either. Greek is spoken everywhere. Aramaic could come in handy if you plan to roam around in the country, but there won’t be time for that now: as soon as the feast comes to an end we shall be heading back.”

As an ex-seaman, Matthew obviously spoke a number of languages, but for him that was a matter of course and so of no value. I failed to win his sympathy, Uri concluded, and that rankled; he would have liked to have that strong and resolute man on his side. Instead, I have given the others a reason to hate me.

He walked with gritted teeth, his head bowed down to make clear there was no point asking more questions. The others drew away, then Matthew pushed ahead also and took the reins back from Iustus, who had proven expert in road construction. Because it really was him, the stonemason and house-builder, Uri had meanwhile assured himself that this — the one to whom Matthew had temporarily handed the reins — was the same as the Iustus whose grandfather had reported to Gaius Lucius’s father that Uri’s grandfather had been stealing when his grandfather had never stolen anything. That was something his father had told him once.

He was half-asleep by the time Matthew called a halt, unharnessed the donkey and tethered it to a tree. They took from their sacks the tefillin, bound it to their forehead or arm, said a prayer while facing southeast, then lay down, each placing his sack beneath his head. There was no water with which to rinse hands and feet, so they rubbed them with soil instead, as that was considered clean. No one asked Matthew if he had aimed for this coppice deliberately or had failed to reach the intended hostelry. It was on my account that progress was so slow, Uri reflected; that is not going to make them like me any better.

He had almost fallen asleep when he noticed that the others were whispering with Matthew. They’re talking about me; they want to get rid of me. I’m the problem.

So what?

The first inn they stayed in was small and ramshackle but reasonably clean; there were six men idling in togas, sitting next to one another on a bench. The group took seats next to them. Uri wearily wiggled his toes; he had slogged on manfully, eating little and drinking little, as his stomach could not take much. His companions must have seen that he was suffering without a word of complaint, trying to keep up.

His companions eyed the men suspiciously; Uri blinked in their direction but could see nothing remarkable. Even if they were robbers, they were quiet. Then, to his surprise, the men began speaking with women’s voices. He narrowed his eyes: the togaed individuals were women, but they wore their togas the same way men did in Rome. Uri was amazed, since in Rome the women went around in tunics with long sleeves, so this was evidently the fashion in the provinces.

Uri would have kept on looking, but his companions were there too and it would not do to stare openly. By now Uri had the feeling that they had warmed toward him a bit; in fact, they were even striking up conversations with him.

By now he had gotten to know their names.

One of them, a muscular, proud man by the name of Alexandros, was a merchant; he was acquainted with Joseph, he said, and had a high opinion of him, which pleased Uri greatly.

Another answered to the name of Valerius and was a hyperetes, or assistant to the archisynagogos, not as a grammateus but as maintenance man, which essentially meant he was a cleaner. Although a nobody and a nothing, he was still the only person in the delegation with a religious occupation. Uri had never come across him before; Valerius’s services were done for the Hebrew temple, which was located a long way from the temple to which Uri went, because it stood on the Via Aurelia, outside the city wall, to the west of the center of Far Side. People who used the Hebrew temple spoke Greek. A couple of generations ago the language of the divine service was perhaps Hebrew or Aramaic, from which the name for the house of prayer might have derived, designating it as a position beyond the river, because the Greek “Hebraios” comes from Aramaic “ibrhay” or Hebrew “ibrhi¯,” meaning “from beyond the river.”

The strong, black-bearded one was called Plotius and said he was a joiner. He mostly kept silent, but Uri would have been glad to hear more from him.

The thickset little busybody was a teacher by the name of Hilarus. No surprise that he was teacher; it’s their job to find fault with everything and everybody. Uri was just thankful his own teacher had been nothing like that.

Anyway, Uri did not dare scrutinize the women, but he did notice what while waiting for their supper his companions, strong adult males that they were, were gaping at them and, all except Matthew and Plotius, fidgeting restlessly on the bench. It struck Uri that marriage does not efface all traces of sexual desire. The Lord knows, he intoned noiselessly, what specters and hideous urges still await me in life!

They were still dining when four Latinian youths dropped into the hostelry. Judging from their clothes and jewels, they must have been rich; maybe they were headed to the country house of one of their fathers, but they hitched their horses in front of the inn. On entering the premises, they weighed the situation and sat down next to the wilting damsels, who livened up, and while the Jews stared into their plates as they chewed, they took drinks. When the Jews had finished the meal, the four youths and six women went upstairs.

By then even Uri had comprehended that these women were professionals. He knew from his reading that whatever takes place in a hostelry does not count as marital infidelity in a court of law. He kept quiet, and so did his companions. From upstairs a sound of tittering, periodic screaming, rhythmic panting, pounding, and creaking of the floor could be heard.

Uri had encountered prostitutes before in Rome while going around his favorite part of the city, the Subura, with ladies in short sleeveless tunics sometimes accosting him and offering to take care of him for two or three asses; the whores in Rome were proverbially dirt-cheap, there being too many of them. Uri always retreated panic-stricken, precisely because, thanks to his father’s good nature, he would always have enough money on his person to pay for their services. He had no money on him now, thank the Lord, so he was in no place to proposition the worthy ladies, were he to be seized by a momentary madness.

They slept in a warehouse, packed together on the ground. For a long time Uri could not get to sleep, listening to the snores and wheezing of his companions and imagining what might be going on upstairs in the inn.

Naked men and women were not unknown sights to him, Roman statuary not exactly being prudish. Paintings in the public library also depicted fauns and nymphs who had nothing on, and the painter had not given Helen too many clothes either, portraying her virtually naked at the side of a Paris with a conspicuous hard-on.

Uri feared sexuality and yearned in equal measure for a woman to initiate him at last. Hanging around in the true Rome, he could hardly shield his eyes from open displays and depictions of sexuality. There were statues of humans, murals of naked nymphs also, in the houses of even rich Roman Jews — not that Uri saw them, as he had no access to such places, but there was talk all over Far Side about it being possible for Jews to purchase with impunity a sarcophagus portraying a nude Venus or Poseidon in specialist shops run by non-Jews, and Levite cemetery attendants would raise no objections. The Elders of Rome took the view that portrayals of man or beast were prohibited only on hilltops, because there they might be worshiped as idols, whereas anywhere else was permitted. Sarah was always happy to inveigh against this disgusting, barbaric custom any time she brought food and drink and clean clothes to a weary Joseph when he got back home, as were a wife’s duties, after all. Uri too understood that the Torah contained a general prohibition against portrayals of both man and beasts, and he simply could not make his mind up whether to support the written Law or the spoken Word in his soul.

When the weather was good, which it was for eight or nine months in the year, benches would be set up on the street, and it was possible to gaze at the bustle for hours on end, and there were few bigger amusements going in the Rome of those days. Sitting in a Roman tavern, Uri would look at the women and try to imagine what kinds of children he would father with each, and how.

He was attracted by the darker-skinned, wild-looking women from far-off lands, Ethiopians especially. They were tall and slender, and they wore their decorative veils with grace, not walking so much as gliding on their long legs, walking along the street as if they were carrying themselves on their own palanquin, even though their ears were pierced. Uri used to daydream about one day converting an Ethiopian woman like that to the Jewish faith, purchasing her out of slavery, and her bringing a cartload of children into the world by him, to the greater glory of the Lord.

There was barely a tavern in Rome in which women did not sit around next to the men; these women were likewise professional, and Uri might avert his gaze, but he could not stop his ears from hearing their puerile suggestions. His command of Latin grew superbly in the process. It was also quite usual for erotic drawings by well-versed hands to appear on house walls, and it was impossible not to see these; they would even desecrate the walls of villas on the Capitoline from time to time, though graffiti like that vanished quickly, as they were washed off by the sentinels. Non-Jewish plebeians with whom Uri was on good terms in the true Rome related that the best paintings were to be found in the thermal springs, always offering some new instruction, and female staff would even demonstrate a desired position with a guest, albeit not cheaply. Uri considered himself lucky that, being Jewish, he was not allowed to frequent such baths, though he was dying to try everything out.

It was late when he finally got to sleep, almost daybreak, and he found it near impossible to get up for the morning prayer. When he wanted to get the matzo from his sack he could not find it at first, and he was alarmed that it might have shaken out somewhere en route, but then he found it, though it was broken up.

Someone had been through the sack.

The pleasant feelings of the previous day evaporated.

They didn’t trust him; they were suspicious.

But what could they have been looking for in a sack that had been given him by Matthew? They could see that, apart from his father’s cast-off cloak, he had arrived with nothing.

After the morning prayer they ate a hearty breakfast to fortify themselves from the journey ahead; the women were languishing in place, while the rich Roman youngsters had taken off. Still, it was not how they looked after group sex that concerned Uri, but only the dreadful emptiness of his belly into which he crammed the food. His companions chatted merrily and even spoke to him pleasantly enough; they did not notice that his mood had altered.

Before the start — there was again a trap to carry the luggage, this time with two donkeys, which meant they would be walking — Uri went up to Matthew and declared gloomily:

“Someone’s been through my sack.”

Matthew cast a glance at him. There was no sympathy in the look but also no malice.

“Was anything taken?” he asked.

“No,” Uri replied, surprised.

“Well, then, no harm came of it,” Matthew replied, and turned away.

Uri was disconsolate. He would have liked to take after this group of strong men, to please them; he had no trouble accepting Matthew as a leader and mentor, but for some reason they were suspicious of him. His father was right: they bore him malice from the outset, and all because his wretched father had been put in a worse position than ever before by Agrippa’s request. And he could not even tell them; they wouldn’t believe him anyway.

He worried away as they walked; on account of that, he did not feel his legs hurting him so much. He no longer looked at the countryside; it was just boring evergreen cypresses everywhere, gentle slopes, hills, withered over-wintering vines, dormant crops, leafless woodlands, and every twenty-five stadia a post where the wealthy could change horses but their group could not drop in, not because it was forbidden but just because everything was more expensive. Uri no longer wondered about anything; he did not blink, just mulled things over bitterly.

Then it occurred to him: what if his sack had not been tampered with deliberately? They all looked the same, after all; maybe someone had mistaken it for their own.

That thought was comforting.

No doubt that is what happened, but he suspected his companions of searching through his sack, and, worse, had made the mistake of relaying that to Matthew. He would have to beg their pardon at the first suitable opportunity.

This was the first time since setting off that he had cheered up.

Life was glorious after all! He was walking in Italia on an important mission, among excellent companions, to Jerusalem — a wretched little Roman Jew, his sandals tied together and slung around his neck, the only one of the group who was barefoot, because sandals were expensive, one needed to take care of them.

Matthew was right; he would toughen up on the journey. Already the walking was easier; his body was already toughening up, the soles of his feet becoming callused. More than likely his eyesight was also improving.

He gazed at the many intermittent points of light against the outlines of the roadside trees: the bare branches would be covered by marvelous green foliage by the time they, having fulfilled their noble mission several months from now, would walk back this way.

Their progress was slower than Matthew had planned, because sunset on the first Friday, the onset of the Sabbath, overtook them in open country.

They had left the paved road by then; they did not have a trap with them, and so, sacks slung on shoulder, they trailed after Matthew up hill and down dale; he, it seemed, was thoroughly familiar with the zigzag route to be taken to avoid costly excise payments in the towns.

They said the Sabbath evening prayers under a tree in full leaf, and on this occasion Matthew read out relevant passages from the Torah scroll he from his sack. It was small, but the crowns of the two wooden staves on which the scroll was rolled were ornamented, maybe that too a gift from the Elders in Rome. Matthew asked Uri to interpret from Greek to Aramaic. Uri blushed; he had never before been picked for such a distinction, and he was amazed to be asked to interpret to Aramaic, of all languages, which, aside from Matthew, none of the others understood. But then again, to interpret from the Torah was a sublime task, whatever the circumstances.

In the more prosperous synagogues, a designated leader would read the Pentateuch text, sentence by sentence, in Hebrew, and another designated adult male, likewise held in high repute, a different person every Sabbath and feast day, would interpret the text sentence by sentence into Greek. In poorer houses of prayers in the provinces, so it was said, there was only a Torah in Greek and no need to interpret. The faithful would only say the “Amen” along with the leader.

Uri interpreted the Greek passages of the Septuagint into Aramaic, even though everyone spoke Greek as their native tongue. With prompts from Matthew, the companions dutifully said the “Amens” in the appropriate places. Uri interpreted fluently and elegantly; his face was burning, he was proud of himself. Matthew, who obviously spoke Aramaic, gave him no plaudits, then, when they began nibbling the matzos and preparing for a day of rest, he said — because one was permitted to speak, just not to work — on Sunday they would see the house where they were supposed to pass the night.

“We’ll call in,” he said, “in case anyone is worried about us.”

For Uri this was the first Sabbath in his life that he had celebrated away from home. He woke up early, said his prayers, rinsed down his feet with dew, dried them on his toga, and used his fingernails to burst the blisters and peel off the thickened skin. It was more a kind of nonchalant and light-hearted picking, rather than with serious corrective intent, as any medication, including self-medication, was forbidden on the Sabbath. It was lucky that the ground was dewy, though religion saw to it that a son of the chosen people would be able to wash his feet even were dew lacking, because there was always going to be soil.

The Lord God had taken good care to insert a day of rest after six days of labor; God well understood that a person can stick out six days on foot but would not take a seventh.

He went off to relieve himself, and he saw that his stool was blood-flecked. His rectum had been itching and throbbing for days, perhaps from all the walking. His father suffered from bouts of colic, especially when he was helplessly worrying about an uncertain business matter.

Uri was delighted by the bloody stool.

He felt that the common ailment brought him closer to his distant father, who would likewise be observing the Sabbath back at home; right now he must be setting off with Sarah and the girls for the house of prayer where upon the Sabbath morning the members of the congregation would collectively listen to the prayer, men and women together and with them any children able to walk. There were stories that in Judaea women were given a place separate from the men; Uri did not understand the need for this degrading differentiation. If the opportunity arose, he would ask Matthew about it someday.

He lolled on the grass the whole day long; it was nice and warm. He extracted the jug from the sack — he had just come to the end of the matzos and had long since polished off the fruit — and placed it under his back; he wrapped his father’s poor old cloak around himself, giving thanks to Joseph for begetting him, and stared at the skies. Up above, confused, multiple outlines blotched bluish, whitish, and grayish-blue, blurring into one another, unpredictably. Beyond that was Heaven, to which, at the end of his days, if he had worthily stood his ground down here below, he would hopefully ascend, there to meet with all the dear souls of his relations. That may have been a Greek idea originally, but the Jews had also adopted it, and quite rightly too; it was very reassuring.

The others in the delegation strolled around, chatted in twos and threes, but they did not go far, as that would have counted as traveling, which of course was forbidden on the Sabbath; they did not move farther than the tree under which the Torah had been read. No one spoke to him, but that did not bother Uri now; the Lord had seen well that on the seventh day one ought to rest. He must have seen the heavy toils of slaves in Egypt and wanted to give them too a reason for rejoicing on the seventh day. Uri exercised his feet; they hurt, but there was something ecstatic even in that. His rectum did not hurt now that he was lying down: it seemed as if the pain had departed from him also, along with the tainted blood.

He was surrounded by countryside of Edenic intactness, charming hills and moors, woods and fields, the glorious land of Campania, and needless to say there was a babbling brook nearby, as they had to drink and ritually bathe; God knew just where to conjure up a brook.

The whole of Italia was not yet cultivated; a vast amount of land was left fallow and belonged either to nobody or to the emperor, which came to the same thing. These hills had perhaps never been cultivated, with only sheep or goats sometimes grazing as they strayed in that direction. These were the sorts of landscapes about which verses were dashed off by bucolic Latin poets who developed an eye for the countryside because they lived in crowded cities.

Uri’s soul was filled, as he lay there, with cheerfulness and an unfocused yearning. At that moment he was at peace with the created world, with the Creator, and specifically because he very much wanted to experience right now the future for which he was predestined. Travel would play a part in it, as a matter of course, for how else would he have ended up where he was? Because he had done nothing wrong, he felt now that the trip to Jerusalem was in fact a gift.

The Lord wanted him to break free at last from his pagan reading matter, to grow up, and to see the Temple, which few in the Diaspora had the chance to see, and for his faith to be strengthened. Uri was one of the chosen people, however wretched he might consider himself to be. How could he not be one of the Lord’s chosen people too if he was one of those, everywhere in the world this morning, who had listened to the same passages from the Torah that not long before he had interpreted to Aramaic?

No one at all passed that way, only the birds flitted around and twittered, but even if someone had come by and seen seven men in tunics — they had taken off the outer garments, it was so warm; spring had arrived early that year — he would not suspect how happy they were.

Non-Jews have no idea, thought Uri, what a joy this was. For all the sufferings that the Lord has visited on his chosen people, it was nonetheless they who were His chosen people: they were worth more than all the rest simply by virtue of existing. That knowledge gave security; that knowledge was the guarantee that everything was fine and would continue to be fine no matter what bad things had happened or ever would happen. When the Messiah, who might become the Anointed Priest of all people but would be Jewish all the same, came, he, Uri, along with his people, would ascend among the privileged into Sublime Eternity.

He had a foretaste of that fine, celestial eternity right now, as his legs were aching less and his rectum was not cramping.

They got to the house they should have reached a day and a half earlier at daybreak on Sunday, but that kind of delay did not count for anything on a journey of this length, Matthew assured them.

Four houses stood on the settlement, surrounded by tall stone walls, and nothing outside gave any sign that Jews lived in one of the houses; it was just the same sort of house as the others. Uri mused how the Lord God and his servants, the angels, would not know which door to knock on when the time came, but then it occurred to him that they were able to recognize a soul, they could see through walls and bodies and faith, and were that not so they would make some serious errors, but that was impossible.

The residents of the house welcomed them with relief; they had been anxious on their account.

It was a big family, with three grandparents, two parents, eight children from adults down to a small infant: five sons and three daughters. They could not own land in their own right, it was true, they only rented, but they kept a lot of sheep, the children taking them out to pasture, whereas they would drive any who met requirements to the harbor a day’s walk away, and from there they would be taken by ship to Ostia and Jewish butchers in Rome.

Which harbor was that? Dicaearchia, naturally.

Uri asked how far that was from Rome.

Plotius stared in wonder.

“We’ve told you once already,” he replied.

Uri still did not understand.

“It’s what the Latini call Puteoli,” said Plotius. “No doubt because of all the little wells. It was founded by the Greeks and it still has many Greek inhabitants.”

Uri was overcome with shame.

“I know that,” he said, blushing. “Foul-smelling hot springs in that area, it’s supposed to be medicinal… Cicero used to own a property there…”

The homeowners told them that they themselves sheared the sheep, and they spun the wool themselves; they were able to get a good price for the yarn; in one of the rooms was an enormous wooden contrivance, a weaving loom. Obviously, the young girls spun the yarn; their mother had taught them how. On the kitchen wall, hung up on hooks by their handles, was a row of long daggers in the event that they needed to defend themselves, but they had never had to do so as yet.

They were prepared to receive the delegation and had baked enough matzos to last the whole week: they barely fit into the sacks. They also handed out wine in skins that were tied off and sealed with wax.

They prayed together then breakfasted together.

During the meal, Uri recited a passage of Latin verse from memory:

Of old, when Titus Tatius ruled the land, the Sabine women

Tended their land and never themselves.

Among them the hale and hearty, good mother, seated on a high bench

Quickly wove the raw thread with her dexterous fingers,

While her daughter closed the flock in the sheep-fold,

She herself laid billets on the brushwood fire.

The residents of the house laughed nervously before it dawned on Uri that they did not speak Latin.

Though a couple of his companions might have had a smattering, there was little chance that they knew whom the poem was by, and they stayed silent.

Uri laughed apologetically, his ears reddening.

That too had been unnecessary.

The next day the delegation got up and started off again.

Life must be good for them, the thought went through Uri’s head. It disappointed him that he had not spoken with a single member of the family in the course of the evening.

Everyone had been shouting, talking all at once, cutting one another off, laughing, joking, nudging. They were used to everyone yelling, otherwise no one would have paid attention, and they were a bit deaf as a result, which particularly appealed to Uri. Life must be good for them, he thought, the dank gloom, the tense quiet of his own home in mind.

One day I am going to have family like that, he resolved. He also resolved that if he made it to the altar of the Temple in Jerusalem, he would make a solemn vow to that effect, cost what it may, because one had to pay for a vow there.

His good cheer gradually dissipated as the walking continued. His rectum was at times seized by cramps, and his feet also gave the occasional pang.

He tried to think back on the good that the Sabbath had brought, but a dark suspicion came over him: Matthew might well have asked him to interpret the text into Aramaic as a test, a chance for him to fail. After all, none of the party apart from Matthew spoke Aramaic; he had not believed that Uri spoke other languages.

But I said that I did, Uri reflected despondently, so why did he not believe me?

The walking was tedious and hard; Uri would have liked something to read while they progressed.

For instance, the Acta Diurna.

The day’s Acta Diurna was something he read habitually at his patron’s house while the others gorged themselves like pigs; a reader enjoyed a measure of protection, with idiots being less likely to pester him with chatter. At the age of five, he had already pounced on this handwritten daily newspaper, several copies of which were delivered to Gaius Lucius by entrepreneurs who specialized in copying and distribution. In the paper were Senate proceedings, laws passed, court decisions, and all sorts of other official announcements — and Uri adored it. Gaius Lucius noticed the boy’s passion for reading and proclaimed that one copy was to be reserved solely and exclusively for Uri. That had been forgotten over the years, of course, but Uri still scanned the day’s Acta Urbis virtually every other day and, if still available, the previous day’s, the imperial decrees, the actions taken by the municipal administration, any news about the foundations run by the wealthy, the marriage notices and the deaths, because everything was in that newspaper, the first in the world, that there ought to be, with only the sports news missing, which Uri did not understand. If he were to edit the Acta, then he would publish daily reports on the competitions that were going on in the stadium, which would boost the circulation many times over. There were also times that he was angry because the hand of the copyist that day was careless, and the paper was barely legible or teeming with spelling errors.

While he was living in Rome, it seemed that the Acta Diurna spoke about him. Or so he felt, at least, even though the news was always reporting on important people he had never seen and was never going to see. Still, what was written about had happened in Rome and related to Rome — in other words, to him, too, as a Roman citizen. But now he had left Rome and was getting ever farther away from it, and the relevance of the Acta Urbis to his current location was zero. Uri walked despondently; there was no sense in moving farther from Rome when he wanted nothing more than to be back home.

But then the sea — that was a big deal.

He saw it for the very first time when they arrived in Rhegium to take the boat to Messana across the narrow straits that Homer referred to as Scylla and Charybdis.

It was not the actual sea, because Sicily appeared as a nearby massif off in the distance, the sea really just a large lake, but all the same it was a mighty stretch of water. As they waited for the boat, Uri paddled in the shallow and, despite the winter, still fairly warm water, gawking at the wriggling fish as he bent over its surface. His companions also took a dip; they said the midday prayers and got out quickly, dried themselves on their cloaks, and dressed. Uri stayed; he felt a yearning to set out on the sea and to merge into this mighty stretch of water, to be carried off, but he controlled himself, and anyway he could not swim, as was the case with virtually everyone in those days; so he just gazed in wonder at the miraculous fish and the luxuriant aquatic plants in the completely transparent water and hummed to himself. He was undisturbed that his companions on dry land might laugh at him; he was not out to earn their favor. He did not presume that they liked him, but they had gotten used to his presence, and he did not irritate them. He had lost weight through the rigors of traveling, his body becoming leaner and stringier, the untimely rolls of fat dropping from his hips and belly; it had been days since an acrid sourness had oozed up from his stomach, even the slight irritation in his throat had stopped. A thick layer of skin had formed on the soles of his feet, and his ankles, which had hurt him since he was a small child, were inured to the suffering and did not ache anymore.

As they alighted from the ferry onto the shore they met two Jews who were headed from Sicily to the Italian mainland. Seeing they were also Jewish, they greeted them and demanded with eyes burning that they should repent immediately. They spoke brusquely, holding forth on the now-imminent end of time, which had already begun in Caesarea, and that the Lord’s wishes were now evident to one and all: He wanted the end…

But what had happened in Caesarea anyway?

Talking over one another, they explained that the prefect of Caesarea had apparently tried to smuggle some sort of military insignia into Jerusalem at night. He smuggled them into the palace on gilded shields, whereupon the people of Caesarea demonstrated for six days in front of the palace and then occupied the stadium. The prefect had sent in soldiers, who threw themselves to the ground with their arms outstretched and pleaded for death because they could not stand to see such lawlessness, so the prefect got scared, dismissed them, and removed the shields from Jerusalem.

“That’s the beginning! Strew ashes on your heads!” one of them cried out before they leapt onto the ferry.

It was amusing to watch these bulky, uniformly bearded and bald-headed men stir their short stumps. There was no reason to rush; they had only just started offloading the ferry, so it would take a good hour or two before the boat set back off. But those two wanted to be on board as early as possible; they were in a hurry.

The travelers watched them blankly. They could not take the return trip just to hear more about the details; they would have had to pay again for boarding the boat.

Matthew guffawed.

“Stark raving mad!” he said.

His companions joined in laughing.

Alexandros had heard that in Judaea, and especially in Galilee, many people these days were awaiting the Last Judgment; false prophets were claiming, with those exact same piercing eyes, that the Messiah was due any day now; their followers were wandering around the two provinces offering purification before the imminent Last Judgment, anointing people with oil or dunking them in water or fasting for weeks in penitence.

“Instead of doing something,” he added disparagingly.

“Harmless blockheads,” was Matthew’s comment. “There was a prophet in Galilee once who made rain during a drought and brought about cures by setting his hands on people. He was stoned in Jerusalem for his troubles, just after Passover, but it was before I was born and the rains didn’t come after all.”

“That must have been Honi,” said Plotius. “He would draw a circle around himself at times of drought and would not step outside it until it rained. He fasted inside the circle, the others outside it, and they would encourage each other… I once met his grandson, he was also named Honi; people thought he was also a miracle worker, and with every drought they would hound him to step inside a circle too, but he did not want to stand in a circle; he was not a sorcerer, he would snarl and hide in the outhouse, and he would not come out for days on end…”

They laughed.

“I have heard exactly the same about a man by the name of Onias,” Alexandros said.

“That’s the one,” Matthew clarified. “In Greek it’s Onias; in Aramaic, Honi.”

They chartered seven donkeys in the harbor after paying one sestertius per head in municipal duties.

It was no easy matter to bargain with the excise men, because apart from the capital tax they demanded two and a half percent of the value of the luggage. It was useless to say they had nothing of value; not only did they make them unpack the sacks, they also searched their persons. The excise men even examined the tefillin. The tax collectors also examined the cheap and crude clay water jugs, unwilling to believe that this was all they had. When they saw that there really was nothing else, they demanded a further three sesterces per head, but it was impossible to know why. Matthew haggled that down to one sestertius each, and then they could set off.

Matthew laughed: the excise men had not noticed that only six names were on the safe-conduct, and he winked at Uri. Uri did not wink back; he was still unhappy about his name not being on the safe-conduct.

They saw nothing of Messana, that charming little town.

This particular mode of transport was even less comfortable than walking, Uri soon found; his delicate behind was not made for an ass’s lumpy back. They rode the donkeys in single file, and as they tried to keep their feet off the ground and steer clear of roadside trees and rocks, they swapped theories about the inhabitants of Judaea and Galilee.

Uri figured that Matthew the boatman, Plotius the joiner, and Alexandros the merchant were all somewhat conversant in Judaean affairs, and the rest as clueless as himself. Apart from vague family myths, he had no idea what life was like and what people believed in Judaea and Galilee.

Alexandros knew the name of the present prefect; he was called Pilatus. He had held the office for nine years, and in those years had quarreled with the Jew just once, when he tried to build a new aqueduct in Jerusalem and had asked for money from the Temple’s treasury. The new aqueduct was not built because most of the community had protested, and the high priest did not dare defy them.

“They held demonstrations on the Temple Square,” Alexandros confirmed. “The soldiers allegedly attacked the crowd and slaughtered many protesters, but I have not met anyone who was there that evening. It’s not customary to slaughter in the Temple Square,” he went on. “There is not enough room for a crowd anyway — not near the tabernacle, in any case. I’ve never managed; it’s guarded dearly.”

“It’s been guarded so tightly,” chipped in Valerius, assistant to the archisynagogos, “ever since the Samaritans scattered human ashes around to desecrate the altar.”

“When was that?” Uri inquired.

“A long time back,” Valerius replied.

“Ten years before the Jews were driven out of Rome,” said Matthew. “There was a huge outcry; it was hard to keep some people from overrunning Samaria.”

Uri figured this must have been seven years before he was born.

Matthew recounted that Pilatus had embarked upon a major construction project as soon as he was appointed. In Caesarea, it was he who built the sanctuary dedicated to the emperor Tiberius, the Tiberium as it was called, and laying the foundation stone was his first official act. The group could soon see for themselves, he said. It was a massive building, and splendid indeed by Hellenistic standards. He also related that the prefect had wanted a stadium built in Jerusalem also, under the Temple Mount, but the Sanhedrin dissuaded him.

“Whereupon the Sanhedrin,” he added with a laugh, “went ahead and built one, and no one protested against that… Not that it would have been possible, because it was converted from a hippodrome by Herod, and they adjusted to that… It is not used very much for anything; there are Greeks living there. It’s used to house people during festivals, so it serves that purpose.”

He was asked if he had met this Pilatus personally.

He had met him, and more than once; he was a meticulously cautious, straight-talking, easy-mannered man, who wouldn’t hurt a fly.

“It is completely out of the question,” asserted Matthew, “to think he would try to sneak Roman military standards into Jerusalem.”

“Maybe he is unaware that it’s forbidden for Jews,” Hilarus guessed.

“How could he not know!” Matthew spluttered. “He’s been kicking his heels in Judaea for nine years; he knows exactly what is allowed and what’s not.”

Silence fell. Maybe it would be better, Uri thought, if he does not know our laws, if what those flaming-eyed men said was true.

“I saw him once in Rome,” said Alexandros. “Before he was appointed prefect. He was there when I was meeting several of my clients. They told me he was interested in Palestine; he wanted to trade with that part of the world, because he was a knight of the equestrian order.”

“An equestrian,” Matthew confirmed.

“A knight of the equestrian becoming a prefect?” Uri queried.

“Judaea is a province of the third rank,” said Matthew. “Being a knight is sufficient to be sent there.”

“As far as I recall,” Alexandros continued, “he was not ignorant about our affairs, but that’s as it should be, if Tiberius named him prefect. It’s a fair bet there were other candidates.”

Matthew snorted. Uri saw that he was glancing toward him as he laughed — as if the laughter were directed against him. He did not understand; he shook off his doubts, he had been needlessly oversensitive before.

There was a lull as they rode the donkeys silently, heavy with worry.

“They’re lunatics, that’s what they are,” Matthew broke the silence. “Nothing happened in Caesarea, and nothing forbidden was taken into Jerusalem. They are looking for something to get excited about. Sailors on my ships tell yarns after an uneventful voyage; each one has seen a dozen sirens, and Pluto himself visits them in the company of Proserpina. Judaeans arriving in Ostia have praised the moderation of the present governor. He never meddles and he doesn’t try to steal any more than is feasible. Obviously he has business dealings with the high priests; otherwise why would he be prefect in the first place? He must have lined his pockets a fair bit over nine years. Business is booming, so why spoil it? He was only looking to do good with the aqueduct; he was in the right, and not the rabble.”

“He wanted to steal from the Temple’s treasures,” snapped the teacher, Hilarus.

“So what?” Matthew retorted. “That’s where they hold the Judaean state wealth. It would have been built for our benefit, wouldn’t it? Why shouldn’t we give money for a new aqueduct? There is never water for the crowds for feast days! As delegates, we will get water, but what about them? They shove their way into creeks to wash, and then you can’t drink the water for weeks! It’s Hell on Earth in the Valley of Hinnom… Then it takes weeks more to clear the filth… The Temple builders are detailed for the job, and meanwhile work on the Temple comes to a stop… Then, before you know, it’s time for the next feast and it starts all over again… Not that it isn’t marvelous to see that throng,” he added dutifully, with an ambivalence that made Uri feel suddenly sick.

Plotius chimed in:

“There’s nothing wrong with people in Judaea and Galilee, aside from a few nutcases. Those madmen did not even speak the governor’s name. If you ask me, they’ve probably never seen or even heard of him! What’s a good governor when you don’t even know his name? They don’t know it because things are peaceful; there’s been peace for a good while, thanks be to the Lord. People have gotten used to it, and that is just fine with them. You’ll soon see for yourselves…”

“No one has a problem with the prefect,” Matthew added after a short pause, and then fell silent.

Uri thought he understood what Matthew had meant: the problem was actually with the high priests. And indeed there was a problem. The Hasmoneans had been producing high priests for generations, since Herod the Great had massacred their predecessors. It was not they who killed the families of the previous high priests, it is true, but they had been the beneficiaries of that awful crime, and the people did not forget it. And if they had not forgotten it in Rome, then they certainly hadn’t in Judaea.

They soon forgot the two mad Jews and trotted on their way, their backsides bruised, their legs numb.

For Uri, traveling no longer scared him. He could take it, and he stuck it out to the end. By the time he got home, toughened up, a real man, he would kiss his father on the hand for paying for this journey.

All of a sudden, they caught sight of a tall, smoldering mountain to the right; this was Etna. They saw the smoke for three days. Matthew said this was nothing compared to the tabernacle in Jerusalem, they would see. Plotius nodded; it was really that thick. Valerius was all for climbing to the peak, and Alexandros was also game, but the rest overruled them. Uri was also not in the mood to make any needless effort. The soles of his feet had hardened — he continued to carry his sandals slung around his neck — but his feet hurt. Still, they had to walk a few hours each day to give the donkeys some rest, otherwise they would get stubborn; as Matthew said, an ass has brains, and if it sees men going about with a load on their necks, then it wouldn’t mind so much doing the same for a few hours. Plotius told a story about an ass that went around reared up on two legs like a man; it could even bray out a few intelligible words, and his companions were flabbergasted, but then Plotius let the cat out of the bag by laughing too soon.

They avoided Catina, as they had no wish to pay duties.

In Syracusa, on the other hand, they paid the duty at the city gate. Matthew knew full well that there were places along the partly ruined city wall where it was possible to scramble over, but it was better not to tempt fate, in case the local guards happened to make their patrol right then.

The urban duties there were also one sestertius per head, but Matthew now had to pay five sesterces per sack; he argued in vain that the practice was illegal, because personal baggage was duty free.

“Of course it’s duty free,” grinned the chief excise officer as his armed minions rummaged assiduously though their sacks. “Another five sesterces per head, I make it.”

“Religious accessories are exempt,” Matthew insisted when the soldiers started tinkering with the phylacteries, making them unclean in the process; the thongs would have to be dipped into water later.

“Jugs, however, are subject to taxation,” the excise man said.

“They’re worth no more than two asses each, and two and a half percent of that is negligible, even if you calculate in quadrans,” Matthew asserted.

“Nevertheless,” said the excise man. “It still comes to five sesterces per head.”

“Then we’ll smash them,” Matthew said stubbornly. “They’re not worth anything anyway. Look, you can see, they’re just rough, clunky objects; we can buy replacements later.”

The customs officer was not concerned in the least.

“Then you can pay tax on the shards,” he said. “And there will be an additional fee of five sesterces per head for clean up.”

With a scowl, Matthew got out the leather pouch from under his cloak and counted the money out into the outstretched hand of the customs chief, who laughed and gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder.

Uri once again started ruminating on where they might be keeping the untold amount of cash they were supposedly carrying to Jerusalem for Passover. There was no money anywhere to be seen. Maybe others were carrying it and had arrived a long time ago. Or else there was a sack rolled up around Matthew’s body, under his tunic. He did not understand why Matthew had argued with the excise man, as the customs officials were in the habit of frisking people. It couldn’t be around his back anyway; when they had taken their dip in the sea at Messana he had been wearing nothing but a loincloth.

It occurred to Uri in retrospect that the customs officials in Syracusa had not examined the letter of safe-conduct either. Matthew had been proven right; it did not matter that only six delegates, not seven, were listed.

He was excited and disappointed all at the same time. From the crumbling city wall, this did not seem like the magnificent town that Archimedes had defended with his splendid inventions and where, while doodling in the dust, he had been knifed in the back by an idiot. Where was the spot? he wondered. Had anyone put up a memorial tablet?

The donkeys were returned. The local operator of the donkey-hire business, a Cretan scoundrel, wouldn’t accept the animals, claiming they were in poor condition, but he could be persuaded by a fairly stiff extra payment, which Matthew bargained down by half. Some debate arose among the companions as to why it was necessary to turn in the donkeys, and to make an additional payment when they had already paid once; after all, they could have just left them unclaimed at the harbor — that was the consensus. Matthew, for his part, began to yell at them for the first time on the journey: he had connections with the firm that went back decades, and however crooked they might be, he could not leave the donkeys to their fate, as that would not fetch the price of a nettle patch. If he did that, they would rent anything to him again, and they would give him a bad name in Italia and throughout the East.

The plan was to sail the next day, but two of the departures had been nixed on account of a couple of storms, and there were others who had made it there earlier. Matthew cursed, but there was nothing he could do about it; he had no luck bribing the harbor authority that booked the passengers, for they were quite happy to take his money but were unable to secure a ship. So after going to great lengths, he rented a warehouse for the night.

They slept on the bare ground with rats, mice, fleas, mosquitoes, and other living creatures for company, but at least they had a roof over their heads. They had to leave the store the next morning, because three shiploads were expected from Alexandria. No matter how much Matthew howled at the representatives of the port authority, they were not going to travel that day either, and were obliged to find somewhere to spend another night.

Matthew found a cheap basement, but Valerius, the hyperetes, was unhappy with it and haughtily stalked off, leaving his sack behind in a huff. Consequently Hilarus, the teacher, also declared that he would not spend another night in the shit — he wasn’t just anyone, he was a teacher. He tossed his sack over his shoulder and started off, but Matthew unexpectedly socked him on the jaw, took the sack, and sat down on it. Not sure what else to do, the rest just lingered around the enormous harbor, where life went on as normal and no one took the least notice of them.

“You’re not going to go mutinous on me,” Matthew yelled. “Anyone who mutinies, I’ll kill!”

Hilarus, weeping, wiped his nose and asked, “Why did you let him go? Why did you let him go?”

“Because I’ll lodge a complaint against him back home,” Matthew continued to yell. “And they’ll kick him out of the synagogue so fast his feet won’t touch the ground!”

Uri would have liked to side with Matthew, that resolute and staunch man whom he had admired up until then, even though they had barely spoken. He, the weak kid, would have liked to defend the strong man, only he had no idea what to say or do in this situation, so he too just faltered mutely, at a loss.

Hilarus acquiesced and stayed. They trudged into the cellar, locking the door behind them with a great many chains (the locks and chains were fortuitously lying in a corner, as if waiting for them), and then went off to eat.

On Matthew’s suggestion, everyone took his jug along to fill with wine later. Led by Matthew, who knew perfectly well how to handle an unruly crew and blessed power of a decent meal, they traipsed into a tavern — grubby though it might have been, packed with whores and hideous characters from any number of harbors on the Great Sea, the wine was good — after which they went to the market, bought some fish and drank more wine, before having their jugs filled and heading out to the pier to keep drinking. They got tighter than Uri ever imagined was possible, any more than he expected that one day he would puke in the sea. He did that at Syracusa, however; Iustus, the stonemason, held his forehead. Blessed be Syracusa forever, Amen! Even if there was nowhere for them to bake the fish, so by the morning it stank and had to be thrown away.

They woke up with splitting headaches in that basement, the cellar of a formerly rich man’s burnt-out villa, where a vinegary fluid was leaking from buckled containers, as it probably had been for years, when Valerius returned contritely. His face and neck were covering by angry red scratches and bites. Matthew acknowledged him with a nod and then went off to the harbor to plot a passage for them somehow; they agreed to meet on the pier.

They locked up the basement and went off to the pier, where a tall lighthouse stood; at the top was a small chamber where flares burned constantly, and, according to the locals, inside the tower was a spiral staircase. As they waited, they struck up a conversation with some other idlers, who gradually let on that the reason for the delays was probably more serious than a mere storm: the Greeks were having their way with the Jewish fleet’s gullible new local representative (the previous one had been replaced, maybe because he filched too much). The harbor’s military commander, a centurion, favored the Greeks; the Jews had obviously not greased his palm sufficiently.

The Jews were having some trouble nowadays — that was the general view of the Latini, Greeks, Syrians, Gauls, and Spaniards. When asked why, they answered with incredible stories about a revolt in Caesarea and some sort of uprising in Jerusalem. About how the Jews in Jerusalem had clashed, they said, with a Roman legion and made off with their battle standards, which were now under guard at Temple, in the innermost shrine. And how the Jews had wanted to stone the Roman prefect at a chariot race in Caesarea, and the prefect barely escaped with his life. Syracusa’s Greeks and Latini and Syrians and Arabs and Abyssinians and others regaled them with these and other ridiculous stories.

The Jews could not take Roman military banners into the Temple in Jerusalem. Just one person, the high priest, was allowed in the innermost sanctum at all, and even he only once a year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which was in the autumn, whereas now it was almost spring. It was just as far-fetched to imagine that the Jews would want to stone the governor at a chariot race in the stadium; besides, the guards would have clearly been able to see the stones in the spectators’ hands. All the same, these rumors were unsettling; something had undoubtedly happened in Judaea, and that was exactly where they were headed.

When Matthew found them at the lighthouse, they began to grill him on what he knew. Matthew admitted that the delay was probably not caused by reported storms; no Jewish ships had arrived in recent days from the port of Caesarea, even though the sea was calm, as the Greek boats that had called in at Caesarea could attest; and it was, indeed, true that the Jewish fleet had a new local representative, the old one had been replaced and the new man was rather feeble, but the military commander was not biased toward the Greeks, and anyway he, Matthew, had already bribed him twice; and how was a Roman centurion supposed to put Jewish ships ahead of the Greeks if none had called in for days now?

“Wouldn’t we be better off on a Greek ship?” Iustus asked.

That was not such a bad idea; more than a few Greek ships had set off for Caesarea over the past two days, with two of them calling in at Crete. But Matthew still shook his head. The Greeks were asking exorbitant fares, and then there was the risk of getting robbed en route. They needed to find a Jewish boat; no Jews would not dare to fleece once they found out this was the delegation.

“Do you mean that if we weren’t, then they would?” Uri inquired.

“We’re no worse than other pirate peoples,” Matthew replied in a superior tone.

They all laughed, and when it was time for the noonday prayer, they all beseeched the Lord to finally send a few Jewish ships to dock in Syracusa.

Three boats did arrive soon after, but these were from Alexandria, and they were going back there; two were Greek and one Jewish. They talked with the Greek sailors. They had also heard about a furor in Jerusalem, but they thought it was highly unlikely that the local governor had ordered Roman army standards to be taken into the Temple Square. The Jewish protest would follow immediately, as he was well aware; more likely, it was an overzealous regimental commander. Several of them had heard that someone resembling Tiberius had also been taken into the Temple. Others disputed that; apparently the Jews had written a letter to Tiberius about the matter, or at least the Jewish high priest in Alexandria had done so, the president of the Alexandrian Sanhedrin, the council of Elders, Alexander the gerusiarch and also alabarchos. It was also reported that Alexander, the head of the Jews in Alexandria, said that the emperor would almost certainly reprimand the prefect, maybe even relieve him of his office, because he was not prepared to see the Pax Romana threatened in the provinces. The Alexandrian Jewish sailors spoke highly of Alexander, whereas the priestly clans of Jerusalem were worthless, an opinion they made clear, although not in so many words. The Roman delegation also grasped from the Alexandrian Jews that they should feel shame that their city didn’t have a house of prayer like the Basilica in Alexandria, which rivaled the Temple in Jerusalem — not that their co-religionists from Alexandria mentioned a single word about it. But as far as thinking goes, they were almost certainly thinking that — so surmised the Roman Jews. Plotius fancied he knew for sure that Alexander did not stem from a priestly family but was a descendant of common Jewish slaves who had settled in Egypt, so he was not rightfully entitled to the title of priest: a gerusiarch and alabarchos, yes, but in no way a priest. These Greeks were ignorant.

“What’s an alabarchos?” queried Iustus.

“The customs and excise chief,” Plotius answered.

Matthew tried to persuade the seemingly sympathetic Jewish captain to sail back to Alexandria via Caesarea, offering quite a substantial sum of money, but the captain spread his arms in a gesture of powerlessness: he sailed on a timetable, and he could not account for the four-day delay that such a detour would cause. It wouldn’t work, even if he could pick up a valuable cargo at Caesarea: there was room on the ship, but Judaea produced nothing that would be worth taking to Alexandria.

Matthew disputed that, whereupon the captain inquired why there was no regular boat traffic between Caesarea and Alexandria.

In Matthew’s opinion it was the excise rates in Alexandria, which were outrageously high and were exacted impudently on ships coming from Judaea.

The captain, being an Alexandrian Jewish patriot, held the view that this was proper; he had visited Jerusalem, and the two-drachma toll that they collected from every pilgrim was typical of the brazen extortion in Jerusalem. They made their living from fleecing pilgrims; a fee of two drachmas that was also collected for using a vessel of clean water, a mikveh, as though smaller coins were not in circulation over there, and anyone who is proven not to have ritually cleansed themselves for six days, which means twelve drachmas, is not permitted to enter Temple Square. Lodgings were also overpriced, because cheap rooms had to be booked at least a year in advance, and that was not possible for a sailor. Food was cheap, no argument there, but on the other hand it was lousy.

The indignant captain proposed that they come with him to Alexandria, and go from there over dry land to Judaea; he would take them on his ship cheaply, and the next day at that. Uri was keen to see the marvelous city of Alexandria, but Matthew did not take up the opportunity; in his view the delay would undermine their mission, and moreover he had never made the journey from Alexandria to Judaea by foot, nor did he wish to. He had no wish to ride a camel, and anyway he would not take the responsibility, because he had met people who had completed the journey with extreme difficulty and had come within a hair’s breadth of death. The Nile was unnavigable close to Alexandria. They needed to get to Nicopolis somehow and board a ship there. They would have to disembark at Thmuis and go east on foot. It was inconceivable that they would not pass through Heracleopolis and Pelusium, yet excise dues in those cities were undoubtedly high. Only at Pelusium would they be able to ford the Nile, and that was where the desert began; even at a forced march, it would take eight to ten days over arid land to reach Gaza — that is, if they did not die of thirst. Only a well-equipped military unit on iron rations or a major commercial caravan could take on the overland route from Alexandria to Judaea, not a delegation a few strong that was just delivering money.

Iustus was amazed that a navigable channel between the Nile and the port of Alexandria had not been constructed already.

“If even the Pharaohs did not build one,” Plotius ventured, “there can be only one reason.”

“And what would that be?” Iustus asked.

The others snickered, Uri included, because they knew the answer: it would have cost too much even for the Pharaohs who built the pyramids. Iustus took offense and spoke to no one for the rest of the day.

Alexandros maintained that the Pharaohs had the money to make the Nile navigable up to the seacoast, but they did not want to make it easy for their enemies, by capturing the seacoast, to penetrate into the heart of the country. It was an opinion that surprised Uri, and he looked pensively at Alexandros, the merchant.

The next day, Matthew went off early “to arrange matters”; the other six knocked around aimlessly on the pier. Hilarus, the teacher, took the line that they too ought to do something because, to their shame, they were going to miss Passover in Jerusalem.

Matthew is a great man, but he ought to be pressing harder for us to set sail, he thought.

In Plotius’s opinion, they had only lost three days, and, since they had set off early, they were still safely within their two-week margin of error, even allowing for six Sabbaths altogether.

Hilarus proposed that they choose from among themselves a deputy leader who would give orders when Matthew was not around.

Alexandros, being a seasoned traveler, immediately volunteered, with Iustus taking his side. Valerius recommended Hilarus. Everyone now turned expectantly to Uri, and he sought eye contact with Plotius, who was staring into the distance.

The tension between them suddenly mounted; Uri did not understand it. If he were to come out for Hilarus or Alexandros, Plotius could do nothing to block the selection of a deputy leader besides plumping for the other, in which case there would be a tie and nothing would happen. But then why choose a deputy leader when he would have no more idea where to start than any of the others? Besides, Matthew would turn up soon anyway.

Plotius broke the silence: he announced that he was going off to think until the evening. Hilarus started yelling about what would happen if a ship were suddenly ready to leave; where would Plotius be found?

“There will be no ship ready to go by evening,” said Plotius, “because even if a boat arrives, it will have to be unloaded then loaded, and it will not leave before tomorrow morning.”

On that note, he left and walked off along the pier toward town.

They looked at Uri for the decisive vote. He sighed and said that he too wanted to think it over, and he hurried after Plotius.

Plotius was strolling slowly, as if he had been waiting. When Uri caught up, he nodded. They vanished together among the houses.

“It’s remarkable how many morons there are in the world,” Plotius declared as they passed through an alley. “One can’t give them their way on everything, but it’s best not to pick fights with them either. They can’t help being morons; the Creator, in His infinite wisdom, wills it so.”

Uri was amazed to hear such a thing from Plotius, the joiner, who had barely spoken a single word the entire trip, yet Plotius was speaking directly to him, who had likewise held his tongue for the most part.

They took a seat at the back of a tavern; they did not settle down on the street, like the locals, because the sun was shining fiercely. Plotius did not mince words. He came straight out and asked Uri how he managed to get himself squeezed into the delegation as a supernumerary at the last minute.

Uri told him frankly that the whole thing was a gift that his father had extracted from Agrippa in return for an immense loan, but he was glad about it because it suggested that his father still considered him his son, even though he had poor eyesight and was useless at everything. Plotius nodded. He had noticed that Uri did not see well but thought he could still make it as a joiner. Then Uri told the story about falling off the roof on his first day of work, at which Plotius chortled: only someone trying very hard would fall off. Uri protested, but Plotius brushed that aside. The mind knows what we want better than we do.

Plotius ordered wine and set down a pitcher, and again Uri protested: he didn’t drink. Plotius urged him on, so Uri took a sip. The wine tasted good; it was heavily honeyed.

“Have you got your own money?” Uri asked with surprise.

“Everybody has some,” Plotius admitted, “except you.”

Uri pondered for a moment, then he asked what Plotius had meant when he called him the supernumerary.

“The decision is made weeks in advance,” he said, “as to who will be in the delegation. Not a word was said about you till the very last moment. We couldn’t really figure out why a feeble young boy had been foisted on us.”

Uri quietly sipped he wine.

“This is a dangerous mission,” Plotius declared. “Never mind getting there, but on the way back we shall be carrying a lot more money. Enough to make it really worth killing for.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that going there we are only taking sacrificial money, but going back we shall be taking the money that our Elders use to grease the palms of the Roman authorities to give rights of Roman or Italian citizenship to the rich of Judaea. They come through too!”

Uri was dumbfounded.

It was not the Romans who distributed citizenship rights to the inhabitants of the provinces; members of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem and their families were legally excluded from the circle of potential Roman citizens. In principle, a subject of Judaea or Galilee could never become a Roman or Italian citizen, and that went for Syrians and Egyptians as well.

Yet there was a way nonetheless — and how else but with money!

How else but with money. That was the expression his father had used when he was obliged to enter the silk business.

Only half of their mission was exalted, then, and the smaller half at that, it appeared.

But how did the joiner know all this?

Uri gulped his wine and stayed quiet. It did not enter his mind to ask if they really were taking the sacrificial money as Plotius says, where it could actually be.

The joiner had a good profession: he could work anywhere at all in Rome outside the Jewish quarter, and because houses often burned down, there was always work and it paid decently as well. It was this prospect of a bright future with which his father had tried to persuade him to become a roofer, it being easier than joinery; it involved no more than placing tiles or slates onto and alongside each other. Plotius must have picked up several languages in the course of his work, as his employers might belong to any nation, so he must have heard all kinds of things along the way. He might be on good terms with individual Roman Elders, including bankers, having worked for them; these days huge houses were being built just to be rented out.

“Do all the others know about this?” Uri asked.

“I suspect they do,” said Plotius. “We get a small commission; after all, we earn it. We’ll be nicely paid off.”

Uri said nothing, just sipped his wine.

Plotius broke out in laughter.

“It’s not what you would call nice,” he admitted, “but if a delegation is carrying money over there, why let it go back empty-handed? On top of which we also have a safe-conduct.”

“Who gives us the money, then?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Plotius. “One day someone will come from the prefect with a fair-sized sack that jingles. We won’t be hard to spot, even in that colossal mass of people. We are an important delegation.”

“Why from the prefect?”

“Because he has been getting a taste too.”

Uri pondered: so that’s how it went.

“Have you done similar work before?” he quizzed.

“No, but I’ve heard that’s the way it’s done.”

“So does the person in question also hand over a list of who is to be granted citizenship in Rome?”

“I very much doubt something like that gets put down in writing. They’ll tell the names to someone with a good memory, and he’ll register them; there won’t be many names to learn — twenty or thirty at most.”

“I’ve got a good memory,” Uri said with pride. “If I read something once, then I have it down perfectly, word for word.”

“You’re exactly the sort I would expect that from,” said Plotius.

Uri picked up a note of sarcasm in his tone and felt a trifle ashamed of himself. Boasting again. Fat good it was his father warning him.

He appreciated Plotius’s candor. Maybe the Lord had arranged this delay in Syracusa so that Uri would finally learn something about his companions.

He would have liked to ask a few other things about the whole setup but he did not dare. Plotius guessed what he was thinking.

“The carriers to Rome do not usually give the names of anyone except those who have actually paid,” he said. “It’s not possible to squeeze in anyone who has not paid. That sort of thing comes to light sooner or later, and the consequences would be serious. There’s a tariff for everything; you can’t gain citizenship free of charge. Just think how lucky we are; we acquired Roman citizenship because it was tossed our way when we were kind enough to be born.”

Uri nodded in agreement. He really had been lucky; he had to thank his grandfather, who perished in the effort to free himself for his grandson, whom he never saw, to become a Roman with full rights of citizenship.

“So Judaean Jews who are full Roman citizens and therefore no longer taxed can move to Italia without hindrance,” he deduced wisely.

“That’s not the point,” said Plotius. “They still have to pay all the Jewish taxes, and they cannot leave the province that they have been living in up till now without special permission, but they do escape the control of the Sanhedrin and fall under Roman jurisdiction. The Jewish authority has no powers over them; it cannot even arrest them but has to turn to the prefect responsible for the matter, who is a long way away. The Roman municipal administration sends the prefect the official list of new Roman and Italian citizens if they happened to live in Judaea; from that moment they cannot be touched by Jewish courts. That is what the real point is, because that is a legal security that does not otherwise exist in Judaea. That is priceless.”

Uri was astounded.

“There was a time once in Jerusalem,” Plotius continued, “when I was arraigned, and not to get hauled up before the Sanhedrin I had to prove that I was a Roman citizen. I told them, and they were so scared they backed right off, did not dare lay a finger on me, though they kept me under close observation and I was unable to leave the city. So I wrote to the prefect in Caesarea, and they got an answer two and a half weeks later that I genuinely was a Roman citizen. Letters between Caesarea and Rome get a response in a fortnight because of the state diplomatic bag. As a result the Jews were forced to leave me alone.”

“What were you accused of?”

“I don’t recall,” said Plotius.

Uri had the sense to let it go at that.

Then Plotius said something else to which Uri did not pay any attention at the time, adding with a smile, “The mail in Rome is slower than the Jewish. News gets from Jerusalem to Antioch in a day and a half at most, because it is passed on by beacons on hilltops; it might take only a day, but one is best advised to avoid Samaria, because those scum light interfering flares to make it impossible to read messages.”

It felt good to idle about in the dark at the back of the tavern; Uri could dimly see colorful figures moving past on the sunlit street, many carrying the same sort of sportulas as they did in Rome, which indicated that here there were likewise patrons and clients, just fewer of them; they were the spitting image of the sportulas in Rome. Evidently Rome dictated the fashions — something that filled Uri with pride. There, inside, he looked at Plotius’s cheerful, mocking, deeply lined face over a thick, unkempt, black beard. He could see that nearby face well, and because he could make it out well, to him it felt familiar. If he did not know he was a Jew and Plotius were to shave his face, anyone might easily take it to be the profile of a Roman noble, complete with dignified aquiline nose in the middle. His baldness was utterly Roman in character. It would be worth having him sit as a model for a bust of a Latin patrician; more than likely there had been patrician blood flowing in the veins of his slave grandfather or great-grandfather.

The wine loosened Uri’s reticence, and he asked Plotius about his trade.

Plotius recounted that he earned his living as a joiner. It did not pay badly; indeed, after a commission in Jerusalem a few years ago he had been hired to build villas for the rich in the Roman style, and he accepted because he had learned all the house-building tricks of the trade back at home, in Rome. In recent times massive new villas had been going up in the center of Jerusalem; they were so big and splendid that they vied with the best in Rome, and not a few of them were graced by his own handiwork; he would show Uri later. Well-off Jews were willing to pay to be able to display their wealth in the city center, above all in the fashionable upper city, rather than on the outskirts. Homo novus, the lot of them, he added contemptuously. He had spent years building villas in Jerusalem, being passed on by personal recommendation from one satisfied customer to the next, and they did pay handsomely, whereas he hardly spent anything because the cost of living in Jerusalem was incredibly low, as compared with Rome.

“Are they rich merchants?”

“No,” said Plotius. “Landowners.”

Vast latifundia — estates — had come into existence in Judaea over the past decade or two since peace had been secured, because the first-born sons who had inherited land were generally unable to come to terms with the other siblings about how that land should be divided, so generally the land would be sold and the money split up, with everyone getting very little, as a result of which they would move into town and become homeless plebs; for that reason the supply of land had swollen so much that it was only possible to sell at prices well below its true value. In other words, the same thing was happening in Judaea as in Italia, the only difference being that in Palestine the land was communal in principle; that is, it was supposed to be redistributed every fifty years, but that had long not been the case, and as a result there was even more ownerless land in Palestine ripe for stealing.

Anyone who had any capital to invest put it into land, including the families of the high priests, even though in principle they were forbidden to do so. They did not buy in their own names, but the land was nevertheless theirs; by now three quarters of Judaea was the personal property of members of families of the high priests, and they sold bits of this on at huge premiums to others, including Romans, even though it was not permitted to sell any part of the Holy Land to non-Jews. Then again, land was supposed to be left fallow for one year in seven to let it recover, but nobody did that.

“There’s not one law that is not transgressed in Judaea,” asserted Plotius. “That’s true in Rome too: every law is transgressed if people can get away with it, but it’s even easier for them to get away with it in Judaea.”

Uri inquired why Plotius did not stay in Judaea if things were going so well for him. Had his family called him back, perhaps?

“I’ve got a wife and I also have a son — Plotius Fortunatus, he’s called. But I don’t see them often, and I don’t miss them very much,” said Plotius. “They have gotten used to the fact that this is my line of work, it’s not they who are the reason. The fact is that Judaea is of no interest; Jerusalem is a hole. It is said that the Temple will be magnificent when it’s ready, but that’s just tripe; there is nothing to see of it, it’s been surrounded by scaffolding for decades. The crowds that flock there during festivals are just appalling, to say nothing of the infectious diseases they carry! Jerusalem is tedious; there’s nothing to do, just a bunch of whores — and those are all wretched: even they are no pleasure at all. Even the Transtiberim is more interesting than Jerusalem, where nothing ever happens or ever will!”

“It did now.”

Plotius gestured dismissively.

“Protests are always going on, especially around feast days, when any number of crazies flood into the city, but then the Jewish watchmen easily deal with them. I don’t know if mercenaries really did take military standards into the Temple, but even if they did, the stink was raised in Caesarea, not in Jerusalem, and that’s a Greek town, not ours, never will be, for all that Jews make up the majority who reside there these days.”

“All the same, the boats are not sailing for some reason,” Uri offered.

“There are other times they don’t sail either,” said Plotius. “Twice already I have spent weeks in Syracusa waiting for a boat and almost died of boredom. There are not many items of Jewish produce that are worth shipping to Italia. Dates you can get elsewhere, and balsam is not something that sells in big amounts; wood is about all that’s worth trading. Whole forests are being felled in Palestine for Rome; they tend to ship the timber to Judaea, and they don’t like ships coming over here empty. So they wait there until a cargo of some sort is finally collected. Or enough people collected.”

Uri did not understand, and Plotius was somewhat surprised that he had to explain this too:

“Spies. They’re important people, and they have money. They come from Syria, Babylon, Armenia — wherever. They carry military and commercial information. We’re important as well, because we shall be carrying a big sum of money on the return journey. It will be easy finding a boat to Caesarea for the return journey: we’ll have enough money to make it worth the captain’s while even with an empty hold. Here in Syracusa there are lots of goods to pack in, and he will be happy making the trip back because they’re things that people will buy in Judaea. But if there happens to be no Jewish ship in the harbor here, we shan’t be able to persuade anyone to take us. What are they going to bring back? Nothing. Any timber that has accumulated there will be picked up eventually by our boat: it will take time for the next forest to be felled.”

Uri mused.

“Could it be that we won’t make it to Judaea in time?”

“Never fear!” assured Plotius. “From Caesarea we’ll be able to make it to Jerusalem in four days, even crawling on our bellies, it’s only two hundred stadia or so. Something is bound to come along sooner or later.”

Uri cogitated; this fellow impressed him. He went on to ask, “What made you become a member of the delegation?”

Plotius did not reply immediately.

“I’ve got things to do in Judaea,” he said finally. “And you’ll be paying for my trip — you Roman Jews, I mean.”

“And how did that work out? Did you apply to the archisynagogos, and he put your name forward?”

Plotius laughed.

“No, it doesn’t go like that… I started by knocking on the doors of the rich people in my congregation… I made it in their interest… There’s the rotation thing, isn’t there, and even though I had not yet been a delegate, some individuals from my family had been, and not so long ago either… I made it onto the list at the last moment, maybe even later than you… I promised them something by way of business.”

So there was someone else who had been squeezed in as an afterthought, not just him; maybe most of them had. So they have no reason to be hostile toward me, Uri realized with relief.

They got back to the pier that evening; their companions were all there, Matthew included. They were right in the middle of an excited discussion. Matthew had located a boat repairer who had a bireme standing ready and waiting in his shipyard, and its owner would only be coming two weeks later to pick it up, until which time the boat was free to come and go between Syracusa and Caesarea. The boat master was secretly inclined to make the boat available and would even ask to be paid for the return trip, because even so he would be better off than if the boat — it was not his anyway — sat in the docks; he was even ready to rustle up free of charge the oarsmen and officers needed, though of course they would need to be paid both ways by the delegation. He was, however, asking for a deposit: half the value of the boat, which of course he would hand back when they got to Syracusa on the return journey.

“I have no vote in this,” Matthew announced. “I have no interest in the matter. You lot decide.”

There were two extreme factions, one represented by Hilarus, the other by Alexandros, who contended with each other. Hilarus was supported by Valerius, and Alexandros by Iustus, just like that morning.

Hilarus was of the opinion that the offer should be accepted, but the deposit should be whittled down and a legally watertight contract established. Alexandros, however, felt that this was all nonsense: what was meant by “a legally watertight contract” anyway? There was no such thing as entering an unassailable contract over the use of an inanimate object if the underwriting party was not the owner.

Hilarus said that one had to understand the ship repairer; he probably knew that the boat was insured for half its value. The master was only asking for what he would get if the boat was wrecked and he could claim that the boat had sunk, or it had not gotten back in time, or it had been stolen. Anyway it fell within the allowed expenditure, he asserted. He looked inquiringly at Matthew, who shook his head to signal not only that he was not voting but also that he was not prepared to offer any information about the delegation’s financial standing either.

Alexandros outlined what would happen if the officers and slaves recruited by the master builder understood nothing about sailing, which there was every chance of:

“The only ones who will do any rowing in rough seas are us, the seven of us, twenty-four hours a day, and long before we ran the ship aground and drowned as it went down, our hearts — by the grace of the Lord — would burst.”

Uri shuddered.

Hilarus for his part believed that was also nonsense. If the captain proved unsuitable, Matthew would take over command; after all, that was his expertise. He again looked at Matthew, who again shook his head. Hilarus added, “We’re just as capable of dishing out lashes as any officer!”

Uri shuddered. He had not the slightest wish to lash out at sculling slaves.

Valerius and Iustus offered affirmative or opposing grunts but no opinions.

All looked at Plotius.

It’s almost as if I were not even here, Uri thought sullenly to himself.

Plotius deliberated.

“What’s the boat like?” he queried.

“It looks up to the job,” said Matthew.

“And if we were to buy it, would we be able to sell it?”

Uri did not grasp what Plotius was driving at, but the others understood.

“That’s it!” Hilarus exclaimed. “We buy it here, take it across and sell it there for a decent profit.”

“Fair enough, but to whom?” Matthew asked.

There was silence.

“Let’s say we buy it,” Matthew said. “That’s a good idea. The master ship builder will sell it cheaper than the owner would; the master will make up some tale for the latter and recover some damages for him, and even so he will make a bundle on it without having to do a lick of work. That’s fine so far. Even the owner doesn’t make out badly, because it’s far from certain that he really did insure it for half its value. The world is full of fake shipping calamities: insurers have a hard time proving that fraud had a hand in them; the owner not only gets the full value from the insurer, but even makes a profit on it — the payoff he gets from the master. That too is fair enough. It is also possible that the proprietor and the master are in collusion against the insurer: let them make a bit, and let the insurers lose out, the jerks. We get it across somehow or other — that too is fair enough. But who exactly is going to purchase it from us in Caesarea?”

Silence.

“There must be someone,” said Hilarus despondently. The teacher was longing for a big adventure, and it pained him that nothing would come of it.

“You haven’t so much as asked Uri,” said Plotius.

The others stared at him, and Uri flushed. Nobody gave a cordial look; he had to say something.

“I don’t know a thing about boats,” Uri protested. “I don’t know anything about most things. I’m deeply sorry that someone worthier than me did not come with you instead of me.”

“The Lord created everyone worthy,” said Plotius. “He created the brute ignorant animals because He had a purpose with them. It is not for us to guess the Creator’s reasons but to accept His disposals. So what do you have to say?”

He would have to say something after all.

“Isn’t there anyone over there for whom a ship like that would come in handy?” he ventured. “The Jewish navy perhaps…”

“No doubt they would be happy to take one as a free gift,” Matthew nodded vigorously. “They might even purchase it, albeit at a rock-bottom price. It’s not just that — there’s no way I could account for a loss like that, I could not even fiddle my way around it.”

Silence.

“What about the Romans?” Uri ventured.

Matthew snorted, and the others joined in the laughter.

“The Romans would take the boat over well and good,” Plotius explained. “But they would clap us in irons on the grounds that we had stolen it, and they’d hand us over to the Sanhedrin to pass sentence. No one among the Jerusalem Elders would come to our defense; we would be rowing in chains till the end of our days.”

Uri flared up:

“But we’re the delegation! We have safe conduct! We’re Roman citizens!”

Plotius stepped up to him and patted him on the shoulder.

“Dear boy, the Sanhedrin nurtures extremely good relations with the Romans,” he said. “And so it should. That’s what peace is, the Lord be praised. Naturally, a few people would hotfoot it from Rome to Judaea on our behalf, and the beloved members of our families would never forsake us, and they would protest till they were blue in the face in every forum that the Sanhedrin had no power of jurisdiction over Roman citizens, and our loved ones would be able to prove that sooner or later, after which the Roman authorities would move Heaven and Earth to have us tracked down; that would take half a year, a year, or even more; and by the time they found us we would long since have croaked in a galley boat, maybe the very one that we offered for purchase to the Romans.”

Uri still did not give up:

“The Sanhedrin cannot pass judgment on Roman citizens! You yourself said so!”

Plotius groaned.

“Dear boy, the Sanhedrin is stuffed with the high priest’s placemen. The high priest is appointed by the Roman prefect, and he can replace him whenever he likes without even having to give a justification. In matters that are not religious the high priest dances whatever jig the prefect whistles, and his placemen dance in turn to his whistle. You don’t seriously believe that the high priest would not take seriously thousands of sesterces from the Romans to keep quiet about them filching a ship with Jewish owners? He’d get the full price of the boat — maybe even more.”

“But that’s corruption!” Hilarus explained.

“In plain Latin,” Matthew nodded his agreement.

They fell silent. Plotius next said, turning to Uri but with the others paying close attention:

“For all that, I am wholeheartedly in full support of whoever is the current high priest in Jerusalem and the Sanhedrin, whatever mischief they might get up to, because they are better by far than those madmen who impair their authority and threaten the peace, our faith, and the very existence of the Jewish people with their muddy ideas and sick notions.”

They examined the boat in question the next day, but they had to admit that it was too large for them, and postponed any decision for another day on the off chance that something would happen. They had to move out of the basement, but they found a deserted building that was in ruins beside the crumbling city wall, and cleared out the ground floor. It was none too secure a place, but it cost nothing and was close to the harbor. They decided that three of them would stay “at home” at all times, and the others would keep an eye on movements and staying up to date.

As he went around the city Uri marveled at how such a significant port could be in such a state of neglect. It was not just that the city wall had collapsed in many places; most of the shrines could have done with a major overhaul.

He came to a halt in front of a papyrus notice stuck to one of the walls.

Matthew also came to a halt.

It was an announcement that the famous Makedonios would be appearing tomorrow at the amphitheater and expounding his theses in person.

Uri became very excited.

“I’ve got two of his works back at home,” he said. “He’s witty. It would be good to listen to him.”

Matthew said nothing.

“It costs eight asses at the theater,” Uri said. “That’s what is written here.”

“I can see,” said Matthew. “Not exactly cheap.”

“Wouldn’t it be a good idea to go and hear him?”

Matthew goggled at him. Uri could see that he was astounded even though there was no rule to forbid a Jew from listening to a non-Jewish philosopher expounding his theses; after all, he was not a priest of some strange rite.

“I’d like to listen to him,” Uri persisted stubbornly.

“Well, then, listen,” said Matthew, and resumed walking.

Uri hurried after him.

“I have no money,” he said. “Lend me eight asses. I’ll give it back in Rome.”

Matthew stopped, reached under his toga, pulled out the little pouch that he carried tied to his back, took out a sestertius, and offered it to Uri.

Uri hesitated.

“Take it!” said Matthew. “One day you’ll come to my place in Ostia and you’ll invite me out to drink a jar of wine in the best tavern.”

Uri thanked him and took the coin from him.

He prayed that a ship would not come just yet. The prayer was heard, and in the afternoon of the following day he handed the money over to the guards at the entrance to the amphitheater and waited for the change. The guards shoved him on, and he was also pushed from behind by others who were seeking to enter, so he was obliged to carry on. Given that one sestertius was worth sixteen asses, he had lost eight asses — and that would have come in handy. He would have fastened it to his loincloth and not spent it, happy in the knowledge that he could do so any time.

There were thirty rows running around the amphitheater. Uri had arrived early so as to be able to take a seat in one of the front rows because from farther back there was no chance of his being able to see the speaker. He hoped he would come close to the audience. The amphitheater was not quite full, but still there was a decent audience, and Uri was relieved to note that there were some other Jews among them. He would make a note of that to Matthew, who seemed to disapprove of his interest in pagan philosophy.

In the center of the space enclosed by the semicircles stood a platform assembled from planks, at the back of which were five steps leading up to it, so the speaker would step up there, perhaps on account of the acoustics. If Uri were to sit a few rows higher, he would be able to see over the landscape to the sea — at least its blueness, if not the horizon. But he wanted a seat near the podium.

It was a pleasant early spring afternoon. A small group appeared in the arena, four men carrying a lectica on which the philosopher was seated. His bald brow was adorned with a wreath of laurels. He was a burly, red-haired man, as Uri could see clearly from the second row, because the litter was carried around past the first row, and the philosopher waved happily to the spectators, who shouted words of encouragement toward him as if they were attending a chariot race. Servants hurried behind, including a scampering manikin.

His physician, people in the crowd commented, goes with him everywhere and if necessary will even open a vein while he is orating. An outstanding doctor; learned his craft at the feet of Celsus, no less.

Uri looked on disappointedly as the burly philosopher, supported by two servants, made his way with great difficulty up the steps to the platform. Even though the folds of the toga were nicely arranged on the ground, somehow it still sat badly on him, pushed out on both sides by his huge misshapen hips. On the basis of the scrolls, Uri had pictured someone with quite a different exterior: a tall, angular figure with sharp features, a pointed nose, irreverently flashing eyes. This man had a turned-up nose and drooping eyes. Admittedly, Socrates also had a totally deformed head; his pug-nosed bust stood in the Capitoline along with all the other Greek greats, whose exteriors were similarly unprepossessing with the sole exception of the dashing Euripides.

The crowd was noisy; a small table was placed on the platform next to the philosopher and an amphora, which may well have contained wine. The servants stood in a semicircle at the back, sunk into reverent immobility; the physician hung around next to the platform. The philosopher raised his right hand; a hush fell on the crowd. Then the philosopher spoke, his deep, sonorous voice filling the space.

He started with a humorous subject: a crocodile wanted to be a man and asked the camel, being a servant to man, what the distinguishing feature of human existence was, so the camel enumerates them and goes on to advise the crocodile on how to be a camel, because that was only one step away from being a man. After the second or third sentence, Uri had the vague feeling that he had already encountered the text — indeed, knew it by heart. The people in the audience chortled with glee as they followed the twists and turns in the witty but rather undemanding text, until Uri realized that he had read the tale among several other works of a similar kind in a scroll by another author. He hoped he was mistaken, but then he saw in his mind’s eye the scroll itself, and he could even recall where in the scroll the words were placed.

The philosopher delivered the text as if it were one of his own compositions.

Uri looked around at the heedlessly chuckling audience.

Plagiarism: the philosopher had pilfered another philosopher’s text. He had not even taken the trouble to write a new one, or at least declaim one of his own older texts.

That grieved Uri. When the orator, having reaped his well-earned success, bowed deeply to ovation, took a sip of his wine, and again raised an arm to request silence to strike up on a new subject, it came as no surprise to Uri that he was also familiar with this tale. It concerned another philosopher’s happy-go-lucky make-believe composition about a cobbler who pretends to be Zeus to win over his friend’s wife, and how the virtuous lady asks Zeus for his assistance, and thus the lady partakes of divine love.

The unsuspecting audience laughed, with the females (there were rich, bejeweled ladies seated among the spectators in the company of their husbands or lovers) demurely gasping a bit at the more indelicate runs of the story, but no protests were to be heard. Uri felt a strong urge to stand up on behalf of the plundered authors and to thunder against the thief, but he controlled himself and watched scornfully at the way the fat man who called himself a philosopher managed to play in his one person the various roles. Not that he was bad at ham-acting: while portraying the female character he even wiggled his hips, simpered and whined in a falsetto tone.

Grown-up men and women enjoyed the infantile stories — grown-ups but utter morons nonetheless.

Uri trailed home despondently. He had wasted sixteen asses, which were not even his, on a shameful farce. He brought to mind the two works of the philosopher he had just seen and considered that they were good, despite his newly found, jaundiced distaste. They were not comparable with his great works but there was in them a certain seriousness, a dignity, a loftiness of the mind. It was terrible that a serious philosopher had to earn a living as a buffoon, filching texts from others.

He made an attempt to guess how much the philosopher might have earned that afternoon. The thirty rows had been roughly two thirds full, and one row seated about 150 people, so there must have been something like three thousand there. Fifteen hundred sesterces. There would have been expenses, like the hire of the theater, and who knows what that would have been: say one third of that, then of course there was the pay of his permanent attendants, which again was hard to assess. The lectica was obviously hired locally; the physician was certainly expensive, and each one of the servants probably cost more to maintain per day than his whole family in Rome.

So, the wretched thief cannot have earned all that big a sum of money if he had to support so many hangers-on. How much would be left for him personally? Not more than two hundred sesterces. Uri’s family could live off of that for months, of course, but it was still a measly remuneration.

He wondered how the clown planned his tours of the Italian provinces. Quite possibly he would make an appearance in some other town every three or four days. In prosperous towns maybe he not only glittered in the amphitheater but was also invited into the homes of the well-off. There were plenty of wealthy people in Syracusa, judging by the villas; who knows, maybe he would be bowing and scraping in private houses tomorrow, and make more from that than he did in the theater. Maybe he even declaimed more serious texts on such occasions.

It was not the sort of thing that Plato or Aristotle went in for.

Uri felt obliged the next day to report to Matthew on the philosopher’s performance. He honestly confessed to having been disappointed that the philosopher had ripped off the works of others.

“I enjoyed it,” said Matthew.

Uri was staggered.

“I was sitting in the back row,” said Matthew. “His voice carried clearly that far off. I saw you sitting in the second row; you kept turning around to look at the audience.”

He’s watching me, Uri thought. Following and watching me. What does he think I am, then? Some sort of spy who had a secret rendezvous with someone in Syracusa’s amphitheater?

“I tried to catch up with you in the crowd,” said Matthew, “but I got stuck at the exit, and by the time I managed to push through you were nowhere to be seen.”

Uri sighed. Once again he had supposed the worst of someone when in reality there had indeed been a big scrimmage on the way out.

In the end, a ship did arrive from Judaea, docking on Friday afternoon, two or three hours before sunset and the onset of the Sabbath.

Valerius happened to be keeping watch at the harbor; he announced that he had already managed to reach an agreement with the captain, who said that he would pick them up at first light on Sunday and would be setting off back to Caesarea. Matthew was none too pleased to have the glory of securing the boat stolen from him; Valerius was elated and described in detail the bireme on which they would be sailing. Uri was astounded at the rich nautical vocabulary Valerius commanded because he had never before so much as heard reference to the various types of masts and sails. Evidently shipping must be a mania for Valerius, assistant to an archisynagogos, and Uri asked him as well whether he had ever sailed before. Valerius replied that yes, he had; a few days ago he had sailed on a ferry from Italia to Sicily. But just wait, just wait, he said, his eyes glittering like a crackpot. Uri was less sanguine: it would take only a stray little storm for them to find themselves on the bottom of the sea. Now that a boat had turned up, he would most willingly have turned back.

The Judaean boat was anchored some two to three hundred feet from the shore, and the huge logs the boat had carried were hauled aloft by an enormous 100- to 120-foot-high pulley rig and lowered onto the smaller craft that had been sculled out to unload the cargo. Matthew said that the reason the boat did not come closer to the shore was so that slaves should not throw themselves into the water and swim off — not that there was much chance of that, seeing as they were chained together, but it did no harm to be careful.

Uri had been struck by the fact that only slaves were working on the boats and on the shore, albeit under the supervision of a few slave drivers, and he even said as much.

Iustus, who had been keeping watch with Valerius, laughed.

“Pity you didn’t see the sailors jumping ashore,” he said, “and the hurry they were in! Racing to be sure that the Sabbath should fall with them in a safe place.”

Matthew also laughed, though he had not even seen them.

“They will be celebrating next door to us,” he said.

Half an hour before the onset of the Sabbath, they arrived at the sawmill to which Matthew led them.

Right up till the sun set, the slaves — whole families: fathers, mothers, and children — ceaselessly rotated, around and around, a huge ribbed wheel, to which a second wheel with a horizontal axis was transversely engaged; a strap attached to the thickened far end of its axle turned a massive circular saw. Others were sawing logs from the new consignment into rectangular planks: a trunk would be tugged onto a table with a slot cut into one end, and at the halfway point the saw would then bite into the wood with a buzzing and howl and split off the surplus bits, which a further detachment of slaves were occupied with chopping up. Uri had seen horses going around in circles in mills and was rather surprised not to see even one such beast here until Hilarus tipped him off that it was cheaper to keep slaves fed than it was to buy fodder for horses.

The logs were seasoned in Judaea because the climate was favorable there; it was not worth trying to work wood that was still wet because later on it would warp and buckle, and not just the builder but also the supplier would be sued on that account if it led to the collapse of a multistory building, an almost weekly occurrence in Rome, as Plotius explained. Besides being able to sell at a higher price when the timber had been processed, cutting it into planks also had the advantage that it was possible to stack more of them together on the next ship that was heading northward, continued Aaron, the sawmill’s owner who had invited them.

“That would be a nice trick,” quipped Matthew, “if trees grew naturally with rectangular trunks.”

“I wouldn’t be too thrilled,” Aaron retorted, “because then I would have to look for a less lucrative trade for myself.”

Uri was amazed that even the sawdust was collected in sacks, but Matthew explained that this was also transported to Rome, where it was scattered on the mud in front of the houses of the rich. Uri was amazed at that as well: did that too come from Judaea? He had often seen sawdust being scattered on the mud in Rome but never imagined that a day would come when he had something to do with it.

Sawdust was not much cheaper than wooden beams, Matthew noted; every last scrap of the forests felled in Judaea was turned to profitable use. He himself had transported a huge amount of timber in his own work. When they got to Judaea he would point out the locations of the forests that had been felled in recent decades; due to the dearth of trees the soil was being blown away by the wind and rocks were now jutting out of the ground. On the other hand, what is one supposed to do if there is no demand for much else in the way of exports from Judaea?

“Dates, for example,” Uri stated.

“Up till now it was possible,” said Matthew, “but in recent times they have also been planting them in Italia, unfortunately.”

The slaves left off work at sunset on the dot to resume at first light on Sunday. They withdrew to a large barn-like building a bit like a stables in which they all lived and where they too celebrated their own Sabbath. They were not chained, but their ears were pierced, and, judging by the stone wall of at least ten feet in height, Uri had not the slightest doubt that they were not able to escape. At the sole gate two sentries, shield and spear in hand, stood on guard; they were not Jews and therefore allowed to do duty on the Sabbath.

Uri brooded on why he felt such twinges of conscience over a Jewish mill-owner keeping Jewish slaves. In Rome the Jews had all been liberated, and they had not been replaced by new slaves from Palestine; peace had reigned for decades. How come these Jews had become slaves despite that?

He questioned Plotius.

“They were unable to pay their debts,” said Plotius, “so they sold themselves, along with their families.”

Uri shuddered.

“Their thinking is,” Plotius went on, “it is better if the family stays together, and also that they will be better off in a Jewish establishment. That is not always the case.”

Uri imagined having to trundle, with his father and sisters, a ribbed wheel around and around for hours at a time, and he felt dizzy. But it was not every day that a shipment of timber arrived at Syracusa; maybe it was not only on the Sabbath that they had a chance to rest.

He felt badly that he had also failed to greet the slaves, even though they too belonged to the household. There was always tomorrow evening, of course.

Aaron owned a true Italian house — huge and with all the trimmings: an atrium, kitchen, bedrooms, and two big pools in the garden, one for ritual bathing (they too were free to take a dip in it, each of them being given a clean loincloth to cover his genitals), whereas in the second swam gorgeous fish of various shapes and sizes. Non-Jewish slaves (there were also some of them) took care of them throughout the night, as the Sabbath restrictions did not apply to them. The house was plumbed for sewage disposal, with the privies, as in richer Roman villas, built to allow for flushing with water. Uri spent three longish spells perched on the oval pottery seats there over the course of the evening, examining the walls of the latrines, tiled to the ceiling as they were with Solomon’s seals — Stars of David, some called them — the bare soles of his feet pleasantly warmed by the floor tiles — under-floor heating by hypocaust had been installed in all the rooms.

Aaron was a middle-aged man of nondescript appearance, more than content with his lot in life. Two sons of his also spent the Sabbath there; as young adults they already had their own houses and were engaged in other trades even though they were not yet married. Uri had the feeling that they looked down on the delegation’s members: they were a long way from Rome, and they had precious little to do with it; they were successful businessmen from a good Syracusan family, and the Roman Jewish community was of no significance for them. Uri would not be surprised to find that they had never read a single scroll in their life, and if they had been present in the amphitheater they would certainly have been unaware that the orator was declaiming works by others. They looked happy.

Aaron proposed that they cast lots to be “king of the wine,” or toastmaster — a suggestion to which the company enthusiastically assented, though Uri had no idea what that office might entail.

They threw a pair of dice, which, as an implement of a game of chance, was forbidden to Jews not only on a Sabbath but at any time. However, seeing that it was only being used to draw lots, no prohibition applied. After several rounds, Valerius emerged as the winner. The hyperetes was so elated at his luck that he leapt around and clapped his hands ecstatically like a child. Uri could only watch in wonder.

The non-Jewish servants brought in an enormous bronze dish, filled it with water, brought out several more large dishes and a good dozen amphorae, then set out ornamental murrhine glasses before them on the table.

Valerius instructed the servants to mix the wine and water in a fifty-fifty ratio. The big vessels — punchbowls, as they were called — were filled with equal quantities of wine and water, and from these the drinks were measured out with a large ladle through a funnel into each person’s drinking glass.

At that point Aaron announced that it was time to say prayers.

They started with the first of the two classes of blessings, because the second type could only be uttered by a priest, then they said the Sh’ma and the seven obligatory blessings for the Sabbath, and finally the kiddush, which is recited over a cup of wine in private houses to consecrate the Sabbath.

Valerius then ordered everyone to down the glass in one and then he would get the next.

They did his bidding.

From then on it was Valerius who stipulated the proportions in which the wine and water were to be mixed, and how often they should drink. His orders had to be complied with, given that he was the wine king. There was no Law, written or unwritten, that said anything about the office of wine king, and therefore it was allowed to comply with the wine king on the Sabbath.

It was likewise allowed to converse and sit around in the garden while drinking. Uri kept casting stealthy glances at the large building looming in the dark behind the high stone wall, where the sailors were celebrating their Sabbath. He noticed that the others also looked over there from time to time. Oil lamps glowed behind the curtains in the tiny windows, much as they did on the table that had been set out in the garden on their side, and at times a sound like the meowing of cats was audible. Maybe they had a menorah in the rooms over there, because in their garden there was a massive, cast-bronze menorah on a marble plinth, with all seven of its candles burning.

“They’re screwing,” Aaron said.

The rest laughed.

It then began to glimmer in Uri’s mind what the dark, two-story building next door might be.

All the same, he asked, and indeed it was: Syracusa’s Jewish brothel.

That was what the sailors had been hurrying to.

The proprietor of the brothel was Jewish, Aaron related, and the women who lived there were Jewish as well, around three dozen of them — or at least so people say, because he personally had never seen them. He chortled, and his sons gave him looks as disgusted as those Gaius Lucius’s sons gave him in Rome. Except that there was no wife present, and nobody asked if she was still alive, had died, or been driven away by Aaron.

The harlots came from Judaea and Galilee, recounted Aaron, and constantly at that; if any fled or died, the gap was immediately filled, because the demand was very high. There were short girls, tall ones, slim ones, and fat ones, girls with large bosoms and others with small bosoms, skinny thighs or fat thighs, broad-hipped or narrow-hipped, red-haired or black-haired, short-haired or long-haired girls; some could dance, others might play the harp, some could read out loud very nicely, and others were completely dumb, but each and every one was well versed in the arts of lovemaking. Divorced wives, unmarried girls who had been knocked up by mercenaries, girls who had been abandoned or anathematized, women, raped virgins, expectant grandmothers, pickpockets, madwomen, women cursed by magic spells — one and all of them unfortunate females who would long ago have given up the ghost had they not found their way here, where they had a roof over their head and food to eat, and none too bad at that, and plenty enough of it too. They not only received Jewish clients, but Jewish sailors were always preferred and were given discounts, because the proprietor strictly observed religious commandments in all things at all times.

A hush fell; they sipped their wine and strove not to take a peek in the direction of the dark, two-story house lowering at the end of the garden, past the pools, past the high wall, but the place where, Uri sensed, they all, himself included, longed to be.

“On the Sabbath, even fallen women are not supposed to work, if they’re Jewish,” Uri piped up.

Iustus and Hilarus endorsed that vigorously: they thought it was outrageous, an unpardonable sin to force women to work on the Sabbath and, worse still, by a Jew, even if they were whores.

Uri looked at Plotius, but the latter said nothing. Valerius shook his head and ordered a new round in a mix of one-third to two-thirds, the larger part being wine.

“It’s not as if they are working,” Matthew said, and he snorted with laughter. “On the Sabbath married couples have a duty to live a married life.”

“That’s right, but those women are not married! They’re lousy whores!” declared teacher Hilarus.

“But they are married,” Matthew rejoined with a mischievous chuckle. “That’s the custom here in Syracusa.” At which he turned to Aaron: “Correct me if I’ve got that wrong…”

“No, you’ve got it right,” Aaron said with a grin on his face.

“Well, anyway, I’ve been told that sailors can drop into the brothel at any time, and they will be served forthwith. If it so happens that they arrive on the Sabbath, because the wind was against them, or the oarsmen mutinied, or pirates wanted to grapple with the ship and had to be beaten off, then they will be heartily welcome on production of a standard marriage certificate, and on these the only blank that is left is for the client’s name; the girls’ names are entered sure enough, only those of the men are missing. The form is quickly completed as soon as the man chooses a woman; the owner of the brothel personally blesses all the newly married couples, and they are free to couple lawfully the whole night long. They spend the Sabbath like any God-fearing Jew, and because they are married it is even obligatory for them to couple. Then on the Sabbath evening, when the sun goes down and the Sabbath comes to a close, they enter the appropriate names into the standard religious document, both sign it, and thereafter they may consider themselves as divorced under the Law — and all perfectly legally.”

“How hypocritical!” expostulated Uri.

“Why’s that?” Matthew asked. “They do genuinely get married, but nowhere does it say how many times a Jew may contract marriage. And they do genuinely get divorced. It’s all done in accordance with the Law. I’ve seen a bill of marriage — not just one either, because some people collect them. Usually they are burned — the real married ones burn them anyway, so the paper will not be found on them by chance. No proof is left in the brothel. The Lord God sees anyway what he must see, and up till now He has not interfered once; not brought down a pestilence on the house, or an earthquake, and no tidal wave has carried it off, though it’s been operating for quite a while.”

“When I first came here,” said Aaron, “it was already here, and that was nearly twenty years ago.”

That bore thinking about. The Lord bestowed on the Jews laws that were full of holes. Equally, that might, of course, be a matter for rejoicing.

“This Syracusan brothel is the most humane I’ve ever heard of,” said Plotius unexpectedly. “The owner has brought in the rule that the men do not pay up front but upon leaving, and pay precisely what the wench says, her status for the evening of the Sabbath indeed being that of a freshly divorced wife. The women are not beaten up here, because any woman who is beaten will declare, purely out of vengeance, a staggeringly large sum, and if the blighter does not have that much, the proprietor recovers it from the rest: nobody is allowed to leave until everyone has paid. There are brutes of servants who can get anybody to cough up, but that is not needed, because anyone going in is clear about the rules. Apparently there have been cases when the woman asked for nothing, but those are just legends, of course; any owner would instantly dismiss a woman like that.”

They supped more wine; by now there was little water in it.

“Cornelius, the proprietor,” said Aaron, “is just as much a father of the synagogue — Pater synagogue — as I am. He offered it a mosaic floor (ten thousand sesterces, it cost), and not as the proprietor of a brothel, but as a merchant. After all, he does trade as well. The community accepted the gift.”

“Has it ever happened,” an overwrought Uri queried, “that a marriage was not dissolved by the evening of the next day?”

Neither Aaron nor Matthew nor Plotius had yet heard of such a miracle.

Hilarus strenuously disapproved of a mockery being made of the sanctity of married life in a brothel, and he was of the opinion that it was the duty of jurists to hunt out objections to such cases.

Plotius snorted: there were no jurists, only priests and believers. Interpreters of the law were noxious beings, because they did not take their stance on the ground of the Pentateuch of Moses but set themselves up as religious experts upon their own authority without having been granted any sort of legitimacy by the Lord.

Uri was amazed at the ferocity of the fires in the eyes of Plotius, who had himself just been expounding a law that certainly had not been revealed by God. Maybe it had been put forward to Him at some time, but He had not yet gotten around to endorsing it because once He did, it became doctrine.

Aaron had a more indulgent attitude toward the secessionists, the name used for the masters, of whom there were many over there in Palestine, and who had been instructing the population for at least one hundred years. They had acquired prestige with their advice and interpretations of law, and they had seats in the Sanhedrin — admittedly only in a minority. Their legal counsel was called upon in Jerusalem and other cities alike to adjudicate on complex cases.

“So, what does one of those masters advise in this case?” Uri was curious.

“I don’t know,” Aaron said, “but I can imagine tough debates went on in the Sanhedrin about prostitution. Not that they had any outcome: there is complete silence about prostitution. As if it did not exist. Yet they too are Jews, and there are scads of them over there.”

“That’s not quite true,” Iustus interjected. “A courtesan, like an exciseman, is disqualified from testifying in a court of law, not even in her own case. A regulation has been passed against them.”

“True,” said Aaron, “but anyone who uses a courtesan is allowed to give witness; he suffers no penalty, even though he is not sleeping with his wife. He is sinning, but he is not punished for that. What else would you call that but confusion? There are some masters over there who take the side of the courtesans, pleading for compassion to be shown toward them because they are not allowed to partake of the tzedakah or charity-box; or in other words, they are unable to quit the business or else they would die. It’s a vicious circle, but the high priests have never said a single word about it up till now.”

“Is there a priest here in Syracusa at all?” Hilarus inquired.

“Sometimes there is,” said Aaron. “There’s one who usually comes for a few days from across the sea. He shuttles. It just so happens that he’s here right now; you will meet him in the house of prayer tomorrow morning. But he’ll soon be off again; his family lives in Jerusalem, close to the fire. That is where the sacrificial meals are given out; they never come over. He has something like eight children, if I’m not mistaken…”

“And what has he got to say about this disgraceful practice?” Hilarus asked, gesturing with his head toward the neighboring building.

“Nothing at all,” Aaron laughed. “What should he say? Forbid sailors from sleeping with a woman after they have spent weeks cooped up at sea? Tell them to switch to brotherly love? Hardly! Apart from anything else, that would be a grave sin he was proclaiming. So he holds his tongue. Though I don’t know,” he added, “how much he gets, or from whom, for holding his tongue. In the final analysis, he would be within his rights to call down a curse on the place, but he has never done so. Though I also don’t know whether anyone has paid him to lay a curse on the house.”

“So, what happens when the Sabbath overtakes a ship at sea?” Uri asked. “Do the slaves lay off rowing? Do the sailors stop climbing the masts?”

“That’s a quite different situation,” Matthew responded. “There is a threat to life, so they are allowed to work. In such cases the law of the exception pertains, according to which man does not exist for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath exists for man.”

“It doesn’t say that in the Torah,” said Uri.

“But it’s there in our tradition,” said Matthew.

“All but two short of one hundred years ago it was not there,” persisted Uri. “When Pompey occupied Jerusalem, the Jews did nothing, because it was the Sabbath; they didn’t defend the City by pulling down the rampart the same day. It can’t be all that ancient a tradition, even if it has been added since. But then where is it written down?”

“It’s written down all right,” observed Plotius. “I’ve seen hefty collections of laws in Judaea and Galilee, more than one of them containing not the word of the Torah but subsequent laws that are based on the Torah. They are guarded in stout, locked chests, and they are of such value that not just anybody can consult them. I asked how much one would have to pay for something like that, and they looked at me as if I were insane: they are so precious that they have no price, they can’t be bought and sold; they are passed as a bequest from a master to his favorite pupil, to his first-born son, or to his brother. The new laws cannot be recorded in principle, as there are numerous instances where they conflict with the laws of the Torah; in short, these collections of laws do not officially exist. But all the same, in practice even those who have never seen such a book stick to these collections of legal cases. If the designated judges have to adjudicate on a complex case and in the end are at a loss what to do, they send envoys with the questions to the masters who are familiar with these collections. Naturally even they only know them through hearsay, as is permitted — though of course they have never seen anything of the like. Perish the thought! Of course, on getting the advice, the judges pass judgment according to their own discretion because there is no necessity to reach a judgment according to a nonexistent book of laws, but oddly enough in most cases they do reach them. It is what in Rome is called the law of precedence.”

Could this be the deficient legal security in Judaea of which Plotius had spoken?

They were now drinking the pure wine that Valerius, the wine king, had now ordered for their throats, and their consciousness became so weighed down that the next day none of them awoke in time, and they did not go to the house of prayer and did not take part in holy worship on that Sabbath.

“It’s only the meal you need to feel sorry about,” said Aaron, placing a wet towel around his head as a compress. “I contributed to acquiring it and it must have been celestial. On the other hand, you were let off having to listen to the sermon. Our priest is long-winded and boring in teaching virtue. He hardly ever lets anyone else get a word in edgewise; stupid, the poor man, but what can we do…”

It was good that a Torah was kept on hand for such cases, and from that they could read what was due to be read on the Sabbath. Anyone was allowed to read what was designated so long as they were among a community of at least ten men. There were precisely ten of them, including Aaron and his sons, so there was no need for them to pray together with the slaves. Matthew quickly unrolled the Greek Torah scroll and read out what had to be read, and at least they were sober enough by then to say the “Amens” in the right places.

Wherever a quorum of ten Jews are together, God is present; to be more precise, the Shechinah, or Divine immanence, is present in everyone, and for that reason the place is holy. Thus, the house of the owner of the sawmill had become holy simply by virtue of their male presence — at least as holy as the house of prayer itself. Indeed, they were even able to take a dip in the basin again before prayers, whereas in the house of prayer the faithful would only have been able to dip their hands in a bowl of water placed there for that purpose, and perhaps splash a little water casually on themselves. They too were able to partake of a big meal, which after all is the very essence of the Sabbath, because the Omnipotent arranged that on the seventh day even Jews who might have been starving until then should finally have access to food that was adequate to man.

Uri ruminated on whether the nearby brothel did not also become a holy place on the Sabbath. There were almost certainly ten men in the building who were praying right then in the prescribed fashion. Maybe most of them were even present together with Cornelius and his family for the regular Sabbath service in the house of prayer, and also said the “Amens” in the right places, and overate at the free meal. Maybe they even took along with them yesterday’s wives, whom they would be divorcing that day; for after all women and children were of equal rank, it was just that they only had to say the Sh’ma twice, once in the morning and once in the evening.

The sailors and wenches were beyond reproach: they observed the law.

It was a wise ordinance of the Lord that the Torah was the centerpiece of the religion rather than the house of prayer in which it was read out from. Since the Diaspora came into existence it is permissible to read from the Torah anywhere if ten men were present, and there would usually be that many assembled.

As a result, they did not meet with the shuttling priest, who had nothing to say on the matter of the brothel but was all the more a windbag on other matters, or with the local Jewish beggars who would overrun the courtyards and gardens of prayer houses in excessive numbers on such occasions (just as they did the surroundings of synagogues in Rome). Still, when all is said and done, and in spite of sleeping through the Sabbath service in the house of prayer, they too, worthy members of the Jewish delegation from Rome, observed the law nonetheless.

At first light on Sunday the ship was loaded, along with the galley slaves, with all sorts of precious cargo, half of which were luxury goods that the rich of Judaea craved, their wives especially: oils, paints, and balms with which it was the latest fad to daub the body in Italia; caskets of jewels; small mirrors; little jars. There were also medicinal herbs guaranteed to cure all manner of ills, either moist in barrels that kept them fresh or in sacks, dried and powdered: rejuvenating salves, aperients to loosen constipated bowels, emollients to calm loose bowels, remedies to inhibit hair loss or counter balding, potions to regrow split nails or banish pimples and warts — all in copious quantities.

The other half of the cargo consisted of Sicilian wine and sizable sacks of almonds. Before now, Uri would have been unable to conceive of that amount of almonds. He had eaten them once before: the roast fish at his bar mitzvah had a thin sprinkling of roasted almonds.

Uri himself also carried a number of smaller parcels over the plank onto the skiff that plied between the ship anchored in the bay and the shore; squinting sideways, he marveled meanwhile at the slaves, who, without a word of complaint, carried barrel after barrel, their eyes dull, apathetic, as if they were oxen or mules driving a mill. When they had finished, they seated themselves in comfort, insofar as their chains permitted; they were chained together in groups of ten, thanks to the newfangled Roman decimal system, which the Jews of Judaea had also adopted, so it seemed the chain gang was an Italian product. It was obviously more comfortable if the shackles were not unfastened when they prayed. Uri got to thinking whether it was pleasing to the Lord to be prayed to by people who had been clapped in irons, although of course He must have gotten used to that sort of thing down the millennia.

The slave driver and his assistant arrived and doled out the rations into small dishes, which were produced from under their leather-belted tunics. The slaves slurped greedily and dug into their food with dirty hands. Uri wondered what he would do if he had been born a slave; he would die of hunger if he could not wash his hands.

I didn’t say goodbye to Aaron’s slaves, it crossed Uri’s mind, and he felt an unpleasant twinge in the pit of his stomach. What must they have thought of the delegation? What had his grandfather, Thaddeus the slave, thought of masters?

When the sailors, sleepily, tottering, put in an appearance, the captain, who had not been with them at the brothel but had celebrated the Sabbath together with the slaves and some of the slave drivers, issued the order to set sail. Uri wondered if a wench had been rowed out to the boat for him, or maybe he had a male lover among the slaves.

The travelers were dead tired by the time they came to say dawn prayers, bowing to the prow of the boat in a southeasterly direction, or, rather, more to the east. The stem had an odd appearance; the curved beams on the two sides were arched gracefully toward each other and upward, as if seeking each other out proudly at the front, yet they met merely in a stubby, thick stump. Uri gazed at the stump with tightly screwed eyes before gradually realizing that a figurehead of some kind must once have been placed there, a god or goddess, as was customary on Roman ships, but when it was bought by Jews they had it sawed off. They circumcised the ship, thought Uri sardonically, before chiding himself.

The ship had been late, waiting for a consignment of balsam that had not arrived in time for some reason. They had also been waiting for a substantial cargo from Galilee, and things from there were always delayed; people there were never in a hurry. The timber had been loaded a long time ago, but balsam now fetched a high price, so it was worth waiting for it.

The captain had also heard about there being a demonstration of some sort at the stadium in Caesarea, but that had not been organized by local Jews; they were very sober-minded and calm and had nothing to do with it. These were people from Jerusalem, not in the hundreds or thousands, just a few dozen angry vagabonds; they had come to no harm and had gone home peacefully. That was not the reason for their being late; it was because the balsam had not arrived.

The ship was pervaded with the aroma of balsam. Nauseated by it, Uri tried vainly to rid his nostrils of the smell. Their quarters were in the belly of the ship, but the dreadful stench there proved, if anything, even more penetrating, so he went up on deck at the stern, sat down with his back against the wall of the bridge, and went to sleep, seated in the open air.

He woke up to find his hands were freezing and felt a tickle. He grabbed and got a yelp in response. He opened his eyes to see a squat, short-legged, short-coated, odd-looking, long-snouted, light brown dog leap away. It came to a stop about three feet away and watched expectantly. Its legs were not just stubby but also bowed, and its long tail whisked right and left. Uri had not had much to do with animals, having at most had to chase away cats, of which there were a great abundance in Rome; a few of the residents of Far Side had kept goats and sheep, out of respect for tradition, but only a few, because there was nowhere to graze them.

“He’s called Remus,” said in Aramaic a sailor who had just shinned down one of the masts.

“So was his mother Romulus?” Uri quipped back good-naturedly, now that he could speak in his family’s secret tongue.

The sailor didn’t get it, however, and he shook his head and vanished.

Uri clucked at the dog and called out its name, whereupon the dog wagged its tail even more enthusiastically, padded over toward Uri, and looked at him even more expectantly. Uri slowly opened the hand that had been licked and stroked him. The dog allowed him, indeed pushed his muzzle vigorously under Uri’s hand so that he would go on stroking him; not being able to do so himself because of his short legs.

Until the time for prayers came around again, Uri stroked the sleeping dog nestled in his lap.

Remus was not the only dog on board; there were eight or nine of them, the precise number varying depending on which sailor was asked. They were used to hunt any rats and mice that pillaged the freight. All were short-bodied, long-nosed dogs that could wriggle through gaps — the smaller the dog, the better. In fact, they were hunting dogs, specially bred by the Romans and very useful, because they did not have to be fed, only allowed to work and be given water now and then.

Wherever Uri went, Remus was sure to follow. He formed the view that the dog knew him better than his human companions, recognizing that he was a reliable and affectionate person. Or did loneliness have its own aura? Was that what the dog smelled?

Countless leather bottles of water, along with dried figs, salted raw fish, smoked fish, and dried fish had been stocked for the crew and passengers, along with several hundred pounds of unleavened bread, baked in thicker portions than matzos generally were. Uri grew tired of the monotonous diet by the first evening; they were taking water to sea, taking fish to sea. It seemed the Creation had not been devised to absolute perfection.

With a favorable northwesterly wind to fill the sails, they forged eastward and later northeastward. The captain said that in the spring it was always better going from Syracusa to Caesarea than the reverse. The slaves, who rowed on the lower level of the bireme, the upper level left empty, were being given a break. Uri looked down on them. They were lying, chained to each other, naked in the gloom of the ship’s belly. Light and air they got from above, from where they could be reached by clambering down a ladder, except that the ladder was pulled up right then. It was only let down when the armed slave drivers took victuals down to them, with the ladders being pulled up after them once they’d scrambled up with the vessels of excrement. One of the slave drivers was always down there with them to control the rhythm of the rowing; he was now resting alongside them — that being his occupation right then. Slave drivers were relieved, not so the slaves.

The long oars had been drawn in. There were something like forty down below. One of the drivers noticed that Uri was looking at the slaves with interest and straightaway began explaining to him in Greek that the oars that were located on the upper bank were much longer, and there were twenty of them.

“We rarely use them,” he said, “because it’s harder to row with them. They’re saved for big storms, and then they are not to move the ship forward but to stabilize it. That is when the best oarsmen are directed to the upper level.”

He was a bald-pated, muscular man, who was beginning to get paunchier from leading a comfortable life. Uri found the heavy jowls and chops, the sycophantic currying of favor, distasteful, but he was grateful that here was someone from whom he could gain information.

“How does one become a slave driver?” he asked.

The man was surprised.

“You need merit and a dose of luck,” he said.

“Could a more profitable, less dangerous occupation not be an option?”

The driver was astonished at first, but then he had a moment of realization and broke into a broad grin.

“I’m happy to be a slave driver, sir. Before that I worked in the galley down below for eight years.”

Uri looked at the reclining bodies below.

The slave driver was also a slave, only he had been promoted to leader.

The driver stood humbly waiting for any further questions, bending forward intently to catch even Uri’s sighs.

“Are they lashed?” Uri queried, indicating them below with a nod.

“Yes,” said the driver. “The language of the scourge is all they understand.”

“Were you beaten?”

“And how! It was the only language I understood.”

“And did you hate the people who beat you?”

“You bet! And they hate me now that I have become a slave driver. But while I was a galley slave I paid no thought to the possibility that those who were my slave drivers hated me. Now I know they did, because I also hate them. That’s how it has to be, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to lash them.”

Uri turned away and looked out to sea with narrowed eyes. It was a steely blue with white flecks. Somewhere far off glistened the green-brownish colors of a line blurring the horizon, like a mosaic studded with granules — that might be dry land. They were not yet far from the shore.

“We hug closely to the coast of Italia to start with,” said the driver politely, “then we cut across and sail by the Dalmatian coast to the Greek islands until we touch Crete, after which we sail on farther to the Syrian coast, where we veer left. If we get a favorable wind we won’t stop till we get to Crete. Three weeks for the whole voyage, if not less.”

Uri looked at the driver’s ear — or rather the piercing in it, which had closed. I should have spotted it earlier, he thought.

The slave driver’s presence was onerous but at the same time disturbing.

“Were you born a slave?” he asked.

“No, not at all, sir,” the driver protested. “We Jews, don’t you know, are not born slaves.”

Uri, shamefaced, stayed silent. He had no idea how things were in Judaea.

“I had a family, even had work,” the slave driver said. “I was a carpenter, but the devil got into me, and I killed my wife and her mother; I smashed their brains in with a hatchet. I also wanted to kill my children, the devil had such a hold on me, but I was wrestled to the ground. The court sentenced me to servitude for life. Though they would have been entitled to have me stoned to death. I’m grateful to the court, sir, because they spared my life, though of course I have the added punishment that until the end of my days I shall grieve my unhappy little ones, six of them altogether, who are left to fend for themselves in the world without mother and father…”

Uri was nauseated to hear the slave driver’s willing confession, though he had no idea quite why. Maybe the tone in which the man had told the tale was somehow disgusting.

“When you became a slave did it not enter your mind to kill yourself?”

The driver was brought up short, surprised by the question.

“No, sir,” he said after a pause. “It never entered my mind. I was possessed by the devil. He did what I did, not me. I can’t help it, sir. It was the demon that they punished, not me. The demon has left me since then, I have the feeling, but I am being punished because I let him take hold of me… That’s my crime, sir: I was not watching out for the devil, and allowed him into my soul.”

Uri looked at the slave driver’s troubled eye. He was looking into the distance past Uri’s unpierced ears.

“You know that you will never be able to be free,” said Uri. “Is it worth living in slavery?”

“I don’t know, sir,” said the driver, his voice recovered. “A person doesn’t think; he lives.”

“Something must keep you going, all the same,” Uri insisted.

“That could be, sir. Indeed, it very likely does. But as far as killing myself is concerned, there wouldn’t have been the means to do so. But then again, it didn’t even enter my head. When the slave drivers started to lash, and they started at once so that I’d know my place, all that I had in my mind was that one day I would be a slave driver. I would be a slave driver and repay with interest. Not to them, that’s not possible, but to the oarsmen. And I pay it back now. Yes, sir, that’s how it was. And that’s how it has turned out, sir.”

Uri screwed his eyes up. The slave driver was standing in front of him. If I were to slap him across the face, thought Uri, no one would chide me, and he wouldn’t dare hit me back.

Strange.

Both of us are identical creatures of God, and yet not the same. What exactly did the Creator have in mind?

“That is what drives them as well,” the driver said, gesturing down toward the slaves with his head. “You can’t row year in, year out, without a person wanting something. They want to become drivers — all of them! If not now, then next year, in ten years, twenty years. Because being a slave driver is good: better to beat than be beaten. To thrash someone is freedom itself, sir. Anyone who doesn’t want that, and doesn’t want it hard enough, is dead in a few weeks — even the strongest of men, if he does not want at any cost to become a slave driver. If the spirit of revenge does not live in him.”

Uri turned away again and looked at the sea. If he looked to the left, he could still see the greenish-brown spots of the coast, and if he looked to the right, the steely blue of the sea. Who would ever suppose that at the far end of the endless expanse of water lay Africa?

They had been sailing for a day and a half when, to their left, on the far-off shore huge lights flared up and the sounds of muffled clamor reached them. The companions gathered on the port side of the deck and gazed toward the shore. Uri also stared, his eyes screwed up, through the fingers of one hand. He was not concerned that in addition to his companions the sailors could also see how shortsighted he was. Uri saw a mass of little colored fireflies in the distance, with the small circlets of light touching one another.

“Today is the anniversary of shipping,” said Matthew touchingly. “Today’s the eighth of March.”

“Pity we didn’t stay in Syracusa for another few days,” Plotius ventured. “We might have seen some real wonders.”

Uri was not the only one who did not know about the anniversary of shipping; neither did Hilarus and Iustus, though Valerius, the hyperetes, did know.

“It’s not customary to set sail till the eighth of March,” he said, “unless it’s in an emergency.”

“All year round, in other words,” Matthew laughed. “Commercial shipping is under way the whole winter.”

“Ah, but they don’t carry passengers,” Valerius countered. “And that’s still hazardous from now right up till the twenty-seventh of May, when the Pleiades rise into the sky. One can sail safely from then until Arcturus rises…”

“On September the twenty-fourth,” said Matthew.

“Yes, on September the twenty-fourth the equinoctial gales blow in, on the fifth of October rain-bringing Capricorn rises, and around October thirteenth you have Taurus, the bull. In November, the Pleiades go down, and that marks the end of the sailing year.”

“Military galleys and rapid gunboats run all year,” noted Plotius.

“At least one thing is true out of all that,” said Matthew with a smile. “On the eighth of March, in every town along the coast they will be celebrating the anniversary of shipping. In Syracusa on these occasions there are usually gladiatorial contests, they hold chariot races, and performances are staged in the amphitheater,” and here he turned to Uri, “the place where the amusing philosopher spoke. One eighth of March I saw a play in that theater; they were performing a comedy of some sort. Quite immoral it was, and much else besides — dances that it is not seemly to relate… I did indeed see some real wonders…”

They all looked with longing toward the coast, where immense lights must have been burning if they could see them, and real wonders were no doubt happening among the celebrating throng.

“So why did we set sail when it was still perilous to do so?” Hilarus asked in alarm.

“That’s right,” said Plotius gravely. “Over the last two days there was every chance of our being wrecked. It’s a miracle we’re still alive.”

They laughed at Hilarus’s jitters, Uri included.

“Will we be following the coastline all the way?” Iustus asked, perhaps in the hope that if the ship were wrecked he would somehow manage to flounder ashore.

“All the way,” said Uri. “Down the Dalmatian coast, by the Greek islands, with only a halt in Crete en route to the Syrian coast.”

There was a brief silence while Plotius and Matthew gazed out at the shore. Uri regretted having spoken.

“But that’s an immense detour!” exclaimed Iustus. “Why aren’t we going by the African coast via Malta?”

“That’s the usual way with a bireme,” said Matthew.

They left Italia at Hydris, and with a favorable wind they crossed the Adriatic in a day and a half. Uri’s mind was set at rest that they would again be navigating close to the safe shore.

He could see that Matthew and Plotius had warmed to each other; they spoke at length. He could also see that the others regarded them with jealousy and whenever possible would step up to them to have a word. They wanted to suck up and form a triumvirate with Matthew and Plotius, Uri reflected as he stroked the dog.

The storm caught them by the Greek islands. Uri was standing on the deck and was amazed because the clouds were as yet a long way off when the captain began bawling, and Matthew yelled in turn, ordering him to get down quick into the rowing area.

Brawny slaves shimmied up the ladder onto the upper rowing bank on the command of the drivers, who quickly unchained them. It seemed all men became equal in a storm, and there was no reason to fear escapes. The slaves’ places were taken by the members of the delegation and a few sailors who were not needed to furl the sails, as the others were taking care of that. Alexandros was the only one of the delegation who went up to the upper bank, saying that he was a good oarsman. Uri was astonished, but on looking at Alexandros’s gigantic back, he must have been telling the truth. Might it be that he was an escaped slave rather than a real merchant?

Uri was given a right-hand oar, Iustus beside him a left-hand one. Before them the huge backs of slaves strained; behind them were seated Hilarus and Plotius. The slave driver who had been supervising the rowing up till then also clambered up onto the upper bank of oarsmen and Matthew took over directing the rhythm. He started in good voice and at a good tempo; the oars were still in the slaves’ hands for a brief moment, after which they immediately followed his commands.

“Let’s change places,” Uri panted to Iustus after the first few pulls.

“No way,” said Iustus determinedly, even though he was right-handed and the change would have been welcome for him as well. Uri did not try again.

He felt something warm hit against his feet. He looked, and it was Remus, the dog. It was whimpering, but Uri could not stroke it; he needed both hands to hold the oar.

The handle of the oar was slippery with the sweat of one of the slaves who had clambered into the upper bank. The oar was pushed through a gap in the hull left expressly for this purpose and dipped into the sea; a thick leather strap was threaded through a hole drilled through the oar close to the handle, with the strap fastened to a beam in the rowing chamber so that it would not fall into the water if the rower lost his grip.

Uri tried to row in the same rhythm as the others, but it was more than likely that he was just paddling air (he was unable to see the blade of the oar, there being no porthole in the rowing chamber), as it went remarkably easily. Then all of a sudden he felt a huge wrench on his arms, shoulders, and neck; a wave had caught the oar, and the oar slipped out of his grip, obliging him to stand up in the pitching boat to retrieve it. Shamefaced, he sat back down in his place. Matthew said nothing, having other things to think of: he was in command.

Over the next hour and a half the squall lasted, the oar was wrenched out of his hands more than a few times, but Hilarus and Iustus were not much better oarsmen. Valerius fared better than them; his only trouble was that he was sick.

Uri was barely able to dip his oar in the water, just threshing with it, and yet he was soon dog-tired nonetheless. When the squall had blown through and the boat was rocking peacefully, allowing the slaves to take a rest, Uri lay flat out on the floor. The boat rolled in one place, the sails having yet to be hoisted; the slaves and sailors on the upper bank were also resting; at that moment moving on was not the important thing; what mattered was for them to recover. They finally clambered down from the upper level, and Uri ought to have gotten up, but he was unable to move. His companions left him to climb the ladder to the deck, but Uri did not have the strength and simply lay on his side. Matthew leaned over him.

“You weren’t rowing,” he informed him scathingly. “I was watching.”

Matthew also climbed up the ladder.

They’re going to pull the ladder up, and I’ll be left here among the slaves, it passed through Uri’s head.

And indeed, on reaching the top Matthew pulled the ladder up. He was laughing mischievously, Uri could see.

The slaves were going to tear him limb from limb, devour him.

Then the ladder was let down again, though not by Matthew: the head slave driver had to climb down.

“Wait!” Uri bawled, gathered all his strength to pick himself to his feet and, limbs trembling, struggled up to the deck.

Once there he almost tumbled back down into the depths when he looked back for the dog; it was nowhere to be seen.

He retched a sour liquid onto the slippery deck. The skin over his whole body ached; his heart was pounding at a horrifying rate.

Down below, the slaves were being shackled to one another again.

“You stood your ground just great,” he heard Matthew’s derisive voice. “All of you.”

Why does he hate me so much? Uri asked himself disconsolately.

He scoured the wet, slippery deck forlornly; it would soon dry if the sun continued to shine this brightly. He noticed an opening between the planks, a hatch cover of some sort, which had been completely lifted back; up till then everything had been shut. He stopped, bent down, and took a look into the small cabin.

He saw the captain from above, recognizing him from the big bald head; he knelt and bent over. Peering into the dimness, he could make out a gleaming statuette about three feet in height standing on a little table, with the captain bowing to it.

Uri was stupefied: what was a Jewish captain doing praying to an idol?

He held his breath and tried to bend closer in such a way that he did not block the sunlight. The captain sensed that someone was watching and glanced up. Uri was aghast and slid back, but the captain was in an extremely good mood that the ship had pulled through, and he shouted out, “Come down, whoever you are!”

Uri scrambled down the ladder.

“He saved us,” the captain said, indicating the statuette.

A snake was wrapped seven times around a standing male body, his head reminiscent of a lion’s. Wings sprouted from the man’s shoulders, his left hand held a globe on which ran two intersecting lines, and his right hand held a knife.

“The Celestial Lord,” said the captain. “He saved us. Twenty times or more he has saved me; my father, more than fifty times!”

He offered Uri a drink, which was strong and stung his throat. The captain, just glad to have someone to talk to, didn’t look to see who it was.

That was how Uri learned about Mithras, who killed the bull and whom pirates and astronomers on Rhodes and in Tarsus worshiped as the Celestial Lord.

The captain was from Tarsus, and his father had been a pirate, or rather not so much a pirate as a sailor, except that the Cilician king’s regular navy was considered by the Romans to be a pirate fleet, and anything that could be plundered, they plundered, just the same as the Roman pirates with whom they competed and, every now and then, would come into conflict. In the end they were taken over by the Romans when they conquered their land, and from then onward they had been valued as commercial seamen.

The captain’s father had also been both an adept astrologer and a captain. He had reached the fourth degree or rank of the mysteries of Mithras but had been unable to advance, because he did not have the appropriate knowledge to do so; initiates were highly erudite people, astrologers all, and they knew everything, and they had ancient clay tablets and papyri from long ago, and they even knew, so his father related, that one time long ago the vernal and autumnal equinoxes were in Taurus, but Mithras decided to displace them to later in the year, and that had been a thousand years ago and more. The sages kept calculating when the equinoxes would be precessed back in Taurus, because if Mithras had displaced them, then he would also replace them, and that is when the initiatory state would set in. That duration was called an Age, and everyone had a different opinion about how long that lasted, how many thousands of years. Mithras was a great lord, in other words, who had conjured the North Star precisely to the north, because, so said the sages, it had not been situated there before, but Mithras wanted mankind to orient by this readily located bright star so that people would be able to sail in certainty.

These and other things were related by the captain to Uri, who found it hard to follow even half of it.

Uri wondered what the Creator said about Mithras’s activities, given that this suggested he was able to move fixed stars around.

The captain said that naturally God was unique and eternal; he was Jewish, like his father before him, but a Great Force had begun to operate after the creation of the stars, the sun, and the moon, and if that was able to operate, then it was not counter to the Creator’s intention, may His name be blessed. The Creator was in fact depicted as the sun, to which Mithras, lion-headed and firmament-mitered, humbly sacrificed. After some hesitation, the captain added that in these depictions the Sun-Creator was generally shown as being the same height as Mithras, who was actually also Perseus, because he had come from the Persians, but then he was not the only Jew in Tarsus who had Mithras to thank when he or a member of his family had stayed alive after a storm.

From then on Uri would occasionally climb down to see the captain, who would relate to him marvelous things about Mithras, the lord of the Upper and Lower Firmament, who was powerful enough to move the constellations. He decided that when he got back to Rome he would inquire with believers in Mithraism there to find out where one could find written traces of these splendid tales.

Around two weeks later they reached harbor on Crete.

Uri did not go on shore with the rest. Crete was of no interest: a rocky island, houses of white stone, and men who somehow made a living there. Plotius tried to tempt him by saying that Cretan Jews were most hospitable, and exceedingly rich, but Uri simply shrugged his shoulders.

Prior to that, Matthew and Plotius, who had sailed that way more than a few times, had enumerated the names of all the totally identical, rocky, desolate islands and the settlements on them. They would be helped out sometimes by Alexandros, who, being a merchant, had also often passed that way. Uri was amazed, because Roman merchants were not known for traveling. Some lines from Homer came to Uri’s mind, and he quietly intoned them. On these Greek islands, according to these lines, the gods and demigods were born, and immortal heroes roamed. Even with his eyes screwed up, however, he saw little: white rocks, some green, and in the distance some darker spots, which had an equal chance of being either tall mountains or clouds.

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.

“When the Druseion was opened,” said Matthew, “Herod the Great tried to persuade Augustus to make the trip here, but all to no avail.”

“It’s also worth having a look at what’s belowground,” said Plotius. “The sewers are so wide and tall, and the chambers that have been fashioned within them are so big that one could hold banquets in them when the tide is out. They have been built in parallel with an interconnecting cross-passage so that rainwater and sewage can flow easily; the sea comes in at high water and on the ebb all the filth is washed away. There is no need for power to clean it.

Alexandros displayed a lively interest in the sewage canals; he wished to see them if that were possible.

Plotius told them that the Romans had completed the system, doubling the width of a section of the aqueduct constructed by Herod because the population had grown and there was a growing demand for water. The seven-mile aqueduct was an incredible engineering feat; it rested on arches that were something like five hundred feet high, and at one place a tunnel bored through a hill and into the city. Over the entire seven miles from spring to city, unobservable to the eye, it sloped slightly downward, without a single hitch; it could hardly be believed that Herod had been able to get this constructed in the first place, and that the Romans were later able to double its capacity, also without a hitch.

Uri noted that when it came down to it, in the end, all aqueducts worked on the same principle, and there were some in Rome that ran even higher aboveground.

“Sure,” Plotius retorted angrily, “but those were not built in the lethargic and imprecise East!”

A devil got into Uri:

“But the pyramids are said to be incredibly precise in their construction. Doesn’t Egypt count as the East?”

Plotius waved that aside in annoyance.

Just opposite the harbor entrance, and thus at its southernmost point, at the foot of the stadium, there was an enormous theater that opened northward, toward the sea, Matthew said, and from its highest point it was possible to see a long way, so there was no barge that would not be spotted from at least twenty or thirty stadia away. It held fifteen thousand people. Pilate had recently replaced its old plaster flooring with marble.

“That’s exactly how Ostia should be built,” Matthew sighed. “Herod the Great had the money; Augustus and Tiberius didn’t…”

“But Herod the Great murdered and robbed on an unimaginable scale,” Alexandros observed. “That is how he got the money. I have no wish for the Romans to get a splendid harbor at that sort of price.”

“All the same, it’s ridiculous,” said Matthew.

Uri did quietly wonder to himself whether Herod the Great had actually murdered any more than Tiberius was said to have. To start with, he had done his murdering through the Praetorian prefect Sejanus, then he had gotten a new Praetorian prefect, Macro, to murder Sejanus and his followers. It was said that Tiberius used force to induce the wealthy to draw up their last will and testament in his favor, so it was more than likely that he had enough money to build a harbor if he wanted.

Matthew outlined that he was putting his trust in Pilate receiving them in Herod’s palace; it might be a matter of luck, but Pilate had already received one delegation that he’d led some six years ago. He had rarely met a Roman who was more agreeable, polite, tactful, or knowledgeable about Jewish affairs, but the important thing was the palace: an immense and glittering building that stood at the southern end of the city on a promontory that ran into the sea, directly above it. It was 240 cubits in length by 130 in breadth, and in the middle it had a pool surrounded by splendid colonnades, one of the columns bearing the names of all the Roman prefects to date, in Greek as well as Latin, and a list of their merits. That was the residence of all the prefects, Pilate too, and he seldom went to Jerusalem; it was a truly marvelous building. It would be nice to see it again inside.

“Can boats be moored by the palace?” Alexandros inquired.

Matthew paused to think. He had not seen a boat over in that direction, but there seemed to be no reason why not. He looked at Alexandros with some amazement.

“Why? Do you want to deliver something directly to the palace?” he asked with a grin.

Alexandros shook his head; he was just interested.

“No doubt Herod sited his palace,” chipped in Plotius, “in a place that he would be able to escape from by ship, if need be, so as to avoid a possible naval blockade of the harbor.”

Uri did not understand what had put such a sharp edge to the tone of Plotius’s voice. Matthew must also have sensed something of the kind because he abandoned his attempt to sketch the history of the town and stared fixedly at the shore.

Uri was glad they had arrived, but he was unable to say goodbye to the dog. He searched and called, but Remus was nowhere to be seen; maybe he had hidden away somewhere in grief. Uri was astonished that he should almost come to crying over a dopey dog.

When they stepped from the gangplank to the shore, Matthew knelt and kissed the ground, which at this point was composed of slabs of marble. Uri hesitated but on seeing that the others did the same, he kneeled down likewise, though he did not kiss the slab, jut touched it with the tip of his nose. Hilarus and Alexandros shed tears, and even Valerius was moved, wiping his nose on his shawl.

A toll of six sesterces per head had to be paid to the Greek exciseman. Matthew had forewarned them that these were not like the Greeks in Italia, with whom it was possible to joke along; these Greeks hated Jews. It mattered not that Jews were multiplying faster than the Greeks; the city was still not truly theirs.

It was typical that the largest house of prayer stood on a plot of land belonging to a Greek merchant, who would not sell the plot. There was no way of compelling him to do so. It had not raised any problems, but whenever he was approached with a new proposal to sell it, he threatened instantly to build on the neighboring plots, because those also belonged to him, and he could block access to the house of prayer. The concept of easement was familiar enough in Caesarea and Judaea, but it was not exactly clear how large it should be; it would not be helpful if the Greek landowner left only an alleyway for the Jewish faithful.

“It’s Alexandria writ small,” Alexandros declared derisively, perhaps hinting at the Greco-Jewish rivalry there, but perhaps also because it was conspicuous how bereft the oversize harbor was of ships.

Plotius remarked that less than half the inhabitants of Alexandria were Jewish, so the comparison did not quite stand, to which Alexandros rejoined that if there were more Jews in Caesarea, then it was high time they forced the Greeks out, but Matthew held that to be foolish because the Greeks would take their revenge on all the Jewish minorities living in Syrian towns. Hilarus tried to put a stop to the senseless squabbling by repeating again and again that they had arrived, they had arrived.

Uri lazily wondered, as they walked over from the mole to the promenade fringed with all the grand buildings, what he would need to do to prevail on his companions to make the return leg of the trip via Alexandria. Maybe the ship would cost more, but it was a shorter route, so part of the extra expense could be recovered.

Caesarea was packed with magnificent buildings, vast palaces and villas, constructed in the finest of Greek styles — a miniature Rome with parks, a theater, a stadium, baths. The town’s location was favorable, and over the city rose a mountainside dotted with attractive big buildings. The harbor surpassed that of Syracusa — smaller perhaps, but orderly and clean. Well-tended date palms and cypresses, planted and pruned to uniform shape, bordered the promenade, which also had a stretch on which lulav and etrog were being grown for Sukkot. Uri could scarcely believe his eyes; he peered, went closer, and stared until tears came. Up till then he had only seen a lulav, with its long, slender branches dense with small leaves, or etrog, with its fruits, in painted images or ritual carvings, placed next to a menorah or shofar. So these plants really did exist! On the fifth day after Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on the fifteenth day of Tishri, comes the festival of thanksgiving, when the autumn harvest is celebrated in Palestine; then lulav branches and etrog lemons have to be taken into the Temple, traditionally, but not in the houses of prayer across the Diaspora, partly because they are not native elsewhere, but also because there is but one Temple, the one in Jerusalem. Word had it that only the Jews of Alexandria were unwilling to acknowledge this, and therefore they carried lulav branches and etrog lemons into their largest house of prayer, the Basilica.

They had to pass a huge temple. Mounted atop a tall stone pillar at the top of the steps in front of its Doric columns was a huge marble statue of a person who was identifiably the emperor Tiberius. The statue was at least as high as the one of Augustus in Rome.

“The Tiberium,” said Matthew. “It took five years to construct. Pilate started building it the moment he was appointed, bringing the plans with him from Rome. The site had been picked out in advance, and a lot of expensive villas had to be demolished to make way for it, and the owners were given a considerable amount in compensation, albeit none too readily, as the lawsuits dragged on for years. Inside the edifice there are statues of Julius Caesar and Augustus, as well as Jupiter, Venus, and Priapus. There was also one of Sejanus, but when he was disgraced Pilate had his head smashed.”

“The torso has been put in storage,” Plotius snickered. “Malicious tongues say it is waiting for the next emperor. It only needs a new head to be carved and joined on.”

Uri went closer to the temple while his companions stopped and watched impatiently. He walked up the steps and around the statue.

The colossus was at least sixty feet high. From below all he could see clearly was Tiberius’s jutting jaw, which blocked out his nose and other features. The sculptor, whoever it was, had fashioned an enormous, pugilistic chin for the figure. In Rome there were numerous busts of the ruling emperor, so Uri looked on him as almost a personal acquaintance; nevertheless there were not all that many depictions of him, as early in his reign he had forbidden statues of himself to be raised. Later he did give up on the ban, but sculptors worked slowly and had to fulfill commissions from cities all over Italia.

Uri searched for the edges of the marble blocks that had been fit together, but these had either been so well finished they were hidden, or else they were too high up for him to see clearly, so even from close up the statue seemed to him to have been carved from a single block. That could not possibly be the case, however. He wondered how much a statue of that size cost. The marble alone must have cost a great deal, to say nothing of the transport.

He stopped at the top of the steps and looked back toward the harbor.

Streets laid out in straight lines, carefully planned buildings, marble, gilded roofs, blinding white colonnades. He blinked hard and squinted through a crack in his fingers.

It was a cold, unfriendly town. No alleyways, or random narrowings and widenings. It was a planned city; it did not live.

“You’ll have time later to gape at everything,” Matthew called out angrily, when Uri got back to the group. “Let’s go! People are waiting for us.”

There were few people in the streets; they were not hurrying. Peace reigned on all sides, and boredom. Nothing in this sleepy, pretty town suggested that disturbances of public order had taken place a few weeks before. The messengers had exaggerated as usual.

They clambered up the mountain, with Uri’s companions also stopping every now and then to look back at the harbor. They went by gardens with rich, dense vegetation screened behind high stone walls in the depths of which no doubt lurked immense villas that were obliterated from sight by the wall and the vegetation. By the entrances to several of the villas there were sentry cabins for the guards. In his belly, Uri sensed a strange emptiness; there was something threatening in the Roman prefect’s seat of residence that he had not felt elsewhere. The fate of the Jewish people could not have been too good under Herod the Great, who had conceived the town.

The hillside was not completely deserted, with laden carts creaking their way up and here and there a pedestrian carrying something on his back or head. But the artificial miniature city, named after Caesar Augustus, stood out in such a sharp contrast to everything that they had seen up till then on the route, and most especially with Rome, that Uri wished, more than ever before, that he was anywhere but where he happened to be.

“We’ll be there any time now,” Matthew panted, “but if you want we’ll climb a bit higher up to the peak, because from there you can pick out Jerusalem.”

Hilarus and Iustus ran on ahead, with the rest trudging on behind toward the top of the hill. They stopped. Matthew pointed to the east rather than southward. The weather was clear, with the sun shining on their backs, and Uri deduced from the whoops of his companions that they could genuinely see it. He turned in the same direction but saw nothing but an endless twinkling blur of blue and green.

“Can you see it?” an exultant Valerius inquired of him. “The Temple!”

“I can see,” said Uri.

He couldn’t see it.

It was time to pray. Matthew poured water from his jug into a bronze dish, and one after the other they rinsed their hands, got out their paraphernalia, affixed the phylacteries to their upper arms or foreheads, turned toward Jerusalem, and bobbing forward and backward said the Sh’ma: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” It seemed to Uri that Israel was not listening; there was no one passing nearby. He rebuked himself for the thought; he was in the Holy Land after all. Valerius, Hilarus, and Iustus prostrated themselves with outstretched arms, while the others prayed standing up. Alexandros was weeping, but Uri felt nothing. He thought of his father: would he feel anything himself were he here?

They made their way down the mountain.

“You didn’t see it, did you,” said Plotius.

“Yes, I did,” Uri rebutted him angrily.

Plotius uttered a soft reproving gurgle, confidentially, so it would not have reached the others. Uri gritted his teeth; he is hurting me, but at least he’s watching. The insult did not please him, but the attention did.

The stone wall at the gate they halted at was covered with vines. Matthew rang a bell to announce their arrival. They waited. Matthew rang again, but there was no response.

“There must be servants around,” he said, troubled.

They might have been there, but either they did not hear or they did not want to open the gate. Alexandros, Hilarus, Valerius, and Iustus in turn pounded on the gate — all to no avail.

“Where are we going to stay?” Plotius queried, and, leaning against the wall, he put down his sack on the ground.

“With Simon the Magus,” Matthew replied. “He’s an important man. Physician to the prefect’s wife.”

“Oh!” was Plotius’s response. They waited to see if he was going to say anything else, but he did not speak, so it became no clearer whether he knew him. They lay down on the western side of the wall, the sun shining strongly on them.

Matthew made excuses: he knew that Simon still lived there; he had been renting the gorgeous residence ever since he had become a confidant of the prefect’s wife. He had not been notified that Simon might have moved; he had also stayed with him on his last two trips, the last time not six months ago, in the month of Tishri, when he had led a delegation for the Day of Atonement. He would know if anything had happened to him. But if he had moved nevertheless, then they would go back to the harbor, because he had an acquaintance there, the secretary to the representative of the Jewish fleet, who had sailed with him for years; he was certain that he’d be able to put them up at his place.

“Never fear,” said Matthew. “You’ll have a roof over your heads.”

They still had a bit of unleavened bread, so they snacked on that, and they still had some water from the boat, which they drank, and went on slumbering at the foot of the wall.

Uri cogitated on what sort of delegation Matthew might have been leading to Jerusalem six months ago. Money was not taken for Yom Kippur, only for Passover. There must be a continuous exchange of information and business between Jerusalem and Rome. Strange that his father had never spoken about it.

When the sun had sunk below the sea in the west, they turned again to Jerusalem and said their prayers.

Matthew paced restlessly.

They sat, backs propped up on the wall, gazing, out of sorts and wordless.

It crossed Uri’s mind that it would be no bad thing if the mission were to end at this point; if he could go straight back to the harbor and set sail on the first ship that was setting off for Alexandria.

On his own.

He would install himself in that famous big library, which Julius Caesar had put to the torch seventy-six years before with the loss of untold millennia of irreplaceable manuscripts, clay tablets, petroglyphs, and scrolls of parchment and cloth. It was rumored, though, that everything possible had since been replaced, and more than one Roman Jew able to offer manuscripts of value to the library in Alexandria had enriched himself. The whole stock was continuously being recollected, and although it was impossible to replace every single item, the rebuilt library of Alexandria once again counted as the world’s richest library.

He would read the works to which he could not gain access in Rome.

In his head there was a long list of the titles of works that absolutely had to be read, mainly mathematical works, the existence of which he had gleaned from public libraries in Rome, which did not hold the works themselves, only references to them. Once he had read those, he would get on a boat that was running from Alexandria to Ostia, finally get back to Rome and home, and lie around in Rome’s damp, cool, miasmic, leprous, malarial air, resting his throbbing head, his sore midriff, and his aching back, and when his father stepped in to upbraid him for something, he could start telling him what he had read, and his father would seat himself on his couch and listen entranced as he had never done before. He, Uri, would be inspired by the spirit and mentality of all the authors he had read, whose works had seeped into him, become one with his blood, and his father would be touched at last by the vast, prodigious human knowledge that emanated from his own son. His spirit, bogged down as it was in mundane cares, would be uplifted. Joseph rarely read, not having the time for it, but Uri was sure that these works would be of assistance to his cruelly fated father.

Down in the harbor a lavish display of lights went up, the brightest of which was the Pharos of Caesarea.

Matthew began talking about the Pharos of Alexandria, which stood at the entrance to the royal harbor.

“That is a sight to behold!” he said. “Hundreds of ships at anchor on both sides, some of them monstrously large: I once saw an Achaean quinquereme. You can hardly get a boat in there, it’s always jam-packed. If a mariner has no reliable contacts in the city and cannot drop the ‘right’ name, he may find himself kept waiting for weeks on the water. Dozens of craft make the rounds with pilots and excisemen between the harbor and the ships at anchor, and if the captain does not pay them unconscionable sums of money (since like everyone else they too work to fill their own pockets), then he will find his ship is constantly put to the bottom of the list until he sees sense or rows over to the city and raises the credit from a banker…”

It would have been good to hear more about Alexandria, but all of a sudden some servants with laden baskets on their heads appeared on the steeply sloping street. At first all that could be seen were the wobbling baskets and only after that the heads. They were followed by a few armed men, and behind them came eight slaves bearing an ornate palanquin up the hill. A litter borne by eight slaves was a rare enough sight even in Rome, where even the wealthy made do with four. It was set down at the gate as gently as if they were transporting eggs, and out of it descended a tousled, black-bearded, rotund figure, balding and with graying hair and bushy eyebrows and wearing an exquisitely draped toga.

This was Simon the Magus.

Their host had made his arrival. They got to their feet to greet him.

Simon offered no excuses; after all, they might just as easily have arrived a day or two earlier or later. He just nodded by way of welcome, greeted Matthew in Aramaic as an old acquaintance and embraced him too, though without a smile on his face. The gate was opened and they were finally able to go in.

They made their way through a splendid, well-kept garden to the stone house, which was larger than that of the proprietor of the sawmill in Syracusa.

Room was made for them in an enormous chamber somewhat like an atrium. They were given wood benches to rest their backs on, and on those were mattresses spread with fine linen. They took a dip in a sumptuous tiled pool, prayed, and then gathered for supper, by which time Simon had also changed, putting on a clean tunic. His hair and beard were uncombed and he was pop-eyed with weariness.

They were served a meal of countless dishes, among them a great variety of meats (Simon knew that having been on a ship, they had eaten no meat for weeks) and fine wines. They fell on the food and ate with gusto, whereas Simon the Magus took only small bites of everything.

Uri looked around; there was nothing to suggest that the person dwelling in the house was a physician.

Simon started speaking Greek with them, but he struggled with the declension of words and the mysteries of the aorist tense, so after a few glasses he switched to Aramaic. He spoke with an easily recognizable Galilean accent. Matthew spoke Aramaic, and now it was suddenly revealed that Plotius spoke it perfectly; not surprising, thought Uri, given that he had spent quite a few years in Judaea, though he found it peculiar that he had not made this clear before. So Plotius too was also testing my Aramaic that Sabbath when I interpreted the reading, he thought.

Hilarus spoke Hebrew, so he was able to follow what the host was saying, more or less, and for the benefit of Iustus, Valerius, and Alexandros, a Jewish servant interpreted from Aramaic to Greek — perfectly, as far as Uri could tell.

Simon tried to banter, but he wasn’t suited to play the role of man of the world, as he was quite obviously unable to set his worries aside, and although no one asked him, he began to talk about them.

He had gotten back to the house so late because he had been trying to call in the outstanding debts of his creditors, and that was no easy matter. He had been concentrating almost exclusively on that for several weeks, and he had been forced to realize that lenders took a much bigger risk than he would ever have imagined. He had been poor for all of his days; he had limped the length and breadth of Galilee as an itinerant sorcerer, curing where he was asked and seeing very little in the way of money as he generally worked for room and board until, by a stroke of luck, Pilate, having heard about the cures he had achieved, sent for him and asked him to restore his sickly wife to health. He did indeed manage to help the lady recover, and he had been given a large amount of money by a grateful Pilate, after which he had gone away and for a few weeks had resumed his healing work in the villages of Galilee, until Pilate’s men caught up with him and called him to the palace, where the condition of Pilate’s spouse had taken a turn for the worse. A few days of speaking to the lady once more brought an improvement; Pilate had retained his services, and since then had very generously supported him financially. It now seemed that the curative effect was no longer working; he would not be able to keep his job much longer, and he wanted to be sure that the money he had saved was in a secure place. He did not regret having to leave this beautiful house: he had been content in stables and sties, and in fact greatly missed the smells of the land and livestock; he missed the country people, who were more appreciative than the rich, even when they could barely pay him, not even in kind, if they had nothing. But if he had come by money, better it should not go astray.

Matthew advised Simon the Magus to invest his money in land; it was cheap now but prices were certain to rise. Plotius recommended something else: buy a share in a well-run bank, and he would then have a share of the bank’s profits, in proportion to the capital that had been put in, with the money accumulating much faster than if it were simply earning interest.

Simon the Magus shook his head: he was a bit old-fashioned and had no head for working out compound interest; indeed, he was not interested, he just wanted to put his money in the safest place, and that was the treasury of the Temple in Jerusalem. It was so well guarded that he could be sure the money would not go astray. Plotius conceded that he was right; as far as he was informed, private fortunes were also stored there, but then the treasury did not pay out any interest. That didn’t matter, said Simon the Magus, as long as the money was in a safe place.

Anyway, he had recently been trying to call in his outstanding debts, and to be sure he was sorry now that earlier on he had given loans at usurious rates, because if the interest had been lower he would have gotten the money back long ago. He had all the promissory notes; they were drawn up in three copies in the presence of two witnesses, as they should be, with a copy going to him, a second to the debtor, and a third to the records office in Caesarea, by the Druseion, but then again a records office could be torched at any time, or a promissory note filched and the debtor’s own copy destroyed, and then the money was as good as gone.

“The Temple’s treasury is safe, because the Jews will never let that be torched,” said Simon the Magus. “If I choose, I can reclassify a part of the money as a donation, and then I shall be putting into effect a deed that is genuinely pleasing to God, and who knows, maybe even the priests will leave me be and not try to curse me two or three times a year for helping the sick and driving out their demons.”

Uri was happy he could understand every word: how lucky he was that his mother tongue was Aramaic, and Greek only his father’s language.

He would never have thought that a sorcerer would have problems like that — exactly the same as any businessman. But there had been gossip about sorcerers back in Rome; they were good for nothing beyond the laying on of hands, it was said, and they cast dubious spells instead of studying Celsus.

“Has Pilate’s wife’s illness gotten worse?” asked Matthew. “Are you afraid that you’ll be kicked out?”

“She’s no worse than earlier,” said Simon the Magus. “She’s dogged by being chronically unloved, which breaks out in various forms on and in her body. I am able to converse with her, listen to her; I am a friend, a well-wisher, her spiritual adviser, but I am not her husband. She has no children, her relatives are a long way away, she can’t confide in the servants, her husband is preoccupied and restless, and the initial charm of my sympathy for her, which made her improvement so spectacular early on, has since disappeared. She has grown accustomed to me and has relapsed. I, in my turn, have grown accustomed to her; her ailments bore me. I know her too well, and for that very reason I can’t think of anything to say. She needs a new doctor — anyone, just not me. Someone in whom she can place unbounded trust. Healing is anyway mostly a question of faith. Pilate is a wise man; he knows that, but I am not waiting for him to terminate the arrangement.”

Uri listened in amazement. An intelligent man, this sorcerer. He might be a sorcerer, but he speaks like a philosopher. Maybe there will be surprises in store for me on the trip, after all.

“Are you also a healer for Pilate?” Plotius asked.

“No,” the Magus answered. “He has a Roman physician, and rightly so. He lets Pilate’s blood, controls his diet, prescribes the order in which baths should be taken. That’s what Pilate believes in, and who am I to undermine that belief? Me, a Jew. As far as his wife is concerned, he was able to admit that Greek medicine had been a washout, but that is not so for himself. I would not have taken him on anyway; I’m not crazy, I’m used to dealing with rural Jews and have no idea what troubles high-ranking Romans. Mediocre as the salves and pills of a Latin doctor may be, he certainly knows better than me what makes Pilate’s belly gripe. More than that, I have striven all along to know as little as possible about him: any time that his wife began to gossip about him I interrupted her and asked her not to go on. I’m sure she would have told this to her husband and in doing so I earned his confidence more than by my initial success in curing his wife. Well, it’s from there that I got this villa.” He gestured around him. “Anyway, it’s not actually mine, I only rent it. I don’t want property of my own; I never did have my own house, and I don’t intend to either. It only brings trouble.”

The members of the delegation carried on eating and drinking in silence. Except for Matthew, they were surprised by the magus; they had not imagined a Galilean quack would be anything like this. Matthew also kept quiet as he ate, but Uri could see that a serenely sardonic sparkle of triumph was glinting in his eyes.

Uri had never before met a man who was so forthright in the way he expressed himself. Roman Jews kept those kinds of ideas to themselves, if they thought them at all; they would never say them out loud. Was the Magus not afraid that someone might inform on him? He must be very sure of himself, and especially about Pilate’s affection for him.

“So, Pilate is restless nowadays?” Alexandros finally inquired in Greek.

“It would seem so,” Simon the Magus replied in Greek. “He was already wound up before the demonstration, though. Previously, he only sent a courier once or twice a week to Rome or Antioch, but in recent weeks it has been five or six, and there are as many coming the other way. I don’t know what’s afoot, but something must have happened in Rome.”

The delegates looked at one another. What on Earth could have happened in Rome? There had been nothing when they set off. The state couriers made the trip more rapidly than their delegation: with fresh remounts at relay stations, they were able to cover the Rome — Naples route in five days; then if they sailed straight via Alexandria to Caesarea, they might be able to make that in two weeks, though that was not significantly faster. It was unlikely anything had happened in Rome, because the news would have reached them in Syracusa through some loudmouthed courier on one of the ships plying the Ostia — Syracusa route; after all, news of the demonstration in Caesarea had already reached them in Messina.

Matthew asked about what had actually happened two weeks back.

Simon related that a crowd of a few hundred had come from Jerusalem and demonstrated for days in front of Pilate’s palace. Leaning out of the window, without regard for possible arrows or javelins, Pilate had politely asked them to go home, but they stayed. He could have had them dispersed by his soldiers, as there were three cohorts and an ala, a division, stationed in the barracks at Caesarea, but he did not; indeed, he issued the order that not a single hair be harmed on the head of any Jew, and he tried to bring the raving lunatics to their senses, telling them that the military insignia that had been taken into the palace in Jerusalem were not images, merely inscriptions with the names of the emperor Tiberius and himself, and anyway the standards had been furled when they were taken up into the tower of Phasael that Herod had built in the Upper City, as they had always done, ever since a Roman governor resided there. Nobody had taken any exception to that previously, so he was of the opinion that it was perfectly in line with Jewish law to carry them in like that.

Pilate’s arguments were to no avail, however; the crowd had been stirred up against him.

Then the Jews had marched to the stadium, and there they were surrounded by an armed detachment. What else were they supposed to do? The Jews had thrown themselves to the ground and demanded to be executed, but then Pilate had arrived in great haste. He ordered the soldiers to leave the stadium and told the Jews that, though it was a grave affront to imperial dignity, in the interests of keeping the peace he would have the military insignia withdrawn. That is what happened, and not a single hair on anyone’s head was harmed. The malcontents trooped home, and it’s been peaceful since then.

“Is it true that a letter of complaint was sent to Tiberius?” Matthew asked.

“I’ve heard rumors of the kind, but I don’t know for a fact. Allegedly Tiberius wrote back immediately and chided Pilate. But then that’s only gossip; Pilate’s couriers aren’t in the habit of opening his correspondence.”

“So, it’s been peaceful since then?” Alexandros asked.

“Yes, peaceful,” said the Magus, but shook his head to show a lack of conviction. “Except for people: the numbers of crazy people grow by the day. I haven’t visited Jerusalem or been around the two counties for months. The time has come for me to leave this nice, cool villa behind; time to do what I can for the crazy people whose troubles I can sense and recognize. Here I have only one crazy person entrusted to me, and I can do nothing for her any longer.”

After a short pause he added, “It’s been peaceful for too long. A second generation has grown up now that has not seen war. From what I see, people can’t stand peace, because when left in peace there’s time to think — and that is painful. There’s as much deception and lying as ever, but now there is time to get caught up in it. Injustice may be a slow-killing poison, but it does kill. Left in peace, the soul becomes crippled — in war, only the body. It will come to war sooner or later. The Creator planted it in us; somehow the soul must want it that way.”

Alexandros livened up, his eyes flashing:

“And what does the Lord want?”

Simon the Magus look wearily at him.

“The Lord God let us choose for ourselves what sort of trouble to get into with each other and ourselves,” he said, now slipping back into Aramaic. “‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,’ He said. All interpreters of the Law also say it: ‘Do not do unto your neighbor what you would not do unto yourself.’ That is the Great Commandment, the Last Word, on which even the schools of Hillel and Shammai agree. Nobody in their right mind can expect anyone who does not love himself to love his neighbor.”

That was the most comfortable of all their lodgings so far, and Matthew allowed them to wander around as they wished during the day.

“But be back by nightfall,” he ordered. “I don’t know when we will be moving on. We have a whole week to get there.”

He also added, “Don’t take anything with you; everything must stay here.”

That “everything” meant the sack, which contained nothing except a jug, tefillin, and a cloak.

“There are not enough berths in Jerusalem,” Plotius explained to Uri. “Many hundreds of thousands make pilgrimage for the feast, often more than a million, and it is not easy to find accommodation, even though we are privileged persons. The later we arrive, the happier they will be; it doesn’t matter if we make a nuisance of ourselves here until the last minute.”

Uri was delighted that at last he would be left alone and could ramble on his own. Maybe Matthew would manage to arrange an audience with Pilate for them. Pilate himself was of no great interest: Gaius Lucius must be wealthier than him, a provincial governor was no big deal, but if he happened to be there, he would quite like to see Herod’s palace from the inside.

He got to the vicinity of the palace. It was a vast edifice, as imposing from the outside as Matthew had described it. There was little chance of being able to inspect it from the inside; Simon the Magus was preoccupied with calling in the money that was owed to him, but without him Matthew could not present himself to the palace saying that they had an audience with the prefect. They were an important delegation, but not so far as Pilate was concerned.

No trace of preparation for the feast could be picked up among the Jews in Caesarea. Of course, for them it was simple: it was enough for them to set off four days beforehand. Matthew wasn’t making much effort to make contact with the Jews of Caesarea; they wouldn’t be able to offer them a more pleasant or comfortable place to stay than Simon’s. There they were given an ample breakfast, and the suppers were marvelous; the table in the dining room was permanently laid and the servants saw to it that they should instantly be given fresh food and drink whether they appeared on their own or with several of the others. Even so, Uri was starving during the day; he had not an as to call his own. He had not the slightest idea what the money here was worth, nor had he even seen any, as he was unable to sit out on the terrace of a tavern to have food or a drink.

In the evenings his companions talked mostly about money. Plotius and Matthew would attempt to explain how much each coin was worth. From the second evening onward that became a daily task for them before going to bed; Uri would lie on his couch, listening to them, perceiving their disputes over exchange rates as a monotonous psalmody. Stupendous amounts of money were in circulation, it turned out, virtually all the denominations that had ever been minted within the field of attraction of the Great Sea, and the exchange between these was impossibly complicated. “Tetradrachma, sela, shekel, sacred shekel, ordinary shekel, dinar. Tropaik, asper, ma’ah, tresith, pondion, issar, prutah, zuz, mina, shekel, dupondius, zuz, mina, shekel, dupondius, drachma, drachma, drachma, dinar, prutah, lepton,” Uri crooned to himself on the couch the names of the coins that he heard, and as he drifted into sleep these magic words droned on of their own accord. The one conversion factor that he registered was that one lepton was worth one eighth of an as, or in other words half a quadrans. It amused him that the smallest coin in Rome also had a half counterpart here, though even a Roman pleb like himself did not measure value in quadrans back home but in asses, and it particularly tickled him that this tiny coin, a lepton, had two names, its Semitic name being the prutah. He had taken note of that because his companions were constantly teasing Hilarus to tell them how many prutah made a lepton, and every time the teacher would give them some other figure for the exchange rate, never realizing that it was the same coin.

It pained Uri that in Syracusa he had been so brazenly robbed of half a sestertius: never again will I be such a numbskull, he vowed keenly.

Early on in the morning all his companions would leave the house, so Uri supposed he could not stay either. Each set off alone and also arrived alone. Uri did not ask them what the devil they were up to; he would have a good feed in the morning and until the evening would stroll aimlessly, hungry and thirsty.

He had seen a house of prayer, a fair-sized building; even the largest synagogue in Rome was not that big. Maybe that was the one that stood on the Greek’s plot of land. He would have gone in, but it was closed. There were a lot of Jews living there, so why was their house of prayer closed? Was there another one? He asked a Greek, and of course there was another. Uri followed his directions and walk there. That too was closed.

That evening he questioned the others. Matthew explained.

“In Palestine houses of prayer are only left open on market days. Mondays and Thursdays are the market days; that is when peasants come in from the villages, bringing their produce, and if they are able to sell anything, they buy themselves something. That is also when they would visit the house of prayer, if they were going that way — not to pray, mind you, but to litigate. That would cost them, so they would take home less money than they had come with, even if they managed to sell something. The Jews of Palestine adore litigation. The courts hold their sessions in the refectory of the house of prayer, hearing cases late into the evening. The houses of prayers are open on the Sabbath as well, of course, but on those days only the members of the local congregation would eat supper there because, being the Sabbath, peasants are not allowed into the city.”

“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.

“I’d never have figured you as one for the Circus,” Alexandros said.

“I’m not,” said Uri. “I’m here for the philosopher.”

Alexandros was unaware that a philosopher was on the program; all he knew about was chariot races and wrestling.

“But of course!” he said. “You were also in the amphitheater in Syracusa on account of some philosopher.”

Uri was again flabbergasted: how did he know that?

“Matthew said.”

Uri fell silent. Was his every move being discussed by his companions? Alexandros twisted his head around, studying the soldiers sitting in the upper tribune.

“They get everything free,” he said cryptically. “Even the wine. Civilians have to pay.”

The indignation came as a surprise to Uri.

“In a few days they too will be in Jerusalem,” said Alexandros. “All three cohorts and the whole ala.”

“What gives you that idea?”

“Everyone knows.”

“Have you been to Jerusalem before?”

“No, but everyone knows that all four cohorts and the ala have to be there, along with the prefect, for the four big feasts. Caesarea falls empty on these occasions. If anyone wants to occupy it, this is the time to do it.”

“Why so many soldiers in Jerusalem?”

“They’re frightened of us,” said Alexandros, with an evil laugh. “Scared stiff, the wretches. If we were united in our will, we would rise up and hurl them out from the top row, and they would all fall down dead.”

Uri thought it best to say nothing, so he turned toward the wall, separated from the race track by railings on both sides; on the steps constructed at the south end of this the notables were starting to file up. They were greeted with loud acclamation by the soldiers in the upper tribune, and in turn they waved and bowed as if they were actors.

“Big nobodies,” said Alexandros. “Local quaestors and aediles.”

I’ve been traveling for a month and a half with my companions, thought Uri, yet I know nothing at all about them. What does he mean by their being frightened “of us”? Who are “we” anyway? Alexandros and me? Who else is “one of us”?

The preparations for the chariot race lasted for ages, deliberately dragged out with all sorts of hocus pocus, and while the spectators were now cheering for the four colors (green seemed to be the most popular, as it was in Rome, with the soldiers uniformly banking on that, whereas the Jewish citizens, from the noise, went more for blue), Uri, for the sake of having something to say, asked Alexandros if he minded going with him later if he was able to arrange to see the sewer.

“I’ve already seen it,” said Alexandros. After a short pause, he added, “It really is a magnificent construction. Every building is connected, the biggest of them with drains ten to twenty cubits across. It’s possible to go around the whole town down there; with a good map one always knows which building one happens to be passing beneath.”

“Are there maps like that?”

“Yes, in diagram form. They were needed for its construction and now for maintenance; it is checked regularly, as it needs to be.”

“And is there a sewer under the stadium?”

“Certainly. The latrines are beneath us. As long as you hold your nose, you can crawl up a drainage channel into whichever sector you choose. The rainwater ditch is also connected. See? It runs all along the side of the arena, and there, next to the wall, is the gutter from the two sides. The stables are also connected. The city spent more on what’s down below than on what can be seen up top. That tall water tower on the left, that’s the stadium’s own special water tower. Look there! On the top of the wall, next to the place of honor is the fountain. It works, too, because it is at a lower height than the water tower… All the important buildings have their own water towers, haven’t you noticed? But there is just one aqueduct… You can’t stand sentries alongside it every ten paces; that would require many tens of thousands of them, and they can’t afford that many…”

A man who is as strong as a bull, allegedly a merchant, comes here from Rome, the city of sewers and aqueducts, and that is what interests him. What, in God’s name, is Alexandros a merchant in? He has never spoken about that. And from what is there a need to defend an aqueduct made of stone that is ten to fifteen cubits wide and runs at the height of five or six men? Surely not from us?

Uri felt no urge to demolish this superb aqueduct.

A colossal din arose: to the south, the quadrigas — two-wheeled chariots with teams of four horses abreast — appeared, with their drivers standing in them. They drove to their starting positions and turned there. The four chariots, one for each color, stood for the start. Bets were being laid, with agents of the local betting office flitting around between rows, handing out tessera, the precise nature of which remained a mystery to Uri, with the names of drivers and horses flying back and forth. The lunacy had begun.

“It’s a dangerous course,” Alexandros said excitedly, panting in Uri’s ear, his nostrils quivering. “There’s room for at most three and half chariots; they were stingy. Blood will flow, mark my word!”

Uri peered and blinked. He would not have ventured a guess at how many chariots fit alongside each other on the track; Alexandros must be a seasoned race-goer. The starter, with an orange kerchief aloft in his right hand, appeared at the starting line; the crowd roared. When he dropped the kerchief to the ground, with a theatrical flair, the gates at the four start positions were yanked up by a servant by means of a pulley contraption, and the cutthroat contest began. Before the kerchief hit the ground they were already hurtling.

By the end of the first half-circuit the left-side wheel of one of the chariots got caught on the pyramid that marked the turn, the chariot had toppled over and another had driven over it, leaving two horses lying with broken legs and one of the charioteers lying on his side, head bleeding, the other was limping, trying to escape by hopping toward the ditch on one leg. Servants scurried to clear the smashed chariots out of the way of the two chariots left in the race, and they paid no attention to the drivers. The two remaining chariots popped into view from behind the wall and again hurtled from left to right along the length nearest the stands; veering sharply to avoid the horses lying across the track, they came within a hair’s breadth of colliding. The crowd raged. The two chariots galloped for seven complete circuits, and the green colored driver won — as it happened, the one for whom the bulk of the crowd had been rooting.

Everyone was yelling; those next to Uri jumped to their feet. The victorious chariot driver took a victory lap; people whistled and clapped and clamored. The winner staggered up to the wall and was garlanded with a wreath. The limping driver inched his way from right to left to the starting line and then vanished through a doorway, to whistling and jeering. The bloody-headed one lay unconscious next to the wall; he was just left there. The second-place driver was sobbing as he drove his panting horses toward the starting line and then disappeared onto the path that led to the stables.

In the second race, one of the chariots overturned and broke apart immediately. The horses stopped, the chariot was unhitched, and they were led back to the starting line, with the driver sprinting off to let the remaining three chariots speed along without obstruction. The man with the bleeding head from the first race was only carried off after the winner of the second race had been announced; he too was whistled at, though he could have heard little of it.

It was then the wrestlers’ turn to enter from the left; they clambered up onto the southern end of the partitioning wall, where cordons had been set up on either side to keep them from falling off, while still leaving spectators on both sides a good view. The combatants were not armed and wore loincloths. Blows, holds, kicks, or bites of any kind were allowed; a match was over when one of the contestants conceded. The winner got up and beat his chest at length, aiming kicks at the opponent who was lying on the ground, every kick acknowledged with rapturous hoots from the crowd. The winner bowed toward the notables and the public at large before ambling down the steps toward the stables. The loser left in the same direction; on reaching the arena he sank to all fours and squirmed away, wiggling his hindquarters to gales of laughter and applause from the public.

Next came two athletes, who likewise proceeded along the wall, this time right by the notables, one balancing on the forehead of the other before clambering up a long pole like a monkey and balancing on one arm. He posed there for minutes on end without anything happening. The bored public, busy chomping, slurping, and gossiping, only cried out when the lower equilibrist knocked the pole off his forehead. The athlete who had been poised on one arm gracefully flew through the air and, after performing two and a half somersaults, managed miraculously to land on his feet in the sawdust, take a step or two, then bow. Applause, ovation. The two athletes scampered off.

Then the dignitaries sitting atop the wall got to their feet, marched to the steps, and began to file down. Only then did the greatest pandemonium so far break out, as they were celebrated as if they had carried out quite exceptional feats of arms. Then they too left, along with their retinues, and headed off in the direction of the stables, with the masses rising to their feet in acclamation.

“Is that it? Is it the interval now? What happened?” Uri inquired uncomprehendingly.

“If you ask me,” Alexandros said in some excitement, “it’s the women’s turn now…”

No one came. They had to wait. The public exulted. But then from over by the starting line ten women shrouded in veils trotted in, raced up the steps, and came to a stop in the middle of the wall.

A gaggle of musicians then ambled in, also from the direction of the starting line, playing percussion and wind instruments. The women started to dance, casting their veils to the ground, strutted around in mantles, cast the mantles off, danced in breast-bands and loincloths, then they discarded their breast-bands, and the public went wild, calling out colorfully, while the swaying women undid their loincloths and discarded those too, leaving them stark naked to perform their provocative dance — at the very end writhing as they lay on their backs. The public erupted. The dance over, the performers gathered their veils, draped them over themselves, and ran down the steps to the left, toward the stables. Applause. The musicians slowly plodded off after them, while servants ran in to gather the other discarded garments. One of the boys got a vigorous round of applause for dangling one of the loincloths before his nose, sniffing theatrically, and then draping it between his legs and making a jerky motion with it as he ran off.

Alexandros fumed.

“They didn’t wrestle,” he said in disappointment — though that was more to himself.

Uri didn’t understand who was supposed to have wrestled: the servants or the women.

An intermission followed. The notables reappeared, mounted the steps in dignified fashion, and resumed their seats. The procession was again accompanied by jubilation, the public being grateful that beforehand, by their absence, they had allowed what would otherwise have been a prohibited item in the program. Uri understood well enough: the local dignitaries could not watch immoral acts like that, only the plebs could do that.

He was discomposed. That was the very first time he had seen living female bosoms — twenty of them at that. True, he had barely seen them; his unflagging goggling had been to little avail, though he had seen enough to spot that they were quite varied, with even the individual units of a pair differing. A female crotch was another matter, but the one he saw had been bleeding, and in his dreams it was encircled by disemboweled guts. He would be having no dreams, good or bad, about these particular bosoms.

Following that, arriving from the direction of the stables and accompanied by several of his retinue, the philosopher stepped up onto the wall from the left. The same one, indeed, whom Uri had seen in Syracusa. Now he wore white stars on a silk mantle of dark blue, with a wreath of laurels adorning his brow. This time the short physician stopped at the foot of the steps and gazed up.

Makedonios shook hands with one of the notables and bowed deeply to one of the ladies sitting there on high before turning to bow to the spectators. He was greeted just like the chariot drivers, athletes, and women. He downed a tumbler of wine before beginning to declaim in a ringing voice that was as clearly audible as it had been in Syracusa.

He told exactly the same two stories as before, changing not a single word.

The soldiers guffawed, taking pleasure at each shoddy twist like little boys, interjecting. He was even more successful than at Syracusa, applauded almost as warmly as the naked women; their earlier triumph had obviously rubbed off on him. The philosopher gratefully made repeated bows, then, joined by his physician and a servant, he took a place at the top of the wall to watch the high point in the program: a final match in which the two earlier winners were pitted against each other. Both started in green, clearly on the principle that a green had to win; the soldiers would have that pleasure, thought Uri, and he was forced to conclude that this was hardly pure chance. Evenly matched, each won a round, leaving the third to decide the competition. The one who came second in the final contest struck his head repeatedly on the ground, threw his arms to the sky, and lashed his horses to get a laugh from the public.

They were just acting, performing a predetermined dance; they too were buffoons. The philosopher was a buffoon, so were the local dignitaries. Who knows, maybe even the chariot spills had been arranged in advance to add an element of suspense. The horse’s legs, it now occurred to Uri, were obviously insured.

Except during the number with the dancing girls, Alexandros kept scouring the auditorium with his gaze, an expression of somber attention on his face. It’s not me he’s spying on, Uri thought, but everyone here.

On the way out, they lost each other, though it was true that they had not agreed to part together. Uri thought for a brief moment before jumping over the ditch between the auditorium and the arena, and addressed the philosopher, who was wheezing his way down the steps from the wall.

He was the only one to approach the philosopher as the crowd thronged around the victorious charioteer to touch his tunic’s ornately edged hem. The competitor’s bodyguards pushed the fans farther back, and there was much gloating when two of them eventually plopped into the ditch, though they too had a laugh.

Uri congratulated him on the two highly amusing stories, and he stammered out the titles of the philosopher’s works with which he was already familiar. The philosopher came to a halt; the physician and a servant holding a fan idled impatiently as these signs of interest on Uri’s part were not to their taste. A faint smile appeared on the philosopher’s face as Uri mentioned the titles.

“I wrote those a long time ago,” he said with a dismissive gesture, and proudly drew himself up. “Nowadays it’s not possible to get acclaim for writing those sorts of works: they’re too good. The signs of decay are dreadful. That is the only word I can use, young friend: dreadful.”

Uri made no reference to the fact that he had heard exactly the same stolen tales before in Syracusa, asking instead where the philosopher’s itinerary would be taking him. The sage told him that he would be traveling northward, with audiences waiting impatiently in Sidon and Damascus, and once there he would organize the rest of the tour. From that Uri took it that he had started off from Alexandria.

“From Sicily I took a boat to Africa,” the philosopher recounted. “I had appearances in Leptis and Cyrene, but Alexandria was not one of the stops… There are too many so-called thinkers there; it’s just impossible to attract an audience. Even a Plato or Aristotle would be whistled off the stage these days; the public has been mollycoddled, and also hardened: the fashion is for their own primitive local favorites.”

Uri asked what work he had in progress.

“Not a single thing has come to my mind for years,” said the philosopher woefully. “I have forgotten even the things I once wrote. I wasn’t able to find a wealthy sponsor; I have to keep traveling all the time, even though I loathe doing that. I was not too clever in arranging my fate.”

Uri wagged his head in disbelief.

“There you have it. In Rome I am known even to the Jews,” the philosopher sighed happily. “Who would have believed it! Perhaps a time will come when I make an appearance even in Rome itself… It must be twenty years since I went that way… I had a major success there. But those were the days when there was still culture, erudition in the world…”

Uri trudged slowly among the civilians toward the town center. The soldiers, formed into detachments, made faster progress; the nailed soles of their boots struck the pavement hard, and they disappeared in the direction of the barracks, which had been built here, as throughout the empire, outside the city walls as a precautionary measure.

Uri had the feeling that as a Jew who paid taxes to the Romans in Judaea, he too had been robbed. He thought about how much was collected from each Jew in Rome in poll taxes and the tariffs on produce, out of which these free shows were paid for. He had heard back home that dues here were self-assessed, with the newborn and dead only being reported every fourteenth year. But how high a percentage was the tax? He would ask when the occasion arose.

He cautiously inspected the Jews trudging by, not noticing that he was staring at them. Apart from feeling cheated, he had nothing in common with them. Yet our religion is the same, Uri thought uncertainly; we are one race, the chosen people.

The charming family with whom they had spent the night in Campania, near Puteoli, came to mind. The many children who shouted happily at one another; the loom; the sheep. God willing, I shall pay them a visit again, he resolved.

He decided to make a solemn promise on the matter. He was amazed how close he now was to the Temple, where that vow was due. Only he could not imagine how he would pay for the sacrificial dove that was necessary for such a vow.

The days of waiting dragged on; Uri rambled around town on his own while his companions disappeared early in the morning, declining his requests to go with them. What important business did they have in Caesarea?

He saw Plotius occasionally in the distance; there were not too many men in this neck of the woods who had such thick, coal-black beards or graying, bald-pated heads. He kept his eyes peeled as he gazed at the harbor; Plotius was drinking on tavern terraces and absorbed in conversation with old men. For the most part, they were Jews, though there were some Greeks as well. Antique buzzards with decrepit features and bodies — not the kind who would be building palaces for themselves. What, he wondered, might Plotius the builder be inquiring about?

One evening he decided to ask him. After prayers and supper, Plotius set off by himself to one of the bowers in the garden, and Uri went to join him. Plotius stopped and waited for him, as he had two weeks previously at the harbor in Syracusa.

“You saw me with the Elders, didn’t you?” Plotius asked.

Uri swallowed deeply. Plotius must have good eyes if he had spotted Uri.

“Yes.”

“Fair enough,” Plotius said, and sat down on a bench in a vine arbor. Uri sat down next to him. It was warm, the sun had just set. Plotius reeked of wine; he had spent the day plying the old men with drink.

“It was the reason I wanted at all costs to be a member of the delegation,” Plotius said. “Even though the last time I was here I was falsely denounced and barely managed to get the hell out of here… I was accused of theft. Me! All I can say is take good care of yourself in this part of the world… Anyway, I came because the harbor of Caesarea interests me.”

He paused, waiting for this to sink in. Uri just ogled.

“You must remember: Matthew talked about how hazardous the harbor at Ostia was; that it ought to be reconstructed…”

“I remember.”

“Well, I’m looking to rebuild it.”

Uri still did not get it.

“That, my friend, is a big deal!” said Plotius. “There’s millions to be made from it. Some emperor is bound to want to do it sometime. Puteoli is a long way from Rome; Ostia is near. Ostia is the future. There’s just one difficulty: saltwater corrodes cement… But it may well be that Herod the Great’s engineers found a way around this — right here. They discovered a way of making a concrete that hardens in seawater, only the method has been forgotten. The builders were Latini, invited here by Herod. I followed up on them in Italia: they died long ago, but there are still a few people living who worked on the construction of the harbor with their own hands. I’m trying to learn from them what materials were used.”

Uri brightened. He had liked Plotius from the start, and now he knew why: he was a man with a goal. He wanted to make money, a lot of it. That was a worthy ambition.

“Did you learn anything?”

“Not much,” Plotius said. “I probed very discreetly, of course, tangentially. ‘Don’t make yourself noticeable in the eyes of authority’—that’s a wise Judaean proverb to be found in the secret books of the law… I have found out that rocks carved in squares were framed with wood, submerged in the sea, and the gaps were filled out with some kind of sand… The wood rotted, but the sand in the wooden molds hardened… It’s said that two centuries ago the harbor of Cosa in Italia was built in exactly the same way. I’ve been to Cosa, however, and that harbor is ruined. This marine concrete as it is called will not last two hundred years, but four or five decades — most certainly if Caesarea’s harbor is still standing, and, as you can see, it is standing… That’s more than enough for any emperor. The word is that some volcanic ash was brought in from Italia; a few of the old boys maintain it was called puteolanum… Two of them gave the Latin name even though they don’t speak a word of Latin… Maybe it comes from around Puteoli; it could be the ash from one of the eruptions of Vesuvius. But there must have been some other material mixed in — something, on being exposed to the salt of the sea, works with the volcanic ash to become stronger than rock in the seawater… I can’t find out anything, though, about this other material…”

He fell silent. Matthew came up and sat down with them in the arbor.

“Am I disturbing anything?” he asked.

“Not at all,” said Plotius. “I was just explaining to Gaius that it’s my wish to rebuild the harbor at Ostia.”

“So I’ve heard,” said Matthew. “The old buzzards have been telling me that you were grilling them about the secret of concrete that sets in water.”

Plotius laughed.

“Before long the whole of Rome is going to know about my secret plans!” he declared merrily.

“From me they won’t,” said Matthew. “But rest assured that there is no way that the work will be awarded to you. There is too much money at stake. It’ll be won by huge bribes; they’ll pay off the entire senate, the Praetorian Guard, the emperor… You’re a pipsqueak in this game.”

“But what if I know the secret of concrete that binds on contact with water alone?”

“Then they’ll drag it from you and throw you into the Tiber!”

Plotius thought that over.

Uri was not sure if he should be happy to be here. Was this perhaps the right time to stand up and go so that they could talk more freely?

“What do you think?” Matthew asked suddenly.

“Me?” Uri asked.

“Yes, you!” said Matthew.

“I have no grasp of that sort of thing.”

“But your father’s an influential man,” said Matthew. “He knows well enough how to land a good line of business. The bigger the investment, the more you can pinch. That’s why it pays to work on as big an investment as possible. Building harbors is just like trading in silk behind everyone else’s back; for example, taking the trouble with the Illyrians to bring it through Dalmatia…”

Uri clammed up. These people were privy to all his father’s secrets, and if they wanted, they could ruin him. But they didn’t know his father too well, because he didn’t steal; he worked hard for his money.

“So what did they say? Where the material comes from? Puteoli?” Matthew asked. “How far is that from Rome?”

“I have no idea,” said Plotius.

“One hundred and forty-three stadia,” interjected Uri.

“Really?”

“According to Iustus,” said Uri.

“That material was on someone’s property then, and that property must belong to somebody today,” said Matthew. “Herod the Great would have paid informers; he had the money. You are not going to have that sort of money, my dear Plotius. You’ll never get near that material.”

Plotius held his tongue.

“I’ll give you a sure tip,” said Matthew. “Build a synagogue in Ostia! The land on the seashore is mine… I’ve already got four exquisite Greek columns for it; all that’s left is to rustle up a building around them… I want a house of prayer bigger than the one at Delos!”

There was a mad gleam in Matthew’s eyes.

“Don’t tell me you’ve planted four small columns in the garden of your house,” Plotius retorted, “and watered them, and now they’re sprouting like palm trees!”

“They’re not standing, because they were on their sides when I dug them up in my garden,” said Matthew. “The shore is sandy, so it’s easy for things to get buried. It was pure fluke that I managed to procure them without paying a penny. Turns out that a consignment of columns had arrived from Greece, but the customer who placed the order went bust shortly beforehand. He killed his family, and then himself. The captain was able to dump about thirty of them at half price but was still left with four. He didn’t want to take them back, they took up a lot of room, and he was in a hurry, so he didn’t have time to rustle up a buyer. So I told him: I’ll take them off your hands. He gave them to me for free; all I had to do was pay for their removal. I buried them in front of my house.”

“How tall are they?”

“Twelve cubits, plus two feet on account of the capitals.”

“You don’t say!” said Plotius.

A servant came out from the house to ask if they wanted anything. Matthew asked for some wine.

“They’re made of the finest marble,” Matthew said.

“So where are you going to put them in your synagogue?” Plotius asked.

“Does it matter? The main thing is that it should be at least as big as the house of prayer at Delos.”

The servant brought a jug of wine and three delicate glasses.

Matthew poured a glass for Uri as well. There was a fire in Matthew’s eyes; he was drunk in advance on the idea of his prayer-house-to-be.

“Mosaic floor,” he continued. “Circles of stone benches… Wonderful murals… A mikveh… Near the sea, as it should be… A well can be dug… The water will run from the cistern into the kitchen…”

“What kitchen?” Plotius inquired.

“It will have a hostel for Jewish seamen. At present there is nowhere for them to eat and sleep; they have to be put up at private houses, six or seven to a room. It’s like trying to sleep in the belly of a ship. My house of prayer will be their house of prayer, so they won’t even have to go into town. They’ll need something to eat, so we shall cook for them for a modest fee, and not just on the Sabbath. Plenty of sailors, plenty of small payments — a huge return.”

“Is that the reason you built your villa outside the town wall? So you could have a house of prayer near at hand?”

“That’s right!” said Matthew. “And once it’s built I shall be the archisynagogos.”

“If I build it, I shall be the archisynagogos,” said Plotius. “That’s the condition, apart from the fee, which of course is priceless.”

They laughed and quaffed the wine.

“I’m serious,” said Matthew. “It’s a fantastic business, but a realistic one.”

“So how will you finance it?” Plotius quizzed.

“I throw in the four columns,” said Matthew. “Each of them is worth several thousand sesterces. The rest will be raised by Jewish seamen; it’s for them that it will be built. I’ll milk the Jews of Ostia as well; after all, it will be theirs as well. There has been just one congregation in Ostia so far; now there’ll be two.”

“It won’t come together just from that,” said Plotius. “To say nothing of the fact that it’s not going to be in their interest to create another congregation.”

“As soon as we get to Jerusalem, I’m going to have a word with the high priest; I’ll get him to make a donation from the treasury.”

“Complete nonsense,” said Plotius. “The priests have never given backing to the construction of synagogues. Each and every house of prayer that is built detracts from the weight of the Temple, and thereby their own weight too.”

“It’s worth a try anyway.”

They drank the wine. Uri was touched that they were speaking so openly in front of him. It meant that they accepted him and considered him a grown man.

Plotius sketched in the air.

“Let’s say we have the southeastern wall here, facing Jerusalem. That is the entrance… You have to go straight, into the house of prayer… The bimah is opposite the entrance… That needs a platform with benches around it… Where am I going to put your columns? Over the bimah? The sanctum is here, opposite the entrance… On the left or the right is a big hall for the school and the court…”

“On the left,” said Matthew firmly.

“Why?” Plotius asked.

“Because that way it will fit in, due to the seashore.”

“It’s all the same to me,” said Plotius. “Let the other hall be on the right… But then if the four pillars are so attractive, then you need to be able to see them from the sanctum and from the second hall… Shall we place the columns right between them?”

“Let’s,” said Matthew.

“But then what kind of roof am I going to build? Are you going to have these idiotic columns, which are two and a half stories high, punching through the roof?”

“Let the whole roof be as high as the columns.”

“Are you out of your mind? I’ve never seen a synagogue that tall. Twelve cubits and two feet?”

“That’s what will be good about it,” said Matthew. “Ours will be the tallest.”

“You’re a maniac, Matthew!” said Plotius admiringly.

“That’s me,” said Matthew. “And I’m going to get the money together. I’ll tap the Jews in Rome as well.” At this he turned to Uri: “Your father too. A lot more of them as well.”

Uri kept quiet.

“Agrippa will also give,” said Matthew. “I’ll wring something out of him.”

“If Agrippa is going to be involved,” said Plotius, “that’s when I get out. A dirty swine if ever I saw one!”

“He’s never short of a penny.”

“To bribe senators and the emperor, but he’s never given a red cent to the Jews. He wants to be king of a Greater Israel bigger than his grandfather’s was.”

“Agrippa will never be a king,” Matthew asserted. “Too many people loathe him.”

“But the Jews of Alexandria want that,” said Plotius. “Nothing is too dear for them… They couldn’t care less whether Agrippa stirs up the am ha’aretz, those wretched ignoramuses, throughout Judaea!”

“He won’t stir them up,” said Matthew. “He can’t even speak to them; he doesn’t speak a word of Aramaic.”

“His agents will do that for him,” said Plotius. “The man’s sick in the head. He wants to be greater than any Jewish king so far… We’ve gone to the grave for that more than a few times already. The last time was when his grandfather ruined us. Agrippa give money for a house of prayer in Ostia? He wants Judaea along with Galilee; nothing else is of interest to him.”

Uri felt awkward. It was all very well their heaping abuse on Agrippa so openly in front of him, but he had to say something.

“My thanks that you speak openly in my presence,” Uri declared.

After a short pause, Matthew spoke.

“What of it?”

“I know that you know my father gave him money, and he asked in return that I should come with you… But my father had no money… He borrowed it from bankers at an interest rate of twenty percent… Agrippa had asked the bankers for the money, they wouldn’t give it but sent him around to my father, who was in no position to say no…”

Silence.

Matthew laughed.

“Agrippa will spend that on a single supper,” he said. “The bird species does not exist whose tongues he would not have served up in a pâté.”

“Were you there?” asked Plotius.

“No,” said Matthew, “but I know someone who was.”

Uri felt dizzy.

The rat had squandered that gigantic sum of money on a single meal!

Plotius turned to Uri.

“A singularly clear-headed merchant like your father is not in the habit of departing from his senses. He’s counting on a high position falling into your lap when Agrippa becomes king. The loan will be paid back if Greater Israel is awarded to Agrippa by the emperor. It’s a big risk, but your father will have considered it worth taking.”

“My father is not like that! No way are we Agrippa’s agents!”

The other two sipped their wine. Uri did not drink.

“Here everybody is someone’s agent,” Matthew declared in an amiable tone. “Any ass can deliver money. Not one person made his way into this delegation by chance; each and every one of us is an important person.”

Uri was enraged.

“All right, then! Out with it!” he yelled. “Who is an agent for whom? Let’s hear it!”

Matthew and Plotius were shaken; they had not expected this.

“I’ll tell you,” said Matthew quietly. “But don’t shout because the others can hear. Should I say?”

Plotius shrugged his shoulders.

“At least I’ll also get to find out.”

Matthew hesitated, then he too shrugged his shoulders.

“Valerius was pushed into the delegation by the archisynagogos. He has a pile of contracts with him; his boss is buying land in Judaea… The sellers will sign, Valerius will take the papers back, and the money will be sent to the sellers with the next delegation… Valerius is making nothing on it, but he will be allowed to keep his job; he’ll be a hyperetes to the end of his days — instead of becoming a sailor and getting to spew his guts out…”

He snickered, then carried on:

“Hilarus bought jewels in Caesarea. They’re cheap here, you see, but ever since then he’s been petrified that his sack will be stolen.”

“Have you looked in his sack?” Uri asked.

“Sure.”

“What about mine? Have you searched that too?” Uri asked determinedly.

“That too. Is anything missing?”

“Nothing.” Uri felt the wine rise up in his stomach. “So what were you looking for?”

“A letter from Agrippa.”

Uri was aghast.

“That’s logical,” Plotius tried to smooth things over. “You were put into the delegation at Agrippa’s request; you’re his agent.”

“It’s not like that,” Uri exclaimed. “There was never any letter of any kind on me!”

“No, there wasn’t,” Matthew confirmed. “I didn’t know then what a good memory you had.”

Uri shook his head. He did not understand.

“One hundred and forty-three stadia,” Plotius prompted him helpfully.

“What about one hundred and forty-three stadia?”

“The distance of Puteoli from Rome,” said Plotius. “You heard it just once, and you registered it. You weren’t even paying any attention. I asked the question as if I didn’t know; Iustus gave the answer, and Matthew immediately changed the subject. If there was anything you would be expected to forget, it would have been that. But just a moment ago you told us how many stadia Puteoli is from Rome. Agrippa made a good choice of courier.”

“I’m sorry!” Uri whispered, jumped to his feet and vomited into the bushes. He wiped his mouth and, gritting his teeth, took his seat again.

They had been spying on him all along, testing him. Let them just carry on.

“I’m listening, Matthew. And Alexandros?”

“A noxious beast,” said Matthew. “He wanted to be a Roman legionary, only they didn’t take him because he’s a Jew. Out of spite, now he wants to become a Jewish military leader and trounce the whole Roman Empire — by himself. Right now he is buying up weapons from legionaries; the Jews are hiding them in caves to rise up in rebellion later on…”

“What legionaries?” Uri asked.

“Members of the Sebaste non-Jewish cohort,” said Plotius patiently. “They report that their weapons, unfortunately, have been mislaid, and they get replacements at no charge. Spears, swords, knives — whatever… They’re paid a per diem of thirty-nine asses, or nine hundred sesterces a year, because the Roman state picks up the tab for their provisions and their weapons, but then it deducts the costs of these from their salaries, so in the end they earn less than a Roman plebe does with his sportula full of food worth twenty-five asses, and he doesn’t have to do anything for it but kill time, much like you! And then you have your tessera on top, which they don’t! So as an unemployed Roman plebeian, you earn twice as much as they do — and they have drills, are deployed whenever there is an earthquake anywhere, or a fire to be fought. They are not allowed to have a family, and they serve for decades on end, the fools, before being resettled, with a minimal pension, somewhere a long way off so they will not rise up in rebellion! No wonder they wheel and deal and steal whenever they get the chance. The state pays again and again for lost weapons, but it does not charge the legionaries, because the state is stupid, and its dopey bookkeeping officials don’t do any thinking for it! Alexandros is not the first to trade in black-market weapons. Judaea is full of caves, and they’re all full to bursting with weapons. The mercenaries sell them cheaply, and the Jews buy heaps of them. Nowadays the only ones who use them are their co-religionists who are highway robbers, but that brute Alexandros is making strenuous preparations to be a Rome-bashing Jewish military leader! And there are many more like him!”

Uri kept quiet and digested that.

“Iustus is keeping tabs on me,” Matthew said with a laugh. “There hasn’t been a delegation yet that did not have its spy. But then he’s not going to have anything to report — unless he reports on you. You’re in the same congregation, if I’m not mistaken.”

“We are,” said Uri. “I know already why Plotius came… So, Matthew, what about you?”

Matthew took a little sip of the wine.

“My obsession is the house of prayer in Ostia… It’s hard to see how I can go wrong when it gets built. I’ll take small charges from the hostelry guests, and even smaller ones from the court officials for the use of the hall, and very little indeed for the school to function, but all of those small charges will add up, and everyone in the town will come to my house of prayer sooner or later, that’s for sure. I shall be the first archisynagogos ever who manages to make money from the post. But peace is needed for Jews to be able to build. The Pax Romana, praise be, is a necessary thing, and praise be to Julius Caesar for conceiving it… Mark my words: I’ll do anything — anything at all — to make sure crazy Jews will not threaten the peace.”

“That’s how I feel as well,” said Plotius.

Uri’s stomach was gripped by a new round of cramps.

“I also need peace,” he said hoarsely, “to read, because for me nothing else is of interest. I can recite to you the whole of Greek and Latin literature by heart. No one is using me to pass messages to anyone: I swear by Everlasting God who is One that this is the truth.”

After a brief hush, Plotius added, “Amen.”

All of a sudden, Simon the Magus departed for Jerusalem, leaving a letter in which he wished them a continued pleasant stay in his house. He had taken some of the servants with him; the rest were left at their disposal. Presumably he had called in all his demands and was hastening to place the money in the Temple’s treasury.

The companions returned together late that evening. Uri had seen nothing of the kind until then; previously they had reached home individually, albeit not so late. They were not in a happy state of mind.

They took their seats in the garden for supper. Hilarus roundly abused the Jews of Alexandria. A stuck-up, brainless bunch; they had money to burn but did not give a hoot for Jewry.

Matthew and Plotius held their tongues.

“The bastards didn’t even invite us for a meal,” said Alexandros.

It turned out that the companions had been at the Druseion that day with the delegation traveling from Alexandria to Jerusalem, who’d had the money to rent the most expensive suites of rooms in that miraculous edifice but had not offered the companions a thing, parting after some empty courtesies and marching off to the most expensive of the lighthouse’s restaurants, though not without making sure that the Jews from Rome should happen to catch them doing just that.

It must have been humiliating in the extreme.

“They’re delivering a hundred and thirty-three times as much money as us,” said Matthew dryly.

“How much is that?” Uri asked, flabbergasted.

“One hundred talents, near enough,” said Matthew. “Of course, that includes taxes from the whole of Egypt, not just the Jews of Alexandria…”

How in God’s name did they carry such so much money? Uri made a quick count: that must be at least 122 pounds of gold! What were they taking it by? A caravan of camels?

Uri was glad that he had not experienced the arrogance of the rich.

It then occurred to him that he was the only one they had not taken with them. That was not nice of them. So, his companions had conspired against him. Even though he had sworn he was carrying no message from Agrippa to anyone, they did not believe him. Not even Plotius or Matthew — nobody.

It occurred to him that maybe the fact that he was not doing business deals with the locals in itself looked fishy. The way their minds worked, what possible reason could there be other than that he, Agrippa’s spy, was superbly well paid and had no need to get involved in trifling business deals.

Let it be over! Let them reach Jerusalem, hand over the money, get through the festival, and return to Rome as soon as possible.

“Pity the Magus did not speak to the prefect,” said Hilarus once the mudslinging at the Jews of Alexandria had been exhausted. “He’s never going to receive us.”

Iustus endorsed that: it would have been nice to look at the palace. Maybe there would be a chance on the return leg.

“It’s possible to get in,” Alexandros supposed. “It’s possible to clamber up from the sewage system…”

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking they don’t guard it,” said Plotius grimly. “A good job they do! If they didn’t guard it, I’d have words with them.”

Alexandros laughed scornfully.

Uri took that to mean that Alexandros had inspected the entire sewage system to find out how it would be possible to launch an attack against the more important buildings. This fellow was surely insane.

They sat, sipping their wine, the conversation returning once again to coins and prices in Caesarea. How cheap everything was here in comparison with Rome; a length of linen cost so-and-so much in this shop, so-and-so much in another, though it was not of the same quality; the wine here was more tart; the lamb in the tavern at the harbor was more tender than it was back at the Tiberium.

Long-forgotten tastes were reawakened on Uri’s palate, not so much the flavors of wine and lamb but of the matzo that he had eaten in boyhood, when his father had still considered him a colleague, teaching him about mark-ups on commodities and how to steer clear of forgeries of high-quality goods. These prices were for children; they couldn’t be taken seriously. The only things to be taken seriously were works of art. But it would have been better, perhaps, had his eyes not deteriorated and had he read nothing other than the Holy Scriptures, and he too had been interested in prices.

After prayers and supper they sat in a vine arbor at the highest point of the garden’s steeply sloping ground, from which they could look down on the house itself. The long table was sumptuously laden with all imaginable seafood dishes that could be considered kosher, which is to say many fishes but no crabs, snails, or shellfish. Who, Uri wondered, could have decided that, and when, because there is not a word in the Pentateuch about why fish with external bony skeletons are placed among the calcareous shellfish, and are not kosher, which ones are exceptionally kosher, and what is the difference between the skeletons? What makes a skeleton bony and what makes it a shell? If the Creator had created man in such a way that an external armor held him in place from the outside, with his flesh on the inside, would such a man not be Jewish on principle? Putting himself, in his imagination, in the shoes of the Creator, Uri pictured for himself tortoise-men and snake-men and bird-men, and the soporific conversation that was carried on among his companions about prices did not penetrate his consciousness.

The western horizon over the sea was flushed; the sun had set just a few minutes before. The tops of the larger buildings in the harbor area could be seen between the palms and cypresses, the high towers almost in their entirety. Lights glimmered in the tiny windows of the uppermost levels of the Druseion. There must be people dwelling there, living and making love, right then. That might be the Alexandrian delegation carousing.

Not that we ourselves are not carousing, Uri admitted even-handedly to himself; indeed, those Jews were paying for themselves in the Druseion, whereas we are getting free board and lodging. Perhaps we are getting the better deal.

Then he reminded himself that there was no “we.”

He was excluded from that community. And if he thought over what Matthew had said about the motives of their fellows, everyone — with the possible exception of an alliance between Matthew and Plotius — was out for himself. The delegation was not a community, but why would it need to become one? The community was hateful; its members were keeping watch, spying on each other, accusing each other of infringing on principles that were thought of as common, reporting on those infringements, even condemning each other to death. Uri very much hoped that he would never see a single one of his companions again once their mission was over.

Then it occurred to him that they were, indeed, a community, bearing all the characteristics of such, and it could even be that he, the one whom everyone was spying on, was as a matter of fact was the cohesive glue of this community, the proof of that being precisely the fact that they had not taken him — him alone — with them today to the Druseion. They competed with each other, collaborated, kept an eye on each other, but they had just one common enemy: himself. That would make him the most important member of the delegation, he concluded, and the reason they did not take me with them is because the Alexandrians support Agrippa, on whose behalf they think I am spying.

That was a startling idea, and he dismissed it straightaway by telling himself that he would think it over with a clearer head at some later time.

The fires were burning in the Caesarean Pharos; even Uri was able dimly to make out its glow. The gilded roofs of the temple of Augustus and the Tiberium were also visible, gleaming rubicund in the twilight. In the garden field crickets stridulated and birds chirped; it was a warm spring evening — a peaceful, quiet sense of well-being prevailed. Uri examined the scenery through a small gap between his fingers; it now seemed to him even more improbable than ever that he happened to be right where he was.

The mission to Jerusalem would be coming to an end in a few days’ time, and they would be setting off for home. He still did not know who was carrying the money. Perhaps the smallest and dimmest of them all: Hilarus or Iustus. Or maybe me.

But it is definitely not in my sack.

Was it not possible that Matthew had handed it over to Simon the Magus, and that is why he had gone on ahead? He had an armed escort; it would be safer with him. Back in Rome he had heard recently — though he had not paid much attention — that bankers anywhere would give money on any letter of credit that had been duly stamped and signed. What if Matthew were bearing a letter of credit like that, and he had given it to Simon, who would then change it for money and deposit it at the treasury?

Uri exercised his feet and kneaded his back. His stomach had stopped cramping a few days back, thanks to the walks and the plentiful, tasty repasts. The painful dispute between Matthew and Plotius had passed without consequences; it seemed if anything to have shown them in a more sympathetic light. True, they had said nothing about going to meet the Alexandrian delegation, he had been left out of that, but at the same time he had also been let off the communal humiliation. He wanted to feel at ease and carefree; he was at peace with the world, because he wanted to be at peace with it.

“In all truth, it’s you who ought to be speaking to Pilate, no?” Hilarus asked unexpectedly.

Uri looked around to see whom Hilarus was addressing, but Hilarus was looking intently at him.

“What was that? Me, speak to whom, about what?”

“You ought to be speaking to Pilate, or have I got that wrong?” Hilarus repeated his question.

Uri had no idea what this was about.

“What would I say to him?” he asked.

“I have no idea: that’s for you to know,” said Hilarus.

Everyone paused. Uri looked around at them; there was not a trace of goodwill in their eyes. Uri shuddered.

“The first time I heard the name was after setting off on this trip,” said Uri. “Before that I had no idea who the prefect of Judaea was. What am I supposed to speak to him about?”

“How would I know? It’s you who knows,” Hilarus said. “You just skulk around the town, staring at women’s naked breasts all day long.”

Everything was still.

Uri did not look at Alexandros. He’d obviously blabbed that I was at the stadium. Somehow it doesn’t count that he was also there; all that matters is that I was there. Why should that be?

“You keep spying on me all the time,” Uri let fly. “Why’s that? Are you going to tell me, at long last, why?”

They stared mutely.

“What makes you think that anyone is spying on you?” Matthew asked soothingly, gently, commiseratingly, paternally.

What a hypocrite, my God.

Uri got up, picked up his goblet of wine, and went into the house. He sat down on his bed and stared into the darkness.

Why do they not believe me?

From then on, Uri slept outside in the garden. He spent Friday evening praying with the group and the Jewish servants, after which he left. For the whole Sabbath he said nothing to them, nor they to him. He ate when they had finished and avoided their company, and they avoided his. He wandered around the garden and fretted. I’m the victim of some diabolical mistake, he thought; they don’t believe a word I tell them.

It won’t be long before this torment comes to an end; next Friday evening is the start of Passover. We have to arrive on Thursday at the latest because — so he had heard — no one would be allowed into the city on Friday. That means they would have to set off no later than Monday at daybreak, maybe even on Sunday evening. Just one more night, Uri thought, and we will be on our way.

They looked through his bag once more. The tefillin had been stuffed into the jug, which had been empty for days now. It had never occurred to him to stuff anything into the jug, least of all his phylactery. They must have wanted him to see that they had searched it. Was it Matthew or one of the others?

He said nothing. One of them is threatening me, he thought; he’s made up some lie about me to the others, and they believed him. But what could that be?

He brooded over what could be eating Hilarus. They had not exchanged a single word on the trip. But they had been rowing next to each other during the squall. Hilarus had been looking at his back. But he had not looked back even once, so he had not seen the fear, if there was any, on his face. He might be annoyed on account of that, but this much? And anyway, it was not Hilarus who had puked, but Valerius, the armchair seaman.

The more time I spend with them, the less I know them.

It crossed his mind that he should turn to Plotius for advice, who had spoken with him warmly and paternally in Syracusa, and had added an “Amen” when he had sworn that he was telling the truth. But something held Uri back. Not even Plotius had come to his defense when Hilarus came out with that nonsense earlier, though Plotius should have known better.

Can he really know, though?

Not so sure.

Who am I, after all?

He tried to examine himself from the outside. A young man, reddish beard, prematurely balding, who squinted, his eyes screwed up to slits, his back bowed, his chin receding and lopsided, the nose protuberant. Although he had lost weight on the way, he had not lost his modest potbelly or his double chin. He wriggled when seated because either his rectum or his back was causing him some discomfort; he walked clumsily, waddling; apparently he talked in his sleep, shouting and arguing; he had a constantly runny nose and was always clearing his throat. Not exactly an edifying spectacle, he concluded. But then what bad was there to see in such a preposterous figure?

Me — Agrippa’s agent? Come on! Surely they can’t seriously suppose that an ambitious grandson of Herod would entrust an important message to such a wretched stripling.

The Creator created me the way that I am, and He left it to me to make what I can of my endowments. I shall harden my soul, endure the indignity; be strong like nobody before.

“We’re hitting the road!” said Matthew.

He was standing over him in the garden and looking down just like his father had done in Rome, at home, two months earlier.

Uri scrambled to his feet, but by the time he could thank him for the wake-up call Matthew had gone back to the house.

It was daybreak on Sunday. Uri shivered as he raked the dew from his greasy hair with his frozen fingers.

They would reach Jerusalem on Wednesday, Thursday at the latest. They had already covered distances like that in Italia, and just as fast. A good thing that the days were longer in spring and summer than winter. And now they would also have a highway under their feet.

The Caesarea-Jerusalem road was well constructed, wider than the Appian Way. But there was a dark aspect to the overly broad thoroughfare: its builders understood that it was surrounded by a province that was not exactly peaceful. The reason it had been built was so that Roman legionaries might quickly march along it along to quell any Jewish rebellion; there was plenty of room for a big army, even for war chariots. Yet it was constructed in peaceful times, and the peace had held ever since, for many decades now, and Jewish leaders, wherever they might live, were doing all they could to keep the peace forever.

There was going to be war. Everyone was counting on that, even though it was peacetime; the builders of the military road had counted on war decades before. Simon the Magus could also see it coming and was doing what he could to save his money while he could.

At the edge of the road lolled women in scanty dresses made up in the Egyptian style. Their faces were daubed white, with their eyebrows picked out in dark paint and their lips red. Even Uri could see their features as they were standing no more than three or four feet away. He estimated the distance between the women as thirty to forty cubits; every one of them, old or young, had a half-crazed look about her. Some stood motionless, like resigned statues; others swayed, their legs apart, or whistled; others mechanically licked the corners of their mouths, or wiggled their backsides, or even pulled out their breasts to display. The travelers pretended not to notice. Uri assumed that some people were skimming off the top of whatever the women made, just as much of the profit his father made from silk was raked off. The reason the whores were allowed to live, as was his father in Rome, was because they made money for someone; the moment they ceased to be of use, they would be disposed of.

It would be good to talk about this with Joseph, but it was something that could not be discussed.

He couldn’t tell his father that he was being treated like a prostitute. No, that wasn’t the right word. He couldn’t tell his father that he was a slave.

The good thing about thoughts is that one can chew on them for a prolonged period, which made walking more tolerable. He was again carrying his sandals around his neck, and the bare, hardened soles of his feet tramped the military road from Caesarea to Jerusalem. His ankle became sore much sooner than it had in Italia, on account of the rough ground, he supposed, or as a result of the week of inactivity in Caesarea.

When they set out, the seven of them were the only ones walking on the road, but as the day went on they encountered ever more people on the way to Jerusalem, to the festivities. For these people, however, there was no need to set out so early: they lived more than three days’ walking distance from the Temple. Nowhere had it been set down in writing, but since the time of Herod the Great, the notorious marathon distance — twenty-four stadia — had been customarily regarded as one day’s walking distance, the notion adopted in the rich towns of Palestine and Syria along with the quinquennial Olympic games. The members of the delegation managed to cover a daily average of one and a half times that much, but then they were, so to speak, professional walkers, and apart from small sacks they were carrying nothing else, no animals, baggage, week’s provisions, or infants.

By noon the innocuous crowd had proliferated, swelling to a group of several hundred Jews; people from nearby villages had taken to the military road to avoid the bumps of unpaved paths with their traps, carts, and barrows.

They could not be asked for road tolls now that they were on their way to a festival, Uri supposed, gaining an insight into the logic of the Pax Romana.

Families and clans walked together, and they carried with them everything that was intended for sacrifice at the Temple. Wheels creaked under carts loaded with plant and animal offerings. There were baskets on the heads of the womenfolk, smaller baskets on the heads of the children, also containing sacrificial offerings.

They marched along in their finest clothes, singing psalms, with the psalms intermingling and a cacophony of sounds arising. For many even the finest clothes were rags, the best sandals, bare feet. Their skin was ulcerated, their bodies scrawny. The oxen pulling the carts were also scraggly, their bones very nearly poking through their hides. The bellies of the countless small children were swollen over their skinny thighs, the bellies of the cattle, donkeys, and camels similarly swollen. This was poverty that Uri had never seen in Italia or Rome.

Could this be my people?

He looked at the shuffling old folks and the small barefoot brats that kept straying off. Already, at six or seven years of age, children had to go to the festivities in Jerusalem; the smallest, the infants of one or two years of age, traveled on their fathers’ backs, and he envied them: he too had hung on to his father’s neck when they had fled, and he had been the family’s only child.

He looked at the solemn heads of families, swathed in their gowns, the women covering their faces; a procession the likes of which it was impossible to imagine in Rome, even though there one could find almost anything imaginable. There, every Jew went to his own synagogue for Passover, and he would have a hearty lunch. Here, there was a mass pilgrimage, and families, so it seemed, took along with them not just the sacrificial offerings but their entire wealth, including all their cattle, their tents as well, either on their backs or on carts, fearing perhaps that anything left at home would be filched. In front and at the back of the carts were tethered horses, foals, oxen, and cattle, with the poultry thrown into the carts themselves; these could not all be sacrificial animals, it was just that they dared not leave them at home, unguarded, in the village — otherwise they would be stolen by robbers, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, so they took with them to Jerusalem their entire fortunes, everything, and then, once the festival was over, they would drive them back home again, or at least as many of the cattle, children, and old people who were still alive after the major effort. This migration back and forth occurred at least three times a year, as if the settled Jewish peasants were returning to their ancestral nomadic lifestyle three times a year; as if wandering were in their blood and the festivals had been codified merely to give free rein to this primitive instinct.

In the autumn, for the Day of Atonement, the holiest feast in the Jewish calendar, there must be even bigger crowds on the move in Judaea. The Feast of Booths, harvest festival, and feast of thanksgiving is called Sukkot for the hastily erected bivouacs, roofed with straw; these were still being carried and would be set up somewhere. Only the name given to this feast is Passover, the spring festival commemorating, in part, the deliverance of Moses and his people and, in part, the ripening of the early-winter sowing of barley.

So many tents and tent poles were being carried that Uri was convinced that tent-making must be the best of all trades in Palestine.

Where would this vast mass of people pitch their tents? he wondered. Hardly in the city, for that was surely paved; indeed, he seemed to recall it being said that the paving of the city had been in constant progress since the time of Herod the Great. This continuously growing throng of people was surely going to camp outside the city during the three most important days of the festival, with many spending the entire week under a tent. There were a couple of half-holidays in between the feast days, but the crowd would still be there, close to Jerusalem, and only then would it set off for home.

He looked at the faces, and with few exceptions they struck him as foreign.

Among them were many faces that he had not encountered in Rome, either among the Jews or the inhabitants of the true Rome. They resembled, most of all, Arabs, Egyptians, Numidians, Ethiopians, and Abyssinians. If the men had not been wearing gowns over their heads, or there had been no kerchief covering the women’s heads, and in some cases a veil as well, he would have had a tough time recognizing them as Jews. The Jews in Rome were not like these; there the Jews were Roman.

They spoke either Greek or Aramaic, and it was only the psalms that were in Hebrew. They sang it inaccurately, garbling words, mixing up word endings; they did not understand the psalms, warbling them in a plaintive drawl, just as they had heard them from their parents. Perhaps it was the essence that one did not need to understand the psalms, just croon and mumble them under his breath in a nonsense language. One has to speak to God, Uri supposed, in a language that has no sense; maybe He understood that. The Lord was hardly going to fool around with meaningful words; He had too many things to worry about, what with all existing worlds being entrusted to Him, not just our earthly world. There must be a fair amount of trouble in the heavenly world as well, with the angels squabbling, to say nothing of the devils, those curious puppets of God whom He had created — after all, He had created everything — to have someone to worry about when He was bored. Maybe He inspired the embrace of bad causes deemed necessary so that men would not castigate Him on their account; maybe the devils were just like Sejanus had been, and the Lord God just like the emperor Tiberius. The Lord was not paying attention to us, and if He hears anything at all, He hears only a querulous, chanting song; but then if He was almighty, He would understand that.

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.”

They stood and watched the chariot creaking along.

“This year Pilate is going to Jerusalem earlier than usual,” Matthew muttered to himself. “Very early.”

There must be some trouble in Judaea after all, that suggested.

A huge crowd was now waiting at the edge of the road for the mercenaries to pass by so that they too could return to the military road.

For a long time yet legionaries in full armor strode by, their boots tramping rhythmically.

The crowd mutely watched them march past; even the children fell silent. The delegation from Rome likewise remained still.

Our people, and our allied army. Our people forced off the road by our army.

Upturned carriages were then righted; the livestock and cultivated crops were reloaded, swept together, or tossed back by the handful into intact sacks. The womenfolk sewed torn sacks with the needles and flax they kept at hand. The children picked up a few kernels of grain in their grubby little hands and proudly dropped those too into the sacks before turning back to look for more. It looks as though they will get the grain milled somewhere close to Jerusalem, Uri reflected, and they will eat it too, because grain like that is impure from a priest’s perspective.

The legs of spavined donkeys and asses were examined by elderly men, their injuries fixed with the aid of broken-off branches and cord; the animals that could not be treated were hoisted onto a cart; they could not be used as sacrificial animals, because they were not sound and the Levites would not accept such an animal, but the travelers would eat those themselves communally during the festival, and that is how they would be accounted for back home, each and every one. Their fellow pilgrims would back them in avowing that everything had happened the way they told it.

The mass reoccupied the military road, but the stillness lasted a long time, with even the small children realizing that now was not the time for their screams.

But then the singing did of course sound again, perhaps coming from tribes that were only now taking to the road and had not seen the passage of the army, though it is also possible that those who had been pushed into the ditch and onto the field had resumed their song.

Whatever might happen at any time, it was good to sing psalms.

It came about spontaneously when the mass came to a standstill to wash their hands and pray; perhaps the old sensed the time more keenly than the young. The delegates too yielded to the mass sense of time: when the crowd halted, so did they; when the crowd sprinkled themselves with water, so Matthew sprinkled the delegates; when the crowd prayed, so did they. When their own water ran out, they rinsed their hands with soil at the roadside, like the others, just as they had done once in Campania. Here, however, it was holy land, the Homeland, and therefore automatically clean from a ritual point of view.

There was about this crowd of many, many thousands something uplifting and at the same time frightening. Something impersonal. Uri felt that he had become no more than an ant-sized part of the throng, and he was unsure what to make of that. He was looking out of its head from the inside, but it was also as if he were watching from above, like an eagle. He had a bird’s eye view of himself too, and he was just as tiny as everyone else, yet it was also not like that, because the throng was not looking at itself from above. Young and old, men and women were sunk in themselves, praying and treading onward. Passover in Rome was nothing like this. There it was small and intimately domestic.

Uri caught himself looking at the vast throng through the eyes of a non-Jewish Roman, as if he were an idle traveler, gazing with interest at the peoples of far-off foreign lands but having nothing to do with what was happening. As if he were not walking among them but seated comfortably in a litter, looking in amazement and with haughty disdain at the throng of people down below. As if he were the prefect and had not curtained off the window of his carriage but were looking out with interest over those whom he ruled, gazing at the corruption, decomposition, and disgusting decay to which children and the elderly, men and women, animals and plants were subjected, and deriving a titillating pleasure from voluptuously inspecting the kinds of ulcers that covered their bodies, what sort of rags they were going around in. Not as if a large portion of Roman Jews were not gravely ill; not as if the Roman plebeians in general did not suffer from countless maladies. Disease, though, seems to be a concomitant of life, almost a fundamental condition, but Uri could not recall from his days in Rome, in either its Jewish or non-Jewish quarters, seeing quite so many seriously misshapen faces. The eyes of the Roman Jews had not gleamed, even on holidays, in such a fashion.

Uri gazed at them as if he had been sent to spy on them.

These people were enthusiastic. They were marching along, going up to the Temple in Jerusalem! In Rome no one enthused about anything, skeptical Jewish descendants of slaves least of all. To be a Jew in Rome meant objectivity: it was bad for everyone, but worst of all, hallelujah, for us, praise be to the Lord for that. One could see, from here in the Holy Land, that while to be a Jew in Rome was a hundred times better, even at times better than for the Latini, who had good reason to be terrified when power changed hands.

Uri was not boundlessly glad to be making his way to Jerusalem with his painful leg and throbbing back. I don’t believe, he now acknowledged to himself, that the Lord dwells in the most secret sanctum of the Temple in Jerusalem; He dwells nowhere, He does not have human form, He does not need to dwell anywhere, He is All, He is the Creation, who created His very self because He wanted to do so, and He sees Himself in us in moderation and indeed sometimes, no doubt, with sorrow. He dwells just as much in Rome as anywhere else.

These people, however, seemed really to believe that He dwelled in the Temple, and that by reaching Jerusalem they would be able to come into His direct presence. They would not, no one can. Perhaps one day the Anointed One, the Messiah, who will descend among us from His right hand to raise us mercifully and set us beside the Lord. The Messiah is certainly there; He belongs there by necessity. But until the Messiah comes, God is present in all places where Jews are present, indeed even in those places where there are no Jews, for, after all, He is God of all men, of all created beings; non-Jews simply do not know it. But it will become known to them. It will become known to non-Jewish servants of the post houses who, standing in front of the buildings and masking their cowardice with grins — though one would think they might have gotten used to it by now — are trembling at the great might of this throng as it wends its way, singing peacefully. They dread that the peaceful throng will all at once turn savage; that is their fear. It will become known to the whores, posted at regular distances along the road, and when the Messiah arrives they too will be relieved of their terrible service. It will become known to the soldiers posted to the sentry cabins; they likewise are afraid. They may be non-Jews, but God is also their only god, only they do not yet know it. The Messiah will free them, too, from all their troubles. One can see from their terrified eyes that they sense His immanent earthly presence, the Shechinah, this all-pervading, all-permeating female spirit, only they fear it as yet. They do not know that they should rejoice.

Uri was assailed by an uncomfortable feeling of being unable to truly rejoice. As if he were not a Jew, though he had been born one of the chosen people. It was a sin to be unable to rejoice sufficiently at this, but he felt that God had inflicted this sin as a diversion: he had become, so he felt, the eye of the Almighty, who was all-seeing. With his poor eyes, to report to Him. So that he might be a spy for the Messiah, who all at once would appear, praying, supplicating, singing to himself softly.

He, the Lord himself, sent me here to spy, and he may be reading my thoughts even now. It may be that He does not see what I see, but my thoughts reach up to Him.

At one of the mass hand-washings he pictured how they might have performed the communal washings in the Jordan conducted by John, whom Herod Antipas had arrested, imprisoned, and for some reason put to death.

Vague rumors regarding those mass bathings had reached Rome, the Jews there just shaking their heads, as though they could not understand. Why immerse oneself completely in the Jordan? It was more than enough to wash hands and feet before saying one’s prayers, and one’s hands before each meal, and one could take a dip perfectly well in the foot-deep water of a mikveh. But even a mikveh was not absolutely necessary; the Roman mikvehs were not intended for total immersion of the body, it was only possible to wash the hands and feet, as the Torah prescribes. What was the point of going beyond what the Torah wisely and moderately prescribes?

That John the Baptist, as he was called, in fact had done nothing, Uri reflected. He was at the place where the masses, longing to be pure, had gotten in the habit of immersing themselves in the Jordan. The throng had been in rapture, and they had outdone what was prescribed by the faith. Those people must have been very sick, just like the crowd now, and they greatly wished to be cleansed of the spiritual torments that were hobbling them so hopelessly. John discerned that and put himself at the head of that rapture — as if he had hit upon it. Absurd! If a river were standing in their path right now, the people would swarm into it to clean themselves and reach Jerusalem in that condition. I too could do with a nice cool bath, Uri thought, wiping the sweat once more with the palm of his hand from his brow and the back of his neck.

I ought to ask Simon the Magus about this; he is a Galilean, like the Baptist. Maybe he knew him personally since it was not long ago that he was executed — perhaps less than a year. It’s a pity Simon had gone on ahead to sort out his filthy financial affairs in time, before the festival begins.

At first it was just the smoke that they saw, only later did they glimpse the City.

It was impossible not to see the smoke; even Uri could see it. It was a cloud like any other, but one that narrowed to an increasingly thin streak as it neared the ground, as if the cloud were hanging over the City attached to an umbilical cord. The cloud could also be pictured inversely: God had created it above the City and He was lowering himself in an attenuating emanation of double paraboloid shape, honoring the City by choosing it as the spot at which to do so.

The smoke of burning flesh on the altar stone rises thinly, only then to disperse. The high, ashlar fireplace stands in the square before the Temple. It is possible to reach the top by stairs, it is said; it is up there that the pyre burns, to there that the parts of the carcasses dismembered by the Levites are carried and roasted. All day long, from dawn to dusk, the priests elected for service that day cremate the sacrificial animals, the flesh and skin of which are due, according to complex laws, either only to the priests themselves, or to members of the priestly families as well, with the Levites also receiving certain parts.

Uri was very much hoping that he would soon be standing near the altar stone, close enough to make a thorough inspection so as to be able to describe it to his father back home.

The smoke lay darkly and with firm contours directly above the horizon, and although no smell carried this far, the throng was intoxicated by the spectacle.

Jewry was doing God a favor by incinerating those countless cattle as His comestibles (the priests eat them, yes, but all the same it may as well be the Lord Himself who consumes them via the stomachs of His adherents), and a well-fed God will forgive His chosen people their sins, and leave them to live and multiply.

Jews were treading across the hills and meadows everywhere in the neighborhood of the City, many hundreds of thousands of people, to arrive in the City on time, although it was only Wednesday afternoon. Since they had started on Sunday at daybreak, in their great haste the delegates had been covering almost fifty stadia a day, two marathons daily. They would easily get there by sunset on Thursday and they, the privileged, would be admitted at one of the city gates.

The city wall itself could now be made out, and also visible was the roof of Herod’s palace, or, to be more precise, the tips of the extremely high towers that had been built next to it, as well as the roof of the Temple, and more than a few other tall edifices: the tower of Phasael, they said, the palace of the high priests. They incandesced in the searing light, a light that Uri too could see; to his eyes they blurred into one, which meant that these palaces on two hills must be close to one another. This was a small city; even a fraction of this throng would never fit in.

Matthew explained that, with Jewry being divided into twenty-four parts, people were allowed entry into the City by the rotation principle, and it was decided by a further complicated process of drawing lots which tribes were entitled to enter Temple Square, and which of its courts, in a given year. The results were known to the guards at the city gates, and they would let inside only the people who had been chosen. The leaders of the tribes carried tablets of marble or clay or scrolls of papyrus to identify themselves, and after thorough scrutiny of these documents, the guards would direct them this way or that. Priority was given to anyone who had not yet visited Jerusalem, or had only done so a long time ago. But anyone who saw the smoke, even though he was stranded outside the city wall, had satisfied the aim of the pilgrimage and would live in the knowledge that he too had seen the City and the Temple.

“You are sure we will get in?” Hilarus inquired anxiously.

“Quite sure,” said Matthew. “I’ve got our letter of safe-conduct.”

They came to a stop; people were clustering together. Matthew signaled that they were to stick closely to him. They slowly shuffled ahead for hours on end. Uri’s feet, back, and neck were aching; he had gotten used to walking, not dawdling.

The reason they had come to a standstill was that a chain of Jewish guardians of the law were stationed seven or eight cubits apart on the meadow, among the well-tended gardens and tiny houses. They were checking individuals and families at random, in some cases searching through their baggage or clothes.

“They’re looking for daggers,” Matthew explained.

“Is that normal?” Hilarus asked.

“No.”

Others could not pass while the check was in progress. True, the crowd could easily have brushed the guardians of the law aside, but the thought did not even arise. People stood and shuffled ahead like sheep. If the guards said they had to wait, then wait they would; that was one of the concomitants of a feast, of joy. For Passover was a joyful celebration, the feast of unleavened bread (the deliverance from slavery in Egypt) and of the first crop in spring. This vast crowd of people had gathered to rejoice and make merry, and that meant cheerfully enduring the burdens that accompany joy.

The strapping guardians of law and order doggedly picked and chose from the throng; Uri studied their work through narrowed eyes. Each inspection took a long time, and Uri was able to guess which people would be beckoned over. Among the poor it was the healthier-looking ones who would be subjected to a search, especially if they were raggedly dressed; among the better-off it was those who appeared more impatient than usual; among the women, the agitated ones; and among the children, the more disciplined. There was a method to this selection that testified to a knowledge of human psychology, though Uri still did not quite grasp why they should expect holidaymakers of conspiring to upset public order in Judaea. The ones who were frisked were suspected — obviously without any foundation — of murderous intent. He recalled something Plotius had said in Syracusa: there was no legal protection in Judaea, which was precisely why so many wanted to win Roman or Italian citizenship.

Eventually they too reached the line of guardians of the law. One of them, fair-haired and young, gave them a once-over before nodding his head to indicate that they could move ahead.

Matthew stepped up to him, took out the letter of safe-conduct, and said something.

The fair-haired Jew flicked his eyes down at the safe-conduct, then looked up at Matthew.

“Which one?”

Matthew pointed to Uri.

Strong hands seized Uri under the armpits, and whisked him off behind the police cordon. Uri found it amusing that he was able to beat the air with his legs, he even laughed out. He was hit on the head. Everything went black: that much he could still see, and he was amazed that such things could also exist.