Claudius the God (20 page)

Herod laughed stupidly. ‘Don’t pay any attention to me, Marmoset. I’m drunk, hopelessly drunk. I say: the most extraordinary things when I’m drunk. The man who made the proverb ‘There’s truth in wine must have been pretty well soaked when he made it. Do you know, the other day at a banquet I said to my steward: “Now look here, Thaumastus, I never want roasted sucking-pig stuffed with truffles and chestnuts, served at my table ever again. Do you hear?”

“Very good, your Majesty, he replied. Yet if there is one dish in the world which I really love beyond all others it is roasted sucking-pig stuffed with truffles and chestnuts. What was it I told you just now? Never to trust your allies? That was funny, eh? I forgot for the moment that you and I were allies.’ So I let the remark go, but it came back to me the next day, as I stood at a window watching Herod’s coach roll away in the direction of Brindisi: I wondered what he had meant, and felt uncomfortable.

Herod was not the only king at that farewell banquet. His brother Herod Pollio, of Chalcis, was there; and Antiochus, to whom I had restored the kingdom of Commagene, on the north-eastern border of Syria, which Caligula had taken away from him; and Mithridates, whom I’ had now, made King of the Crimea; and, besides these, the King of Lesser Armenia and the King of Osroene, both of whom had been hanging about Caligula’s court, thinking it safer to be at Rome than in their own kingdoms, where Caligula might suspect them of plotting against him. I sent them all back together.

It would be just as well to follow Herod’s story a little farther and to bring the account of what happened at Alexandria to a more conclusive point before returning to write of events at Rome and giving an indication of what was happening on the Rhine, in Morocco, and on other-frontiers. Herod returned to Palestine, with more pomp and glory even than on the last occasion. On arrival at Jerusalem he took down from the Temple Treasury the iron chain which he had hung up there as a thank-offering and put in its place the golden one that Caligula had given him: now that Caligula was dead he could do this without offence. The High Priest, greeted-him most respectfully, but after the usual compliments had passed took, it upon himself to reprove Herod for having given his eldest daughter in marriage to his brother: no good, he said, would come of it. Herod was not the man to allow. himself to be dictated to by any ecclesiastic, however important or holy. He asked, the High Priest, whose name was Jonathan, whether or not he considered that he, King Agrippa, had done a good service to the, God of the Jews by dissuading Caligula from defiling the Temple and by persuading me to confirm the religious privileges of the Jews at Alexandria, and to grant similar privileges to Jews throughout the world. Jonathan replied that all this was well done. So Herod told him a little parable. A rich man one day; saw a beggar by the roadside, who cried out to him for alms and claimed to be a cousin. The rich man said: ‘I am sorry for you, beggar-man, and will do what I can fox you, since you are my cousin. Tomorrow if you go to my bank you will find ten bags of gold waiting for you there, each containing two thousand gold pieces in coin of the realm.’

‘If you are speaking the truth,’ the beggar said, ‘may God reward you!’ The beggar went to the bank and, sure enough, the bags of gold were handed to him. How pleased he was and how grateful! But one of the beggar’s own brothers, a priest, who had himself done nothing for him when he was in distress, came to call on the rich man the next day; ‘Do you call this a joke?’ he asked indignantly. ‘You swore to give your poor cousin, twenty thousand gold pieces in coin of the realm, and deceived him into thinking that you had actually done so. Well, I came to help him count them, and do you know, in the very first bag I found a Parthian gold-piece;, masquerading as a real one! Can you pretend to believe that Parthian money passes current here? Is this an honest trick to play on a beggar?’

Jonathan was not abashed by the parable. He told Herod that the rich man had been foolish to spoil his gift by the inclusion of the Parthian coin,, if, indeed, he had deliberately done ‘so. And he said, too, that Herod must not forget that the greatest kings were only instruments in the hands of God and were rewarded by Him in proportion to their devotion to His service.

‘And His High Priests?’ asked Herod.

His High Priests are sufficiently rewarded for their faithfulness to Him, which includes the rebuking of all, Jews who fail in their religious duty, by being allowed to put on the sacred vestments and once a year enter that marvellously holy chamber where He dwells apart in immeasurable Power and Glory.’

‘Very well,’ said Herod. ‘If I am an instrument in His hands, as you say, I hereby depose you. Someone else will wear the sacred vestments at the Passover Festival this year. It will be someone who knows the right times and seasons for uttering rebukes.’

So Jonathan was deposed and Herod appointed a successor, who also after a time offended Herod by protesting that it was not proper for the Master of Horse to be a Samaritan: a Jewish king should have only Jewish officers on his staff. The Samaritans were not of the seed of Father’ Abraham, but interlopers. This Master of Horse was none other than Silas; and for Silas’s sake Herod deposed the High Priest and offered the office to Jonathan again. Jonathan refused it, though with seeming gratitude, saying that he was content to have once put on the sacred vestments and that a second consecration to the High Priesthood could not be so holy a ceremony as, the first. If God had empowered Herod, to depose him, it must have been, a, punishment for his pride; and if now God was in a forgiving mood, he rejoiced, but would not risk a second offence. Might he therefore suggest that the High Priesthood be given to his brother Matthias as holy and God-fearing a man as was to be found in all Jerusalem? Herod consented.

Herod took up his residence. in Jerusalem, in the part called Bezetha, or the blew City, which surprised me very much, for he now had several fine cities luxuriously built in the Graeco-Roman style, any one of which he could have made his capital. He visited all these cities from time to time in ceremonial style and treated the inhabitants with courtesy, but Jerusalem, he said, was the only city for a Jewish king to live and reign in. He made himself extremely popular with the inhabitants of Jerusalem not only by his gifts to the Temple and his beautification of the city but by his abolition of the house-tax, which diminished his revenues by 100,000 gold pieces annually. His total annual income, however, amounted even without, this to some 500,000 gold pieces. What surprised me still more was that he now worshipped daily in the Temple and kept the Law with great strictness: for I remembered. the contempt that I had often heard him express for ‘that holy psalm-singer’ his, devout brother Aristobulus, and in the private letters that he now always enclosed in his official dispatches there was no sign of any moral change of heart. One letter that he sent me was almost all about Silas. It ran as follows Marmoset, my old friend, I have the saddest and most comical story to tell you: it concerns Silas, the ‘faithful Achates’ of your brigand ‘friend Herod Agrippa. Most learned Marmoset, from your rich store of out-of-the-way historical learning can you inform me whether your ancestor, the pious Aeneas, was ever as bored by the faithful Achates as I have lately been by Silas? Have Virgilian commentators anything to tell us on that head? The fact is that I was foolish enough to appoint Silas my Master of Horse, as I think I wrote to-you at the time. The High Priest didn’t approve of the appointment, because he was a Samaritan; the Samaritans once vexed the Jews at Jerusalem, the ones who had returned there from their Babylonian captivity, by knocking down every night the walls they built by day; and the Jews have never forgiven them this. So I went to the trouble of deposing the High Priest on Silas’s account. Silas had already begun to be very self-important and was daily giving fresh proof of his famous frankness and bluntness of speech. My removal of the High Priest encouraged him to put on greater airs than ever. Upon my word, sometimes visitors at Court could not make out which of us was the King and which was only the Master of Horse. Yet if I hinted to Silas that he was presuming on his friendship he used to sulk, and dear Cypros used to reproach me for my unkindness to him, and remind me of all that he had done for us. I had to be pleasant to him again end as good as apologize to him for my ingratitude.

His worst habit was constantly harping on my former troubles - in mixed company too - and giving most embarrassingly circumstantial details of how he had saved me from this danger and that, and how faithful he had shown himself, and how much excellent advice of his I had neglected, and how he had never looked for any reward but my friendship, in fine weather or rain or tempest - for that was the Samaritan character. Well, he opened his mouth once too often. I was at Tiberias, on the Lake of Galilee, where I was once magistrate under Antipas, and the leading men of Sidon were banqueting with me. You may remember the difference of opinion that I once had with the Sidonians when I was Flaccus’s adviser at Antioch? Trust Silas to be on his worst behaviour at a banquet of such unusual political importance. Almost the first thing that he, said to Hasdrubal, the harbour-master of Sidon, a man of the greatest influence in Phoenicia, was: ‘I know your face, don’t I? Isn’t your name Hasdrubal? Of course, yes, you were one of the delegation that came to King Herod Agrippa, about nine years ago, asking him to use his influence with Flaccus on behalf of Sidon in that boundary dispute with Damascus. I well remember advising Herod to refuse your presents, pointing out that it was, dangerous to take-bribes from both parties in a dispute:’ he would be sure to get into trouble. But he only laughed at me. That’s his way.’

Hasdrubal was a man of delicacy and said that he had no recollection of the incident at all: he was sure that Silas must be mistaken. But you can’t stop Silas. ‘Surely your memory isn’t as bad as that?’ he persisted. ‘Why, it was because of that case that Herod had to clear out of Antioch in the disguise of a camel-driver I provided him with it - leaving his wife and children behind - I had to smuggle them aboard a ship to take - them away and make a long detour by way of the Syrian desert to Edom. He went on a stolen camel. No, in case you ask me about that camel, it wasn’t I who stole it, but King Herod Agrippa himself.’

This made me pretty hot, and it was no use denying the main facts of the story. But I did my best to gloze it over with a light-hearted romance of how one day my desert blood stirred in me and I grew weary of Roman life at Antioch and felt an overpowering impulse to ride out into the vast desert spaces and visit my kinsmen in Edom; but knowing that Flaccus would detain me - he was dependent on me for political advice - I was forced to take my leave secretly, and so arranged with Silas for my family to meet me at the port of Anthedon at the conclusion of my adventure. And a very enjoyable holiday it had proved to be. At Anthedon, I said, I had been met by an Imperial courier, who had failed to find me at Antioch, with a letter from the Emperor Tiberius: inviting me to Rome to act as his adviser, because my brains were wasted in the provinces.

Hasdrubal listened with polite interest, admiring my lies, for he knew the story almost as well as Silas did. He asked, ‘May I inquire of your Majesty whether this was your first visit to Edom? I understand that the Edomites are a very noble, hospitable, and courageous race, and despise luxury and frivolity with a primitive severity which I find it easier, myself, to admire than to imitate.’

That fool Silas must needs put his oar in again. ‘Oh, no, Hasdrubal, that wasn’t his first visit to Edom. I was his only companion - except for the Lady Cypros, as she was then, and the two elder children - on his first visit. That was the year that Tiberius’s son was murdered. King Herod had been obliged because of this to escape from his creditors at Rome, and Edom was the only safe place of refuge. He had run up the most enormous debts in spite of my repeated warnings that a day of reckoning would come at last. He loathed Edom, to tell the honest truth, and was contemplating suicide; but the Lady Cypros saved him by swallowing her pride and writing a very-humble letter to her sister-in-law Herodias, with whom she had quarrelled. King Herod was invited here to Galilee and King Antipas, made him a judge of the Lower Courts in this very town. His annual income was only seven hundred gold pieces.’

Hasdrubal was opening his mouth to express surprise and incredulity when Cypros suddenly came-to my help: She had not minded, Silas’s telling tales about me, but when he brought up that old memory of the letter to Herodias, it was quite another matter: ‘Silas,’ she said, ‘you talk far too much and most of what you say is inaccurate and nonsensical. You will oblige me by holding your tongue.’

Silas grew very red and once more addressed Hasdrubal: ‘It is my Samaritan nature to tell the truth frankly, however disagreeable. Yes, King Herod passed through many vicissitudes before he won his present kingdom. Of some of these he does not appear to be ashamed - for instance, he has actually hung up in the Temple Treasury at Jerusalem the iron chain with which he was once fettered by order of the Emperor Tiberius. He was put in gaol for treason, you know. I had warned him repeatedly not to have private conversations with Gaius Caligula in the hearing of his coachman, but as usual he disregarded my warning. Afterwards Gaius Caligula gave him a gold chain, a replica of the iron one, and, the other day King Herod hung this gold chain up in the Treasury and took down the iron one, which did not shine brightly enough, I suppose.’ I caught Cypros’s eye and we exchanged understanding looks. So I told Thaumastus to go to my bedroom where the chain was hanging on the wall facing my bed and bring it down. He did so, and I passed it round the table as a curiosity; the Sidonians examining it with ill-concealed embarrassment. Then I called Silas to me. ‘Silas,’ I said, ‘I am about to do you a signal honour. In recognition of all your services to me and mine, and the fine frankness that you have never failed to show me even in the presence of distinguished guests, I hereby invest you with the Order of the Iron Chain; and may you live long to wear it. You and I are the only two companions, of this very select Order and I gladly surrender the regalia to you complete. Thaumastus, chain this man and take him away. to prison.’