CHAPTER VI.
Alexandria was in the greatest excitement.
The Emperor's visit now immediately impending had tempted the busyhive of citizens away from the common round of life in which, day afterday,--swarming, hurrying, pushing each other on, or running each otherdown--they raced for bread and for the means of filling their hours ofleisure with pleasures and amusements. The unceasing wheel of industryto-day had pause in the factories, workshops, storehouses and courts ofjustice, for all sorts and conditions of men were inspired by the samedesire to celebrate Hadrian's visit with unheard-of splendor. All thatthe citizens could command of inventive skill, of wealth, and of beautywas called forth to be displayed in the games and processions which wereto fill up a number of days. The richest of the heathen citizens hadundertaken the management of the pieces to be performed in the Theatre,of the mock fight on the lake, and of the sanguinary games in theAmphitheatre; and so great was the number of opulent persons that manymore were prepared to pay for smaller projects, for which there wasno opening. Nevertheless the arrangements for certain portions of theprocession, in which even the less wealthy were to take a share, theerection of the building in the Hippodrome, the decorations in thestreets, and the preparations for entertaining the Roman visitorsabsorbed sums so large that they seemed extravagant even to the prefectTitianus, who was accustomed to see his fellow-officials in Romesquander millions.
As the Emperor's viceroy it behoved him to give his assent to all thatwas planned to feast his sovereign's eye and ear. On the whole, he leftthe citizens of the great town free to act as they would; but he had,more than once, to exert a decided opposition to their overdoing thething; for though the Emperor might be able to endure a vast amount ofpleasure, what the Alexandrians originally proposed to provide forhim to see and hear would have exhausted the most indefatigable humanenergy.
That which gave the greatest trouble, not merely to him, but also to themasters of the revels chosen by the municipality, were the never-dormanthostility between the heathen and the Jewish sections of theinhabitants, and the processions, since no division chose to come last,nor would any number be satisfied to be only the third or the fourth.
It was from a meeting, where his determined intervention had at lastbrought all these preliminaries to a decision beyond appeal, thatTitianus proceeded to the Caesareum to pay the Empress the visit whichshe expected of him daily. He was glad to have come to some conclusion,at any rate provisionally, with regard to these matters, for sixdays had slipped away since the works had been begun in the palace ofLochias, and Hadrian's arrival was nearing rapidly.
He found Sabina, as usual, on her divan, but on this occasion theEmpress was sitting upright on her cushions. She seemed quite to havegot over the fatigues of the sea-voyage, and in token that she feltbetter she had applied more red to her cheeks and lips than three daysago, and because she was to receive a visit from the sculptors, Papiasand Aristeas, she had had her hair arranged as it was worn in thestatue of Venus Victrix, with whose attributes she had, five yearspreviously--though not, it is true, without some resistance--beenrepresented in marble. When a copy of this statue had been erected inAlexandria, an evil tongue had made a speech which was often repeatedamong the citizens.
"This Aphrodite is triumphant to be sure, for all who see her make hasteto fly; she should be called Cypris the scatterer."
Titianus was still under the excitement of the embittered squabbles andunpleasing exhibitions of character at which he had just been presentwhen he entered the presence of the Empress, whom he found in a smallroom with no one but the chamberlain and a few ladies-in-waiting. Tothe prefect's respectful inquiries after her health, she shrugged hershoulders and replied:
"How should I be? If I said well it would not be true; if I said ill, Ishould be surrounded with pitiful faces, which are not pleasant to lookat. After all we must endure life. Still, the innumerable doors in theserooms will be the death of me if I am compelled to remain here long."
Titianus glanced at the two doors of the room in which the Empress wassitting, and began to express his regrets at their bad condition, whichhad escaped his notice; but Sabina interrupted him, saying:
"You men never do observe what hurts us women. Our Verus is the only manwho can feel and understand--who can divine it, as I might say. Thereare five and thirty doors in my rooms! I had them counted-five andthirty! If they were not old and made of valuable wood I should reallybelieve they had been made as a practical joke on me."
"Some of them might be supplemented with curtains."
"Oh! never mind--a few miseries, more or less in any life do not matter.Are the Alexandrians ready at last with their preparations?"
"I am sure I hope so," said the prefect with a sigh. "They are bent ongiving all that is their best; but in the endeavor to outvie each otherevery one is at war with his neighbor, and I still feel the effects ofthe odious wrangling which I have had to listen to for hours, and thatI have been obliged to check again and again with threats of 'I shall bedown upon you.'"
"Indeed," said the Empress with a pinched smile, as if she had heardsome thing that pleased her.
"Tell me something about your meeting. I am bored to death, for Verus,Balbilla and the others have asked for leave of absence that they maygo to inspect the work doing at Lochias; I am accustomed to find thatpeople would rather be any where than with me. Can I wonder then thatmy presence is not enough to enable a friend of my husband's to forgeta little annoyance--the impression left by some slight misunderstanding?But my fugitives are a long time away; there must be a great deal thatis beautiful to be seen at Lochias."
The prefect suppressed his annoyance and did not express his anxietylest the architect and his assistants should be disturbed, but began inthe tone of the messenger in a tragedy:
"The first quarrel was fought over the order of the procession."
"Sit a little farther off," said Sabina pressing her jewelled right-handon her ear, as if she were suffering a pain in it. The prefect coloredslightly, but he obeyed the desire of Caesar's wife and went on with hisstory, pitching his voice in a somewhat lower key than before:
"Well, it was about the procession, that the first breach of the peacearose."
"I have heard that once already," replied the lady, yawning. "I likeprocessions."
"But," said the prefect, a man in the beginning of the sixties--and hespoke with some irritation, "here as in Rome and every where else, wherethey are not controlled by the absolute will of a single individual,processions are the children of strife, and they bring forth strife,even when they are planned in honor of a festival of Peace."
"It seems to annoy you that they should be organized in honor ofHadrian?"
"You are in jest; it is precisely because I care particularly that theyshould be carried out with all possible splendor, that I am troublingmyself about them in person, even as to details; and to my greatsatisfaction I have been able even to subdue the most obstinate; stillit was scarcely my duty--"
"I fancied that you not only served the state but were my husband'sfriend."
"I am proud to call myself so."
"Aye--Hadrian has many, very many friends since he has worn the purple.Have you got over your ill temper Titianus? You must have become verytouchy. Poor Julia has an irritable husband!"
"She is less to be pitied than you think," said Titianus with dignity,"for my official duties so entirely claim my time that she is not oftenlikely to know what disturbs me. If I have forgotten to dissimulate myvexation before you, I beg you to pardon me, and to attribute it to myzeal in securing a worthy reception for Hadrian."
"As if I had scolded you! But to return to your wife--as I understandshe shares the fate I endure. We poor women have nothing to expect fromour husbands, but the stale leavings that remain after business hasabsorbed the rest! But your story--go on with your story."
"The worst moments I had at all were given me by the bad feeling of theJews towards the other citizens."
"I
hate all these infamous sects--Jews, Christians or whatever they arecalled! Do they dare to grudge their money for the reception of Caesar?"
"On the contrary Alabarchos, their wealthy chief, has offered to defrayall the cost of the Naumachia and his co-religionist Artemion."
"Well, take their money, take their money."
"The Greek citizens feel that they are rich enough to pay all theexpenses, which will amount to many millions of sesterces, and they wishto exclude the Jews, if possible, from all the processions and games."
"They are perfectly right."
"But allow me to ask you whether it is just to prohibit half thepopulation of Alexandria doing honor to their Emperor!"
"Oh! Hadrian will, with pleasure, dispense with the honor. Ourconquering heroes have thought it redounded to their glory to be calledAfricanus, Germanicus and Dacianus, but Titus refused to be calledJudaicus when he had destroyed Jerusalem."
"That was because he dreaded the remembrance of the rivers of bloodwhich had to be shed in order to break the fearfully obstinateresistance of that nation. The besieged had to be conquered limb bylimb, and finger by finger, before they would make up their minds toyield."
"Again you are speaking half poetically, or have these people electedyou as their advocate?"
"I know them and make every effort to secure them justice, just as muchas any other citizen of this country which I govern in the name ofthe Empire and of Caesar. They pay taxes as well as the rest of theAlexandrians; nay more, for there are many wealthy men among them whoare honorably prominent in trade, in professions, learning and art, andI therefore mete to them the same measure as to the other inhabitantsof this city. Their superstition offends me no more than that of theEgyptians."
"But it really is above all measure. At Aelia Capitolina which Hadrianhad decorated with several buildings, they refused to sacrifice to thestatues of Zeus and Hera. That is to say they scorn to do homage to meand my husband!"
"They are forbidden to worship any other divinity than their own God.Aelia rose up on the very soil where their ruined Jerusalem had stood,and the statues of which you speak stand in their holy places."
"What has that to do with us?"
"You know that even Caius--[Caligula]--could not reduce them by placinghis statue in the Holy of Holies of their temple; and Petronius, thegovernor, had to confess that to subdue them meant to exterminate them."
"Then let them meet with the fate they deserve, let them beexterminated!" cried Sabina.
"Exterminated?" asked the prefect. "In Alexandria they constitutenearly half of the citizens, that is to say several hundred thousand ofobedient subjects, exterminated!"
"So many?" asked the Empress in alarm. "But that is frightful.Omnipotent Jove! supposing that mass were to revolt against us! No oneever told me of this danger. In Cyrenaica, and at Salamis in Cyprus,they killed their fellow-citizens by thousands."
"They had been provoked to extremities and they were superior to theiroppressors in force."
"And in their own land one revolt after another is organized."
"By reason of the sacrifices of which we were speaking."
"Tinnius Rufus is at present the legate in Palestine. He has a horriblyshrill voice--but he looks like a man who will stand no trifling, andwill know how to quell the venomous brood."
"Possibly" replied Titianus. "But I fear that he will never attain hisend by mere severity; and if he should he will have depopulated hisprovince."
"There are already too many men in the empire."
"But never enough good and useful citizens."
"Outrageous contemners of the gods and useless citizens!"
"Here in Alexandria, where many have accommodated themselves to Greekhabits of life and thought, and where all have adopted the Greek tongue,they are undoubtedly good citizens, and wholly devoted to Caesar."
"Do they take part in the rejoicings?"
"Yes, as far as the Greek citizens will allow them."
"And the arrangement of the water-fight?"
"That will not be given over to them, but Artemion will be permitted tosupply the wild beasts for the games in the Amphitheatre."
"And he was not avaricious about it?"
"So far from it that you will be astonished. The man must know thesecret of Midas, of turning stones into gold."
"And are there many like him among your Jews?"
"A good number."
"Then I wish that they would attempt a revolt, for if this led to thedestruction of the rich ones, their gold, at any rate, would remain."
"Meanwhile I will try and keep them alive, as being good rate-payers."
"And does Hadrian share your wish?"
"Without doubt."
"Your successor may perhaps bring him to another mind."
"He always acts according to his own judgment, and for the present I amin office," answered Titianus haughtily.
"And may the God of the Jews long preserve you in it!" retorted Sabinascornfully.