Alexandria was in the greatest excitement.
The Emperor's visit now immediately impending had tempted the busy hive
of citizens away from the common round of life in which, day after day,
--swarming, hurrying, pushing each other on, or running each other down--
they raced for bread and for the means of filling their hours of leisure
with pleasures and amusements. The unceasing wheel of industry to-day
had pause in the factories, workshops, storehouses and courts of justice,
for all sorts and conditions of men were inspired by the same desire to
celebrate Hadrian's visit with unheard-of splendor. All that the
citizens could command of inventive skill, of wealth, and of beauty was
called forth to be displayed in the games and processions which were to
fill up a number of days. The richest of the heathen citizens had
undertaken the management of the pieces to be performed in the Theatre,
of the mock fight on the lake, and of the sanguinary games in the
Amphitheatre; and so great was the number of opulent persons that many
more were prepared to pay for smaller projects, for which there was no
opening. Nevertheless the arrangements for certain portions of the
procession, in which even the less wealthy were to take a share, the
erection of the building in the Hippodrome, the decorations in the
streets, and the preparations for entertaining the Roman visitors
absorbed sums so large that they seemed extravagant even to the prefect
Titianus, who was accustomed to see his fellow-officials in Rome squander
millions.
As the Emperor's viceroy it behoved him to give his assent to all that
was planned to feast his sovereign's eye and ear. On the whole, he left
the 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 the
thing; for though the Emperor might be able to endure a vast amount of
pleasure, what the Alexandrians originally proposed to provide for him to
see and hear would have exhausted the most indefatigable human energy.
That which gave the greatest trouble, not merely to him, but also to the
masters of the revels chosen by the municipality, were the never-dormant
hostility between the heathen and the Jewish sections of the inhabitants,
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 last
brought all these preliminaries to a decision beyond appeal, that
Titianus proceeded to the Caesareum to pay the Empress the visit which
she expected of him daily. He was glad to have come to some conclusion,
at any rate provisionally, with regard to these matters, for six days had
slipped away since the works had been begun in the palace of Lochias, and
Hadrian's arrival was nearing rapidly.
He found Sabina, as usual, on her divan, but on this occasion the Empress
was sitting upright on her cushions. She seemed quite to have got over
the fatigues of the sea-voyage, and in token that she felt better she had
applied more red to her cheeks and lips than three days ago, and because
she was to receive a visit from the sculptors, Papias and Aristeas, she
had had her hair arranged as it was worn in the statue of Venus Victrix,
with whose attributes she had, five years previously--though not, it is
true, without some resistance--been represented in marble. When a copy
of this statue had been erected in Alexandria, an evil tongue had made a
speech which was often repeated among the citizens.
"This Aphrodite is triumphant to be sure, for all who see her make haste
to fly; she should be called Cypris the scatterer."
Titianus was still under the excitement of the embittered squabbles and
unpleasing exhibitions of character at which he had just been present
when he entered the presence of the Empress, whom he found in a small
room with no one but the chamberlain and a few ladies-in-waiting. To the
prefect's respectful inquiries after her health, she shrugged her
shoulders and replied:
"How should I be? If I said well it would not be true; if I said ill, I
should be surrounded with pitiful faces, which are not pleasant to look
at. After all we must endure life. Still, the innumerable doors in
these rooms 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 was
sitting, and began to express his regrets at their bad condition, which
had escaped his notice; but Sabina interrupted him, saying:
"You men never do observe what hurts us women. Our Verus is the only man
who can feel and understand--who can divine it, as I might say. There
are five and thirty doors in my rooms! I had them counted-five and
thirty! If they were not old and made of valuable wood I should really
believe 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 on
giving all that is their best; but in the endeavor to outvie each other
every one is at war with his neighbor, and I still feel the effects of
the odious wrangling which I have had to listen to for hours, and that I
have been obliged to check again and again with threats of 'I shall be
down upon you.'"
"Indeed," said the Empress with a pinched smile, as if she had heard some
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 may go
to inspect the work doing at Lochias; I am accustomed to find that people
would rather be any where than with me. Can I wonder then that my
presence is not enough to enable a friend of my husband's to forget a
little annoyance--the impression left by some slight misunderstanding?
But my fugitives are a long time away; there must be a great deal that is
beautiful to be seen at Lochias."
The prefect suppressed his annoyance and did not express his anxiety lest
the architect and his assistants should be disturbed, but began in the
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-hand
on her ear, as if she were suffering a pain in it. The prefect colored
slightly, but he obeyed the desire of Caesar's wife and went on with his
story, pitching his voice in a somewhat lower key than before:
"Well, it was about the procession, that the first breach of the peace
arose."
"I have heard that once already," replied the lady, yawning. "I like
processions."
"But," said the prefect, a man in the beginning of the sixties--and he
spoke with some irritation, "here as in Rome and every where else, where
they 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 of
Hadrian?"
"You are in jest; it is precisely because I care particularly that they
should be carried out with all possible splendor, that I am troubling
myself about them in person, even as to details; and to my great
satisfaction I have been able even to subdue the most obstinate;
still it was scarcely my duty--"
"I fancied that you not only served the state but were my husband's
friend."
"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 very
touchy. 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 often
likely to know what disturbs me. If I have forgotten to dissimulate my
vexation before you, I beg you to pardon me, and to attribute it to my
zeal in securing a worthy reception for Hadrian."
"As if I had scolded you! But to return to your wife--as I understand
she shares the fate I endure. We poor women have nothing to expect from
our husbands, but the stale leavings that remain after business has
absorbed 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 the
Jews towards the other citizens."
"I hate all these infamous sects--Jews, Christians or whatever they are
called! Do they dare to grudge their money for the reception of Caesar?"
"On the contrary Alabarchos, their wealthy chief, has offered to defray
all 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 the
expenses, which will amount to many millions of sesterces, and they wish
to 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 the
population of Alexandria doing honor to their Emperor!"
"Oh! Hadrian will, with pleasure, dispense with the honor. Our
conquering heroes have thought it redounded to their glory to be called
Africanus, Germanicus and Dacianus, but Titus refused to be called
Judaicus when he had destroyed Jerusalem."
"That was because he dreaded the remembrance of the rivers of blood which
had to be shed in order to break the fearfully obstinate resistance of
that nation. The besieged had to be conquered limb by limb, and finger
by finger, before they would make up their minds to yield."
"Again you are speaking half poetically, or have these people elected you
as their advocate?"
"I know them and make every effort to secure them justice, just as much
as any other citizen of this country which I govern in the name of the
Empire and of Caesar. They pay taxes as well as the rest of the
Alexandrians; nay more, for there are many wealthy men among them who
are honorably prominent in trade, in professions, learning and art, and
I therefore mete to them the same measure as to the other inhabitants of
this city. Their superstition offends me no more than that of the
Egyptians."
"But it really is above all measure. At Aelia Capitolina which Hadrian
had decorated with several buildings, they refused to sacrifice to the
statues of Zeus and Hera. That is to say they scorn to do homage to me
and 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 placing
his statue in the Holy of Holies of their temple; and Petronius, the
governor, had to confess that to subdue them meant to exterminate them."
"Then let them meet with the fate they deserve, let them be
exterminated!" cried Sabina.
"Exterminated?" asked the prefect. "In Alexandria they constitute
nearly half of the citizens, that is to say several hundred thousand of
obedient subjects, exterminated!"
"So many?" asked the Empress in alarm." But that is frightful.
Omnipotent Jove! supposing that mass were to revolt against us! No one
ever 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 their
oppressors 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 horribly
shrill voice--but he looks like a man who will stand no trifling, and
will know how to quell the venomous brood."
"Possibly" replied Titianus. "But I fear that he will never attain his
end by mere severity; and if he should he will have depopulated his
province."
"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 Greek
habits 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 to
supply 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 the
secret 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 the
destruction 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 am
in office," answered Titianus haughtily.
"And may the God of the Jews long preserve you in it!" retorted Sabina
scornfully.