by Ken Parejko
Vespasian turned to Titus. “Well?”
Titus shrugged. Had this Joseph bar Matthias truly had a vision of God, and of Vespasian as the new savior, or was he making it all up only to save his skin? “You’ve told an interesting story,” Vespasian admitted. “Now tell me why I should believe it.”
“I swear by your soul and mine that what I've said is true.” Joseph turned to the man at his side, who’d surrendered with him. “This man will verify that a year ago, before I was even chosen general of our army, I had prophesied that you, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, would one day become emperor. Only then I did not know how this would come about, or the part I would play in it. Tell them, Simon.”
Joseph’s officer nodded. “Yes, it is true. I heard him speak it, long ago.”
There was of course no way to verify the story. Frustrated, Vespasian ordered the two taken away.
Titus seemed energized by Joseph’s story. “Remember the cypress, father,” he said. Titus had once told me the story of how a cypress tree grew on the family estate at Reate. His grandmother watched the tree grow and put out its branches. The first branch withered and died. That was her first grandchild, she said. And it came to pass, a girl was born who lived only a short while. But the next grew strong and wide, and that was Vespasian, who would have a great future.
“So you believe him?” Vespasian asked. Titus shrugged. “Anyone else?” Vespasian asked but none of us spoke up. “Agrippa?”
The Herodian prince knew Joseph personally. “In my experience he’s a man of his word,” Agrippa said. “I will tell you why I say this. A few years ago some of his followers, unknown to him, attacked and robbed my steward Ptolemy and my sister Berenice just outside Jerusalem. Though I’m Herodian and he’s Hasmonean, Joseph returned everything his men had stolen. Though it caused his own men to hate him it was the right thing to do, and it kept a fragile peace among us. I say we keep him alive. He may be useful.”
Vespasian thought a moment. “I’m for executing them both. They’ve already caused us enough trouble. How can we know when they’re lying and when they’re not?”
Titus rose and stretched. From the direction of Jotapata the smoke still brought the smell of destruction and of our victory. “I don’t know,” he said. “Does it really matter if it’s true or not, so long as he claims you’re the Messiah? It seems to me that’s worth at least a legion. I say keep him, and kill him at the first sign of treachery.”
Vespasian said nothing, and dismissed us for the night. “We all need a good rest. We’ve wounded to tend to and we need to talk about our next move. We’ve won a battle, but the blessing of a Jewish general doesn’t end the war.” Vespasian, the hard-headed realist, was once again right.
In time Titus convinced his father to spare the Jewish general’s life, who took the Roman name Josephus and fought alongside us, advising us on tactics and bringing as many Jewish leaders as he could to our cause. Now he was treated not as a prisoner but as an auxiliary officer with whom I interacted almost every day. I took to questioning him about the ways of his people, what they believed, what they ate, what medicines they used, and their history. I discovered in him a bright and resilient person, who in just a few weeks had remade himself into a Roman rather than a Jew. Sometimes he would chide me for my lack of interest in the spiritual life. He told me how when he was a young man he’d traveled out into the desert to meet the holy hermits who lived there, and learned from them their ways. He told me of a cult called the Essenes, and described them in detail. I had Lucius write it all down.
This was all quite strange. I was a practical man, a down-to-earth Stoic, with no interest in the religious fanaticism that seemed endemic to this part of the world. I was a patriotic Roman, just now putting my life on the line for my country. Yet here I was befriending a Jewish general who only a few days before had been our bitter enemy. A general, moreover, who had been raised in a fervent piety and spoke of seeing and hearing God.
I’d come a long way from the little villa on Lake Larius. How much farther would my life carry me? I had no way of knowing. But the simple answer, which would have to suffice for now, was first back to Ptolemais, then on to Caesarea, where the army would rest, regroup and set its next plan of action.
Chapter 12
Judea
Summer, 67 C.E.
Thou has ruled the world
with much fear,
harassed the humble,
oppressed the peace-makers,
hated the righteous
and loved the sons of falsehood,
and thou has destroyed the citadel
of the fruitful.
Second Ezra
The road from Ptolemais to Caesarea hugs the seacoast, and was mostly an easy, level march. Near Acre, with the slopes of Mount Carmel rising from the sea’s edge ahead of us, we walked across the fine-grained sand which was mined and shipped back to Italy to make our finest glass. As we rode I dictated to Lucius the geography, the flora and fauna, and the natural resources of the lands we’d encountered. We could see small holdings on Mount Carmel’s slopes where olives, grapes, figs, dates, fruits and vegetables were grown. We sloshed across the river Pacida, spread out here into a shallow estuary. I’d been told that the hills here were once forested with giant oaks and pines, but already for centuries the forests were gone. Where fresh water met the sea the soil eroding down from the hills darkened the waves.
Lucius pointed to one of the few pines still growing along the river. “Are they the same kind as we have?” he asked. They did resemble the pines of Rome.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why do you say that?” Lucius challenged me. I didn’t have an answer. How could you tell one kind from another? It had bothered me, before. Animals were easy. A horse was a horse, a dog a dog, an elephant....well, sometimes even animals were not so easy. There seemed to be at least two different kinds of elephants. And how was a dog different from a wolf? But plants were harder. Sometimes the same kind of plants had different shapes. Up near the top of Carmel the trees grew with their crowns sprawling longest downwind from the prevailing westerlies. Yet surely they were the same kind as those growing in calmer spots. What did we mean when we said they were the same, or different kinds? It was a conundrum, this naming thing, which troubled me no end.
At times we found ourselves marching over long sandy dunes which were blown perpendicular to the coast. Up and down we marched, and it was entertaining to watch the long line of horses and men alternately disappear into the trough of a dune, then reappear on the other side. If the distance between dune-crests and troughs was just right, in relation to our speed of travel, there were men marching ahead of me I never saw: when I'd just reached a crest, they had just passed beyond the next. I tried to think through the mathematics of it, but it was too much for me. Instead I turned my interest to the sparse beach-grasses which grew on the dunes. I recognized wormwood and broom, both plants I’d already seen on dunes in Syria. Then it came to me, that this patch of sand-dunes through which we marched was its own kind, too, for dunes, deserts, mountains and volcanoes came in different kinds. But kind means something different when it refers to a landscape rather than plants or animals. Or does it?
A sheep is not a goat, that’s clear, I thought, and a desert is not an estuary. There are many kinds of sheep, as there are many kinds of dogs, horses, and trees. What is it makes a sheep, a sheep? What is it makes a desert, a desert?
Along the way we crossed riverbeds which snaked down from the eastern hills. Most were dry, having spent their floods during the spring rains. Several, though, still had water in them, and a few -- including the Chorseos and farther towards Caesarea, the aptly-named Crocodile River -- still had water. We crossed the Crocodile over a flimsy bridge. I’d seen crocodiles in Rome, where in the arena they were thrown deer or sometimes even humans. As we crossed the bridge the men pointed out to each other the slow, patient predators lying low at the water’s edge. Here along the river were
swamps in which tall papyrus plants grew -- the source of the fiber I spent so much of my time scribbling away on. I recognized oleander, too, and saw floating far out in the river a beautiful white water lily. As we passed huge flocks of ibises, herons and pelicans rose from the water and wheeled overhead. Like Antioch on the Orontes, here was an oasis, lush and full of life, a small Nilotic Eden.
Across the river we entered the Plain of Sharon where the grain-harvest had just begun. From here all the way to Egypt was Rome’s breadbasket. As we marched we watched the farmers bringing in the wheat, spelt and barley, basket by basket, which would make its way to Rome and feed the city which could no longer feed itself. Slaves and sharecroppers, stripped naked in the heat, were busy processing the harvest piled along the road. As in Italy they’d left small piles which we call horaria for the gods. Threshers swung leather-thonged flails, which whooshed and thwacked as we passed. There was a fine rhythm to the work, two men standing opposite one another, one’s flail swinging down as the other came up, again and again. Others who were winnowing the grain lifted it in big baskets and threw it high into the air, where the offshore breeze winnowed away the chaff and weeds. Our men, whether Italian, Thracian or Gallic, had seen all this before, on the small-holdings which dotted the countryside of their births. Those who’d grown up on a farm, and had themselves worked the harvest, felt a wave of nostalgia pass through them as they recalled those days working from dawn to dusk, working together toward a common goal, and then the common relief when the harvest was done and the harvest celebration which followed.
Now ahead we could just see Caesarea’s most famous building. The city of Caesarea had been built around a tall tower called Strato’s Tower. The little village of rock huts huddled at the Tower’s foot had been called just that, Strato’s Tower, until Herod enlarged it and renamed it Caesarea in honor of his friend and benefactor Caesar Augustus. The tall, cylindrical tower which we saw rising from the edge of the sea, three centuries old, was in the first stages of decay, but remained an emblem of the city’s long history.
The only claim Herod, who’d made Caesarea his home, had to rule Judaea was his inherited wealth and the political connections his father, Antipater, had made before he died. It was the Roman Senate, not the people of his homeland, who declared him king of Judea. In a great procession through the Forum, Herod the opportunist marched with his powerful allies Mark Antony on one side and Octavian, soon to become the emperor Augustus, on the other. The procession ended with ritual sacrifices to the Roman deities. By taking part in these sacrifices Herod ingratiated himself to the Romans while making life-long enemies among the Jews. But Herod knew well that his authority was propped up by Roman, not Jewish, support.
Caesarea was considered an Alexandria writ small, a cross-roads city depending for its prosperity and its religious and intellectual diversity on the commercial traffic which came by road from the east and by sea from the north, west and south. Cults of Isis, Artemis, and Serapis were strong here, and here prospered a Hellenized form of Judaism, merging Greek intellectualism with Judaic tradition. This lively interaction between Judaism and the Greek influence made Caesarea, like Alexandria, a mecca for philosophers. Here too had formed a small community of followers of the martyred Christus, who'd brought their disciple Peter here. It was here he’d debated Simon Magus, leader of his own cult, the man who'd convinced Drusilla to leave her husband Aziza for Felix. And it was here that by converting the centurion Cornelius that Peter made his cult’s first inroad into the non-Jewish community.
Because of Lucius’ interest in the Christi I knew about Peter and also a man named Saul of Tarsus who’d spent time in Caesarea. Both had been executed during Nero’s persecutions. Saul, who’d turned to calling himself Paul to signify a break with the traditional Judaism out of which he’d sprung, spent nearly two years imprisoned in the basement of Herod’s Caesarean palace. Paul had insisted that the growing Christian community, til then a ragtag band of dissatisfied Jews, reach out to pagan gentiles. Until uncircumcised men were allowed into the temple, he argued, we Christi will never be more than a tiny shoot on the tree of Judaism. He tried to convince the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees that while Christ had been a Jew, his message was a new, revolutionary message of personal salvation, meant for all people, not just the Jews. The hereditary priesthood, distrusting Paul’s brand of revolutionary Judaism, convinced our officials to arrest him. Felix, who I'd seen long before at Ara Agripinnensis, was governor at Caesarea at that time. What to do with Paul and his new cult was a fine political dilemma. Paul was placed under house arrest and treated well. For Paul these two years were an important interlude, which gave him time to clarify his beliefs. As I would later learn, while her husband was away Felix’ wife Drusilla had visited Paul often, probing and testing his faith.
Caesarea's harbor, built by Herod and named by him the Sebasto, the Greek name for Augustus, was really the reason the city existed at all. All along the coastline, for many miles north and south of Caesarea the surf crashed against the land, brought in by strong off-shore winds. Ships making their way from Tyre, Sidon, or Antioch towards Alexandria and other harbors to the south lacked a refuge from storms which formed without warning out at sea and blew across its long fetch. Herod gave them that refuge here at Caesarea and in doing so guaranteed the long-term vitality of the city. We watched ships sailing into the harbor between two tall obelisks. While the tallest was being built Augustus' nephew Drusus, who'd appeared in my dream, had died in Germany. So Herod named the tower the Drusion. Seeing the Drusion in person connected my heart to the city. In fact it was because of that dream that I’d written the German History, and because of the popularity of that book that I'd set off on the path which ultimately brought me here to Judea.
Surrounding the harbor and spilling onto the breakwater which stretched northwest into the sea we could see dozens of granaries and warehouses built to store the produce and products making their way in and out of the city. Then the city's theater came into view, up on a hill outside the city's wall, where audiences listening to a concert or watching a play enjoyed an impressive view of the city, the harbor and the sea behind it.
It was because the harbor provided access to our supply ships that Caesarea would be our base for the Judean campaign. But the city was too small to support the entire army so Vespasian ordered the 5th and 10th legions to set up camp outside its gates. The rest of the army he sent to Scythopolis, and appointed M. Ulpius Traianus to build a road between the two cities. Then we officers followed Vespasian through Caesarea’s gates to our lodgings in and around the Herodian palace.
Vespasian at the head, then Titus, then twenty others of us rode in full uniform conspicuously down the long, colonnaded main street, busy with commercial traffic. The Roman presence in the city was ancient, but never stronger than today. Crowds stopped to watch us pass. Some cheered, some turned away muttering. The forum was in the city’s center where on a high platform Herod had built a temple for sacrifice to Roma and Caesar Augustus. To many of the citizens the temple was an insult. But it also spoke volumes about the vitality of our culture; here, at the far eastern edges of the provinces, that temple evidenced the success of our imperial reach, as did similar such temples all across the empire, from Britain to Gaul to Dacia and the shores of north Africa.
While living here in Caesarea forty years ago Pontius Pilate, praefect of Judea, had a small temple built and dedicated to Tiberius. We were just riding by the praefect’s residence, a fine building made of serpentine, marble and local granite. It was from this house that Pilate had ridden out one day into the-less civilized regions of the province where, as part of his official duties, he was asked to reside over the trial of a poor Nazarean preacher.
Vespasian and Titus were put up in Herod’s palace by the sea. Agrippa, Herod’s great-grandson, who now owned the palace, had made rooms available for them. Other officers including myself found lodging in villas down along the harbor. I slept well that night. Aft
er weeks in field-camps certain creature comforts were surprisingly attractive.
The next morning I’d hoped to explore the city and climb Strato’s Tower. But Vespasian called us together for a strategy session and I was expected to attend along with Agrippa, Josephus, Tiberius Julius Alexander, and their aides, so I set off for Herod’s palace. Herod meant to leave his signature into the future built large in stone. He’d built great palaces and fortresses across his empire, at Alexandrion, Cypros, Herodion, Masada and Machaeros. Eighty years ago in the center of Jerusalem, the holiest spot of the Jewish religion, he raised the Temple Mount more than a hundred feet, made of cut stones some of which were said to weigh a hundred tons. On top of the Mount he built the great Second Temple. Work on the Second Temple was still under way, and the irony did not escape me that we were to meet that morning in Herod’s palace to plan the destruction of the very Temple he’d ordered built in Jerusalem.
Of all his grandiose schemes Herod reserved the loveliest of his buildings for the seat of his power in Caesarea, he city he founded to rival Alexandria itself. He situated the palace just south of the main harbor, on a promontory jutting out to the sea, and spared no expense in its making. It was designed in the Greek style, a rectangular plan with a grand semicircular colonnade at the end closest the sea and a smaller colonnade at the entrance we were just passing through. We were to meet in the building's reception room, fifty feet on a side. But the architectural focus of the palace, ahead of us, was a swimming pool more than a hundred feet long and seventy wide. As we entered Josephus remarked that Herod had pools built in all of his palaces. Even the fortress of Masada high on its jutting mountain-top had a swimming pool, which also served as a water-reservoir. As we talked Vespasian came down the steps from the palace’s upper level with Titus, Tiberius Julius Alexander and Agrippa at his side. Vespasian beamed.
