Philo of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
Second after Sejanus, Flaccus Avillius took up the plot against the Jews. He could not injure the whole nation outright, as Sejanus had, since he had fewer resources for it, but wherever he could reach he impaled great numbers with irreparable evils. Still, though he appeared to attack only a part of the nation, he extended his plot to assail all Jews everywhere, relying more on craft than on force; for those who lack the strength natural to tyrants achieve their designs through cunning.
This Flaccus, then, having been judged among the emperor's friends by Tiberius Caesar after the death of Severus, who had been entrusted with Egypt, was appointed prefect of Alexandria and the country — a man who at the start of his rule displayed countless proofs of apparent excellence. He was quick and consistent, sharp in understanding, effective in carrying out what he had resolved, most ready in speech, and able to perceive an unspoken matter before it was even voiced.
In a very short time, then, he became thoroughly familiar with the administrative affairs of Egypt, which are intricate and varied and barely mastered even by those who have made the work their pursuit from earliest youth. The clerks were an extraordinary crowd, yet he already outstripped them all in experience in matters both great and small, so that he became, for the sake of precision, not merely their equal but a teacher instead of a familiar figure to those who had formerly instructed him.
As for what concerned accounts and the correct management of the revenues, though these were important and necessary, they gave no evidence of a commanding spirit; but the qualities that revealed a nature more splendid and truly regal he displayed with greater openness. He carried himself, for instance, with more dignity — for a certain haughtiness is most profitable to a ruler — he adjudicated major cases together with men of rank, he brought down the overproud, and he prevented the gathering of a mixed and disorderly mob. He also dissolved the clubs and associations that, always under pretext of sacrifices, would feast and riotously meddle in public affairs, dealing firmly and vigorously with those who resisted.
Then, once he had filled the city and the countryside with good order, he turned in his rounds again to the military forces, drawing them up, drilling them, training the infantry, the cavalry, the light-armed troops, and their commanders — so that they would not, by embezzling the soldiers' pay, incite them toward banditry and plunder — and reminding each soldier in turn not to meddle in anything outside his military duty, but to remember that he was stationed also to preserve the peace.
Perhaps someone might say: "You there, though you know you are accusing a man, you have gone through no charge at all, but have strung together long praises. Are you not raving, out of your mind?" — I am not out of my mind, my friend, nor am I so foolish as to be unable to see where an argument leads.
I praise Flaccus not because it is fitting to extol an enemy, but so that I may set his depravity in a clearer light. For one who errs through ignorance of the better course is granted pardon, but one who does wrong from knowledge has no defense, since he stands already convicted in the court of his own conscience.
Having received his command for a term of six years, in the first five, while Tiberius Caesar was still alive, he preserved the peace and governed with such vigor and strength that he surpassed all who had held the office before him.
But in the last year, after Tiberius had died and Gaius had been proclaimed emperor, he began to let everything slacken and slip — whether because of the very heavy grief he bore for Tiberius (for it was plain that he was deeply affected, as for one closest to him, from his continual dejection and the flow of tears that poured forth unceasingly as if from a spring), or because he bore ill will toward the successor for having courted the party of the legitimate heirs rather than that of the adopted one, or because he had had a part in the conspiracy against Gaius's mother — for which she had been put to death — and, through fear of being caught, had let his guard down.
For a while he still held out, not entirely relinquishing his grip on affairs. But when he heard that Tiberius's grandson, who shared the rule, had been killed at Gaius's command, struck by this unspeakable calamity he cast himself down and lay speechless, his mind having long before given way and grown slack.
For while the young man lived, he had not despaired of the sparks of his own safety; but once he had died, he thought his own hopes had died with him — though a small breath of aid still remained, namely his friendship with Macro, who at first had wielded the greatest influence with Gaius and, as the story goes, had contributed the largest share toward his obtaining the empire, and still more toward his safety —
for Tiberius had often planned to remove Gaius, thinking him malicious and unfit for rule, and at the same time out of fear for his grandson (he was afraid that, once he himself died, the boy would become a mere sacrifice); yet often Macro would remove his suspicions and praise Gaius as simple, without malice, sociable, and utterly devoted to his cousin, so that Tiberius would be willing to yield the empire to him alone, or in any case to give him the foremost place.
Deceived by these men, he unwittingly left behind, at his death, an implacable enemy — to himself, to his grandson, to his whole line, to his advocate Macro, and to all mankind.
For when Macro saw him living without restraint and following his impulses toward whatever came, however it came, he would admonish and try to calm him, believing him still to be the Gaius who, while Tiberius yet lived, had been reasonable and obedient. Poor wretch, for his excess of goodwill he paid the highest penalty, being destroyed along with his whole household, wife and children together, as a superfluous burden and an annoyance.
Indeed, whenever we saw him approaching from a distance and looked downcast, he would say such things to those with him: "Let us not smile, let us look downcast: here comes the one who reproves, the plain-spoken one, who has now begun to be tutor to a full-grown man and an emperor, now that the moment has driven off and parted him from those of his earliest youth."
So when Flaccus learned that this man too had been destroyed, he abandoned entirely what hope remained, and, growing weak and dissolving in judgment, was no longer able to manage affairs as before.
Whenever a ruler despairs of being able to hold power, his subjects are bound at once to grow unruly, especially those whose nature it is to be provoked by trivial and chance occurrences — and among these the Egyptian populace takes first place, being accustomed to fan great uprisings from the smallest spark.
Finding himself in a helpless and desperate state, he floundered and reversed everything he had held to shortly before, along with the turn of his judgment toward the worse, beginning with his closest associates: those who were well-disposed and especially his friends he now regarded with suspicion and thrust away, while with those who had been declared enemies from the start he made peace and used them as counselors in everything.
These men — for they bore him a grudge — feigned in word alone to be reconciled, but nursed in their minds resentments wholly irreconcilable in deed, and, play-acting genuine friendship as if on a stage, seized him wholly for themselves. So the ruler became a subject, and the subjects became rulers, proposing the most disadvantageous counsels and having them ratified at once.
For they became the guarantors of everything they had schemed, taking up, merely for show, a name of office as mute as a mask on the stage — Dionysiuses who curry the mob, Lampons who scribble decrees, Isidoruses who lead factions, busybodies, inventors of evils, disturbers of the city; for this name has somehow come to prevail among them.
All these men banded together and devised a most grievous scheme against the Jews, and coming to Flaccus in private they said:
"Everything you had from the boy Tiberius Nero is gone, and gone too is the hope that came after him, your friend Macro; the prospects from the reigning power are not favorable to you. You must find yourself the most capable advocate, one through whom Gaius may be won over to goodwill."
"That advocate is the city of Alexandria, which the whole imperial house has honored from the beginning, and our present master especially. It will plead your cause if it receives some gift from you — and there is no greater benefit you could grant it than to hand over and abandon the Jews."
Though bound to reject and take offense at men who spoke like revolutionaries and common enemies, he instead endorsed what they had said. At first he made his plots less conspicuous, not presenting himself as an equal and impartial hearer to those with disputes, but inclining toward one side; nor did he grant equal freedom of speech in other matters, but whenever any Jew approached him, he would turn away and cultivate an unapproachable manner toward these alone. Later he displayed his hostility openly as well.
What further strengthened his madness — cultivated more by design than by nature — was a certain coincidence of events. Gaius Caesar gave to Agrippa, grandson of King Herod, a third portion of his grandfather's realm, which the tetrarch Philip, his uncle on his father's side, had been enjoying as its fruits.
When he was about to set sail, Gaius advised him to forgo the voyage from Brundisium to Syria, since it was long and wearisome, and instead to take the shorter route by way of Alexandria, waiting for the Etesian winds; for he said that the merchant ships from there were fast sailers and had the most experienced pilots, who, like men driving racehorses, kept an unswerving straight course. Agrippa obeyed, both as one obeying a master and as one following advice meant for his own benefit.
Coming down to Dicaearchia and seeing Alexandrian ships lying at anchor and ready to put out, he boarded with his own people, and, favored with a good voyage, was brought to land a few days later without notice or observation, having ordered the pilots — for Pharos came into view about the late afternoon — to gather in the sails and to keep the ship out at sea, not standing far off, until deep evening came on, and then to put in to the harbors by night, so that he might disembark once everyone had already turned to sleep, and reach his host's house unseen by anyone.
So he made his stay with such great discretion, wishing, if it were at all possible, to slip away unnoticed by everyone in the city; for he had not come to see the sights of Alexandria, having already stayed there before, on the occasion when he set out on his voyage to Rome to visit Tiberius, but meant to use it as a short route on his way home.
But the people, bursting with envy — for the Egyptian character is by nature malicious — took the good fortune of others as their own misfortune, and at the same time, on account of their old and, in a way, natural hatred toward the Jews, were vexed that a Jew had become a king, no less than if each of them had individually been robbed of an ancestral kingdom.
And once again the wretched Flaccus's companions goaded him on, driving him to the same jealousy and provoking his envy, saying, "His visit here is your undoing; he is wrapped in a greater weight of honor and glory than you are. He turns everyone's attention to himself, the whole bodyguard of spearmen looking on, adorned as it is with silver-plated and gilded weapons."
"For was it necessary for him to come into the domain of another, when he could, by making use of the voyage, have been sent safely to his own country? Even if Gaius allowed it — or rather compelled it — he ought to have begged and pleaded to be excused from coming here, so that the governor of the country not be dishonored by being outshone."
Hearing these things, he knew, even more than before, how in public he feigned being Agrippa's companion and friend, out of fear of the one who had sent him, but privately was consumed with jealousy, gave vent to his hatred, and insulted him obliquely, since he did not dare to do so openly.
For to the idle and leisured mob of the city — and it is a multitude given over to loose talk, and quick to seize any opportunity for slander and abuse — he permitted the reviling of the king, whether he himself had started the insults or had incited and led on others, through his attendants who were accustomed to such things, to do so.
These, seizing the opportunity, spent whole days in the gymnasium mocking the king and stringing together gibes; and in some cases, using poets who composed mimes and farces, they displayed their cleverness in shameful matters, being slow to learn what is good but the quickest and most ready to learn the opposite.
For why did he not grow indignant, why did he not stop it, why did he not rebuke such shameless abuse? Even if the man had not been a king but merely one of the household of Caesar, should he not have been shown some measure of privilege and honor? No — these are clear proofs that Flaccus had become a partner in the abuse; for one who could have rebuked it, or at the very least restrained it, and did not, was plainly himself allowing and permitting it. And whatever occasion a disorderly mob seizes upon for its offenses, it does not stop there, but moves on from one thing to another, always working up something newer and worse.
There was a madman named Carabas, not afflicted with the wild and savage kind of madness — for that is unmanageable, both to those who have it and to those who come near it — but with the loose and gentler kind. He spent his days and nights naked in the streets, avoiding neither heat nor cold, a plaything for idle children and youths.
Driving the poor wretch to the gymnasium and setting him up on high, so that he might be seen by everyone, they spread out a sheet of papyrus for a diadem and set it on his head, and clothed the rest of his body with a floor-mat instead of a cloak, and someone, seeing a small strip of the local papyrus thrown down along the road, picked it up and gave it to him instead of a scepter.
And when, as in a theatrical farce, he had taken on the emblems of kingship and had been got up to look like a king, young men bearing rods on their shoulders in place of spears stood on either side of him in imitation of a bodyguard. Then others came up to him, some as if to pay their respects, some as if to bring cases for judgment, others as if to consult him about public affairs.
Then from the crowd standing round in a circle there rang out a strange shout of people calling him "Marin" — for that, they say, is the word for "lord" among the Syrians — for they knew that Agrippa was Syrian by race and possessed a large portion of Syria, over which he was king. And when Flaccus heard this, or rather saw it,
he ought properly to have seized and imprisoned the madman, so as not to give those who mock their betters an occasion for insult, and to have punished those who had got him up in this costume, because they had dared, both in deed and in word, both openly and obliquely, to insult a king, a friend of Caesar, and one honored by the Roman senate with praetorian rank. Instead, not only did he not rebuke them, he did not even see fit to stop it, granting impunity and free license to those who wished ill and were bent on hostility, pretending not to see what he saw and not to hear what he heard.
The mob — perceiving this, not the settled and respectable populace, but the one always accustomed to fill everything with tumult and disorder through its love of meddling and its zeal for a worthless life, and its habitual idleness and leisure, a treacherous thing — streamed together into the theater from early morning, since they had already bought from wretched Flaccus, the honor-mad man ready to sell anything, honors purchased at the cost not only of himself but of the common safety, and with one voice cried out that images should be set up in the synagogues, introducing this most novel outrage, never before committed.
And knowing this — for they are extremely sharp in wickedness — they craftily made a screen of Caesar's name, to which it is not lawful to attach anything blameworthy.
What, then, did the governor of the country do? Knowing that the city has two classes of inhabitants, ourselves and these others, and that all Egypt does too, and that the Jews who dwell in Alexandria and the country, from the descent toward Libya to the borders of Ethiopia, number no fewer than a million, and that the experiment concerned everyone, and that it was not profitable to disturb ancestral customs, he disregarded all this and permitted the dedication to be carried out, though he had countless resources and every means of forethought, either to give orders as a ruler or to give advice as a friend.
But he — for he was a fellow-worker in each of the wrongs being committed — thought it right to fan the flames of the sedition from a position of even greater power, adding ever newer accretions of evils, and, for his own part, filled almost the whole inhabited world, one might say, with civil wars.
For it was not unclear that the report about the destruction of the synagogues, having its beginning in Alexandria, would spread at once to the districts of Egypt, and would run from Egypt to the eastern regions and the nations of the east, and from the region below Egypt and Mareia, which are the borders of Libya, to the western regions and the nations of the west; for a single country cannot contain the Jews, so numerous are they.
For this reason they inhabit the greater number and the most prosperous of the cities in Europe and Asia, both on the islands and on the mainland, regarding the Holy City as their mother-city — the city in which stands the sacred temple of the Most High God — but considering as their fatherlands the places which each of them received from their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers and still earlier ancestors to dwell in, in which they were born and raised; and to some cities they came even at their founding, sending out settlers, as a favor to the founders.
And there was fear that people everywhere would seize on the occasion arising there to attack their fellow-citizens the Jews, introducing innovations against their synagogues and ancestral customs.
But they — for they were not going to remain quiet forever, even though they were by nature well disposed to peace, not only because among all people struggles over one's customs surpass even dangers to life itself, but also because they alone under the sun, along with their synagogues, were being deprived of their pious devotion to their benefactors, a thing for which they would have been honored, not put to death countless times — having no sacred precincts in which to express their gratitude, would have said to those who opposed them:
"You do not realize that you are not adding honor to our lords but taking it away, not knowing that for the Jews everywhere in the inhabited world the synagogues are manifestly their starting-points for reverence toward the house of Augustus, and if these are taken from us, what other place or manner of honor is left to us?
For if we are neglecting the customs that are permitted to us, we deserve to suffer the utmost punishment, for not rendering complete and full recompense. But if we hold back from what is not permitted by our own laws, this too is to confirm what is dear to Augustus — I do not know what wrong, small or great, we commit; unless someone should wish to blame us for not transgressing willfully and deliberately, for not neglecting to observe our departures from the customs of our ancestors — departures which, even if they begin from others, often end by falling back on those responsible for them."
But Flaccus wronged us in this way, by keeping silent about what should have been said and saying what should have been kept silent. And those men, whose favor he was courting—what was their intention? Was it really that of men wishing to pay honor? Then was there a shortage of temples in the city, whose largest and most essential districts have been consecrated as sacred precincts, for the dedication of whatever they wished?
We have spoken, then, of the impulse of men who delight in giving offense and who scheme with skill, an impulse by which those who commit outrage will not seem to be doing wrong, while it is unsafe for those who suffer the outrage to oppose them. For it is no honor, gentlemen, to abolish laws, to disturb ancestral customs, to insult one's fellow residents, and to teach even those in other cities to disregard concord.
Since, then, his assault on the laws seemed to him to be succeeding, once he had seized our houses of prayer and left not even the name of them, he turned to another target: the abolition of our civic status, so that, once we had been cut off from the only things on which our life relied—ancestral customs and a share in civic rights—we might undergo the utmost disasters, with no cable left to grasp for safety.
For a few days later he posted an edict in which he declared us foreigners and aliens, without granting us a hearing, but condemning us without trial. What greater proclamation of tyranny could there be than this? He himself became everything at once—accuser, enemy, witness, judge, and punisher. Then, to the two roles already mentioned, he added a third: he let loose, as though the city had been captured, anyone who wished to plunder the Jews. And once they had been granted impunity, what did they do?
There are five districts in the city, named after the first letters of the alphabet; two of these are called the Jewish districts, because the greatest number of Jews live in them, though not a few are also scattered and living in the others. What, then, did they do? They drove the Jews out of four of the districts and herded them together into the area of a single one, and a very small one at that.
Because of their numbers, they overflowed onto the beaches, the dung-heaps, and the tombs, stripped of everything they owned. Meanwhile those others, overrunning the now-deserted houses, turned to plunder and divided up the spoils as though from a war; and since no one stopped them, they even broke open the workshops of the Jews, which had been closed because of the public mourning for Drusilla, and carried off whatever they found there—and there was a great deal of it—hauling it through the middle of the marketplace and treating what belonged to others as their own.
But even heavier than the plunder itself was the idleness that followed it: those who had made their living had lost their stores, and no one—farmer, ship-owner, merchant, or craftsman—was permitted to carry on his usual business. In this way poverty was constructed from two directions at once: from the plundering itself, by which people who had once possessed something were stripped of their property in a single day, and from the fact that they could no longer earn a living by their customary trades.
Now these things, though unbearable, were nevertheless bearable when set beside what was done afterward. For poverty is a hard thing, especially when it is engineered by enemies, but it is a lesser evil than outrage against the body, even the slightest such outrage.
But as for what our people suffered, given the extremity of it, no one using words in their proper sense could even call it outrage or ill-treatment; rather, it seems to me that one would be at a loss for fitting terms, so great was the novel cruelty involved—so much so that the conduct of men who have conquered in war and are by nature implacable toward the captured would, by comparison, seem the very mildest thing.
Those conquerors plunder money and take a multitude of captive persons, having themselves run the risk, had they been defeated, of losing their own possessions. Yet even so, they release countless numbers of their spear-won captives, once relatives or friends pay a ransom for them—perhaps not because they are moved to pity, but because they are overcome by love of money. But, someone might say, what does that matter? For those who benefit from it, the manner of their deliverance makes no difference.
Indeed, even the enemy dead who have fallen in war are granted burial—by the more decent and humane victors, at their own expense; and even those who extend their hostility as far as the dead nonetheless hand over the bodies under truce, so that the fallen may not be denied that last favor which custom prescribes.
Such, then, is the conduct of the hostile in time of war. Let us now see what those who, only a little while before, were our friends did in time of peace. After the plundering, the forced evictions, and the violent expulsions from most parts of the city, we found ourselves as though besieged within walls by enemies encamped all around; we were crushed by want and by a terrible scarcity of necessities, watching our wives and infant children perishing before our eyes from a famine of human contrivance—
—and this though everything else was full of abundance and good harvest, the river having richly flooded the fields with its inundation, and the plain, wherever it bore wheat, yielding, through its fertility, the most bountiful crop of grain—
No longer able to endure their want, some went, though they had never been accustomed to it before, to the houses of relatives and friends, to ask for a contribution of the bare necessities; others, out of a noble spirit that turned away from the lot of a beggar as fit only for a slave and unworthy of a free man, went out into the marketplace for no other reason than to buy food for their households and themselves—unfortunate men that they were.
For they were seized at once by those who had established mob rule as their fortress, murdered by treachery, and, being dragged and trampled through the entire city, were utterly destroyed, with no part of them left that could receive burial.
But countless others too they worked over and destroyed, through manifold and elaborately devised forms of evil, driven to a savage cruelty—men who had raged themselves, out of sheer ferocity, into the nature of wild beasts. For whatever Jews happened to appear anywhere, they either stoned or beat to death with clubs, not aiming their blows straight at the vital parts, so that their victims would not die too quickly and thereby too quickly be relieved of their painful suffering.
Emboldened by this impunity and truce granted to their crimes, some, growing ever more reckless, gave up their blunter weapons and took up the most effective of all—fire and iron—and killed many with the sword, while destroying not a few by fire.
Indeed, the most pitiless of all these men even burned whole families—men together with their wives, infant children together with their parents—in the middle of the city, having no pity for old age, for youth, or for the innocent age of children. And whenever they could find no supply of wood, they gathered brushwood instead and destroyed their victims more by smoke than by fire, devising for the wretched a death that was more piteous and more prolonged. Their bodies lay together half-burned, a harsh and most painful sight.
And if those brought along to gather brushwood were slow about it, they would burn their masters on their own furniture, taken from the plunder—setting aside for themselves whatever was valuable, while burning up whatever was not especially useful, using such things instead of ordinary firewood.
Many they even bound while still alive, tying one foot at the ankle, and dragged them along while leaping upon them and trampling them underfoot, having devised the cruelest possible death;
and even once they were dead, their tormentors, raging on without end, inflicted still heavier abuse on the bodies, dragging them through, I might almost say, every single alley of the city, until the corpse—its skin, flesh, and sinews scraped away by the unevenness and roughness of the ground, and the parts that had been joined together by nature torn apart and scattered here and there—was completely consumed.
Those who did these things acted out, as though on a theater stage, the parts of those who were suffering. And the friends and relatives of those who had truly suffered these things, for the sole reason that they grieved over the disasters befalling their own kin, were led away, whipped, broken on the wheel, and after every form of abuse their bodies could endure, the last punishment held in reserve for them was the cross.
Having thus tunneled through and broken into everything, and having left no part of Jewish affairs untouched by his supreme malice, Flaccus—that master of great deeds, that inventor of novel crimes—devised yet another attack, strange and unprecedented.
For as to our council of elders, which the Savior and Benefactor Augustus had chosen to take charge of Jewish affairs after the death of the ethnarch, through his instructions to Magius Maximus when the latter was about to take up the governorship of Alexandria and the country for a second time—of the members of this council, thirty-eight who were found in their homes he ordered bound at once, and, arranging a fine procession through the middle of the marketplace, he led into the theater these elderly men, prisoners with their arms pinioned, some with leather straps, others with iron chains—a most pitiable spectacle, and utterly out of keeping with the occasion—
and, making them stand directly opposite their seated enemies as a public display of shame, he ordered every one of them stripped and scourged with the whips customarily used to degrade the very worst of criminals, so that some, carried out on stretchers as a result of the blows, died on the spot, while others fell ill for a very long time and came to despair of ever recovering.
The magnitude of this plot has already been demonstrated through other evidence, but it will be shown still more clearly through what is about to be said. Three men from the council of elders, Euodus, Tryphon, and Andron, had been stripped of everything they possessed in their homes in a single raid, and Flaccus was well aware that they had suffered this; for he had been informed of it, having earlier summoned our leaders to discuss what seemed to be terms of reconciliation with the rest of the city.
And yet, knowing precisely that these men had been robbed of their own property before the very eyes of those who had plundered it, he acted so that the victims should endure a double misfortune — poverty together with outrage done to their persons — while the robbers enjoyed a double pleasure, reaping the fruits of another's wealth and gorging themselves to satiety on the dishonor of those they had despoiled.
I hesitate to mention one of the things done at that time, for fear that, being thought trivial, it might diminish the magnitude of so many other outrages; yet even if it is a small thing, it is no small proof of malice. There are recognized distinctions among floggings in the city, corresponding to the rank of those about to be beaten: Egyptians happen to be scourged with one kind of lash and by one kind of person, while Alexandrians are beaten with the flat blade and by Alexandrian flat-blade-bearers.
This custom was preserved even in the case of our people by the governors before Flaccus, and by Flaccus himself in his early years. For it is possible — yes, it is possible — to find, even within dishonor, some small remnant of honor, and within outrage something carried over from the realm of the inviolable, whenever one allows the natures of things to be examined on their own terms, without adding from oneself some malicious passion that strips away and estranges everything mixed with the more decent form.
How then is it not utterly harsh that, while ordinary Alexandrian Jews were beaten with the more liberal and civic form of scourging whenever they were thought to have done something deserving punishment, the rulers — the council of elders, who bear a name signifying both age and honor — should in this respect fare worse than their subjects, treated like the meanest Egyptians guilty of the gravest crimes?
I say nothing of the fact that even if they had committed countless offenses, he ought out of respect for the occasion to have postponed the punishments; for among magistrates who govern rightly and do not merely pretend to honor their benefactors but truly honor them, it is customary to punish none of the condemned until these illustrious birthdays and festivals of the illustrious emperors have passed.
But he broke the law even during these very days and punished men who had done no wrong, men whom he could have punished again later if he had wished. Instead he hastened and pressed on for the sake of currying favor with the hostile mob, thinking that by this means he would win them over more fully to what he had in mind.
I know that in the past, when such a truce was about to begin, some who had been crucified were taken down and given over to their relatives, so that they might be granted burial and receive the customary rites; for it was thought fitting that even the dead should enjoy some benefit on the emperor's birthday, and that at the same time the sacred character of the festival should be preserved.
But he ordered that men not yet dead should not be taken down from their crosses, but that they should be crucified while still alive — men to whom the season offered only a brief reprieve, not a full pardon, only a postponement of punishment, not a complete release. And he did this after they had already been tortured with whips in the middle of the theater, and racked with fire and iron.
And the spectacle was arranged in two parts. The first show, from early morning until the third or fourth hour, consisted of this: Jews being whipped, hung up, broken on the wheel, mutilated, and led to their death through the middle of the orchestra. What came after this fine display were dancers and mimes and flute-players and all the other playthings of theatrical contests.
And why do I dwell on these things? For a second devastation was now devised, since he wished to lay siege to our whole armed population as well, by inventing a novel slander. The slander was this: that the Jews kept full suits of armor hidden in their houses. So he summoned a centurion whom he trusted above all others, named Castus, and ordered him to take the boldest soldiers from the ranks under his command and hurry, without any advance warning, to burst into the houses of the Jews and search them, to see whether any store of weapons lay hidden there. And the man ran off at once to carry out the order.
The people, not knowing what was intended, at first stood speechless with shock, their little wives and children clinging to them and dissolving in tears out of fear of captivity; for they expected nothing less than that this was the beginning of a general plundering.
But when they heard one of the searchers ask, “Where do you keep your weapons stored?” they breathed a little easier, and threw open everything, even what lay in their innermost rooms, and showed it all — glad on the one hand,
yet grieving on the other: glad that the slander would be refuted by the plain facts themselves, but distressed, first, that such grave accusations against them were believed in advance simply because they were concocted by their enemies, and second, that secluded women who never so much as stepped through the outer gate, and maidens kept in their chambers, who out of modesty avoided even the sight of men, even of their closest relatives, were now exposed not merely to unfamiliar eyes but to the menacing gaze of soldiers.
Yet when the search was carried out thoroughly, how great a store of defensive weapons was found? Helmets, breastplates, shields, daggers, pikes, whole suits of armor brought out in heaps? And in their turn, missile weapons — javelins, slings, bows, arrows? Of these, absolutely nothing was found; not even knives sufficient for the daily preparation of food.
From this the simplicity of their manner of life was at once made evident, since they did not admit extravagance or soft living, the very things that naturally breed satiety — and from satiety is born insolence, the beginning of every evil.
And yet not long before this, when the Egyptians throughout the countryside had been disarmed by a certain Bassus, whom Flaccus had assigned to this task, one could at that time see a great fleet of ships having sailed in and lying at anchor in the harbors of the river, loaded with weapons of every kind, and pack-animals carrying vast heaps of bundled spears tied together in balanced loads on either side, and nearly all the wagons from the camp full of complete suits of armor, moving forward in orderly rows, all presenting the same appearance and arrangement; and the distance between the harbors and the armory in the palace, where the weapons were to be deposited, was in all about ten stadia.
It would have been reasonable to search the houses of those who had furnished all this; for they had often revolted before and were suspected of a tendency to rebellion, and it was even necessary for their leaders, in imitation of the sacred games, to hold new triennial gatherings in Egypt for the collection of weapons, so that they either would not have time to manufacture new ones, or would have only a few instead of many, having no opportunity to withdraw and regroup.
But why should we have had to suffer any such thing? When were we ever suspected of rebellion? When were we not considered peaceable by everyone? Are the practices we follow every day not blameless, do they not contribute to the good order and stability of the city? Indeed, if the Jews had kept weapons among themselves, more than four hundred houses would not have been stripped bare, houses whose occupants became exiles, driven out by those who plundered their property. Why then did no one search the houses of these plunderers, who, even if they had no weapons of their own, at least possessed whatever they had stolen?
No, as I said, the whole affair was a plot born of the ruthlessness of Flaccus and of the mobs, of which even the women had their share of enjoyment. For not only in the marketplace but even in the middle of the theater, women were seized like prisoners of war and dragged onto the stage, falsely accused of one thing or another, amid some unbearable and most grievous outrage;
then, if they were recognized as belonging to another race, they were released — for many were seized as Jewish women without any careful inquiry into the truth — but if they turned out to be our women, those who had become tyrants and masters instead of mere spectators ordered them to eat pork, forcing it upon them. Now those who, out of fear of punishment, tasted it were released without further ill-treatment; but the more resolute among them were handed over to torturers for irremediable abuse, which is the clearest proof that they had done nothing wrong.
Beyond what has been said, he sought to harm us not only by his own actions but now also through the emperor himself, and devised a plan to that end. For we had voted every honor for Gaius that was possible and permitted by law, and having carried them out in deed, we presented the decree recording them to him, asking — since he would not have permitted us a delegation had we requested one — that he himself forward it.
Having read it, and nodding his head repeatedly at each item in the decree, smiling and beaming, or pretending to be pleased, he said, “I accept all of you as showing true piety, and I will send it, or rather I will myself fulfill the office of ambassador, so that Gaius may perceive your gratitude.”
“I myself will also bear witness to everything I know of the people's good order and obedience, adding nothing of my own; for the truth is the most sufficient praise.” Overjoyed at these promises, we gave thanks, believing that the decree had already, in our hopes, been read out before Gaius.
And indeed it was reasonable to think so, since everything sent through the prefects with urgency receives prompt consideration from the emperor. But he, bidding a hearty farewell to everything we had planned, everything he had said, everything he had agreed to, kept the decree back with himself, so that we alone among all people under the sun should be thought his enemies.
Was this not the work of a man who had lain awake scheming for a long time, with careful forethought, plotting against us -- rather than someone improvising recklessly out of desperation, carried by an ill-timed impulse and some perversion of reasoning?
But God, it seems, who cares for human affairs, took pity on us. He exposed Flaccus's flattering, polished words meant to deceive, and the council-chamber of his lawless mind where he had plotted his stratagems, and before long he gave us grounds for not being cheated of our hope.
For King Agrippa, visiting the city, once we had recounted to him the plot Flaccus had mounted against us, set the matter right. He promised to send on the decree, and, as we hear, took it and sent it, explaining also the delay -- not that our household had been slow to learn piety toward its benefactor, but that from the start we had been eager, only to be robbed of our timely demonstration of it by the malice of the governor.
After this, Justice -- champion and ally of the wronged, avenger of unholy deeds and unholy men -- began to close in on him. First he suffered an outrage and calamity of an utterly unprecedented kind, one that had befallen no one since the imperial house of Augustus took up the rule of land and sea.
There had, it is true, been some under Tiberius and under his father Caesar who governed provinces and turned their charge and stewardship into despotism and tyranny, filling their regions with irreparable evils -- bribery, plunder, unjust condemnations, the exile and banishment of the innocent, the summary execution of the powerful. These men, once their appointed term of office was over and they returned to Rome, the emperors called to account and required to render a reckoning of their conduct, especially whenever the wronged cities sent embassies.
At such times the emperors made themselves common judges, hearing accusers and defenders alike on equal terms, refusing to condemn anyone unheard, and rendering their verdicts neither out of hostility nor out of favor, but according to the nature of truth, judging what seemed to be just.
But for Flaccus, it was not after his term of office but while it was still current that the justice which hates wrongdoing overtook him, provoked by the boundless excess of his crimes and lawless acts.
The manner of his arrest was as follows. He had supposed that he had already won over Gaius regarding the matters for which he was suspect -- partly through letters overflowing with flattery, partly through the fawning speeches and long strings of fabricated praises he wove together whenever he addressed public gatherings, and partly through his great popularity with the greater part of the city.
But he did not notice that he was deceiving himself; for the hopes of wicked men are unstable, since they anticipate the better outcome while in fact suffering the opposite and getting only what they deserve. For a centurion named Bassus was sent from Italy, commissioned by Gaius, together with the company of soldiers he commanded.
Boarding one of the swiftest-sailing vessels, within a few days he reached the harbors of Alexandria, off the island of Pharos, toward evening, and ordered the pilot to keep out at sea until sunset, contriving to remain unseen so that Flaccus would not get advance notice, take some rash countermeasure, and render his mission futile.
When evening came, the ship put in, and Bassus disembarked with his own men and went forward, neither recognizing anyone nor being recognized by anyone. Finding along the road a soldier of the guard on watch, he ordered him to point out the house of the garrison commander, for it was to him that he wished to disclose his secret mission, so that, should he need extra hands, he would have someone to fight alongside him.
Learning that the commander was dining out with Flaccus at someone's house, he lost no time and pressed on to the house of the man who had given the banquet -- one Stephanio, a freedman of Tiberius Caesar, at whose house they were staying -- and, stopping a little way off, sent one of his own men, disguised as an attendant, to reconnoiter, a device meant to keep anyone from noticing. This man went into the banquet as though he were the servant of one of the guests, surveyed everything with care, and returned to report to Bassus.
Learning that the entrances were unguarded and that Flaccus had only a small company about him -- scarcely ten or fifteen serving slaves had accompanied him -- Bassus gave the signal to his men and rushed in suddenly. Some of the soldiers took their stand by the banqueting couches with swords girded, and surrounded Flaccus, who had not seen it coming; for he happened at that very moment to be proposing a toast and showing courtesy to those present.
When Bassus came forward into their midst, Flaccus, seeing him, was struck dumb with astonishment, and wishing to rise, he caught sight of the ring of guards around him and knew, even before he heard a word, what Gaius intended for him, what those who had come were under orders to do, and what he himself was about to suffer at once; for a keen mind can see all at once, and hear all together, things that in fact unfold bit by bit over a long time.
Each of his fellow diners rose in terror and stood frozen, shuddering, fearing that some sentence had been passed on the dinner company as well; for flight was neither safe nor even possible, since the entrances were already held. Flaccus was led away by Bassus's soldiers at his command, making this his final departure from a banquet; for it was fitting that the sentence begin from the hearth against the man who had made countless households hearthless, though they had done no wrong.
This was the most unprecedented thing Flaccus suffered -- to be captured like an enemy, in the very country he governed, on account, I believe, of the Jews, whom he had resolved to wipe out entirely in his hunger for glory. Clear proof of this lies in the timing of his arrest; for it was the season of the great national festival of the Jews, at the autumn equinox, when it is their custom to live in booths.
Yet nothing of the festival was carried out at all, since the leaders were still imprisoned after their irreparable and unbearable torments and outrages, while the ordinary people, considering the leaders' misfortunes shared by the whole nation, and burdened besides by the particular sufferings each had endured himself, were sunk in more than ordinary gloom.
For painful things tend to be doubled at festival time for those unable to celebrate -- through the loss of the cheerful gladness a festival calls for, and through the added share of grief by which they were thrown into turmoil, unable to find any remedy for such great misfortunes.
While they were in this state of deep pain, weighed down by the heaviest of burdens -- for they had shut themselves up in their houses, since night had fallen -- some came bringing news of Flaccus's arrest. They took it at first for a trick, not the truth, and were pained all the more, thinking they were being mocked and set up for a trap.
There was uproar throughout the city; night watchmen ran up and down, and horsemen galloped in haste to the camp and from the camp back again with urgent speed. Stirred by the unfamiliar commotion, some came out of their houses to inquire what had happened; for it seemed that something extraordinary was afoot.
When they learned of the arrest, and that Flaccus was already caught in the net, they stretched out their hands to heaven and sang hymns, striking up songs of praise to the God who watches over human affairs: "We do not gloat, Master," they said, "over the punishment of an enemy, for we are taught by the sacred laws to feel for our fellow men; but we rightly give you thanks for taking pity and mercy on us and for lightening the unrelenting, repeated afflictions we bore."
Having spent the whole night in hymns and songs, at dawn they poured out through the gates and made their way to the neighboring shores -- for their houses of prayer had been taken from them -- and standing on the purest ground, cried out with one voice:
"Earth and sea, air and heaven, parts of the universe and the whole cosmos, O greatest king of mortals and immortals, we have come to summon you to a hymn of thanksgiving, you who alone remain our dwelling place, since we have been driven out of everything else made by human hands, deprived of our city and of the public and private enclosures within it -- alone under the sun made cityless and hearthless by the plotting of our ruler.
"You hold out good hopes to us also for the restoration of what remains, since you have already begun to grant our prayers, in that you have suddenly cast down -- though he was not yet far off -- the common enemy of our nation and the author and teacher of the calamities it endured, a man breathing great ambitions and thinking to win glory through them. You did not let those who had suffered so much learn of it only by report, so that their joy would be dulled, but brought it close, almost before the eyes of the wronged, for a more vivid picture of this vindication beyond all hope."
Beyond what has been said, a third thing besides seems to me to have happened by divine providence. For when he set sail as winter was beginning -- since it was fitting that he, who had filled all the elements of the universe with his impieties, should also taste the terrors of the sea -- after suffering countless hardships he barely reached Italy, and immediately two of his bitterest enemies, Isidorus and Lampo, took up the accusations against him,
These men had, not long before, held the rank of subjects—hailing him as master, benefactor, savior, and the like—but now displayed, as opposing parties, a strength not merely equal but far greater, drawn from a great reserve, not only because they were confident in the justice of their cause, but, what mattered most, because they saw that the ruler of human affairs was an implacable enemy to Flaccus, one who would assume the outward form of a judge, taking care not to seem to condemn a man untried, but in fact display the conduct of a hostile party, since in his soul he had already condemned him before accusation or defense and had already fixed on him the utmost penalties.
Nothing is so hard to bear as for men once superior, once rulers, to be accused by their inferiors and former subjects—as if masters were accused by house-slaves or purchased servants.
But this, it seems, was a lighter evil when set beside a greater one. For it was not simply men who had held the rank of subjects who suddenly, stripping for the fight and joining forces, launched their accusations; rather, for most of the time of his governorship over the province these two men, above all others, had become his bitterest enemies. Lampon had been prosecuted for impiety against Tiberius Caesar, and after the matter dragged on for two years he had given up hope,
for the judge, maliciously contriving, kept feigning postponements and delays, wishing—even if the man should escape the charge—at least to hang over him for the longest possible time the fear of an uncertain future, and so give him a life more painful than death.
Then later, even when he seemed to have won, he claimed to have been wronged in his property—for he had been forced to hold the office of gymnasiarch in a rather diminished style—either because he was actually stingy and ungenerous in his expenditures, pleading that he did not possess a fortune sufficient for so lavish an outlay, or because he genuinely did not possess one, though before the test came he had let himself be reputed a very rich man, but when put to the proof he did not appear a man of great wealth, having acquired nearly everything he owned through wrongdoing.
For, standing beside the governors whenever they held court, he would take notes as the cases were brought in, as though this were his proper office; then he would erase some things or deliberately pass over them, and add in others that had not been said, and sometimes he would even substitute words, altering, transposing, and turning the letters upside down, extorting money syllable by syllable, indeed letter by letter—that stooped-over scribe.
Him the whole populace, again and again, with one accord, aiming true and striking the mark, denounced as a 'reed-cutter,' a name given to those who had reduced countless people, though still alive, to a state more wretched than the dead—people who, though able to win their cases and prosper, endured unjust defeat and poverty, since their enemies had bought both outcomes from the man who cheapened and sold off other people's property.
For it was impossible for the governors administering so vast a province, with private and public business always flowing in afresh, to remember everything—especially since they were not only judging cases but also receiving the accounts of revenues and taxes, the examination of which consumed the greater part of the year.
But he, entrusted with guarding the most essential deposit of all—justice, and the most sacred judgments concerning it—traded on the judges' forgetfulness, recording as defeated those who deserved to win, and, after an accursed fee, or more properly a bribe, recording as victors those who deserved to lose.
Such, then, was Lampon, who stood forth as accuser; and Isidorus was no less depraved—a demagogic rabble-rouser, practiced in stirring up confusion, an enemy of peace and stability, unable to originate factions and disturbances but formidable at fanning and swelling those that arose, eager to keep about him a disorderly, jumbled mob gathered from every mixed and motley element, which he had organized into divisions, as it were, like guild-companies.
There are, throughout the city, populous clubs whose fellowship is founded on nothing sound, but on unmixed wine, drunkenness, drunken violence, and the insolence these breed; the locals call them 'assemblies' and 'couches.'
In all, or most, of these clubs Isidorus carries off first place, and is called the symposiarch, the master of the couches, the disturber of the city. Whenever he wishes to accomplish some piece of mischief, at a single signal they come together en masse and say and do whatever is commanded; and once, having taken offense at Flaccus for some matter—
namely, that whereas at first he had seemed to be in his good graces, he was no longer courted as before—Isidorus hired the oil-anointed toughs and the men accustomed to train their voices for shouting, who peddle their bawling in the marketplace to buyers just as goods are sold, and urged them to assemble in the gymnasium.
These men, having filled the place, accused Flaccus on no genuine pretext at all, fabricating charges that had never occurred and stringing together false statements in anapestic verses drawn out to great length, so that not only Flaccus but everyone else was struck with astonishment at the absurdity of it, and concluded—rightly—that there must be someone whose favor they were currying, since they themselves had suffered no irreparable harm, nor did they know of any real wrong done to the rest of the city.
Afterward, on deliberation, it was decided to arrest some of them and inquire into the cause of this sudden, unaccountable madness and frenzy. Those arrested, without need of torture, confessed the truth, and along with it supplied proof through the facts themselves—the agreed price, the part already paid, the part promised to be paid later, the men chosen to distribute it as leaders of the faction, the place, the time, when the bribery took place.
Since everyone, naturally, was indignant, and the city took it hard that the folly of a few should be smeared onto its own name, it was decided to summon the purest part of the populace and, on the next day, to bring forward those who had distributed the bribe, so that Flaccus might both expose Isidorus and defend his own record as a governor, on the ground that he had been unjustly slandered.
When they heard the summons, not only the officials came but the entire city, apart from that portion which was about to be exposed for having taken the bribe. Those who had performed this fine service were raised up on a platform, so that they might be visible and conspicuous and recognized by all, and they charged Isidorus with being responsible for the disturbances and the abuse hurled at Flaccus, since he had furnished no small crowd with both money and wine for his sake.
"For where," they said, "could we have gotten such abundance? We are poor; we can barely provide our daily necessities. And what terrible thing had we suffered at the governor's hands, that we should have been driven to bear him a grudge? No—the one responsible for all this, its author, is that man who is always envious of those who prosper and hostile to lawful order."
The bystanders, recognizing these words—for what was said bore clear stamps and marks of the accused man's true character—cried out, some that he should be disenfranchised, others that he should be exiled, others that he should be put to death; and these last were the majority, to whose side the rest also came over, so that all with one accord, with a single voice, shouted for the death of the common pest, the man responsible, from the moment he had come forward and thrust himself into public affairs, for leaving no part of the city untouched by his corruption.
And he, aware of his own guilt, fled to escape arrest; but Flaccus took no further trouble over him, believing that with him gone by his own choice, the city's affairs would be free of faction and undisturbed.
I have dwelt at length on these matters, not in order to recall old wrongs, but because I have marveled at the justice that oversees human affairs: that the very men who from the start had been hostile to him, and to whom of all people he was most odious, were also the ones allotted to bring the accusation against him—an excess of anguish; for it is not so terrible to be accused as it is to be accused by confessed enemies.
He was not only accused—he, who had ruled over subjects and had, but a little before, held power over the life of each of these men who had now become his sworn enemies—but he was also utterly overpowered, meeting with a double misfortune: to be mocked in his defeat by gloating enemies, which to a right-thinking person is worse than death.
Then a kind of abundance of misfortunes came upon him. He was at once stripped of his entire estate, both what he had inherited from his parents and what he had acquired himself, having been an extraordinary lover of fine things. For his wealth was not, as with some very rich men, inert raw material; everything was carefully chosen for its refinement—drinking cups, garments, coverlets, furniture, and all the rest that adorns a house—every item exquisite.
And in addition, his household staff of servants, selected by merit both for physical beauty and vigor together, and for their unfailing competence in the practical duties of service; for in whatever post each had been assigned, they excelled, so as to be regarded either as first among those who practiced the same skills, or second to none at all.
Clear proof of this is that, when countless properties confiscated by the state were sold off, properties belonging to condemned men, only that of Flaccus was reserved for the emperor's own treasury—apart from a few small items—so that the law laid down for men condemned in this way should not be transgressed.
After the confiscation of his property, sentence of exile was passed on him, and he was driven from every part of the mainland — the greater and better portion of the inhabited world — and from every one of the fortunate islands. He was on the point of being banished to the bleakest of the Aegean islands, the one called Gyara, had he not found an advocate in Lepidus, through whom he exchanged Gyara for Andros, which lies very close to it.
Then he set out once more on the road from Rome to Brundisium, the very road he had traveled a few years before, at the time when he had been appointed governor of Egypt and the neighboring parts of Libya — so that the cities which had then watched him passing, breathing greatness and displaying the full weight of his good fortune, might now watch him again, laden with disgrace.
Pointed at with fingers and reproached for his sudden reversal, he was weighed down by heavier griefs, since his misfortune was constantly renewed and rekindled by the addition of fresh evils, which forced back into memory, as if by relapse, even the recollection of his earlier misdeeds — recollections that had until then seemed to have faded.
Having crossed the Ionian gulf, he sailed the sea as far as Corinth, becoming a spectacle to the coastal cities of the Peloponnese, once word of his sudden reversal spread; for whenever he disembarked from the ship, those of base nature ran together to gloat maliciously, while others came to look on and take a lesson from the misfortunes of another, as is their custom.
Having crossed the isthmus from Lechaeum to the sea on the opposite side and gone down to Cenchreae, the port of Corinth, he was compelled — since his guards would not grant him the least respite — to embark at once on a small merchant vessel and put to sea; and after suffering countless hardships when a contrary wind broke out violently against him, he was barely dragged as far as Piraeus.
When the storm had ceased, he passed by Attica as far as the headland of Sunium, and from there crossed over the islands that came next in turn — Helene, Ceos, Cythnos, and the others that lie in a row one after another — until he reached the last one he was destined to come to, Andros.
Catching sight of it from a distance, the wretched man let a flood of tears pour down his cheeks as if from a spring, and striking his chest, he cried out most bitterly, 'Men, my guards and escorts, what a fine exchange I am making — Andros, this luckless island, for blessed Italy — I, Flaccus, who was born, raised, and educated in the
imperial city of Rome, who was a fellow student and companion in life of the grandsons of Augustus, who was judged among the foremost friends of Tiberius Caesar, and to whom his greatest possession, Egypt, was entrusted for six years. What could account for so great a reversal?
Night in the middle of day, as if an eclipse had occurred, has seized hold of my life. What am I to call this little island? My place of exile, or a new fatherland — a refuge and shelter, but a wretched one? A tomb would be its truest name. For I, wretched man that I am, am setting out in a way carrying my own corpse, as if to a burial mound; either I shall break off my miserable life through grief, or, if I should be able to live on, I shall face a long death, one endured with full awareness.' Such were his lamentations.
When the ship put in at the harbor, everyone disembarked with eyes bent to the ground, like those crushed beneath a heaviest burden, their necks weighed down by misfortune, unable — or not daring — to lift their heads even slightly, because of those who met them and those who had come to gawk, standing on either side of the road.
Those who had escorted him brought him before the assembly of the people of Andros and displayed him to everyone, making them witnesses to the exile's arrival on the island.
When they had discharged this duty, they departed; but Flaccus, no longer seeing a single familiar face, found his suffering renewed, sharper still, by vivid images that pressed upon him; and as he took in the great emptiness surrounding him, in the midst of which he was now confined, his violent removal from his homeland, which had once seemed an evil, now seemed by comparison with his present state a welcome good. So violently was he convulsed that he differed in nothing from the mad; he leapt up again and again, running this way and that, clapping his hands together, striking his thighs, throwing himself to the ground, and crying out repeatedly:
'I am Flaccus, who a short while ago was governor of the great city, or rather the city of many cities, Alexandria — the administrator of Egypt, the most blessed of lands, to whom so many tens of thousands of its inhabitants used to turn, who commanded great forces of infantry, cavalry, and navy, not merely counted in numbers but chosen as the very finest among his subjects, who each day, whenever he went out, was escorted by countless throngs.'
'But were these things not phantoms — not truth at all? Did I, while sleeping, only dream that former cheerfulness — mere images treading upon nothing, fictions of a soul perhaps inscribing things that do not exist as though they did? I have been deceived; they were, it seems, shadows of things, not the things themselves — a mere imitation of reality, not reality itself making plain what is false. For just as, of the things that appear to us in dreams, we find nothing still standing once we rise, but all of it vanishes at once, flying away, so too those glories in which I once gloried have been extinguished in the briefest turn of time.'
Such were the thoughts with which he was continually wrestled to the ground and, in a sense, had his neck broken. Fleeing the gatherings of the crowd because of the shame that dogged him, he would neither go down to the harbor nor endure to venture into the marketplace, but shut himself up at home and lay low, not even daring to step beyond his own courtyard gate.
There were times, too, deep at dawn, while others were still in their beds, when, showing himself to no one at all, he would go out beyond the wall and spend the whole day in the wilderness, turning aside whenever anyone was likely to meet him, and, worn away and consumed in soul by the ever-present memories of his misdeeds, the wretched man would go back in only at dead of night, praying, because of his measureless and endless anguish, that evening might become morning; then, shuddering at the darkness and at the monstrous visions that came whenever he chanced to fall asleep, he would pray that morning become evening again.
For the gloom that enveloped him stood opposed to everything bright.
A few months later he bought a small plot of land, and on it he spent much of his time in isolation, groaning and weeping over his own fate.
It is said that once, around the middle of the night, becoming possessed like the Corybantic revelers, he went out from his farmhouse, lifted his gaze to the sky and the stars — truly seeing the order within the order of the universe — and cried out:
'King of gods and men, you have not, after all, been neglectful of the nation of the Jews, nor is their claim of your providence a false one; rather, those who say they have no champion or defender in you are utterly mistaken in their judgment. I myself am clear proof of this: for whatever I contrived against the Jews, I myself have suffered.'
'I looked on while their properties were being plundered, granting the plunderers free license; for this I was stripped of my paternal and maternal inheritance, and of whatever I had received as gifts and favors, and whatever else I had acquired by other means.'
'I once reproached them with dishonor and foreign status, though they were citizens with full civic rights, so as to gratify their adversaries — a disorderly, unruly mob by whose flattery I, unlucky man, was deceived; for this I have been dishonored, and, driven as an exile from the whole inhabited world, I am now shut up here.'
'I once brought some of them into the theater and ordered them, unjustly, to be tortured before the eyes of their bitterest enemies; and so it is only just that I have not been paraded into one theater or one city to suffer the utmost outrages, my wretched soul tormented even before my body — no, I have been paraded in a procession through the whole of Italy as far as Brundisium, through the whole Peloponnese as far as Corinth, and through Attica and the islands as far as Andros, my prison.'
'And I am firmly persuaded that this is not the limit of my misfortunes, but that others lie in wait to make full payment in kind for what I have done. I killed some, and did not pursue those who killed others; some were stoned; some were burned alive; others were dragged through the middle of the marketplace until their entire bodies were consumed.'
'Of these deeds I know that the avenging Furies await me, and the spirits of vengeance already stand as if at the starting line, poised and thirsting for blood; and each day, or rather each hour, I die in anticipation many deaths, in place of the one final death.'
Often he was terrified and thrown into panic; a shudder shook his limbs and every part of his body, and fear left his soul trembling, shaken by gasping breath and violent palpitation, since he was deprived of the one thing that by nature can console a human life—good hope.
No favorable bird ever appeared to him. Every omen was ill-boding, every rumor turned back on him; his waking hours were full of toil, his sleep full of dread, his isolation like that of a wild beast. Yet was the company of a crowd the sweetest thing to him? No—his time spent in the city was most unpleasant. Was solitude in the country a safe refuge from disgrace? No, it was treacherous and merciless: whoever approached him quietly, even gently, was under suspicion.
‘Someone is plotting something against me,’ he would say, ‘whoever walks a little faster does not seem to be hurrying toward something else, but is pursuing me. The pleasant man lies in wait for me, the outspoken man despises me; food and drink are given to me as to cattle led to slaughter.’
‘How long, though I am made of iron, can I hold out against such great misfortunes? I know I am growing soft toward death, kept by the spite of some hostile power from cutting short my wretched life all at once, because of certain extremities of irreparable evils which, storing them up against me,’
‘it grants as a favor to those it has already treacherously murdered.’ Turning such thoughts over and writhing in anguish, he awaited in dread the end appointed by fate; and his continual pains stirred up and overturned his soul. But Gaius, being savage by nature and insatiable in his acts of vengeance, did not, as some do, let go of those he had once punished, but nursing an unending wrath, kept contriving some new disaster for them; and he hated Flaccus above all others, so that even men who merely shared his name he regarded with suspicion, alienated by the very sound of it.
And often remorse came over him, because he had condemned Flaccus to exile and not to death; and though he respected the man who had pleaded for him, he nevertheless blamed Lepidus for it, so that Lepidus gave up interceding, from fear of punishment to himself; for he was afraid, reasonably enough, that by becoming responsible for another man's lighter sentence he might himself incur a heavier one.
Since, then, no one any longer dared say anything in his defense, Gaius indulged an implacable and unchecked rage, which, instead of fading with time as it should have, grew sharper instead—like diseases in the body that relapse, for these are more severe than the first attack.
They say, then, that once, lying awake at night, he fell to thinking about the men of rank who had been exiled—men suspected in name only of being unfortunate, but who had in truth secured for themselves a life free of business, at peace, and truly free.
He even changed the name for it, calling it a sojourn abroad rather than exile; for a sojourn abroad, he said, was simply the removal of men who had abundant provisions and could live free of business, in tranquility and ease—and it was absurd for such men to enjoy the fruits of a philosophic life in the midst of peace.
Then he ordered that the most eminent of them, those held in greatest regard, be put to death. He issued a written list of names, at the head of which stood Flaccus. When the men charged to carry out the killings arrived at Andros, Flaccus happened to be coming in from the countryside toward the town, while they were approaching from the harbor, and from a distance each party caught sight of the other.
Sensing from this what they were hurrying to do—for every soul is highly prophetic, especially in times of misfortune—he turned off the road and fled at a run over rough ground, forgetting, perhaps, that this was an island and not the mainland, where what good is speed when the sea shuts you in on every side? Of necessity one of two things must happen: either, pressing further on, to be carried into the sea, or to be caught the moment he reached its very edge.
It was, then, comparing one evil with another, better to die on land than at sea, since nature has assigned the earth as the place most proper to human beings and to all land-dwelling creatures alike, not only while they live but also when they die, so that the same earth may receive both their first birth and the final dissolution of their life.
But his pursuers, running without pause, caught up with him; and some at once began digging a pit, while others dragged him by force as he resisted, shouting and struggling; and because of this his whole body was wounded all over, as he ran about exposed to their blows like a hunted animal.
For as he grappled with and clung to his killers, at one moment preventing them from bringing their swords to bear, and at another receiving slanting blows, he became responsible for graver injuries to himself; and cut through and hacked apart in hands, feet, head, chest, and ribs, so that he was butchered like a sacrificial victim, he lay there—since justice willed to inflict on a single body a number of deaths equal to the murders of the Jews who had been unlawfully put to death,
and the whole place ran with blood from the many veins that were severed piece by piece, pouring out in streams; and as the corpse was dragged into the pit that had been dug, most of its parts came apart, since the sinews that bound together the whole unity of the body had been torn through.
Such were the sufferings that Flaccus too endured—the truest proof that the nation of the Jews had not been deprived of help from God.