When Vespasian entered Alexandria, he was met by the philosophers and magistrates in great pomp. The philosophers, indeed, in a city where, beside the officers of government, talent formed the only aristocracy, were a very important body; and Dion, Euphrates, and Apollonius had been useful in securing for Vespasian the allegiance of the Alexandrians. Dion was an orator, who had been professor of rhetoric, but he had given up that study for philosophy. His orations, or declamations, gained for him the name of Chrysostom, or golden-mouthed. Euphrates, his friend, was a platonist, who afterwards married the daughter of the prefect of Syria, and removed to Rome. Apollonius of Tyana, the most celebrated of these philosophers, was one of the first who gained his eminence from the study of Eastern philosophy, which was then rising in the opinions of the Greeks as highly worth their notice. He had been travelling in the East; and, boasting that he was already master of all the fabled wisdom of the Magi of Babylon and of the Gymnosophists of India, he was come to Egypt to compare this mystic philosophy with that of the hermits of Ethiopia and the Thebaid. Addressing himself as a pupil to the priests, he willingly yielded his belief to their mystic claims; and, whether from being deceived or as a deceiver, whether as an enthusiast or as a cheat, he pretended to have learned all the supernatural knowledge which they pretended to teach. By the Egyptians he was looked upon as the favourite of Heaven; he claimed the power of working miracles by his magical arts, and of foretelling events by his knowledge of astrology. In the Thebaid he was so far honoured that at the bidding of the priests one of the sacred trees spoke to him, as had been their custom from of old with favourites, and in a clear and rather womanly voice addressed him as a teacher from heaven.
It was to witness such practices as these, and to learn the art of deceiving their followers, that the Egyptian priests were now consulted by the Greeks. The oracle at Delphi was silent, but the oracle of Ammon continued to return an answer. The mystic philosophy of the East had come into fashion in Alexandria, and the priests were more celebrated as magicians than as philosophers. They would tell a man’s fortune and the year that he was to die by examining the lines of his forehead. Some of them even undertook, for a sum of money, to raise the dead to life, or, rather, to recall for a time to earth the unwilling spirits, and make them answer any questions that might be put to them. Ventriloquism was an art often practised in Egypt, and perhaps invented there. By this the priests gained a power over the minds of the listeners, and could make them believe that a tree, a statue, or a dead body, was speaking to them.
The Alexandrian men of letters seldom erred by wrapping themselves up in pride to avoid the fault of meanness; they usually cringed to the great. Apollonius was wholly at the service of Vespasian, and the emperor repaid the philosopher by flattery as well as by more solid favours. He kept him always by his side during his stay in Egypt; he acknowledged his rank as a prophet, and tried to make further use of him in persuading the Egyptians of his own divine right to the throne. Vespasian begged him to make use of his prayers that he might obtain from God the empire which he had as yet hardly grasped; but Apollonius, claiming even a higher mission from Heaven than Vespasian was granting to him, answered, with as much arrogance as flattery, “I have myself already made you emperor.” With the intimacy between Vespasian and Apollonius begins the use of gnostic emblems on the Alexandrian coins. The imperial pupil was not slow in learning from such a master; and the people were as ready to believe in the emperor’s miracles as in the philosopher’s. As Vespasian was walking through the streets of Alexandria, a man well known as having a disease in his eyes threw himself at his feet and begged of him to heal his blindness. He had been told by the god Serapis that he should regain his sight if the emperor would but deign to spit upon his eyelids. Another man, who had lost the use of a hand, had been told by the same god that he should be healed if the emperor would but trample on him with his feet. Vespasian at first laughed at them and thrust them off; but at last he so far yielded to their prayers, and to the flattery of his friends, as to have the physicians of Alexandria consulted whether it was in his power to heal these unfortunate men. The physicians, like good courtiers, were not so unwise as to think it impossible; besides, it seemed meant by the god as a public proof of Vespasian’s right to the throne; if he were successful the glory would be his, and if he failed the laugh would be against the cripples. The two men were therefore brought before him, and in the face of the assembled citizens he trampled on one and spit on the other; and his flatterers declared that he had healed the maimed and given sight to the blind.
Vespasian met with further wonders when he entered the temple of Serapis to consult the god as to the state and fortunes of the empire. He went into the inner sanctuary alone, and, to his surprise, there he beheld the old Basilides, the freedman of Claudius, one of the chief men of Alexandria, whom he knew was then lying dangerously ill, and several days’ journey from the city. He inquired of the priests whether Basilides had been in the temple, and was assured that he had not. He then asked whether he had been in Alexandria; but nobody had seen him there. Lastly, on sending messengers, he learned that he was on his death-bed eighty miles off. With this miracle before his eyes, he could not distrust the answers which the priests gave to his questions.
From Alexandria Vespasian sent back Titus to finish the siege of Jerusalem. The Jewish writer Joseph, the son of Matthias, or Flavius Josephus, as he called himself when he entered the service of the emperor, was then in Alexandria. He had been taken prisoner by Vespasian, but had gained his freedom by the betrayal of his country’s cause. He joined the army of Titus and marched to the overthrow of Jerusalem. Notwithstanding the obstinate and heroic struggles of the Jews, Judæa was wholly conquered by the Romans, and Jerusalem and its other fortresses either received Roman garrisons or were dismantled. The Temple was overthrown in the month of September, A.D. 70. Titus made slaves of ninety-seven thousand men, many of whom he led with him into Egypt, and then sent them to work in the mines. These were soon followed by a crowd of other brave Jews, who chose rather to quit their homes and live as wanderers in Egypt than to own Vespasian as their king. They knew no lord but Jahveh; to take the oaths or to pay tribute to Cæsar was to renounce the faith of their fathers. But they found no safety in Egypt. Their Greek brethren turned against them, and handed six hundred of them up to Lupus, the governor of Egypt, to be punished; and their countryman Josephus brands them all with the name of Sicarii. They tried to hide themselves in Thebes and other cities less under the eyes of the Roman governor. They were, however, followed and taken, and the courage with which the boys and mere children bore their sufferings, sooner than acknowledge Vespasian for their king, drew forth the praise of even the time-serving Josephus.
The Greek Jews of Egypt gained nothing by this treachery towards their Hebrew brethren; they were themselves looked down upon by the Alexandrians, and distrusted by the Romans. The emperor ordered Lupus to shut up the temple at Onion, near Heliopolis, in which, during the last three hundred years, they had been allowed to have an altar, in rivalry to the Temple of Jerusalem. Even Josephus, whose betrayal of his countrymen might have saved him from their enemies, was sent with many others in chains to Rome, and was only set free on his making himself known to Titus. Indeed, when the Hebrew Jews lost their capital and their rank as a nation, their brethren felt lowered in the eyes of their fellow-citizens, in whatever city they dwelt, and in Alexandria they lost all hope of keeping their privileges; although the emperor refused to repeal the edict which granted them their citizenship, an edict to which they always appealed for protection, but often with very little success.
The Alexandrians were sadly disappointed in Vespasian. They had been among the first to acknowledge him as emperor while his power was yet doubtful, and they looked for a sum of money as a largess; but to their sorrow he increased the taxes, and re-established some which had fallen into disuse. They had a joke against him, about his claiming from one of his friends the trifling debt of six oboli; and, upon hearing of their witticisms, he was so angry that he ordered this sum of six oboli to be levied as a poll-tax upon every man in the city, and he only remitted the tax at the request of his son Titus. He went to Rome, carrying with him the nickname of Cybiosactes, the scullion, which the Alexandrians gave him for his stinginess and greediness, and which they had before given to Seleucus, who robbed the tomb of Alexander the Great, at Alexandria, of its famous golden sarcophagus.
Titus saw the importance of pleasing the people; and his wish to humour their ancient prejudices, at the ceremony of consecrating a new bull as Apis, brought some blame upon him. He there, as became the occasion, wore the state crown, and dazzled the people of Memphis with his regal pomp; but, while thus endeavouring to strengthen his father’s throne, he was by some accused of grasping at it for himself.
The great temple of Kneph, at Latopolis, which had been the work of many reigns and perhaps many centuries, was finished under Vespasian. It is a building worthy of the best times of Egyptian architecture. It has a grand portico, upheld by four rows of massive columns, with capitals in the form of papyrus flowers. On the ceiling is a zodiac, like that at Tentyra; and, though many other kings’ names are carved on the walls, that of Vespasian is in the dedication over the entrance.
Of the reign of Titus in Egypt we find no trace beyond his coins struck each year at Alexandria, and his name carved on one or two temples which had been built in former reigns.