‘How goes the world in Jerusalem?’ asked Vespasian. ‘The question is very interesting to an old soldier like me. We constantly hear of risings there. I am told that affairs are getting desperate, and who knows but what the Emperor may some day despatch me thither at the head of a legion?’
‘Nothing is more likely,’ said Julius.
‘Unless you snore while the Emperor is singing, father, as you did at Subiaco,’ said Titus, laughing, as did all the guests.
‘Impudent boy!’ said Vespasian, joining in the laugh. ‘Let Julius go on.’
Julius told them that ever since the days when Pontius Pilatus had half maddened the Jews by bringing the Roman ensigns into Jerusalem, and Caligula had reduced them to stupefaction by proposing to set up his own image in their Temple, they had been on the verge of sedition.
‘Felix,’ he added, ‘only got off their impeachment by the influence of his brother, Pallas. Festus had hard work with their bandits. At present they are raging in a first-rate quarrel with young King Agrippa.’
He proceeded to tell them how Agrippa, for the delectation of his friends, had built a dining-room at the top of his Palace, so that his guests as they lay at the banquet could enjoy the highly curious spectacle of all that was going on in the Temple precincts. Indignant at this encroachment, the Jews built up a blank wall of such a height as not only to exclude the view from the Asmonæan Palace of Agrippa, but also to shut out the surveillance of the Roman soldiers in the tower Antonia. Agrippa was furious, and Festus ordered them to demolish the wall. But they said that they would die rather than consent to do this. They appealed to Nero, and Festus allowed them to send their High Priest, Ishmael ben Phabi, with nine others, to plead their cause with the Emperor.
‘I suspect that this deputation was on board the vessel whose shipwreck I mentioned,’ said Julius.
‘Will this appeal be successful?’ asked Vespasian.
‘I believe it will,’ answered the centurion; ‘for Poppæa is very favourable to the Jews.’