‘Give them an audience, Cæsar,’ said Poppæa, who was secretly addicted to Judaism, and had even been admitted as a proselyte of the gate. ‘Aliturus presented them to me at Puteoli. They are worth conciliating. This High Priest is so rich that his mother (I am told) once presented him with a tunic worth a hundred minæ, and he only deigned to wear it once. You know the prophecy of the astrologer, that you are to have an Oriental Empire, and perhaps to reign at Jerusalem.’
Nero consented, and Aliturus, who was always among his favourites, was ushered into his presence. The actor wore the ordinary dress of a wealthy Roman youth, but the two friends who accompanied him were in the costume of the East, with rich robes and silken turbans. The elder of the two was an old man, whose white beard flowed in waves over his breast, and whose sumptuous dress and haughty bearing accorded with the dignity, if not with the humility, of the High-Priesthood. The younger was a man not yet thirty years old, splendidly handsome and full of the genius of his race.
‘Welcome, Aliturus,’ said the Empress. ‘Cæsar, this is the venerable Ishmael ben Phabi, High Priest of the Jews, on whose ephod has hung the twelve-gemmed oracle, and who has worn the golden robes; and this is Josephus of Jerusalem, son of the Priest Matthias, a Priest, a Rabbi, and a soldier.’
The High Priest and the Rabbi bowed almost to the ground, and kissed the hand which Nero extended to them as he asked them on what business they had come to consult him.
‘Half of our task in Rome has failed,’ said the High Priest. ‘We came, commissioned by our nation to impeach Paulus of Tarsus, a ringleader of the Galileans, for a sedition which he stirred up in Jerusalem; but while our shipwreck detained us your clemency has acquitted the criminal. We came also to entreat the liberation of some of our priests who are here in prison, sent hither on frivolous charges by the Procurator Festus.’
‘I will intercede for them,’ said Poppæa. ‘Those Procurators of Judæa constantly maltreat an innocent and venerable people.’
‘The last Procurator is of your appointment, Poppæa,’ said the Emperor. ‘I only nominated Gessius Florus, because you are a friend of his wife Cleopatra.’
‘And he is the worst of them all,’ whispered Josephus to Aliturus. ‘He takes bribes from the bandits. He impales Jews who are knights and Roman citizens, and he would not desist, though Berenice went before his tribunal barefooted and with dishevelled hair.’
‘I have no doubt that Florus will be kinder than his predecessors,’ said Poppæa. ‘The others have stirred up against Rome the anger of the Jewish God.’
‘Who is that?’ asked Nero. ‘Is it Moses?’