‘Moses,’ said Ishmael, ‘was a great law-giver, to whom was granted more than human wisdom; but we worship not a mortal man. Our God is He who made heaven and earth.’
‘Anchialus?’ asked Nero.[94]
‘Anchialus is some gentile scoff which I understand not,’ said the High Priest, with dignity.
Nero whispered to Poppæa a line of Lucan’s:—
‘Judæa, votaress of a dubious God.’
‘Suffer me to answer,’ said Josephus; ‘and as the Emperor is learned in Greek I will answer in the line of an oracle given by the Clarian Apollo himself:—
‘“Deem that the God Supreme, the Lord of Lords, is IAO”’[95]
‘And do you mean to say that this God of yours—Iaô, as you call him—can injure Rome?’
‘He punishes all who insult His majesty,’ answered the young Rabbi, ‘and He blesses those that honour Him. Cæsar, in his wisdom, knows how Pompeius burst into our Holy of Holies, and found that we did not worship, as men lyingly said, the image of an ass, but that the shrine was dark and empty. But from that time forth, Pompeius was overwhelmed in that sea of ruin which flung him, a headless corpse, on the shore of Alexandria. Heliodorus, the treasurer of Seleucus Philopator, was scourged out of our Holiest by a vision of angels. But Alexander the Great bowed before our High Priest Iaddua, and God gave him unexampled victories. And Julius, your mighty ancestor, was dear to our race, and he prospered through our prayers.’
‘Yea,’ said the High Priest, ‘and when the Cæsar Gaius would have profaned our Temple with a statue of himself, our God smote him with madness, and ere a year was over the dagger reached his heart.’