‘A new god has recently been added to their number,’ said Seneca, ‘the divine Claudius.’
‘Yes,’ said Gallio, significantly; ‘he has been dragged to heaven with a hook! But you have not let me finish my story. It appears that this Paulus was a tent-maker, and for some reason or other, in spite of his absurd beliefs, he had gained the confidence of Erastus, the city chamberlain, and of a great many Greeks; for, strange to say, he had—so I am told—preached a very remarkable and original code of ethics. It is almost inconceivable that a man can hold insane doctrines, and yet conform to a lofty morality. Yet such seems to have been the case with this strange person. I looked at him with curiosity. He was dressed in the common Eastern costume of the Jews, wearing a turban and a coarse striped robe flung over his tunic. He was short, and had the aquiline nose and general type of Judaic features. But though his eyes were sadly disfigured by ophthalmia, there was something extraordinary about his look. You know how those Jews can yell when once their Eastern stolidity is roused to fury. Even in Rome we have had some experience of that; and you remember how Cicero was once almost terrified out of recollection of his speech by the clamour they made, and had to speak in a whisper that they might not hear what he said. To stand in the midst of a mob of such dirty, wildly gesticulating creatures, shouting, cursing, waving their garments in the air, flinging up handfuls of dust, is enough to terrify even a Roman. I, as you know, am a tolerably cool personage, yet I was half appalled, and had to assume a disdainful indifference which I was far from feeling. But this man stood there unmoved. If he had been a Regulus or a Fabricius he could not have been more undaunted, as he looked on his infuriated persecutors with a glance of pitying forgiveness. Every now and then he made a conciliatory gesture, and tried to speak; but though he spoke in Hebrew, which usually pacifies these fanatics to silence, they would not listen to him for an instant. But the perfect dignity, the nobleness of attitude and aspect, with which that worn little Jew stood there, filled me with admiration. And his face! that of Pætus Thrasea is not more striking. The spirit of virtue and purity, and something more which I cannot describe, seemed to breathe from it. It is an odd fact, but those Jews seem to produce not only the ugliest and the handsomest, but also the best and worst of mankind. I sat quiet in my curule chair, and let the Jews yell, telling them once more that, as no civil crime was charged against Paulus, I refused to be a judge in matters of their superstition. At last, getting tired, I ordered the lictors to clear the prætorium, which they did with infinite delight, driving the yelling Jews before them like chaff, and not sparing the blows of their fasces. I thought I had done with the matter then; but not at all! It was the turn of the Greeks now. They resented the fact that the Jews should be allowed to make a riot, and they sided with Paulus. He was hurried by his friends into a place of safety; but the Greeks seized the head of the Jewish Synagogue—a fellow named Sosthenes—and administered to him a sound beating underneath my very tribunal.’
‘Did you not interfere?’ asked Seneca.
‘Not I,’ said Gallio. ‘On the contrary, I nearly died with laughing. What did it matter to a Roman and a philosopher like me whether a rabble of idle Greeks, most of them the scum of the Forum, beat any number of Jews black and blue? It is what we shall have to do to the whole race before long. But, somehow, the face of that Paulus haunted me. They tell me that he was educated at Tarsus, and he was evidently a man of culture. I wanted to get at him, and have a talk with him. I heard that he had been lodging in a squalid lane of the city with a Jewish tent-maker named Aquila, who was driven from Rome by the futile edict of Claudius. But my lictor either could not or would not find out the obscure haunt where he hid himself. The Christians were chary of information, and perhaps, after all, it was as well not to demean myself by talking to a ringleader of a sect whom all men detest for their enormities.If report says true, the old Bacchanalians, whose gang was broken up two hundred years ago, were nothing to them.’[6]
‘I have heard their name,’ said Seneca. ‘Our slaves probably know a good deal more about the matter than we do, if one took the trouble to ask them. But unless they stir up a riot at Rome I shall not trouble the Emperor by mentioning them.’
At this point of the conversation a slave announced that Seneca’s other brother, the knight Marcus Annæus Mela, and his son Lucan, were waiting in the atrium.
‘Admit them,’ said Seneca. ‘Ah, brother, and you, my Lucan, perhaps it would have been a better thing for us all if we had never left our sunny Cordova.’
‘I don’t know that,’ said Mela. ‘I prefer to be at Rome, a senator in rank, though I choose the station of a knight. To be procurator of the imperial demesnes is more lucrative, as well as more interesting, than looking after our father’s estates in Spain.’
‘What does the poet say?’ asked Gallio, turning to the young Spaniard, a splendid youth of seventeen, whose earlier poems had already been received with unbounded applause, and whose dark eyes glowed with the light of genius and passion. ‘Is he content to stand only second as a poet—if second—to Silius Italicus, and Cæsius Bassus, and young Persius?’
‘Well,’ said Lucan, ‘perhaps a man might equal Silius without any superhuman merit. Persius, like myself, is still young, but I would give up any skill of mine for his delightful character. And, as for Rome, if to be a constant guest at Nero’s table and to hear him read by the hour his own bad poetry be a thing worth living for, then I am better off at Rome than at Cordova.’