The Memoirs of Herod Agrippa II

Chapter TWO - The Chest

Chapter TWO - The Chest

In the depths of darkness made emphatic by the light of candles I have my waking dreams. The candle-tree casts glimmering circles round me in the dark and in this yellow light nothing has the strength and certainty of daytime. Instead it twists and flickers in the draughts made in the dark night air beyond it. The present shifts and wavers. Parchment, pen, the hand that holds it, hover and change shape. The mind likewise, grasping for an anchor in the cool night air, drifts backward claiming its inheritance.

The daylight of the past takes strength from this mystery of night and the present it inhabits. It emerges, forms itself into landscapes which become reality. The past fades and returns, shimmers and dies, recalls itself in the haze of a hundred mirages. The mind plays tricks. The candles smoke and flutter and finally a picture, always with the threat of vanishing, plays into life in the eye of the mind. It is an epic, full of the clash of armour and the din of battle, full of the subtle whisper of intrigue, of blood on dungeon walls and the silent dagger in the night, full of the pomp of power, the pillars of marble and of gold and great crowds and armies. Full also of the names that made history: of Caesar, Pompeius, Brutus, Cassius, Marcus Antonius and his Cleopatra, of Antipas and Herod now called the Great and of Agrippa my father. Full of the names of the masters of the Roman world; of Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and Nero and of the men and women around them. It is a story full of the height of the power of Rome and the fatal seeds of its fall, the ambitions of Juda and its collapse into ruins. It is a story worth the telling, a story told already but in wreathes of lies and self-serving. More of that.

The night is growing cold. The desert air has reached the palace and climbed its walls with stealth. The darkness is a little deeper. The candles give an extra splutter as the cold draught reaches them. Their movement gives me warning and I feel the cold. An extra cloak will do the trick. I have lived through the ages of man, through the age of action into the age of contemplation, and I should know them well enough by now; contemplation and action. The Jews already had their God and contemplated how best to act in service of him, the Greek sought out his god through contemplation in the hope of discovering how best to act. Action for both was service to ideals and such a service brooks no opposition. Facing each other, daggers were soon drawn and one ideal destroyed the other in a raucous cry of blood and horror which I was doomed to witness. This was the tragedy of the Herods, decreed by fate to stand astride such hates at such a time.

I speak of ideals in such a context. Ideals are for the schools and synagogues. The world ignores them or debases them. What did the Romans know of the ideals of Greece or the mad sicarii of the ideals of their rabbis? Fanatics never know and never question the subtle aura of the mind's inner workings. Ideals like theirs dare not admit a doubt to stand between them and their goals. There is no doubt in a Roman arch or column. It bears the great weight of a certainty which the lithe and sinewy temples of the Greeks never displayed and which our architects now can never recapture, pay them as we will. The solemn pomp of the Roman builders is a desecration of beauty as the daggers of the zealots are a desecration of God.

The patrimony of the Romans is in provincial Italy. They claim descent from the heroes of Troy, from Hector and Aeneas, but the great grandfather of the Roman tribes was no hero but a she-wolf who suckled the twin founders of the city only to look on as brother slaughtered brother. Cain killed Abel and has been vilified in Jewish thought down the ages. Romulus, whose very name is Rome, likewise killed his brother but has been worshipped by Romans ever since. Ashamed of this, they claim descent from Greece through Alexander, conqueror of the world, forgetting that Alexander was hardly Greek himself but the ruler of the tribe of Macedon whom the Greeks looked down on as savages. Rome is twice removed from the glory of Greek thought which was first destroyed by Alexander and his armies and then incorporated into Rome in a second wave of conquest. In the end Socrates was wrong and Thrasymachus right. Justice is power and operates in the interests of the stronger party, and Roman justice now holds sway over the world. Rome put on the civilisation of Greece like a coat, to cover its nakedness, and we who rule in the name of Rome do likewise. In the depths of the night and after a lifetime of obedience I may in secret put it down on paper, a tiny, very private act of rebellion to be hidden in a hole in the wall before I die and never seen again, but in the daylight where we can be seen, we are all Romans now.

I am a Roman and a speaker of Latin. I was brought up in the Roman schools in the capital of the empire. Tacitus and Virgil are my masters. I rule here in the name of Rome over tetrarchies and toparchies filled with Roman men and women. I am also a Jew and a speaker of Hebrew. Isaiah and Jeremiah are my masters. I am obedient to the laws of God in every detail and in my tetrarchies and toparchies live Jewish men and women. I am of both and neither. I am an Idumaean, Jewish but Roman by adoption. I have a foot in each camp. Like my father, Agrippa, and my great-grandfather Herod and even my great-great-grandfather Antipater, I owe allegiance to both sides of the great divide. My story is the story of a century of compromise and conflict, of friendships and murders, of gold and battles and false messiahs. The dead will come to life and briefly tread the world again in the ink marks made by an old man. This history has been written in time and blood and my words will never change it. I doubt they will be read. But in this parchment I will set to rest the judgement of my life before the hand that writes it is laid to rest in the earth. I began this story at the end, thinking of illness and physicians in the loneliness of the dark. Now I must return across the years and, like the mason with a house, start putting brick on brick at the foundations.

Not many mementos from those times but what remains is decaying in the trunks I still have with me. They sit in the far corner of the room bound in iron like little tombs. Inside are the remains of memories waiting for the day of judgement. One among them is secured with a lock that lies heavy in the hand but which any thief could pick in a moment. You don't have to lift it at the corners to know its weight which is the weight of the past, a past out of which I grew and of which I am a part. Its momentos and papers are heavy with my history.

Now I place the old key in the lock. History left to itself soon grows rusty and it needs a good strong twist of the wrist to turn and release. Inside are Alexander's seal, stolen by the rogue, Ptolomy, at his death-bed and given to me by the Alabach. Here is a letter sent from the procurator Felix to his brother Pallas in Rome soon after the accession of Nero as emperor, its wax cracked and its ink brown. Here also is the sword of Apollonius, the leader of the Syrians. Judas Maccabaeus wrenched it from him in his first battle and turned it on its owner. He carried it with him from the skirmish and used in all his future battles. It has a gilded hilt and its blade is etched with dragons. On my desk I have old Nicolaus' diary which he kept during his service with my great-grandfather. It is not easy to read and is bound in sheets under a cover of pig's leather which is a comment of sorts in itself. And wrapped in a cotton pouch a bronze coin of ten drachmae pitted with water, the figure of a face smelted onto the surface. This was minted by Antipas and never saw the light of day. It is the earliest likeness of my family that I have seen. I begged it of a traveller who held it as a talisman on a chain around his neck. Also here are letters patent under the seals of four emperors, grants of land and tithes, summonses to appear in Rome, warrants of execution, some a century or more in age. Also more private correspondence, a whole bundle from Claudius to my father shut up in a little box of cederwood which I was told once contained the poison which might have killed Pheroras. The long letter written from my father to Caligula begging him not to place a statue of himself as a god in the temple; a letter that saved many lives. I had it from the archive. I have also a more recent small book of texts copied by a scribe of Manasseh on the history of the Maccabees and given me with a dedication. All this and more.

Now I must set free all these memories, all these hints that are dead leaves blowing around on the surface of a story which I have to tell. It starts far back in the deserts of Arabia Felix and along the spice trails that lead beyond to the distant east. Its earlier moments hover in the mists of a past of which there remains only the outlines of occasional flashes of lightning that stand out down the years. But let it start where the distant strands of the threads of the story begin to ravel together, before the story even becomes a story.

I do hope you enjoyed this first chapter. More below. Votes and comments always most welcome.