by Daisy Dunn
With these words he was about to surrender to Nicanor. But when the Jews who shared his retreat understood that Josephus was yielding to entreaty, they came round him in a body, crying out, “Ah! well might the laws of our fathers groan aloud and God Himself hide His face for grief—God who implanted in Jewish breasts souls that scorn death! Is life so dear to you, Josephus, that you can endure to see the light in slavery? How soon have you forgotten yourself! How many have you persuaded to die for liberty! False, then, was that reputation for bravery, false that fame for sagacity, if you can hope for pardon from those whom you have fought so bitterly, or, supposing that they grant it, can deign to accept your life at their hands. Nay, if the fortune of the Romans has cast over you some strange forgetfulness of yourself, the care of our country’s honour devolves on us. We will lend you a right hand and a sword. If you meet death willingly, you will have died as general of the Jews; if unwillingly, as a traitor.” With these words they pointed their swords at him and threatened to kill him if he surrendered to the Romans.
Josephus, fearing an assault, and holding that it would be a betrayal of God’s commands, should he die before delivering his message, proceeded, in this emergency, to reason philosophically with them.
“Why, comrades,” said he, “this thirst for our own blood? Why set asunder such fond companions as soul and body? One says that I am changed: well, the Romans know the truth about that. Another says, ‘It is honourable to die in war’: yes, but according to the law of war, that is to say by the hand of the conqueror. Were I now flinching from the sword of the Romans, I should assuredly deserve to perish by my own sword and my own hand; but if they are moved to spare an enemy, how much stronger reason have we to spare ourselves? It would surely be folly to inflict on ourselves treatment which we seek to avoid by our quarrel with them. ‘It is honourable to die for liberty,’ says another: I concur, but on condition that one dies fighting, by the hands of those who would rob us of it. But now they are neither coming to fight us nor to take our lives. It is equally cowardly not to wish to die when one ought to do so, and to wish to die when one ought not. What is it we fear that prevents us from surrendering to the Romans? Is it not death? And shall we then inflict upon ourselves certain death, to avoid an uncertain death, which we fear, at the hands of our foes? ‘No, it is slavery we fear,’ I shall be told. Much liberty we enjoy at present! ‘It is noble to destroy oneself,’ another will say. Not so, I retort, but most ignoble; in my opinion there could be no more arrant coward than the pilot who, for fear of a tempest, deliberately sinks his ship before the storm.
“No; suicide is alike repugnant to that nature which all creatures share, and an act of impiety towards God who created us. Among the animals there is not one that deliberately seeks death or kills itself; so firmly rooted in all is nature’s law—the will to live. That is why we account as enemies those who would openly take our lives and punish as assassins those who clandestinely attempt to do so. And God—think you not that He is indignant when man treats His gift with scorn? For it is from Him that we have received our being, and it is to Him that we should leave the decision to take it away. All of us, it is true, have mortal bodies, composed of perishable matter, but the soul lives for ever, immortal: it is a portion of the Deity housed in our bodies. If, then, one who makes away with or misapplies a deposit entrusted to him by a fellow-man is reckoned a perjured villain, how can he who casts out from his own body the deposit which God has placed there, hope to elude Him whom he has thus wronged? It is considered right to punish a fugitive slave, even though the master he leaves be a scoundrel; and shall we fly from the best of masters, from God Himself, and not be deemed impious? Know you not that they who depart this life in accordance with the law of nature and repay the loan which they received from God, when He who lent is pleased to reclaim it, win eternal renown; that their houses and families are secure; that their souls, remaining spotless and obedient, are allotted the most holy place in heaven, whence, in the revolution of the ages, they return to find in chaste bodies a new habitation? But as for those who have laid mad hands upon themselves, the darker regions of the nether world receive their souls, and God, their father, visits upon their posterity the outrageous acts of the parents. That is why this crime, so hateful to God, is punished also by the sagest of legislators. With us it is ordained that the body of a suicide should be exposed unburied until sunset, although it is thought right to bury even our enemies slain in war. In other nations the law requires that a suicide’s right hand, with which he made war on himself, should be cut off, holding that, as the body was unnaturally severed from the soul, so the hand should be severed from the body.
“We shall do well then, comrades, to listen to reason and not to add to our human calamities the crime of impiety towards our creator. If our lives are offered us, let us live: there is nothing dishonourable in accepting this offer from those who have had so many proofs of our valour; if they think fit to kill us, death at the hands of our conquerors is honourable. But, for my part, I shall never pass over to the enemy’s ranks, to prove a traitor to myself; I should indeed then be far more senseless than deserters who go over to the enemy for safety, whereas I should be going to destruction—my own destruction. I pray, however, that the Romans may prove faithless; if, after pledging their word, they put me to death, I shall die content, for I shall carry with me the consolation, better than a victory, that their triumph has been sullied by perjury.”
By these and many similar arguments Josephus sought to deter his companions from suicide. But desperation stopped their ears, for they had long since devoted themselves to death; they were, therefore, infuriated at him, and ran at him from this side and that, sword in hand, upbraiding him as a coward, each one seeming on the point of striking him. But he, addressing one by name, fixing his general’s eye of command upon another, clasping the hand of a third, shaming a fourth by entreaty, and torn by all manner of emotions at this critical moment, succeeded in warding off from his throat the blades of all, turning like a wild beast surrounded by the hunters to face his successive assailants. Even in his extremity, they still held their general in reverence; their hands were powerless, their swords glanced aside, and many, in the act of thrusting at him, spontaneously dropped their weapons.
But, in his straits, his resource did not forsake him. Trusting to God’s protection, he put his life to the hazard, and said: “Since we are resolved to die, come, let us leave the lot to decide the order in which we are to kill ourselves; let him who draws the first lot fall by the hand of him who comes next; fortune will thus take her course through the whole number, and we shall be spared from taking our lives with our own hands. For it would be unjust that, when the rest were gone, any should repent and escape.” This proposal inspired confidence; his advice was taken, and he drew lots with the rest. Each man thus selected presented his throat to his neighbour, in the assurance that his general was forthwith to share his fate; for sweeter to them than life was the thought of death with Josephus. He, however (should one say by fortune or by the providence of God?), was left alone with one other; and, anxious neither to be condemned by the lot nor, should he be left to the last, to stain his hand with the blood of a fellow-countryman, he persuaded this man also, under a pledge, to remain alive.
Having thus survived both the war with the Romans and that with his own friends, Josephus was brought by Nicanor into Vespasian’s presence. The Romans all flocked to see him, and from the multitude crowding around the general arose a hubbub of discordant voices: some exulting at his capture, some threatening, some pushing forward to obtain a nearer view. The more distant spectators clamoured for the punishment of their enemy, but those close beside him recalled his exploits and marvelled at such a reversal of fortune. Of the officers there was not one who, whatever his past resentment, did not then relent at the sight of him. Titus in particular was specially touched by the fortitude of Josephus under misfortunes and by pity for his youth. As he recalled the combatant of ye
sterday and saw him now a prisoner in his enemy’s hands, he was led to reflect on the power of fortune, the quick vicissitudes of war, and the general instability of human affairs. So he brought over many Romans at the time to share his compassion for Josephus, and his pleading with his father was the main influence in saving the prisoner’s life. Vespasian, however, ordered him to be guarded with every precaution, intending shortly to send him to Nero.
On hearing this, Josephus expressed a desire for a private interview with him. Vespasian having ordered all to withdraw except his son Titus and two of his friends, the prisoner thus addressed him: “You imagine, Vespasian, that in the person of Josephus you have taken a mere captive; but I come to you as a messenger of greater destinies. Had I not been sent on this errand by God, I knew the law of the Jews and how it becomes a general to die. To Nero do you send me? Why then? Think you that [Nero and] those who before your accession succeed him will continue? You will be Caesar, Vespasian, you will be emperor, you and your son here. Bind me then yet more securely in chains and keep me for yourself; for you, Caesar, are master not of me only, but of land and sea and the whole human race.”
As Josephus predicted, Vespasian become emperor, ruling from AD 69 to 79, and was succeeded by his son Titus, who was succeeded in turn by his brother Domitian. Freed by Vespasian, Josephus became a Roman citizen and lived out the rest of his life in Rome, where he wrote The Jewish War and other works of Jewish history.
THE COLOSSAL TURBOT
Satires, IV
Juvenal
Translated by William Gifford, 1817; revised by John Warrington, 1954
Juvenal was one of the great satirists of ancient Rome. He flourished in the troubled times of Emperor Domitian (ruled AD 81–96), the ‘last Flavian’ and ‘bald-pate Nero’, who exiled him to the Egyptian desert after he made a particularly mocking reference. The AD 80s and 90s were fraught with anxieties. Political informers flourished until Domitian was assassinated in AD 96. Juvenal jests about Domitian’s hair loss in this satire about a very expensive fish. The shady but wealthy Crispinus, a member of Domitian’s staff, crops up in several of Juvenal’s satires.
When the last Flavian, drunk with fury, tore
The prostrate world, which bled at every pore,
And Rome beheld, in body as in mind,
A bald-pate Nero rise, to curse mankind,
It chanced that where the fane of Venus stands,
Reared on Ancona’s coast by Grecian hands,
A turbot in the Adriatic main
Filled the wide bosom of the bursting seine.
Monsters so bulky from its frozen stream
Maeotis renders to the solar beam,
And pours them, fat with a whole winter’s ease,
Through the bleak Euxine into warmer seas.
The mighty draught the astonished boatman eyes,
And to the Pontiff’s table dooms his prize.
For who would dare to sell it, who to buy,
When the coast swarmed with many a practised spy—
Beachcombers, prompt to swear the fish had fled
From Caesar’s ponds wherein it erstwhile fed;
And, thus recaptured, claimed to be restored
To the dominion of its ancient lord?
Nay, if Palfurius may our credit gain,
Whatever rare or precious swims the main
Is forfeit to the Crown. Our boatman chose
To give what, else, he had not failed to lose.
Now were the dog-star’s sickly fervours o’er;
Earth, pinched with cold, her frozen livery wore;
The sick of quartan fevers ’gan to speak,
And fiercely blew the blasts of winter bleak,
Keeping the turbot fresh. The boatman flew
As if the sultry South corruption blew;
And now the lake, and now the hill he gains,
Where Alba, though in ruins, still maintains
The Trojan fire which, but for her, were lost,
And worships Vesta, though with less of cost.
The wondering crowd, that gathered to survey
The enormous fish and barred the fisher’s way,
Satiate at length retires; the gates unfold;
Murmuring, the excluded senators behold
The envied dainty enter. On the man
To ‘great Atrides’ pressed, and thus began:
‘This, for a private table far too great,
Accept. The day as festive celebrate.
Make haste to load your stomach and devour
A turbot destined for this happy hour.
I sought him not: he marked the toils I set,
And rushed, a willing victim, to my net.’
Was flattery e’er so rank? Yet He grows vain,
And his crest rises at the fulsome strain.
When to divine a mortal power we raise,
He credits all hyperboles of praise.
But when was joy unmixed? No dish is found
Capacious of the turbot’s ample round!
In this distress he calls the chiefs of state,
At once the objects of his scorn and hate,
In whose pale cheeks distrust and doubt appear,
And all a tyrant’s friendship breeds of fear.
Scarce was the loud Ligurian heard to say:
‘He sits, ’ere Pegasus was on his way;
Yes, the new bailiff of the affrighted town
(For what are Prefects more?) had snatched his gown
And rushed to council. From the ivory chair
He dealt out justice with no common care,
But yielded oft to those licentious times
And, when he could not punish, winked at crimes.
Then old, facetious Crispus tripped along,
Of gentle manners and persuasive tongue:
None fitter to advise the lord of all,
Had that pernicious pest, whom thus we call,
Allowed a friend to soothe his savage mood,
And give him counsel, wise at once and good.
But who shall dare this liberty to take
When, every word you hazard, life’s at stake,
Though but of stormy summers, showery springs?
For tyrants’ ears, alas! are ticklish things.
So did the good old man his tongue restrain,
Nor strove to stem the torrent’s force in vain.
Not one of those who, by no fears deterred,
Spoke the free soul and truth to life preferred,
He temporized. Thus fourscore summers fled,
Even in that court, securely o’er his head.
Next him appeared Acilius hurrying on,
Of equal age, and followed by his son
Who fell, unjustly fell, in early years,
A victim to the tyrant’s jealous fears.
But long ere this were hoary hairs become
A prodigy among the great at Rome:
Hence I would rather owe my humble birth,
Frail brother of the giant brood, to Earth.
Poor youth! in vain the ancient sleight you try;
In vain, with frantic air and ardent eye,
Fling every robe aside and battle wage
With Numidian bears upon the Alban stage:
All see the trick, and, spite of Brutus’ skill,
There are who count him but a trifler still;
For in his day it cost no mighty pains
To gull a prince with much more beard than brains.
Rubrius, though not, like thee, of noble race,
Followed with equal terror in his face;
And, labouring with a crime too foul to name,
More than the pathic satirist lost to shame.
Montanus’ belly next, and next appeared
The legs on which his monstrous pile was reared.
Crispinus followed, daubed with more perfume,
Thus early, than two funerals would consume;
Then bloodier Pompey,
1 practised to betray,
And quietly whisper noble lives away.
Fuscus,2 an arm-chair strategist, is there,
Whose corpse the Dacian vultures wait to tear.
Last, shy Veiento with Catullus3 came,
Deadly Catullus, who, at beauty’s name,
Took fire, although unseen: a wretch whose crimes
Struck with amaze e’en these prodigious times;
A base, blind parasite, a murderous lord,
Raised from the bridge-end to the council-board;
Yet fitter still to dog the travellers’ heels
And whine for alms to the descending wheels,
To blow soft kisses to the cars until
They reach the foot of steep Aricia’s hill.
None dwelt so largely on the turbot’s size,
Or raised with such applause his wondering eyes;
But to the left (Oh, treacherous want of sight!)
He poured his praise—the fish was on the right!
Thus would he in the amphitheatre sit
And shout with rapture at some fancied hit;
And thus applaud the stage machinery; where
The youths are rapt aloft and lost in air.
Nor fell Veiento short. As if possessed
With all Bellona’s rage, his labouring breast
Burst forth in prophecy: ‘O Prince, I see
The omens of some glorious victory!
Some monarch taken prisoner of war:
Arviragus hurled from his British car!
The beast’s a foreigner: there is no lack
Of prickles bristling all along his back.’
Proceed, Fabricius, and what remains untold
(The turbot’s age and birth-place) next unfold.
The emperor now the important question put:
‘How say ye, Fathers? Shall the fish be cut?’
‘Oh, far be that disgrace,’ Montanus cries;
‘No, let a dish be formed of amplest size,
Within whose slender sides the fish, dread sire,
May spread his vast circumference entire.
The matter’s urgent; someone is required—
Prometheus—to see the oven’s fired.
Bring, bring the tempered clay, and let it feel