of his departure. We recalled our schooldays together, and when nobody seemed to be listening I leant across and called him by his old nickname.
`Brigand,' I said quietly, 'I always expected you to be a, king, but if anyone had ever told me that I'd be your Emperor I'd have called him a madman.'
`Little Marmoset,' he replied in the same low tones. `You're a fool, as I've always told you. But you have fool's luck. And fool's luck holds. You'll be an Olympian God when I'm only a dead hero; yes, don't blush, for That's how it will be, though there's no question which of us two is the better man.'
It did me good to hear Herod speak in his old style again. For the last three months he had been addressing me in the most formal and distant way, never failing to call me Caesar Augustus and to express only the most profound admiration for my opinions, even if he. was often regretfully forced to disagree with them. `Little Marmoset' (Cercopithecion) was the playful nickname Athenodorus had given me. I now begged him that when he wrote to me from Palestine he would always enclose with his official letter, signed with all his new titles, an unofficial letter signed `The Brigand' and giving me his, private news. He agreed to this: on condition that I replied in the same vein, signing myself 'Cercopithecion'. As we shook hands on the bargain he looked me steadily in the eyes and said: `Marmoset, do you want a little more of my excellent knavish advice? I'll give it you absolutely free this time.'
`Please, dear Brigand, let me have it.'
`My advice to you, old fellow, is this: never trust anyone! Never trust your most grateful freedman, your most intimate friend, your dearest child, the wife of your bosom, or the ally joined to you by the most sacred oath. Trust yourself only. Or at least trust your fool's luck, if you can't honestly trust yourself.'
The earnestness of his tones penetrated the cheerful fumes of wine that were clouding my brain and roused my attention. `Why do you say that, Herod?'' I asked sharply. `Don't you trust your wife Cypros? Don't you trust your friend Silas? Don't you trust young Agrippa, your son? Don't you trust Thaumastus and your freedman Marsyas, who got you the money at Acre, and brought you food in prison? Don't you trust me, your ally? Why did you say that? Against whom are you putting me on my guard?'
Herod laughed stupidly. 'Don't pay any attention to me, Marmoset. I'm drunk, hopelessly drunk. I say: the most extraordinary things when I'm drunk. The man who made the proverb ‘There's truth in wine must have been pretty well soaked when he made it. Do you know, the other day at a banquet I said to my steward: 'Now look here, Thaumastus, I never want roasted sucking-pig stuffed with truffles and chestnuts, served at my table ever again. Do you hear?' 'Very good, your Majesty, he replied. Yet if there is one dish in the world which I really love beyond all others it is roasted sucking-pig stuffed with truffles and chestnuts. What was it I told you just now? Never to trust your allies? That was funny, eh? I forgot for the moment that you and I were allies.' So I let the remark go, but it came back to me the next day, as I stood at a window watching Herod's coach roll away in the direction of Brindisi: I wondered what he had meant, and felt uncomfortable.
Herod was not the only king at that farewell banquet. His brother Herod Pollio, of Chalcis, was there; and Antiochus, to whom I had restored the kingdom of Commagene, on the north-eastern border of Syria, which Caligula had taken away from him; and Mithridates, whom I' had now, made King of the Crimea; and, besides these, the King of Lesser Armenia and the King of Osroene, both of whom had been hanging about Caligula's court, thinking it safer to be at Rome than in their own kingdoms, where Caligula might suspect them of plotting against him. I sent them all back together.
It would be just as well to follow Herod's story a little farther and to bring the account of what happened at Alexandria to a more conclusive point before returning to write of events at Rome and giving an indication of what was happening on the Rhine, in Morocco, and on other-frontiers. Herod returned to Palestine, with more pomp and glory even than on the last occasion. On arrival at Jerusalem he took down from the Temple Treasury the iron chain which he had hung up there as a thank-offering and put in its place the golden one that Caligula had given him: now that Caligula was dead he could do this without offence. The High Priest, greeted- him most respectfully, but after the usual compliments had passed took, it upon himself to reprove Herod for having given his eldest daughter in marriage to his brother: no good, he said, would come of it. Herod was not the man to allow. himself to be dictated to by any ecclesiastic, however important or holy. He asked, the High Priest, whose name was Jonathan, whether or not he considered that he, King Agrippa, had done a good service to the, God of the Jews by dissuading Caligula from defiling the Temple and by persuading me to confirm the religious privileges of the Jews at Alexandria, and to grant similar privileges to Jews throughout the world. Jonathan replied that all this was well done. So Herod told him a little parable. A rich man one day; saw a beggar by the roadside, who cried out to him for alms and claimed to be a cousin. The rich man said: `I am sorry for you, beggar-man, and will do what I can fox you, since you are my cousin. To-morrow if you go to my bank you will find ten bags of gold waiting for you there, each containing two thousand gold pieces in coin of the realm.' `If you are speaking the truth,' the beggar said, `may God reward you!' The beggar went to the bank and, sure enough, the bags of gold were handed to him. How pleased he was and how grateful! But one of the beggar's own brothers, a priest, who had himself done nothing for him when he was in distress, came to call on the rich man the next day; `Do you call this a joke?' he asked indignantly. `You swore to give your poor cousin, twenty thousand gold pieces in coin of the realm, and deceived him into thinking that you had actually done so. Well, I came to help him count them, and do you know, in the very first bag I found a Parthian gold-piece;, masquerading as a real one! Can you pretend to believe that Parthian money passes current here? Is this an honest trick to play on a beggar?'
Jonathan was not abashed by the parable. He told Herod that the rich man had been foolish to spoil his gift by the inclusion of the Parthian coin,, if, indeed, he had deliberately done 'so. And he said, too, that Herod must not forget that the greatest kings were only instruments in the hands of God and were rewarded by Him in proportion to their devotion to His service.
'And His High Priests?' asked Herod.
His High Priests are sufficiently rewarded for their faithfulness to Him, which includes the rebuking of all, Jews who fail in their religious duty, by being allowed to put on the sacred vestments and once a year enter that marvellously holy chamber where He dwells apart in immeasurable Power and Glory.'
`Very well,' said Herod. `If I am an instrument in His hands, as you say, I hereby depose you. Someone else will wear the sacred vestments at the Passover Festival this year. It will be someone who knows the right times and seasons for uttering rebukes.'
So Jonathan was deposed and Herod appointed a successor, who also after a time offended Herod by protesting that it was not proper for the Master of Horse to be a Samaritan: a Jewish king should have only Jewish officers on his staff. The Samaritans were not of the seed of Father' Abraham, but interlopers. This Master of Horse was none other than Silas; and for Silas's sake Herod deposed the High Priest and offered the office to Jonathan again. Jonathan refused it, though with seeming gratitude, saying that he was content to have once put on the sacred vestments and that a second consecration to the High Priesthood could not be so holy a ceremony as, the first. If God had empowered Herod, to depose him, it must have been, a, punishment for his pride; and if now God was in a forgiving mood, he rejoiced, but would not risk a second offence. Might he therefore suggest that the High Priesthood be given to his brother Matthias as holy and God-fearing a man as was to be found in all Jerusalem? Herod consented.
Herod took up hisresidence. in
Jerusalem, in the part called Bezetha, or the blew City, which surprised me very much, for he now had several fine cities luxuriously built in the Graeco-Roman style, any one of which he could have made his capital. He visited all these cities from time to time in ceremonial style and treated the inhabitants with courtesy, but Jerusalem, he said, was the only city for a Jewish king to live and reign in. He made himself extremely popular with the inhabitants of Jerusalem not only by his gifts to the Temple and his beautification of the city but by his abolition of the house-tax, which diminished his revenues by 100,000 gold pieces annually. His total annual income, however, amounted even without, this to some 500,000 gold pieces. What surprised me still more was that he now worshipped daily in the Temple and kept the Law with great strictness: for I remembered. the contempt that I had often heard him express for `that holy psalm-singer' his, devout brother Aristobulus, and in the private letters that he now always enclosed in his official dispatches there was no sign of any moral change of heart. One letter that he sent me was almost all about Silas. It ran as follows
Marmoset, my old friend, I have the saddest and most comical story to tell you: it concerns Silas, the `faithful Achates' of your brigand `friend Herod Agrippa. Most learned Marmoset, from your rich store of out-of-the-way historical learning can you inform me whether your ancestor, the pious Aeneas, was ever as bored by the faithful
