Gaius felt a terrible weight removed from his shoulders. He almost ran from his tent and without arranging for any of the usual detachment of guards he mounted his horse and rode quickly towards Jerusalem.
When he gave the news to Jonathon, the outcome deflated him; the priest merely grunted, and turned away. That the deaths of thousands had been averted seemed barely worth another thought!
Accordingly it was an annoyed Gaius who returned to his camp. There was a large message from Rome, this one bearing Claudius' seal. Gaius opened it. According to Claudius, Little Boots was behaving even more erratically than usual. The Temple issue had been resolved, but possibly more through sheer luck than anything else. Philo and his party had arrived, but so had a deputation from Alexandria who were there to argue against the Jews. Then came his letter about Gods. Whatever he put in it, Claudius noted, it seemed to satisfy Little Boots, for he became almost reasonable. Accordingly he, Claudius, quickly arranged for the parties to see Little Boots. The meeting had the usual bizarre aspects.
Philo had begun his well-prepared speech when Gaius Caesar cut him short, and asked whether this was a prelude to a request about the Jewish Temple. When told yes, Little Boots shrugged, turned to one of the Jewish leaders and muttered something about, 'How could he have guessed if he were not divine?' The Jews shuddered, the Alexandrians made some vile comments about Jews, and Caesar sat there smirking. Suddenly, he leaned forward, pointed at the Jews, and with a slight grin said, 'What are you? God-haters? Men who deny my divinity?'
One of the Alexandrians, Isadorus, immediately leaped into the fray. 'Lord Caesar, still more and more justly will you hate them when you learn that of all man-kind, these Jews refused to sacrifice for your safety!'
A Jew leaped forward. 'Lord Caesar, we have sacrificed for you, and we fed not on the flesh of our victims, but made holocaust of them, not once but thrice. Firstly, when you became Princeps, secondly when you were restored from disease, and thirdly for your success against the Germans. .'
Little Boots nodded sternly, then suddenly said, 'Ye sacrificed for me, but not to me!'
The Jews fell back in terror as the implications struck them. They could deny their one God, or they could deny Caesar. The Alexandrians goaded them, while Caesar simply smiled sadly at them. Suddenly, he leaped to his feet, rushed across the palace room, and muttered something about a drape not looking right. He adjusted it, asked what the parties who had followed him thought about it, and as the sycophants began making comments about Caesar's undoubted eye for beauty, he charged up the stairs to adjust another drape. Then, back down, and another drape. Then back to the first, and returned it to where it had originally been, and asked them what they thought about that. Nobody dared reply.
Then Caesar turned on the Jews. 'Why do you not eat pork?' The Alexandrians laughed at this, but suddenly fell silent when Caesar turned towards them, a furious expression on his face. The Jewish leader explained that each people had its special customs. Some even refrain from eating lamb.
'Quite right,' Little Boots snorted. 'Their meat is terrible.' He then lurched into a speech about public policy, but then, when he must have decided that nobody was really interested, he stopped and dashed off to adjust another drape on a balcony. The parties followed. Then he turned to nobody in particular, shrugged, and said sadly, 'Men who think me no god are more unfortunate than criminal.'
'Lord Caesar, the statue?' Isadorus asked.
Little Boots waved him away, saying, 'If they prefer to worship someone other than me, it's their loss.' The scribes quickly transferred this permission to remove the statue to parchment, and Little Boots signed without even querying it.
Then, for the rest of the day, Little Boots behaved almost like Augustus, being fair, wise, and hard working. If the Jewish religion could make that happen, Claudius noted, it might be worth considering! If it were the Jewish religion, Gaius thought.
In the meantime, he, Gaius Claudius, simply did not know how fortunate he was to be so far from Rome. Certainly Little Boots had some good days, but he had some bad ones too. Nothing was sacred. Little Boots was forcing Senators' wives to fornicate with him, and while some may have been willing, at least one was not; she had committed suicide later. Of course, Claudius added, the great Augustus, for all his talk about virtue, entered other people's wives as frequently as these Jews claimed they were entering their Temple.
While Caesar demanded more power, he was becoming increasingly insecure and lived in continual fear of plots. One of the most active at flushing out plotters was Titus Flavius Vespasianus. Not a man to get on the wrong side of, Claudius noted.
Little Boots, continuing his program to prove that there were no Gods, had even deified his horse. As an antireligious statement, this was a total failure. Roman citizens began worshipping the horse! Gaius Caesar laughed his head off at this, but he failed to realize that many felt it better to be laughed at than to be on the wrong side of Caesar.
Meanwhile, Caesar continued to pursue his grand ideas. He had ordered the design of one of the grandest aqueducts, to bring water fifty-six miles to the city of Rome, ten miles of which to be suspended on arches a hundred feet high. He had completed the temple of Augustus, he had repaired the theatre of Pompeius, and he had commenced work on a special harbour on Sicily for corn ships to find refuge in storms. But some of his ideas went too far, like the canal he had had designed through Corinth. How could anyone ever build anything like that! He was working too hard, and in attempting to emulate Augustus he did all administration himself. Unfortunately, he was no Augustus.
But most seriously of all, Gaius Caesar was spending too much of the treasury on ridiculous spectacles for the people, or to get the people to like him. For if Gaius Caesar had an overriding weakness, it was that he wished people to like him, and he behaved in a fashion that almost guaranteed they did not. Actually, that was not quite true. It was likely that the masses did like him, and a number of equestrians, like the Flavians, were doing very well. For it was the senatorial class that Caesar disliked so much. These, he thought, were the plotters, they were the lazy, and in Caesar's eyes, they were blocking progress. For what Caesar admired were people who were trying to achieve something.
When he came to power, Gaius Caesar had become very popular for putting an end to Tiberius' system of spies and informers. Now the spies and informers were back. Spiteful Romans were informing on their neighbours, people like Vespasian were rounding up those neighbours, and some of the interrogations were not very pretty.
There was bad news for him, too, and it was imperative that he control himself. His father and mother were dead. It was unclear exactly what had happened. All that was known was that his father had constructed tunnels into the hill behind the family estate, and seemingly there had been a cave-in while his parents and some staff and relations were inside the caves. The official version was that they must have been carrying out some religious ceremony and the roof caved in. There were, however, rumours that Caesar himself had had them killed. It was known that Caesar had uncovered a plot against him, and that plot involved a plan to assassinate him and then restore the republic. Unfortunately his father had been seen prior to this in the company of known republicans, and according to Caesar's spies, he had been acting somewhat furtively.
Whatever the reason for what had happened, some of the remaining staff had later spent days digging, but the cave-in was very substantial. Finally, given that whoever was in the tunnels had to be dead he, Claudius, had used his relationship with Tiberius to order that the tunnels be refilled and an oak be planted over the entrance, with an imperial order prohibiting anyone disturbing the site. He apologized that it was all he could do; the family would rest in peace. If there was any good news it was that Lucilla was alive and well; she was with Quintus at the time.