Uri then recalled that he had not taken advantage of the two bounties of three hundred sesterces that Caligula had distributed in person to the population, nor the one that Claudius had ordered to be distributed while they were in Puteoli, and this latter was the larger amount, because those with large families were entitled to receive one thousand sesterces, and Uri could prove he had three children. At cockcrow one day, before anybody was up, he went off to do his mural painting work and, around midday, rushed off to the local authority to assert his right to receive these. He was asked for all manner of verification, for which he had to go back once more to Far Side, and now it was with Iustus that he spoke. He had likewise become one of the superiors in the office of the Jewish community, no longer working as secretary to Honoratus but having secretaries work for him. Iustus put on an act as if Uri had never been ostracized, embracing him, patting him on the back, exulting greatly, and promising to collect all that was necessary to support Uri’s impeccable right of citizenship as a Roman Jew, for there were copies of all the documents in the archives, though it was quite obvious that he would do nothing.
Unexpectedly, however, Uri was judged retrospectively to have qualified to be granted four hundred sesterces, the amount Nero distributed to the plebs when he attained power, though the authorities would hear nothing further about any other monies. Uri hid that four hundred sesterces for even grimmer times to come.
They puffed and blew, snored and squabbled in the peasant dwelling, and they went hungry. The peasant himself, who moved out into the stable with his family, did not provide any fare, which had to be purchased separately. Hagar moaned and so did the girls, but the worst was when they did not moan, just sat there staring mournfully, accusingly. Marcellus would say nothing, not even to complain, but there were times when he would vanish for days on end and would not say where he had been, for all the clouts he was given by Hagar, who doted on him. Uri was reduced to screaming:
“Go out and get some work, or at least beg! It’s always me alone who does the work! At least save me, with my bad back, from having to lug the bread that we get for the tessera all the way from the Campus Martius — half a day that takes!”
Hagar had by then switched off, with the look in her eyes suggesting that Uri was an intolerable character for continually yelling without any reason at all, whereas the children were amazed because why should they too have to work and lug things around.
“You’ve all been spoiled rotten!” Uri yelled, which was true, though right then they happened to be living in dire poverty and were starving, so they loathed their father all the more.
Why should I be making all of the sacrifices for them? Why don’t I just leave them to stew in their own juices? I’m going to clear off, move in somewhere with Flora, pay the fee for her manumission and give her a string of uncircumcised Ethiopian metoicosts!
Uri found out where Aristobulus lived; he was the elder brother of Agrippa and kept his distance both from Jews and from politics. Uri had to rap on the door for a long time before it was opened. Aristobulus was an old man with an intelligent, lined face; he listened with amazement to Uri’s request.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “If your father gave Agrippa a loan why didn’t he ask him for the money to be paid?”
“Because my father died prematurely.”
“You were in a position to ask, though.”
“I did, but he didn’t give it back.”
“So what am I supposed to do? Pay off a debt incurred by my elder brother, who’s no longer alive? On what grounds? It’s not me who became king! Ask Herod, Agrippa’s other elder brother; at least he’s got some pathetic little kingdom…”
This was the Herod who had married Marcus’s widowed wife, Berenice, his sister; his kingdom really was tiny, but then again Claudius had granted him oversight of the Temple’s affairs, including the appointment of high priests. But that Herod was far away.
Aristobulus, a grandson of Herod the Great, owned a large, splendid residence on Quirinal Hill, and he lived there on his own with his servants. He could see that Uri must be in trouble and suggested that he make contact with the young Agrippa, his nephew, who also lived in Rome: he was the heir to Agrippa’s fortune and also to his debts, as he was also the heir apparent to the throne of Judaea.
Uri mentioned that, as far as he knew, Cumanus had for quite some time been the prefect of Galilee, whereas the prefect of Judaea and Samaria was Felix, a one-time slave of Claudius’s who had wed Drusilla, Agrippa’s younger daughter, and if Nero had left them in those positions, then it was rather unlikely that Agrippa the Younger would become king.
Aristobulus gave a gloating laugh: the story had gone around that the circumcision had been extremely painful for Felix, as in his case they had not only removed the foreskin but also a fair chunk of the penis — so much for Felix and Drusilla. Aristobulus grumbled on a bit and then referred him to his firstborn daughter, Jotape, on the off chance that she would take pity on him.
“It’s been a long time since any soul moved my heart to pity,” said Aristobulus gloomily. “In my opinion it serves anyone who is born human right to toil to the end of his days and can only expire in dreadful agony. At least I’m fond of animals, though I do nothing for them, and have been in the habit of praying that a new deluge should come upon us, and this time with no Noah and no ark.”
Jotape was a spinster who resided in a magnificent house near the Porta Capena; she was said to gaze at the passing traffic all day long from behind a curtain, she could never have enough of that, though she was also a passionate collector of original Greek statues and pictures. Jotape was very tall, a hump-backed, bony-faced, hook-nosed amazon who looked as if she’d started developing as a man but on the way ended up in a woman’s body.
She heard Uri out, shook her head and expressed her sympathies in a deep drawl. But she regretted there was nothing she could do for him as she had no money herself.
“My father sent you here, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“That’s his way of signaling his unshakable distaste. He refers to me anyone he does not consider to be agreeable, and he never considers anyone so.”
Uri was transfixed by a panel painting propped up against a leather couch.
“Zeuxis?” he asked in wonder.
It was Jotape’s turn to be amazed:
“How do you know that?”
“I saw a copy of one of his works in Alexandria. It must have cost a fortune!”
“Six hundred thousand sesterces.”
“It’s worth at least three times that! Not that Zeuxis wasn’t reduced to giving his pictures away for free at the end of his life…”
“I bought that from its fourth owner; each of them made a fair bit of money on it.”
The picture was of fauns playing with one another, each with a human face full of character.
“Those fauns are architects!” Uri remarked to the present owner. “He completed it when the protracted planning work on the Erechtheun in Athens was in progress. I once knew their names but off the top of my head I can’t recall them right now… For a long time it was thought that the one on the far left was Phidias, but it can’t be him because then he’d have to be bald…”