Vespasian lifted the lid of Ataphanes’ box, which stood on the desk between them. They were sitting in the cool of the Alabarch’s study on the northern side of his house away from the threat of direct sunlight. The room was filled with many scrolls, labelled in Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and Latin, giving it a musty smell reminiscent of a library storeroom. The only light came from two slatted windows in the wall opening out onto the central courtyard from whence came the sound of two young men reading aloud, at great speed, in unison.
‘Your freedman was wealthy,’ Alexander commented, fingering the gold coins and trinkets inside. ‘How much is here?’
‘I’m afraid that I don’t know exactly.’
‘Then I shall weigh it.’ Alexander got up and retrieved a large set of scales from a wooden chest in the corner of the room. ‘My fee, which will cover all expenses including those of my cousin’s, will be eighteen per cent of the weight of the gold. I won’t take into account the value of the workmanship; would that be agreeable to you?’
‘Ten.’
‘Sixteen.’
‘Twelve.’
‘Fifteen.’
‘Eleven.’
Alexander smiled beneath his full, sand-coloured beard. ‘You bargain strongly considering that it is not your money. Very well, twelve it is.’
‘Done,’ Vespasian said. Alexander started to weigh out the gold.
The Alabarch’s appearance had surprised Vespasian; he had expected a wise-looking, old grey-beard with rheumy eyes, a dripping nose and, perhaps, a slight stoop. The reality had been far different: Alexander was a fit and powerful man in his late forties with alert, piercing blue eyes and long, almost blond hair with a beard to match. The only things about him that fitted in with Vespasian’s stereotypical ideas of Jewishness were his clothes — very typical — and his pronounced nose — averagely so. He had the calmness about him of a man at ease with himself and his position in life and Vespasian could tell immediately that he was a man he could trust.
‘Six minae, twenty-four drachmae and three obols,’ Alexander said eventually.
‘Which makes your percentage one obol short of seventy-five drachmae,’ Vespasian said after a moment’s thought, ‘or, almost exactly, one Roman pound in gold.’
Alexander did some quick calculations on a wax tablet and raised his eyebrows. ‘I can see that you would be a hard man to cheat.’
‘Not that I believe you would try, Alexander.’
Alexander began to weigh out his share. ‘I was brought up to be honest and truthful in all things, something that I hope I’ve passed on to my sons.’ He indicated to the voices in the courtyard. ‘That’s them at their Torah studies, which, I’m afraid, they resent as much as I did at their age, but I insist upon them doing it because otherwise, when they come of age, how can they make an informed decision as to whether they believe in the religion or, like me, do not?’
‘You’re not a Jew?’
‘Of course I’m a Jew racially, I’m just not a practising Jew. Why else do you think that I’m the Alabarch? With me Rome gets the best of both worlds: it has a Jew running the Jewish community here in Alexandria and collecting its taxes, which makes it acceptable to the Jews.’
‘Even though you don’t share their religion?’
Alexander chuckled. ‘Oh, I do enough to be seen as a righteous man in their eyes. I recently paid for the nine gates of the Temple in Jerusalem to be gilded, so they have to accept me; but at the same time Rome has an Alabarch who isn’t swayed by religious dogma. Rome can see me as being even-handed.’
‘That’s not the impression that Flaccus gave me,’ Vespasian said, realising that he was talking out of turn. ‘He said that you had been making too many demands recently.’
‘There is an ongoing issue of Alexandrian citizenship and whether Jewish citizens are allowed to live outside the Jewish Quarter, not to mention the statues of the Emperor in the temples. But I’ve also been trying to mediate between the elders and the prefect on another matter: they want him to crack down on this new sect that they see as preaching heresy and consider it to be a Roman attack on their religion.’
‘But that’s ridiculous, there’s nothing Roman about it at all.’
‘The main preacher is a Roman citizen.’
Vespasian frowned. ‘Paulus? Surely not; he’s trying to eradicate it.’
‘He was trying to eradicate what was known as The Way; four years ago he was here doing some very unpleasant things to anyone suspected of being a member of the sect.’ Alexander indicated to the perfectly balanced scales.
Vespasian nodded his approval of the twelve per cent. ‘Yes, I came across him in Cyrenaica; he was ruthless. I had him arrested and put on a ship back east.’
‘A pity that you didn’t have him killed.’ Alexander tipped his gold into a bag and placed it in a drawer. ‘Well, he claims to have had some sort of spiritual enlightenment since then while on his way to Damascus. He appeared out of the desert a couple of months ago, having lived there by himself for three years, and started preaching without permission. He claims that he has God’s authority and it’s not a Jewish matter at all; and in a way he’s right. He’s not preaching a reformed version of Judaism along the lines that the followers of The Way claimed that Yeshua bar Yosef preached to the Jews alone; he’s preaching a completely new religion to Gentiles as well as Jews centred on our God but not the Torah. He claims that Yeshua bar Yosef is God’s son who came to die for the sins of the world and redeem all mankind. Only through him, Paulus professes, can those who truly repent of their sins hope to live with God in the Kingdom of Heaven, which is not of this world, rather than wait for resurrection in an earthly paradise at the End of Days as most Jews believe. He also adds fear and urgency into his message by claiming that the End of Days, or the Day of Judgement, as he calls it, is close at hand. Paradoxically he blames the Jews for having this Yeshua crucified even though it is a Roman form of execution, and if he hadn’t been executed Paulus wouldn’t have anything to base his incoherent religion on. You can understand why the elders and my people are angry.’
‘Yes, I felt it as I came through the Jewish Quarter. Why doesn’t Flaccus do something about Paulus?’
‘Ask him yourself,’ Alexander replied, replacing Ataphanes’ gold back in the box. ‘I don’t know, but I think that it’s because he doesn’t care; after all, what’s another new religion to a Roman? You embrace them all.’
‘And rightly so, if it doesn’t involve having your foreskin cut off. But this one sounds different.’
Alexander closed the box. ‘It is different and it’s dangerous because it doesn’t acknowledge any earthly authority; its appeal lies in the promise of salvation and reward in a world to come, not in the here and now. If it is allowed to take root, then the whole emphasis of our civilisation could change from a philosophical debate on how to live in the present, to a spiritual debate on how to prepare for a theoretical afterlife. I’ve been thinking about it and I wonder what would happen to science and learning if all that people worried about was the idea of an immortal soul.’
‘I’m afraid that you’ve lost me there,’ Vespasian replied as Alexander began to write out a receipt. ‘However, I can see the danger of a religion that doesn’t acknowledge the ultimate authority of the Emperor — whatever he may be like. But surely this is just a small sect created by one man?’
‘But it will grow because Paulus aims his preaching at the poor and slaves who have nothing in this world to lose and everything to gain from his idea of salvation and spiritual riches in the next; it’s very potent. Paulus is an extremely ambitious man who believes that his abilities have never been truly recognised and that all his life he’s been denied his rightful place in society. He asked, demanded even, to marry the High Priest’s daughter, just before he went to Damascus, and was refused; I think that he saw that as the final indignity and decided to find a way to power in his own right because it was shortly after that he disappeared. Now he’s back and I believe that he has found a way to turn this world upside down with him finally at the top.’