In the midst of these pleasures the empress arrived. The long crossing had told on her: she was growing frail without ceasing to be hard. Her political associations no longer caused me annoyance, as in the period when she had foolishly encouraged Suetonius; she now had only inoffensive women writers about her. The confidante of the moment was a certain Julia Balbilla, whose Greek verse was fairly good. The empress and her suite established themselves in the Lyceum, from which they rarely went out. Lucius, on the contrary, was as always avid for all delights, including alike those of the mind and of the eye.
At twenty-six he had lost almost nothing of that arresting beauty which aroused acclamations from the youth in the streets of Rome. He was still absurd, ironic, and gay. His caprices of other days had now turned to manias: he made no move without his head cook; his gardeners composed astonishing flower plantings for him even aboard ship; he took his bed with him wherever he went, modeled on his own design of four mattresses stuffed with four special kinds of aromatics, on top of which he lay surrounded by his young mistresses like so many cushions. His pages, painted, powdered, and attired like Zephyrs and Eros, complied as well as they could with mad whims which were sometimes crueclass="underline" I had to intervene to keep the young Boreas, whose slenderness Lucius admired, from letting himself die of hunger. All that was more exasperating than charming. We visited together everything to be visited in Alexandria: the Lighthouse, the Mausoleum of Alexander and that of Mark Antony, where Cleopatra triumphs eternally over Octavia, the temples, the workshops and factories, and even the quarter of the embalmers. From a reputable sculptor I purchased an entire lot of Venuses, Dianas, and Hermes for Italica, my native city, which I had in mind to modernize and adorn. The priest of the temple of Serapis offered me a service of opaline glass, but I sent it to Servianus, with whom, out of regard for my sister Paulina, I tried to keep passable relations, at least at a distance. Great building projects took shape in the course of all these somewhat tedious rounds.
The religions in Alexandria are as varied as the trades; the quality of the product, however, is more doubtful. The Christians especially distinguish themselves there by a multiplication of sects which is, to say the least, useless; two charlatans among them, Valentinus and Basilides, were intriguing against each other, closely watched over by the Roman police. As for the Egyptian populace, the lowest level took advantage of each of their own ritual festivities to throw themselves, cudgel in hand, upon foreigners; the death of the bull Apis provokes more uprisings in that city than an imperial succession in Rome. Fashionable people change gods there as elsewhere they change doctors, and with about as much success. But gold is their only idoclass="underline" nowhere have I seen more shameless importuning. Grandiose inscriptions were displayed all about to commemorate my benefactions, but my refusal to exempt the inhabitants from a tax which they were quite able to pay soon alienated that rabble from me. The two young men who accompanied me were insulted more than once: Lucius was reproached for his lavish expenditures, which, it must be admitted, were excessive, and Antinous for his obscure origin, on the subject of which ran absurd rumors; both were blamed for the ascendancy which they were supposed to have over me. This last assumption was ridiculous: Lucius, whose judgment in public affairs was surprisingly acute, nevertheless had no political influence whatsoever; Antinous did not aspire to it. The young patrician, knowing the ways of the world, merely laughed at the jibes, but they were cause for suffering to Antinous. The Alexandrian Jews, egged on by their coreligionists in Judaea, did their best to aggravate a situation already bad. The synagogue of Jerusalem delegated Akiba to me, its most venerable member; almost a nonagenarian, and knowing no Greek, he came with the mission of prevailing upon me to abandon projects already under way at Jerusalem. Aided by my interpreters I held several colloquies with him which, on his part, were mere pretext for monologue. In less than an hour I felt able to define his thought exactly, though not subscribing to it; he made no corresponding effort concerning my own. This fanatic did not even suspect any reasoning possible on premises other than those he set forth. I offered his despised people a place among the others in the Roman community; Jerusalem, however, speaking through Akiba, signified its intention of remaining, to the end, the fortress of a race and of a god isolated from human kind. That savage determination was expressed with tiresome deviousness: I had to listen to a long line of argument, subtly deduced step by step, proving Israel’s superiority. At the end of eight days even this obstinate negotiator became aware that he was pursuing the wrong course, so he announced his departure. I abhor defeat, even for others, and it moves me the more when the vanquished is an old man. The ignorance of Akiba, and his refusal to accept anything outside his sacred books or his own people, endued him with a kind of narrow innocence. But it was difficult to feel sympathy for this bigot. Longevity seemed to have bereft him of all human suppleness: that gaunt body and dried mind had the locust’s hard vigor. It seems that he died a hero later on for the cause of his people, or rather, for his law. Each of us dedicates himself to his own gods.
The distractions which Alexandria affords began to wane. Phlegon, who knew the local curiosities everywhere, whether procuress or famous hermaphrodite, proposed to take us to a local magician. This go-between for two worlds, the invisible and our own, lived in Canopus. We went there at night by boat along the torpid waters of the canal, a dismal ride. A silent hostility reigned, as always, between the two young men: the intimacy into which I was forcing them augmented their aversion for each other. Lucius hid this feeling under a mocking condescension; my young Greek enclosed himself in one of his dark moods. I happened to be rather tired; a few days before, on coming back from a race in full sun, I had had a brief fainting fit which only Antinous and the black Euphorion had witnessed. They had been unduly alarmed, and I had forbidden them to disclose the matter.