Chapter 15

The annual week of the Passover would begin tomorrow; and Antipas, who had always anticipated its games, processions and ceremonies with pleasure, was troubled by its arrival. His Roman house-guests at the Embassy, already bored to forthright rudeness toward their host, would find it a dull affair.

He now realized that it had been a mistake to invite so many of them. He might have managed comfortably with two or three, but—ignoring the warning of Herodias, who was not particularly chummy with any of the women of the party—he had brought fifteen!

There were Mark and Aurelia Varus and their daughter Faustina, recently divorced by Consul Narro for spending too much time with Prince Gaius; Julius and Paula Fronto, lately recalled from the prefecture in Crete; Senator Manius Cotta; Nerius and Drusilla Hispo; the garrulous Valerie Flaccus, a friend of Salome’s; Proconsul Fabius Tiro, his gossiping wife Amelia and their restless and flighty young Flavia; Junius Manilius, a retired Legate and long-time crony of the Tetrarch; Tullius Fadilla, a wealthy, middle-aged bachelor; and the ageing but kittenish Julia Drusus, who was driving Fadilla insane with her attentions. Deep in his cups at a banquet, Antipas had invited everybody within sound of his voice to accompany him home on The Augusta; and now he was paying for his indiscretion.

Usually the month of Nisan, spent in Jerusalem, was thoroughly enjoyed by the Tetrarch. The Galilean Embassy, by grace of the immense sums Antipas had spent upon it, was one of the most beautiful public edifices in the city and spacious far beyond its needs. It would have gratified the Tetrarch if more attention had been accorded it—and him. He craved popularity. He had even gone to the length of announcing that the night patrols were welcome to assemble, when off duty, in the huge carriage-court, and had provided a wood-fire where, in chilly weather, they might warm themselves. As a further evidence of his hospitality, a midnight snack was served to the legionaries. But it couldn’t be said that all this generosity ever did the foolish fellow any good. The soldiers nightly warmed their hands, enjoyed the Tetrarch’s cakes and wine, and flirted with the servant-girls; but the Embassy was—for all that—a hissing and a byword, even in the opinion of its beneficiaries.

But the great man had pretended not to know where he stood in the public’s estimation. For that one month every spring, he conducted his Embassy as if it really mattered. He had always taken pride and pleasure in playing judge. The cases brought before him were rarely of any importance; and, when they were, the losing litigant always appealed to Pilate, who, contemptuous of Antipas and his pompous little tribunal, customarily reversed the decision.

Undaunted by these embarrassments, the Tetrarch made a great thing of the trivial matters submitted to him, handling with ridiculous ostentation mere border brawls between the Samaritans and Galileans, involving such issues as their joint responsibility for the repair of a wooden bridge on an unfrequented donkey-trail at a cost of fifty shekels. Indeed the Samaritans and Galileans had often gone to law for less. They had hated one another for at least five centuries and relished the occasional opportunity of exchanging elaborately contrived insults in this atmosphere of ponderous dignity, even if a favourable decision cost more than it was worth.