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captivity
were much better off than
those back home, as they well
knew it; they acted rather like
a sizable permanent legation
in Rome, and if they traded
shrewdly, and Rome and Jewry
were bounded by ever more
threads, as was predestined
by necessity, they were only
doing what the Creator had
seemingly intended them to
do.
The winding inter i or
courtyard had originally
been a single labyrinthine
system. Fortification had
arisen spontaneously in the
open space—although the
wealthiest, as is the custom
wherever Mammon is master,
were separated from the
communal yard with high
walls and indeed had special
guards to protect them—may
money be cursed eternally—
especially now, because an
ever increasing number of
Rome’s Jews were rich, and
an even greater number were
getting poorer. There might
have even been a connection
of sorts between the two
phenomena.
The original Far Side stood
right in the center of the Jewish
quarter, with new houses
built around it, but in recent
years rich entrepreneurs had
started building multistory
tenement blocks. Joseph
feared that, one of these days,
their own ramshackle shed
would be cleared away, along
with the small huts around it,
and replaced by four- or five-
story buildings. That is what
had happened in the non-
Jewish areas immediately next
to Far Side, where Egyptians,
Syrians and Greeks from Asia
Minor lived just as wretchedly
as most Jews, and they went
around the Jewish area just as
comfortably as in their own.