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captivity
leave them in place on the
principle that “a well-fed tick
sucks less blood than a hungry
one.”
It may well be, though, that
the previous prefect got mixed
up somehow in the Sejanus
affair.
Agrippina the Elder is another
oft-cited example. She was
Germanicus’s very popular
widow who, fourteen years
af ter her husband died,
was starved to death by
Tiberius. It wasn’t like that,
interjects another political
commentator: banished to
the island of Pandataria,
Agrippina went on a hunger
strike, a centurion poked out
one of her eyes, then she
was force-fed, on Tiberius’s
orders, but incompetently,
and that’s what caused her
death. What does it matter?
She was murdered. The Jews
are just as up on Roman gossip
as any other nation, and they
have just as many worthy
political commentators.
Uri was interested in history;
all tales with twists and turns
interested him, and he read
countless works of Greek
and Latin authors in his little
alcove. There he was left alone
and could spend the whole
day musing and piecing things
together. The images he saw in
his waking dreams were sharp
and bright, almost palpable.
Imagination is a great thing,
if someone has it.
He could read Greek, because
their neighbors in the Jewish
quarter had Greek as their
mother tongue, and most
Jewish boys in Rome answered
to a Greek name. They brought
it from Palestine, where
Hellenization had proved
most successful in the area of