Legatio Ad Gaium

And if he ever gave any one a sum of money as a gift, he demanded it back again at some future time, not a simple loan but he also required interest and compound interest, and often treating the persons themselves who had received it from him as thieves, and punishing them with the severest penalties for having stolen it; for he was not contented that those miserable men should return what had been given to them, but he compelled them also to give up all their property which they had inherited from their parents, or relations, or from any friends, or which, having selected a life of industry and profit, they had acquired by their own resources.

And those who appeared to be in the greatest credit with him, and who lived with him in a round of pleasure, as one may say, with great appearances of friendship and good will, were greatly injured by him, being compelled to expend large sums in irregular, and illegal, and sudden journeys, and in entertainments; for they lavished whole properties in the preparation of a single banquet, so that they were compelled to have recourse to usurers, so vast was his prodigality;

therefore many men deprecated the receiving of any favours from him, thinking not only that it was of no advantage, but even that they were only a bait and a snare to lead them into intolerable suffering.

So great therefore was his inequality of temper towards every one, and most especially towards the nation of the Jews to which he was most bitterly hostile, and accordingly beginning in Alexandria he took from them all their synagogues there, and in the other cities, and filled them all with images and statues of his own form; for not caring about any other erection of any kind, he set up his own statue every where by main force; and the great temple in the holy city, which was left untouched to the last, having been thought worthy of all possible respect and preservation, he altered and transformed into a temple of his own, that he might call it the temple of the new Jupiter, the illustrious Caius.

What is this that you say? Do you, who are a man, seek to take to yourself the air and the heaven, not being content with the vast multitude of continents, and islands, and nations, and countries of which you enjoy the sovereignty? And do you not think any one of the gods who are worshipped in that city or by our people worthy of any country or city or even of any small precinct which may have been consecrated to them in old time, and dedicated to them with oracles and sacred hymns, and are you intending to deprive them of that, that in all the vast circumference of the world there may be no visible trace or memorial to be found of any honour or pious worship paid to the true real living God?

Truly you are suggesting fine hopes to the race of mankind; are you ignorant that you are opening the fountains of evils of every kind, making innovations, and committing acts of audacious impiety such as it is wicked to do and even to think of?

It is worth while to make mention of what we both saw and heard, when we were sent for to encounter a contest on behalf of our national constitution; for the moment that we entered into the presence of the emperor we perceived, from his looks and from the state of agitation in which he was, that we had come not before a judge but before an accuser, or rather I should say before the open enemy of those whom he looked upon as opposed to his will;

for it would have been the part of a judge to sit with assessors selected because of their virtue and learning, when a question of the greatest importance was being investigated which had lain dormant for four hundred years, and which was now raised for the first time among many myriads of Alexandrian Jews; and it would have been proper for the contending parties with their advocates to stand on each side of him, and for him to listen to them both in turn; first to the accusation and then in turn to the defence, according to a period measured by water, [*](The time allotted to the speeches of advocates in the Athenian courts of justice was measured by a water-clock, κλεψύδρα, something like our hour-glass of sand. ) and then retiring the judge should deliberate with his assessors as to what he ought publicly to deliver as his sentence on the justice of the case; but what was actually done resembled rather the [*](The time allotted to the speeches of advocates in the Athenian courts of justice was measured by a water-clock, κλεψύδρα, something like our hour-glass of sand. )

For besides that he in no particular behaved in the manner which I have just been describing as proper, having sent for the managers of two gardens, the Maecenatian and the Lamian garden, and they are near one another and close to the city, in which he had spent three or four days, for that was the place in which this theatrical spectacle, aimed at the happiness of a whole nation, was intended to be enacted in our presence, he commanded all the outer buildings to be opened for him, for that he wished to examine them all minutely;