Agrippa's Daughter by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page B

left her cold and unmoved—
    The play was stiff, wooden, and quite dull, and nothing the company of Colophon Greeks were able to do could breathe any life into it. Two of the company spoke Latin poorly with an atrocious Ionian accent, and whenever one of these two had lines to speak, the audience roared with laughter and pelted him with fruit peelings and pits and bits of sausage. Even in a comedy, laughter at the wrong place can be destructive; and though the play was contrived as a comedy, it was not particularly funny. Writing in his formal, scholastic manner, Claudius had borrowed freely—if indeed the play actually was from his own hand—and had pasted together a series of contrived incidents. In a mythical country, a child is born to the king’s wife. At precisely the same time, another child is born to the slave woman who tends the queen. Since the queen has no milk and a wet nurse is required, they choose the slave woman, and, of course, she switches the infants so that her own blood may come into the throne. It was an ancient plot, and onto it was grafted a series of equally ancient plots, which unfolded with tedious predictability.
    Berenice, with Gabo crouched at her feet, was seated toward the back of the royal pavilion, which contained places for about two dozen people in four terraces or steps, these of stone hollowed into the shape of chairs and cushioned for comfort. An awning stretched overhead provided shade. Only here and in the other pavilions was shade provided—otherwise the entire amphitheater lay open to the broiling rays of the midday sun. The emperor’s pavilion was the same size as the royal pavilion and provided comfortable seating for those Roman functionaries in Caesarea who desired to see the current play. Today, the Legate Germanicus Latus, a fat, bald, good-natured Italian, was there with his wife and his three daughters and half a dozen people of his suite. Situated on an angle from the royal pavilion, they were able to smile and nod at the royal party. Latus was in Palestine on a trade mission for the emperor, and it would hardly do for him to miss an opening performance of his master’s first theatrical effort. They were amply provided with buckets of iced wine, and they drank and smiled and bowed and stuffed themselves with fruit as the play went on.
    Berenice and Gabo shared the back row of their pavilion with Berenice’s brother, Agrippa, and a young palace page, Joseph Bennoch by name. In the row directly in front of them, three priests and a rather dubious woman of the court were seated. The next row was occupied by seneschals, advisers, more priests, and the palace steward. And in the front row, Agrippa sat with two young women he had favored lately. Two young men of good family shared seats to provide front and maintain the saintliness of the king’s recent reputation.
    Had this not been a command performance, with Claudius’ reputation on stage, Berenice would have departed after a few minutes of the tedious nonsense. As it was, Agrippa had given orders that all gates to the theater be closed, and the audience, most of whom were not even provided with parasols against the sun, were forced to sit and endure—a situation to which only a minority objected. The others had come for a holiday and were ready to enjoy anything on the stage. They had brought baskets of food and bottles of wine, and they ate and drank and cheered the players and mocked them and screamed with applause or hissed with hatred—and became drunk and happy and occasionally violent, with no Jews present except the handful of quality in the pavilions—no Jews to look down their noses and despise the simple pleasures of plain people and thereby spoil their fun and fulfillment. The Syrians and Levantine Greeks and Egyptians and half-breed Philistines and Moabites and polyglot combinations of Persian, Parthian, Hittite, Assyrian, Babylonian, Jebusites, Samaritans, Italians, and even a sprinkling of Gauls,