In the Realm of Authors and Literature

Claudius The God. By Robert Graves. 583 pp. New York: Smith & Haas. $3.00.

Many scholars have tried to minimize anti-Semitism in the Roman Empire, feeling that modern anti-Semitism is best stigmatized by showing it to be an ugly and barbaric heritage of the Dark Ages, after the Teutonic tribesmen had smashed the last vestiges of Rome. But as a matter of fact the Jews, especially those Jews who had left Palestine; were as persecuted and vilified as our German brethren today. The very beginnings of prejudice and antagonism may be traced to the impact of Hellenic upon Hebraic culture. The Greeks were pushed eastward by Rome and colonized Asia Minor. Their cynical paganism could not live peacefully side by side with the passionate, stubborn monotheism of the Jews. The first clashes occurred in cities like Damascus and Antioch, but the most serious situation arose in Alexandria, in which Greeks and Jews had both settled by the tens of thousands.

Those of us who cannot go to the original Greek and Latin sources will find in Robert Graves’ “Claudius the God,” sequel to his popular “I, Claudius,” a fascinating store of material. In form both volumes constitute the autobiography of the Emperor Claudius. There of course is much material that has nothing to do with Jewish affairs—a great deal about Roman politics, customs and morals, the exciting story of the conquest of Britain, and much about the intrigues of Asiatic kings—but even that will be avidly read for its racy style, dramatic content, and scholarliness in the use of source material. For the author has kept his fine imagination strictly within the bounds ### documentation.

In the present volume the Jewish theme is the most important, however; for its secondary hero is Herod Agrippa, King of the Jews, grandson of Herod the Great and uncle of Salome.

He was raised in Rome and for a time turned his back on all things Jewish. The Roman emperors had been educated by Greek tutors and taught to despise the Jews. Tiberius had banished the whole Jewish colony of Rome, to the number of 4,000, to Sardinia, where 2,000 had died of marsh fever. Caligula had, as one of his few humane acts, permitted the survivors to return. It should be remembered that Augustus had granted the Jews equal rights with other subject peoples everywhere as a reward for their vassalage in Palestine. But no emperor could solve the religious question. All other known religions—and Rome was a place of many cults—could live peacefully side by side; but not that of the Jews, for their God was a jealous God. Remember also that the Roman emperors were deified after death and their statues ordered set up in the temples throughout the empire. This to the Jews meant defilement, and they resisted with violence. What good to them then was their political equality?

Claudius, whose intentions were always good, tried to ease the situation in Alexandria which this edict created by exempting the Jewish temples. But the Greeks were up in arms at this alleged discrimination, and began the first pogrom of historical significance.

This was the situation when Herod, who as a boy had been a close friend of Claudius, was made ruler of all the little kingdoms and tetrarchies between Syria and Egypt. He no sooner was on the throne than his natural ambition began to work. Partly as a result of his superstitious belief in omens and partly as a result of political strategy, he became a strict observer of the Law. Rumors of his piety began to go out among the Jews. Also his championship of the oppressed Alexandrian Jews earned him the gratitude of the Jewish world—which by that time had spread its colonies throughout the empire. And finally there was the accident of his birth in Bethlehem. The Jews began hailing him as the long-awaited Messiah. And he in his turn began to dream of a great Asiatic empire free of Rome.

He cemented anti-Roman political alliances; he took away the arms of Greek regiments and put the soldiers to ditch-digging, and he secretly armed and trained 200,000 Jews. The representatives of Rome were terrified, for, as they wrote to the emperor, “the Jew fighting in the name of his God, as the history of the Maccabees has shown, is heroic to the point of madness. Never was there a better disciplined race.”

But Claudius refused to move against his boyhood friend. For the great day, Herod had planned a public festival at which he himself should strike off with a heavy hammer the heads of the statues of the Roman emperors. Six allied kings were at his side. The Jews were in a state of mystical fervor. The Greek inhabitants were awed and subdued. Herod was receiving the embassies of his allies—and permitted them to hail him as a God. Immediately a frightful omen, an owl, appeared, and Herod was struck down with a dire disease and died in five days. The conspiracy collapsed. The Greeks struck in avenging fury, and no Jewish hand was raised to stop them. So despondent were the Jews that they did not even sow their fields. Another thousand years of waiting faced them.

In this book the reader moves and lives in the Roman world. I cannot describe the intensity with which Graves evokes the life of the street, the temples, the forums, the army camps and the very brothels. “Claudius the God” is a bloody, bitter book, but it will hold you in rapt attention throughout its six hundred pages. It is a unique work because its author combines in himself the gifts of a scholar and a dramatist.