Background to the Riots in Alexandria

25–32

His [Flaccus’] insanity, which was due to instruction from others rather than to his own nature, was further aggravated by the following incident. The emperor Gaius [Caligula] gave Agrippa, the grandson of King Herod, as his kingdom a third of his grandfather’s inheritance, of which Philip the tetrarch, his paternal uncle, used to enjoy the usufruct.

When Agrippa was about to leave, Gaius advised him not to make the voyage to Syria via Brindisium, because that made for a long and tiresome trip, but to wait for the trade winds and then take the shorter route via Alexandria. [ . . . ] Agrippa complied with this advice because Gaius was his master but also because it seemed that the advice he had been given was useful. [ . . . ]

The only reason he was there [in Alexandria] was to take a shortcut home.

But envy is an inborn characteristic of the Egyptians, and they regard anyone else’s good luck as their own bad luck, which is the reason why they were bursting with envy. At the same time, in their ancient and, in a sense, innate enmity towards the Jews, they were vexed by the idea that a Jew had become a king, which was to them as if each of them had been deprived of an ancestral kingdom.

So, poor Flaccus was again incited by his companions, who stimulated and provoked him into the same state of envy as their own. They said, “The visit of this man here means your own downfall! He has been invested with a greater dignity of honor and prestige than you have. He is attracting the attention of all men by the sight of his spear-carrying army of bodyguards with their weapons adorned with silver and gold. [ . . . ]”

When Flaccus heard this, his anger swelled still more than before, and although in public, out of fear of the one who had sent him, he pretended to be Agrippa’s comrade and friend, in private he gave clear expression to his jealousy and hatred; he insulted him behind his back because he was too much of a coward to do so openly. [ . . . ]

36–44

Now there was a lunatic named Karabas, whose madness was not of the wild and savage kind [ . . . ] but of the more relaxed and gentler variant. He spent both day and night naked on the streets, not discouraged by heat or cold, a plaything of the children and the youngsters who were idling about.

Together they drove this poor man into the gymnasium and placed him there on a platform so that he could be seen by everyone. On his head they spread out a piece of papyrus for a diadem and clothed the rest of his body with a doormat for a robe; and someone who had seen a small piece of native papyrus lying on the street, gave it to him for a sceptre. [ . . . ]

Then there arose a strange shout from among the multitude of those standing around him: They called him “Marin”—which is said to be the word for “Lord” in Syriac—for they knew that Agrippa not only was by birth a Syrian but also ruled as a king over a great part of Syria.

When Flaccus heard, or rather saw all this, [ . . . ] not only did he not punish them, he did not even think fit to restrain them, but he gave license and impunity to all those who were so malevolent and malicious, and he pretended not to see what he did see and not to hear what he did hear.

The crowd [ . . . ] flocked into the theatre first thing in the morning, knowing that they already had Flaccus in their pocket for less than a penny, which this man in his lust for fame, this good-for-nothing, had accepted to the injury not only of himself but also of the public safety. They shouted, as if with one mouth, that statues should be erected in the synagogues, thus proposing an entirely novel and unprecedented violation of the law. [ . . . ]

What then did the governor of the country do? He knew that the city, as the rest of Egypt, has two kinds of inhabitants, us and them, and that there are no less than one million Jews living in Alexandria and the rest of the country, from the steep slope that separates us from Libya to the boundaries of Ethiopia. He also knew that the attack was directed against us all and that it would not yield anything good if they tried to disrupt our ancestral customs. Yet, in disregard of all this, he permitted them to erect the statues, even though there were innumerable considerations, all of cautionary character, which he could have put forward either as an order from the ruler or as advice from a friend.

He, however, co-operated with them in each and every one of their misdeeds and therefore thought fit to use his position of superior power to kindle the sedition by adding newer forms of evil and, as far as it was in his power, one may almost say that he filled the whole world with civil wars.

Translated by Pieter W. van der Horst.