The life and work of St. Paul

3AIUS AND THE JETfS PEACE OF THE CHURCH. 139
prince to be instantly arrested. Clothed as he was in royal purple, Agrippa
was seized, pnt in chains, and taken off to a prison, in which he languished
for the six remaining months of the life of Tiberius. Almost the first
thought of Gaius on his accession was to relieve the friend who had paid him
such assiduous court before his fortunes were revealed. Agrippa was at once
released from custody. A few days after, Gaius sent for him, put a tSadem
on his head, conferred on him the tetrarchies of Herod Philip and of
Lysanias, and presented him with a golden chain of equal weight with the
iron one with which he had been bound.
Now, although Agrippa was a mere unprincipled adventurer, yet he had
the one redeeming feature of respect for the external religion of his race.
The Edomite admixture in his blood had not quite effaced the more generous
instincts of an Asmonaean prince, nor had the sty of Caprese altogether made
him forget that he drew his line from the Priest of Modin. The Jews might
well have expected that, under an Emperor with whom their prince was a
bosom friend, their interests would be more secure than they had been even
under a magnanimous Julius and a liberal Augustus. Their hopes were
doomed to the bitterest disappointment ; nor did any reign plunge them into
more dreadful disasters than the reign of Agrippa's friend.
In August, A.D. 38, Agrippa arrived at Alexandria on his way to his new
kingdom. His arrival was so entirely free from ostentation for, indeed,
Alexandria, where his antecedents were not unknown, was the last city in
which he would have wished to air his brand-new royalty that though he
came in sight of the Pharos about twilight, he ordered the captain to stay in
the offing till dark, that he might land unnoticed. 1 But the presence in the
city of one who was at once a Jew, a king, an Idumsean, a Herod, and a
favourite of Caesar, would not be likely to remain long a secret ; and if it was
some matter of exultation to the Jews, it exasperated beyond all bounds the
envy of the Egyptians. Flaccus, the Governor of Alexandria, chose to regard
Agrippa's visit as an intentional insult to himself, and by the abuse which he
heaped in secret upon the Jewish prince, encouraged the insults in which the
mob of Alexandria were only too ready to indulge. Unpopular everywhere,
the Jews were regarded in Alexandria with special hatred. Their wealth ,
their numbers, their usuries, their exclusiveness, the immunities which the
two first Caesars had granted them, 2 filled the worthless populace of a hybrid
city with fury and loathing. A Jewish king was to them a conception at once
ludicrous and offensive. Every street rang with lampoons against him, every
theatre and puppet-show echoed with ribald farces composed in his insult,
At last the wanton mob seized on a poor naked idiot named Carabbas,
who had long been the butt of mischievous boys, and carrying him off to
the Gymnasium, clothed him in a door-mat, by way of tallith, flattened a
1
Derenbourg is therefore mistaken (p. 222) that Agrippa " se donna la pu6rile satisfaction
d'etaler son luxe royal dans 1'endroit oil naguere it avait traln6 une si honteuse
misere."
3
Jos. Antt. xiv. 7, 2 ; xix. 5. 2, and xiv. 10, passim (Decrees of Julius).