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L'ENVOI 577
creature soon became accustomed to the sound ! When Titus
died, it was taken out of his brain, and found to be of the size
of a bird, and to be furnished with a beak and claws of iron.
Such is the torment which hatred devised for the best of the
Twelve Csesars, and the best but one or two of all the Emperors
for three hundred years. But the sad truth is that, apart
from such frenetic imaginations, the last years of the life of
Titus were full of anxiety and disquietude, for which he did
not find in a sounding philosophy the alleviation which he
would have found abundantly in a humble faith.
With DOMITIAN we have happily been less concerned.
How such a mixture of depravity and savageness, of falsity
and ingratitude can have sprung from the virtuous union
which also produced a Titus, is a mystery of atavism. But
at last the dagger of Stephanus struck him down, and a betterphase
of the Empire was renewed. Rome gauged his character
right when she nicknamed him '
the bald Nero.'
Of the Jews whom we have introduced, ISHMAEL BEN
PHABI vanishes into obscurity. He lives, however, in the
energetic curse which the Talmud pronounces upon family
after family of the priests of that epoch. He occurs in the
line which denounces the violence of himself and his sons :
'
Woe to the family of Ishmael Ben Phabi ! woe to their
fists ! . . . Their servants strike the people with their rods !
'
JOSEPHUS became the devoted creature of the Flavian
dynasty. By timely prophecies he managed to secure the
favour of Vespasian and Titus, as he had won their admiration
by his genius and courage. He played his difficult
part with consummate astuteness, and secured his safety in
spite of the execration of the Jews and the suspicion of the
Romans. But what shall we say of a man who, in spite of
his boasted patriotism, could, after being an eyewitness of the
long, slow agony of his country's dissolution, be a guest of
the Romans during the games in which hundreds of his miserable
fellow-countrymen perished in the amphitheatre ? of a
man who could commemorate without a pang the unequalled
splendour of the triumph at Rome, when Vespasian and Titus,
robed in purple and silk and crowned with laurel, sat in their
chariots amid rivers of splendid spoils, and Domitian rode a
gallant war-horse by their side, and Simon Bar-Gioras, after
cruel insults, was led aside at the foot of the Capitol to be
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