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AVENGERS IN DYNASTIC CONFLICTS<br />
doubted the authenticity of the claimant even before he met him. 72 It seems,<br />
therefore, that the emperor was the first to greet the imposter with sober<br />
scepticism. One could not, so Josephus appears to say (no doubt to flatter his<br />
friend and patron, Vespasian), pull the wool over the eyes of a Roman<br />
emperor, in this way also taking a sideswipe at the unbelievable blindness of<br />
all those Jews taken in by the false Alexander.<br />
Still a little unsure, Augustus ordered one of his intimates, Celadus, to<br />
investigate. 73 Celadus, a freedman, was particularly well acquainted with<br />
Alexander from his time in Rome. The moment he laid eyes on the imposter<br />
he realised that it was all a deception. According to Josephus, all of a sudden<br />
the false Alexander seemed much less like the original and his uncouth build<br />
betrayed him as a slave. 74 Taken to task by Celadus, the false Alexander immediately<br />
confessed – rather too promptly for an imposter who had managed<br />
to preserve his disguise so masterfully and with such success. Aware of the<br />
tension, Josephus tried to explain it away in his later treatment of the story,<br />
which in this respect differs clearly from the original of the Bellum Iudaicum.<br />
But first let us resume the course of the original. In the name of Augustus,<br />
Celadus assured the slave that his life would be spared if he identified the<br />
person behind the plot. The imposter offered no resistance, willingly named<br />
his Svengali, and candidly admitted how much he had benefited by the deal.<br />
Augustus heard the story with amusement and then, because of the strong<br />
physique already stressed by Josephus, 75 sentenced the man to the galleys.<br />
We are not told what happened to his accomplices.<br />
We should not be surprised that Augustus treated the affair in a relaxed<br />
fashion, with humour and even some cynicism. Even if Josephus’ account is<br />
not precisely how things happened, it is probably more or less correct and,<br />
as we have already seen, in comparable circumstances (Corocotta’s cheeky<br />
surrender) the emperor had reacted with the same control. 76<br />
So much for the Bellum Iudaicum. In the Antiquitates Iudaicae Josephus<br />
devised a more colourful and credible finale. First, he recast the imposter’s<br />
condemnation to make a more complex and so more plausible set of events<br />
than in his first version of the story. Celadus is again sent by Augustus to<br />
make contact with this supposed son of Herod, but is unable to make up<br />
his mind as to whether or not he is genuine. ‘Alexander’ and his backer<br />
are brought before Augustus, but both at first deny the deception. It is the<br />
emperor alone, with his perfect eye for the truth, who senses that the young<br />
man is too burly for a royal prince, and so can never be the son of Herod.<br />
The insight that in the Bellum Iudaicum was attributed to Celadus is now<br />
had by princeps himself. In order to make Augustus’ clever perception even<br />
more impressive, he is now made to expose the false Alexander fully without<br />
any external help. To this end he first asks the claimant about the whereabouts<br />
of his brother, Aristoboulos. He is told that he too was spared by the<br />
compassionate executioner, and has been left behind safe on Cyprus to make<br />
sure that, whatever happened, one of the sons of Mariamne would survive. 77<br />
147
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