a very emotional fifty year old man

copyright 2008 Stephan Huller

We now stand before the central problem of this entire book – whether there is enough surviving evidence to suggest that Marcus Julius Agrippa’s trip to Alexandria around 37 CE had something to do with the event described on throne of St. Mark. Agrippa’s age is entirely crucial to our argument; a significance which goes beyond the particular size of the chair. The question ultimately goes back to ‘which Agrippa’ was released from prison by the Emperor Caligula.

If we accept the claims of the surviving texts of Josephus, it was Marcus Agrippa’s father - presumably an ‘Agrippa’ with another given name - who was freed by Caligula. Josephus doesn’t mention anything about a trip to Alexandria thereafter however. All of this information comes from a thoroughly Hellenized Jew named Philo from the same Egyptian city. It is Philo who seems to pick up on the details exactly where Josephus leaves off – or at least that’s how scholars have traditionally looked at the problem. I see things quite differently.

There was always something inherently implausible about Josephus’ portrait of Agrippa’s ‘friendship’ with Claudius. If we accept the portrait of ‘Agrippa I’ which emerges from the Christianized pages of Josephus we have to imagine that Caligula the raving lunatic remained steadfastly loyal throughout his life to a devout Jew. Yet Philo makes absolutely clear that Caligula detested Jews. Why then would he have liked Agrippa I?

Furthermore ‘Agrippa I’ would have been forty eight at the enthronement of the twenty five year old Caesar in 37 CE. It is utterly implausible. What could a twenty five year old have in common with a man of nearly fifty? How could a friendship have emerged between these two men? Again it just doesn’t make intuitive sense.
We have to imagine that the twenty five year old Caesar took a devoted forty eight year old man on various trips to Germany. It has to be accepted now that during all the depravity and bloodshed that characterized his reign, Claudius managed to avoid killing this strange old Jewish man that stood at his right hand. Indeed we are told by a range of sources that Caligula was a very angry young man who killed people on a mere whim. He is said to have killed his grandmother, his brother, his father-in-law and most of the other people around him. The only one who survived was his uncle Claudius who Suetonius says was spared “merely as a laughing-stock.”

How then can we imagine that in the midst of all this brutality and carnage a fifty year old Jew somehow survived the fate of all his other companions? It simply doesn’t make sense. Of course if we imagine that he was a beautiful young lad, the scenario makes perfect sense. Young Agrippa represented the ‘perfect innocent’ Caligula wanted to protect from the brutality he was inflicting on the world around him. There was a deep psychological connection between them which contemporary therapists would have enjoyed dissecting.

To this end if we look carefully at Philo’s alternative account of their relationship it immediately becomes obvious that Agrippa wasn’t anywhere near fifty years old. He was instead a young boy who was continually emotionally traumatized by his ‘older brother.’ This becomes clear when we follow Philo’s reporting of Caligula’s attempt to goad the Jews into outright rebellion by installing statues of himself in all their places of worship including the temple of Jerusalem. The incident occurred in CE when Agrippa was either 13 or 50 years of age.

The story goes that as ‘Agrippa’ walks into the Emperor’s palace and sees that he is angry he finds himself unable to hide his trepidation. ‘Agrippa’ throughout appears as a young innocent with absolutely no control over his emotions. Philo says that when Gaius immediately saw that Agrippa was in a state of great alarm and perplexity he went out of his way to assure him that he bore him no ill will. At this ‘Agrippa’ calms down until he learns about the Emperor’s plan to install a statue in the temple. The innocent of the young lad comes shining through yet again.

We are immediately told again by Philo that:

Agrippa fell into such a state of grief that he changed into all sorts of colours, becoming at the same moment bloodshot, and pale, and livid, for he was all over agitation and trembling from the top of his head down to his feet, and a quivering and shaking seized upon and disordered all his limbs and every member of his body, all his sinews, and muscles, and nerves being relaxed and enfeebled, so that he fainted away, and would have fallen down if some of the bystanders had not supported him. And they being commanded to carry him home, bore him to his palace, where he lay for some time in a state of torpor without any one understanding what sudden misfortune had brought him into this state.

I know already what people are going to say. Perhaps Philo was exaggerating the emotional state of Agrippa for literary effect. Yet this would be utterly absurd such wild displays of pathos would have been unimaginable for man of over fifty years especially a cultured student of philosophy like Agrippa.

The ancient world believed that fifty was the age that a educated man could finally become ‘master’ of his own passions. By contrast children were seen as essentially emotionally uncontrollable owing to their lack of training. It all came down to the philosophical ideal of apatheia which Agrippa surprisingly is unable to demonstrate throughout the whole report. We are told again that he is eventually carried home where he

lay in a state of profound stupor, being completely unconscious of everything that passed; but about evening he raised his head a little, and for a short time opened, though with difficulty, his languid eyes, and with dim and indistinct vision looked upon the people who surrounded him, though he was not as yet able to distinguish clearly between their several forms and features.

Agrippa is so shaken that he relapses into such a deep sleep that those around him wonder if he was still breathing. When he finally wakes up he realizes that he is back in his own palace. It is at this point that he does the unimaginable for a fifty year old philosopher; he is portrait as “shedding abundance of tears” once more.

For the moment it doesn’t matter that all of these histrionics actually lead to the desired result – Caligula does indeed relent from his mad plan. Yet most scholars don’t even think twice about Agrippa’s pathetic display. This pathetic display seems all the more ridiculous when we compare the equivalent behaviour of an embassy of ‘elders’ from the city of Alexandria when they have to face the Emperor attempting much the same thing in the synagogues of their city.

These fifty plus year old gentlemen are confronted with actually something a lot more serious than in Agrippa’s case. The Emperor’s plan to install statues of himself wasn’t theoretical. It actually took place. Nevertheless it is noteworthy that none of these old men end up behaving like Agrippa. They somehow can muster enough courage to carry on a rational dialogue with these men even as he inflicts unimaginable injuries to their community.

When Gaius threatens them for not worshipping him as a God it is acknowledged that the Jewish elders “immediately” had a profound shuddering came upon them. Yet they manage somehow to carry on a conversation. As Gaius entered into their synagogues to drive the Jews into the street alongside hostile pagan adversaries mocking and deriding them they managed to stay calm and quiet in perfect philosophic detachment. As he shouted insults against their idiosyncratic customs they somehow managed to carry on a conversation.

It is utterly ridiculous to maintain Agrippa could possibly have been the same age as the elders of Alexandria especially when compare their behavior. After all this abuse we hear that:

when our pleadings on behalf of justice were thus broken up, and cut short, and interrupted, and crushed as one may almost say, we, being wearied and exhausted, and having no strength left in us, but being in continual expectation of nothing else than death, could not longer keep our hearts as they had been, but in our agony we took refuge in supplications to the one true God, praying him to check the wrath of this falsely called god.

In the end Gaius again relented from his plan to force the Jews into open rebellion. Nevertheless what almost never said in all of this is how clear the proof that Agrippa was not a ‘master.’ He was clearly still a boy and his behavior clearly demonstrates that.

Philo of Alexandria adored Agrippa with every bone in his body. This is absolutely clear from other treatises we shall examine shortly. The ‘sissy’ portrait of Agrippa cannot be attributed to malice on his part. The answer has eluded scholars for so long owing to their slavish devotion to the falsified text of Josephus. Agrippa was a little boy. The elders acted like fifty year old men did in antiquity. Agrippa didn’t because he wasn’t yet a man.

I would argue furthermore that we can apply these same arguments to Agrippa’s slinking into Alexandria’s harbor only a few years earlier.
Philo makes up an excuse that it was all Caligula’s fault because he was the one who instructed Agrippa to carry on like this. As ridiculous as the excuse is it only makes sense if Caligula was directing a nine year old boy. Surely a king of almost fifty years wouldn’t need help to get home!