name is carved on the temple of Tentyra with
that of the emperor. He was a man who united all those qualities of
prudent forethought, with prompt execution and attention to business,
which was so necessary in controlling the irritable Alexandrians, who
were liable to be fired into rebellion by the smallest spark. Justice
was administered fairly; the great were not allowed to tyrannise over
the poor, nor the people to meet in tumultuous mobs; and the legions
were regularly paid, so that they had no excuse for plundering the
Egyptians.

On the death of Tiberius, in A.D. 37, the old quarrel again broke out
between Jews and Greeks. The Alexandrians were not slow in learning the
feelings of his successor, Caius, or Caligula, towards the Jews, nor
in turning against them the new law that the emperor's statue should
be honoured in every temple of the empire. They had very unwillingly
yielded a half-obedience to the law of Augustus that the Jews should
still be allowed the privileges of citizenship; and, as soon as they
heard that Caligula was to be worshipped in every temple of the empire,
they denounced the Jews as traitors and rebels, who refused so to honour
the emperor in their synagogues. It happened, unfortunately, that their
countryman, King Agrippa, at this time came to Alexandria. He had full
leave from the emperor to touch there, as being the quickest and most
certain way of making the voyage from Rome to the seat of his own
government. Indeed, the Alexandrian voyage had another merit in the eyes
of a Jew; for, whereas wooden water-vessels were declared by the Law to
be unclean, an exception was made by their tradition in favour of the
larger size of the water-wells in the Alexandrian ships. Agrippa had
seen Egypt before, on his way to Rome, and he meant to make no stay
there; but, though he landed purposely after dark, and with no pomp or
show, he seems to have raised the anger of the prefect Flaccus, who felt
jealous at any man of higher rank than himself coming into his province.
The Greeks fell into the prefect's humour, and during the stay of
Agrippa in Alexandria they lampooned him in songs and ballads, of which
the raillery was not of the most delicate kind. They mocked him by
leading about the streets a poor idiot dressed up with a paper crown and
a reed for a sceptre, in ridicule of his rather doubtful right to the
style of royalty.

As these insults towards the emperor's friend passed wholly unchecked
by