After I had been in Rome a few weeks, I was admitted into a club or collegium of actors; where I made acquaintance with the actor Aliturius, a Jew by birth, one that was in great favor with Poppea who had that same year been married to the Emperor. Now the lady Poppea, like many others of rank and quality at that time, was given to the observance of the Jewish law; at least so far as concerned Sabbaths and abstinence from meats and the use of certain purifications; and she had with her a certain Ishmael, who had been high priest among the Jews. Hence it came to pass that, by help of Aliturius and through favor of Poppea, I was admitted to perform and recite at several feasts and drinking parties in the palace, and sometimes even in the presence of the Emperor himself, but more especially before the officers of the Pretorian guard.
One evening, as I came from a feast where I had been making mirth for some of the officers, returning through that part of the palace which looks towards the Circus Maximus, there passed by me a guard of soldiers having a prisoner in chains, whom they led into an adjoining chamber, and I understood from them that the man was to lie there for that night, that he might be ready on the morrow; when the Emperor himself proposed to hear his cause in the temple of Apollo, which was near at hand. “And who,” said I, “is this prisoner whom the divine Emperor thus deigns to honor?” The man, they said, was one of the Christian superstition. Now at that time, being in favor with Poppea and the Jew Aliturius, and it being my occupation to be a jester for the officers and soldiers, I was wont to make the Christians matter for jest and scoffing, not sparing sometimes (may the Lord forgive me) to assail even the Crucified One in my jesting. So being inflamed with wine, I thrust myself unbidden into the chamber, telling the guard that we would examine the prisoner at once, “Wherefore,” said I, “be ye _judices_ or jury, and I, for the nonce, will be the divine Emperor himself.”
