Agrippa's Daughter Quotes

“Where am I?” “In the House of Hillel, under the terebinth tree.” “That’s a good place to be,” she agreed, as simply and gently as a child. “I am tired now, and I want to sleep.” That night Berenice Basagrippa died—in her fifty-fourth year. They buried her on the hillside next to her husband, Shimeon Bengamaliel, the grandson of the sage who is remembered as Hillel the Good. In time the gravestone was carried away or sank into the ground, and so the grave was unmarked and became one with the ancient soil of Galilee in Israel.”
― Howard Fast, Agrippa's Daughter: A Novel

“That, Imperator, is of concern only to myself and to Titus. And further, do not address me as woman. My ancestors were priests at Jerusalem and kings at Megiddo when Rome was a circle of mud huts inhabited by brutes who had not yet learned to weave cloth or even to smelt copper. And as for this meeting, I think that I at least have had sufficient of it—and if you will permit me, I should like to go.”
― Howard Fast, Agrippa's Daughter: A Novel

“One doesn’t expect history from a Jew. From a Greek, yes—and a Roman. But a Jew.” “What does one expect from a Jew?” “Business, you know. You are a nation of merchants. The hand out all the time, you know. That’s why you are all so improbably rich. Go anywhere—anywhere in the world, and you find your rich Jew.” “We are merchants,” Joseph nodded. “I can’t deny that. Your emperors wear the purple because Jews crush the shell and extract the dye, and because Jewish ships bring the dye to Thrace to dye the cotton there, and other Jews buy the cotton cloth in Egypt. By virtue of the same, your silk tunic exists because Jewish caravans trade between here and Cathay, and the beautiful bronze clasp you wear, with the hawk emblazoned on it, exists because a Jewish trading station and synagogue has flourished in Cornwall for a hundred years before ever a Roman set foot in Britain, and because Jewish supercargoes directed Phoenician shipping into the tin trade before certain other peoples ever learned that bronze was an alloy of copper and tin. We create wealth, my dear procurator; we don’t steal it.”
― Howard Fast, Agrippa's Daughter: A Novel

“Perhaps we admire certain qualities in Rome only because we are Jews—just as our being Jews makes us the implacable enemies of other qualities that Rome embraces.”
― Howard Fast, Agrippa's Daughter: A Novel

“There—you mean to eat? No, no—I hold with my blessed mentor, Hippocrates, that three quarters of the physical evils that beset mankind flow from eating too much, not too little.”
― Howard Fast, Agrippa's Daughter: A Novel

“I know that we foster the illusion that we are our own masters, yet when it comes to basic things, it is Rome that must decide whether a Jewish king should sit on the throne of Cilicia. However, it worked out well enough, for Vibius Marsus took a light view of the matter, saying that so far as he was concerned, Polemon could cut off his hand or his head as well as his foreskin—Rome being less concerned with the religion of its vassals than with their loyalty. It would seem that Polemon has proven his loyalty, for when Marsus charged his brother, Cheleth, with plotting against Rome, Polemon tried him and hanged him—that is, his brother Cheleth of course and not the proconsul. So Vibius Marsus put no barriers in our way.”
― Howard Fast, Agrippa's Daughter: A Novel

“He claims that he first lost his heart to you when he saw you four years ago at the wedding, and he says that his love is constant and increasing, so that he cannot eat or sleep or have any peace for desire of you. I put it to him that this made a strange kind of approach, seeing that he already had a wife. But he told me that she tired him and he was ready to put her aside, and that he had already spoken to what passes for the high priest at Tarsus in terms of a religious dissolution of his marriage. He asked me whether you would be badly affected if his wife were to die inadvertently. I replied that not only would you react poorly to this, but that it would only add flames to the talk that already circulates around you and myself and our house. I must say that he is unaffected by this talk.”
― Howard Fast, Agrippa's Daughter: A Novel

“If Agrippa was indifferent to the needs or desires of Berenice, he was by no means indifferent to her bloodlines; she could claim not only the Herodian and Hasmonean ancestry, but also the bloodline of King David and a trace of the Roman Julian Gens. There was the highest blood in Israel. Who could marry it?”
― Howard Fast, Agrippa's Daughter: A Novel

“Only the very great take pleasure in the glory of others.” “Oh?” He had forgotten entirely his earlier irritation. Now he smiled at the manner in which she complimented herself and himself, the two bracketed.”
― Howard Fast, Agrippa's Daughter: A Novel