Josephus and the Emperor

To ONE who has felt at times that Mr. Lion Feuchtwanger was somewhat heavy in hand, this latest volume of his Josephus trilogy is an agreeable surprise. The author’s prose remains ponderous, yet to this reviewer Josephus and the Emperor is a more vital and important book than its two predecessors. In it the doubts and irresolutions of Josephus, the intellectual who tried to be both Jew and Roman, patriot and compromiser, are finally resolved. And over the story of his twists and turns, and those of the other characters, hangs always the dark spirit of the Emperor, the God-man, Domitian. The author has dealt masterfully with the strange character of Domitian. In fact that gloomy despot overshadows all the other persons of this drama. Josephus himself is almost taken for granted. He merely works out his destiny along the lines predetermined by his character, and the story of his ending, after the death of Domitian, is almost anticlimax. R. E. D.