"Herod himself always insisted that he was congenitally a rogue. To which I would reply, "No, you are a fundamentally virtuous man wearing the mask of roguery." This would make him angry. A month or two before Caligula's death we had a conversation of this sort. At the end of it he said, 'Shall I tell you about yourself?' 'There's no need,' I answered, 'I'm the Official Fool of the Palace.' 'Well,' he said, 'there are fools who pretend to be wise men and wise men who pretend to be fools, but you are the first case I have yet encountered of a fool pretending to be a fool. And one day you'll see, my friend, what sort of a virtuous Jew you are dealing with.'" Chapter 1, p. 11

"Everyone at Rome who is anyone gets divorced sooner or later. (Nobody, for instance, could...