Such pleasantries had been several times repeated, when a still more diabolical idea was suggested to the emperor. This was to place a colossal golden statue of himself in the sanctuary of the temple at Jerusalem, and to have the temple itself dedicated to his own divinity.[11.7] This odious intrigue had very nearly hastened by thirty years the revolt and the ruin of the Jewish nation. The moderation of the imperial legate, Publius Petronius, and the intervention of King Herod Agrippa, favorite of Caligula, prevented the catastrophe. But until the moment in which the sword of Chæræa delivered the earth from the most execrable tyrant it had as yet endured, the Jews lived everywhere in terror. Philo has preserved for us the unheard-of scene which occurred when the deputation of which he was the chief was admitted to see the emperor.[11.8] Caligula received them during a visit he was paying to the villas of Mæcenas and of Lamia, near the sea, in the environs of Pozzuoli. He was on that day in a vein of gaiety. Helicon, his favorite joker, had been relating to him all sorts of buffooneries about the Jews. "Ah, then, it is you," said he to them with a bitter smile and showing his teeth, "who alone will not recognise me for a god, and prefer to adore one whose name you cannot even utter!" He accompanied these words with a frightful blasphemy. The Jews trembled; their Alexandrian enemies were the first to take up the word: "You would still more, O Sire, detest these people and all their nation, if you knew the aversion they have for you; for they alone have refused to offer sacrifices for your health when all other people did so!"