_The Year of Jubilee_
[Sidenote: A Retrospect]
The first rage of the persecution was at an end;[30] the popular thirst
for blood was satiated. The natural admiration that follows fortitude
and innocence, and the natural hatred that consigns a tyrant to the
execration of his time and of posterity, found their way, and Nero dared
murder no more. I voluntarily shared the prison of Constantius and my
child. Its doors were now set open. The liberality of my people supplied
the means of returning to Judea, and we hastened down the Tiber in the
first vessel that spread her sails from this throne of desolation.
The chances that had brought us together were soon explained. Salome,
urged to desperation by the near approach of her marriage, and anxious
to save herself from the perjury of vowing her love to one unpossessed
of her heart, had flown with Constantius to Cæsarea. The only person in
their confidence was the domestic who betrayed me into the hands of the
procurator, and who assisted them only that he might lure me from home.
[Sidenote: The Return to Judea]
At Cæsarea they were wedded, and remained in concealment, under the
protection of the young Septimius. My transmission to Rome struck them
with terror, and Constantius instantly embarked to save me by his Italian
influence. The attempt was surrounded with peril, but Salome would not
be left behind. Disguised, to avoid my possible refusal of life at
his hands, he followed me step by step. There were many of our people
among the attendants and even in the higher offices of the court. The
Empress had, in her reproaches to Nero, disclosed the new barbarity of
my sentence. No time was to be lost. Constantius, at the imminent hazard
of life, entered the palace. He saw the block already erected in the
garden before the window, where Nero sat inventing a melody which was to
grace my departure. The confusion of the fire offered the only escape. I
was witness of his consternation when he made so many fruitless efforts
to penetrate to the place where Salome remained in the care of his
relatives. When I scaled the burning mansion, he desperately followed,
lost his way among the ruins, and was giving up all hope when, wrapped in
fire and smoke, Salome fell at his feet. He bore her to another mansion
of his family. It had given shelter to the chief Christians. They were
seized. His young wife scorned to survive Constantius; and chance and my
own fortunate desperation alone saved me from seeing their martyrdom.
We returned to Judea. In the first embrace of my family all was forgotten
and forgiven. My brother rejoiced in Salome’s happiness; and even her
rejected kinsman, despite his reluctance, acknowledged the claims of him
who had saved the life of the father, to the daughter’s hand.
What perception of health is ever so exquisite as when we first rise
from the bed of sickness? What enjoyment of the heart is so full of
delight as that which follows extreme suffering? I had but just escaped
the most formidable personal hazards; I had escaped the still deeper
suffering of seeing ruin fall on beings whom I would have died to rescue.
Salome’s heart, overflowing with happiness, gave new brightness to her
eyes and new animation to her lovely form. She danced with involuntary
joy, she sang, she laughed; her fancy kindled into a thousand sparklings.
Beautiful being! in my visions thou art still before me. I clasp thee to
my widowed heart, and hear thy sweet voice, sweeter than the fountain
in the desert to the pilgrim, cheering me in the midst of my more than
pilgrimage.
[Sidenote: During the Jubilee]
An accession of opulence gave the only increase, if increase could be
given, to the happiness that seemed within my reach. The year of JUBILEE
arrived. Abolished as the chief customs of Judea had been by the weakness
and guilt of idolatrous kings and generations, they were still observed
by all who honored the faith of their fathers. The law of Jubilee was
sacred in our mountains; it was the law of a wisdom and benevolence above
man.
Its peculiar adaptation to Israel, its provision for the virtue and
happiness of the individual, and its safeguard of the public strength and
constitutional integrity, were unrivaled amongst the finest ordinances of
the ancient world.
On the entrance of the Israelites into Canaan, the land was divided, by
the inspired command, among the tribes according to their numbers. To
each family a portion was assigned as a gift from heaven. The gift was
to be inalienable. The estate might be sold for a period; but in the
fiftieth year, on the evening of the Day of Atonement, in the month of
Tishri, the sound of the trumpets from the sanctuary, echoed by thousands
of voices from every mountain-top, proclaimed the Jubilee. Then returned,
without purchase, every family to its original possessions. All the
more abject degradations of poverty, the wearing out of families, the
hopeless ruin, were obviated by this great law. The most undone being in
the limits of Judea had still a hold in the land. His ruin could not be
final, perhaps could not extend beyond a few years; in the last extremity
he could not be scorned as one whose birthright was extinguished; the
Jubilee was to raise him up and place the outcast in the early rank
of the sons of Israel. All the higher feelings were cherished by this
incomparable hope. The man, conscious of his future possessions, retained
the honorable pride of property under the sternest privations. The time
was hurrying on when he should stand on an equality with mankind, when
his worn spirit should begin the world again with fresh vigor, if he
were young; or when he should sit under the vine and the fig-tree of his
fathers, if his age refused again to struggle for the distinctions of the
world.
[Sidenote: The Allotment of Naphtali]
The agrarian law of Rome and Sparta, feeble efforts to establish this
true foundation of personal and political vigor, showed at once both
the natural impulse and the weakness of human wisdom. The Roman plunged
the people into furious dissensions, which perished almost in their
birth. The Spartan was secured for a time only by barbarian prohibitions
of money and commerce—a code which raised an iron wall against
civilization, turned the people into a perpetual soldiery, and finally,
by the mere result of continual war, overthrew liberty, dominion, and
name.
The Jubilee was for a peculiar people, restricted by a divine
interposition from increase beyond the original number. But who shall say
how far the same benevolent interposition might not have been extended to
all nations, if they had revered the original compact of heaven with man?
How far throughout the earth the provisions for each man’s wants might
not have been secured—the overwhelming superabundance of portionless life
that fills the world with crime might not have been restrained; how far
despotism, that growth of desperate abjectness of the understanding and
gross corruption of the senses, might not have been repelled by manly
knowledge and native virtue? But the time may come.
[Sidenote: The Summons of Florus]
In the first allotments of the territory, ample domains had been
appointed for the princes and leaders of the tribes. One of those
princedoms now returned to me, and I entered upon the inheritance of the
leaders of Naphtali, a large extent of hill and valley, rich with corn,
olive, and vine. The antiquity of possession gave a kind of hallowed
and monumental interest to the soil. I was master of its wealth, but I
indulged a loftier feeling in the recollection of those who had trod
the palace and the plain before me. Every chamber bore the trace of
those whom the history of my country had taught me to reverence; and
often, when in some of the fragrant evenings of summer I have flung
myself among the thick beds of bloom that spread spontaneously over my
hills, the spirits of the loved and honored seemed to gather round me.
I saw once more the matron gravity and the virgin grace; even the more
remote generations, those great progenitors who with David fought the
Philistine; the solemn chieftains who with Joshua followed the Ark of
the Covenant through toil and battle into the promised land; the sainted
sages who witnessed the giving of the law, and worshiped Him who spake in
thunder from Sinai; all moved before me, for all had trod the very ground
on which I gazed. Could I transfer myself back to their time, on that
spot I should stand among a living circle of heroic and glorious beings
before whose true glory the pomps of earth were vain; the hearers of the
prophets themselves; the servants of the man of miracle, the companions
of the friend of God; nay, distinction that surpasses human thought,
themselves the chosen of heaven.
The cheering occupations of rural life were to be henceforth pursued on
a scale more fitting my rank. I was the first chieftain of my tribe,
the man by whose wisdom multitudes were to be guided, and by whose
benevolence multitudes were to be sustained. I felt that mingled sense
of rank and responsibility which with the vain, the ignorant, or the
vicious is the strongest temptation to excess, but with the honorable and
intelligent constitutes the most pleasurable and the most elevated state
of the human mind.
Yet what are the fortunes of man but a ship launched on an element whose
essence is restlessness? The very wind, without which we can not move,
gathers to a storm and we are undone! The tyranny of our conquerors had
for a few months been paralyzed by the destruction of Rome. But the
governor of Judea was not to be long withheld, where plunder allured
the most furious rapacity that perhaps ever hungered in the heart of
man. I was in the midst of our harvest, surrounded with the fruitage
of the year and enjoying the sights and sounds of patriarchal life,
when I received the formidable summons to present myself again before
Florus. Imprisonment and torture were in the command. He had heard of
my opulence, and I knew how little his insolent cupidity would regard
the pardon under which I had returned. I determined to retire into the
mountains and defy him.
[Sidenote: The Rescue of Septimius]
But the Roman plunderer had the activity of his countrymen. On the
very night of my receiving the summons I was roused from sleep by the
outcries of the retainers, who in that season of heat lay in the open air
round the palace. I started from my bed, only to see with astonishment
the courtyards filled with cavalry, galloping in pursuit of the few
peasants who still fought for their lord. There was no time to be lost;
the torches were already in the hands of the soldiery, and I must be
taken or burned alive. Constantius was instantly at my side. I ordered
the trumpet to be sounded on the hills and we rushed out together, spear
in hand. The Romans, alarmed by resistance where they had counted upon
capture without a blow, fell back. The interval was fatal to them. Their
retreat was intercepted by the whole body of the peasantry, at length
effectually roused. The scythe and reaping-hook were deadly weapons to
horsemen cooped up between walls, and in midnight. No efforts of mine
could stop the havoc, when once the fury of my people was roused. A few
escaped, who had broken wildly away in the first onset. The rest were
left to cover the avenues with the first sanguinary offerings of the
final war of Judea.
I felt that this escape could be but temporary, for the Roman policy
never forgave until the slightest stain of defeat was wiped away. All
was consternation in my family, and the order for departure, whatever
tears it cost, found no opposition. In a few hours our camels and mules
were loaded, our horses caparisoned, and we were prepared to quit the
short-lived pomp of the house of my fathers. Constantius alone did not
appear. This noble-minded being had won even upon me, until I considered
him the substitute for my lost son; and I would run the last hazard
rather than leave him to the Roman mercy. With the women, the interest
was expressed by a declared resolution not to leave the spot until he was
found. The caravan was broken up and all desire of escape was at an end.
At the close of a day of search through every defile of the country,
he was seen returning at the head of some peasants bearing a body on a
litter. I flew to meet him. He was in deep affliction, and drawing off
the mantle which covered the face, he showed me Septimius.
[Sidenote: Roman Plans]
“In the flight of the Romans,” said he, “I saw a horseman making head
against a crowd. His voice caught my ear. I rushed forward to save him,
and he burst through the circle at full speed. But by the light of the
torches I could perceive that he was desperately wounded. When day broke,
I tracked him by his blood. His horse, gashed by scythes, had fallen
under him. I found my unfortunate friend lying senseless beside a rill,
to which he had crept for water.”
Tears fell from his eyes as he told the brief story. I too remembered the
generous interposition of the youth, and when I looked upon the paleness
of those fine Italian features that I had so lately seen lighted up with
living spirit, and in a scene of regal luxury, I felt a pang for the
uncertainty of human things. But the painful part of the moral was spared
us. The young Roman’s wounds were stanched, and in an enemy and a Roman I
found the means of paying a debt of gratitude. His appearance among the
troops sent to seize me had been only a result of his anxiety to save the
father of his friends. He had accidentally discovered the nature of the
order and hoped to anticipate its execution. But he arrived only in time
to be involved in the confusion of the flight. Pursued and wounded by
the peasantry, he lost his way, and but for the generous perseverance of
Constantius he must have died.
The public information which he brought was of the most important kind.
In the Roman councils, the utter subjugation of Judea was resolved on;
the last spark of national independence was to be extinguished, tho in
the blood of the last native; a Roman colony established in our lands;
the Roman worship introduced; and Jerusalem profaned by a statue of
Nero, and sacrifices to him as a god, on the altar of the sanctuary. To
crush the resistance of the people, the legions, to the number of sixty
thousand men, were under orders from proconsular Asia, Egypt, and Europe.
The most distinguished captain of the empire, Vespasian, was called from
Britain to the command, and the whole military strength of Rome was
prepared to follow up the blow.
[Sidenote: The Principles of War]
I summoned the chief men of the tribe. My temperament was warlike. The
seclusion and studies of my early life had but partially suppressed my
natural delight in the vividness of martial achievement. But the cause
that now summoned me was enough to have kindled the dullest peasant into
the soldier. I had seen the discipline of the enemy; I had made myself
master of their system of war. Fortifications wherever a stone could
be piled upon a hill; provisions laid up in large quantities wherever
they could be secured; small bodies of troops practised in maneuver,
and perpetually in motion between the fortresses; a general base of
operations to which all the movements referred—were the simple principles
that had made them conquerors of the world. I resolved to give them a
speedy proof of my pupilage.