balanced, by this prosperous expedition, their misfortunes at sea; and
by the bounty of Germanicus their happiness was increased; since to each
sufferer he paid as much as he declared he had lost; neither was it
doubted but that the enemy was tottering and concerting measures for
obtaining peace, and that the next summer would terminate the war.
Tiberius, by frequent letters, pressed him "to come home to the triumph
decreed him." He urged also that he had experienced enough of events and
casualties; he had indeed fought great and successful battles, but he
must likewise remember his losses and calamities, which (however, owing
to wind and waves, and no fault of the general) were yet great and
grievous. He himself had been sent nine times into Germany by Augustus,
and effected much more by policy than arms. It was thus he had brought
the Sygambrians into subjection, thus the Suevians, thus King Maroboduus
had been obliged to submit to terms. The Cheruscans, too, and the other
hostile nations--now the Roman honor was vindicated--might be left to
pursue their own intestine feuds. Germanicus besought one year to
accomplish his conquest, but Tiberius assailed his modesty with fresh
importunity, by offering him another consulship, the duties of which
would require his presence; he added "that if the war were still to be
prosecuted, he should leave materials for the fame of his brother,
Drusus, who, as there then remained no other enemy, could acquire the
title of _Imperator_, and earn the privilege of presenting the laurel in
Germany alone." Germanicus persisted no longer; though he knew that this
was all hypocrisy, and that through envy he was torn away from a ripened
harvest of glory.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] There were four gates to a Roman camp. Livy says so in express
terms: "_Ad quatuor portas exercitum instruxit, ut, signo dato, ex
omnibus portubus eruptionem facerent._" The several gates were the
_prætorian_; the gate opposite to it, at the extremity of the camp,
called the _decuman_; and two others, called the _right_ and _left
principals_, because they stood on the right and left sides of the camp,
fronting the street called _Principia_.
[20] In the camp a place was set apart for taking the auspices, on the
right of the general's tent.
[21] He assumed this disguise in order to appear like a German soldier.
[22] The Romans divided the night into four watches. Each watch was on
duty three hours, and then relieved by the next in turn. The third watch
began about the modern twelve at night.
[23] It appears that the battle was fought in July or the beginning of
August, _adulta jam æstate_. If so, the _fifth_ hour nearly agrees with
our nine in the morning.
[24] In the time of the republic, the title of Imperator was given by
the soldiers in the field of battle to the commander-in-chief. The
custom ceased under Augustus, who annexed the title to the imperial
dignity, the prince being then generalissimo of all the armies of the
empire. The name of Imperator, it is true, was afterward given to the
general who gained a victory; but that was not done without the special
permission of the prince. The same rule was observed under the following
emperors; and accordingly we find that Tiberius was saluted Imperator;
but the soldiers did not presume to do that honor to Germanicus.
[25] The mouth of the Visurgis, or the Weser.
THE CRUCIFIXION
A.D. 30[26]
FREDERIC WILLIAM FARRAR
The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ took place on Friday of the
Passover week of the Jews, in the year A.D. 30. This day is known
and now generally observed by Christians as Good Friday.
Crucifixion, as a means of inflicting death in the most cruel,
lingering, and shameful way, was used by many nations of antiquity.
The Jews never executed their criminals in this way, but the Greeks
and Romans made the cross the instrument of death to malefactors.
The cross was in the shape either of the letter T or the letter X,
or was in the form familiar in such paintings of the Crucifixion as
the well-known representation of Rubens. It was the usual custom to
compel the criminal to carry his own cross to the place of
execution. The cross was then set up and the criminal was usually
tied to it by the hands and feet and left to perish of hunger and
thirst. Sometimes he was given a narcotic drink to stupefy him. In
the case of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ the victim was fastened
to the cross by nails driven through his hands and feet.
As Dr. Judson Titsworth has plainly pointed out, the men who were
crucified with Jesus Christ were not thieves, but robbers (this is
the term also used below by Farrar), or perhaps Jewish patriots, to
the Romans political rebels and outlaws. They would then be classed
with Jesus under the accusation that they were not loyal to the
sovereignty of the Roman Emperor. During the procuratorship of
Pontius Pilate there was a widely prevailing spirit of sedition and
revolt among the Jews, and many rebels were sentenced to
crucifixion. Such a rebel was the robber Barabbas, whom Pilate
wished to substitute for Jesus as the victim of popular fury. The
"robber" episode of the Crucifixion is treated by Farrar with a
picturesque effect which heightens the vivid coloring in his
account of the supreme event that marks "the central point of the
world's history."
Utterly brutal and revolting as was the punishment of crucifixion, which
has now for fifteen hundred years been abolished by the common pity and
abhorrence of mankind, there was one custom in Judea, and one
occasionally practised by the Romans, which reveal some touch of
passing humanity. The latter consisted in giving to the sufferer a blow
under the armpit, which, without causing death, yet hastened its
approach. Of this I need not speak, because, for whatever reason, it was
not practised on this occasion. The former, which seems to have been due
to the milder nature of Judaism, and which was derived from a happy
piece of rabbinic exegesis on Prov. xxxi. 6, consisted in giving to the
condemned, immediately before his execution, a draught of wine medicated
with some powerful opiate. It had been the custom of wealthy ladies in
Jerusalem to provide this stupefying potion at their own expense, and
they did so quite irrespectively of their sympathy for any individual
criminal. It was probably taken freely by the two malefactors, but when
they offered it to Jesus he would not take it. The refusal was an act of
sublimest heroism. The effect of the draught was to dull the nerves, to
cloud the intellect, to provide an anæsthetic against some part at least
of the lingering agonies of that dreadful death. But he, whom some
modern sceptics have been base enough to accuse of feminine feebleness
and cowardly despair, preferred rather "to look Death in the face"--to
meet the king of terrors without striving to deaden the force of one
agonizing anticipation, or to still the throbbing of one lacerated
nerve.
The three crosses were laid on the ground--that of Jesus, which was
doubtless taller than the other two, being placed in bitter scorn in the
midst. Perhaps the cross-beam was now nailed to the upright, and
certainly the title, which had either been borne by Jesus fastened round
his neck or carried by one of the soldiers in front of him, was now
nailed to the summit of his cross. Then he was stripped naked of all his
clothes, and then followed the most awful moment of all. He was laid
down upon the implement of torture. His arms were stretched along the
cross-beams; and at the centre of the open palms the point of a huge
iron nail was placed, which, by the blow of a mallet, was driven home
into the wood. Then through either foot separately, or possibly through
both together as they were placed one over the other, another huge nail
tore its way through the quivering flesh. Whether the sufferer was
_also_ bound to the cross we do not know; but, to prevent the hands and
feet being torn away by the weight of the body, which could not "rest
upon nothing but four great wounds," there was, about the centre of the
cross, a wooden projection strong enough to support, at least in part, a
human body which soon became a weight of agony.
It was probably at this moment of inconceivable horror that the voice of
the Son of Man was heard uplifted, not in a scream of natural agony at
that fearful torture, but calmly praying in divine compassion for his
brutal and pitiless murderers--aye, and for all who in their sinful
ignorance crucify him afresh forever: "Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do."
And then the accursed tree--with its living human burden hanging upon it
in helpless agony, and suffering fresh tortures as every movement
irritated the fresh rents in hands and feet--was slowly heaved up by
strong arms, and the end of it fixed firmly in a hole dug deep in the
ground for that purpose. The feet were but a little raised above the
earth. The victim was in full reach of every hand that might choose to
strike, in close proximity to every gesture of insult and hatred. He
might hang for hours to be abused, outraged, even tortured by the
ever-moving multitude who, with that desire to see what is horrible
which always characterizes the coarsest hearts, had thronged to gaze
upon a sight which should rather have made them weep tears of blood.
And there, in tortures which grew ever more insupportable, ever more
maddening as time flowed on, the unhappy victims might linger in a
living death so cruelly intolerable that often they were driven to
entreat and implore the spectators or the executioners, for dear pity's
sake, to put an end to anguish too awful for man to bear--conscious to
the last, and often, with tears of abject misery, beseeching from their
enemies the priceless boon of death.
For indeed a death by crucifixion seems to include all that pain and
death _can_ have of horrible and ghastly--dizziness, cramp, thirst,
starvation, sleeplessness, traumatic fever, tetanus, publicity of shame,
long continuance of torment, horror of anticipation, mortification of
untended wounds--all intensified just up to the point at which they can
be endured at all, but all stopping just short of the point which would
give to the sufferer the relief of unconsciousness. The unnatural
position made every movement painful; the lacerated veins and crushed
tendons throbbed with incessant anguish; the wounds, inflamed by
exposure, gradually gangrened; the arteries--especially of the head and
stomach--became swollen and oppressed with surcharged blood; and while
each variety of misery went on gradually increasing, there was added to
them the intolerable pang of a burning and raging thirst; and all these
physical complications caused an internal excitement and anxiety which
made the prospect of death itself--of death, the awful unknown enemy, at
whose approach man usually shudders most--bear the aspect of a delicious
and exquisite release.
Such was the death to which Christ was doomed; and though for him it was
happily shortened by all that he had previously endured, yet he hung
from soon after noon until nearly sunset before "he gave up his soul to
death."
When the cross was uplifted the leading Jews, for the first time,
prominently noticed the deadly insult in which Pilate had vented his
indignation. Before, in their blind rage, they had imagined that the
manner of his crucifixion was an insult aimed at _Jesus_; but now that
they saw him hanging between the two robbers, on a cross yet loftier, it
suddenly flashed upon them that it was a public scorn inflicted upon
_them_. For on the white wooden tablet smeared with gypsum, which was to
be seen so conspicuously over the head of Jesus on the cross, ran, in
black letters, an inscription in the three civilized languages of the
ancient world--the three languages of which _one_ at least was certain
to be known by every single man in that assembled multitude--in the
official Latin, in the current Greek, in the vernacular
Aramaic--informing all that this Man who was thus enduring a shameful,
servile death--this Man thus crucified between two _sicarii_ in the
sight of the world, was "THE KING OF THE JEWS."
To him who was crucified the poor malice seemed to have in it nothing of
derision. Even on his cross he reigned; even there he seemed divinely
elevated above the priests who had brought about his death, and the
coarse, idle, vulgar multitude who had flocked to feed their greedy eyes
upon his sufferings. The malice was quite impotent against One whose
spiritual and moral nobleness struck awe into dying malefactors and
heathen executioners, even in the lowest abyss of his physical
degradation. With the passionate ill-humor of the Roman governor there
probably blended a vein of seriousness. While he was delighted to
revenge himself on his detested subjects by an act of public insolence,
he probably meant, or half meant, to imply that this _was_, in one
sense, the King of the Jews--the greatest, the noblest, the truest of
his race, whom therefore his race had crucified. The King was not
unworthy of his kingdom, but the kingdom of the King. There was
something loftier even than royalty in the glazing eyes which never
ceased to look with sorrow on the City of Righteousness, which had now
become a city of murderers. The Jews felt the intensity of the scorn
with which Pilate had treated them. It so completely poisoned their hour
of triumph that they sent their chief priests in deputation, begging the
governor to alter the obnoxious title. "Write not," they said, "'The
King of the Jews,' but that 'He _said_, I am the King of the Jews.'" But
Pilate's courage, which had oozed away so rapidly at the name of Cæsar,
had now revived. He was glad in any and every way to browbeat and thwart
the men whose seditious clamor had forced him in the morning to act
against his will. Few men had the power of giving expression to a
sovereign contempt more effectually than the Romans. Without deigning
any justification of what he had done, Pilate summarily dismissed these
solemn hierarchs with the curt and contemptuous reply, "What I have
written I have written."
In order to prevent the possibility of any rescue, even at the last
moment--since instances had been known of men taken from the cross and
restored to life--a quaternion of soldiers with their centurion were
left on the ground to guard the cross. The clothes of the victims always
fell as perquisites to the men who had to perform so weary and
disagreeable an office. Little dreaming how exactly they were fulfilling
the mystic intimations of olden Jewish prophecy, they proceeded,
therefore, to divide between them the garments of Jesus. The _tallith_
they tore into four parts, probably ripping it down the seams; but the
_cetoneth_, or undergarment, was formed of one continuous woven texture,
and to tear would have been to spoil it; they therefore contented
themselves with letting it become the property of any one of the four to
whom it should fall by lot. When this had been decided, they sat down
and watched him till the end, beguiling the weary lingering hours by
eating and drinking, and gibing, and playing dice.
It was a scene of tumult. The great body of the people seem to have
stood silently at gaze; but some few of them as they passed by the
cross--perhaps some of the many false witnesses and other conspirators
of the previous night--mocked at Jesus with insulting noises and furious
taunts, especially bidding him come down from the cross and save
himself, since he could destroy the Temple and build it in three days.
And the chief priests, and scribes, and elders, less awe-struck, less
compassionate than the mass of the people, were not ashamed to disgrace
their gray-haired dignity and lofty reputation by adding their heartless
reproaches to those of the evil few. Unrestrained by the noble patience
of the sufferer, unsated by the accomplishment of their wicked
vengeance, unmoved by the sight of helpless anguish and the look of eyes
that began to glaze in death, they congratulated one another under his
cross with scornful insolence: "He saved others, himself he cannot
save;" "Let this Christ, this King of Israel, descend now from the
cross, that we may see and believe." No wonder then that the ignorant
soldiers took their share of mockery with these shameless and
unvenerable hierarchs: no wonder that, at their midday meal, they
pledged in mock hilarity the Dying Man, cruelly holding up toward his
burning lips their cups of sour wine, and echoing the Jewish taunts
against the weakness of the King whose throne was a cross, whose crown
was thorns. Nay, even the poor wretches who were crucified with him
caught the hideous infection; comrades, perhaps, of the respited
Barabbas, heirs of the rebellious fury of a Judas the Gaulonite, trained
to recognize no Messiah but a Messiah of the sword, they reproachfully
bade him, if his claims were true, to save himself and them. So _all_
the voices about him rang with blasphemy and spite, and in that long
slow agony his dying ear caught no accent of gratitude, of pity, or of
love. Baseness, falsehood, savagery, stupidity--such were the
characteristics of the world which thrust itself into hideous prominence
before the Saviour's last consciousness, such the muddy and miserable
stream that rolled under the cross before his dying eyes.
But amid this chorus of infamy Jesus spoke not. He _could_ have spoken.
The pains of crucifixion did not confuse the intellect or paralyze the
powers of speech. We read of crucified men who, for hours together upon
the cross, vented their sorrow, their rage, or their despair in the
manner that best accorded with their character; of some who raved and
cursed, and spat at their enemies; of others who protested to the last
against the iniquity of their sentence; of others who implored
compassion with abject entreaties; of one even who, from the cross, as
from a tribunal, harangued the multitude of his countrymen, and
upbraided them with their wickedness and vice. But, except to bless and
to encourage, and to add to the happiness and hope of others, Jesus
spoke not. So far as the malice of the passers-by, and of priests and
sanhedrists and soldiers, and of these poor robbers who suffered with
him, was concerned--as before during the trial so now upon the cross--he
maintained unbroken his kingly silence.
But that silence, joined to his patient majesty and the divine holiness
and innocence which radiated from him like a halo, was more eloquent
than any words. It told earliest on one of the crucified robbers. At
first this _bonus latro_ of the Apocryphal Gospels seems to have faintly
joined in the reproaches uttered by his fellow-sinner; but when those
reproaches merged into deeper blasphemy, he spoke out his inmost
thought. It is probable that he had met Jesus before, and heard him, and
perhaps been one of those thousands who had seen his miracles. There is
indeed no authority for the legend which assigns to him the name of
Dysmas, or for the beautiful story of his having saved the life of the
Virgin and her Child during their flight into Egypt. But on the plains
of Gennesareth, perhaps from some robber's cave in the wild ravines of
the Valley of the Doves, he may well have approached his presence--he
may well have been one of those publicans and sinners who drew near to
him for to hear him. And the words of Jesus had found some room in the
good ground of his heart; they had not all fallen upon stony places.
Even at this hour of shame and death, when he was suffering the just
consequence of his past evil deeds, faith triumphed. As a flame
sometimes leaps up among dying embers, so amid the white ashes of a
sinful life which lay so thick upon his heart, the flame of love toward
his God and his Saviour was not quite quenched. Under the hellish
outcries which had broken loose around the cross of Jesus there had lain
a deep misgiving. Half of them seem to have been instigated by doubt and
fear. Even in the self-congratulations of the priests we catch an
undertone of dread. Suppose that even now some imposing miracle should
be wrought! Suppose that even now that martyr-form should burst indeed
into messianic splendor, and the King, who seemed to be in the slow
misery of death, should suddenly with a great voice summon his legions
of angels, and, springing from his cross upon the rolling clouds of
heaven, come in flaming fire to take vengeance upon his enemies! And the
air seemed to be full of signs. There was a gloom of gathering darkness
in the sky, a thrill and tremor in the solid earth, a haunting presence
as of ghostly visitants who chilled the heart and hovered in awful
witness above that scene. The dying robber had joined at first in the
half-taunting, half-despairing appeal to a defeat and weakness which
contradicted all that he had hoped; but now this defeat seemed to be
greater than victory, and this weakness more irresistible than strength.
As he looked, the faith in his heart dawned more and more into the
perfect day. He had long ceased to utter any reproachful words; he now
rebuked his comrade's blasphemies. Ought not the suffering innocence of
him who hung between them to shame into silence their just punishment
and flagrant guilt? And so, turning his head to Jesus, he uttered the
intense appeal, "O Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom."
Then he, who had been mute amid invectives, spake at once in surpassing
answer to that humble prayer, "Verily, I say to thee, to-day shalt thou
be with me in Paradise."
Though none spoke to comfort Jesus--though deep grief, and terror, and
amazement kept them dumb--yet there were hearts amid the crowd that beat
in sympathy with the awful sufferer. At a distance stood a number of
women looking on, and perhaps, even at that dread hour, expecting his
immediate deliverance. Many of these were women who had ministered to
him in Galilee, and had come from thence in the great band of Galilean
pilgrims. Conspicuous among this heart-stricken group were his mother
Mary, Mary of Magdala, Mary the wife of Clopas, mother of James and
Joses, and Salome the wife of Zebedee. Some of them, as the hours
advanced, stole nearer and nearer to the cross, and at length the
filming eye of the Saviour fell on his own mother Mary, as, with the
sword piercing through and through her heart, she stood with the
disciple whom he loved. His mother does not seem to have been much with
him during his ministry. It may be that the duties and cares of a humble
home rendered it impossible. At any rate, the only occasions on which we
hear of her are occasions when she is with his brethren, and is joined
with them in endeavoring to influence, apart from his own purposes and
authority, his messianic course. But although at the very beginning of
his ministry he had gently shown her that the earthly and filial
relation was now to be transcended by one far more lofty and divine, and
though this end of all her high hopes must have tried her faith with an
overwhelming and unspeakable sorrow, yet she was true to him in this
supreme hour of his humiliation, and would have done for him all that a
mother's sympathy and love can do. Nor had he for a moment forgotten her
who had bent over his infant slumbers, and with whom he had shared those
thirty years in the cottage at Nazareth. Tenderly and sadly he thought
of the future that awaited her during the remaining years of her life on
earth, troubled as they must be by the tumults and persecutions of a
struggling and nascent faith. After his resurrection her lot was wholly
cast among his apostles, and the apostle whom he loved the most, the
apostle who was nearest to him in heart and life, seemed the fittest to
take care of her. To him, therefore--to John whom he had loved more than
his brethren--to John whose head had leaned upon his breast at the Last
Supper, he consigned her as a sacred charge. "Woman," he said to her, in
fewest words, but in words which breathed the uttermost spirit of
tenderness, "behold thy son;" and then to St. John, "Behold thy mother."
He could make no gesture with those pierced hands, but he could bend his
head. They listened in speechless emotion, but from that hour--perhaps
from that very moment--leading her away from a spectacle which did but
torture her soul with unavailing agony, that disciple took her to his
own home.