THE JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM
The first rays of morning sunlight were gilding the stately towers
of Cæsarea as the soldiers of the Italian Cohort filed through the
southern gate of the city.
They were marching on foot to Jerusalem, a journey of some sixty miles,
marching by the military road made by the Romans themselves, a highway
so well and durably paved that portions of it still remain after the
lapse of nearly two thousand years.
A little in advance of these troops, and justly proud of their fine and
martial appearance, rode the tribune Terentius Rufus, and at his side
was Crispus, mounted likewise upon a curveting steed.
On the previous day Nero’s edict had been posted up in the public
places of Cæsarea; it gave the precedency to the Greeks.
Now, though it was plain to the least observant that the city was
seething with excitement caused by the triumph of the one faction and
the mortification of the other, Rufus and his cohort had been commanded
by the procurator to return to Jerusalem on the ground that all was
quiet at Cæsarea!
“And Florus himself,” remarked Rufus, “is withdrawing to Sebaste with
his legion, so that the city will be entirely denuded of troops. Pluto
take me!” he continued, knitting his brows in perplexity, “if I can
understand his conduct save upon the supposition that he wants to
kindle the torch of war.”
The two rode on in silence for a while. Then Crispus, who from time
to time had been glancing back at the marching troops, said, with a
somewhat perplexed air:
“Rufus, there is something lacking in thy cohort. What is it? Ah! I
have it. The eagle! Where is it?”
“Purposely left behind in the Prætorium at Cæsarea.”
“Name of Mars!--why?”
“In going through Judæa we have to pay respect to the Jewish
superstition, which, as you know, regards all images with abhorrence.”
Crispus was for the moment dumb with indignation.
“What!” cried he. “We must not carry our standards in a country
conquered by us? Doth Rome rule Judæa, or Judæa Rome?”
“Judæa doth, in this matter at least, rule Rome.”
“I pray you, Rufus,” said Crispus, reining in his steed, “bid a
centurion return for the eagle.”
But Rufus shook his head.
“Pontius Pilate was of like mind with you. He made his first entry
into Jerusalem with figured banners. For three days and two nights the
Jewish populace howled, raged, and wept round his Prætorium. At the end
of the third day he sent his troops among them with drawn swords. The
Jews flung themselves prostrate, bared their necks, and cried that they
would rather die than see their laws broken.
“What could dismayed Pilate do? He couldn’t massacre a whole people in
the first week of his government. Compelled sullenly to yield, he sent
the ensigns back to Cæsarea. Since that day no troops dare venture into
Jerusalem save with plain banners.”
“Forbidden to carry the eagles,” muttered Crispus wrathfully. “How long
shall this be?”
“Till our next war with them, when we shall more thoroughly vindicate
the supremacy of Rome, and be masters in our own house.”
“When will that be?”
“’Tis but a matter of days, in my opinion.”
Days! To Crispus this was startling news, and yet not unwelcome.
“I carry with me a sealed letter,” continued Rufus, “addressed to King
Agrippa, who is at Jerusalem. He is, as you know, the brother of the
Princess Berenice, the nominator of the high priest, and the supreme
guardian of the temple treasures. The purport of the letter I know
not, but if I may judge from Florus’ sinister smile as he handed me
the missive, it contains some command which Agrippa will be loth to
execute. Should the Jews of Jerusalem support the king in his attitude,
it may prove the beginning of an outbreak whose end no man can foresee.
I may be wrong, Crispus, but I have a presentiment that in this letter
we are carrying the fate of Judæa.”
Crispus frowned. He loved fighting, but it seemed to him there would be
little honor and glory gained in reducing to submission a people goaded
to war by the deliberate oppression of an unjust governor.
The road traversed by the Romans wound southwards through the
flower-enameled meads that constitute the Plain of Sharon, never more
lovely than when seen in the soft sunshine of a May morning.
Now and again in their march the Romans would pass a gayly-clad group
of Jewish country-folk, many of them accompanied by asses and mules,
laden with timber.
“Pilgrims bound for Jerusalem,” explained Rufus in answer to Crispus’
inquiries. “Within a few days comes the Festival of the Xylophoria, or
the Wood-offering, when the Jews are accustomed to bring to the temple
supplies of timber sufficient to keep the sacrificial fires going for a
year.”
At a wayside spring a somewhat numerous caravan had made a brief halt
to refill their water-skins, and to refresh their beasts of burden. The
air was lively with the sound of timbrels, of songs, and of dances.
The approach of the clanging cohort, with its swinging martial stride,
put a sudden stop to the mirth.
“The Romans! the Romans!” was the cry.
Silent of tongue, but with eyes that looked unmistakable hatred, the
pilgrims drew aside to let the legionaries pass. One fierce-looking
Jew, bolder than his fellows, cried aloud: “To Gehenna with all
Gentiles!”
Rufus rode past with a smile of contempt.
“Yon fellow knows full well,” said he, “that if I choose, I can hang
him to the nearest tree, and yet the knowledge of that fact cannot keep
him from expressing his hatred of the Romans.”
“What is the Gehenna to which he would consign us?” asked Crispus, who
was not so well versed in Hebrew matters as Rufus.
“The Jewish Tartarus, a place of flame and torment, to which you and
I, no matter how virtuous our life, are destined to be sent, according
to the saying of the rabbis, ‘The Gentiles are only so much fuel for
Gehenna.’”
“They don’t love us, these Jews,” laughed Crispus.
“Hatred of the Roman is drawn in with the maternal milk. You see now
the necessity for maintaining so large a military force in Judæa.
Africa, once the seat of the Carthaginian empire, is kept in order
by a single legion. One legion, too, suffices for warlike Spain.
Greece, once so great in deeds of arms, hath no legion at all within
her bounds. These turbulent Jews require three legions. Think of it!
Thirty-six thousand men perpetually under arms in a province no larger
than our native Latium, so restless are these Jews, so hostile to our
rule.”
“Why that stoppage in front?” said Crispus, glancing ahead at a group
of distant pilgrims who had come to a sudden standstill in a way that
threatened to impede the march of the oncoming Romans.
“That,” replied Rufus, “is another proof of Jewish contempt for the
foreigner. The stone you see by the roadside marks the border of two
provinces. At present we are in heathen Phœnicia; pass that stone, and
we are in holy Judæa. Your Hebrew, on arriving at the frontier, takes
off his sandals and carefully wipes them, lest he should pollute the
sacred soil of Judæa by bringing upon it the profane dust of other
lands.”
Crispus looked, and saw that it was even as Rufus had said. Every Jew,
upon coming to the frontier-stone, removed his shoes, and either wiped
or shook them, a somewhat useless cleansing, seeing that a minute
afterwards the six hundred men of the Italian Cohort were bringing in
Phœnician dust with them.
“You are a patrician of Rome,” said Rufus, addressing Crispus, “proud
of your pure and lofty lineage, but know this, that if the vilest
beggar in Jerusalem should be touched by you on the eve of the passover
he would deem himself so unclean as to be unable to keep the feast.
Purification by bathing would entitle him to the privilege of the
supplementary passover held seven days later to meet such cases.”
A march of some twenty-five miles brought the cohort to Antipatris, a
military station guarding the line of communication between Cæsarea
and Jerusalem. Within the barracks of this town Rufus found ample
accommodation for his troops. At nightfall he and Crispus ascended to
the battlements of the Roman castle; from their lofty position the two
could see the whole extent of Sharon, from the mountains to the sea,
whitened by the silvery moonlight.
Far and wide over the landscape gleamed the fires of the Jewish
pilgrims, camping for the night under the leafy terebinth or by the
wayside spring.
“List!” said Rufus, with uplifted finger.
Floating upward from the valley below came the sound of many voices
conjoined in a mournful melody. Now and again Crispus could faintly
catch some of the words of the refrain.
“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning!”
As the breeze wavered, the voices rose and fell with a weird and
plaintive effect, and Crispus thrilled as he listened. There was, to
his way of thinking, a sob in every cadence--“How long, O Lord, how
long?”--a wild appeal to heaven for vengeance against their present
oppressor, the Roman.
A spirit of profound melancholy fell upon Crispus as he contemplated
the character of this strange Eastern nation. In his journey that day
every face seen by him, every incident that had happened, gave proof
that though Jew and Roman touched each other at a hundred points, they
were nevertheless as far apart as if seas rolled between them.
While all other nations of the empire, including even Greece, so
renowned in arts, arms, and learning, were content to live peaceably,
nay happily under the shadow of the eagle-wings of Rome, the Jew
maintained an attitude of sullen hostility to his conqueror.
How long was this antagonism to last? Was the Jew to remain forever a
thorn in the side of the empire, or must the solution of the problem
come, as Rufus was convinced it would, in the shape of an exterminating
war?
Next morning at sunrise the march was resumed. The road, that had
hitherto followed a line parallel with the coast, now turned inland,
and leaving the maritime plain behind them, the Romans began to ascend
the picturesque ravines that wind towards the rocky tableland upon
which Jerusalem is built.
Gophna, another military station, fifteen miles distant from the holy
city, was their second stopping-place.
At daybreak they began the third and final stage of their journey,
along a road dazzlingly white and dusty.
At the ninth hour of the morning the cohort was toiling through an
upland ravine. In front of them at some distance was a numerous body
of wood-bearing pilgrims. Suddenly, as their van gained the highest
point of the road, a thrilling shout broke from it, followed by a
precipitate hurrying forward on the part of all of those in the rear.
“Yerûshalaïm! Yerûshalaïm!” was the cry that rang out on the morning
air, the cry of the Jews.
“Hagiopolis! Hagiopolis!” exclaimed the Greek proselytes.
“Hierosolyma!” said Rufus quietly.
Impelled by a natural curiosity, Crispus pressed forward his steed,
and, as he gained the northern height of Scopus, the whole city at one
flash burst full upon his view.
He drew rein, and, with a lively interest, gazed upon the famous
city--“_longe clarissima urbium Orientis_”--whose origin was lost far
back in the night of antiquity, a city gray with age ere ever a stone
of Rome was laid!
A century earlier Jerusalem had presented a dull and even squalid
appearance; but, thanks to that magnificent despot, Herod the Great, a
monarch distinguished by his taste for Grecian architecture, the city
was now a dream of beauty, with its imperial mantle of proud towers;
its marble palaces gleaming through the clear, transparent air of a
Syrian morn; its stately colonnades and triumphal arches, interspersed
with the foliage of the tall and graceful palm; and, above all, the
pure, white temple, “a mount of alabaster, topped with golden spires,”
flashing in the morning sunlight with a splendor that forced the eyes
to turn aside.
Crispus looked at it, and thought of his dream.
“Mark me,” said Rufus, “it will never be well with Rome till yon fair
city be leveled with the dust, and the plow passed over it.”
Prophetic words!
If those Jews, among whom Crispus and Rufus were now making their way,
could but have foreseen the future, their daggers would have flashed
in the sunny air, and the two Romans would have been no more!
The supreme emotion evoked among the peasant pilgrims by the sight of
the holy city was expressed in characteristic fashion. Some laughed
aloud in the insanity of joy; others, with clasped hands and tears
in their eyes, sank upon their knees, and not a few among the women
fainted. Some pulled off their sandals, and walked barefoot towards
the city, as though the way were hallowed ground; others assumed their
richest robe, as if they were about to enter a holy synagogue. One
member of the throng, a Levite, lifting up a sonorous voice, began the
chanting of a psalm, appropriate to the occasion; and the refrain was
immediately taken up by the whole multitude, slow-moving towards the
city:
“The hill of Zion is a fair place, and the joy of the whole earth; upon
the north side lieth the citadel of the Great King.”
“Now, if by the Great King is meant Cæsar, which is to be doubted,”
remarked Rufus, “these fanatics are right. Thou seest yon edifice,
Crispus, towering high above the temple. ’Tis my Roman citadel, of
whose hospitality you must partake.”
Making their way through a region of groves and gardens, adorned with
the mansions of the wealthy residents, the Roman troops entered the
city, and threading its narrow, winding streets, came to their quarters
in the citadel Antonia, so named by Herod the Great in memory of his
friend and patron, Marc Antony, its usual name among the Jews being
Baris, or the Tower.
This fortress occupied the summit of a lofty rock, separated from the
mount on which the temple stood by a deep ravine, crossed by a line of
arches. As the temple--in itself a stronghold--dominated and looked
down upon the city, so did Antonia dominate and look down upon the
temple. Far above the golden roof of the sanctuary towered its haughty
battlements, adorned with the standard bearing the significant letters,
S.P.Q.R. Upon that proud banner, the visible symbol of Roman dominion,
no Jew ever looked save with a wrathful curse.
Leaving his men in their quarters, Rufus, losing no time, set off,
accompanied by Crispus, for the palace of Agrippa, bent on delivering
to that monarch the letter of Florus.
It was still early morning, and the streets, thronged by pilgrims,
new-arriving, presented an animated and busy aspect, which would
disappear later, when the heat of noontide would usher in the quietude
of the siesta.
Suddenly, high above the sounds produced by the restless throng, there
rose a voice, and one so weird that Crispus had never before heard the
like. At its hollow tone, voices, sounds, footsteps, ceased. A hush as
of death fell over all.
Along the middle of the street, and moving at a pace that never changed
from its slow and measured uniformity, came a wild-eyed, melancholy
figure, clad in a single robe of camel’s hair, and tied at the waist
with a leathern girdle.
His arms were raised to heaven; he glanced neither to right nor left;
his face was like a mask of stone, set in one unchanging expression of
woe.
No man stopped him; no man questioned him; all knew the uselessness of
it.
He was a familiar figure to the people, but familiarity had never
lessened one thrill of the awe felt by them whenever he appeared.
“A voice from the East, a voice from the West, a voice from the fours
winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against
the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people.
Woe, woe to Jerusalem!”
The people stood, as they always stood when he passed by, immovable,
silent, wondering. Did they behold a madman, or one in whom was the
spirit of the ancient prophets?
“Who is yon fellow?” asked Crispus, watching the figure as it receded
in the distance.
“Jesus, the son of Hanan. ’Tis four years since he began to appear at
the yearly feasts, traversing the streets and uttering the woe that we
have just heard. Brought before the tribunal of the procurator Albinus,
and questioned, he would answer only, ‘Woe, woe to Jerusalem!’ Though
scourged till his bones were laid bare, he maintained during it all a
dry eye and a stony countenance, uttering the while his weird plaint.
He seems to be, not a man, but a voice.”
“The voice of some god, it may be,” muttered Crispus, upon whose mind
the incident had left a singular impression. “Doomed Troy had its
Cassandra, whom none would believe until too late. So, too, Jerusalem
seems to have its prophet, to whom this foolish people, that dream of
war, would do well to give heed.”
Resuming their walk, the two friends ascended the slope of Mount Zion,
and came to the old Asamonean Palace, the residence of King Agrippa.
“Aren’t you coming in with me?” asked Rufus, as Crispus hesitated. “We
may encounter the Princess Berenice.”
Crispus turned away, saying he would await his friend’s return in the
Xystus close by. Rufus looked after him in some wonderment.
“For the future,” he muttered, “I had better refrain from mentioning
Berenice’s name; it seems to trouble him.”
Rufus, on being admitted to the presence of Agrippa, found him seated
at a table. In person he was tall and slender. Delicate and refined in
features, and dressed in the height of Jewish fashion, he presented,
at any rate in the eyes of the sturdy Roman, a somewhat effeminate
appearance. On one side of him was his sister Berenice, who had arrived
at Jerusalem the preceding night; on the other was an elderly man with
a hooked nose, thin lips, and a yellow polished forehead, who looked
like a typical rabbi, as indeed he was, being none other than Simeon,
the son of the celebrated Gamaliel. Before him lay an ink-horn and
a parchment-scroll; between his fingers was a calamus or reed pen.
Evidently he had been composing some document with the aid of his royal
friends, and all three were looking as if very well pleased with their
work. Rufus wondered whether they would look so well pleased after
reading the document that _he_ was bringing for them.
“This prayer,” said Simeon, laying his hand upon the parchment-scroll
before him, “this prayer will serve as a fan to winnow the chaff from
the wheat.”
The three looked up as Rufus entered. He, being the commandant of
Antonia, was a great man in Jerusalem, and they therefore received him
affably.
“And what would the excellent Rufus with us?” asked Agrippa.
The excellent Rufus handed the letter to the king, who took it between
his delicate jeweled fingers and broke the seal. While he was doing
this Berenice rose from the table, and drawing near to Rufus addressed
him in a low tone.
“Did you leave Crispus at Cæsarea?”
Her tone and look, betraying more than ordinary interest in the absent
Roman, came as a revelation to Rufus.
“As I live,” he thought, “this woman loves Crispus.” Aloud he answered,
“Nay, princess, he hath accompanied me to Jerusalem.”
“Where is he now?” she asked eagerly.
And Rufus, knowing that it would bring trouble into those beautiful
eyes were she to learn that the phlegmatic Crispus preferred the
miscellaneous crowd in the Xystus to the attractions of the Asamonean
Palace, replied, “I left him in Antonia.”
What other question she might have asked was interrupted by Agrippa,
who, having mastered the contents of the epistle, was frowning
terribly. He called his sister to his side and handed her the letter.
She knit her brows as she read, and in turn passed the missive to
Simeon, who, after duly perusing it, seemed to be more angry than his
royal patrons.
They were quiet for a time, all thinking.
“Submit not to this demand,” said Berenice passionately, addressing her
brother, “since submission will be quoted as a precedent; we shall be
virtually acknowledging his right to make such claim. One oppression
will lead to another.”
“True, but on the other hand,” returned Agrippa, “if he should seek
to make good his demand by force of arms ’twill lead to tumult and
bloodshed--nay, even to open rebellion, for at this present time the
popular mind is strung to a high state of tension by prophets who
predict the near advent of the Messiah’s kingdom.”
Turning to Rufus he said aloud:
“You know the contents of this letter?”
“Indeed, no. I was told no more than to press for an immediate answer.”
“I will defer my reply till to-night.”
Rufus bowed and withdrew.
“I am the cause of this,” said Berenice sorrowfully.
“You, princess! How?” exclaimed Simeon.
“This is Florus’ way of taking vengeance upon me because I have
declined to listen to his wooing.”