THE DREGS OF THE CUP OF TREMBLING
By noon the following day, all Alexandria roared with the news that
Agrippa had returned a king!
The Regio Judaeorum lost its repose. Certain irrational of the
inhabitants displayed carpeting and garlands in honor of the Jewish
potentate, within their boundaries. But others, instructed by
instinct, closed the fronts of the houses and laid their treasure
within grasp.
By the advice of Marsyas, Agrippa had caused his ship to bring to,
outside the harbor, and await the dropping of darkness before he came
ashore. The few hours he spent in Alexandria had been passed under
cover, and none without the alabarch's household was aware of his
presence in the city. The newly-crowned Judean king found it difficult
to repress his desire for ostentation, and when Marsyas' plan for
secrecy miscarried at last, Agrippa was irritated because he had been
deprived of a longed-for opportunity to astonish the Alexandrians.
"But who could have told it?" he asked, with ill-concealed satisfaction.
Marsyas' lips curled.
"Classicus," he said.
Before the porch of the alabarch's house groups of people came to stand
and discuss the fortunes of the Herod. The sounds, never
congratulatory, began to change in temper. As the day grew, numbers
began to accumulate and hang like sullen bees buzzing insurrection.
Though they themselves were mongrels cast out of twenty subjugated
kingdoms and bullied into unspeakable servitude by the tyrant Rome,
Prejudice, unarmed with argument and speaking in dialect, arose and
rebelled at Alexandria entertaining a Jewish king.
Toward sunset a group of empty curricles and chariots came and stood
before a certain house, the last in the Jewish district, facing the
Gentile environs of the water-front. Had any cared to remark, it might
have been observed that this house could be reached from the alabarch's
by abandoned passages and private walks, a series of Jewish courts and
stable-yards, without exposing any who went that way to the Gentile
eye. After a while, a body of Roman guards emerged from nowhere and
arrayed themselves alongside the vehicles. Presently, groups of slaves
bearing burdens, followed by a party of high-class Egyptians, mounted
the chariots and without hesitation the procession took up movement
toward the harbor.
But an angle in the streets brought them upon the Gymnasium. It was
built in a square of sufficient size to receive the crowds that usually
attended the contests of the athletae, and there thousands were
assembled to do Alexandrian honor to a Jew.
The daylight was still on the streets, and Marsyas, in the guise of a
charioteer, driving the horses of the foremost car, observed that each
of the mass was busy with his own noise, and apparently unsuspecting
the coming of Agrippa. So he signed to the centurion in charge of the
praetorian squad to make way with as little ostentation as possible.
At the porch before the Gymnasium, the crowd was most packed, loudest
and most entertained. A naked, deformed, apish figure stood on a
pedestal from which a statue had fallen and had not been replaced. A
wreath of rushes had been twisted about the degenerate forehead, a
strip of matting had been bound with a tow-cord about his middle; in
his hand was a stalk of papyrus with the head broken and hanging down.
On their knees about the base of the plinth were half a score of youths
from the Gymnasium, groaning in tragic chorus, the single Syriac word:
"_Maris_! _Maris_! Lord! Lord!"
Loudly the crowd roared its part, with voices raucous and hoarse from
much abuse:
"Hail, Agrippa! King of the Jews!"
Agrippa's chariot, following the way the centurion had quietly opened
through the crowd, attracted little attention and the half-light of the
twilight did not reveal his features, which he had been led further to
conceal by an Egyptian cowl. A long white kamis covered his dress.
But his eyes fell upon the idiot; he caught the mockery and its meaning
from the crowd.
A quiver of rage ran through his frame. Laying hold of the Egyptian
smock, he tore it off and threw it fairly into the faces of those
nearest him; the white cowl followed, and he stood forth like a
new-risen sun in a tissue of silver, mantled with purple, his fillet
replaced by a tarboosh sewn with immense gems.
Defiance and insult and daring could not have been embodied in a more
effective act. The continuous tumult burst into a yell of fury. In a
twinkling his chariot was hemmed in and blocked and the raving rabble
reached out to lay hands on him.
Marsyas, seeing destruction in Agrippa's recklessness, shouted to the
centurion, who responded by hurling his praetorians, with broadsword and
spear into the mob.
The protection of Caesar, thus evidenced, beat back the astonished herd
as a charge of cavalry might have done, but it fringed the lane opened
before the royal Jew and raged.
Thereafter every inch of the way was contested.
Not even a show of interference was made by municipal authorities.
Instead, here and there, soldiers of the city garrison could be seen,
singly or in groups, as spectators and applauding. The riot began to
take on the appearance of a holiday, for groups of upper classes began
to appear on housetops, stairs and porches of houses, where they made
themselves comfortable and listened to the demonstration as they were
accustomed to watch contests in the stadia. Below in the long way
toward the harbor-front, the lawless of any class indulged their love
of disorder and amused the aristocrats.
The fugitives were almost in sight of the forest of masts which marked
the wharves, when Marsyas detected a change in the tone of the tumult.
Derision and revilement began to lose impetus, flagging in the face of
a freshened uproar of another temper, beginning far behind and sweeping
down the street after the fugitives. It was savage, bloodthirsty and
menacing. Out of the inarticulate volume he caught finally shouts
about the Jews and Flora; next, about the dance of Flora; after that
the whole declaration, sent thundering, like a sea over winter capes,
that the dancing Flora was a Nazarene and the daughter of the alabarch!
Marsyas' face, turned toward Agrippa, was ghastly. The Herod felt the
first quiver of terror he had experienced in years. He reached toward
the lines, meaning to give Marsyas opportunity to return to the Regio
Judaeorum. But Marsyas was shouting mightily to the centurion to charge
the crowds before them. The praetorian heard and his men presented a
double row of spears and rushed. The lesser mob ahead broke, and
Marsyas cried back to Cypros' charioteer.
The next minute with desperate mercilessness he had loosed a long
plaited whip like a crackling flame upon the necks of his horses.
The terrified beasts leaped; the car lurched and headlong they plunged
into the mass before them. Right and left the rawhide played, over
faces, shoulders and lifted arms, searing and scarring wherever it
touched. With grim satisfaction, the two within the chariot felt at
times that the car mounted and toppled over prostrate rioters, like
sticks in the roadway. The jam became panic and flight, and the horses
took the free passage, mad with desire to get away from the stinging
torment that harassed them.
The driver of Cypros' car closed in quickly with its following of
curricles, and kept close behind the flying chariot, but the
praetorians, out-distanced, contented themselves by following through
short ways, and the riot was left behind.
At the wharf the maddened animals could not be stopped until they had
been circled again and again. But hardly had the wheels ceased to
move, when Marsyas leaped to the ground, and, flinging the lines to a
slave, put up his hands to Agrippa.
"As the first debt to thy manhood and to the alabarch forget not this
opportunity to help him! Hear them! They want Jewish blood; Lydia's
blood! There is none in Alexandria to stay them! Help, my lord!
Beseech Caesar in thy people's behalf, as I beseech thee now! Answer,
answer!"
"I hear, Marsyas," Agrippa responded, "and by all that I hold sacred, I
promise thee Flaccus' end! God help thee! Farewell!"
Pausing only for the word, Marsyas turned and ran with frantic speed
back into the city. He saw, at every step, that which made his heart
chill in his bosom. The tide of the riot had turned, and that which
was not already pouring in upon the Nazarenes, was rushing into the
Regio Judaeorum.