NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES
_The Dancing Girls from the Temples of Daphne_
Draw the upper horizontal line of a square and the lower vertical right
hand line! The two sides of this square represented the Great Roman Road
between East and West in the days following the Prophet, whom the Greeks
called “Christus—the Anointed” and the Hebrews called “Jesus or
Joshua—Salvation of God.”
All roads led to Rome. Along this highway like beads on a string were
the cities of the Ancient World—Jerusalem, the Holy City, at the foot
of the right hand side; Damascus, the oldest city of man, halfway up;
Antioch, at the angle turning westward, the playground and halfway
house, where merchant princes and conquering emperors paused in their
far journeyings from Asia to Europe to take their pleasure and spend
their fortunes, whether of plunder or traffic; then along the horizontal
line leading from desert to sea, Iconium and Philadelphia and Sardis;
then on the sea—Ephesus, whence one could sail to Athens or Rome, to
culture or power.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE ROMAN ROAD]
When the summer sea lay in painted crystal, calm as glass, one could
come down from any of these cities, to fair harbors and take passage
forward on the great grain ships of Egypt or on little sailing vessels;
but when the equinoctial storms came in September, or when war filled
the great grain ships with troops, travelers were forced to follow the
caravan route, and the khans of all the cities were thronged with men of
every color and race under the sun. The poor camped in goatskin tents
outside the walls. They had nothing to lose from plunder. The rich
crowded the city plazas and inns and public khans in the throngs of a
great annual fair; and the merchants reaped their harvest in barter of
little silver images and amulets to protect from travelers’ perils, and
in the sports of theater and hippodrome, where the latest plays from
Athens and Rome were given; or lecturers from the Far East disputed
their mystic philosophies with the keen wits of Athens and the cynics of
Rome; or gladiators fought; or captives in war were thrown to the wild
beasts with a chance for life and freedom if they could vanquish tooth
and claw with naked hands.
We sometimes bewail our modern civilization. Go read of the nightly
entertainments in these cities of the Great Roman Road!
* * * * *
It was the evening of September 24, in Iconium. Lystra and Derbe lay
only a few hours south, and there, by the curious trick Fate has of
interweaving lives, was the little Phyrygian lad, Onesimus, with his
father’s Damascus caravans, beating southward for Damascus where he was
first captured by the robber bands of Galilee and began his life of
slavery, which took him first to Cæsarea, then to Rome, then seven years
later, back over this very road where he rescued victims from crime as
he had been rescued by Paul in Rome.
The city was thronged. Caravans returning from Ephesus had money to
spend. Travelers from the Asian Desert going on to Ephesus wandered
dazed amid the booths and shops, famed for their Tyrian purple damasks
and gold-thread curtains and rugs of goat hair silky as finest fur. The
plaza was a living mass of humanity clothed in brightest colors milling
in endless circlings round the musicians under the central trees, who
were paid by the city to give free entertainment to all visitors. The
balconies of houses overhanging the city square began to open shutters;
and dark eyes were seen above answering lovers’ signals below; but on
the sill of one deep casement sat a girl alone. A rabble had gathered
round a speaker in the city square. The speaker was short of stature,
with thighs that had been lamed in war or accident, but he was clad in
the black silk cloak of a man of distinction, and though his receding
hair showed premature care, his forehead reflected the white light of an
æsthetic; and as he declaimed, his eyes lighted up with a strange fire
of faith. Near the speaker lounged a richly dressed, stout, prosperous
Greek of the merchant class. He was not listening. He was watching with
amused cynicism the changing concentrated expression of the girl’s
intent face in the balcony above. The man twisted at the great emerald
signet ring on his little finger. He clanked the sword dangling in its
jeweled scabbard against the heel of his red morocco high boots. He
stuck his thumbs in the gold sash belting his sky-blue silk jacket. Then
he stroked his oiled curls projecting from the gold-and-blue turban cap.
The girl’s eyes never once glanced his way. They were riveted as on a
life and death messenger towards the little deformed orator round whom
larger crowds were now pressing.
The stout, middle-aged Greek dandy flushed angrily and stepped sharply
up to the house door below the balcony. He lifted the brass knocker and
rapped loudly. The knocker was a great Roman eagle. The door was opened
by a middle-aged woman, clad in rich purple silk, and he was led to an
inner court open to the sky in the middle of the house. A fountain
played in the center of the court, and over the railing of the stone
stairs leading to the chambers off the upper balcony clung vines and
blooming flowers scenting the night air.
“How now, my son, Thamyris?” smiled the middle-aged woman, showing teeth
white as pearls between painted lips, and shaking the black jeweled
pendants in her ears so they seemed part of the curls framing her ivory
face.
“Not son—yet,” answered the man irritably, “unless your daughter Thecla
has eyes for her lover rather than that Jewish babbler ranting in the
square there.”
“A pest on these wandering synagogue ranters, who upset our daughters’
beliefs in the old gods.” The woman’s smile was hard as marble. “She has
not moved from that window for three nights since the fellow strayed
into Iconium and began speaking in the square! I can do nothing with
her. I like not her silence, Thamyris! I would she stormed; but she sits
silent as stone—listening, listening to that babbler! Who is he? A girl
never knows herself till a man teaches her what love is. Can’t you get
rid of him?” And the hard laugh of the girl’s mother had a sinister
knowledge that was not of youth, as she shot a glance at the middle-aged
man, which he read without words. “I want my daughter married. She is
eighteen summers this night. She will marry as I bid her, or go to the
temple gods and take her fate. I will have no daughter of eighteen
summers betraying my years.”
The man laughed; but he laughed with angry red flush. He flung himself
down on the bench. “And yet, my Mother, eighteen summers wed to fifty
make not for peace to the man unless the maid come willingly. You
ask—who is he? I know not, except that he has changed his name from
Saul to Paul, follows the new sect of that Christus crucified in
Jerusalem and boasts he is a Roman citizen, else we could have him
crucified, too, for creating disorder by blaspheming against Greek gods.
All I know is—he is a fool. When he came here first and worked miracles
of healing, the people would have offered sacrifices to him as to a
god—he could have grown rich from the gifts of one caravan. I would
have pushed him, myself, for the profit in it, if he hadn’t played the
fool and backed away from the rabble’s worship and gifts; but when the
people were ready to crown him with garlands and make offerings of
beasts and jewels and gold, he had to cry out he was only a man and stop
them; and now the rabble are ready to stone him as a pious fraud. I
could leave him to the rabble but I fear the damage is done—he has
chilled Thecla’s love for me; and I’ll have no unwilling bride.”
“Can’t you get rid of him?” insistently repeated the mother.
“I’ll try. I can lodge a complaint and have him imprisoned for causing
disorder; but he is Roman citizen—more than that, I dare not do—”
“More than that I will do,” added the mother harshly. “Unless she gives
you your word this night, I turn her from my door into the streets.
There you can seize her and carry her to your own house, Thamyris; or
the city magistrate will seize her for wandering the streets without the
badge of a courtesan on her forehead and have her burned at the faggots.
Little headstrong fool! Does she think to change our Greek customs for a
puny whim? I have given her dower to make a princess rich; and you have
given her gifts of an empress; and she sits listening to that beggarly
babbler, whom no one knows, stone to her blood mother’s commands and
cold as a Venus in snow to her lover. Go to her! Plead not! Command! Do
as you will! My ears are deaf! A girl denying her lover in Iconium would
last long as a gazelle baited by hounds—Pah!”
The middle-aged, stout, heavy lover went bounding up the balcony steps
fast as his fat calves and stiff knees would carry him. He drew aside
the silk portières hanging across the daughter’s apartment and advanced
across the room a little breathless. The girl turned her head but did
not speak. Thereupon, something he had not reckoned smote his courage
cold. It was the love he had for the fair child in the window seat. He
could not touch her. He could not risk turning love to indifference, or
indifference to hate.
“How now, my little bride,” he said gallantly drawing something from his
gold sash, “here are some gifts I purchased to-day from the Damascus
caravans—emerald earrings set in Damascus gold wrought fine as a spider
web, and a little silver mirror from an Arab merchant, which shall show
your face fairer than Venus’ eyelids penciled for the dawn.”
He had meant to lay the gifts in her lap and take her thanks in an
embrace; but somehow he could only open the little cases and shove them
awkwardly along the stone window sill.
The girl’s long-lashed eyes filled with tears. She smiled sadly.
“My poor dear Thamyris,” she said gently.
“Not poor,” he interrupted harshly, “nor dear, either, unless I am dear
to you.”
“Dear Thamyris—if these gifts are to buy my love, I cannot take them. I
would be cheating you.”
He sat down on the window sill beside her.
“They are not gifts to buy your love. They are tokens of my love,” he
said, toying with the gold tassel of her sash.
“Then, if they are tokens of your love, I am cheating you, dear
Thamyris; for I cannot give you love in return.”
“I am no huckster,” he urged, flushing angrily. “They are the free gift
of a free Greek. I ask no love in return. I only ask that you become my
bride and let me teach you love.”
She mutely shook her head.
“Put them on,” he ordered abruptly. “Your mother has pledged you to me.
You are mine; but I will not claim you till you come willingly to my
arms.”
“Because you command me, I put them on. I must obey you as long as I
remain in my mother’s house.” She fastened the filigree clasps to her
ears and thrust the silver mirror in her sash.
The man sat in the window studying her. The rabble round the speaker in
the square below was growing noisier.
“Thecla,” asked the man abruptly. “Is it that you love some one else?”
The girl turned her full gaze upon him. Her eyes were deep blue. Her
lashes were long and black and curling. Her brows were arches penciled
fine as if done by an artist; and her whole face glowed with a radiance
as of sun dawn in spring. Her breathing quickened.
“Yes, Thamyris, I love some one else; but you can never understand.”
“Not this beggarly babbler, Paul, with the changing names and magic?” he
shouted.
“No,” she said. Her glance dropped. “Not Paul. That is why I said you
would never understand. It is Paul’s Master—the Christ—I love—”
The man broke in a loud impatient laugh. “Why, child, He’s dead! He was
crucified before you were born! You love a shadow—”
“He is not dead,” she answered simply. “That is why I said you would
never understand. He is the Christ of Love and Light and Life—”
“But will love for a myth, who was crucified by His own countrymen, keep
you from marrying a living man and lover? Does your Paul preacher down
there teach men and maids not to marry? That is blasphemy, my Thecla! It
proves the gods made a mistake in the way they made us.”
The man almost shouted his relief. He had risen and was pacing the
floor.
“No, love for the Christ would not keep me from marrying living man; and
Paul does not teach that. He teaches that the sin of sins is cheating
love; and that is what I would be doing if I married you, Thamyris, and
did not love you.”
The man came forward to the window and gazed down in the square.
“I’ll risk your not loving me,” he smiled.
“I will not,” she answered.
The man’s face darkened. He thrust his hands in his gold sash.
“Thecla, what is this new madness setting all the Greek cities of Asia
by the ears? I am reasonable. I would learn; but I am a man; and I am
flesh and blood. You are pledged to me. I can claim you. You say I can
never understand. Let us reason this out. Granted I can’t
understand—what does Paul teach, tell me that?”
“The Gospel of Youth and Gladness—” she began.
“I can’t claim Youth, but if you will marry me, I can Gladness!”
“And that the dead must bury their dead; and that you can’t put new wine
in old bottles,” she went on.
The man’s face flushed and darkened. “Go on,” he said, “you are apt
pupil for this deceiver! Try walking in the streets alone to-night and
I’ll warrant an old bottle would be good protection for new wine gone to
a girl’s head.”
“That money is the root of evil—”
“But very useful to spoiled brides,” he added bitterly.
“That children born of such union as you would force on me have teeth
set on edge because their fathers have eaten sour grapes; that we must
level up, not down; that the road to happiness is narrow as a razor; and
that if we find the great pearl called love, we must not cast it before
swine; and that is what I would be doing with your love—Thamyris—if I
took it and gave none in return. I would be the Circe of your pagan gods
turning your beautiful love into a thing for swine—”
In the growing dusk she could not see his face, but she felt the waves
of his deep anger.
“Once more and for the last time, I ask you—is it yes or no, Thecla?”
“Dear Thamyris,” she pleaded, rising and laying her hand on his arm, “it
must be no for your own sake.”
He flung her hand from his arm and strode heavily down the stairs of the
inner court. The mother rose from the stone bench by the fountain.
“Well?” she demanded.
The merchant drew his sword from his scabbard. “I must get this
arch-deceiver put away. I’ll have the impostor whipped from the city for
creating riots. He has turned her head,” and he flung through the street
doorway to the crowded city square.
Thecla heard what he said from where she sat sadly down on the stone
sill of the upper balcony. “He that loveth father or mother more than me
is not worthy of me. . . .” she repeated, “and he that taketh not his
cross and followeth after me, is not worthy of me; and he that findeth
his life shall lose it; and he that loseth life for my sake should find
it”—and she saw as in a trance, the red flowers dancing above the
fountains of the city square, the snowy mountains like opal gems in the
moonlight encircling the little city, the lake with its myriad pleasure
boats alight with lanterns, where the mountain torrents fed the great
water pool of the city—when the trance was broken by a wild halloo in
the city square.
The little lame speaker was backing away from the menacing rabble now
milling round him with hisses of ridicule. Two rough fellows to rear had
picked up stones and hurled them. Rocks, rained down from a claque to
rear, pushed those forward into a riot. The preacher raised his arm to
screen his face. A rock had struck him. She saw the blood gush from his
face. He fell—then all was mingled in the confusion of the people
running for cover to the booths and shops, when a pound of iron-shod
hoofs came over the cobblestones. A Roman Legion swept into the square,
encircled the fallen form of the speaker, threw him across the saddle in
front of the captain, and wheeled towards the Roman prison on the far
side of the plaza. As the crowd came out again from the shops, she
caught a glimpse of Thamyris thrusting his sword back in its jeweled
scabbard glancing up towards her seat in the window. She drew back
sickened in soul and heavy-hearted.
“As though treachery would win love,” she said.
Her mother stood in the curtained entrance.
“Have you given Thamyris his answer?” the woman demanded harshly.
“I have,” answered the girl.
The woman clapped her hands for a servant. A black woman came
noiselessly in and lighted the brass chandelier with a long taper.
The girl stood as still and white as death under the light. The mother
read the answer in the white face, and her own face became white and
hard as stone.
“Then—go—from—this house,” she slowly pronounced, “and never darken
its doors again till you are wedded wife of Thamyris.”
The girl picked up her black cloak from the couch she was never to see
again, threw it over her shoulders and passed silently down the
courtyard stairs, and out to the night street.
The hard marble face of the mother broke in a harsh cunning laugh.
“And now—Thamyris,” was all she said.
The black woman withdrew with a shiver and followed her young mistress
down the stairs. As she heard the street door shut twice, the mother
laughed again.
The silence of midnight with a chill of the mountain snows fell on the
little city where East and West met on the Great Roman Road.
When the two cloaked women passed through the outer door to the darkened
and deserted square, they were followed by three silent figures—two of
them rude fellows, who had thrown the rocks at the speaker and fomented
the riot of the throngs listening forward, the third with a
blue-and-gold turban cap, a blue-silk jacket and a sword in his gold
sash.
“Follow,” the third ordered. “When they run for the dark lanes, seize
them. Clap your hands over their faces so they cannot scream! Do what
you like with the black woman—she is yours; but I am to rescue the
maid. See you hurt her not, but frighten her well, and when I strike at
you with my sword, take to your heels. Avoid the Roman watchman! This
must not be known! Come to my warerooms for your reward to-morrow.”
But the Roman watchman with brass lantern on arm was pacing the center
of the square, and to him the two women hastened. The three men
following stealthily in the shadows of the buildings round the square
saw them pause and speak to the Roman. There was parley of some kind.
The Roman soldier seemed to be hesitating! He had laughed loudly at
first. Now he was in doubt and hesitating. The woman with the white face
had thrown back her cloak, lifted her hands and was unfastening her
earrings. She placed them in the Roman’s hands. He had liftened his
brass lantern and was examining the proffered jewels. He lifted his
bugle and blew a shrill whistle. Half a dozen Roman soldiers came
running from the prison side of the city square.
The three spies dodged into a darkened lane between streets. When they
emerged on the city square again, stealthily glancing in all directions,
there was not a sign of Roman watchman, soldiers, women. Thamyris drew
his sword in a blind fury of balked passion.
“Clowns—blackguards,” he stamped. “You were too slow! We have lost
them,” and he struck in impotent rage at his terrified tools. They
obeyed his injunction of but a moment before and took to their heels
down the dark lanes.
The turnkey of the prison sat nodding over a tankard of wine in a little
room off the entrance from the square. A Roman watchman had roused him
and the two were examining, by the light of the soldier’s brass lantern,
a pair of emerald earrings set in Damascus filigree.
“Good jewels—not false—by Jupiter—ten years’ wages; and what do you
say she wants?”
“To see the wounded teacher rescued from the mob to-night; but she has
disobeyed her mother, refused to go to her affianced husband, and been
turned out in the streets as a courtesan. She refuses to wear a
courtesan’s red band round her brow; and by Iconium law, she will be
burned at the stake for that. These independent cities on the Roman Road
have their own laws.”
“What’s that to us? The jewels are good! Take her to the prisoner’s
cell; but he is a Roman citizen. He must not be harmed without trial.”
The watchman went back to the cloaked figures in the corridor. He led
them without a word down the long passageway lighted dimly by iron
candles with flaming pine knots. Before one cell tramped another Roman
soldier. The watchman spoke to the guard in a low voice. He came back to
the women.
“He says—what will you give him to let you in?”
Thecla drew a silver mirror from her girdle.
The watchman went back to the guard. Again, there was a conference under
the light of the pine faggot in the iron clamp against the stone wall.
The silver mirror was being examined. The watchman returned to the
women.
“He says after you have seen him—what will you do? We Romans interfere
not with Grecian laws in the independent cities. He does not want
trouble over this. What will you do afterwards?”
“Tell him,” answered the Grecian girl, “I shall deliver myself to the
Greek magistrate to-morrow morning to be burned in the hippodrome for
disobeying my mother, and refusing to marry the man to whom she sold
me.”
The guard heard the answer, put the great key in the cell lock and
pushed open the creaking door. The two women passed in and the door
locked behind them.
For a moment they could see nothing by the smoky light of the pine knot
in the iron clamp of the wall except the silver beam of the moonlight
breaking the dark through a casement window so deep you could only see
the night sky outside as through a long high tube. There was the sound
of breathing, and a man’s figure lay on a cot against the wall, with one
arm and one foot padlocked to a staple in the stones. His head was
pillowed on a folded black cloak and his forehead bound in a white
cloth, where the rocks of the rioters had struck him, but the moonlight
falling on his face and hands showed a curious luminous radiance and
white peace. At first the Greek girl thought he was dead and her knees
gave under her. Then, she heard his breathing and knew that he slept and
was dreaming happy dreams, as children dream in peace, for the white
face smiled in its sleep.
The Greek girl’s eyes closed and her lips moved in prayer. Yet she
hardly knew how or to whom to pray; for in the temples of Iconium there
were only statues of the goddess Venus, or Diana, or the Roman emperors;
and she had never before prayed to an Unknown, Invisible God. Her
serving woman fell to her knees and began to wail aloud, swaying her
body to and fro after the manner of the Blacks. When Thecla opened her
eyes from an almost inarticulate prayer, she saw the prisoner sitting up
on his cot.
“Child—how came—you here?”
She told him in a few words.
“Have you counted the cost?”
“No cost can be too great,” she said.
He smiled quietly as though he had not been mobbed and stoned by a
riotous rabble but a few hours before.
“True, child, no cost can be too great; for no one can leave father or
mother, or brother or sister to join the Glad Kingdom but the reward
shall be a hundredfold, both here and hereafter. The cost is but the
trifling price we pay to pass through the portals to the Unseen Kingdom,
whether here or hereafter; but why came you here?”
“To be baptized into that Kingdom before they whip you from the city
to-morrow.”
“Bid your serving woman bring me the jar of drinking water.”
She kneeled at his feet. He dipped his finger in the jar and marked the
sign of the Cross on her brow. “I baptize you in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit into the service of the Glad Kingdom both
here and hereafter, now and forever more,” he said. “Bid your woman hand
me the bread and the cup of wine. Quaff now the Loving Cup with me,
child!” He handed her a broken piece of bread. “In as oft as you do
this, you do it in remembrance of the Crucified One’s Last Supper with
His Loved Ones; but remember always, child—it is not the Doleful
Supper, which these children of the Adversary say; it is the Loving Cup
to commemorate His translation to the One and Only God.”
So in the darkened prison of Iconium between midnight and dawn, the
first woman martyr to the new faith was baptized into the Unseen Kingdom
and quaffed the Loving Cup to her Lord; and in the little modern city of
Konieh, a thousand legends of Thecla, some true, some fanciful, are told
among the mountain folk to this day. Sometimes, they have it, that the
faggots were kindled in the Iconium Theater and the wild beast
tournament held in Antioch; but each city marking the crumbling stones
of the Old Roman Road has its own legend.
Thecla rose from her knees.
“My Master,” she said, “how can I serve the Kingdom if I am to be burned
to-morrow?”
“That—I know not. God will lead you. If you are burned to-morrow,
’twill be but the fiery gate to the Unseen Kingdom and service there. If
you are not burned, God will lead you to service here. I shall be
whipped from the city at day dawn and go to Timothy, a child in years
like yourself, at Derbe and Lystra; but at Antioch is the Brotherhood,
where holy men and women plan our warfare against the Adversary—the
World, the Flesh and the Devil; but hard by Antioch are the Gardens of
Daphne, where many maids like you are forced to barter love for carnal
gain. Go to them, child! You have been rescued! Rescue them! How, I know
not. God will lead you and my prayers will follow you—a cloud of light
to fore—follow it—a screen of protection behind—look not back—but
press gladly forward to the high calling of a warrior for the Christ;
and the Lord bless you and keep you in the inmost sanctuary of His Grace
and Gladness! He shall renew your flesh as a little child’s and keep in
your heart an eternal youth, long as you drink of the Living Waters of
Life! Never repine! Never envy! Go forth rejoicing always! Rejoice,
rejoice, child, again I say rejoice! For our suffering is but as idle
passing dream, and we shall awaken to Eternal Day.”
* * * * *
All Iconium was agog. As far as it is possible to set down definite
dates in this era, it was about 46 A.D.
First, an impostor, who followed the Christus of the Jews, had been
whipped from the city at day dawn for contempt towards the gods of Rome
and Greece. The mob had given over pursuing when he fell senseless
outside the walls of the city. Then, an overland caravan from Rome had
come along the road headed for Antioch; and in the caravan was the
famous and rich lady Trefina, cousin of the Emperor of Rome, bound to
spend the winter season in the pleasure gardens of Daphne; and the
merchant princes of Iconium were planning a great fête to entertain
these visitors and unlock their fat purses. It was bruited about that a
Greek girl, a convert to the Christian disturber, was to be thrown to
the wild beasts in the theater that night. Some said her crime was
sacrilege. Others said she was a woman of the streets, who refused to
wear the red cord that was badge of her calling, and had bribed the
guards of the prison to go in and corrupt the very prisoners under the
magistrate’s nose. Others again averred she had refused to obey her
mother and run away from the husband, who had bought her. And all
Iconium, high and low, was agog to see the great fête in the theater
that night for the Lady Trefina, cousin of the Emperor, who had but lost
her daughter and was in such dejection that the citizens were determined
to win her favor by an exhibition that would dispel her weariness of all
living.
Again the fat Greek merchant, Thamyris, knocked on the door of the house
in the city square; and again the middle-aged woman opened the door and
drew him hurriedly in.
The man threw himself on the stone bench with a groan.
“You have heard the magistrate’s sentence for to-night?” he asked; and
the tears streamed down his cheeks. “I have tried to see her all day. I
have offered an emperor’s ransom to save her; but the coming of the Lady
Trefina from Rome has fixed the Roman Commander in his purpose and he
will not budge. They blame my slaves for fomenting the riot last night.
They despise us Greeks! They will tear us to pieces with bloody hands
and throw us to the beasts if we but stir to save her. My slaves have
betrayed me! They say I have been caught in my own trick—” the merchant
broke in heavy heart-shattering sobs.
The mother stood surveying him with unutterable hard scorn.
“Unmanly fool!” she taunted. “I thank the gods you are to be no son of
mine! Why did you not seize her and force her to your will, when she
passed through the door as we planned? Blunderer! Bungler! To let a wisp
of a maid slip through your fumble fingers like a jewel to mud! Not thus
did my Lord win me! He stole me from the hills of Phrygia, and broke me
to his will; and if I were a man, would I pause for this little fool’s
tears?”
“Aye; and you poisoned your Lord for a night’s pastime, and took his
fortune and would sell your daughter to me to play wanton again for
another rich husband! Think you I would love Thecla if she had been such
as you?” and the wretched man broke again into terrible sobbing.
For a second, the incarnate fury standing above the unguarded man could
not speak; and when she spoke, it was in the hiss of a serpent about to
strike.
“Say you—that—to me?” she demanded. “Know you not I could denounce you
to the Romans to-night as the corrupter of my daughter and the cause of
all this riot to gain your ends? Say—you—that—to me? Take back what
you said—fool!”
“Say—that—to you!” The man sprang to his feet and seized her by the
throat. “Yes—that—and that—and that,” he stabbed her at each word,
flung her on the tessellated pavement, and not pausing to see whether
she were living or dead, dashed through the doorway to the street and
ran through the deserted city for the theater, where all Iconium had
thronged. He did not notice his sky-blue jacket was spattered with
blood. He had flung his bloody dagger from him as he ran. He was a
madman. He knew not whether the roar he heard were in his own bursting
brain, or from the tier on tier of stone seats in the open theater,
where all Iconium was stamping their impatience and shouting for the
performance to begin. He tossed the guard at the gate a gold coin; and
the Roman laughed.
“He was the maid’s lover,” said the Roman; and Thamyris vaulted the
stone stairs to the highest seat, where he could see both audience and
arena. The trumpets were blowing. Riders on horses with ribbons and
tassels were prancing round the arena. The great lady Trefina from Rome
was entering the royal box, for pipes and bugles and trumpets blew a
blast; and the drums beat for the stone doors to lift and admit the wild
beasts to the sanded circle below the spectators. First came a lioness
lashing her tail from side to side; but the spectators hissed.
“Too full-fed,” the Greek merchant heard a Roman soldier behind him
saying. “If we had known the Lady Trefina was to be here to-night, we
could have starved the beast so she’d fight. I’d say—let in her cubs!
Stab one of her cubs, and she’ll liven up!”
Then the fanfare of trumpets and pipes blew again to drown the shrieks
of the victim—a door on the opposite side of the arena lifted and a
horseman rode in with a naked girl across his saddle pummel. He spurred
his horse to a frantic gallop five times around the arena. The audience
rose and cheered to the echo. The Lady Trefina in the royal enclosure
was seen to sink back and drop her veil at the sight of the
entertainment that had been provided in her honor; but the horseman
having speeded round and round the arena now approached the dazed
lioness, reached over, and, with his long whip, struck the crouching
creature a stinging cut, and dropped the naked form across his saddle
pummel not a stone’s throw from the enraged beast. The trumpets blew
till the echo rang amid the temple columns encircling the arena, and the
spectators went mad in a blood lust of shouts.
The fall had loosened the victim’s hair. It fell in great black coils
almost to her feet, and beneath her hair could be seen her nude form
pink as a shell or sun dawn. A terrible silence fell. The spectators
held their breath. The trumpets had silenced to be ready for a blast to
drown any cry of anguish. The naked Greek girl had lighted agile as a
bird on her feet, and she moved not so much as a hair’s breadth from the
crouching lioness now snarling and lashing head and tail from side to
side. Her flesh looked fresh as a little child’s.
“Little fool! Why doesn’t she fight, or run!” demanded the Roman beside
Thamyris. The Greek merchant sank heavily where he sat and hid his face
in his hands. He wanted to shout her name, but had the coward’s
protective presence of mind to know a shout would raise uproar and
enrage the lioness. She was perishing and he, the real murderer, was
watching her perish. Sweat of anguish stood out on his body in hot drops
as of blood. What was it she had said—the sin of sins was cheating
love?
The silence in the vast audience had grown so tense he could hear the
snarl of the lioness, the lash of its tail on the sand, the breathing of
the audience as if spellbound and cowed. He peered through his hands.
“She is an enchantress and ought to be burned,” muttered a Jewish
priest. “Paul hath bewitched the maid.”
The lioness had crouched but it had not sprung. It was advancing with
its red angry eyes on the motionless, naked form. The girl did not move.
The beast paused. The girl stretched out her hand. The lioness ceased
lashing its tail angrily and tossing its head from side to side. It was
creeping on her as a cat creeps on a bird. She stooped and all her hair
fell about and hid her nakedness. The great cat came on but it did not
strike nor spring. Its eyes were on the Greek girl’s, and the girl’s
eyes were on its eyes. It raised its head. She did not move her
outstretched hand. It sniffed her hand and dropped its head to her feet.
She slowly stooped and laid her hand on its head.
Again the silence stretched so tense that a shuffle of feet and whispers
brought angry looks from neighbors on the seats. Slowly, gently, with
the caress of a mother for her young, the Greek girl was stroking the
head of the beast between its ears. It stooped and licked her feet and
lay down as if in the presence of a friend recognized, where it had
expected foe. On bended knee, the girl stooped, caressing the beast.
The Lady Trefina in the royal enclosure had lifted her veil and was
leaning forward. The commandant was seen to lean across to her, and she
rose and threw a laurel wreath into the arena. The horseman came
spurring back and snatched the girl to his saddle. Other horsemen came
galloping with long lances and drove the now terrified lioness back
through the stone portal. All Iconium rose to its feet on the stone
benches and shouted salvos of frantic applause; but the cries were
mingled. Some shouted, “Saved—Saved!” others hissed and shouted back
“More—More.”
Blood lust felt that it had somehow been cheated of its full glut.
In the center of the arena stood a tall flagpole with the Roman eagle in
brass on the tip. The horseman with the naked girl now circled this in
frantic gallops. Reining his horse so suddenly that it reared on its
haunches, he now leaped off with the girl in his arms. He placed the
laurel wreath on her forehead. With such a broad belt as men use to
girth chariot teams, he now strapped the victim by the waist to the
pole. Iconium knew what was coming and began to roar in an earthquake of
applause. Never did this Greek city on the Great Roman Road fail of
entertainment for royal visitors. After all, the quick victory of the
girl over the beast was not to cheat their lust for horrors. Black
slaves were piling faggots and straw about the pole. Others were
emptying great vats of water in a lake about the pile to prevent the
fire leaping across the sands to the seats.
Thamyris sank from the upper bench, where he sat, a crumpled heap of
blood-spattered blue silk with gold sash, to the stone space behind the
next tier.
“Dead,” said the Roman standing behind him. “These Greeks are all soft
at pith. Would Roman die of love for a mistress?”
The fanfare of trumpets was blowing again to drown cries of anguish; and
in the crash of drum and bugle and trumpet, another crash was not
heeded. The opal peaks no longer swam in silver moonlight. A black
squall was coming down from the mountains and the commandant was seen
signaling the attendants to hasten.
Oil was poured on the faggots and straw, and a torch held to the far
edge near the pools of water. The flame shot up, illumining the dark
bloodthirsty faces, tier on tier of seats to mid-heaven. Again the crash
of trumpets! The white figure of the victim was seen to raise her hands
as if to Heaven and whether from the flame or the lightning of the
gathering storm, her face shone radiant and fearless as dawn. Clouds of
dust and sand blew through the arena in a tornado. Neighbor could not
see neighbor on the stone seats and all the assembly began drawing
cloaks over heads to protect them from the stifle of dust till the gust
had passed. There was a terrible and sudden lull, when sand and rain
came down in a deluge. Then the lightning bolts came—came in forks, and
spears, and javelins of dazzling blinding light.
There was a reverberating crash that rocked the templed columns of the
theater as though they had been reeds in a wind. Women rose with
screams. Men dashed up in panic. Was the earthquake feared more in the
cities of the Roman Road than vengeance of God or man? A sharp
ricocheting splintering as of the theater falling, and the lightning
struck—struck the brass-tipped pole in the middle of the arena and the
deluge burst from mid-heaven in rods of rain—torrential rains in a
hurricane of wind and lightning. The pole fell. Some one shouted that
the Lady Trefina had fainted. The Roman, who had stood above Thamyris’
dead body, saw an attendant run across the arena through the flashes of
lurid lightning, snatch an unconscious white prone figure from the pile
of quenched faggots, and dash to the royal enclosure of the Lady Trefina
with the naked Greek girl over his shoulder.
The rest was lost in the darkness and the deluge of rain.
When Iconium awakened to cloudless skies the next morning, the city of
the Roman Road was again agog with gossip. Had the Greek maid perished
of the lightning stroke, or the fire? Had any one seen her body? No one
knew. The great fête had ended in fiasco, and the commandant was in
testy mood not to be questioned. Certainly one rumor proved
true—Thamyris was dead; but whether he had died of grief for the loss
of his promised bride, or been stabbed in a brawl on the upper tier of
seats, newsmongers did not know; for his body had been found all
blood-spattered from blue jacket to silken breeches. Thecla’s mother
could not be seen; for she was ill abed of heartbreak. And certainly,
the Lady Trefina from Rome had departed at day dawn ill pleased with the
fête; for she had not waited for the caravan. She had gone ahead at
break of day in a litter chair with no attendant but the Roman
Commander, a Greek page boy, who looked like a girl, mounted on a fleet
horse, and an old colored woman bent astride over a mule, hanging to the
saddle pummel as though she were frightened out of her wits.
* * * * *
The record of Thecla must now jump forward some twenty years.
The Roman Road on two sides of a square from Ephesus east to Antioch and
from Antioch south to Jerusalem to this day has legends of what happened
to her in these years. Some said she had escaped with the Lady Trefina
dressed as a page boy. Others said she had joined Paul and Timothy at
Derbe and Lystra. Others knew she had lived hidden in caves between
Antioch and Daphne Gardens. About all that is authentic that can be
gathered of this period is that the Lady Trefina adopted her in place of
the dead daughter and left her a substantial fortune. Paul had gone to
Rome, where Nero had beheaded him when he could not crucify a Roman
citizen. Peter had come up from Babylon to take Paul’s place in Rome,
hurrying over the same Roman Road from the Desert of the East and had
been crucified in Rome, because he was not a Roman citizen. Nero,
himself, had suicided. From Antioch to Damascus and Jerusalem, the Roman
Road was now yearly packed with Imperial troops, for Titus, the Emperor
Vespasian’s son, had taken the Holy City, and, except for the Herod
Towers on the west, left not a stone standing of the Jewish capital. The
Christian Sect, though hated by the Jews, had been driven by the war
from Antioch to Ephesus, where they gathered strength each day; and in
an era of universal persecution and massacre, Thecla was forgotten. She
was now only one of countless martyrs to a despised faith; and the faith
suffered less on the Roman Road than in the Imperial City or Judea,
because these Greek trade cities of Asia Minor had been granted
independent laws, provided they kept fealty to Rome. The only danger to
them was the Emperor worship, which Rome had set up in every Greek
temple—statues of Roman conquerors, side by side with Greek deities for
worship and homage to unify the Empire. Some philosophers declared
openly this was the worship of the Beast foretold in prophecy of Greek
sibyl and Hebrew seer. Others said the name in whispers and bided their
time for Rome’s fall from a pinnacle of intoxicated power.
Again it was the month of September. Grapes hung heavy on the vineyards
lining the road. The olive groves alone shone brilliant green in the
drought. The cactus hedges stood withered and gaunt, like ragged ghosts
flinging wild arms out in the blue haze of late summer. On the broad
Roman Road the dust was a yellow curse to man and beast, but at dusk and
dawn it was a crimson glory against an amber skyline.
Two travelers coming up from Jerusalem to Antioch had been driven off
their course by the press of troops going back to Rome after the fall of
Jerusalem. One was mounted on a huge, grizzled camel in trappings of
silver, with tassels and buckles of brass in the Roman eagle; but he was
no Roman. He was a Greek Hebrew, clad all in white, with a sword to the
gold cord round his neck, and he wore the long flowing white beard of
philosopher, or doctor of the laws. The other rode a jaded horse and was
a younger man, near the thirties or forties in age, pure Greek, with
blue eyes and golden curled hair cut short to his neck. He, too, was
clad in white cloak with sword scabbard hanging from the gold cord round
his neck; and a pack of sumptuary mules and camels in charge of servants
followed behind with tents and baggage. Failing to make way through the
press of Roman legions on the road to Damascus, the travelers had
skirted off to the left down by the sea path; but there, too, their
progress was impeded by the departing troops. At Cæsarea, they could get
quarters in neither khan nor inn, and had to camp outside the city wall.
When they sought to take ship for Ephesus, they found decks and holds
crammed, yes, crammed with the returning victorious legions; and the
plunder every man carried was a king’s ransom. There were priceless
Damascus hangings woven in gold thread taken from the Temple. Some of
the soldiers had cast off their hot metal armor and swathed themselves
in these gorgeous curtains and tapestries, and reeled sodden drunk from
the stone quay back and forward to the taverns. Others carried plunder
of gold coin and gold ornaments rifled from the houses of the destroyed
city openly in pouches round their waist, and could be seen in the port
streets dicing their gold away at a cheaper rate than a pound of gold
for a grain of wheat, or an ounce of silver for a roll of goat’s cheese;
and as it was the wine press season in Palestine and the new wine was
heady and raw, the intoxicated soldiers drank more freely of the wine
than the water, which had been poisoned by the bodies of the dead thrown
into wells and pools. Men could be seen draining a deep tankard at one
quaff, then throwing away the gold or silver cup, which came from the
Temple, and stretching themselves out to sleep off their debauch, by
roadside or in city gutter.
The two travelers stood on the broad breakwater, that ran out in a
circle to the sea, and watched the captive Hebrews embarking for Rome.
There were seven hundred, all over seventeen in years and under
thirty—in the prime of manhood’s beauty, to grace the Triumph in the
Imperial City. All other captives, men, women, children, were being sold
into slavery to the Arabs and Egyptians for less than the price of a
dog. A few thousand older than thirty were being kept for the
gladiatorial combats that nightly entertained the Roman Legions in the
hippodrome. Some women and aged men—it is recorded about two
thousand—who could not bring a price as slaves—were being reserved to
be thrown to the wild beasts between the acts of the gladiatorial
fights.
The two Greek travelers stood watching the embarkation from the quay.
Suddenly there was a great outcry of “Make way—make way—for King
Agrippa”; and the last of the Herod line—a man in middle age—passed
down the gangway, bent, broken, and gray of hair on his brow. He was
accompanied by the Princess Bernice in litter chair or palanquin, but
little did her pale face show the regal pride of the Herods, who had
ruled Judea for a century. She lay back in her chair indifferent to the
remarks of the gaping loungers, weary of life, with the cold hardness in
her dark-ringed black eyes of one who has lost the prize and slain all
hope in her soul.
The young Greek onlooker gave a start forward. The older bearded man
laid a hand on his arm.
“Let the dead bury their dead—my Onesimus! If souls refuse rebirth into
a new life and will remain in their own dungeons, they can but die! New
wine in new bottles, son; for the new wine has burst the old bottles in
the glad wine of a new life for the ages to come.”
It was impossible to get passage by sea to Ephesus; so the next morning,
they resumed their journey along the sea road toward Antioch. It is
unnecessary to trace the progress forward of that journey. Every
stopping place was sacred to the past and to the future for all
time—Tyre and Sidon and Carmel, whose glories had departed with
memories of Elijah and Jonah and Solomon and Christ; then Seleucia, the
port leading through mountain pass to Antioch; but here, while war had
not left desolation, so many of the Roman officers had come up to pass
the winter in rest and pleasure that the Greek travelers were again
forced to camp outside the city walls and send their beasts and servants
into one of the public khans, where they would have shelter when the
autumn rains broke.
The desert and mountain clans had done as they are doing to-day and have
done since time began—as the snows and rains of the upper mountains
began to fall, they had driven their herds down to the plains to pasture
for the winter or find sale to the Roman buyers. A yellow tent city of
woven camels’ hair dotted the plains outside the city walls of white
marble and gray stone.
Having left guard at their tent, the two Greek travelers entered the
city gates to search for an evening meal at one of the public inns. They
found themselves seated at table in the courtyard of an inn near the
city gate, much frequented by the sheiks of the hill and desert tribes
with the herds outside.
Motley rude fellows sat cheek by jowl with Arab sheiks and heads of
mountain clans and the rough riff-raff element that lives by its wits in
every great city.
The younger man had set down his tankard of goats’ milk and turned to
his aged companion: “My Apollos,” he said, “why was I directed to leave
Babylonia and to come on to Ephesus? I had taken up the work of Peter
when he went to Rome.”
His aged bearded companion gazed absently, as if far back and far
forward.
“You have Peter’s Epistles to the Greek Churches of Asia?” he asked.
“I have had them copied for all the Greek Churches of Asia.”
“Recall you where he admonished—‘Love the brotherhood—fear God—honor
the King—for the time for me to lay aside my body is now rapidly
drawing near?’ He foreknew his own translation to the Upper Kingdom.
Matthew and Luke and Mark have gone to Egypt. Thomas has passed to the
beyond in Persia. John, only, is left among the Greeks and he is
banished to Patmos. I have been forbidden Rome since Paul’s death and
must to Crete. On you must fall the joy of directing the Greek cities of
the Roman Road. You must be bishop of Ephesus—”
“I—bishop? I am not even an elder. Have you forgotten all Grecian Asia
knows I was a runaway slave?”
“Nay, Onesimus—I have not forgotten; and because of what the gracious
help of God has done for you, would I see you bishop to encourage other
youth to join our warfare. We are a brotherhood militant, and who but
youth for fighting ranks! New wine in old bottles bursts the worn
goatskins. New wine of life for new age, son, old heads for guidance and
wisdom; but ours is the good news of youth and gladness; and when our
bodies wax old as a garment, we must lay them off and move on to eternal
youth in invisible realms.”
There was a clink of wine jars from the adjoining table. A rough band of
mountain bandits had come in and were drinking heavily with some Antioch
merchants. A lewd oath followed by loud laugh came from the drunken
group.
“She has ruined half the physicians of Antioch by her magic healing! She
has interfered with the sale of silver images of Diana and Venus by our
silversmiths; and now with her religious house in the grottos and caves
for the dancing girls of Daphne Gardens and half Rome here for winter
pleasure, what is to become of our maids for the Love Temples?”
“How old is she?” asked a bearded fellow, who seemed to be leader of the
bandit group.
“Old—that’s it—that’s her hold on these dancing girls! She keeps
eternally young with her magic and has lured away half our daughters
with her lies of a Christ, who can never die, and a love that is cheated
of a young girl’s dreams. I am a silversmith—I know what I say—we have
not sold one image this year, where we used to sell ten thousand.” The
silversmith stroked his beard and displayed the bracelets and rings of
his trade on his fat hand.
“And the Lady Trefina left her great store of Roman gold, you say?”
asked the bandit eagerly. “Does she keep that gold in her caves?”
“Not she, she is too crafty. That’s safe with the money changers here
and supports her schools for girls. Besides, it buys protection from the
Roman captain here. He, who harms her, would be impaled on the Roman
wall here for the hawks to pick his skull—”
“But my band of wild boars could destroy a woman without harming her.”
It was then the bandit leader repeated the lewd oath that had first
startled the two Greek Christians.
“But ply my young men with wine enough to-night, and we’ll prove her a
courtesan breaking the law without the red cord about her brow, which
the law enacts. Once prove on oath we’ve spent a night in her cave—the
laws of Antioch will do the rest. The Roman guard here would drive them
out like swine and throw them to the wild beasts in the hippodrome. We’d
have our dancing girls back in Daphne Gardens and no more of this folly
of heifers thinking they lead the herd.”
The heads of the group went together over the wine tankards of the table
in lowered tone with ugly laugh on the part of the mountain bandits and
oily smile from the Antioch merchants. The bandit chief rose. He
whistled. Half a dozen young fellows from the mountain clans with long
swords in sashes and dirks in slings dangling from the right wrist
appeared in the portal of the patio as if by magic. The chief signaled
them to join the table, and more wine and yet more wine was ordered, as
old and young heads went together in undertones above the center of the
table.
The two Greek Christians rose and passed out from the patio of the inn.
“Who is this woman teacher of the Christian faith they mean to attack
to-night?” demanded the aged man, Apollos. “Said I not the new wine was
bursting the old bottles—the spiritual is defeating the carnal, and we
need youth in fighting rank to keep the faith clean as a Damascus sword?
Who is this woman?”
“I know not, Apollos, unless one Thecla, a convert of Paul’s twenty
years ago in Iconium, when I was youth and captured by these same
bandits. She was said to have escaped to the caves near Antioch, where
she set up schools for the maids, who run away from the Love Temples of
Daphne Gardens. She toils so secretly few know how or where she dwells,
except that a great Roman lady left her fortune enough to buy protection
of Rome—”
“There is vile work afoot to-night, Onesimus. We must call the Roman
guard and hasten up to protect her caves till they come. Do you instruct
our tent men, while I see the Roman captain.”
* * * * *
Up and up over circling trail they rode the rough mountain pass that led
between the sea and Antioch. Larch, oak, fir and pine forest closed
behind them darkening as they pushed their panting horses up the steep
ascent. Mountain torrents rushed down to right and left in the sibilant
hush of night slacking the thaw of upper snows. Narrower and narrower
led the pass till the riders could have tossed a biscuit from side to
side of the precipices closing in cañon cleft. Above tree line, the
clouds enfolded them in a silken gauze cool as wind on hot face; and
above the cloud line, they rode in a world of silver moonlight, with
black shadows of the rock walls etched in ink and the howl of hyena and
jackal reëchoing through the caves. The stars were lanterns hung in a
lucent blue that seemed but a hand reach away from the two silent
riders. Once, as they passed the dark mouth of a grotto in the rock wall
washed by the tumbling cascade of waters over the precipice, they heard
the roar of a lion that set all the mountains in echo. The precipices on
either side of the pass now came together in overhanging arch not a
lance length apart and, as they passed under the shadow, a mountain
cataract leaped down—rainbow colored in the mist of moonlight, but the
path seemed to be ending in a blind wall.
“She chose her hiding place well,” said Apollos.
“She would need to,” answered Onesimus.
“Where is her religious house?” asked the aged man, as they breathed
their horses.
Onesimus was no longer presbyter and prospective bishop. He was mountain
boy again as he had been twenty years ago before the bandits had
captured him, and his eyes were searching the face of the rock cleft
where only a silver bar showed open space, as an eagle might scout for
its hidden nest. An eagle did at that very moment utter shrill warning
of human intrusion.
“That,” answered Onesimus, “must be her sentry of danger; for she was
mountain born as I am; and we always chose camp near an eagle’s nest for
warning.”
The eagle uttered its woeful cry again to fore, and they passed through
the arch. The rock walls here were pitted with grottos as they are to
this day; and we, who smile at the early Christians adopting monastic
life to flee the world, the flesh and the devil in these early ages,
should remember that it was often life in the grottos, or death by wild
beasts in the hippodrome. In one place the silvered mossed rock seemed
to have been stoned up in front. Past this place, tumbled another
cataract. Dwellers in the grottos always chose sites with good drinking
water inside. Onesimus pointed ahead, drew his sword and moved forward.
To the side where the cataract gushed out was a door of long slabs so
narrow a man must enter sideways. Onesimus knocked on the door. A wicket
in the logs opened; and we, who laugh at wickets in the doors of
monastic houses, would do well to recall how and why such wickets were
first used. They were used to save the lives of those who kept the faith
for us. A woman’s face appeared in the wicket. It was a face in its late
thirties, but it was a face that would always be young; for it had not a
line of care or envy. Was it the moonlight; or was it a trick of
Onesimus’ own memories of Paul long ago in the prison hut of Rome; for
the face wore the radiance that artists have vainly tried to portray in
halo?
“We are disciples of Paul,” he said in Greek.
The woman flung the door open and drew them in.
The grotto was empty but for a taper beneath a wooden cross, but at the
far end was a cleft in the rock—the real end of the pass leading to
grottos deeper in the mountain.
“And He shall hide His own in a cleft in the rock,” said Apollos. “Go
you within and tell the Lady Thecla why we are here. Keep your sword
drawn at the cleft in the rock. If they break past my guard, strike as
they go through yon crack in the wall. I would open the wicket when the
rioters come.”
There is no record of what the drunken rioters said, when the wicket
opened on a white bearded face instead of woman’s; but when they would
have smashed the door and forced entrance, Apollos drew a sword with
blade fine as Damascus razor and inquired calmly in tones too soft to be
safe what he might do for them. How could he serve them best? They
paused at that and fell back under the arch to confer. Came a thunder of
iron hoofs echoing in rip-rap over the stone road and the drunken crew
turned to flee pursuit of Roman guard; but flee—where? This road ended
in the blind wall of a stoned up cavern. They dashed back for hiding in
the caves lower down. There were echoes, oaths, clash of swords on metal
armor, neigh and scream of terrified horses; and a Roman centurion
galloped to the door.
“What did you do with your trapped beasts? Have you taken them
prisoners?” demanded Apollos.
“We took no prisoners. Not one escaped. We drove them over the
precipice. Yon eagle will have full crop for her nestlings to-morrow;
and that lion below will not roar so loud in hunger.”
And so Thecla lived to the great age of ninety years and her memory is
kept sacred on September 24, to this day. Without dancing girls for the
Love Temples of Daphne Gardens, all the beauty and lure of the place
failed to hold the wintering pleasure seekers of Antioch. The very
winter that Onesimus passed over the Roman Road to become Bishop of
Ephesus, the great Love Temples of Venus were destroyed by fire. The
Christians said they had been struck by lightning as a manifestation of
God’s vengeance for the attempt on the Thecla Community, even as
lightning had once before delivered her from the Adversary. The
merchants of Antioch, who yearly spent a hundred thousand talents to
draw the pleasure seekers from Rome to winter in Daphne Gardens, said
the Christians had set them on fire; but the lure of Daphne Gardens fell
off from that year. To this day, you can find signs of the Cross and
inscriptions by the early Christians in the grottos and caverns, between
Antioch and the sea; but of Daphne Gardens, hardly enough remains to
mark the site, did we not know it was ten miles in circumference, and
five miles from the four hundred crumbling marble towers of Antioch. War
and plunder broke the power of Antioch; and what war and plunder could
not destroy, the earthquake threw down; but the Faith kept holy in the
grotto is reënacted to-day wherever “the new wine bursts the old
bottles” and the Loving Cup goes round to commemorate Him who first
broke women’s fetters.