THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN.
Their tricks of legerdemain, coupled with a thorough and accurate
knowledge of astronomy, of which they made as great a mystery to
the common people as a modern doctor of medicine does of the art of
healing, enabled the Elimites, by taking advantage of a solar eclipse,
and calling on the resources of a first-class juggler, to gain
complete control of the Jewish government, and opened a plain highway
to a complete revolution in the national religion as well as in the
political aspect of things.
Corinthia, accompanied by her paramour Jokim, who thus found himself
virtually a king, made a splendid progress through the land by chariot,
driving with her own hand as the feminine representative of the firm of
solar and lunar deities, and receiving the obeisance little short of
worship indeed of her subjects. Her first official act on her return to
Ophir was to issue a decree that tribute should be levied upon every
male citizen of Israel for the purpose of building a magnificent Temple
of the Sun where that glorious luminary and divine deputy might be
worshiped with due respect to his greatness. Nothing was now too hard
for the subjects of the bewitching queen to believe when proclaimed
from her lips; and gold and silver flowed into the public treasury in
abundance. New and larger expeditions than ever before were fitted out
to the mines of Ophir for material with which to make the projected
temple shine with the splendor of the sun himself. Workmen in vast
armies began actively to prepare brick, stone and mortar, cedar and
spruce, from the mountains, and skilled artisans fashioned costly and
beautiful vases, enriched with scroll work of gold, and others modeled
flowers and vines of silver and gold till the nation presented the
appearance of a hive of bees intensely earnest in the work of laying up
winter stores.
Slowly the dream of beauty evolved from the chaos of brick and stone,
lime and mortar, cement and stucco. The mason’s trowel and the
engraver’s chisel wrought unceasingly to make the airy castle that
existed as a mental picture only become a substantial fact and the
measure of its growth was the measure of the growth of the young queen
into the affections of her people. They went wild over her wit and
beauty, forgot her moral lapses, and unconsciously fell into a state of
feeling toward her that was closely allied to the reverence we have for
deity.
The enthusiasm among the deluded Jews was a molten sea of precious
metals which the Accadian rulers directed into the mold of human
designs and crystallized it into the magnificent Temple of the Sun.
It was the record of spontaneous growth of national life, an era in
national progress, the insignia of civic pride, pardonable in that
its object was a worthy one, in the minds of the masses of the people
who were led insensibly away from the religion and traditions of
their fathers. As the religious fervor and physical energy of the
nation culminated in this stupendous aggregation of wall and arch,
roof and dome, as it was the expression of their highest ideal in
their artists’, their architects’, and the engravers’ arts, so its
completion was to make possible the last and highest step in the
carefully matured plans of Jokim and his associates. It is not to be
supposed that the motives of the judges in exalting Corinthia to the
rulership of Israel were purely unselfish ones. They knew full well
that the beauty and sex of Corinthia could overcome prejudices and
difficulties that would for them be insurmountable, that would require
decades, perhaps generations, of patient tutoring to smooth away.
Power and position were of use to them only while they lived, and to
die with the consciousness that their efforts had prepared the way for
their posterity to reap glory and honor was but a poor incentive, for,
according to their teachings, as of all other wise men of the world,
was not human power a weariness to the flesh, and all human greatness
vanity and vexation of spirit, and why should they wish to make so
unsubstantial a bequest to their children?
Besides, troublesome questions as to a choice between many aspirants
might arise to perplex and distract their offspring, and it was so
plainly their duty to ward off trouble from their household that the
ten wise judges, consulting with the almost equally wise, learned
professions of the scribes or doctors of the law, and the priesthood,
thought that at the dedication of the temple they should signalize that
event, and by coupling it with that of instituting in full the system
of worship taught them by their fathers in the land of Elim, namely the
worship of the sun with all its accompanying rites; and as the wife of
this solar deity was embodied in the person of Corinthia, they should
have a deified representation of the sun himself, who should be supreme
ruler as well as standing at the head of the priesthood.
Queen Corinthia, who doubtless understood this as the final step in the
movement, and mindful of the fact that her power came from this source,
made no objection, especially as every eye turned upon Jokim as the
most suitable person to sacrifice his personal feelings for the common
good.
So as the temple grew to perfection of symmetry, a day was proclaimed
when it would be fittingly dedicated to the worship of Jehovah. The
dedication was to be preceded by seven days of feasting and sport;
races were to be run by footmen, trials of skill at archery were to
take place, and on the seventh day a great chariot race was to occur
as the culmination of a series of races during each day preceding.
The winners of the six days’ trial should on the seventh have the
honor of contending with the beautiful queen herself, who would drive
the favorite royal equipage, a team of four milk-white horses of
such docility, and so perfectly trained that they were the wonder
and admiration of the City of Ophir. Corinthia herself was a daring,
successful horsewoman, and had trained them largely with her own
hand, and had achieved her first notoriety in the city by her superb
horsemanship, driving at a furious rate through the crowded streets
where collisions seemed impossible to avoid, when, at a word from her,
the intelligent creatures would stop with astonishing suddenness,
standing perfectly still until the crowd had scattered away, when at
the given signal they would dash away again.
Three months’ notice was given to prepare for the festival, and the
races and chariot driving at once became the absorbing topic of the
day, and also the chief occupation of all who were fortunate enough to
be able to possess horses and a vehicle.
It happened that among all the judges, Jokim had only one formidable
rival, and he was formidable only because of the sinister methods he
was capable of employing to accomplish his purpose. The hooked nose
and eagle eye, somewhat hooded by heavy eyebrows, showed his Jewish
origin and fiery ambition. He had ever viewed the advancement of Jokim,
his superior in everything but the cunning of the jackal, with bitter
jealousy and hatred, for a very good and sufficient reason, namely,
that he had cherished plans of his own very similar to those of Jokim,
their very similarity aiding him to interpret the motives that governed
his opponent. His illicit affections had been lavished upon a young
Jewess who was as noted for beauty and accomplishments in the city of
license and luxury as Corinthia herself, until the latter had been
exalted suddenly to a station far above hers, when crowned queen of
Israel.
Her lover was as strictly an Elimite as Jokim, by birth and education,
but being blessed with a cast of features more resembling the Jewish
and possessed of the far-seeing wiles of a demagogue, he had upon
coming to Ophir from a remote part of the country always proclaimed
himself as an Accadian Jew, and changed his Accadian name to the Jewish
one of Levi.
His infatuation for the fair Jewess, Rebecca, was largely prompted by
motives of policy to enable him to curry favor with the preponderating
element in the kingdom.
When the question of crowning a high priestess of the sun had been
discussed by the judges, his manipulations had almost secured the
nomination of Rebecca, instead of Corinthia, and on failing to do
so, had nearly caused an insurrection among some of the Jews, when
Corinthia, the Elimite, was enthroned.
If the hatred of Levi toward Jokim was cordial, what rancorous jealousy
and intense hatred must have been engendered in the feminine heart
of Rebecca toward her rival, whom she regarded as an alien whose
unscrupulous mind had been so fortunate as to inhabit a beautiful body,
enabling her to exert powerful fascination over all men with whom she
came in contact, so that all she had to do was to look about her and
choose her victim according to his political influence.
Corinthia did not make any pretense of loving her enemy or trying to
heap coals of fire on her head, though she would have done so gladly if
she could have been certain that it would have caused baldness on that
head where the beautiful shining tresses of Rebecca reposed, or have
dimmed the sparkle of the Jewish maiden’s eye.
The most potent cause of jealousy between men is political rivalry. The
hatred of one woman toward another is a feminine instinct. But when
women are found to add the political motives to their natural tendency
to hate each other, we have a combination that nothing can withstand.
While Rebecca could have encircled the white neck of Corinthia with her
lily fingers with an energy that would have wrenched bone and sinew
asunder, Corinthia considered that she had already broken the neck of
Rebecca, politically speaking, by her coronation; but she felt none of
the pity that a generous victor feels for the vanquished, but only wild
demoniacal exultation over her, and she failed not to remind her enemy
of the fact on all occasions by a disdainful smile and a toss of her
head, which would send her fallen foe off in a frenzy of baffled rage
that boded no good for Corinthia or her kingdom should opportunity ever
cross hands with her.
Among the Elimites it had come to be too much as it was in the
effeminate latter days of the Grecian and Roman glory; the wives and
mothers were the instruments of toil and drudgery, and the brilliant,
beautiful, and accomplished mistresses, those exquisitely-whited
sepulchers, were the companions of the lordly rulers and citizens of
wealth. Theirs was the companionship with which they enjoyed the public
walks and places of amusements. It was their gayety and sprightliness
that charmed their leisure hours, and for them they bought costly
chariots and high-bred horses. With their own hands they taught their
temptresses to manage the mettled horses, and lavished their praises
and flatteries upon the sodden mass of corruption, and laughed gayly at
sallies of wit from the lips of her whose glory was her shame, of her
whose footsteps take hold on hell, as the people of Israel were shortly
to learn to their cost.
As Rebecca and Queen Corinthia had been instinctively rivals in social
and political affairs, so feats of horsemanship were no exception
to the rule. Rebecca’s lover, Levi, though not a willing charioteer
himself, was driving a desperate race in which the prize was a kingdom
and the forfeit chagrin bitter as death itself. Therefore, he was in
no position to heed lightly Rebecca’s sly hints that Jokim’s mistress
drove a splendid chariot, and showy team, and was likely to outshine
the daughters of Israel and steal the affections of the people.
Ruefully the niggardly Levi had set about finding a team as snowy,
and a chariot as showy as that of his rival, and had succeeded so
well that his identity had come near being swallowed in that of his
hated rival, for the chariot of Jokim was a familiar sight on the
streets of Ophir, and distinguishable at a glance from any other.
But Levi’s purchase was destined in the end to change all this, for
they so closely resembled Jokim’s horses that none but the closest
observation could distinguish one from the other, and the presence of
both vehicles in plain sight upon the street at once was necessary to
convince spectators that there were two instead of one, and even then
some of the ignorant and superstitious ones among them half-believed
the newcomer to be a double of the other.
All this occurred some time prior to the coronation, when the rivals
were on equal social footing, and it was a hotly-contested question
among the adherents of the two beauties as to which of them was the
better horsewoman.
Rebecca determined to contest the championship with all comers, and
secretly she had almost begun to feel the thrill of triumph and hear
the shouts of the populace that were to emphasize her success. Isidor
was her trusted keeper and assistant as trainer of the horses for the
momentous race; a burly Jew with neither the fear of man nor God before
his eyes, subtle as the serpent of Eden, devoted to his employer;
nothing of scruple in his nature stood in the way of his serving her
to the utmost, and he added to this cast of character a wonderful
knowledge of, and dominion over, the dumb creatures.
Long and earnest consultations between Rebecca and Isidor took place
after the announcement of the festivities of the temple dedication. The
first fruit of these consultations was that Abram, a brother of Isidor,
who was at a distance from the city, was sent for. He had in common
with Isidor the gift of mastery over the horse kingdom, and had made
even better use of his gift for his own advantage, and was reported
a very wizard in his power to handle and subdue vicious animals, and
develop the intelligence of tractable ones.
A day or two after he was sent for, Abram met accidentally (?) on the
street Jokim, whose agent he had been a year before in the selection
and training of Corinthia’s famous team.
“Ah! thou art the man who was in my thoughts at this moment, Abram the
wizard. I know that no other man in all Ophir can match thee in skill
with chariot horses, and I am in need of thee just now. Where hast thou
been all these months past? Hast thou not then heard of the famous race
to be run on the seventh month in which our gracious queen will drive
the horses that thou didst train so well?”
Abram disclaimed all knowledge of city events, having been on the
plains, he said, helping to stay a dangerous distemper among the horses
of the Israelites to the northward, and having but just come to Ophir
for remedies with which he must hasten back to the plains.
“Say not so, Abram,” said Jokim, “I have urgent need of thee for some
weeks, even to the time of our glorious festival of dedication. You
must tarry with us and breathe your witcheries anew into the ears of
our queen’s snowy beauties; our queen must win the race, and I have no
fear with your faithful services to aid us.”
“It may not be, Father Jokim,” said Abram, “for mine honor I may not
tarry. My word, which is ever my bond, has been given that not later
than the hour of sunset, next day but one hence, I would return with
more of the great remedy for the suffering animals.”
“Then will I relieve thy faithful mind of the responsibility of failing
to keep thy word, for the queen has but just now sent me forth to put
on foot inquiry concerning the whereabouts of the wizard horseman,
Abram of Ophir, and commanded that a message should be sent with haste
requiring his immediate presence before her.”
“Then is there none in all our new land of Canaan that will obey more
joyfully than her humble servant Abram,” said that exceedingly suave
equine healer; and forthwith he called one of his caravan and sent a
message to his imaginary anxious patrons in the distant foothills of
the condition of affairs, and then accompanied his employer-by-proxy to
the presence of the lovely young ruler of Israel herself.
There was that in Abram’s obeisance before Corinthia which suggested
that he blamed himself greatly for cumbering the ground, or encroaching
upon the air with his presence and sordid needs, but also an earnest
hint that if allowed the meanest corner in the barren desert he would
like to continue in the cumbering business a little longer, not so much
on his own account, but to show his gratitude to the woman to whom he
had once been almost a companion when he had the matchless matches in
training, and she was but a prospective queen.
But the adulatory posture of the horse-training Jew was of a kind of
sweets none too highly seasoned for the taste of the queen but lately
permitted to taste the draughts of power. She received him graciously,
and urged upon his attention the fact that the cares of her present
situation would render it impossible for her to give to her favorites
the personal care that she had formerly bestowed upon them; therefore
she had sent for him that as he knew her method of managing her horses,
and as they too had succeeded so wonderfully in the past, she should
be glad to submit her chances of success entirely to his keeping, and
there must be no peradventure as to the final results, as she could
not afford to be beaten in the presence of half the kingdom, and
hinted that she had one rival in particular who would doubtless be a
contestant in the race, and by whom she would not be beaten for half
of Ophir.
Abram assured the queen that the kingdom did not contain the equals
of her four docile animals, and that there was no possibility of
defeat; and grovelling from the royal presence he betook himself to
the royal stables, where he evened the account with nature by making
his animals feel that they cumbered the ground only by his indulgence,
and went to work upon his task with such vigor that though the chariot
horses of Corinthia were already celebrated throughout the kingdom
for wonderful intelligence and trained ability, he daily added some
new horsely virtue to their already long list. Daily, too, or rather
nightly, he might have been seen like a dark shadow of evil, flitting
through the night from the palace grounds toward the quarters of his
brother Isidor, with whom he held long and earnest consultations upon
affairs that presumably were purely those of a brotherly nature, and
not infrequently, when the ties of consanguinity had thus been cemented
afresh by these dutiful conferences, Levi himself, accompanied by the
beautiful black-eyed Rebecca, would honor them with a visit to inquire
how the work of training went forward, if all the conditions of diet
and quarters were perfect, and to ask with friendly concern how Abram’s
work was progressing.
To be sure there were some business transactions of a purely
confidential character between Levi, the wealthy and dignified
ex-ruler, the first party, and Isidor and his brother Abram, second
party, in which a bond was entered into by the first party, binding
himself by a forfeit of one-half of his vast estate to give unto Isidor
and Abram, upon the fulfillment of certain stipulations on their part,
two certain “palaces of cedar in the outer part of the city of Ophir,
as thou goest westward, and furthermore a forest of cedar and fir in
the mountains of Ophir, as thou goest across the land to the westward,
and the pastures that reach into the valley therefrom with their
springs of living water, and all the flocks and herds that feed upon
that pasture or lie beneath that forest of fir and cedar, to thee are
they covenanted and to thy seed after thee.”
To Isidor and Abram this simple piece of parchment which they hid
away very carefully seemed to speak a charmed language. Its various
combinations of monotonous characters seemed to exert an exhilarating
influence over their actions.
The days passed on, and the time of the great religious festival drew
near. The streets were daily gay with the procession of chariots
wending their way to and from the great racecourse just without the
city. Excitement grew intense in anticipation of excitement, and
speculation as to who should win was active, and feverish desire to
know what was to be the meed to the victorious charioteer, for it
was announced that upon the first day of the festival the terms and
conditions to be observed, and the reward that was to crown the efforts
of the victor would be made known. Meanwhile they were compelled to be
content with the assurance from the queen that a reward adequate to the
importance of the event and commensurate with the love of the queen
for her dutiful subjects should fall to each of the winners of the
series that was to end upon the sixth day; and that upon the seventh
day to show her interest in the welfare of her people, and her cordial
approval of their sports, the royal chariot driven by herself would
enter the lists against the victors for the grand prize.
Isidor and Abram were as ignorant as the street rabble as to what the
prize should be, and as indifferent as the little band of lepers who
dwelt upon the hillside overlooking the city in a few miserable hovels,
and were daily supplied from the queen’s table with food which was
placed in a convenient spot at a safe distance from the little city,
where hope was never known to enter, and whose inhabitants dragged out
their miserable lives in plain view of the pleasure and grandeur, the
vanities and excess of pleasures indulged in by the great city of the
living world, while they were practically viewing the pageant from the
grave.
The prize set before the two loving brothers was a more dazzling one
than the wildest dreams of the contestants could conjure up as possible
to be offered from the hand of Corinthia.
Meanwhile she was more than satisfied with the progress of Abram’s
milky pupils. She condescended graciously to ride with him in his
training course, which was attached to the palace grounds and walled in
by a massive brick wall high and wide enough to exclude all the danger
of interference or eavesdropping upon the secrets of Abram’s art, and
was highly delighted with the progress in speed and tractability; and
in her enthusiasm had one day increased the wages of Abram which were
very meager, to the magnificent extent of one-twentieth part to be
added to his daily pittance, and promised that should she win the race,
Abram might expect to drive a chariot of his own some day.
This was a very hazy and indefinite promise, but a very safe one which
the virtuous queen imagined would be amply sufficient to set on fire
his most ardent ambitions. Abram was griped with pangs of deepest
humility apparently, at the spontaneous overflowing generosity of his
sovereign, and none but those who might have caught the light of a
vicious gleam that flashed for a moment from beneath his eyebrows,
could imagine that he was not overjoyed by her kindness and pained anew
only on account of his cumbersome presence.