DEBORAH
By James M. Ludlow
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[Illustration]
DEBORAH
A TALE OF THE TIMES
_of_
JUDAS MACCABAEUS
_by_
JAMES M. LUDLOW
_AUTHOR OF
THE CAPTAIN OF THE JANIZARIES_
_ETC_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
Copyright, 1901, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--THE CITY OF PRIDE, 11
II.--THE CITY OF DESOLATION, 22
III.--THE LITTLE BLIND SEER, 32
IV.--THE DISCUS THROW, 39
V.--A FLOWER IN A TORRENT, 46
VI.--A JEWISH CUPID, 54
VII.--IN THE TOILS OF APOLLONIUS, 63
VIII.--DEBORAH DISCOVERS HERSELF, 71
IX.--THE NASI'S TRIUMPH, 79
X.--JUDAS MACCABÆUS, 91
XI.--THE PRIEST'S KNIFE, 106
XII.--THE FORT OF THE ROCKS, 111
XIII.--THE DAUGHTER OF THE VOICE, 120
XIV.--THE SPY, 130
XV.--THE BATTLE OF THE WADY, 140
XVI.--THE BATTLEFIELD OF A HEART, 146
XVII.--A FAIR WASHERWOMAN, 160
XVIII.--HIGH PRIEST! HIGH DEVIL! 171
XIX.--THE RENEGADE, 179
XX.--A FEMALE SYMPOSIUM, 185
XXI.--BATTLE OF BETHHORON, 193
XXII.--A PRELUDE WITHOUT THE PLAY, 200
XXIII.--THE GREED OF GLAUCON, 205
XXIV.--LESSONS IN DIPLOMACY, 209
XXV.--A JEWESS TAKES NO ORDERS FROM THE ENEMY, 215
XXVI.--TO UNMASK THE PRINCESS, 221
XXVII.--THE QUEEN OF THE GROVE, 227
XXVIII.--A PRISONER, 234
XXIX.--A RAID, 243
XXX.--FOILED, 250
XXXI.--THE SHEIKHS, 258
XXXII.--THE CASTLE OF MASADA, 266
XXXIII.--WITH BEN AARON, 276
XXXIV.--QUICK LOVE: QUICK HATE! 282
XXXV.--WORSHIP BEFORE BATTLE, 289
XXXVI.--THE TEMPTRESS, 298
XXXVII.--"IF I WERE A JEW," 304
XXXVIII.--THE POISONER, 309
XXXIX.--BATTLE OF EMMAUS, 313
XL.--"A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM," 321
XLI.--A STRANGE VISITOR, 327
XLII.--A CLOSE CALL FOR DION, 332
XLIII.--BATTLE OF BETHZUR, 339
XLIV.--A WIFE? 346
XLV.--THE TRIAL, 354
XLVI.--DISENTANGLED THREADS, 363
XLVII.--A QUEEN OF ISRAEL? 367
XLVIII.--A BROKEN SENTENCE FINISHED, 377
XLIX.--THE HIDDEN HAND, 386
L.--THE VENGEANCE OF JUDAS, 392
LI.--A KING, INDEED, 401
AUTHOR'S NOTE, 407
DEBORAH
I
THE CITY OF PRIDE
King Antiochus, self-styled Epiphanes, the Glorious, was in a humor
that ill-suited that title. He cursed his scribe who had just read to
him a letter, kicked away the cushions where his royal and gouty feet
had been resting, and strode about the chamber declaring that, by all
the gods! he would make such a show in Antioch that the whole world
would be agog with amazement.
The letter which exploded the temper of his majesty was from Philippi,
in Macedonia, and told how the Romans, those insolent republicans of
the West, had made a magnificent fête to commemorate their conquest of
the country of Perseus, the last of the kings of Greece.
Epiphanes was a compound of pusillanimity and conceit. He could forget
the insult offered by a Roman officer who drew about "The Glorious" a
circle in the sand, and threatened to thrash the kingship out of him
if he did not at once desist from a certain attempt upon Egypt; but he
could not endure that another should outshine him in the pomp for which
Antioch was famous. This Eagle of Syria, as he liked to be called,
would rather have his talons cut than lose any of his plumage.
Hence that great oath of the king. So loud and ominous was it that
the pet jackanapes sprang to the shoulder of the statue of the Syrian
Venus, and clung with his hairy arms about her marble neck. The giant
guardsmen in the adjacent court, who, half asleep, stood leaning upon
their pikes, were startled into spasmodic motion, and shouldered their
weapons, before their contemptuous glances showed that they understood
the words that rang out to them.
"By all the gods! if Rome has the power, and Alexandria the commerce,
Antioch shall be queen in splendor, though it takes all the gold of all
the provinces to dress her."
The scribe smiled blandly and bowed his appreciation of this new-coming
glory of his master. The jackanapes took heart, and, after annihilating
some of his own personal enemies with vigorous scratching of his
haunches, leaped from the statue to the arm of the King's chair. So the
grand pageant was ordered.
All the world was invited to the Syrian capital. For an entire
month such splendors and sports were seen at Daphne, the famous
pleasure-grounds near to Antioch, that ever after the capital was
called Epidaphne, the City by the Grove. The heights of Silpius, on
whose lower slope Antioch lay like a jewel in the lap of a queen,
blazed by day with a thousand banners, and at night with fires whose
reflection turned the Orontes that flowed below the city into a stream
of molten gold.
One day was devoted to military display. There were fifty thousand
soldiers of many nations, from the perfectly formed Greek of the
Peloponnesus to the Persian, who made up for his lack of muscle by the
superior glitter of his spear, and the lithe and swarthy Arabs from
all the deserts between the Ægean and the Euphrates. Plumes of gold
nodded above shields of bronze and silver. Hundreds of chariots glowed
like rainbows in their parti-colored enamel, and were drawn by horses
buckled and bossed with precious gems. Droves of elephants armored in
dazzling steel carried upon their backs howdahs like thrones.
A stalwart young Greek stood looking at this martial display. He wore
the chiton, or under-garment, cut short above the knees, and belted
at the loins, where hung a stout sword indicating that he too was a
soldier.
"What think you, Dion?" asked a comrade.
"Why, that the body-guard of our King Perseus, though numbering but
three thousand, could have annihilated this whole mongrel horde as
readily as Alexander did the million when he won this land for his
degenerate successors. But I must not criticise the service I am
enrolled to enter."
Following the soldiery in the procession came a thousand young men,
each wearing a crown of seeming gold, clad in glistening white silk,
and holding aloft a huge tusk of ivory. These symboled the trade wealth
of Syria.
But the army having passed by, the Greek was soon wearied with the rest
of the display; and, bidding his companion farewell, with a few sage
suggestions about the temptations of the Grove at night, such as one
young fellow might give another, went into the city.
The second day's festivities were of a less valiant, though not less
fascinating sort. It was the Day of Beauty. Hundreds of fair women,
in balconies that overhung the narrow streets of the city, or grouped
upon platforms here and there throughout the Grove, flung into the air
the dust of sandalwood and other spiceries, or sprinkled the crowds
with drops of aromatic ointments. At the crossing of the paths were
great vessels of nard and cinnamon and oils, scented with marjoram and
lily, that even the paupers might delight themselves with the perfume
of princes. Tanks of wine and tables spread with viands were as free as
they were costly.
But the King himself was the most extravagant provision of the show.
In him the dignity of a king was less than the vanity of the man: his
coxcomb more than his crown. It cut him to the quick that a courtier
should outdress him, a charioteer better manage his steeds, or a
fakir set the mouths of the crowd more widely gaping. In the military
procession yesterday he had sat between the tusks of an enormous
elephant, and pricked the brute's trunk with a golden prod. He had also
ridden a famous stallion,--tightly curbed, it is true, and flanked by
six athletic grooms.
His majesty's originality was especially shown on the Day of Beauty by
his riding beside Clarissa, the famous dancer, in the chariot where
she reclined as Queen of the Grove, an apparition of Astarte herself.
The extemporized divinity of love wore a moon-shaped tiara of silver,
the symbol of the Queen of Heaven; Epiphanes put on an aureole of gold
to represent the glory of the Sun. A score of women whose forms were
familiar to all the frequenters of the dancing gardens of Daphne lay at
their feet.
Dion was an onlooker. He had caught so much of the spirit of the day as
to curl his locks and drape a purple himation or outer cloak from his
left shoulder.
"That's the Macedonian," said one of Clarissa's satellites, as from her
float she spied the graceful form in the crowd.
"A perfect Apollo!" was the critical response, which drew a jealous
glance from even The Glorious, who made the unkingly comment:
"No. His nose isn't true. Has the snout of a Jew."
His Majesty deserved to hear, though he did not, the comment the Greek
was at the same moment making to his comrade:
"Humph! Epiphanes, the Glorious! Well do the people call him Epimanes,
the Fool."
Captain Dion, notwithstanding the contemptuous sentiments thus far
awakened by the great show, was an observer the day following; for the
spectacular greatness of the affair would have drawn a Diogenes into
the crowd.
This was All-Gods Day. The various deities of the nations which
Epiphanes' fathers had conquered for him, and those of lands which the
ambitious monarch claimed, though he had not yet subdued them,--these
were represented by their statues, or by living personages who were
apparelled in celestial hues; that is, so far as the King's costumers
were acquainted with the fashions of the world beyond the clouds.
One float bore a tableau in which Mount Olympus appeared, peopled with
divinities, among whom Jupiter sat with uplifted hand holding a sheaf
of golden spears for lightning bolts, which the shaking of the float
made to menace the spectators with celestial ire. A bull-headed Moloch
of brass was contributed by the adjacent Phœnician city of Sidon; this
was followed by a stone Winged Bull from Babylon.
Lesser divinities held their court before the gaping crowds, as if
heaven were trailing its banners beneath the greater glory of the
earthly monarch. Indeed, the vanity of Epiphanes did not hesitate
to make this monstrous pretension. He was magnificently enthroned,
his head canopied by a device in which a golden sun and silvery
planets were made to float through fleecy azure. At his feet on a
lower platform were priests representing every religion in his wide
domain--those of the Phœnician Baal in white robes with fluted skirts
slashed diagonally with violet scarfs, their heads covered with
close-fitting caps of knitted hair-work, as if of a piece with their
black beards; Greek priests with gloomy brows inspecting the entrails
of the sacrifice; and naked Bacchantes, crowned with the leaves of the
vine.
Among these sacred officials was Menelaos, the High Priest of the Jews,
clad in the beauty of the ancient pontificate; his white tunic partly
covered with the blue robe; his head surmounted with the flower-shaped
turban. Menelaos was not the rightful High Priest of his people. His
brother, the sainted Onias, had held that office, until, after long
captivity in the prison of Daphne, he was murdered by Menelaos' order,
not far from the spot the fratricide was now passing.
As on the previous days, Dion, the Macedonian, had his station as a
spectator on the raised platform by the splendid gate of Daphne. By
his side was a young man. He was of decided Jewish countenance, of
slight form, head uncovered except for the silver band which held his
artificially curled hair close down upon his forehead--the fashion
of Antiochian fops of the time; from his shoulders a yellow himation
buckled with an enormous jewel and cornered with purple devices.
"I take it, Glaucon," said Dion, "that you are in feather with the High
Priest of your people. If I mistook it not, you gave him a knowing nod,
which he would have returned had not his pose at the feet of the King
prevented."
"Yes," replied the Jew, "Menelaos and I are good friends. And well we
may be, for, next to his own, my family is the noblest in Jerusalem.
Menelaos has great influence with the King, and has brought me into
much favor in Antioch."
"Such favor you will doubtless need, if reports be true," replied Dion.
"They say that General Apollonius has made your city of Jerusalem a
butcher's pen. That surely might have been avoided, since Menelaos, and
your house--the house of----"
"The house of Elkiah, the Nasi," quickly interjected Glaucon.
The Greek continued: "Since such great families as yours have been
induced to accept the lordship of Antioch, why not all others? I fear
that Apollonius is given to the wearing of the bones on the outside of
his hand."
"Well he may be," replied Glaucon, "for my people are
obdurate,--stupidly so. Many of them are crazed with their religious
bigotry. For the precept of some dead Rabbi they would live in
the tombs. They would cut off their flesh rather than part with a
traditional hem of the garment. They are so proud that one of them
would not marry Astarte herself. But a few of us are wiser. We are
going to introduce the Greek customs which are so beautiful and joyous;
learn your philosophy; adorn our Temple with your art. Young Jewry
hears the call of the Greek civilization, as does all the rest of the
world. Old Jewry is soured with its traditions, as milk is from too
long standing."
"I am glad that I am not a Jew," replied Dion. "I fear that my love of
fight would make me a rebel."
"Not you, Captain Dion," said the Jew, looking with admiration into the
Greek's handsome face and his blue eyes, that were as full of frolic as
of fire. "You, Dion, could fight for a woman, if she were beautiful;
but not for a gray-walled temple, and a lot of psalm-snoring priests."
"Well," replied Dion, "I shall soon have a chance to study your strange
people; for I am ordered by the King to join Apollonius. I sail
to-morrow on the _Eros_, from the harbor of Seleucia to Joppa."
"Then I am in high luck," replied the Jew enthusiastically, "since
I will have you for a fellow-passenger. One night more in Daphne! I
assure you that I shall play the true Greek, and fill myself with the
best that is left in Antioch, since to-morrow I pay tribute to Neptune.
You will join me at sunset, Captain? Celanus' wines are excellent."
"Impossible," replied Dion. "I must keep my legs steady under me,
and my brain-pan level, for to-morrow I shall have to take charge of
a hundred of the most villainous wretches that the King ever got
together. And he calls them 'Greek soldiers,' though there isn't a man
of them that can tell his race two generations back. A lot of pirates,
robbers, mine-slaves, and old wine-skins on legs! Greek soldiers! When
Mars turns chambermaid to a stable we Greeks will be such soldiers. But
they may be good enough for the work that Apollonius has for them in
Jerusalem. Farewell! To-morrow at noon on deck!"
* * * * *
Even a king must sometimes work. So Antiochus, the Glorious, laid aside
the trappings of divinity and attended to business. A vast empire,
such as he had inherited through several generations from Alexander
the Great, needed care. So far as possible the King farmed out the
government of the provinces to those who would return the largest
revenue, and trouble him least about the method of their gathering it.
Yet something was left for even the King to do.
First in the royal interest, after he had returned to his palace,
was the report of the chief of the city spies--old Briareus, he
fondly called him, since he was as one that had a hundred arms, and
a thousand fingers on them, which were in all the private affairs of
the inhabitants of the capital. Having satisfied himself with his
chief's account, and feeling confident that the royal throat was in
no immediate danger of being cut by any of the multitude he was daily
outraging, the King turned to less interesting matters, such as the
whereabouts of his many armies, their victories and defeats.
"Your tablets, Timon."
The scribe read:
"Apollonius reports all quiet at Jerusalem. Executed two hundred
yesterday."
"Good!" said the King. "Bid him leave not so much as a ghost of a Jew
above Hades; and then let him hasten the work in the country to the
north. The Jewish peasants are unsubdued. It is not safe for a single
company of our troops to go over land to Judea. I have had to send the
detachment tomorrow by water down the coast."
"There is the matter of Glaucon, son of the Nasi. You recall your
Majesty's promise to spare his property. It was a part of the bargain
with Menelaos, the Priest."
"To Hades with the Priest!" cried the King.
"Would it be wise to break with Menelaos?" timidly suggested the scribe.
"You are right, Timon. The High Priest will be convenient in
Jerusalem,--like the handle to a blade. Has Menelaos paid up all he
promised?"
"Yes; the nine hundred talents are safe."
"Nine hundred talents! That rascal must have robbed the Temple."
"Well, if he did, it will save your Majesty the trouble of finding the
hidden coffers. They say that the old King Solomon put his gold into
wells as deep as the earth, and that only the High Priest knows where
they are."
"A good thought!" said the Glorious, thumping the bald head of the
scribe with the royal seal. "Your skull, Timon, is as full of wisdom
as a beggar's is of fleas. When Menelaos has gobbled down all the gold
there is in Jerusalem, we will open his crop and let out the shekels,
as they do corn grains from a turkey's gullet. A good thought! But
enough of these things. They tire me. Business is for slaves, not for
kings. Did you note to-day how the people looked as I appeared in the
procession?"
"Your Majesty's glory can but grow upon the multitude. It is like that
of a mountain,--of a sunset--of--of the Great Sea when the glowing orb
of day with rays like the dishevelled hair----"
"Stop, good Timon; no flattery. You know I never could abide flattery."
"No words could flatter your Majesty." The scribe bowed upon the marble
floor, and kissed the feet of his master.
"Now begone," said the King. "Let everything be ready for to-night.
Clarissa, the Queen of the Grove, comes with a troop of her dancers."
With a wave of the royal hand the scribe vanished, and instead came the
King's costumers and physician; for the body of the Glorious must be
re-apparelled, and his stomach put in order for feasting.
II
THE CITY OF DESOLATION
The streets of Jerusalem in every age have been thronged with the same
motley multitude: cool-looking, white-shirted market venders from
the stalls; no shirted sweat-hot artisans from the cellar workshops;
dyers, designated by their badges of bright-colored threads; tailors,
in heraldry of ornamented needles; carpenters, wearing their symbol
of square and compass--of which they were as proud as the scribe was
of the pen stuck behind his ear; fishermen from Galilee and the coast
jostling the fruiterers with great baskets on their heads; bare-legged,
dirt-tanned laborers from the fields; half-naked children of either
sex, playing with equal carelessness whether they knocked over the
piles of fruit and black bread that stood upon the stone pavement,
or were themselves knocked over by the sharp hoofs of asses or the
spongy feet of camels. These exponents of common, toiling humanity
made way for the gay tunic-clad aristocrats of the Upper City of Sion,
white-robed priests from the Temple Mount, gray-sheeted women from the
Cheesemakers Street, and ladies in black silken garments and caps of
coins, who were borne in palanquins from the more fashionable Street of
David.
But in the year 167 before our Era all these had disappeared,--as
suddenly and completely as the sea-mullets and blackfish are driven
out of the shallows in the bay of Joppa by an invasion of sharks.
The costumes and speech of the new crowd on the streets were foreign,
chiefly those of Greek and Syrian soldiers, with broad-brimmed hats,
loose-knit, iron-linked corsage, tight leather leggings, and short,
stout cleaver-like swords hanging from their girdles. Here and there
one stood stock still, sentinelling his corner of the street, with the
point of his sarissa or long spear gleaming ten cubits above his head,
while his broad circular shield held abreast made an eddy in the living
current as it swept around him. These were the soldiers of Antiochus
Epiphanes.
Mingled with them were many foreign civilians, as their dress
indicated; merchants whose belts were well filled with gold to purchase
what the soldiers might steal; colonists to resettle the lands from
which the conquered people were expelled; and hordes of hucksters and
harlots who followed the armies of the time as dust clouds come after
chariots.
Nor were there wanting in the crowd those whose curved noses
contradicted the disguise of their newly cropped hair, and proclaimed
them to be renegade Jews: men who preferred to retain their ancestral
property by denying the faith of their fathers.
One afternoon the crowd in the Street of David became suddenly
congested. Through it a man, venerable with age, was vainly trying to
make his way. His long white locks, which curled downward in front of
his ears and mingled with the snowy beard upon his bosom, betokened his
Jewish race; while the broad fringes of white and hyacinth upon his
outer garment designated him as one of the Chasidim or Purists, who
preferred to part with their blood rather than with their religion. The
old patriot made no retort to the jostling and gibes of the crowd, but
his deep-set eyes flashed hatred from beneath their shaggy brows, and
told of the tragedy in his soul even more eloquently than if his lips
had poured forth fiery speech.
"You can't swim up this stream, old man," said a soldier, giving the
frail form a twirl that made it face the other way.
"It is the Nasi himself, Chief of the Rabbis," whispered a young Jew in
Greek cloak to a soldier. "Herakles club me, if you haven't caught the
biggest rat left in the hole. But Apollonius has given protection to
the Nasi's house. Be careful."
"Protection to his house! Why then did he come out of it? Fetch him
along. Strip him naked, and warm his toad's blood in the new gymnasium."
With this insult the soldier tore the outer garment from the old man's
back. The Jew was dazed for the instant by the Greek's audacity, and
mumbled within his sunken lips the words of the Prophet: "I gave my
back to the smiters, and my cheek to them that plucked off the hair."
He then raised his eyes heavenward, apparently unconscious of a
staggering blow between his shoulders from the flat of a sword. He
stood a moment until he had completed the sacred sentence: "For the
Lord God shall help me; therefore shall I not be confounded; therefore
have I set my face like a flint."
"'Face like a flint,' does he say? Let's see if it will strike fire
like a flint," shouted one, smiting the old patriot on the mouth with
the palm of his hand.
This dastardly deed drew blood which stained his white beard. But it
brought a quick retaliation from an unexpected direction; for a blow
like that of a catapult fell upon the assailant's head.
"By the thunderbolt of Zeus! that made you see fire," cried a comrade,
as the coward reeled into his arms. "Captain Dion's fist is as heavy
as the hammer of Hephæstus, the blacksmith of the gods, and makes the
sparks fly as well. I'll wager, Ajax, that you saw the sky full of
stars, or else your head is harder than an anvil."
By the side of the venerable Jew now stood a young Greek officer. If
Hephæstus had need of an assistant blacksmith the shoulders of Dion
would have attracted his notice; yet it is doubtful if the goddesses
of Olympus would have allowed so graceful a man to be consigned to
the celestial workshop. His face, too, was peculiarly attractive.
Topped with a brush of light hair and lighted by his blue eyes, it was
beautiful, but without a trace of femininity; a blending of dignity,
intelligence, courage, and kindly feeling, though the latter quality
was just then outglowed by rage.
On his well-curled head was a chaplet of myrtle, for he was returning
as victor in the day's sports at the new gymnasium which, as an
intended insult to the religious prejudices of the people, the
Governor, Apollonius, had recently built against the southern wall of
the Temple plaza.
"Bravo, Dion! If you had hit the Theban boxer yesterday like that, they
wouldn't have called for another round."
Dion faced the crowd, and with utmost detestation in his voice,
exclaimed: "If I had been here yesterday, this crew of cowardly knaves
had not hanged the babes to their mothers' necks, and thrown them from
the walls. Let one of you garlic chewers dare confess any part in that
beastly business, and I will heave him over the walls into Gehenna,
where other carcasses rot. Who touched those women?"
As Dion looked from face to face his blue eyes flashed like the
sword-point of a fencer feeling for an exposed spot in the breast of
his antagonist. The challenge was not taken, one venturing to say:
"It was done at the Governor's orders."
"I pronounce that a lie. Who repeats it?" cried Captain Dion.
A fellow-officer suggested that it might have been ordered by
Apollonius, since the women had plainly broken the new law and had
circumcised their brats.
"Shame on you, comrade!" said Dion. "They were women and mothers, and I
would say as much to the King's face."
The old Jew, hearing the reference to the scene which he himself had
been compelled the day before to witness, turned boldly to the crowd of
Greeks, and, with uplifted hands, repeated this imprecation from one of
the Psalms of his people:
"Let your children be fatherless and your wives be widows! Let your
children be vagabonds and----"
But Dion's hand was firmly laid upon the speaker's mouth.
"Nay, hold your breath, old man. If you give us much of it that way,
this crowd will take the rest of it with the hangman's rope."
Dion gently took the Jew's arm. "You must go back to your house. Come,
I will see you safely within doors, if you will stay there."
"No, I will go to the house of the Lord, and worship, for it is the
ninth hour," replied the determined man.
"That you cannot do," said Dion, kindly. "Don't you see that the Temple
gate is burned, and that soldiers are guarding the opening? Your
worship is no longer permitted there. Your sort of priests are all
gone."
"Then," said the patriot, "I will be my own priest. Surely the Lord
will accept an old man's last worship on earth before he goes hence."
"Nay, my good man, but the priests of the new religion are at the
Temple. To-morrow they celebrate the feast of Bacchus. If you go there,
they will crown you with ivy, and make you drunk in honor of the god.
You must go home, and stay within doors."
"Then let me go--to my own house! My God! Why was it not my sepulchre
ere I saw what the Prophet foretold?"
Captain Dion led him safely along the Street of David, the crowd giving
way as it gazed upon the two and remarked the contrast between the
half-mummied saint and the strong-limbed, festive-crowned youth.
"Old Elkiah is about the last of this damnable race left in Jerusalem.
It is a wonder that Apollonius has given him tether so long."
"Perhaps Dion knows the Jew," responded some one. "The captain is as
good a Greek as ever drew sword or loved a woman, but his nose isn't
straight on a line with his forehead. See, it has a Jewish twist."
"A fine observation," laughed another, "for one always follows his
nose, and that may account for Dion's kindness to some of these rebels."
"Don't insult Captain Dion!" said one. "He's close in with Apollonius.
Besides, he's a good fellow. He always gives a weaker man his handicap
in the arena without having it ordered."
"True, or you would not have won yesterday. But I wish he wouldn't
interfere with the sport of the men. I know that it is cruel, but the
sooner the bigots are exterminated the sooner it will cease. Were it
not for Dion's friendship for that Glaucon--as Elkiah's fool of a son
now calls himself--we would soon find out what the old Jew's house has
for us. They say his cellar is as good as a gold-mine."
"Better kill off Glaucon, and let the old man die himself. You saw that
his life is about burned out, and his old body only like a heap of
ashes with a spark in it," was the humane response.
Dion paused by the oaken door in the wall of the Jew's house. He
took from a little pouch at his belt a pinch of aromatic sawdust of
sandalwood, and dropped it upon a small square altar whose brazier
emitted a thin curl of white smoke, clouding the entrance. This was an
altar to Zeus which the Governor had commanded to be placed at all the
houses which were still occupied by the Jews. Just above the altar the
lintel had been torn by the destruction of the Mezuzah or wooden box
which, according to the Hebrew custom, contained the sacred sentences
from the Law, and through the small apertures in which a visitor to any
Jewish home could see the word "Shaddai," the Almighty One, and thus
make the common salutation, "Peace be to this house," into a prayer.
Dion's worship at the little altar by the gate was marred by a muttered
curse upon Apollonius for the needless insult perpetrated by this act
of sacrilege.
The Greek had scarcely time to knock at the outer entrance when the
door flew open, and with the cry "Father!" a young girl's arms were
about the old man.
She drew him inside, and stood with her left arm supporting, while she
raised her right hand as if it were a shield to protect him.
Captain Dion was familiar with the finest statuary in Athens and
Antioch, but thought he had never seen anything to match this,--the
white head and beard of age shielded by the raven locks of youth and
beauty. He would tell Laertes, his sculptor friend, of this pose.
The girl was apparently about seventeen years of age, tall and lithe,
with sufficient muscle to give that exquisite grace which only
accompanies strength. Her hair, bound about the temples with a single
fillet of silver, fell in wavy profusion of jet black upon a white
linen chiton. This was gathered at the shoulders, and left fully
exposed a neck which might have illuminated a copy of Solomon's Song.
Beneath the breasts the garment was girdled with a rope of golden
threads, and thence fell below the knees. Her ankles were wound with
long white sandal lacings, which were in harmony with the silver band
that bound her brow. Her arms were bare. In her haste she had not put
on her outer garment, and thus stood revealed in a more exquisite
modelling of nature than she would have chosen had she known that she
was to be beneath so critical an eye. Yet she could not have been more
charming had she practised for hours before her mirror of polished
brass, and passed her proud old nurse Huldah's inspection before she
made her début at the gate.
Dion noted that the girl's features were perfect, but strictly on the
Semitic model. Her face might be a hard one, for it well fitted the
tragic feeling of the moment; or it might be sweet as any he had loved
to dream about, for it also fitted the intensity of filial affection
and solicitude she now displayed. The Greek seemed transfixed by her
eyes. These were enlarged by her surprise, and their pupils gleamed
from their deep black irises with the fire of excitement.
"A Jewish Athena!" thought Dion, as in a brief sentence or two he
begged the girl to be more prudent in the care of her father. Surely
there was no scorn of the Jewish race in the profound bow with which he
took his departure, nor in the hasty glance he stole as the door was
closing.
He plucked a leaf from his myrtle crown and dropped it upon the altar.
As he went away he sighed a prayer for the maiden, and grumbled another
curse upon the King's cruelty. Then he whistled a sort of musical
accompaniment to his thought, which ran something like this:
"That girl is Glaucon's sister. He never told me that he had one."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, in that he was wise, since he only
knows me for a Greek adventurer, and thinks my honor like his own, a
spur on the heel, to be used or not according to one's inclination.
But, by the arm of Aphrodite! what a woman! Beautiful as a lioness,
and as brave too. Strange that the Jew could be father of both her
and Glaucon--of a lioness and a jackal! Glaucon and I must be good
friends, though I despise the fool. Why doesn't he fight for his house?
I would--especially with that woman in it."
Dion stopped and stood a long time looking at the narrow strip of sky
visible between Elkiah's house and those which lined the opposite side
of the street. There were no angels in the blue ether; but something
prompted him to take from his bosom a piece of onyx enclosed in a
casket of gold, and to look at a sweet face cut into the stone.
"I wonder if she was anything like Elkiah's daughter!"
He put the intaglio back into its pocket and went away.
III
THE LITTLE BLIND SEER.
The house of Elkiah was one of the most stately in Jerusalem, though
inferior to the structure which, in more ancient days, rose from the
same foundations. Whenever Elkiah told of his ancestral dignities
he was apt to show his listeners what were now the cellars and
sub-cellars of the house, the great stones of which, by the flat
indentations chiselled about the borders, proved that they were as
old as the days when Solomon built the Temple, and perhaps wrought
by the same Phœnician workmen. The second story, and the battlements
which enclosed the roof, were of newer construction, and had evidently
been made of the débris of a former and more palatial edifice, for an
occasional huge and broidered stone showed upon the street in ancient
architectural pride--just as some moderately circumstanced people wear
an occasional jewel left them by their richer forebears.
The residence of Elkiah thus maintained a relation to the other and
ordinary houses of the city not unlike that which its occupant held
to his fellow-citizens. He traced his blood to the days when another
Elkiah stood high in the court of Solomon, and thence back to the
settlement of the land by the emigrants from Egypt. This could be
attested by the official records, and was illustrated by numerous
priceless antiques now stored away in secret closets cut into the
solid walls, but which in safer times had ornamented the house from
battlement to court.
For many years Elkiah had been the Nasi, or President of the Sanhedrin,
that combined ecclesiastical and secular court of seventy-two men who
legislated for and judged the people. Of late years the Sanhedrin
itself had become utterly debauched by the gold of Egyptian Ptolemies
and Syrian Antiochuses, in their rivalry for the possession of
Palestine. Most of the members of this sacred council had become
Hellenized, and adopted Greek philosophies and customs; and now
that the Syrian monarch had invaded the city, these renegades saved
themselves from being despoiled by becoming despoilers of their
brethren. A former High Priest, Joshua, had changed his name to the
Greek Jason, as the Greeks scornfully said, for the sake of the "Golden
Fleece." The present incumbent of the sacred office, Menelaos, had been
circumcised as Onias, and was now the chief of the traitors in the
sacrilegious extinction of the national religion.
The crowning grief of the venerable Elkiah was the apostasy of his own
first-born son, Benjamin, who had taken the heathen name of Glaucon,
and thus shamed the house of his fathers while he protected it from the
general pillage.
The late afternoon of the day following that of Dion's rescue of Elkiah
from the mob the old man was reclining upon the thick rug and pillows
which Deborah--for so was his fair daughter called--had spread upon the
roof. Here he loved to lie, sheltered from view by the parapets, while
his eyes followed the white clouds which flecked the deep blue of the
sky--"Jehovah's banners," he called them--or caught the gleam of the
Temple roof when he was disposed to pray.
"Where is Caleb?" he asked.
A lad of some ten years was lying in the upper chamber, the room which,
like a little house by itself, occupied half of the roof upon which
it opened. Hearing his father's call, the child sprang up, and in an
instant was by Elkiah's side.
"Here am I, father!"
With his long black hair clustering upon his white chiton, and his
large black eyes, the boy resembled his sister. One would have noted,
however, a strange look; the pupils too widely expanded, as when one
tries to see in the dark. And this the child had been doing ever since,
five years ago, his sight was destroyed by a strange malady which not
even the physician Samuel could cure, for all that this learned man was
skilled in the potencies of herbs, the baleful and blessed beams of the
stars, and even the deeper mysteries of the words of the Rabbis.
Little Caleb was marvellously beautiful in spite of the stare of his
blind eyes and the marble pallor of his face. It was a child's face,
yet there was in it the placid sweetness of a woman's look, and at
times it seemed to glow with the intelligence of riper years--for the
boy had thought and felt more than most men had done.
Caleb knelt down by his father's side, and kissed his forehead. The
old man's harsher features relaxed at the touch of the young lips, and
tears sprang to his eyes as he drew the lad to his breast.
"Blessed be God, who has left me this fair image of my Miriam! Come,
Caleb, and look for me. Your blind eyes are better than mine, which my
sins have smitten. Can you see the chariots of the Lord?"
"Nay, father, but you have taught me to trust in Him who is Himself
like 'the mountains round about Jerusalem.' What need have we for
chariots? Can He not save by His word as well as by war?"
"True, child! Yet I myself once saw, when the impious Apollodorus
raged through our street, slaughtering all he met, and no one could
stand against him, I saw--or do I dream it?--I saw a heavenly warrior,
clad from head to foot in solid silver, waving a sword of fire, who
stood before the wicked man, and smote him to the ground. But when
they lifted the heathen there was not the sign of the stroke upon him,
though he breathed no more. Would that the Avenger might come again,
and speedily! But until He come--until He come--we must trust the word,
only the word. Bring the Roll of the Prophet. It surely tells of the
times that are now passing."
The boy felt for his sister's hand. Taking it, he pressed it against
his blind eyes--a way he had of checking his own too violent feeling.
He whispered, as he felt her comforting touch:
"Sister, the troubles have surely broken our father's mind. He does not
remember even yesterday."
Then, raising his voice, "You have forgotten, father, that the soldiers
came and searched the house and took the Books away."
Elkiah passed his hands over his forehead as if to smooth the mirror
of his memory. Recollection came, but with it a rage that shook his
decrepit form until Deborah's kiss allayed his emotion.
"No matter for the Roll, father," said Caleb. "You know that I can
repeat what the Books say. Now that I am blind, I keep in memory all
that I hear. In that way God lets me have more, perhaps, than if I
could see even to white Hermon there in the north."
"Bless the eyes which the Spirit of the Lord has opened!" cried the old
man. "Tell me, child, what says the Prophet of this monster who calls
himself our King--Epiphanes, the Glorious--for shame!"
"The Prophet says," replied Caleb, quoting the words of Daniel, "that
his heart shall be against the Holy Covenant, and they shall pollute
the Sanctuary of Strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and
shall place the Abomination that maketh desolate."
"Woe! Woe upon Jerusalem!" cried Elkiah. "Why did I not slay the
impious Apollonius, that child of Satan, when he rode into our Holy of
Holies? Alas! the breath of the Lord has withered the arm of Elkiah
that it cannot smite. But the Avenger will come. He will come yet. What
says the Prophet further, my son?"
Caleb continued, "And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall be
corrupt with flatteries."
"Ah!" groaned the old patriot, his voice gurgling in his throat
like the growl of a wild beast. "And my own son, the son of Miriam,
corrupted by the flatteries of the Greek! My Benjamin turned into a
Glaucon! God forgive me for having begotten a traitor!"
Elkiah sat upright on the rug. With averted palm he swept the air,
as if he would banish from his heart its paternal instinct. He then
covered his face with his hands and cried: "O my Miriam! I thank Thee,
O God, that Thou didst take her ere she knew this. But, Lord, why didst
Thou take my Miriam, and leave me that--that--traitor? But read on,
child."
Waiting a moment until his father's paroxysm had passed, Caleb
completed the prediction: "But the people that do know their God shall
be strong, and shall do exploits."
"Do exploits? Be strong? That we shall," shrieked the old man. "Your
hand, Deborah! My sword! I will go and smite the Syrian."
"Nay, father, that cannot be," said Deborah, as she laid the exhausted
form back upon the pillows. "Let the children fulfil the Prophet's
word."
"The children! My children!" muttered the old man. "One of them a
heathen, another blind, and the other only a girl. Deborah, oh, that
thou wert a man, or could wear a sword like the Deborah of old!"
Deborah summoned Ephraim, an old servant of the house, who with Huldah
his wife assisted in bringing Elkiah into the roof chamber; for the air
grew cold as the sun dropped behind the citadel by the Joppa gate, and
left only his golden glow on the top of Olivet eastward.
Little Caleb stood a while leaning over the parapet, his face showing
the tremendous movement of his soul, now expressing some ineffable
longing, and now hardening under some heroic purpose. He turned toward
the Temple as if he could see the sacred precincts: but suddenly his
great blind orbs were directed southward. As his sister returned to the
roof he called to her.
"Deborah, there is a strange noise beyond the city gate, over Ophel!"
"Dear child, you are not yet familiar with the cries at the heathen
games. The shouts come from the gymnasium."
"Why, sister, I know all sounds. I know by the dog's barking whether
he has the fox on the run or at bay, or has lost him in the hole. And
men cry just as the brutes do. I don't need to hear words. I sometimes
follow the games in the gymnasium off there. Now it is the hum of the
crowd before the contests begin; now the cheer for the runners; the
laugh when the wrestlers tumble; the rage of the losers; the joy of the
crowd when a favorite wins--I hear it all. But, Deborah, somebody has
been hurt over there. Can't you hear something sad in the murmur on
Ophel? It is as the fir-trees moan when a storm is coming."
The sound which Caleb heard will be interpreted if we tell of Captain
Dion's doings that day.
IV
THE DISCUS THROW.
The high plateau of Ophel swells out from the southern wall of the
Temple, and looks down upon the vales of Hinnom and Kedron, which come
together at its base, five hundred feet below. From this promontory
one can see for miles through the deep valley, which is lined near
the city with rock-hewn tombs, and in the distance with whitish-gray
cliffs, as if the Kedron had become a leper outcast from the company
of the beautiful hills and vales which elsewhere surround Jerusalem.
Down, down the valley it goes until lost to sight amid the mountains
of stone and sand that make the wilderness of Judea. There the leper
dies and is buried in the Dead Sea. Whichever way lies the wind, except
from the north, it sweeps this promontory of Ophel with refreshing
coolness. Here in the olden time the sages and saints of Israel had
been accustomed to walk, their meditations on the judgments of God
perhaps more sombre because of the gloomy grandeur of the scene; and
here the multitudes had thronged, with hearts gladdened by the contrast
of joy of their city with the distant desolation.
But now, by the orders of Apollonius, the Governor under Antiochus,
the top of Ophel had been levelled for the stately building of the
gymnasium.
To one looking up from the valley of the Kedron, the graceful Greek
porticos must have showed against the old gray walls of the Temple like
vines on the scarp of a mountain boulder. In front of the structure lay
the athletic field, dotted with many colored pennants which denoted the
places reserved for the various games. At one end of the field was the
stadium, the running track, some six hundred feet in length. Adjoining
this was an open court in which were practised wrestling, throwing the
discus, swinging the great hanging stone, hurling the javelin, archery,
sword play, boxing, and the like. By the side of this court were baths,
and near them great caldrons supplying the luxury of heated water.
In shaded porches were raised platforms upon which at stated hours
rhetoricians who plumed themselves upon their eloquence discoursed
of philosophy and poetry and love. Here, too, professors of the
calisthenic art exhibited in their own persons and those of their
pupils the graces of the human form.
Captain Dion emerged from the Street of the Cheesemakers upon the
athletic field. He saluted the banner of Apollonius, which flaunted
from its tall staff, then cast a spray of ivy at the foot of the statue
of Hermes, the god of the race. He was at once hailed by a group of
young men with whom he was evidently a favorite.
Among these was Glaucon. A broad-brimmed hat topped his head.
Artificially curled black locks stuccoed his brow. A white chlamys, or
outer robe, of linen broadly bordered with purple was draped from his
shoulder in the latest style of the capital.
"Ah, Glaucon, well met! How has it fared with you since we parted at
Joppa?" was Dion's greeting. "Has the sea jog gotten out of your legs
yet? If the mountains of Carmel and Cassius on the coast had been
turned to water the waves could not have tossed us more than when we
came from Antioch."
"Jerusalem is a poor exchange for Antioch," replied Glaucon. "One day
at Daphne for a lifetime here, but for a few good fellows like you,
Captain."
"Did you succeed in getting the order for confiscation reversed?" asked
the Greek.
"Oh, yes, I shall hold the property; that is, if I can keep the old
man, my father, within doors, so that he doesn't bring a mob about
our ears as he did yesterday. Apollonius--Pluto take him!--mulcted
me heavily of shekels last night as a guarantee that the old bigot
would keep the peace. I wish that you would give the Governor a fair
word for me, Dion. You see, I have not come into the estate yet, and
haven't many gold feathers to drop. Apollonius seems to think that I am
moulting all my ancestral wealth."
"I think I can get the Governor to at least pare your nails without
cutting the quick hereafter," replied his friend.
"My thanks. I shall need your help, Captain, in all ways, for though
I have donned the King's livery, you Greeks look on me as a Jew. I am
like to fall between the upper and nether millstones. My people have
cast me off, and, by Hercules! yours do not take to me as they should."
"Never fear, Glaucon," replied Dion. "A man who can swear 'By
Hercules!' instead of 'As the Lord liveth!' will soon have the favor of
our gods."
"And goddesses, too, I hope," laughed Glaucon. "But I have not thanked
you, Dion, for saving my father from his crazy venture on the streets
yesterday. The shade of Anchises bless you for that!"
"Well up in the poets, too, I see," said the Captain, slapping his
comrade on the back. "Your brain is Greek if your blood be Hebrew. But
let us hear what this blabber is saying."