CHAPTER VII

THE JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM

The first rays of morning sunlight were gilding the stately towers of Cæsarea as the soldiers of the Italian Cohort filed through the southern gate of the city.

They were marching on foot to Jerusalem, a journey of some sixty miles, marching by the military road made by the Romans themselves, a highway so well and durably paved that portions of it still remain after the lapse of nearly two thousand years.

A little in advance of these troops, and justly proud of their fine and martial appearance, rode the tribune Terentius Rufus, and at his side was Crispus, mounted likewise upon a curveting steed.

On the previous day Nero’s edict had been posted up in the public places of Cæsarea; it gave the precedency to the Greeks.

Now, though it was plain to the least observant that the city was seething with excitement caused by the triumph of the one faction and the mortification of the other, Rufus and his cohort had been commanded by the procurator to return to Jerusalem on the ground that all was quiet at Cæsarea!

“And Florus himself,” remarked Rufus, “is withdrawing to Sebaste with his legion, so that the city will be entirely denuded of troops. Pluto take me!” he continued, knitting his brows in perplexity, “if I can understand his conduct save upon the supposition that he wants to kindle the torch of war.”

The two rode on in silence for a while. Then Crispus, who from time to time had been glancing back at the marching troops, said, with a somewhat perplexed air:

“Rufus, there is something lacking in thy cohort. What is it? Ah! I have it. The eagle! Where is it?”

“Purposely left behind in the Prætorium at Cæsarea.”

“Name of Mars!--why?”

“In going through Judæa we have to pay respect to the Jewish superstition, which, as you know, regards all images with abhorrence.”

Crispus was for the moment dumb with indignation.

“What!” cried he. “We must not carry our standards in a country conquered by us? Doth Rome rule Judæa, or Judæa Rome?”

“Judæa doth, in this matter at least, rule Rome.”

“I pray you, Rufus,” said Crispus, reining in his steed, “bid a centurion return for the eagle.”

But Rufus shook his head.

“Pontius Pilate was of like mind with you. He made his first entry into Jerusalem with figured banners. For three days and two nights the Jewish populace howled, raged, and wept round his Prætorium. At the end of the third day he sent his troops among them with drawn swords. The Jews flung themselves prostrate, bared their necks, and cried that they would rather die than see their laws broken.

“What could dismayed Pilate do? He couldn’t massacre a whole people in the first week of his government. Compelled sullenly to yield, he sent the ensigns back to Cæsarea. Since that day no troops dare venture into Jerusalem save with plain banners.”

“Forbidden to carry the eagles,” muttered Crispus wrathfully. “How long shall this be?”

“Till our next war with them, when we shall more thoroughly vindicate the supremacy of Rome, and be masters in our own house.”

“When will that be?”

“’Tis but a matter of days, in my opinion.”

Days! To Crispus this was startling news, and yet not unwelcome.

“I carry with me a sealed letter,” continued Rufus, “addressed to King Agrippa, who is at Jerusalem. He is, as you know, the brother of the Princess Berenice, the nominator of the high priest, and the supreme guardian of the temple treasures. The purport of the letter I know not, but if I may judge from Florus’ sinister smile as he handed me the missive, it contains some command which Agrippa will be loth to execute. Should the Jews of Jerusalem support the king in his attitude, it may prove the beginning of an outbreak whose end no man can foresee. I may be wrong, Crispus, but I have a presentiment that in this letter we are carrying the fate of Judæa.”

Crispus frowned. He loved fighting, but it seemed to him there would be little honor and glory gained in reducing to submission a people goaded to war by the deliberate oppression of an unjust governor.

The road traversed by the Romans wound southwards through the flower-enameled meads that constitute the Plain of Sharon, never more lovely than when seen in the soft sunshine of a May morning.

Now and again in their march the Romans would pass a gayly-clad group of Jewish country-folk, many of them accompanied by asses and mules, laden with timber.

“Pilgrims bound for Jerusalem,” explained Rufus in answer to Crispus’ inquiries. “Within a few days comes the Festival of the Xylophoria, or the Wood-offering, when the Jews are accustomed to bring to the temple supplies of timber sufficient to keep the sacrificial fires going for a year.”

At a wayside spring a somewhat numerous caravan had made a brief halt to refill their water-skins, and to refresh their beasts of burden. The air was lively with the sound of timbrels, of songs, and of dances.

The approach of the clanging cohort, with its swinging martial stride, put a sudden stop to the mirth.

“The Romans! the Romans!” was the cry.

Silent of tongue, but with eyes that looked unmistakable hatred, the pilgrims drew aside to let the legionaries pass. One fierce-looking Jew, bolder than his fellows, cried aloud: “To Gehenna with all Gentiles!”

Rufus rode past with a smile of contempt.

“Yon fellow knows full well,” said he, “that if I choose, I can hang him to the nearest tree, and yet the knowledge of that fact cannot keep him from expressing his hatred of the Romans.”

“What is the Gehenna to which he would consign us?” asked Crispus, who was not so well versed in Hebrew matters as Rufus.

“The Jewish Tartarus, a place of flame and torment, to which you and I, no matter how virtuous our life, are destined to be sent, according to the saying of the rabbis, ‘The Gentiles are only so much fuel for Gehenna.’”

“They don’t love us, these Jews,” laughed Crispus.

“Hatred of the Roman is drawn in with the maternal milk. You see now the necessity for maintaining so large a military force in Judæa. Africa, once the seat of the Carthaginian empire, is kept in order by a single legion. One legion, too, suffices for warlike Spain. Greece, once so great in deeds of arms, hath no legion at all within her bounds. These turbulent Jews require three legions. Think of it! Thirty-six thousand men perpetually under arms in a province no larger than our native Latium, so restless are these Jews, so hostile to our rule.”

“Why that stoppage in front?” said Crispus, glancing ahead at a group of distant pilgrims who had come to a sudden standstill in a way that threatened to impede the march of the oncoming Romans.

“That,” replied Rufus, “is another proof of Jewish contempt for the foreigner. The stone you see by the roadside marks the border of two provinces. At present we are in heathen Phœnicia; pass that stone, and we are in holy Judæa. Your Hebrew, on arriving at the frontier, takes off his sandals and carefully wipes them, lest he should pollute the sacred soil of Judæa by bringing upon it the profane dust of other lands.”

Crispus looked, and saw that it was even as Rufus had said. Every Jew, upon coming to the frontier-stone, removed his shoes, and either wiped or shook them, a somewhat useless cleansing, seeing that a minute afterwards the six hundred men of the Italian Cohort were bringing in Phœnician dust with them.

“You are a patrician of Rome,” said Rufus, addressing Crispus, “proud of your pure and lofty lineage, but know this, that if the vilest beggar in Jerusalem should be touched by you on the eve of the passover he would deem himself so unclean as to be unable to keep the feast. Purification by bathing would entitle him to the privilege of the supplementary passover held seven days later to meet such cases.”

A march of some twenty-five miles brought the cohort to Antipatris, a military station guarding the line of communication between Cæsarea and Jerusalem. Within the barracks of this town Rufus found ample accommodation for his troops. At nightfall he and Crispus ascended to the battlements of the Roman castle; from their lofty position the two could see the whole extent of Sharon, from the mountains to the sea, whitened by the silvery moonlight.

Far and wide over the landscape gleamed the fires of the Jewish pilgrims, camping for the night under the leafy terebinth or by the wayside spring.

“List!” said Rufus, with uplifted finger.

Floating upward from the valley below came the sound of many voices conjoined in a mournful melody. Now and again Crispus could faintly catch some of the words of the refrain.

“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning!”

As the breeze wavered, the voices rose and fell with a weird and plaintive effect, and Crispus thrilled as he listened. There was, to his way of thinking, a sob in every cadence--“How long, O Lord, how long?”--a wild appeal to heaven for vengeance against their present oppressor, the Roman.

A spirit of profound melancholy fell upon Crispus as he contemplated the character of this strange Eastern nation. In his journey that day every face seen by him, every incident that had happened, gave proof that though Jew and Roman touched each other at a hundred points, they were nevertheless as far apart as if seas rolled between them.

While all other nations of the empire, including even Greece, so renowned in arts, arms, and learning, were content to live peaceably, nay happily under the shadow of the eagle-wings of Rome, the Jew maintained an attitude of sullen hostility to his conqueror.

How long was this antagonism to last? Was the Jew to remain forever a thorn in the side of the empire, or must the solution of the problem come, as Rufus was convinced it would, in the shape of an exterminating war?

Next morning at sunrise the march was resumed. The road, that had hitherto followed a line parallel with the coast, now turned inland, and leaving the maritime plain behind them, the Romans began to ascend the picturesque ravines that wind towards the rocky tableland upon which Jerusalem is built.

Gophna, another military station, fifteen miles distant from the holy city, was their second stopping-place.

At daybreak they began the third and final stage of their journey, along a road dazzlingly white and dusty.

At the ninth hour of the morning the cohort was toiling through an upland ravine. In front of them at some distance was a numerous body of wood-bearing pilgrims. Suddenly, as their van gained the highest point of the road, a thrilling shout broke from it, followed by a precipitate hurrying forward on the part of all of those in the rear.

“Yerûshalaïm! Yerûshalaïm!” was the cry that rang out on the morning air, the cry of the Jews.

“Hagiopolis! Hagiopolis!” exclaimed the Greek proselytes.

“Hierosolyma!” said Rufus quietly.

Impelled by a natural curiosity, Crispus pressed forward his steed, and, as he gained the northern height of Scopus, the whole city at one flash burst full upon his view.

He drew rein, and, with a lively interest, gazed upon the famous city--“_longe clarissima urbium Orientis_”--whose origin was lost far back in the night of antiquity, a city gray with age ere ever a stone of Rome was laid!

A century earlier Jerusalem had presented a dull and even squalid appearance; but, thanks to that magnificent despot, Herod the Great, a monarch distinguished by his taste for Grecian architecture, the city was now a dream of beauty, with its imperial mantle of proud towers; its marble palaces gleaming through the clear, transparent air of a Syrian morn; its stately colonnades and triumphal arches, interspersed with the foliage of the tall and graceful palm; and, above all, the pure, white temple, “a mount of alabaster, topped with golden spires,” flashing in the morning sunlight with a splendor that forced the eyes to turn aside.

Crispus looked at it, and thought of his dream.

“Mark me,” said Rufus, “it will never be well with Rome till yon fair city be leveled with the dust, and the plow passed over it.”

Prophetic words!

If those Jews, among whom Crispus and Rufus were now making their way, could but have foreseen the future, their daggers would have flashed in the sunny air, and the two Romans would have been no more!

The supreme emotion evoked among the peasant pilgrims by the sight of the holy city was expressed in characteristic fashion. Some laughed aloud in the insanity of joy; others, with clasped hands and tears in their eyes, sank upon their knees, and not a few among the women fainted. Some pulled off their sandals, and walked barefoot towards the city, as though the way were hallowed ground; others assumed their richest robe, as if they were about to enter a holy synagogue. One member of the throng, a Levite, lifting up a sonorous voice, began the chanting of a psalm, appropriate to the occasion; and the refrain was immediately taken up by the whole multitude, slow-moving towards the city:

“The hill of Zion is a fair place, and the joy of the whole earth; upon the north side lieth the citadel of the Great King.”

“Now, if by the Great King is meant Cæsar, which is to be doubted,” remarked Rufus, “these fanatics are right. Thou seest yon edifice, Crispus, towering high above the temple. ’Tis my Roman citadel, of whose hospitality you must partake.”

Making their way through a region of groves and gardens, adorned with the mansions of the wealthy residents, the Roman troops entered the city, and threading its narrow, winding streets, came to their quarters in the citadel Antonia, so named by Herod the Great in memory of his friend and patron, Marc Antony, its usual name among the Jews being Baris, or the Tower.

This fortress occupied the summit of a lofty rock, separated from the mount on which the temple stood by a deep ravine, crossed by a line of arches. As the temple--in itself a stronghold--dominated and looked down upon the city, so did Antonia dominate and look down upon the temple. Far above the golden roof of the sanctuary towered its haughty battlements, adorned with the standard bearing the significant letters, S.P.Q.R. Upon that proud banner, the visible symbol of Roman dominion, no Jew ever looked save with a wrathful curse.

Leaving his men in their quarters, Rufus, losing no time, set off, accompanied by Crispus, for the palace of Agrippa, bent on delivering to that monarch the letter of Florus.

It was still early morning, and the streets, thronged by pilgrims, new-arriving, presented an animated and busy aspect, which would disappear later, when the heat of noontide would usher in the quietude of the siesta.

Suddenly, high above the sounds produced by the restless throng, there rose a voice, and one so weird that Crispus had never before heard the like. At its hollow tone, voices, sounds, footsteps, ceased. A hush as of death fell over all.

Along the middle of the street, and moving at a pace that never changed from its slow and measured uniformity, came a wild-eyed, melancholy figure, clad in a single robe of camel’s hair, and tied at the waist with a leathern girdle.

His arms were raised to heaven; he glanced neither to right nor left; his face was like a mask of stone, set in one unchanging expression of woe.

No man stopped him; no man questioned him; all knew the uselessness of it.

He was a familiar figure to the people, but familiarity had never lessened one thrill of the awe felt by them whenever he appeared.

“A voice from the East, a voice from the West, a voice from the fours winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people. Woe, woe to Jerusalem!”

The people stood, as they always stood when he passed by, immovable, silent, wondering. Did they behold a madman, or one in whom was the spirit of the ancient prophets?

“Who is yon fellow?” asked Crispus, watching the figure as it receded in the distance.

“Jesus, the son of Hanan. ’Tis four years since he began to appear at the yearly feasts, traversing the streets and uttering the woe that we have just heard. Brought before the tribunal of the procurator Albinus, and questioned, he would answer only, ‘Woe, woe to Jerusalem!’ Though scourged till his bones were laid bare, he maintained during it all a dry eye and a stony countenance, uttering the while his weird plaint. He seems to be, not a man, but a voice.”

“The voice of some god, it may be,” muttered Crispus, upon whose mind the incident had left a singular impression. “Doomed Troy had its Cassandra, whom none would believe until too late. So, too, Jerusalem seems to have its prophet, to whom this foolish people, that dream of war, would do well to give heed.”

Resuming their walk, the two friends ascended the slope of Mount Zion, and came to the old Asamonean Palace, the residence of King Agrippa.

“Aren’t you coming in with me?” asked Rufus, as Crispus hesitated. “We may encounter the Princess Berenice.”

Crispus turned away, saying he would await his friend’s return in the Xystus close by. Rufus looked after him in some wonderment.

“For the future,” he muttered, “I had better refrain from mentioning Berenice’s name; it seems to trouble him.”

Rufus, on being admitted to the presence of Agrippa, found him seated at a table. In person he was tall and slender. Delicate and refined in features, and dressed in the height of Jewish fashion, he presented, at any rate in the eyes of the sturdy Roman, a somewhat effeminate appearance. On one side of him was his sister Berenice, who had arrived at Jerusalem the preceding night; on the other was an elderly man with a hooked nose, thin lips, and a yellow polished forehead, who looked like a typical rabbi, as indeed he was, being none other than Simeon, the son of the celebrated Gamaliel. Before him lay an ink-horn and a parchment-scroll; between his fingers was a calamus or reed pen. Evidently he had been composing some document with the aid of his royal friends, and all three were looking as if very well pleased with their work. Rufus wondered whether they would look so well pleased after reading the document that _he_ was bringing for them.

“This prayer,” said Simeon, laying his hand upon the parchment-scroll before him, “this prayer will serve as a fan to winnow the chaff from the wheat.”

The three looked up as Rufus entered. He, being the commandant of Antonia, was a great man in Jerusalem, and they therefore received him affably.

“And what would the excellent Rufus with us?” asked Agrippa.

The excellent Rufus handed the letter to the king, who took it between his delicate jeweled fingers and broke the seal. While he was doing this Berenice rose from the table, and drawing near to Rufus addressed him in a low tone.

“Did you leave Crispus at Cæsarea?”

Her tone and look, betraying more than ordinary interest in the absent Roman, came as a revelation to Rufus.

“As I live,” he thought, “this woman loves Crispus.” Aloud he answered, “Nay, princess, he hath accompanied me to Jerusalem.”

“Where is he now?” she asked eagerly.

And Rufus, knowing that it would bring trouble into those beautiful eyes were she to learn that the phlegmatic Crispus preferred the miscellaneous crowd in the Xystus to the attractions of the Asamonean Palace, replied, “I left him in Antonia.”

What other question she might have asked was interrupted by Agrippa, who, having mastered the contents of the epistle, was frowning terribly. He called his sister to his side and handed her the letter. She knit her brows as she read, and in turn passed the missive to Simeon, who, after duly perusing it, seemed to be more angry than his royal patrons.

They were quiet for a time, all thinking.

“Submit not to this demand,” said Berenice passionately, addressing her brother, “since submission will be quoted as a precedent; we shall be virtually acknowledging his right to make such claim. One oppression will lead to another.”

“True, but on the other hand,” returned Agrippa, “if he should seek to make good his demand by force of arms ’twill lead to tumult and bloodshed--nay, even to open rebellion, for at this present time the popular mind is strung to a high state of tension by prophets who predict the near advent of the Messiah’s kingdom.”

Turning to Rufus he said aloud:

“You know the contents of this letter?”

“Indeed, no. I was told no more than to press for an immediate answer.”

“I will defer my reply till to-night.”

Rufus bowed and withdrew.

“I am the cause of this,” said Berenice sorrowfully.

“You, princess! How?” exclaimed Simeon.

“This is Florus’ way of taking vengeance upon me because I have declined to listen to his wooing.”