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.