Saul of Tarsus: A Tale of the Early Christians

by Elizabeth Miller

  CHAPTER XXXI

  THE DREGS OF THE CUP OF TREMBLING

  By noon the following day, all Alexandria roared with the news thatAgrippa had returned a king!

  The Regio Judaeorum lost its repose. Certain irrational of theinhabitants displayed carpeting and garlands in honor of the Jewishpotentate, within their boundaries. But others, instructed byinstinct, closed the fronts of the houses and laid their treasurewithin grasp.

  By the advice of Marsyas, Agrippa had caused his ship to bring to,outside the harbor, and await the dropping of darkness before he cameashore. The few hours he spent in Alexandria had been passed undercover, and none without the alabarch's household was aware of hispresence in the city. The newly-crowned Judean king found it difficultto repress his desire for ostentation, and when Marsyas' plan forsecrecy miscarried at last, Agrippa was irritated because he had beendeprived of a longed-for opportunity to astonish the Alexandrians.

  "But who could have told it?" he asked, with ill-concealed satisfaction.

  Marsyas' lips curled.

  "Classicus," he said.

  Before the porch of the alabarch's house groups of people came to standand discuss the fortunes of the Herod. The sounds, nevercongratulatory, began to change in temper. As the day grew, numbersbegan to accumulate and hang like sullen bees buzzing insurrection.Though they themselves were mongrels cast out of twenty subjugatedkingdoms and bullied into unspeakable servitude by the tyrant Rome,Prejudice, unarmed with argument and speaking in dialect, arose andrebelled at Alexandria entertaining a Jewish king.

  Toward sunset a group of empty curricles and chariots came and stoodbefore a certain house, the last in the Jewish district, facing theGentile environs of the water-front. Had any cared to remark, it mighthave been observed that this house could be reached from the alabarch'sby abandoned passages and private walks, a series of Jewish courts andstable-yards, without exposing any who went that way to the Gentileeye. After a while, a body of Roman guards emerged from nowhere andarrayed themselves alongside the vehicles. Presently, groups of slavesbearing burdens, followed by a party of high-class Egyptians, mountedthe chariots and without hesitation the procession took up movementtoward the harbor.

  But an angle in the streets brought them upon the Gymnasium. It wasbuilt in a square of sufficient size to receive the crowds that usuallyattended the contests of the athletae, and there thousands wereassembled to do Alexandrian honor to a Jew.

  The daylight was still on the streets, and Marsyas, in the guise of acharioteer, driving the horses of the foremost car, observed that eachof the mass was busy with his own noise, and apparently unsuspectingthe coming of Agrippa. So he signed to the centurion in charge of thepraetorian squad to make way with as little ostentation as possible.

  At the porch before the Gymnasium, the crowd was most packed, loudestand most entertained. A naked, deformed, apish figure stood on apedestal from which a statue had fallen and had not been replaced. Awreath of rushes had been twisted about the degenerate forehead, astrip of matting had been bound with a tow-cord about his middle; inhis hand was a stalk of papyrus with the head broken and hanging down.

  On their knees about the base of the plinth were half a score of youthsfrom the Gymnasium, groaning in tragic chorus, the single Syriac word:

  "_Maris_! _Maris_! Lord! Lord!"

  Loudly the crowd roared its part, with voices raucous and hoarse frommuch abuse:

  "Hail, Agrippa! King of the Jews!"

  Agrippa's chariot, following the way the centurion had quietly openedthrough the crowd, attracted little attention and the half-light of thetwilight did not reveal his features, which he had been led further toconceal by an Egyptian cowl. A long white kamis covered his dress.But his eyes fell upon the idiot; he caught the mockery and its meaningfrom the crowd.

  A quiver of rage ran through his frame. Laying hold of the Egyptiansmock, he tore it off and threw it fairly into the faces of thosenearest him; the white cowl followed, and he stood forth like anew-risen sun in a tissue of silver, mantled with purple, his filletreplaced by a tarboosh sewn with immense gems.

  Defiance and insult and daring could not have been embodied in a moreeffective act. The continuous tumult burst into a yell of fury. In atwinkling his chariot was hemmed in and blocked and the raving rabblereached out to lay hands on him.

  Marsyas, seeing destruction in Agrippa's recklessness, shouted to thecenturion, who responded by hurling his praetorians, with broadsword andspear into the mob.

  The protection of Caesar, thus evidenced, beat back the astonished herdas a charge of cavalry might have done, but it fringed the lane openedbefore the royal Jew and raged.

  Thereafter every inch of the way was contested.

  Not even a show of interference was made by municipal authorities.Instead, here and there, soldiers of the city garrison could be seen,singly or in groups, as spectators and applauding. The riot began totake on the appearance of a holiday, for groups of upper classes beganto appear on housetops, stairs and porches of houses, where they madethemselves comfortable and listened to the demonstration as they wereaccustomed to watch contests in the stadia. Below in the long waytoward the harbor-front, the lawless of any class indulged their loveof disorder and amused the aristocrats.

  The fugitives were almost in sight of the forest of masts which markedthe wharves, when Marsyas detected a change in the tone of the tumult.

  Derision and revilement began to lose impetus, flagging in the face ofa freshened uproar of another temper, beginning far behind and sweepingdown the street after the fugitives. It was savage, bloodthirsty andmenacing. Out of the inarticulate volume he caught finally shoutsabout the Jews and Flora; next, about the dance of Flora; after thatthe whole declaration, sent thundering, like a sea over winter capes,that the dancing Flora was a Nazarene and the daughter of the alabarch!

  Marsyas' face, turned toward Agrippa, was ghastly. The Herod felt thefirst quiver of terror he had experienced in years. He reached towardthe lines, meaning to give Marsyas opportunity to return to the RegioJudaeorum. But Marsyas was shouting mightily to the centurion to chargethe crowds before them. The praetorian heard and his men presented adouble row of spears and rushed. The lesser mob ahead broke, andMarsyas cried back to Cypros' charioteer.

  The next minute with desperate mercilessness he had loosed a longplaited whip like a crackling flame upon the necks of his horses.

  The terrified beasts leaped; the car lurched and headlong they plungedinto the mass before them. Right and left the rawhide played, overfaces, shoulders and lifted arms, searing and scarring wherever ittouched. With grim satisfaction, the two within the chariot felt attimes that the car mounted and toppled over prostrate rioters, likesticks in the roadway. The jam became panic and flight, and the horsestook the free passage, mad with desire to get away from the stingingtorment that harassed them.

  The driver of Cypros' car closed in quickly with its following ofcurricles, and kept close behind the flying chariot, but thepraetorians, out-distanced, contented themselves by following throughshort ways, and the riot was left behind.

  At the wharf the maddened animals could not be stopped until they hadbeen circled again and again. But hardly had the wheels ceased tomove, when Marsyas leaped to the ground, and, flinging the lines to aslave, put up his hands to Agrippa.

  "As the first debt to thy manhood and to the alabarch forget not thisopportunity to help him! Hear them! They want Jewish blood; Lydia'sblood! There is none in Alexandria to stay them! Help, my lord!Beseech Caesar in thy people's behalf, as I beseech thee now! Answer,answer!"

  "I hear, Marsyas," Agrippa responded, "and by all that I hold sacred, Ipromise thee Flaccus' end! God help thee! Farewell!"

  Pausing only for the word, Marsyas turned and ran with frantic speedback into the city. He saw, at every step, that which made his heartchill in his bosom. The tide of the riot had turned, and that whichwas not already pouring in upon the Nazarenes, was rushing into theRegio J
udaeorum.