My Glorious Brothers

by Howard Fast

  “We must fight again,” he said, “and I do not know that it is the last time, for I think they will come down on us again and still again. But we must fight, and one day we will be free. If there were time, we could go through the land, and the people would come to us, as they came before, and we would arm them and train them; but there is not time, and we cannot hide ourselves in the wilderness, as we did once, and leave the land all open and ripe for the mercenaries. Then we had a smaller debt to the people, but because they trusted us, they went back to their homes and their fields, and we cannot let this Bacchides go through the land like a wolf in the flock. As few as we are, we must fight, not here behind the Temple walls, but in our hills, as we have always fought.” He stopped and waited, but there was no sound from the men. These were the old ones, the handful that were left from Ephraim, the few from Modin, from Goumad, from Hadid and Beth Horon; most of them had fought first under the old man, the Adon, and now they fought under the young man, the Maccabee. They had only to look at Judas as he stood there with his back to the Temple wall, the high, white stone, still lit by the last rays of the sun, framing him, the light glowing in his hair and on his brown, beautiful features, to know the answer to the question he asked. And as always, he said to them gently:

  “I want no one with a debt unpaid, with a new wife, a new house, a new field, a new child. Such may go, and there will be no shame in their going. They will fight again. We are Jews among Jews, and there should be no shame in our hearts—”

  Men left, weeping as they went; the ranks thinned, but closed, and those who remained stood sure and silent, eight hundred of them. Then Judas went among them, calling each by name, embracing some, kissing some, and they touched him and spoke to him with such love as I have never known to be given to a man. He was theirs, the Maccabee, and they were his. The bond would be sealed, signed in blood—yet I think that even if they knew it then, they would have had it no different.

  Then, as darkness fell, they covered their heads with their cloaks, and in a soft yet reaching voice Judas said, in the old Hebrew:

  Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.

  And the close-ranked men answered, “Amen—so be it.”

  ***

  That same night, we left Jerusalem and traveled due west, for we knew that the Greek was coming down from the northwest, and it was Judas’s plan to get behind him and strike at him either from the rear or from somewhere on the flank. We had too little force to meet him head on in some valley, bar his path and harry him from the hillsides, but Judas felt that with a little good fortune we might cut off a section of his army and so hurt it that the whole advance might be stopped or even turned into a retreat. Therefore, we marched quickly until well after midnight, covering almost twenty miles, and then, secure in the feeling that we were well behind Bacchides, we set out our sentries and bivouacked in a broad pasture on the outskirts of Beth Shemesh. We slept like dead men that night, woke refreshed with the dawn, and continued westward.

  For one reason and another, the spirits of the men were high. Part of it was the glorious day, the blue sky, the clean wind from the Mediterranean, and the lovely green of the terraced foothills; part of it was the fact that they marched again with the Maccabee, and the deep-seated confidence that under him they could come to no abiding ill. As we swung north at the edge of the coastal plain, to return again to the hills in the rear of the Greek, they lifted their voices in an old Judean battle song—and broke it as suddenly, for there, in the broad coastal valley, were the mercenaries, thousands upon thousands of them, a broad mass in front—and then a long, extended flank that cut off our retreat to the hills…

  I think I knew it was the end—I think perhaps we all knew it, even Judas, yet his voice rang out in high spirit as he called us to follow him and then set out at a run, driving all our strength against that extended flank.

  We turned the surprise into something else; somehow—whether through traitors or spies we never knew, but somehow—Bacchides had anticipated our tactic, and for once the Greek had laid a trap for the Jew; yet we sprung the jaws. Desperate we were, and desperately we smashed the phalanx at its weakest point, driving our unarmored bodies against the massed spears, separating them, making first a small hole and then a larger one through which we poured, closing with the mercenaries and driving them into flight by the fierce, unfettered violence of our attack. For the moment, it seemed like a victory, and we shouted triumphantly as we cut them down, pulled them down from behind; but then, over the din, we heard the voice of Judas calling us to stand, and as we broke off the pursuit, we saw that both ends of the long flank had reformed themselves and were moving in upon us, and behind them the serried ranks of the main army.

  We fell back into an area of high boulders and narrow ravines, where the phalanx could not be used against us, but Judas dared not order a retreat for fear it would turn into a rout, for fear they would pull us down even as we had pulled them down a moment ago. Already, we were outflanked; already they were closing in on us from every side. Judas did the only thing he could do; he pulled us together in among the boulders and rocks in a rough circle, and there we fought.

  Never will I forget that wild, bestial roar that went up from the mercenaries when they saw that at last they had a Jewish army in a position from which it could not retreat, could not escape. They had waited many years for this. They had carpeted our Judean soil with their dead for this. They had planned for this, dreamed of it—and here, at last, it was.

  Yet we stung them. We were not sheep to be pulled down in the fold, but rather the oldest, hardest and best fighting men in all the land of Judea, and we did not leave them that day without a little glory. No, Judas—you left your mark, you left your mark.

  First, as they closed in upon us, we shot away our arrows, not as we were wont to shoot in the defiles, filling the air with them until they fell like rain, but slowly and carefully, seeking a mark for every sliver of cedar, knowing that when the twoscore arrows each of us carried were shot away, there would be no more. We feathered the crevices of their armor; we buried our shafts in their eyes, in their brows, in their arms, and they paid dearly for that first attack. They shouted less; they came more slowly—and yet they came.

  Until midday, we fought with our spears, and when they were broken, with our swords and our knives and our hammers, and in that time we beat back charge after charge, how many I don’t know, but many, many—so many that the memory itself is unbearable with pain and weariness. And then they drew back to rest, to regroup their forces, to count their dead who lay around us like a wall.

  They paid a price, but so had we, and out of our eight hundred, less than half remained. Old wounds had opened and new wounds had seared them. When I dropped my sword, I felt that to lift it again would be an effort beyond any mortal will of mine. My mouth was dry as parched leather, and when I tried to speak, only hoarse croakings came forth. All about us the wounded lay, pleading for water, and all among us were the dead who would plead no more. I looked for Judas and Jonathan, and my heart beat less wildly when I saw that they still lived and stood—as Ruben did and Adam ben Lazar too; but Judas bled from a long cut across his breast, and the face of that fierce and vengeful man from the South was smashed in, so that his mouth was a raw and gaping wound.

  Judas came to me, stepping across the bodies of the dead, and he held out a flask of water.

  “Give it to the wounded,” I managed to croak.

  “No, Simon, better that the sound should drink—otherwise there will be no wounded tonight.”

  I wet
my lips; I could not do more than that. Ruben came to me and kissed me. “My friend, Simon, good-bye.” I shook my head. “No—good-bye,” he repeated, “and peace unto thee. I am happy. This way I would want it. It has been a good thing to live with you; it will not be hard to die with the sons of Mattathias.”

  I could not think of the dead, or the end, or the past or the future; I could only think of each blessed moment of rest, and I could only desire that there should be a moment more, a moment more before they returned to the attack.

  They came again. Our circle was smaller. They came again and again, and now I was only a few yards from my brothers—they who had been on the other side of the circle before. We beat them off, and they came again, and now we were a half circle against a mighty boulder, and here we would stay and here we would die.

  Every motion became unendurable agony. Now I felt no pain from my wounds; now I felt nothing and heard nothing, but knew only one thing, the terrible, awful weight of my sword, and yet somehow I lifted it again and again and thrust and hacked, even as my brothers were thrusting and hacking, even as Judas fought with the long, keen weapon that he had taken from dead Apollonius so long ago. And still they came—and I knew that they would come forever, until I died, until every Jew died. Time stopped; all things stopped, except the movement of the mercenaries crawling over the piles of dead to get at us. Sometimes, there would be a pause, but always the sublime sweetness of it would go almost instantly and they would be back at us.

  And then there was a pause that did not come to an end, and suddenly I was conscious of night, not twilight, not the slow change from day to evening, but night enfolding us and a driving, beating rain on my face. For a moment, I was certain I stood alone in that ghastly place of death, and I wet my mouth with rain and cried out—not words but frantic, sobbing sounds, and I kept that up until I felt hands on my face, and then I knew I lay on the ground and there was a voice in my ear, the voice of my brother Jonathan, asking me, asking me, my brother’s keeper, “Simon, Simon, where is Judas?”

  “I don’t know—I don’t know.”

  Together, we crawled from body to body; there were no other living, no other living. From body to body, we crawled, and we found Judas. Black as pitch was the night, yet when he was under our hands, we knew him, and somehow we found the strength to raise him in our arms and to carry him from that hellish place.

  Very slowly we moved, very slowly, and every step was pain. Sometimes we were so close to the mercenaries that we could hear their voices plainly, and then later we heard them no more—and still we went on. How long I don’t know; that night had no beginning and it had no end, but sometime we found a narrow cleft in the rocks, and there we lay down with our brother and for all of the driving rain, we fell immediately into the deep sleep of utter exhaustion.

  I don’t know what time it was the next day when we woke. Rain still poured out of the gray skies and neither the mercenaries nor the place where we had fought were in sight.

  We had no words to speak; we had no tears to shed. It was done, and Judas, our brother Judas, the Maccabee who was without peer and without reproach, was dead. Tenderly, Jonathan and I bore his body in our arms. All things were over, all things were done, yet still we walked and still we went inland in the direction of Modin and the old rooftree of Mattathias.

  There are no words for me to say what I felt then, or what I thought—just as there were no words that could pass between Jonathan and me. Judas was dead…

  ***

  So I write it, an old man, an old Jew searching in the past, in that strange and troubled land of memories. So I wrote, and now I can write no more, for it seems now that there is little purpose and less knowing in the telling of this tale.

  Now night is a somber time, and though all the land lies in peace, I, Simon, the least of my glorious brothers, know no peace.

  Part Five

  The Report of the

  Legate Lentulus Silanus

  May it please the noble Senate that my mission is done; as instructed, I proceeded to the land of the Jews—or Yehudim, as they title themselves—and remained there three months in pursuance of my duties. During that time, I held several conversations with their chieftain, the Maccabee, as they call him, and also styled Simon the Ethnarch; and these conversations touched on many matters, including future relations between Judea and Rome. This I will deal with in the course of my report, and again in the few recommendations I humbly submit. The rest of the time was spent in a study of their land and customs and in the preparation of this report.

  As ordered, I went by ship to Tyre, and there disembarked. Having no knowledge whatsoever of Jews, having neither met nor seen one prior to my arrival at Tyre, I determined to spend a few days in that city and facilitate my journey to Judea. Thereupon, I proceeded to the Jewish quarter, which is fairly large in Tyre, and made myself acquainted with these strange people for the first time.

  Fortunately, I encountered no language difficulties. Aramaic is the common tongue of almost all peoples dwelling in this part of the world, and it is so close to the dialect spoken by the inhabitants of Carthage—which I mastered during the Punic Wars—that I found myself very soon speaking it as well as a native. I would recommend that all legates and ambassadors dispatched to this area be versed in the Aramaic, both to glorify the long arm of Rome and to facilitate exchange of ideas.

  Aramaic is the common tongue of the Jews, as well as of the Phoenicians, the Samarians, the Syrians, the Philistines and the many other people who inhabit this area—and also the Greeks; but among the Jews, on certain occasions, they will use Hebrew, the ancient language of what they call their “holy scriptures,” a speech related to the Aramaic but hardly intelligible to me. Even children appear to be versed in both tongues, but for matters of everyday usage, I found the Aramaic to be sufficient.

  With the Jews in Tyre, I had less trouble than with the local overlords. The latter were at first inclined to circumscribe my coming and going, whereupon I went to Malthus, the prince, and let him know in no uncertain terms that whatsoever my treatment was, the details would be included in my official report to the Senate. After that, the interference ceased.

  The Jews, on the other hand, have a clearly defined code of conduct toward strangers, and though most of them had only heard of Rome and hardly seen a citizen before, I was received with great courtesy, nor was I barred from any part of their little community, even their holy places which they call “synagogues.” This amazed me all the more since I had already learned—during my few hours in Tyre—with what hatred and suspicion and contempt they are regarded by all the other inhabitants of the city. Nor is this hatred unique to Tyre; I found it a constant quality during the whole of my overland trip to Judea, even slaves, whose condition defies description, finding time and venom with which to hate the Jews. So consistent a manifestation as this intrigued me highly, and I think I have discovered many of the factors which contribute toward it; some of these I will enumerate and elaborate upon in the course of my report.

  Of the Jews in Tyre, I will say little, since I consider it more useful to describe my first impressions of them in their native land, Judea; yet I must mention that in all ways, they keep themselves apart from all other inhabitants, neither eating the same food nor drinking the same wine. Also there is about them something shared by the Judeans, but far more noticeable in a non-Jewish land—that is a fierce and unbending pride and superiority, which is somehow mixed with incredible humility, a quality which both attracts and enrages, so that from the very first, in spite of their courtesy, I found myself repressing a desire to evidence hostility toward them.

  Among them, I found and hired an old Jewish man, one Aaron ben Levi, or, in our terms, Aaron the son of Levi; and I might mention here that these people have no surnames, yet the humblest of them will trace their genealogy carefully and specifically over five or ten or even fifteen gener
ations. That they are a very ancient people, no one can gainsay, perhaps the most ancient in all this area, and they also possess a sense of the past which is both astonishing and disturbing.

  This Aaron ben Levi proved most useful as a guide and as an informant; for he had been a camel driver and caravan man all his life, except for those years when he left his calling to fight under the banner of the Maccabee; and he not only knew every road and bypath in Palestine, but proved most valuable in his memories of the Jewish wars. I also purchased a horse and saddle for seventeen shekels, both of which are noted and attested in the general accounting, as well as an ass for the old man; whereupon we journeyed southward along the main coastal highway toward Judea.

  A word or two about this camel guide of mine, since many of his characteristics are typical of the Jews and will thereby prove valuable in estimating the potential of these people—as well as the necessarily great menace of them. His age was somewhere in the late sixties, but he was dry and hard and brown as a nut; he had a high, thin nose, most of his teeth, and a pair of sparkling and insolent gray eyes. Unlike most of these people, who are generally taller than any others in this part of the world, or even in Rome, he was small and bent, but his whole attitude and bearing was outrageously patrician. Though before I took him for hire he had been without work for more than a year, and thereby a charge of the community, literally a beggar, he gave every impression of doing me a great favor by accepting my food and money. Though never by word or look could he be accused of actually offending me, he somehow mixed every word and every movement with a pitying sort of contempt that indicated clearly enough that even though I was less than dirt, it was an accident of birth that made me so, and therefore I was not wholly to blame.

  I recognize that these are strange impressions for a citizen of Rome and a legate of the Senate to record; but in all truth, they are so characteristic of this whole people—although varying in subtlety according to the individual—that I cannot refuse to note them.