by Alan Gold
Abraham sighed. He’d been in Rome during the reign of the emperor Claudius, when twenty thousand blue-skinned Britons had been hauled in chains through the streets toward the Senate building after a humiliating victory by the Roman armies. Their leader, sullen and resentful, was pulled by oxen in a cage on a cart. And Britain, Abraham had been told, was just as rugged as Israel.
How little the Jews knew of the rest of the world and what they were facing in fighting against the Romans. The Babylonians, the Egyptians, and the Greeks had produced great armies that they’d marched across the face of the world, but their men had fought as individuals. The Romans, though, had made war into an art as well as a science and were the most deadly force of men ever to have carried weapons into battle. The men were trained over years to fight as one, whether they were a century, a cohort, or a legion; when they went into battle, the soldiers fused together and formed the shape of a turtle with their shields, and when they fought against an enemy army, they used techniques like the buffalo, with the main body attacking the opposition head-on while the horns of the buffalo surrounded the flanks of the enemy and massacred them from the sides and back.
He drank some of the strengthening brew he’d made for the men, praying to Adonai Elohim that it might give him some fortitude. No matter how often he explained the Roman warfare techniques, Jonathan and those commanders around him told him that such weaponry or military tactics were useful in lands where there were open plains, but in the rugged mountains and valleys of the Galilee and Judea, such techniques could not easily be employed.
* * *
SARAH, WIFE OF ABRAHAM BEN Zakkai, walked awkwardly, nervously, to the door of the home of Samuel the merchant, high on the hill of Jerusalem. Her heart beating, she knocked on the door. It was opened by a huge black man, a Nubian, who looked down at Sarah and frowned.
“Yes?”
“I wish to speak with your master,” she said.
He smiled condescendingly and told her, “Servants use the entrance in the back of the house. This door is for—”
“I’m not a servant. I’m the wife of Abraham ben Zakkai, the doctor. I wish to—”
The moment Abraham’s name was mentioned, the servant beamed a huge smile and opened the door wide. “Please, lady, enter this house. You and your family are welcome here. Your wonderful husband saved my life and that of the woman who is now my wife. He is a marvelous doctor, your husband. I hope he’s well and prospering.”
She sighed and followed him into the bowels of the house, where he asked her politely to sit in an antechamber while he fetched his master.
Samuel appeared shortly after and looked at her in surprise. “Yes? You’re the wife of the doctor? What can I do for you?”
“Sir,” she said softly, “my husband, Abraham, is a good man. A loving husband and a father. He has been abducted. I don’t know who has him or whether he’s alive or dead. I haven’t seen him for four months and I’m in despair. Please, please, can you help me? My children are grieving and I have nobody else to turn to. You’re a friend of the Romans. Has he been abducted by them and sent to a prison? Has he been taken by this new group all Jerusalem is talking about? I’m desperate. Can you help me find him?”
Samuel looked disconsolate. “Lady, with all my heart, I’d love to help you, but I have no idea where he has gone. I’ve met him once, briefly, when he came to my home to cure my servants. He has probably been taken as a doctor by these Zealot people, as you suggested. But I will ask and make inquiries. I know where you live and so if I hear anything I’ll tell you immediately.”
He reached onto his table and picked up a purse of money. He held it out to her. “I’m sure you’ll need this . . .”
She smiled and shook her head. “Thank you, sir. You’re kind. But I want my husband, not money.”
She nodded in deference and made her exit. And he felt ashamed that he’d lied to such a good, loving, and honorable young woman.
* * *
SAMUEL THE MERCHANT left the camp and returned to Jerusalem to find out more information that could be of assistance to Jonathan and his men. So far, the raids that they’d undertaken had caused serious casualties among the Romans, but far more damaging than dead soldiers to the Roman commanders was the loss of face. Men died all the time in war, but for a legion to lose its eagles, for a cohort to lose its banner, was a loss of face that had to be corrected. And so, under orders from the Senate in Rome, measures were put in place that would see this nasty little rebellion quashed.
Jonathan and his men marched north and west from their secret camp to the ancient Jewish city of Sepphoris, which the Romans had renamed Diocaesarea when they built their fortress. The Zealots weren’t going into the city, for they’d be slaughtered by the soldiers, but were planning an attack on a platoon of about eighty men, which constituted a century, returning from a scouting mission and led by a particularly vicious centurion. The Jews would hide in the hills about four leagues from Sepphoris and then rain hail fire, stones, and weapons down onto the valley road. By the time the soldiers’ bodies were discovered, Jonathan and his Zealots would have disappeared into the hills, preparing for another strike in another part of the country.
Exhausted at the end of the two-day march over the trackless wastes of the Galilean hills and valleys, Abraham was grateful to be told to watch the massacre of the Romans from a safe place high on a hill. The Jewish Zealots positioned themselves halfway down the hill, concealed by trees, rock ledges, outcrops, and the mouths of the numerous caves. They lay flat on the earth, out of sight of the track that ran through the valley floor beside a thin stream, ready when the first arrow was let loose by Jonathan to send down their spears, rocks, and arrows in a deadly storm that would kill all the Romans in the century. The track led from the north to the south and eventually to the city of Sepphoris, and Jonathan had chosen a place of hiding that was just to the south of a bend in the arm of the valley. It meant that the Romans would march around the bend, blind to their assailants, and walk into the trap.
Abraham lay on the rock ledge high above the theater below him. He could clearly see some of the Zealots hiding and waiting, and from his vantage point he could see the road clearly. There were more than fifty Zealots assembled in the heat of the midday sun, like spiders lying in wait for flies to be snared by their web.
Time passed slowly as Abraham waited. He was both surprised and pleased that the Zealots far below him maintained their discipline, despite the boredom of waiting. On three occasions the men were roused by the noise of travelers walking toward Sepphoris. One was a goatherd urging his animals forward. The next interloper was a man on a donkey singing a song, oblivious to the dozens of deadly soldiers looking at him in amusement from their hideouts. And the third was a group of young girls giggling as they walked back to their homes in the city.
More time passed, and Abraham feared that they would have to spend the night in silence as they waited. Intelligence from a sympathizer in the city of Sepphoris informed Jonathan that the century would be returning this day after patrolling the central parts of the Galilee. They would be led by a burly and aggressive centurion by the name of Marcus Julius Tertius, hated for his brutality and feared by those under his command. Few would mourn his demise.
It was late in the afternoon, when the sun’s shadows were casting a darkening gloom over the valley floor, that the men became aware of the noise of animals and cart wheels and leather-clad feet marching beyond the bend in the road. Though not yet in sight, all became alert to the sounds on the compacted earth of the road. The sounds grew louder and louder and Abraham could see all of the Zealots, many now hidden by shadows, silently reaching for their spears, bows, arrows, and rocks. Suddenly the first of the century, led by a tall, heavyset Roman riding a horse, appeared around the bend of the valley. He was followed by rows of soldiers walking three abreast. In the middle of the century were four carts pulled by oxen, laden with food, weaponry, and tents. They were marching straight into
Jonathan’s trap, and it was so obvious that they would soon be slaughtered. Despite their being Romans, Abraham said a brief prayer to the Almighty for their lives.
As the last of the men marched around the bend, the centurion Marcus Julius Tertius glanced around, held up his hand, and called for his men to halt. Abraham was surprised. They should have continued to march forward into the ambush, because where they had stopped was too distant for the Zealots’ weapons to harm the Romans. He, Jonathan, and the Zealot army wondered what they were doing.
Abraham watched in fascination as the centurion dismounted and led his horse to the water. He barked a command, and a dozen soldiers ran to the edge of the track where it rose up the hillside, standing there on guard while the other soldiers sat on the ground and rested, drinking from flasks and eating bread from their satchels.
The Zealots were forced to wait until the Romans had finished their rest period, frustrated that their battle had been delayed. Suddenly, unexpectedly, there was a piercing scream from halfway up the hillside. Horrified, Abraham turned quickly to see one of the Zealots farther up the hill behind him stand, clutching his shoulder. Then he staggered forward and fell over the edge of the cliff, plunging earthward. Another stood, clutching at his neck as though trying to remove a bee’s stinger. Frantic, the man twisted and turned and it was then that Abraham saw an arrow that had pierced the back of his neck; its point was sticking out of his throat. His eyes were wide in fear and pain as he struggled to do something, but it was immediately apparent to Abraham that the man was already as good as dead. From the wound, a fountain of blood gushed out of the man’s throat and mouth as he pitched forward, headfirst. He fell just beyond the ledge and crashed onto a rock below. There was a sickening thud as the man’s head was crushed, and as he fell farther, Abraham saw the streak of blood that colored the rock.
As the dead man cascaded downward, another scream came from behind a tree to his left; then another as the men to Abraham’s right and left tumbled down the steep hill toward the valley floor, each man pierced by an arrow or a spear. More men on the opposite side of the valley screamed and seemed to dive from their hiding places on the mountainside down to their deaths. Each was pierced in his leg or arm or back or head by a vile Roman weapon. Abraham held his breath in shock, not knowing what to do. He was well hidden, but any movement would lead to his certain exposure and death.
And then he heard a warlike scream in Latin: “Aperi portas Inferno!” He’d heard it once or twice before when he was in Rome. It meant “Open the gates of Hell!” The moment the words echoed off the walls of the valley, breaking the once-peaceful silence, a further swarm of arrows and spears fell from the heights of the hills down onto where the Zealots had positioned themselves. Abraham watched in dismay as the Jews tried to return the assault but instead were rewarded by a hail of arrows. Five, then ten, then thirty Zealots clutched their chests or throats or legs as the arrows and spears found their marks. All around him was the hideous whistle of arrows in flight and the sickening thwack of spears burrowing deep into chests and arms and legs.
The Zealots stood in panic from their hideouts, looking up to the tops of the hills as they tried to defend themselves from the deadly rain of a thousand arrows and spears. But they stood no chance. Hundreds of Roman soldiers had silently gathered on the hilltops in a deadly trap. Some of the Zealots managed to shoot arrows upward toward the Romans, but it was useless, and within the blink of an eye all of the Jews were slaughtered and falling down the hillside into the ravine below. Abraham cowered, terrified, unable to move a muscle. By the good graces of Adonai, he had hidden himself on a rock ledge out of sight of the valley floor, and because of the overhang of the cave’s entrance he was out of view of the soldiers on the tops of the mountains.
But he could see some of the Roman soldiers on the crest of the hillside, taking aim at the Jews as though they were killing cattle in a pen. He saw that all of the Roman soldiers in the valley had stood and were running forward. As they reached the Zealots who’d fallen down the hillside, they slit their throats to ensure that they were dead.
It was all over in what seemed like the time it takes to dress for morning prayers, but these poor patriots would never pray again. At the beginning, before the ambush, there was silence, but the moment it started, there were screams from the very depths of Gehenna; then, when the arrows and spears were in full flight, there was a cacophony of shouts and curses and threats and yelps and prayers for help. Then, just as suddenly, there was a mysterious and enveloping silence. And in the silence Abraham knew with certainty that there was death.
It was dark by the time the two centurions met, the burly one in the valley and the commander of the troops who had attacked the Zealots. They came together far below Abraham, beside the river, hugging and congratulating each other, laughing and joking about the success of their operation. And all the Romans formed up and marched out of the valley toward Sepphoris.
Abraham didn’t move; couldn’t move. He was the only survivor of the massacre. All the Zealots were dead and the Romans didn’t even bother to bury their bodies, leaving their corpses as a testament to Rome’s dominance and a lesson to any who thought to fight the might of their emperor.
And while Israel and its men were enslaved and killed by their conquerors, Abraham found that he was suddenly free to return to his comfortable life with his wife and children.
* * *
IT HAD BEEN THREE WEEKS since the Zealot group were slaughtered by the Romans. For them, it was a great victory, but it caused seething hatred and resentment among the Zealots in Jerusalem, who hid their activities by meeting in basements, outside of the walls in the many valleys that surrounded the city, and in eating places where the innkeepers served only those whom they recognized as being travelers or local Israelites—anybody but a Roman.
Samuel, who heard about the raid days after the bodies of Jonathan and his men became food for vultures and crows and lions, was bereft but had to pretend to look delighted when his Roman friends came to call. They gathered in his house, now one of the safest places for the nobility and senior echelons of the army to meet, and ate and drank and laughed uproariously as the Praefectus Alae, the Tribunus Cohortis, and the Praefectus Castrorum and their wives congratulated one another on their recent stunning victories. And Samuel and his wife, Lior, were forced to laugh and drink with them, agreeing that now that the Jews had been taught a severe lesson, perhaps they would behave like all enslaved peoples and respect their masters.
What none of Samuel’s guests realized, though, was that the massacre of Jonathan and his men was the turning point in what had, until then, been a minor insurrection. The way in which the bodies of the Zealots were treated—left to become food for wild animals instead of being given a Jewish burial—caused the restrained hatred for the Romans to flare up. Within two days of the news reaching Jerusalem, men, women, and children who had previously observed the curfew were now walking in the shadows of the streets, watching the Romans and how they deported themselves. And they saw how frequently Samuel the wealthy merchant celebrated the Romans’ success, how many important governors, senior soldiers, and their wives gathered at his house, and the noises of laughter that erupted out of the windows and over the walls.
The disgust of the people grew with the joyous banter of the Romans along the streets near the temple. And Samuel’s friendship was noticed by Zealots who were not privy to Samuel’s relationship with Jonathan.
One evening, when Samuel was out dining in the home of the Roman garrison commander, a party of Zealots burst their way into Samuel’s home. At first his Nubian slave put up a valiant fight, breaking the necks of two of the attackers; but he was soon forced to retreat from the door where he was trying to block their entrance and was speared to death outside his master’s office, where Samuel’s wife, Lior, their three daughters, and their two sons were standing in fear, listening to the melee outside.
Lior now realized that she had made a terrib
le mistake by entering this room for safety, because there was only one door, and if the intruders overcame the servants, she and her children had no way out. She enfolded as many of the younger ones as she could in her arms, and all hid beneath Samuel’s table.
“Children,” she whispered, trying to keep her voice from sounding as though she were panicking, “your father will be home very soon, and he’ll tell those horrible men to go away. But until your father returns, we have to remain here. The nasty men won’t dare to enter into your father’s office. He doesn’t allow you inside, and so they will know to stay away.”
But while she was trying to stop her two little girls from crying, the noise of shouting and cursing from the vestibule suddenly stopped. Her heart thumping as though it would burst out of her chest, Lior listened and prayed to God Almighty that the men had been sent away. But when she heard footsteps approaching the office’s door, she knew that her worst fears were about to be realized. The door burst open and four men suddenly entered the room.
“There they are,” said one of the men, pointing underneath Samuel’s table. “Out, Roman whore. You and your bastards.”