The Hammer: A Story of the Maccabean Times

  CHAPTER VII.

  THE DARKNESS THICKENS.

  Azariah had read the signs of the times aright. The darker days had come,days so full of trouble that the unhappy people looked back to the pastthat had seemed so sad and gloomy as to a time of rest. Things had notbeen going well with King Antiochus, for the Romans had driven him out ofEgypt, and in his rage and fear he turned against his Jewish subjects withgreater ferocity than ever. One of his motives was the brutal desire towreak upon the feeble the vengeance which he could not exact from thestrong; the other was a genuine fear lest he should lose another provinceas he had already lost Egypt. He saw that the policy of Rome was to stirup against him the national spirit of subject peoples, and he knew wellenough that in the Jews, crushed though they had been by oppression andmassacre, this national spirit was not by any means dead. Accordingly heset himself with relentless ferocity to extinguish it. Everythingdistinctive of the people was to be rooted out; that done they mightbecome really submissive; there would be no more a land of the Jews, butsimply a province of Southern Syria.

  The first thing, he conceived, would be to strike such terror into thehearts of the people that there should be no thought among them ofresistance. For such a purpose nothing could be more effective thananother massacre such as that which had already been perpetrated two yearsbefore under his own eyes: only this, he determined, should be morecomplete. He perceived with a devilish ingenuity that his orders would bemore relentlessly carried out if he entrusted their execution to some oneelse, than if he were personally present. Appeals might be made to him towhich he might yield out of sheer weariness, whereas a lieutenant, if hewere only hard-hearted enough, would simply fall back upon the orderswhich he had received, and refuse all responsibility save that of seeingthat these were fully carried out.

  Such a lieutenant he knew that he possessed in the person of a certainApollonius, a Cretan mercenary, who had already given proofs enough thathe was about as little troubled as any man could be with a conscience orwith feelings of compassion. To Apollonius, accordingly, the commissionwas entrusted, and he proceeded to execute it in a particularly brutal andtreacherous way.

  He marched to Jerusalem, taking with him a picked force of some fivethousand men--picked, it may be said, quite as much for their unscrupulousand ferocious character, as for their strength and skill in arms. Therewould have been, in any case, little chance of resistance, but, to makehis task the easier of accomplishment, he had so timed his coming that heapproached the city two or three hours before the end of the Sabbath.Secret orders had been sent to Philip, the Phrygian, that he was to relaxthe severity of his rule; and the people had begun to breathe again aftera long period of repression. The Temple was still shut, or virtually shut,but the synagogues were open, and were indeed frequented by throngs offervent worshippers.

  It wanted a couple of hours to sunset when the news ran through the citythat an armed force was approaching the walls. The first feeling arousedby the tidings was naturally one of alarm. The appearance of the soldiers,however, was such as to disarm all apprehensions. In the first place theywere more like a crowd of men who happened to be carrying arms than anarmy. They were not marching in ranks, or indeed keeping any kind oforder. A multitude of country-folk could be seen mingled among them,soldiers and civilians walking side by side in the most friendly andunconstrained fashion. Some of the new comers recognized old acquaintancesamong the townsfolk, and introduced their comrades to them; and thoughsome of the sterner sort stood rigidly aloof, there were quite enoughamong the inhabitants of Jerusalem to give the visitors a general welcome.Apollonius himself, a conspicuous figure as he rode on his white chargerup and down the streets of the city, was noticeably busy in renewing oldacquaintanceships and making new ones.

  And then in a moment the whole scene was changed. A soldier and a citizenwere standing on the wall, talking and laughing together, and that in aplace where they could be seen by all observers. Suddenly, without therehaving been even the slightest sign of a quarrel, the soldier was seen toplunge his sword into the side of his companion. It was a preconcertedsignal. The wretched inhabitants, who would have been defenceless in anycase, were taken absolutely off their guard, and had but slender chancesof escape. How many hundreds, possibly thousands, perished cannot beguessed. But the massacre was more general, more pitiless than that whichhad devastated the city two years before. Apollonius's "picked" men showedthemselves altogether worthy of his choice, so brutal and bloodthirstywere they. And Apollonius himself was to be seen everywhere urging his mento make short work with these "pestilent Jews," as he called them, and notunfrequently striking a blow himself. He earned on that day such hatredthat thereafter there was not to be found a Jew, save among the vilestrenegades and traitors, but uttered a curse when his name was mentioned.

  Of course the soldiers had to be paid for their bloody day's work, andthey were paid by the plunder of the city. The houses were stripped, andthe plunderers, when they had carried away everything that had rousedtheir cupidity, often, out of sheer wantonness, completed the work ofdevastation, by setting fire to the desolated houses. Altogether Jerusalempresented such a spectacle as had not been seen since the days of theBabylonian conquest.

  The spirit of the people having been, as it would seem, thus effectuallybroken for the present, it remained to provide against its possiblerevival in the future.

  Long gaps were made in the line of wall, so long that it took not a fewdays to make them, and would certainly require as many weeks to repair.The town thus made defenceless was further overawed by the erection of afort in the City of David, this fort being held by a strong garrison ofGreeks and Asiatic mercenaries.

  The means of repression thus provided, the next thing was to extinguishall that was characteristic of the national life. First, the great centreof that life, the Temple, was formally desecrated. Already it had beensubjected to such indignities that the pious Jew could scarcely bear toenter its precincts. But the final horror, the "abomination ofdesolation," was yet to come. On the 15th of the month Chisleu (December)an altar of a Greek pattern, and consecrated to the Olympian Zeus, wasplaced on the great altar of sacrifice, and ten days afterwards a huge sowwas slaughtered on this. Her blood, caught after the Greek fashion in abowl, was sprinkled on the altar of incense and on the mercy-seat withinthe Holy of Holies--a hideous mockery of the sprinkling which the Lawenjoined to be performed once in every year. From the animal's flesh amess of broth was prepared, and this was sprinkled on the copies of theLaw. The Temple, thus dishonoured, was as if it had ceased to be.

  The meeting-houses, in which, as we have seen, the people had found asubstitute for the Temple worship, were summarily closed. An edict wasissued commanding that every one who possessed a copy of the Law, or ofany one of the sacred books, should give it up without loss of time. Tocall in cupidity to the aid of fear in enforcing this edict, the King'sofficers were instructed to pay a reasonable price for the manuscriptsthus produced. It was made a capital offence to read or to recite any partof the proscribed writings. Then the practice of circumcision wasforbidden. Death was to be the penalty for all who should take any part inperforming this rite--for the circumciser, the mother, the father, even thebabe itself.

  And then to the policy of repression Antiochus added the policy of briberyand temptation. Their own worship forbidden, the Jews were to be alluredby the seductions of the worship of their masters. Hitherto little hadbeen done in this way. Insults indeed, had been heaped upon the people;but little attempt had been made to attract them. The Temple gates, closedfor more than a year, were again thrown open; and the courts, long silent,resounded with the mirth of sacrificial banquets and the gaiety offestivals. Not only all the splendours, but all the impure pleasures ofheathen worship were called in to assist the attempt that was being madeto sap what was left of the faith of the people.

  Antiochus, who, for all his wrath at Jewish obstinacy, could not helpfeeling a certain re
spect for it, took the trouble to send among thepeople a missionary, if he may be so called, who was to instruct them inthe new religion which their King was so anxious to impose upon them.

  Theopompus, or Athenaeus, to use the name which was commonly given him fromhis birthplace, was a follower of the philosophy of Epicurus. He had helda subordinate post, as lecturer in geometry, in the famous school of theGarden, but had found his modest income insufficient to meet his somewhatexpensive tastes. If he had had but a tolerable competence, Athenaeus wouldhave made an ideal Epicurean. He was devoted to pleasure, but there wasnothing unseemly or extravagant about his devotion. For the foolish peoplewho ruined their constitutions and emptied their purses by exhaustingexcesses he had a genuine contempt. "Give me," he would say, "a decentsufficiency of 'outside things,' and I am content." As he had a fairsmattering of culture, and a real acquaintance with geometry, and had avenerable appearance which happily hit the mean between hilarity andausterity, he might have been, but for a chronic want of money, a realsuccess among the somewhat _dilettante_ philosophers of Athens. Butcircumstances were against him. Poverty did not ill become an Academic,and positively set off a Stoic; but an Epicurean seemed to have missed hisvocation if he could not be always handsomely dressed and able to giveelegant entertainments to his friends. Athenaeus, who liked above allthings to be on good terms both with himself and with every one else, feltthis very acutely, and he was proportionately delighted when the SyrianKing proposed to him that he should go as a teacher, not without ahandsome salary, of Greek religion and Greek culture.

  His success was not encouraging. In the first place he had a difficulty inmaking himself understood. The pure Attic Greek on which he prided himselfwas strange to the ears of his new audience, and he could not bringhimself to descend to the barbarous dialect to which they were accustomed.And when he was seriously called to account in the matter of his belief hefound himself involved in difficulties from which he saw no way of escape.At Athens religion was politely ignored. The common people must, ofcourse, have their gods and goddesses; and the wise man, if he wereprudent, would say nothing--anyhow in public--to disturb their belief; butwithin the privileged walls of the schools the names of Zeus and Atheneand Apollo were never so much as mentioned, except, perhaps, in the courseof some antiquarian discussion.

  Among his new disciples, as he would fain have reckoned them, Athenaeusfound a very different temper. They were terribly in earnest; abstractionsand phrases did not satisfy them; they pushed their questions home in avery perplexing way.

  One day at the conclusion of a lecture, the customary invitation to theaudience to put any questions that might occur to them was accepted by ayoung man who sat on one of the front benches.

  "I would ask you, venerable sir," he said, "some questions about the godsof your religion."

  "Speak on," replied Athenaeus, with his usual courtesy; "I shall bedelighted to satisfy you to the best of my power."

  "Are we to believe the stories that are told us in this book?" and he heldup, as he spoke, a little volume of popular mythology, filled frombeginning to end with tales that, to say the least, were not edifying."For, if these be true, these divine beings were such as would be banishedfrom the society of all honest men and women. They are thieves,adulterers, murderers. It would be a thousand times better to have no godsat all than such as these."

  "You are right, sir," said the lecturer; "these stories are for theignorant only, at least in their outward meaning, though they have aninner meaning also, which I will take some fitting occasion to expound.But not such are the gods whom we worship."

  "Will you tell us something of them?" continued the questioner.

  "Willingly, for they are such that the wisest of men need not be ashamedof them. They dwell in some remote region, serene and happy. Wrath theyfeel not, nor sorrow, nor any of the passions that disturb the souls ofmen."

  "And do they care for our doings upon earth?"

  "How so? They neither love nor hate; and both they must do, I take it, didthey concern themselves with human affairs."

  "What profit, then, is there in them? How are men the better for theirbeing?"

  "That I know not; only that it is part of the order of things that theymust be."

  "Far be it from me," exclaimed the young Jew, "to exchange for such idleexistences the God of my fathers! He may smite us in His anger till we arewell-nigh consumed, but at least He cares for us. He led our fathersthrough the sea and through the wilderness in the days of old. He hasspoken to us by the prophets, and He has made His Presence to be seen inHis Temple; and though He has hidden His face from us for a time, yet Hewill repent Him of His wrath, and devise the means by which He shallrecall His banished unto Him. No, we will not change our God for yours!"

  A loud murmur of assent went round the benches when the speaker sat down,and Athenaeus felt that he had made but small way with his audience.

  Finding his theology and philosophy but ill received, Athenaeus bethoughthim of what seemed a more hopeful method of proselytizing. Could not aspecially powerful attraction be found in the festival of Dionysus, thewine-god? Vintage feasts, he reflected, are common to every country wherewine is produced, and it would not be difficult to ingraft the Greekcharacteristics on a celebration to which the Jews were alreadyaccustomed. Some of the less scrupulous might be tempted to take part insuch a festival, a beginning would be made, and more would follow in duetime. How the scheme prospered will be told in the next chapter.