Ben-Hur: A tale of the Christ
with one Ganymede, what a cup-bearer you would make for the emperor!
Tell me, my Judah, how the coming of the procurator is of such interest
to you.”
Judah bent his large eyes upon the questioner; the gaze was grave and
thoughtful, and caught the Roman’s, and held it while he replied, “Yes,
five years. I remember the parting; you went to Rome; I saw you start,
and cried, for I love you. The years are gone, and you have come back
to me accomplished and princely—I do not jest; and yet—yet—I do wish
you were the Messala you went away.”
The fine nostril of the satirist stirred, and he put on a longer drawl
as he said, “No, no; not a Ganymede—an oracle, my Judah. A few lessons
from my teacher of rhetoric hard by the Forum—I will give you a letter
to him when you become wise enough to accept a suggestion which I am
reminded to make you—a little practise of the art of mystery, and
Delphi will receive you as Apollo himself. At the sound of your solemn
voice, the Pythia will come down to you with her crown. Seriously, O my
friend, in what am I not the Messala I went away? I once heard the
greatest logician in the world. His subject was Disputation. One saying
I remember—‘Understand your antagonist before you answer him.’ Let me
understand you.”
The lad reddened under the cynical look to which he was subjected; yet
he replied, firmly, “You have availed yourself, I see, of your
opportunities; from your teachers you have brought away much knowledge
and many graces. You talk with the ease of a master, yet your speech
carries a sting. My Messala, when he went away, had no poison in his
nature; not for the world would he have hurt the feelings of a friend.”
The Roman smiled as if complimented, and raised his patrician head a
toss higher.
“O my solemn Judah, we are not at Dodona or Pytho. Drop the oracular,
and be plain. Wherein have I hurt you?”
The other drew a long breath, and said, pulling at the cord about his
waist, “In the five years, I, too, have learned somewhat. Hillel may
not be the equal of the logician you heard, and Simeon and Shammai are,
no doubt, inferior to your master hard by the Forum. Their learning
goes not out into forbidden paths; those who sit at their feet arise
enriched simply with knowledge of God, the law, and Israel; and the
effect is love and reverence for everything that pertains to them.
Attendance at the Great College, and study of what I heard there, have
taught me that Judea is not as she used to be. I know the space that
lies between an independent kingdom and the petty province Judea is. I
were meaner, viler, than a Samaritan not to resent the degradation of
my country. Ishmael is not lawfully high-priest, and he cannot be while
the noble Hannas lives; yet he is a Levite; one of the devoted who for
thousands of years have acceptably served the Lord God of our faith and
worship. His—”
Messala broke in upon him with a biting laugh.
“Oh, I understand you now. Ishmael, you say, is a usurper, yet to
believe an Idumaean sooner than Ishmael is to sting like an adder. By
the drunken son of Semele, what it is to be a Jew! All men and things,
even heaven and earth, change; but a Jew never. To him there is no
backward, no forward; he is what his ancestor was in the beginning. In
this sand I draw you a circle—there! Now tell me what more a Jew’s life
is? Round and round, Abraham here, Isaac and Jacob yonder, God in the
middle. And the circle—by the master of all thunders! the circle is too
large. I draw it again—” He stopped, put his thumb upon the ground, and
swept the fingers about it. “See, the thumb spot is the Temple, the
finger-lines Judea. Outside the little space is there nothing of value?
The arts! Herod was a builder; therefore he is accursed. Painting,
sculpture! to look upon them is sin. Poetry you make fast to your
altars. Except in the synagogue, who of you attempts eloquence? In war
all you conquer in the six days you lose on the seventh. Such your life
and limit; who shall say no if I laugh at you? Satisfied with the
worship of such a people, what is your God to our Roman Jove, who lends
us his eagles that we may compass the universe with our arms? Hillel,
Simeon, Shammai, Abtalion—what are they to the masters who teach that
everything is worth knowing that can be known?”
The Jew arose, his face much flushed.
“No, no; keep your place, my Judah, keep your place,” Messala cried,
extending his hand.
“You mock me.”
“Listen a little further. Directly”—the Roman smiled
derisively—“directly Jupiter and his whole family, Greek and Latin,
will come to me, as is their habit, and make an end of serious speech.
I am mindful of your goodness in walking from the old house of your
fathers to welcome me back and renew the love of our childhood—if we
can. ‘Go,’ said my teacher, in his last lecture—‘Go, and, to make your
lives great, remember Mars reigns and Eros has found his eyes.’ He
meant love is nothing, war everything. It is so in Rome. Marriage is
the first step to divorce. Virtue is a tradesman’s jewel. Cleopatra,
dying, bequeathed her arts, and is avenged; she has a successor in
every Roman’s house. The world is going the same way; so, as to our
future, down Eros, up Mars! I am to be a soldier; and you, O my Judah,
I pity you; what can you be?”
The Jew moved nearer the pool; Messala’s drawl deepened.
“Yes, I pity you, my fine Judah. From the college to the synagogue;
then to the Temple; then—oh, a crowning glory!—the seat in the
Sanhedrim. A life without opportunities; the gods help you! But I—”
Judah looked at him in time to see the flush of pride that kindled in
his haughty face as he went on.
“But I—ah, the world is not all conquered. The sea has islands unseen.
In the north there are nations yet unvisited. The glory of completing
Alexander’s march to the Far East remains to some one. See what
possibilities lie before a Roman.”
Next instant he resumed his drawl.
“A campaign into Africa; another after the Scythian; then—a legion!
Most careers end there; but not mine. I—by Jupiter! what a
conception!—I will give up my legion for a prefecture. Think of life in
Rome with money—money, wine, women, games—poets at the banquet,
intrigues in the court, dice all the year round. Such a rounding of
life may be—a fat prefecture, and it is mine. O my Judah, here is
Syria! Judea is rich; Antioch a capital for the gods. I will succeed
Cyrenius, and you—shall share my fortune.”
The sophists and rhetoricians who thronged the public resorts of Rome,
almost monopolizing the business of teaching her patrician youth, might
have approved these sayings of Messala, for they were all in the
popular vein; to the young Jew, however, they were new, and unlike the
solemn style of discourse and conversation to which he was accustomed.
He belonged, moreover, to a race whose laws, modes, and habits of
thought forbade satire and humor; very naturally, therefore, he
listened to his friend with varying feelings; one moment indignant,
then uncertain how to take him. The superior airs assumed had been
offensive to him in the beginning; soon they became irritating, and at
last an acute smart. Anger lies close by this point in all of us; and
that the satirist evoked in another way. To the Jew of the Herodian
period patriotism was a savage passion scarcely hidden under his common
humor, and so related to his history, religion, and God that it
responded instantly to derision of them. Wherefore it is not speaking
too strongly to say that Messala’s progress down to the last pause was
exquisite torture to his hearer; at that point the latter said, with a
forced smile,
“There are a few, I have heard, who can afford to make a jest of their
future; you convince me, O my Messala, that I am not one of them.”
The Roman studied him; then replied, “Why not the truth in a jest as
well as a parable? The great Fulvia went fishing the other day; she
caught more than all the company besides. They said it was because the
barb of her hook was covered with gold.”
“Then you were not merely jesting?”
“My Judah, I see I did not offer you enough,” the Roman answered,
quickly, his eyes sparkling. “When I am prefect, with Judea to enrich
me, I—will make you high-priest.”
The Jew turned off angrily.
“Do not leave me,” said Messala.
The other stopped irresolute.
“Gods, Judah, how hot the sun shines!” cried the patrician, observing
his perplexity. “Let us seek a shade.”
Judah answered, coldly,
“We had better part. I wish I had not come. I sought a friend and find
a—”
“Roman,” said Messala, quickly.
The hands of the Jew clenched, but controlling himself again, he
started off. Messala arose, and, taking the mantle from the bench,
flung it over his shoulder, and followed after; when he gained his
side, he put his hand upon his shoulder and walked with him.
“This is the way—my hand thus—we used to walk when we were children.
Let us keep it as far as the gate.”
Apparently Messala was trying to be serious and kind, though he could
not rid his countenance of the habitual satirical expression. Judah
permitted the familiarity.
“You are a boy; I am a man; let me talk like one.”
The complacency of the Roman was superb. Mentor lecturing the young
Telemachus could not have been more at ease.
“Do you believe in the Parcae? Ah, I forgot, you are a Sadducee: the
Essenes are your sensible people; they believe in the sisters. So do I.
How everlastingly the three are in the way of our doing what we please!
I sit down scheming. I run paths here and there. Perpol! Just when I am
reaching to take the world in hand, I hear behind me the grinding of
scissors. I look, and there she is, the accursed Atropos! But, my
Judah, why did you get mad when I spoke of succeeding old Cyrenius? You
thought I meant to enrich myself plundering your Judea. Suppose so; it
is what some Roman will do. Why not I?”
Judah shortened his step.
“There have been strangers in mastery of Judea before the Roman,” he
said, with lifted hand. “Where are they, Messala? She has outlived them
all. What has been will be again.”
Messala put on his drawl.
“The Parcae have believers outside the Essenes. Welcome, Judah, welcome
to the faith!”
“No, Messala, count me not with them. My faith rests on the rock which
was the foundation of the faith of my fathers back further than
Abraham; on the covenants of the Lord God of Israel.”
“Too much passion, my Judah. How my master would have been shocked had
I been guilty of so much heat in his presence! There were other things
I had to tell you, but I fear to now.”
When they had gone a few yards, the Roman spoke again.
“I think you can hear me now, especially as what I have to say concerns
yourself. I would serve you, O handsome as Ganymede; I would serve you
with real good-will. I love you—all I can. I told you I meant to be a
soldier. Why not you also? Why not you step out of the narrow circle
which, as I have shown, is all of noble life your laws and customs
allow?”
Judah made no reply.
“Who are the wise men of our day?” Messala continued. “Not they who
exhaust their years quarrelling about dead things; about Baals, Joves,
and Jehovahs; about philosophies and religions. Give me one great name,
O Judah; I care not where you go to find it—to Rome, Egypt, the East,
or here in Jerusalem—Pluto take me if it belong not to a man who
wrought his fame out of the material furnished him by the present;
holding nothing sacred that did not contribute to the end, scorning
nothing that did! How was it with Herod? How with the Maccabees? How
with the first and second Cæsars? Imitate them. Begin now. At hand
see—Rome, as ready to help you as she was the Idumaean Antipater.”
The Jewish lad trembled with rage; and, as the garden gate was close