Ben-Hur: A tale of the Christ
by, he quickened his steps, eager to escape.
“O Rome, Rome!” he muttered.
“Be wise,” continued Messala. “Give up the follies of Moses and the
traditions; see the situation as it is. Dare look the Parcae in the
face, and they will tell you, Rome is the world. Ask them of Judea, and
they will answer, She is what Rome wills.”
They were now at the gate. Judah stopped, and took the hand gently from
his shoulder, and confronted Messala, tears trembling in his eyes.
“I understand you, because you are a Roman; you cannot understand me—I
am an Israelite. You have given me suffering to-day by convincing me
that we can never be the friends we have been—never! Here we part. The
peace of the God of my fathers abide with you!”
Messala offered him his hand; the Jew walked on through the gateway.
When he was gone, the Roman was silent awhile; then he, too, passed
through, saying to himself, with a toss of the head,
“Be it so. Eros is dead, Mars reigns!”
CHAPTER III
From the entrance to the Holy City, equivalent to what is now called
St. Stephen’s Gate, a street extended westwardly, on a line parallel
with the northern front of the Tower of Antonia, though a square from
that famous castle. Keeping the course as far as the Tyropoeon Valley,
which it followed a little way south, it turned and again ran west
until a short distance beyond what tradition tells us was the Judgment
Gate, from whence it broke abruptly south. The traveller or the student
familiar with the sacred locality will recognize the thoroughfare
described as part of the Via Dolorosa—with Christians of more interest,
though of a melancholy kind, than any street in the world. As the
purpose in view does not at present require dealing with the whole
street, it will be sufficient to point out a house standing in the
angle last mentioned as marking the change of direction south, and
which, as an important centre of interest, needs somewhat particular
description.
The building fronted north and west, probably four hundred feet each
way, and, like most pretentious Eastern structures, was two stories in
height, and perfectly quadrangular. The street on the west side was
about twelve feet wide, that on the north not more than ten; so that
one walking close to the walls, and looking up at them, would have been
struck by the rude, unfinished, uninviting, but strong and imposing,
appearance they presented; for they were of stone laid in large blocks,
undressed—on the outer side, in fact, just as they were taken from the
quarry. A critic of this age would have pronounced the house
fortelesque in style, except for the windows, with which it was
unusually garnished, and the ornate finish of the doorways or gates.
The western windows were four in number, the northern only two, all set
on the line of the second story in such manner as to overhang the
thoroughfares below. The gates were the only breaks of wall externally
visible in the first story; and, besides being so thickly riven with
iron bolts as to suggest resistance to battering-rams, they were
protected by cornices of marble, handsomely executed, and of such bold
projection as to assure visitors well informed of the people that the
rich man who resided there was a Sadducee in politics and creed.
Not long after the young Jew parted from the Roman at the palace up on
the Market-place, he stopped before the western gate of the house
described, and knocked. The wicket (a door hung in one of the valves of
the gate) was opened to admit him. He stepped in hastily, and failed to
acknowledge the low salaam of the porter.
To get an idea of the interior arrangement of the structure, as well as
to see what more befell the youth, we will follow him.
The passage into which he was admitted appeared not unlike a narrow
tunnel with panelled walls and pitted ceiling. There were benches of
stone on both sides, stained and polished by long use. Twelve or
fifteen steps carried him into a court-yard, oblong north and south,
and in every quarter, except the east, bounded by what seemed the
fronts of two-story houses; of which the lower floor was divided into
lewens, while the upper was terraced and defended by strong
balustrading. The servants coming and going along the terraces; the
noise of millstones grinding; the garments fluttering from ropes
stretched from point to point; the chickens and pigeons in full
enjoyment of the place; the goats, cows, donkeys, and horses stabled in
the lewens; a massive trough of water, apparently for the common use,
declared this court appurtenant to the domestic management of the
owner. Eastwardly there was a division wall broken by another
passage-way in all respects like the first one.
Clearing the second passage, the young man entered a second court,
spacious, square, and set with shrubbery and vines, kept fresh and
beautiful by water from a basin erected near a porch on the north side.
The lewens here were high, airy, and shaded by curtains striped
alternate white and red. The arches of the lewens rested on clustered
columns. A flight of steps on the south ascended to the terraces of the
upper story, over which great awnings were stretched as a defence
against the sun. Another stairway reached from the terraces to the
roof, the edge of which, all around the square, was defined by a
sculptured cornice, and a parapet of burned-clay tiling, sexangular and
bright red. In this quarter, moreover, there was everywhere observable
a scrupulous neatness, which, allowing no dust in the angles, not even
a yellow leaf upon a shrub, contributed quite as much as anything else
to the delightful general effect; insomuch that a visitor, breathing
the sweet air, knew, in advance of introduction, the refinement of the
family he was about calling upon.
A few steps within the second court, the lad turned to the right, and,
choosing a walk through the shrubbery, part of which was in flower,
passed to the stairway, and ascended to the terrace—a broad pavement of
white and brown flags closely laid, and much worn. Making way under the
awning to a doorway on the north side, he entered an apartment which
the dropping of the screen behind him returned to darkness.
Nevertheless, he proceeded, moving over a tiled floor to a divan, upon
which he flung himself, face downwards, and lay at rest, his forehead
upon his crossed arms.
About nightfall a woman came to the door and called; he answered, and
she went in.
“Supper is over, and it is night. Is not my son hungry?” she asked.
“No,” he replied.
“Are you sick?”
“I am sleepy.”
“Your mother has asked for you.”
“Where is she?”
“In the summer-house on the roof.”
He stirred himself, and sat up.
“Very well. Bring me something to eat.”
“What do you want?”
“What you please, Amrah. I am not sick, but indifferent. Life does not
seem as pleasant as it did this morning. A new ailment, O my Amrah; and
you who know me so well, who never failed me, may think of the things
now that answer for food and medicine. Bring me what you choose.”
Amrah’s questions, and the voice in which she put them—low,
sympathetic, and solicitous—were significant of an endeared relation
between the two. She laid her hand upon his forehead; then, as
satisfied, went out, saying, “I will see.”
After a while she returned, bearing on a wooden platter a bowl of milk,
some thin cakes of white bread broken, a delicate paste of brayed
wheat, a bird broiled, and honey and salt. On one end of the platter
there was a silver goblet full of wine, on the other a brazen hand-lamp
lighted.
The room was then revealed: its walls smoothly plastered; the ceiling
broken by great oaken rafters, brown with rain stains and time; the
floor of small diamond-shaped white and blue tiles, very firm and
enduring; a few stools with legs carved in imitation of the legs of
lions; a divan raised a little above the floor, trimmed with blue
cloth, and partially covered by an immense striped woollen blanket or
shawl—in brief, a Hebrew bedroom.
The same light also gave the woman to view. Drawing a stool to the
divan, she placed the platter upon it, then knelt close by ready to
serve him. Her face was that of a woman of fifty, dark-skinned,
dark-eyed, and at the moment softened by a look of tenderness almost
maternal. A white turban covered her head, leaving the lobes of the ear
exposed, and in them the sign that settled her condition—an orifice
bored by a thick awl. She was a slave, of Egyptian origin, to whom not
even the sacred fiftieth year could have brought freedom; nor would she
have accepted it, for the boy she was attending was her life. She had
nursed him through babyhood, tended him as a child, and could not break
the service. To her love he could never be a man.
He spoke but once during the meal.
“You remember, O my Amrah,” he said, “the Messala who used to visit me
here days at a time.”
“I remember him.”
“He went to Rome some years ago, and is now back. I called upon him
to-day.”
A shudder of disgust seized the lad.
“I knew something had happened,” she said, deeply interested. “I never
liked the Messala. Tell me all.”
But he fell into musing, and to her repeated inquiries only said, “He
is much changed, and I shall have nothing more to do with him.”
When Amrah took the platter away, he also went out, and up from the
terrace to the roof.
The reader is presumed to know somewhat of the uses of the house-top in
the East. In the matter of customs, climate is a lawgiver everywhere.
The Syrian summer day drives the seeker of comfort into the darkened
lewen; night, however, calls him forth early, and the shadows deepening
over the mountain-sides seem veils dimly covering Circean singers; but
they are far off, while the roof is close by, and raised above the
level of the shimmering plain enough for the visitation of cool airs,
and sufficiently above the trees to allure the stars down closer, down
at least into brighter shining. So the roof became a resort—became
playground, sleeping-chamber, boudoir, rendezvous for the family, place
of music, dance, conversation, reverie, and prayer.
The motive that prompts the decoration, at whatever cost, of interiors
in colder climes suggested to the Oriental the embellishment of his
house-top. The parapet ordered by Moses became a potter’s triumph;
above that, later, arose towers, plain and fantastic; still later,
kings and princes crowned their roofs with summer-houses of marble and
gold. When the Babylonian hung gardens in the air, extravagance could
push the idea no further.
The lad whom we are following walked slowly across the house-top to a
tower built over the northwest corner of the palace. Had he been a
stranger, he might have bestowed a glance upon the structure as he drew
nigh it, and seen all the dimness permitted—a darkened mass, low,
latticed, pillared, and domed. He entered, passing under a half-raised
curtain. The interior was all darkness, except that on four sides there
were arched openings like doorways, through which the sky, lighted with
stars, was visible. In one of the openings, reclining against a cushion
from a divan, he saw the figure of a woman, indistinct even in white
floating drapery. At the sound of his steps upon the floor, the fan in
her hand stopped, glistening where the starlight struck the jewels with
which it was sprinkled, and she sat up, and called his name.
“Judah, my son!”
“It is I, mother,” he answered, quickening his approach.
Going to her, he knelt, and she put her arms around him, and with
kisses pressed him to her bosom.
CHAPTER IV
The mother resumed her easy position against the cushion, while the son
took place on the divan, his head in her lap. Both of them, looking out
of the opening, could see a stretch of lower house-tops in the