Ben-Hur: A tale of the Christ
“The Grove of Daphne!” he said, to a third inquirer. “Nobody can
describe it; only beware! It was begun by Apollo, and completed by him.
He prefers it to Olympus. People go there for one look—just one—and
never come away. They have a saying which tells it all—‘Better be a
worm and feed on the mulberries of Daphne than a king’s guest.’”
“Then you advise me to stay away from it?”
“Not I! Go you will. Everybody goes, cynic philosopher, virile boy,
women, and priests—all go. So sure am I of what you will do that I
assume to advise you. Do not take quarters in the city—that will be
loss of time; but go at once to the village in the edge of the grove.
The way is through a garden, under the spray of fountains. The lovers
of the god and his Penaean maid built the town; and in its porticos and
paths and thousand retreats you will find characters and habits and
sweets and kinds elsewhere impossible. But the wall of the city! there
it is, the masterpiece of Xeraeus, the master of mural architecture.”
All eyes followed his pointing finger.
“This part was raised by order of the first of the Seleucidæ. Three
hundred years have made it part of the rock it rests upon.”
The defense justified the encomium. High, solid, and with many bold
angles, it curved southwardly out of view.
“On the top there are four hundred towers, each a reservoir of water,”
the Hebrew continued. “Look now! Over the wall, tall as it is, see in
the distance two hills, which you may know as the rival crests of
Sulpius. The structure on the farthest one is the citadel, garrisoned
all the year round by a Roman legion. Opposite it this way rises the
Temple of Jupiter, and under that the front of the legate’s residence—a
palace full of offices, and yet a fortress against which a mob would
dash harmlessly as a south wind.”
At this point the sailors began taking in sail, whereupon the Hebrew
exclaimed, heartily, “See! you who hate the sea, and you who have vows,
get ready your curses and your prayers. The bridge yonder, over which
the road to Seleucia is carried, marks the limit of navigation. What
the ship unloads for further transit, the camel takes up there. Above
the bridge begins the island upon which Calinicus built his new city,
connecting it with five great viaducts so solid time has made no
impression upon them, nor floods nor earthquakes. Of the main town, my
friends, I have only to say you will be happier all your lives for
having seen it.”
As he concluded, the ship turned and made slowly for her wharf under
the wall, bringing even more fairly to view the life with which the
river at that point was possessed. Finally, the lines were thrown, the
oars shipped, and the voyage was done. Then Ben-Hur sought the
respectable Hebrew.
“Let me trouble you a moment before saying farewell.”
The man bowed assent.
“Your story of the merchant has made me curious to see him. You called
him Simonides?”
“Yes. He is a Jew with a Greek name.”
“Where is he to be found?”
The acquaintance gave a sharp look before he answered,
“I may save you mortification. He is not a money-lender.”
“Nor am I a money-borrower,” said Ben-Hur, smiling at the other’s
shrewdness.
The man raised his head and considered an instant.
“One would think,” he then replied, “that the richest merchant in
Antioch would have a house for business corresponding to his wealth;
but if you would find him in the day, follow the river to yon bridge,
under which he quarters in a building that looks like a buttress of the
wall. Before the door there is an immense landing, always covered with
cargoes come and to go. The fleet that lies moored there is his. You
cannot fail to find him.”
“I give you thanks.”
“The peace of our fathers go with you.”
“And with you.”
With that they separated.
Two street-porters, loaded with his baggage, received Ben-Hur’s orders
upon the wharf.
“To the citadel,” he said; a direction which implied an official
military connection.
Two great streets, cutting each other at right angles, divided the city
into quarters. A curious and immense structure, called the Nymphaeum,
arose at the foot of the one running north and south. When the porters
turned south there, the new-comer, though fresh from Rome, was amazed
at the magnificence of the avenue. On the right and left there were
palaces, and between them extended indefinitely double colonnades of
marble, leaving separate ways for footmen, beasts, and chariots; the
whole under shade, and cooled by fountains of incessant flow.
Ben-Hur was not in mood to enjoy the spectacle. The story of Simonides
haunted him. Arrived at the Omphalus—a monument of four arches wide as
the streets, superbly illustrated, and erected to himself by Epiphanes,
the eighth of the Seleucidæ—he suddenly changed his mind.
“I will not go to the citadel to-night,” he said to the porters. “Take
me to the khan nearest the bridge on the road to Seleucia.”
The party faced about, and in good time he was deposited in a public
house of primitive but ample construction, within stone’s-throw of the
bridge under which old Simonides had his quarters. He lay upon the
house-top through the night. In his inner mind lived the thought,
“Now—now I will hear of home—and mother—and the dear little Tirzah. If
they are on earth, I will find them.”
CHAPTER III
Next day early, to the neglect of the city, Ben-Hur sought the house of
Simonides. Through an embattled gateway he passed to a continuity of
wharves; thence up the river midst a busy press, to the Seleucian
Bridge, under which he paused to take in the scene.
There, directly under the bridge, was the merchant’s house, a mass of
gray stone, unhewn, referable to no style, looking, as the voyager had
described it, like a buttress of the wall against which it leaned. Two
immense doors in front communicated with the wharf. Some holes near the
top, heavily barred, served as windows. Weeds waved from the crevices,
and in places black moss splotched the otherwise bald stones.
The doors were open. Through one of them business went in; through the
other it came out; and there was hurry, hurry in all its movements.
On the wharf there were piles of goods in every kind of package, and
groups of slaves, stripped to the waist, going about in the abandon of
labor.
Below the bridge lay a fleet of galleys, some loading, others
unloading. A yellow flag blew out from each masthead. From fleet and
wharf, and from ship to ship, the bondmen of traffic passed in
clamorous counter-currents.
Above the bridge, across the river, a wall rose from the water’s edge,
over which towered the fanciful cornices and turrets of an imperial
palace, covering every foot of the island spoken of in the Hebrew’s
description. But, with all its suggestions, Ben-Hur scarcely noticed
it. Now, at last, he thought to hear of his people—this, certainly, if
Simonides had indeed been his father’s slave. But would the man
acknowledge the relation? That would be to give up his riches and the
sovereignty of trade so royally witnessed on the wharf and river. And
what was of still greater consequence to the merchant, it would be to
forego his career in the midst of amazing success, and yield himself
voluntarily once more a slave. Simple thought of the demand seemed a
monstrous audacity. Stripped of diplomatic address, it was to say, You
are my slave; give me all you have, and—yourself.
Yet Ben-Hur derived strength for the interview from faith in his rights
and the hope uppermost in his heart. If the story to which he was
yielding were true, Simonides belonged to him, with all he had. For the
wealth, be it said in justice, he cared nothing. When he started to the
door determined in mind, it was with a promise to himself—“Let him tell
me of mother and Tirzah, and I will give him his freedom without
account.”
He passed boldly into the house.
The interior was that of a vast depot where, in ordered spaces, and
under careful arrangement, goods of every kind were heaped and pent.
Though the light was murky and the air stifling, men moved about
briskly; and in places he saw workmen with saws and hammers making
packages for shipments. Down a path between the piles he walked slowly,
wondering if the man of whose genius there were here such abounding
proofs could have been his father’s slave? If so, to what class had he
belonged? If a Jew, was he the son of a servant? Or was he a debtor or
a debtor’s son? Or had he been sentenced and sold for theft? These
thoughts, as they passed, in nowise disturbed the growing respect for
the merchant of which he was each instant more and more conscious. A
peculiarity of our admiration for another is that it is always looking
for circumstances to justify itself.
At length a man approached and spoke to him.
“What would you have?”
“I would see Simonides, the merchant.”
“Will you come this way?”
By a number of paths left in the stowage, they finally came to a flight
of steps; ascending which, he found himself on the roof of the depot,
and in front of a structure which cannot be better described than as a
lesser stone house built upon another, invisible from the landing
below, and out west of the bridge under the open sky. The roof, hemmed
in by a low wall, seemed like a terrace, which, to his astonishment,
was brilliant with flowers; in the rich surrounding, the house sat
squat, a plain square block, unbroken except by a doorway in front. A
dustless path led to the door, through a bordering of shrubs of Persian
rose in perfect bloom. Breathing a sweet attar-perfume, he followed the
guide.
At the end of a darkened passage within, they stopped before a curtain
half parted. The man called out,
“A stranger to see the master.”
A clear voice replied, “In God’s name, let him enter.”
A Roman might have called the apartment into which the visitor was
ushered his atrium. The walls were paneled; each panel was comparted
like a modern office-desk, and each compartment crowded with labelled
folios all filemot with age and use. Between the panels, and above and
below them, were borders of wood once white, now tinted like cream, and
carved with marvellous intricacy of design. Above a cornice of gilded
balls, the ceiling rose in pavilion style until it broke into a shallow
dome set with hundreds of panes of violet mica, permitting a flood of
light deliciously reposeful. The floor was carpeted with gray rugs so
thick that an invading foot fell half buried and soundless.
In the midlight of the room were two persons—a man resting in a chair
high-backed, broad-armed, and lined with pliant cushions; and at his
left, leaning against the back of the chair, a girl well forward into
womanhood. At sight of them Ben-Hur felt the blood redden his forehead;
bowing, as much to recover himself as in respect, he lost the lifting
of the hands, and the shiver and shrink with which the sitter caught
sight of him—an emotion as swift to go as it had been to come. When he
raised his eyes the two were in the same position, except the girl’s
hand had fallen and was resting lightly upon the elder’s shoulder; both
of them were regarding him fixedly.
“If you are Simonides, the merchant, and a Jew”—Ben-Hur stopped an
instant—“then the peace of the God of our father Abraham upon you
and—yours.”
The last word was addressed to the girl.
“I am the Simonides of whom you speak, by birthright a Jew,” the man
made answer, in a voice singularly clear. “I am Simonides, and a Jew;
and I return you your salutation, with prayer to know who calls upon
me.”
Ben-Hur looked as he listened, and where the figure of the man should
have been in healthful roundness, there was only a formless heap sunk
in the depths of the cushions, and covered by a quilted robe of sombre