Ben-Hur: A tale of the Christ
capital on the Tiber; that is, in tunics short of sleeve and skirt, a
style of vesture well adapted to the climate of Antioch, and especially
comfortable in the too close atmosphere of the saloon. On the divan
here and there togas and lacernae lie where they have been carelessly
tossed, some of them significantly bordered with purple. On the divan
also lie sleepers stretched at ease; whether they were overcome by the
heat and fatigue of the sultry day or by Bacchus we will not pause to
inquire.
The hum of voices is loud and incessant. Sometimes there is an
explosion of laughter, sometimes a burst of rage or exultation; but
over all prevails a sharp, prolonged rattle, at first somewhat
confusing to the non-familiar. If we approach the tables, however, the
mystery solves itself. The company is at the favorite games, draughts
and dice, singly or together, and the rattle is merely of the tesserae,
or ivory cubes, loudly shaken, and the moving of the hostes on the
checkered boards.
Who are the company?
“Good Flavius,” said a player, holding his piece in suspended movement,
“thou seest yon lacerna; that one in front of us on the divan. It is
fresh from the shop, and hath a shoulder-buckle of gold broad as a
palm.”
“Well,” said Flavius, intent upon his game, “I have seen such before;
wherefore thine may not be old, yet, by the girdle of Venus, it is not
new! What of it?”
“Nothing. Only I would give it to find a man who knows everything.”
“Ha, ha! For something cheaper, I will find thee here several with
purple who will take thy offer. But play.”
“There—check!”
“So, by all the Jupiters! Now, what sayest thou? Again?”
“Be it so.”
“And the wager?”
“A sestertium.”
Then each drew his tablets and stilus and made a memorandum; and, while
they were resetting the pieces, Flavius returned to his friend’s
remark.
“A man who knows everything! Hercle! the oracles would die. What
wouldst thou with such a monster?”
“Answer to one question, my Flavius; then, perpol! I would cut his
throat.”
“And the question?”
“I would have him tell me the hour— Hour, said I?—nay, the
minute—Maxentius will arrive to-morrow.”
“Good play, good play! I have you! And why the minute?”
“Hast thou ever stood uncovered in the Syrian sun on the quay at which
he will land? The fires of the Vesta are not so hot; and, by the Stator
of our father Romulus, I would die, if die I must, in Rome. Avernus is
here; there, in the square before the Forum, I could stand, and, with
my hand raised thus, touch the floor of the gods. Ha, by Venus, my
Flavius, thou didst beguile me! I have lost. O Fortune!”
“Again?”
“I must have back my sestertium.”
“Be it so.”
And they played again and again; and when day, stealing through the
skylights, began to dim the lamps, it found the two in the same places
at the same table, still at the game. Like most of the company, they
were military attaches of the consul, awaiting his arrival and amusing
themselves meantime.
During this conversation a party entered the room, and, unnoticed at
first, proceeded to the central table. The signs were that they had
come from a revel just dismissed. Some of them kept their feet with
difficulty. Around the leader’s brow was a chaplet which marked him
master of the feast, if not the giver. The wine had made no impression
upon him unless to heighten his beauty, which was of the most manly
Roman style; he carried his head high raised; the blood flushed his
lips and cheeks brightly; his eyes glittered; though the manner in
which, shrouded in a toga spotless white and of ample folds, he walked
was too nearly imperial for one sober and not a Cæsar. In going to the
table, he made room for himself and his followers with little ceremony
and no apologies; and when at length he stopped, and looked over it and
at the players, they all turned to him, with a shout like a cheer.
“Messala! Messala!” they cried.
Those in distant quarters, hearing the cry, re-echoed it where they
were. Instantly there were dissolution of groups, and breaking-up of
games, and a general rush towards the centre.
Messala took the demonstration indifferently, and proceeded presently
to show the ground of his popularity.
“A health to thee, Drusus, my friend,” he said to the player next at
his right; “a health—and thy tablets a moment.”
He raised the waxen boards, glanced at the memoranda of wagers, and
tossed them down.
“Denarii, only denarii—coin of cartmen and butchers!” he said, with a
scornful laugh. “By the drunken Semele, to what is Rome coming, when a
Cæsar sits o’ nights waiting a turn of fortune to bring him but a
beggarly denarius!”
The scion of the Drusi reddened to his brows, but the bystanders broke
in upon his reply by surging closer around the table, and shouting,
“The Messala! the Messala!”
“Men of the Tiber,” Messala continued, wresting a box with the dice in
it from a hand near-by, “who is he most favored of the gods? A Roman.
Who is he lawgiver of the nations? A Roman. Who is he, by sword right,
the universal master?”
The company were of the easily inspired, and the thought was one to
which they were born; in a twinkling they snatched the answer from him.
“A Roman, a Roman!” they shouted.
“Yet—yet”—he lingered to catch their ears—“yet there is a better than
the best of Rome.”
He tossed his patrician head and paused, as if to sting them with his
sneer.
“Hear ye?” he asked. “There is a better than the best of Rome.”
“Ay—Hercules!” cried one.
“Bacchus!” yelled a satirist.
“Jove—Jove!” thundered the crowd.
“No,” Messala answered, “among men.”
“Name him, name him!” they demanded.
“I will,” he said, the next lull. “He who to the perfection of Rome
hath added the perfection of the East; who to the arm of conquest,
which is Western, hath also the art needful to the enjoyment of
dominion, which is Eastern.”
“Perpol! His best is a Roman, after all,” some one shouted; and there
was a great laugh, and long clapping of hands—an admission that Messala
had the advantage.
“In the East” he continued, “we have no gods, only Wine, Women, and
Fortune, and the greatest of them is Fortune; wherefore our motto, ‘Who
dareth what I dare?’—fit for the senate, fit for battle, fittest for
him who, seeking the best, challenges the worst.”
His voice dropped into an easy, familiar tone, but without relaxing the
ascendancy he had gained.
“In the great chest up in the citadel I have five talents coin current
in the markets, and here are the receipts for them.”
From his tunic he drew a roll of paper, and, flinging it on the table,
continued, amidst breathless silence, every eye having him in view
fixed on his, every ear listening:
“The sum lies there the measure of what I dare. Who of you dares so
much! You are silent. Is it too great? I will strike off one talent.
What! still silent? Come, then, throw me once for these three
talents—only three; for two; for one—one at least—one for the honor of
the river by which you were born—Rome East against Rome West!—Orontes
the barbarous against Tiber the sacred!”
He rattled the dice overhead while waiting.
“The Orontes against the Tiber!” he repeated, with an increase of
scornful emphasis.
Not a man moved; then he flung the box upon the table and, laughing,
took up the receipts.
“Ha, ha, ha! By the Olympian Jove, I know now ye have fortunes to make
or to mend; therefore are ye come to Antioch. Ho, Cecilius!”
“Here, Messala!” cried a man behind him; “here am I, perishing in the
mob, and begging a drachma to settle with the ragged ferryman. But,
Pluto take me! these new ones have not so much as an obolus among
them.”
The sally provoked a burst of laughter, under which the saloon rang and
rang again. Messala alone kept his gravity.
“Go, thou,” he said to Cecilius, “to the chamber whence we came, and
bid the servants bring the amphorae here, and the cups and goblets. If
these our countrymen, looking for fortune, have not purses, by the
Syrian Bacchus, I will see if they are not better blessed with
stomachs! Haste thee!”
Then he turned to Drusus, with a laugh heard throughout the apartment.
“Ha, ha, my friend! Be thou not offended because I levelled the Cæsar
in thee down to the denarii. Thou seest I did but use the name to try
these fine fledglings of our old Rome. Come, my Drusus, come!” He took
up the box again and rattled the dice merrily. “Here, for what sum thou
wilt, let us measure fortunes.”
The manner was frank, cordial, winsome. Drusus melted in a moment.
“By the Nymphae, yes!” he said, laughing. “I will throw with thee,
Messala—for a denarius.”
A very boyish person was looking over the table watching the scene.
Suddenly Messala turned to him.
“Who art thou?” he asked.
The lad drew back.
“Nay, by Castor! and his brother too! I meant not offence. It is a rule
among men, in matters other than dice, to keep the record closest when
the deal is least. I have need of a clerk. Wilt thou serve me?”
The young fellow drew his tablets ready to keep the score: the manner
was irresistible.
“Hold, Messala, hold!” cried Drusus. “I know not if it be ominous to
stay the poised dice with a question; but one occurs to me, and I must
ask it though Venus slap me with her girdle.”
“Nay, my Drusus, Venus with her girdle off is Venus in love. To thy
question—I will make the throw and hold it against mischance. Thus—”
He turned the box upon the table and held it firmly over the dice.
And Drusus asked, “Did you ever see one Quintus Arrius?”
“The duumvir?”
“No—his son?”
“I knew not he had a son.”
“Well, it is nothing,” Drusus added, indifferently; “only, my Messala,
Pollux was not more like Castor than Arrius is like thee.”
The remark had the effect of a signal: twenty voices took it up.
“True, true! His eyes—his face,” they cried.
“What!” answered one, disgusted. “Messala is a Roman; Arrius is a Jew.”
“Thou sayest right,” a third exclaimed. “He is a Jew, or Momus lent his
mother the wrong mask.”
There was promise of a dispute; seeing which, Messala interposed. “The
wine is not come, my Drusus; and, as thou seest, I have the freckled
Pythias as they were dogs in leash. As to Arrius, I will accept thy
opinion of him, so thou tell me more about him.”
“Well, be he Jew or Roman—and, by the great god Pan, I say it not in
disrespect of thy feelings, my Messala!—this Arrius is handsome and
brave and shrewd. The emperor offered him favor and patronage, which he
refused. He came up through mystery, and keepeth distance as if he felt
himself better or knew himself worse than the rest of us. In the
palaestrae he was unmatched; he played with the blue-eyed giants from
the Rhine and the hornless bulls of Sarmatia as they were willow wisps.
The duumvir left him vastly rich. He has a passion for arms, and thinks
of nothing but war. Maxentius admitted him into his family, and he was
to have taken ship with us, but we lost him at Ravenna. Nevertheless he
arrived safely. We heard of him this morning. Perpol! Instead of coming
to the palace or going to the citadel, he dropped his baggage at the
khan, and hath disappeared again.”
At the beginning of the speech Messala listened with polite
indifference; as it proceeded, he became more attentive; at the
conclusion, he took his hand from the dice-box, and called out, “Ho, my
Caius! Dost thou hear?”
A youth at his elbow—his Myrtilus, or comrade, in the day’s chariot
practice—answered, much pleased with the attention, “Did I not, my
Messala, I were not thy friend.”
“Dost thou remember the man who gave thee the fall to-day?”
“By the love-locks of Bacchus, have I not a bruised shoulder to help me
keep it in mind?” and he seconded the words with a shrug that submerged
his ears.