Ben-Hur: A tale of the Christ
As a passing acquaintance with the people of the Holy City, strangers
as well as residents, will be necessary to an understanding of some of
the pages which follow, it will be well to stop at the gate and pass
the scene in review. Better opportunity will not offer to get sight of
the populace who will afterwhile go forward in a mood very different
from that which now possesses them.
The scene is at first one of utter confusion—confusion of action,
sounds, colors, and things. It is especially so in the lane and court.
The ground there is paved with broad unshaped flags, from which each
cry and jar and hoof-stamp arises to swell the medley that rings and
roars up between the solid impending walls. A little mixing with the
throng, however, a little familiarity with the business going on, will
make analysis possible.
Here stands a donkey, dozing under panniers full of lentils, beans,
onions, and cucumbers, brought fresh from the gardens and terraces of
Galilee. When not engaged in serving customers, the master, in a voice
which only the initiated can understand, cries his stock. Nothing can
be simpler than his costume—sandals, and an unbleached, undyed blanket,
crossed over one shoulder and girt round the waist. Near-by, and far
more imposing and grotesque, though scarcely as patient as the donkey,
kneels a camel, raw-boned, rough, and gray, with long shaggy tufts of
fox-colored hair under its throat, neck, and body, and a load of boxes
and baskets curiously arranged upon an enormous saddle. The owner is an
Egyptian, small, lithe, and of a complexion which has borrowed a good
deal from the dust of the roads and the sands of the desert. He wears a
faded tarbooshe, a loose gown, sleeveless, unbelted, and dropping from
the neck to the knee. His feet are bare. The camel, restless under the
load, groans and occasionally shows his teeth; but the man paces
indifferently to and fro, holding the driving-strap, and all the time
advertising his fruits fresh from the orchards of the Kedron—grapes,
dates, figs, apples, and pomegranates.
At the corner where the lane opens out into the court, some women sit
with their backs against the gray stones of the wall. Their dress is
that common to the humbler classes of the country—a linen frock
extending the full length of the person, loosely gathered at the waist,
and a veil or wimple broad enough, after covering the head, to wrap the
shoulders. Their merchandise is contained in a number of earthen jars,
such as are still used in the East for bringing water from the wells,
and some leathern bottles. Among the jars and bottles, rolling upon the
stony floor, regardless of the crowd and cold, often in danger but
never hurt, play half a dozen half-naked children, their brown bodies,
jetty eyes, and thick black hair attesting the blood of Israel.
Sometimes, from under the wimples, the mothers look up, and in the
vernacular modestly bespeak their trade: in the bottles “honey of
grapes,” in the jars “strong drink.” Their entreaties are usually lost
in the general uproar, and they fare illy against the many competitors:
brawny fellows with bare legs, dirty tunics, and long beards, going
about with bottles lashed to their backs, and shouting “Honey of wine!
Grapes of En-Gedi!” When a customer halts one of them, round comes the
bottle, and, upon lifting the thumb from the nozzle, out into the ready
cup gushes the deep-red blood of the luscious berry.
Scarcely less blatant are the dealers in birds—doves, ducks, and
frequently the singing bulbul, or nightingale, most frequently pigeons;
and buyers, receiving them from the nets, seldom fail to think of the
perilous life of the catchers, bold climbers of the cliffs; now hanging
with hand and foot to the face of the crag, now swinging in a basket
far down the mountain fissure.
Blent with peddlers of jewelry—sharp men cloaked in scarlet and blue,
top-heavy under prodigious white turbans, and fully conscious of the
power there is in the lustre of a ribbon and the incisive gleam of
gold, whether in bracelet or necklace, or in rings for the finger or
the nose—and with peddlers of household utensils, and with dealers in
wearing-apparel, and with retailers of unguents for anointing the
person, and with hucksters of all articles, fanciful as well as of
need, hither and thither, tugging at halters and ropes, now screaming,
now coaxing, toil the venders of animals—donkeys, horses, calves,
sheep, bleating kids, and awkward camels; animals of every kind except
the outlawed swine. All these are there; not singly, as described, but
many times repeated; not in one place, but everywhere in the market.
Turning from this scene in the lane and court, this glance at the
sellers and their commodities, the reader has need to give attention,
in the next place, to visitors and buyers, for which the best studies
will be found outside the gates, where the spectacle is quite as varied
and animated; indeed, it may be more so, for there are superadded the
effects of tent, booth, and sook, greater space, larger crowd, more
unqualified freedom, and the glory of the Eastern sunshine.
CHAPTER VII
Let us take our stand by the gate, just out of the edge of the
currents—one flowing in, the other out—and use our eyes and ears
awhile.
In good time! Here come two men of a most noteworthy class.
“Gods! How cold it is!” says one of them, a powerful figure in armor;
on his head a brazen helmet, on his body a shining breastplate and
skirts of mail. “How cold it is! Dost thou remember, my Caius, that
vault in the Comitium at home which the flamens say is the entrance to
the lower world? By Pluto! I could stand there this morning, long
enough at least to get warm again!”
The party addressed drops the hood of his military cloak, leaving bare
his head and face, and replies, with an ironic smile, “The helmets of
the legions which conquered Mark Antony were full of Gallic snow; but
thou—ah, my poor friend!—thou hast just come from Egypt, bringing its
summer in thy blood.”
And with the last word they disappear through the entrance. Though they
had been silent, the armor and the sturdy step would have published
them Roman soldiers.
From the throng a Jew comes next, meager of frame, round-shouldered,
and wearing a coarse brown robe; over his eyes and face, and down his
back, hangs a mat of long, uncombed hair. He is alone. Those who meet
him laugh, if they do not worse; for he is a Nazarite, one of a
despised sect which rejects the books of Moses, devotes itself to
abhorred vows, and goes unshorn while the vows endure.
As we watch his retiring figure, suddenly there is a commotion in the
crowd, a parting quickly to the right and left, with exclamations sharp
and decisive. Then the cause comes—a man, Hebrew in feature and dress.
The mantle of snow-white linen, held to his head by cords of yellow
silk, flows free over his shoulders; his robe is richly embroidered, a
red sash with fringes of gold wraps his waist several times. His
demeanor is calm; he even smiles upon those who, with such rude haste,
make room for him. A leper? No, he is only a Samaritan. The shrinking
crowd, if asked, would say he is a mongrel—an Assyrian—whose touch of
the robe is pollution; from whom, consequently, an Israelite, though
dying, might not accept life. In fact, the feud is not of blood. When
David set his throne here on Mount Zion, with only Judah to support
him, the ten tribes betook themselves to Shechem, a city much older,
and, at that date, infinitely richer in holy memories. The final union
of the tribes did not settle the dispute thus begun. The Samaritans
clung to their tabernacle on Gerizim, and, while maintaining its
superior sanctity, laughed at the irate doctors in Jerusalem. Time
brought no assuagement of the hate. Under Herod, conversion to the
faith was open to all the world except the Samaritans; they alone were
absolutely and forever shut out from communion with Jews.
As the Samaritan goes in under the arch of the gate, out come three men
so unlike all whom we have yet seen that they fix our gaze, whether we
will or not. They are of unusual stature and immense brawn; their eyes
are blue, and so fair is their complexion that the blood shines through
the skin like blue pencilling; their hair is light and short; their
heads, small and round, rest squarely upon necks columnar as the trunks
of trees. Woollen tunics, open at the breast, sleeveless and loosely
girt, drape their bodies, leaving bare arms and legs of such
development that they at once suggest the arena; and when thereto we
add their careless, confident, insolent manner, we cease to wonder that
the people give them way, and stop after they have passed to look at
them again. They are gladiators—wrestlers, runners, boxers, swordsmen;
professionals unknown in Judea before the coming of the Roman; fellows
who, what time they are not in training, may be seen strolling through
the king’s gardens or sitting with the guards at the palace gates; or
possibly they are visitors from Cæsarea, Sebaste, or Jericho; in which
Herod, more Greek than Jew, and with all a Roman’s love of games and
bloody spectacles, has built vast theaters, and now keeps schools of
fighting-men, drawn, as is the custom, from the Gallic provinces or the
Slavic tribes on the Danube.
“By Bacchus!” says one of them, drawing his clenched hand to his
shoulder, “their skulls are not thicker than eggshells.”
The brutal look which goes with the gesture disgusts us, and we turn
happily to something more pleasant.
Opposite us is a fruit-stand. The proprietor has a bald head, a long
face, and a nose like the beak of a hawk. He sits upon a carpet spread
upon the dust; the wall is at his back; overhead hangs a scant curtain,
around him, within hand’s reach and arranged upon little stools, lie
osier boxes full of almonds, grapes, figs, and pomegranates. To him now
comes one at whom we cannot help looking, though for another reason
than that which fixed our eyes upon the gladiators; he is really
beautiful—a beautiful Greek. Around his temples, holding the waving
hair, is a crown of myrtle, to which still cling the pale flowers and
half ripe berries. His tunic, scarlet in color, is of the softest
woollen fabric; below the girdle of buff leather, which is clasped in
front by a fantastic device of shining gold, the skirt drops to the
knee in folds heavy with embroidery of the same royal metal; a scarf,
also woollen, and of mixed white and yellow, crosses his throat and
falls trailing at his back; his arms and legs, where exposed, are white
as ivory, and of the polish impossible except by perfect treatment with
bath, oil, brushes, and pincers.
The dealer, keeping his seat, bends forward, and throws his hands up
until they meet in front of him, palm downwards and fingers extended.
“What hast thou, this morning, O son of Paphos?” says the young Greek,
looking at the boxes rather than at the Cypriote. “I am hungry. What
hast thou for breakfast?”
“Fruits from the Pedius—genuine—such as the singers of Antioch take of
mornings to restore the waste of their voices,” the dealer answers, in
a querulous nasal tone.
“A fig, but not one of thy best, for the singers of Antioch!” says the
Greek. “Thou art a worshiper of Aphrodite, and so am I, as the myrtle I
wear proves; therefore I tell thee their voices have the chill of a
Caspian wind. Seest thou this girdle?—a gift of the mighty Salome—”
“The king’s sister!” exclaims the Cypriote, with another salaam.
“And of royal taste and divine judgment. And why not? She is more Greek
than the king. But—my breakfast! Here is thy money—red coppers of
Cyprus. Give me grapes, and—”
“Wilt thou not take the dates also?”
“No, I am not an Arab.”
“Nor figs?”