5. CHAPTER V.
ROME AND ISRAEL-A COMPARISON.
THE young Israelite proceeded then, and rehearsed his conversation
with Messala, dwelling with particularity upon the latter's speeches
in contempt of the Jews, their customs, and much pent round of life.
Afraid to speak the while, the mother listened, discerning the
matter plainly. Judah had gone to the palace on the Market-place,
allured by love of a playmate whom he thought to find exactly as he
had been at the parting years before; a man met him, and, in place
of laughter and references to the sports of the past, the man had been
full of the future, and talked of glory to be won, and of riches and
power. Unconscious of the effect, the visitor had come away hurt in
pride, yet touched with a natural ambition: but she, the jealous
mother, saw it, and, not knowing the turn the aspiration might take,
became at once Jewish in her fear. What if it lured him away from
the patriarchal faith? In her view that consequence was more
dreadful than any or all others. She could discover but one way to
avert it, and she set about the task, her native power reinforced by
love to such degree that her speech took a masculine strength and at
times a poet's fervour.
"There never has been a people," she began, "who did not think
themselves at least equal to any other; never a great nation, my
son, that did not believe itself the very superior. When the Roman
looks down upon Israel and laughs, he merely repeats the folly of
the Egyptian, the Assyrian, and the Macedonian; and as the laugh is
against God, the result will be the same."
Her voice became firmer.
"There is no law by which to determine the superiority of nations;
hence the vanity of the claim and the idleness of disputes about it. A
people risen, run their race, and die either of themselves or at the
hands of another, who, succeeding to their power, take possession of
their place, and upon their monuments write new names; such is
history. If I were called upon to symbolize God and man in the
simplest form, I would draw a straight line and a circle; and of the
line I would say, 'This is God, for he alone moves forever
straightforward,' and of the circle, 'This is man-such is his
progress.' I do not mean that there is no difference between the
careers of nations; no two are alike. The difference, however, is not,
as some say, in the extent of the circle they describe or the space of
earth they cover, but in the sphere of their movement, the highest
being nearest God.
"To stop here, my son, would be to leave the subject where we began.
Let us go on. There are signs by which to measure the height of the
circle each nation runs while in its course. By them let us compare
the Hebrew and the Roman.
"The simplest of all the signs is the daily life of the people. Of
this I will only say, Israel has at times forgotten God, while the
Roman never knew him; consequently comparison is not possible.
"Your friend-or your former friend-charged, if I understood you
rightly, that we have had no poets, artists, or warriors; by which
he meant, I suppose, to deny that we have had great men, the next most
certain of the signs. A just consideration of this charge requires a
definition at the commencement. A great man, O my boy, is one whose
life proves him to have been recognized, if not called, by God. A
Persian was used to punish our recreant fathers, and he carried them
into captivity; another Persian was selected to restore their children
to the Holy Land; greater than either of them, however, was the
Macedonian through whom the desolation of Judea and the Temple was
avenged. The special distinction of the men was that they were
chosen by the Lord, each for a divine purpose; and that they were
Gentiles does not lessen their glory. Do not lost sight of this
definition while I proceed.
"There is an idea that war is the most noble occupation of men,
and that the most exalted greatness is the growth of battle-fields.
Because the world has adopted the idea, be not you deceived. That we
must worship something is a law which will continue as long as there
is anything we cannot understand. The prayer of the barbarian is a
wail of fear addressed to Strength, the only divine quality he can
clearly conceive; hence his faith in heroes. What is Jove but a
Roman hero? The Greeks have their great glory because they were the
first to set Mind above Strength. In Athens the orator and philosopher
were more revered than the warrior. The charioteer and the swiftest
runner are still idols of the arena; yet the immortelles are
reserved for the sweetest singer. The birthplace of one poet was
contested by seven cities. But was the Hellene the first to deny the
old barbaric faith? No. My son, that glory is ours; against
brutalism our fathers erected God; in our worship, the wail of fear
gave place to the Hosanna and the Psalm. So the Hebrew and the Greek
would have carried all humanity forward and upward. But, alas! the
government of the world presumes war as an eternal condition;
wherefore, over Mind and above God, the Roman has enthroned his
Caesar, the absorbent of all attainable power, the prohibition of
any other greatness.
"The sway of the Greek was a flowering time for genius. In return
for the liberty it then enjoyed, what a company of thinkers the Mind
led forth? There was a glory for every excellence, and a perfection so
absolute that in everything but war even the Roman has stooped to
imitation. A Greek is now the model of the orators in the Forum;
listen, and in every Roman song you will hear the rhythm of the Greek;
if a Roman opens his mouth speaking wisely of moralities, or
abstractions, or of the mysteries of nature, he is either a plagiarist
or the disciple of some school which had a Greek for its founder. In
nothing but war, I say again, has Rome a claim to originality. Her
games and spectacles are Greek inventions, dashed with blood to
gratify the ferocity of her rabble; her religion, if such it may be
called, is made up of contributions from the faiths of all other
peoples; her most venerated gods are from Olympus-even her Mars, and,
for that matter, the Jove she much magnifies. So it happens, O my son,
that of the whole world our Israel alone can dispute the superiority
of the Greek, and with him contest the palm of original genius.
"To the excellences of other peoples the egotism of a Roman is a
blindfold, impenetrable as his breastplate. Oh, the ruthless
robbers! Under their trampling the earth trembles like a floor
beaten with flails. Along with the rest we are fallen-alas, that I
should say it to you, my son! They have our highest places, and the
holiest, and the end no man can tell; but this I know-they may reduce
Judea as an almond broken with hammers, and devour Jerusalem, which is
the oil and sweetness thereof; yet the glory of the men of Israel will
remain a light in the heavens overhead out of reach: for their history
is the history of God, who wrote with their hands, spake with their
tongues, and was himself in all the good they did, even the least; who
dwelt with them, a Lawgiver on Sinai, a Guide in the wilderness, in
war a Captain, in government a King; who once and again pushed back
the curtains of the pavilion which is his resting-place, intolerably
bright, and, as a man speaking to men, showed them the right, and
the way to happiness, and how they should live, and made them promises
binding the strength of his Almightiness with covenants sworn to
everlastingly. O my son, could it be that they with whom Jehovah
thus dwelt, an awful familiar, derived nothing from him?-that in
their lives and deeds the common human qualities should not in some
degree have been mixed and coloured with the divine?-that their
genius should not have in it, even after the lapse of ages, some
little of heaven?"
For a time the rustling of the fan was all the sound heard in the
chamber.
"In the sense which limits art to sculpture and painting, it is
true," she next said, "Israel has had no artists."
The admission was made regretfully, for it must be remembered she
was a Sadducee, whose faith, unlike that of the Pharisees, permitted a
love of the beautiful in every form, and without reference to its
origin.
"Still, he who would do justice," she proceeded, "will not forget
that the cunning of our hands was bound by the prohibition, 'Thou
shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of
anything;' which the Sopherim wickedly extended beyond its purpose and
time. Nor should it be forgotten that long before Daedalus appeared in
Attica, and with his wooden statues so transformed sculpture as to
make possible the schools of Corinth and AEgina, and their ultimate
triumphs, the Poecile and Capitolium-long before the age of Daedalus,
I say, two Israelites, Bezaleel and Aholiab, the master-builders of
the first tabernacle, said to have been skilled 'in all manner of
workmanship,' wrought the cherubim of the mercy-seat above the ark. Of
gold beaten, not chiselled, were they; and they were statues in form
both human and divine. 'And they shall stretch forth their wings on
high,.... and their faces shall look one to another.' Who will say
they were not beautiful? or that they were not the first statues?"
"Oh, I see now why the Greek outstripped us," said Judah,
intensely interested. "And the ark; accursed be the Babylonians who
destroyed it."
"Nay, Judah, be of faith. It was not destroyed, only lost, hidden
away too safely in some cavern of the mountains. One day-Hellel and
Shammai both say so-one day, in the Lord's good time, it will be
found and brought forth, and Israel dance before it, singing as of
old. And they who look upon the faces of the cherubim then, though
they have seen the face of the ivory Minerva, will be ready to kiss
the hand of the Jew from love of his genius, asleep through all the
thousands of years."
The mother, in her eagerness, had risen into something like the
rapidity and vehemence of a speech-maker; but now, to recover herself,
or to pluck up the thread of her thought, she rested awhile.
"You are so good, my mother," he said, in a grateful way. "And I
will never be done saying so. Shammai could not have talked better,
nor Hillel. I am a true son of Israel again."
"Flatterer!" she said. "You do not know that I am but repeating what
I heard Hillel say in an argument he had one day in my presence with a
sophist from Rome."
"Well, the hearty words are yours."
Directly all her earnestness returned.
"Where was I? Oh yes, I was claiming for our Hebrew fathers the
first statues. The trick of the sculptor, Judah, is not all there is
of art, any more than art is all there is of greatness. I always think
of great men marching down the centuries in groups and goodly
companies, separable according to nationalities; here the Indian,
there the Egyptian, yonder the Assyrian; above them the music of
trumpets and the beauty of banners; and on their right hand and
left, as reverent spectators, the generations from the beginning
numberless. As they go, I think of the Greek saying, 'Lo! the
Hellene leads the way.' Then the Roman replies, 'Silence! what was
your place is ours now; we have left you behind as dust trodden on.'
And all the time, from the far front back over the line of march, as
well as forward into the farthest future, streams a light of which the
wranglers know nothing, except that it is forever leading them on-the
Light of Revelation! Who are they that carry it? Ah, the old Judean
blood! How it leaps at the thought! By the light we know them.
Thrice blessed, O our fathers, servants of God, keepers of the
covenants! Ye are the leaders of men, the living and the dead. The
front is thine; and though every Roman were a Caesar, ye shall not
lose it!"
Judah was deeply stirred.
"Do not stop, I pray you," he cried. "You give me to hear the
sound of timbrels. I wait for Miriam and the women who went after
her dancing and singing."
She caught his feeling, and, with ready wit, wove it into her
speech.
"Very well, my son. If you can hear the timbrel of the prophetess,
you can do what I was about to ask you; you can use your fancy, and
stand with me, as if by the wayside, while the chosen of Israel pass
us at the head of the procession. Now they come-the patriarchs first;
next the fathers of the tribes. I almost hear the bells of their
camels and the lowing of their herds. Who is he that walks alone
between the companies? An old man, yet his eye is not dim, nor his
natural force abated. He knew the Lord face to face! Warrior, poet,
orator, lawgiver, prophet, his greatness is as the sun at morning, its
flood of splendour quenching all other lights, even that of the
first and noblest of the Caesars. After him the judges. And then the
kings-the son of Jesse, a hero in war, and a singer of songs
eternal as that of the sea; and his son, who, passing all other
kings in riches and wisdom, and while making the Desert habitable, and
in its waste places planting cities, forgot not Jerusalem which the
Lord had chosen for his seat on earth. Bend lower, my son! These
that come next are the first of their kind, and the last. Their
faces are raised, as if they heard a voice in the sky and were
listening. Their lives were full of sorrows. Their garments smell of
tombs and caverns. Hearken to a woman among them!-'Sing ye to the
Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously!' Nay, put your forehead in the
dust before them! They were tongues of God, his servants, who looked
through heaven, and, seeing all the future, wrote what they saw, and
left the writing to be proven by time. Kings turned pale as they
approached them and nations trembled at the sound of their voices. The
clements waited upon them. In their hands they carried every bounty
and every plague. See the Tishbite and his servant Elisha! See the sad
son of Hilkiah, and him, the seer of visions, by the river of
Chebar! And of the three children of Judah who refused the image of
the Babylonian, lo! that one who, in the feast to the thousand
lords, so confounded the astrologers. And yonder-O my son, kiss the
dust again!-yonder the gentle son of Amoz, from whom the world has
its promise of the Messiah to come!"
In this passage the fan had been kept in rapid play; it stopped now,
and her voice sank low.
"You are tired," she said.
"No," he replied, "I was listening to a new song of Israel."
The mother was still intent upon her purpose, and passed the
pleasant speech.
"In such light as I could, my Judah, I have set our great men before
you-patriarchs, legislators, warriors, singers, prophets. Turn we
to the best of Rome. Against Moses place Caesar, and Tarquin against
David; Sylla against either of the Maccabees; the best of the
consuls against the Judges; Augustus against Solomon, and you are
done: comparison ends there. But think then of the prophets-greatest of the great."
She laughed scornfully.
"Pardon me. I was thinking of the soothsayer who warned Caius Julius
against the Ides of March, and fancied him looking for the omens of
evil which his master despised in the entrails of a chicken. From that
picture turn to Elijah sitting on the hill-top on the way to
Samaria, amid the smoking bodies of the captains and their fifties,
warning the son of Ahab of the wrath of our God. Finally, O my
Judah-if such speech be reverent-how shall we judge Jehovah and
Jupiter unless it be by what their servants have done in their
names? And as for what you shall do-"
She spoke the latter words slowly, and with a tremulous utterance.
"As for what you shall do, my boy-serve the Lord, the Lord God of
Israel, not Rome. For a child of Abraham there is no glory except in
the Lord's ways, and in them there is much glory."
"I may be a soldier then?" Judah asked.
"Why not? Did not Moses call God a man of war?"
There was then a long silence in the summer chamber.
"You have my permission," she said, finally; "if only you serve
the Lord instead of Caesar."
He was content with the condition, and by-and-by fell asleep. She
arose then, and put the cushion under his head, and, throwing a
shawl over him and kissing him tenderly, went away.