Great Lion of God

by Taylor Caldwell

  “Men of Athens!” he cried, embracing them with his arms outheld, and with his voice and the sparkle of his eyes, vivid even in that vivid air. “You have heard me before, those of you who listened to me in the marketplaces, and in the synagogues in the Court of the Gentiles, and in the streets, and so my message to you is not new to your ears. Many of you have said to me, with all reverence, ‘Is your Jesu the Unknown God of Whom we have heard throughout the ages?’ And I have answered you, ‘Indeed, He is your Unknown God, and the Unknown God of all men, who have worshiped Him in darkness and hope and humility. But now I speak to you of Him Who is no longer unknown, but stands in resurrected light, and is finally revealed to the whole world, in splendor, dignity, awesome power, grandeur, love and tenderness and beauty. There is not a religion of man, dead or living, which has not held the golden seed of the Promise, and all men have awaited Him, though multitudes did not know for Whom they waited. They only hoped, but hope is enough for it has been fulfilled.’

  “This I have said to you, and this have I preached, in many places in your city. Many have laughed, and have said, ‘Who is this wandering Jew who speaks of intricate matters so simply, and is no philosopher but a man in humble garments and with dust on his feet?’ But many more have listened in politeness and with courtesy and I thank them, though they have not accepted my witness.”

  He then recounted to them his vision on the road to Damascus, and now they were utterly silent, with the walls of noise beyond them merely concentrating the silence within their grouping. Some had heard this before, but it enthralled them to hear it again. Many had not heard it at all, and they were enchanted, for it seemed to them that Saul had not only become a poet—and they reverenced poets above all other men—but was somewhat godlike, himself. His descriptions, fired as if from the sun itself, and endowed with majesty and power, moved them to the heart if not in sudden faith then in veneration of beauty. It was as if a new Homer sang to them new and heretofore unrevealed poetry. Their eyes filled with tears at the vision of the Messias, so vividly brought before their eyes by Saul, and His glory and might, but they were tears of appreciation at such a marvel of perfection. Jesu was a new manifestation of Apollo or Zeus or Hermes, glorious of limb, scintillating of countenance, endowed with authority and with a radiance greater than the sun, more terrible than a storm, more invincible than a whirlwind. They were caught up in tumultuous emotions; some sighed; some murmured; some clasped hands tightly together; some merely stared at Saul, rapt and trembling. They believed every word he said. They did not doubt that he had seen a god, probably even Zeus, himself. It was a vision that appeared to make the air about them golden and shaking with light. Even the most sophisticated and urbane, who were convinced that Saul had been struck by the divine and fearful madness—of the gods, perhaps, or of his own poesy most probably—were stirred and exhilarated.

  They gave him, mutely, the honor they would bestow on a poet whose cantos they had never heard before but whose imagery was ineffable. It did not matter to them if the vision had been true, or untrue, or only imagined. It was Beauty, and was not their nation the very seat of Beauty, and was not Beauty her own logic and reason for being?

  But some there were who listened—and not only the humble—and were touched with the finger of faith like a finger of flame on their hearts, and were moved by the Holy Spirit. Some of them said to themselves, “It is unreasonable, and it is mad, and there is no logic in it, no argument, no revelation of a rational mind—yet I believe. I do not know why I believe, but I know in all my parts that what this man has told me is veritable truth, beyond all reasoning, all doubt, and that he has seen God and has spoken to Him, and that what he says I must accept lest I die. For my soul is alight with the grandeur of God, and what I see only darkly now is a vision that can expand into ineluctable delight, into a deliciousness beyond the senses, into an ecstasy which cannot be imagined but only endured and remembered.”

  To others, however, his redemptive gospel was too simple, too childlike, too uncomplicated for true wisdom, too easily to be grasped and held by the vulgar, too immature, and even somewhat maudlin. It was poetic, but as truth it was absurd. The man should publish his poetry and then he would be acclaimed, for were not poets endowed with the divine and a joy to the tired hearts of men? Even their absurdities and transports were lovely. However, in the business of daily living, in the intransigence of wives and children, in the competition of the marketplace and in banking and commercial affairs, what Saul of Tarshish was saying had no application. The gods ruled their realm. Men ruled theirs. There should be no blurring of borders. When gods intrude on the realms of men, and vice versa, then madness resulted. The men of Athens preferred rationality and hoped that the gods would keep their distance, for what did Olympus know of stock markets and banks and politicians and taxgatherers? Or, for that matter, of the desperate predicament of man?

  Saul had no way of knowing whose heart was touched by the Holy Spirit and whose cool, urbane and rational heart remained untouched except for the poetry of his words. Near him, and behind him, stood young Timothy, the Hermes with the cherubic face, understanding both worlds and distressed by both, and with an urgent conflict in his heart. Timothy wanted to cry out, There is no Jew, no Gentile, no heathen, no division among men, no race, no Athenian, no Roman or Parthian or Persian or Egyptian, no barbarian, no obscurity! We are only men—and what Saul and I have brought to you is a truth pertaining to all. Listen, and let your hearts be moved. Those who divide us are enemies. Those who set brother against brother are murderers. There is but one truth, ordained for all men. Hearken to it. God is the Father of us all, and beyond that you need know nothing more!

  Saul was startled, on the conclusion of his speech, to hear hearty and appreciative applause from the ranks who had listened to him, the same admiring applause they would have given to a fine actor whose performance they extolled, and whose words of tragedy and joy had moved their intellects and inspired their sense of beauty and grandeur. Saul understood at once, with both chagrin and an inner wry hilarity, but he consoled himself that the Messias had His own Wisdom and He knew whose hearts he wished to touch. I am a lion before men, thought Saul, though a worm before Him.

  Saul left Timothy to talk to those few who wished to know more and who were considering baptism, and he descended the high marble steps wearily, for as always his own eloquence and passion exhausted him. Many touched him on the arm to congratulate him on an excellent presentation and his poesy and he saw they were not mocking him so he restrained a hasty answer. Then it was that he saw Lucanus, the physician, on the outskirts of the crowd, watching him with a pale and unreadable expression, and Saul’s heart rose on a wing of joy and his weariness left him and he raced down the steps to embrace his friend.

  Chapter 46

  “OUR dear and glorious physician!” exclaimed Saul, and he could not have enough of embracing the Greek. “What a rapture to our eyes you are! When did you arrive? How goes it with you, my dearest friend? You appear tired, even ill. What! Have you been straining yourself too mercilessly among the heathen?”

  His words rushed from him, so filled with happiness he was, and delight, and so he evidently failed to see that Lucanus’ blue eyes were heavy with sorrow and that his face was drawn. Lucanus put his hands on the other man’s shoulders and tried to speak, then could not. But Saul seemed not to see. He waved impatiently to Timothy high above him on the gleaming marble steps and shouted, “Come at once! We have Lucanus here with us, my dear friend!”

  His own harassed face, so worn and sunburned and brownly sprinkled with freckles, and crowned by that thick and arrogant mane of red and white, glowed with joyous emotion. When Timothy started down the steps Saul pressed and repressed Lucanus’ arm, like a younger brother. The Greek, who was now in his early sixties, still possessed a tall slenderness, upright and proud, and his snowy hair curled over his fine skull and his eyes were those of a youth for all the pain-wrinkled flesh about his mouth. He was
footsore and dusty. Saul exclaimed, “I will take you at once to my poor inn, which though humble is clean, and you must bathe and rest before all else, and then—though I am no lover of food—I will take you to a splendid inn where the viands are marvelous, it is alleged, and the wine and whiskey of the best!”

  “Saul,” began Lucanus in a low voice, then halted as Timothy joined them and the listeners began to stream past them with curious glances, recognizing Lucanus as a Greek. Some vaguely recalled him, from their younger years, as a physician who had lived in Athens from time to time, and saluted him politely, a gesture he returned. But he appeared both distraught and excessively tired. Young Timothy had never seen him before, though he knew him at once as a Greek and he looked back artlessly at Lucanus who gave him a brief though thorough examination with eyes that could not be deceived.

  “Our Lucanus, the evangelist!” shouted Saul to his young friend, and Lucanus and Timothy embraced and said simultaneously, “May the peace of Christ Jesus be with you.” And Saul stood and beamed at them, his weariness gone, and then he walked between them, linking his arms with theirs, and led them the long way down the Acropolis, past the many temples and the gardens and the fountains and the colonnades. He never ceased to utter cries of pleasure, and squeezed the arms he grasped, and laughed like a boy. An intensely intuitive man, his joy apparently prevented him from immediately knowing that Lucanus was silently distracted, but Timothy, less overwhelmed, began to become more and more quiet, and he would glance at Lucanus uneasily.

  “It is not far to my inn,” said Saul. “Yonder it is, beyond that grove of cypresses and that smaller grove of olive trees where the oil is pressed. I warn you, Lucanus, it is not a fine inn!”

  “It does not matter,” said the Greek, and his white brow seemed to shrivel with his sorrowful thought.

  “But tell me!” cried Saul. “Where have you traveled! What news do you bring! How is the Church faring in far places?”

  “Let us first wash the dust from us, and have a cup of wine,” said Lucanus, trying to smile. “Then we will sit where it is cool and I will tell you—” He shrank a little, and Timothy, who, though he walked on the other side of Saul, felt the shrinking of the physician, and his alarm grew.

  The inn was indeed humble, and noisy, and its courtyard was filled with asses and horses and goats and fowl and stank lustily, and men shouted as they tended their animals and cursed in the heat and spat on the cobbled stones. Lucanus followed Saul into the dank darkness and odors of the interior, where Saul shouted for the innkeeper and demanded the best available room for the physician. The innkeeper, a foul fellow in a leather apron, squinted at Lucanus, bowed and said, “But the noble physician arrived but two hours ago and he already has a chamber, my very best, I assure you, Master, for did he not cure my poor mother thirty years ago and not charge her one drachma? He has but to command.”

  “Oh,” said Saul, and looked foolish, and Lucanus smiled at him affectionately and said, “But I did not know this was your inn, my dear Saul, and too you have not allowed me to say a single word!”

  “I am usually talking,” said Saul. He looked at the innkeeper, and Lucanus said, “I am not hungry, I fear, so I should prefer a light meal and not go to another inn.”

  “The food,” said Saul, staring with a hard expression at the innkeeper, “is unbelievably atrocious in this place.”

  “Lord,” said the innkeeper, “it is your taste which is atrocious, and not my table, for you order but little, and the poorest. If the noble lord will but command I will set before him and his guests the finest of feasts, whiskey, beer, excellent wine from Italy—not the wine of the miserable Roman foot soldier but the wine of the captains—artichokes in oil, beef steeped in golden wine, a soup to make the gods envious, bread as white as snow, vegetables with dew still on them and the dressing concocted of wine, lemon juice, salt, honey and garlic, a fish still cold and wet from the sea and to be browned to crackling lusciousness as swiftly as possible, fruit tart and sweet and chilled from my cellar, cheeses which the throat hesitates to swallow for fear of depriving the mouth of delight, and pastries like ambrosia which melt like a snowflake on the tongue and cause tears of happiness to fill the eyes.”

  “Aha,” said Saul, disbelieving, “and from whence will come these treasures?”

  The innkeeper shrugged, winked and laid his dirty forefinger along his nose.

  Timothy and Lucanus had been listening with slight smiles. Saul said, “I will pay anything for such a feast, but if one thing fails to meet the test I shall not pay for the dinner. Hence with you, rascal!” and he clapped the innkeeper heartily on the shoulder as the man turned away. “He is a liar, of course,” said Saul. “He will send his scoundrelly sons to the best inn, with baskets, and will serve his embezzled dinner to us for an enormous price. No matter. It is not every day that you arrive, Lucanus.”

  He hurried away to bathe and to remove his dusty long tunic for something more suitable. Timothy would have followed him but Lucanus laid his hand on his arm.

  “I have dire news for Saul ben Hillel,” said Lucanus, “and I do not know what words I must choose, or when.”

  Timothy nodded and replied, “I suspected such, Lucanus. But my mother, may she rest in peace, always declared that a man can bear grief with more fortitude if his stomach is filled.”

  “As a physician, I do not recommend that you break evil news to a man with that full stomach, for it may give him a seizure of the heart. It is better that he drinks.”

  Timothy considered. “I have never seen Saul drunk, no, not even on the Passover or the New Year, when drunkenness is condoned as a celebration. He has attended weddings and drank but half a cup of wine. He is very austere.”

  “I have, in my pouch, something I will drop into his whiskey when you gain his attention for a moment,” said Lucanus, “and another to follow in the wine which increases the desire to drink it. I know he is austere, so he will not eat to satiety. The pills will restrain his emotions for several hours, and then we will renew them.”

  Timothy’s young light blue eyes moistened and he bent his head and went away, and, sighing, Lucanus went to his own chamber.

  They met again very shortly and the innkeeper led them to a distant table in the clamorous dining room which smelled of the manure outside and sweat and vinegar and heat and dust. The fierce and brilliant sunlight streamed through the open windows. The party of three had a measure of privacy in this corner and here it was not so hot and not so bright. Saul seated himself between his friends and again his face glowed.

  “Tell me all!” he commanded Lucanus. He looked suspiciously at the three small cups, tarnished and greasy, which the innkeeper put before them with a flourish.

  “The best Syrian whiskey, from a secret place in my cellar!” said the innkeeper.

  “Excellent,” said Lucanus, and lifted the cup. He glanced at Saul then at Timothy. “Timothy, you are the youngest here, so I beg of you that you give us a toast, for on this occasion we shall honor youth.”

  Timothy said, “We thank God, King of the Universe, for this meal.”

  A toast by the youngest was something new in Saul’s experience, and he decided it must be a Greek custom on some special occasion. Timothy, who had never dissembled before, turned very red. He began to stammer, gazing at Saul. “I believe there are five whom we may baptize,” he said. The little cup in his hand trembled. Saul smiled at him kindly. “I spoke to at least six score,” he said, “but let us be happy for the smallest harvest, for these Greeks are very slippery men, indeed.”

  Timothy saw, out of the corner of his eye, that Lucanus had deftly dropped something in the whiskey before Saul. He murmured, trying to smile, “But Lucanus is a Greek, and so was my father, may he rest in peace.”

  “I regret my stupid remark,” said Saul. He looked with distaste at the whiskey, began to put it beside the hand of Lucanus, but Lucanus said, “What! Are you refusing to drink this nectar with me? If I remember rightly you
and I enjoyed such whiskey on board a certain vessel long ago. Drink, my dear friend. I command it. It is only courtesy.”

  “I do not dislike it,” said Saul. “I grimace as a habit, a foolish one, implying to others that meat and drink are beneath me,” and he laughed loudly and roughly, like a boy, and others at a distance, hearing, turned and stared at him, then laughed also, for it seemed to them that Saul must be drunk. In their turn Timothy and Lucanus forced themselves to laugh, not entirely without true mirth, for Saul’s ridicule of himself was disarming. He drank the whiskey, looked down into the cup and said, “This does not taste like Syrian whiskey, as that rascal averred. It was probably illegally distilled somewhere in the hills of Macedonia and the Roman customs stamp forged.”

  “A merry practice of my countrymen—forgery,” said Lucanus. He poured another cup for Saul who drank it and said, “It improves.”

  “I have observed that about whiskey,” said Lucanus. “Ah, here is the wine. Let us taste it and see if it is as promised.” The innkeeper, with many gestures, wiped the inside of the cheap glass goblets with a fairly clean cloth and poured the wine as if pouring a libation on an altar, and the others watched, fascinated.

  The wine, though hardly Bacchian, was tolerable, and the dinner, though hardly Lucullan, was not to be despised. Timothy observed that Lucanus magically dropped another pellet into the wine at Saul’s hand, when Timothy asked a question of the physician and Saul looked intently at him, for the question was clumsy. Saul ate sparingly, as usual, but he drank more copiously and now a deep flush was on his face and his blue eyes opened wider as if the lids had relaxed. He said, “Lucanus, you have not told me what has brought you here, not where you have traveled, for I have not had a letter from you for over a year.”