The Source

by James A. Michener

  “Tell King Herod,” she told the soldiers, “that I am sorry he murdered Mariamne.” In those few words she summarized the mad misery of the man.

  That was three days ago. In the interval the citizens of our little town have reacted as Herod foresaw. Non-Jews come to the steps of the temple to bemoan my fate, and I advise them that as a Roman I am prepared to die. Jews come to visit Shelomith, for her father was a man of dignity and is well remembered in Galilee, and with equal resignation she assures them that she has lived a good life and a long one and that the ignominy of execution does not humiliate her. My people offer arguments and her people utter prayers, and it almost seems as if Shelomith and I must console the living rather than accept their weeping on our behalf.

  But I must not create the impression that we are stoics. Yesterday I came upon my wife as she rubbed her tired face with a sweet oil which she keeps in a small phial: she had before her a tray of these bottles which Herod had given her years ago when we stayed with him at Caesarea, and she was so exquisite as she lifted first one little phial and then the other, creating beauty from them as if we were going to a dinner, that I sobbed, and she put down the tray and took my hand.

  “We must not berate ourselves for having served Herod,” she whispered.

  “You don’t accuse me … for having intertwined our lives with his?”

  “Of course not! Apart from these last insane years he did far more good than evil. He gave us a harsh administration, but he gave us peace.”

  “Why do you Jews always seek out kings like Herod?” I asked.

  “We? Rome gave us Herod. We had no voice in choosing him.”

  “I meant that if your people had rallied about the Maccabees there would have been no opening for Herod.”

  She considered this and replied slowly, “We Jews always find it difficult to support our own people. We seem to prefer being governed by others.” Then she added, “It’s something you won’t understand. But we cannot believe in any kingdom, neither of our own making nor of Rome’s. We hold that the true kingdom is of God and will come only with the Messiah, so even if Herod had been Jewish we wouldn’t have accepted him. There will never again be a Jewish state in Israel, for we are destined to live under the yoke of others, offering our testimony not to principalities but to God.”

  I was unwilling to follow her in these philosophical discussions, so I turned the talk to happier days. “I am nineteen again and you are a child living near the synagogue of Makor. A small ship sails into Ptolemais bearing a powerful young man named Herod who steps down to say, ‘I have come to pacify the Galilee.’ If we were to live those years again, would you advise me to stand with him? Defend him before Octavian?”

  Again she paused to consider my question, for Shelomith has the Jewish characteristic of looking at life with absolute honesty of purpose, and quietly she said, “Would we not be craven to reject our history now?” She took my hands and said, “We followed Herod, and I suppose we’d do so again. But we should have given some thought, Timon, to the greater king whom we should have served with greater devotion.” Before I could respond, she laughed and asked, “Of all the years we spent together, which were the best? When we were building that beautiful arcaded street in Antioch?”

  “No. Caesarea made anything else insignificant. As long as the earth endures, that city will be the capital of Asia, and to have helped launch it was no mean accomplishment.” We sat in our prison and recalled those majestic rows of columns, the palaces and the gemlike theater nestled beside the blue sea. It was a masterpiece that we built, Herod and I, and it will remain as long as men cherish works of beauty.

  Yesterday Shelomith smiled when I spoke in this manner of Caesarea, and when I asked why, she said, “You are so stubbornly Roman! I should have thought that the temple of Jerusalem would be your permanent satisfaction. Even we Jews are forced to admit that there Herod performed a miracle.”

  I had never spoken to my wife of this matter, but death was upon us and there was no sensible reason to withhold our thoughts, so I said, “The temple I have erased from my mind. For me it does not count.”

  “Why?” Shelomith cried, for like all Jews she kept a deep affection for this ancient building.

  “For a long time I’ve suspected that sooner or later Rome will have to destroy the temple.”

  “But why?”

  “Because imperial Rome and the temple cannot exist together within the same empire.”

  “Timon! You are talking insanely, like the king. Rome is one thing. It lies across the ocean and is very powerful, but the temple exists in a separate world. Its continuation is permanent.”

  “I used to think so,” I said.

  “What changed your mind?”

  “You weren’t in Jerusalem when priests caused the young men to chop down the wooden eagle.”

  “You told me about it,” my wife answered, and her eyes glowed with satisfaction as she recalled the daring escapade.

  “You remember the tearing down,” I said, “but I remember the men who were burned alive. We set up five pillars before the temple and huge piles of brush were placed upon the stones, forming platforms on which the condemned men stood. Herod’s soldiers … they’re always ready to do anything … lit the fires and we expected cries of anguish to come from the pillars.”

  “What happened?”

  “The fires burned unevenly, but as the flames licked about each face, one after the other, the man who was being burned alive cried with his last breath, ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.’ ”

  “At such a moment what else would a man say?”

  I looked at Shelomith and realized, after a lifetime of the most intimate existence with her, that I barely understood her, and she must have recognized this, for she said quietly, “Tomorrow or the next day, when the messenger comes, and the soldiers are sent in to kill us, you will think of Rome and Augustus and the distant buildings you have built. You may even look upon the Augusteana across the way and a marvelous light will go out. Timon, I have loved you so. You have been so brave, so enduring.” She began to weep, not silently but with unstifled sobs that sent tears gushing from her eyes, and as they fell upon her lap she took one of the perfume bottles and with its lip brushed aside the offending tears, so that some fell into the bottle, and she laughed nervously, saying, “Together we have made the perfume of life, tears and roses and the smell of olive trees in the spring. That perfume has been in my nostrils since the first day I met you.”

  She placed the phial on the tray and resumed the line of thinking that the tears had interrupted. “As we die you will look upon the buildings of this world, but I will whisper, ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.’ Herod with all his soldiers, with all his flames, will never be able to silence that cry.”

  “That’s why I say the temple will have to be destroyed. Rome has offered you membership in the world at large. But in your stiff-necked pride you’ve rejected the world and clung to your temple.”

  “Must it perish?” she cried, and we were dealing with such impassioned thoughts that I left her improvised dressing table, so that she might complete her toilet, and went to the entrance of the temple where the guards were waiting for the word to slay us.

  Two were Egyptian and two were German, and I asked them how they had entered the service of Herod. The Egyptians had been given him by Caesar Augustus when he dissipated Cleopatra’s power, and the Germans had been brought to Judaea as slaves, progressing by one chance or another to responsible positions in the army. “How many Jews have you slain?” I asked the men. They shrugged their shoulders. “We do what we’re told,” they replied.

  “Well, how many?” I insisted. “We haven’t had any foreign wars, so all your activity has been against the Jews. How many would you guess?” And they began recalling their various expeditions against Jerusalem, when there was trouble there, and Samaria before the name was changed to Sebaste, and the trouble in Gaza. Slowly the figu
res mounted until these four chance soldiers, operating in different areas, found that they had slain more than a thousand leading Jews.

  “When the orders come to kill my wife and me … won’t you wonder what it’s about?”

  “Orders come and we obey them,” one of the Germans replied. His sharp, dreadful sword hung easily from his left hip.

  “But you’ve known that Herod was insane.”

  “Don’t speak against the king,” the soldier warned me.

  “But he’s dead. We’re merely awaiting confirmation.”

  “I should think you’d want him to live,” the German argued, speaking a colloquial Greek.

  “You haven’t answered my question. Why would you obey the orders of a dead man?”

  “Because if you don’t have one king, you have another,” the German explained. “If Herod is dead, as you say, there’s another king in Antioch to give orders and above him there’s the emperor in Rome, and it doesn’t matter very much who tells us to do what. There’s always a king somewhere.”

  Jews came to pray with Shelomith, and in their bearded faces, obdurate as iron, I found my solution to the behavior of the Herodian soldiers. On earth there was always a king giving orders, and frequently they were contradictory or even inhuman, as in the case of a putrefying Herod, but above them there had to be a true king who judged things honestly and who, when the time came, corrected the mistakes of the earthly sovereigns. If there were not such a system, the behavior of a mortal like Herod would be incomprehensible.

  I looked at the Jews, whom I had never understood, for they were always a withdrawn race who showed neither love nor toleration for the Romans, and I realized that it was not through the friends of Herod but through these bearded, intransigent men that Judaea and perhaps the whole empire would find its moral stability. Between the Jews and the Romans there would be war—of that I was increasingly convinced—and doubtless the temple as a symbol of Judaism would have to vanish; but the principles these men stood for, the rectitude I saw in their faces, must ultimately triumph. For the first time I was sorry to be dying, for I wanted to witness this great confrontation. For me, Herod had terminated any belief in Rome as a permanent master. There would have to be something else, some force that could control insane men. Why, he had even intimated that if the rumors were true, if an honest king of the Jews had been born in Bethlehem, all Jewish babies in that district must be slaughtered, but from this hideous act he had drawn back. It was essential that some superior power be called into existence to force such men to draw back from their other insanities, and I wished that I could be on hand to greet the messengers of that power when they arrived.

  Shelomith and I talked of these things for many hours yesterday and I went to bed with increased respect for her religion, which I had not deeply investigated before. I say, “I went to bed,” as if this day had merely been another in a long sequence of routine days, but it was not. We shall probably never go to bed again. I shall never again see her rise like a flower coming to bloom in the spring, and in the nothingness of death, if I am permitted memory, I shall miss her more than I can say. My three sons, one in Antioch, one in Athens and one in Rhodes, will look like her until they die, some years from now, and then her lovely image will be forgotten. Being a Jewess, she never allowed me to have her portrait made, for like the brave men who chopped down the Roman eagle and who were burned alive for their audacity, she considered portraits blasphemy. Something Moses had told his Jews prevented them from having any likeness made; but I smile, for as long as Makor stands, the eight perfect columns will serve as her memorial. They are closer to her reality than a painting of her face could ever be, for they reproduce her essence: tall, flawlessly proportioned, austere, yet molded to the requirements of her position. Like her columns she stands with her head unadorned, and bearing nothing, for she is a free woman. Only the Jews know how to produce such women, and I have known two of them—Shelomith and Mariamne. Had the queen lived she would have kept Herod sane, but she died prematurely and he died with her.

  Messengers come to the gate! Shelomith moves to my side, her right hand in mine. We watch the important men in short military skirts stride down the street and swing into the forum. Between the columns they march, not looking at our prison, and they head for the governor’s palace. We watch them disappear with their fateful news and observe, almost against our will, that the four guards stiffen in preparation for the deed ahead.

  Shelomith kneels to pray, and some old Jews who knew her father begin rocking back and forth outside the temple, wailing prayers that I do not understand.

  I cannot pray. I joined with Herod when I was nineteen and with him I rode to power and to triumph. If his insanity has now enveloped me in death, I cannot decently complain. My ancestors lived in Makor for countless generations, and they studied always how they must adjust to the invading armies, and usually they made the right decision. They were Hebrews or Greeks or Babylonians as occasion demanded, and years ago I decided to be a Roman. I have been a good Roman, and I leave this part of the world—not only Makor but all of Judaea and Syria as well—more beautiful than when I found it, and having offered this as my benediction I am ready to die.

  The governor leaves his palace, the one I built, and strides along the forum I erected. He comes to the prison which I built for myself, and the German guards unleash their swords—those fearful short swords that do the king’s work. The governor and the messengers stand erect before the temple columns and Shelomith stands bravely beside me as a voice begins to speak.

  “King Herod is dead. The prisoners are set free.”

  Shelomith’s hand falls from mine, and all I can think of is that somehow I must seek out the new king to see if he plans the building of new edifices. But Shelomith has dropped to her knees and I hear her praying, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

  LEVEL

  VIII

  Yigal and His Three Generals

  Brass coin, a Roman sestertius worth about 4¢ when issued. One fourth of a denarius, the penny of the Bible. This notable design, celebrating the conquest of Judaea launched by General Vespasian in 67 C.E., was used repeatedly during the reign of the Flavian dynasty: Vespasian emperor 70-79; his son Titus, 79-81; and his second son Domitian, the persecutor of the Christians, 81-96. This specimen issued in Rome 72 C.E. by Vespasian to honor Titus, who had destroyed Jerusalem 70 C.E., thus ending the Jewish War. Obverse: T(itus) CAES(ar) VESPASIAN(us) IMP(erator) PON(tifex) TR(ibunicia) POT(estate) CO(n)S(ul) II. (Caesar Titus, son of Vespasian the Emperor, the Great Priest, Owner of the Tribunician Power, Consul for Two Times.) Reverse: IUDAEA CAPTA S(enatus) C(onsulto). (Judaea captured. With the approval of the Senate.) Similar coins were struck in Caesarea, but on these the legends were in Greek. Such coins issued until the assassination of Domitian. Lost in the ruins of Makor by a Roman traveler, October 18, 74 C.E.

  Throughout its long history Makor’s fate was usually determined by what happened in remote capitals like Memphis, Babylonia, Antioch and Rome; and citizens listened for distant rumors that might affect them.

  Thus in 14 C.E. they heard that great Caesar Augustus had died and that his place had been taken by the tyrant Tiberius, a man so debauched and craven that he fled Rome and hid on small islands until 37 C.E., when he was finally smothered in a heap of dirty laundry. Tiberius was succeeded by the even worse tyrant Caligula, who, like others before him, insisted upon being worshiped as the only god. Crazy with lust and abominations, he ordered his statue to be placed in all temples throughout the empire, and to this fatuous command the various nations acceded—except one.

  The Jews of Judaea refused to accept Caligula as their god, and they likewise refused to allow his statues to enter their territory; and when the emperor heard of their obstinacy he left off his immoralities long enough to announce that if the Jews alone, of all his subjects, refused to acknowledge him as their god, he would force them to do so with armies, after which he would sell th
e lot into slavery—every man and child throughout the Jewish nation. This ominous edict was delivered in the year during which Caligula caused his horse Incitatus to be elected a full consul of Rome, and not long after that day on which, having grown surfeited with ordinary killings in the arena, he ordered hundreds of casual spectators in the stadium thrown to the wild beasts so that he might enjoy their sudden agony as the lions and tigers sprang upon them.

  Caligula sent his edict for disciplining the Jews to a trusted veteran of Roman wars, General Petronius, who was stationed with two full legions in Antioch, and that wise, daring military man took immediate steps to subdue Judaea and impose the emperor’s will. Importing a third legion from Italy and gathering three auxiliary groups from Syria, he waited for a Roman ship that was bringing twoscore huge statues of Caligula, and when all were assembled he marched his men southward with startling speed and ordered the ship to Ptolemais, from which seaport he proposed to subdue Judaea.

  Eight miles east, in the little frontier town of Makor, which as so often in the past would have to engage the first onslaught of the invaders, lived a young Jew named Yigal, neither priest nor merchant, to whom the simple precepts of his religion were more sweet than the sound of children’s laughter. He worked at the olive press south of town and owned no property, not even the house in which his wife and their sons lived. His was a frugal family and the children were never wasteful of the meager drachmas he earned. At the Feast of Tabernacles they begged a few coins so that they might build the booth in which they and their parents would live during the holy days. At Passover they pestered their father to buy a kid, and at the feast celebrating Queen Esther’s triumph over the Persian persecutor Haman they required a few additional coins to buy the sweets and trinkets customary on that occasion.