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 the 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.
In the year that General Petronius bore down with his legions upon Judaea, Yigal was only twenty-six years old, and he was one of the least important men in Makor, but by some intuitive sense it was he who foresaw with shimmering clarity what would happen to the Jews if the Romans succeeded in erecting their statues to Caligula in local synagogues and in desecrating the great temple in Jerusalem. What was more remarkable, it was Yigal—this undistinguished olive-grove worker—who discovered the only tactic whereby the Jews could halt the Romans; so one morning, to his own surprise, he assembled what Jews he could in Makor’s Roman forum and, standing on the steps of the Venus temple, harangued them as follows:
“Jews of Makor, our fathers have told us of that day long ago when the tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes sought to violate our holy places with his image as that of the only true god. Then our forefathers rose against him and drove him from this land. I know we cannot duplicate their feat. The Romans are many times stronger than the Syrians ever were. They march with dreadful legions that have never been defeated, and we poor Jews are powerless to oppose them. Our leaders Simeon and Amram are correct when they advise us not to take arms against the Romans, not to harry or molest them in any way, for if we do so we can be sure that the Romans will destroy this town and Jotapata and every other, even to Jerusalem. Our synagogues will not only be profaned, they will be razed to the ground, and we shall be sold into slavery as we were in the days of Babylon. We are powerless, and the enemy is upon us.”
Yigal was not the kind of Jew to whom townsmen would ordinarily listen. He was neither tall like the oldest of the priests, nor bulky in figure like the governor; nor was he a brilliant man. He was of medium height, frail, brown-haired. His eyes were not blue nor were they brown, but a kind of gray-green, and both his nose and his chin were small to the point of being ridiculous. His teeth were uneven but strong, and his voice was not commanding but it was clear, without rasps or muffled vowels. He was certainly not a man one would choose for a leader, and the reason why he had remained merely an assistant at the olive grove was that he had failed to impress the owner with any ability other than honesty and promptness. If he was paid for twelve hours’ work a day he delivered that number or more. Even his love of Judaism did not differentiate him from the other Jews of Makor, for he could never be a zealot. In simple terms, he found in his dedication to the laws of Moses a satisfaction which he knew did not come to Romans who worshiped Caligula-Jupiter nor to Greeks who clung to the Zeus-Baal of the region.
“We are powerless,” he continued that day, “but we are not without strength. For this night I shall walk to Ptolemais, with my wife Beruriah and my three sons, and there we shall lie down before the legions of General Petronius and we shall tell him that we would rather die than have his men place images of his emperor in our synagogues. If all of us do this, if we are willing to bare our throats and the throats of our children to the Roman swords, Petronius must listen. He may order his men to slay us. Tomorrow night I may be dead, and my wife may be dead and the children I love so dearly. But we will have proved to the Romans that they may not do this wrong thing unless they kill every Jew in this land.”
Simeon, the acknowledged leader of Jews in this part of the Galilee, ridiculed Yigal’s plan, saying that even nine hundred Jewish throats would not impress a man like General Petronius, but Yigal was not to be silenced. He resumed his argument and to his surprise a farmer called Naaman, older than Yigal but like him a man of no substance, joined the plea and added, “We have learned in the past that unless we protest with all our energy we will be smothered by the Romans. Here is the final test. If we surrender our synagogues to the statues of Caligula we are doomed. Truly there is no escape, and I agree with Yigal that we must march to Ptolemais and throw ourselves before the Roman legions, telling them to kill us there. I shall go with him.”
“You fools!” Simeon warned. “The planting season approaches and you’re needed in the fields.” For it was the Jews who tended the countryside, Greeks alone serving as merchants in the towns.
To this Yigal replied, “Those fields can be our major weapon. If we refuse to plant, the Romans will be forced to listen.”
“No!” Simeon said. “Against the Romans no one can prevail.” And so the town was split into two parts, most agreeing with Simeon that submission was the only way to preserve the Jews but some siding with Yigal and Naaman that opposition must be made now, even though the Roman legions were fully armed while the Jews had nothing.
All that day, while the Roman ship in Ptolemais unloaded its statues of Caligula, the Jews in Makor continued arguing, and at about the time that General Petronius was ready to begin his march to Jerusalem, depositing a statue in each conquered place, but saving the two largest for the temple, Yigal finally persuaded about half the Jews in Makor that the moment of decision was upon them. Standing in the forum he said simply, “We shall trust that God Almighty will illuminate the heart of General Petronius and prove to him that he dare not kill all the Jews of Judaea. If we accomplish this, even though we lose our own lives, what great work we shall have done for the Lord.”
“You will never halt the Romans,” old Simeon wailed.
“We have no other choice,” Yigal countered. He bowed his head and prayed for a few moments, then gathered up his wife and his t
hree sons and started slowly toward the main gate. The farmer Naaman and his family followed, and they were joined by others who understood what Yigal was attempting, but most of the senior Jews and all of the Greeks laughed at the improvised army of four hundred that marched with no weapons and no general to guide them.
Yigal went out the main gate and onto the stone-surfaced road that led westward to Ptolemais, and with slow, patient steps so that the women and little children could keep pace, he started the historic march to the seaport where the Roman legions waited. His ragtag army passed the checkpoints where, the old Phoenician guard posts had stood and came late in the day to that barren mound along the Belus River where for three thousand years the original port of Akka had faced the Mediterranean. As dusk approached, the Jews reached the plain leading to the new city, perched on a peninsula, which King Herod had graced with a cluster of delightful buildings, and there, in the shadow of the walls of Ptolemais with its massive gates, Yigal and his people sat upon the ground and waited. Night fell and the shadows of Roman troops could be seen upon the walls, lit from behind by fires that burned in the city. The Jews had no fires, and the night was cold, but they huddled on the ground—fathers and mothers making sleeping circles in which the children nestled—and all wondered what the Romans would do on the forthcoming day.
When the sun was up General Petronius surveyed the rabble from a lookout post on the wall, and making nothing of the scene dispatched some legionnaires to apprehend the leaders of the mob, and when the soldiers arrived Yigal and Naaman offered themselves as hostages. They were marched inside the gates, where in a public square decorated on three sides by handsome Herodian buildings, General Petronius met them, backed up by the sixteen senior centurions of his legions. The Romans wore battle dress, short military skirts, metal-studded sandals, shin-guards, loose-fitting garments about their shoulders, and marks of their rank. They were resolute, relaxed warriors, ready at the command of their general to kill a hundred thousand Jews if necessary for the completion of their assignment. Hardly a Roman soldier in Ptolemais believed that Caligula, an offensive man with ugly habits, was a god; but all believed that if the emperor wished to tell his distant dominions that he was, the provinces had better obey. The soldiers watched with contempt as the two Jews in cheap civilian robes approached.
“Who are those people out there?” Petronius asked in Greek. He was a tall, handsome man, son of a good Roman family and a scholar given to reflecting upon the lessons of history. He always spoke Greek, which he had learned from Athenian slaves.
Using the same language Yigal replied, “We are Jews. Come to beg you not to bring statues into our land.”
Some of the soldiers laughed, and Petronius said, “Statues of Caligula are to rise in every land. It has been ordered.”
“We will sooner die than permit them here,” Yigal said quietly. Again the soldiers laughed, not in ridicule of the inconspicuous field hand but at the humor of the situation.
General Petronius said, “At seven this morning we shall begin marching to Jerusalem, and your Jews had better step aside, for we must deliver our statues.” Behind the officers Yigal could see the first of the huge white images which slaves would haul over hilly roads for many months. With his twoscore marble faces Caesar Caligula, the god, looked benevolently down upon the scene.
“Respected General,” Yigal said, “if you wish to move those statues into our land you will have to kill all of us on the plain.”
The simple force with which he spoke these words evoked two reactions. At first General Petronius was astonished at what the man was saying, but quickly he recovered his composure and grasped the mild-mannered Jew by the throat. “Are you challenging the power of Rome?” he demanded.
Naaman interceded. “Our quarrel is not with Rome, sir. Twice each day we sacrifice to Rome. We serve in your armies and pay your taxes. But we cannot permit in our country graven images, neither of gods nor of men.”
“We’ll see about that,” Petronius thundered, thrusting Yigal aside and ordering his legions to move forward. The gates were swung open. The centurions called signals which the decurions passed along to their men and the march began, but as the first foot soldiers reached the gate Petronius capriciously ordered them to halt. “Bring forth the smallest statue,” he cried, and slaves ran to fetch a handsome black-marble bust of Caligula, with vine leaves in his hair and deep-carved sockets for his benevolent eyes. It was a statue that any museum would cherish or that people a thousand years later would instinctively recognize as a thing of beauty. “The god Caligula will go before us as we enter Judaea,” Petronius announced, and now, with the slaves moving ahead, the army resumed its march into the land of the Jews.
But when a short distance had been covered, the soldiers came upon the four hundred Jews of Makor—that trivial little town that hardly any Roman had heard of—who resolutely lay across the road and barred the way. The slaves, carrying the offensive statue, halted, not knowing what to do, and centurions of the three official legions ran forward with drawn swords. There was a painful moment as the determined Jews continued to block the way, while the Romans hesitated about killing them without specific orders from General Petronius. No Jew was armed.
Hurrying from the rear, accompanied by Yigal and Naaman as prisoners, Petronius came upon the scene and saw for himself that the Jews of Makor were indeed resolved to die where they lay rather than allow the statue to pass. He judged there were less than five hundred of them, with more than half women and small children, while he had some eighteen thousand armed troops at his command. If he gave the signal the killing could be ended in fifteen minutes, but he was a man of sensitivity; he had won many battles without massacring women and children, so now he hesitated. Turning to Yigal, a man half his age, with neither education nor distinctions, Petronius said, “Order your people to disperse.”
“We are going to die … here on the road.”
“Centurions! Clear the road.”
Eagerly the soldiers ran toward the Jews, swords drawn, but when the nameless people of Makor made no effort to protect themselves, awaiting the cold thrust of the sword, Petronius ordered his men to halt. Sweating, the Roman general said to Yigal, “Young man, if they do not obey me we shall have to slaughter them all. Tell them to get up and move aside.”
“I have told you … we are going to die.”
“For what reason?” Petronius pointed with some dismay at the inoffensive black statue of the new god. “For a piece of stone you would die?”
“A false god must not enter our land,” Yigal said.
Petronius swallowed. He knew that Caesar Caligula was no god. He also knew that Caligula had become a false god only because he had murdered his predecessor, Tiberius. And he suspected that before long Caligula himself would have to be murdered. The man’s excesses—killing decent citizens so that he could sleep with their wives for one night, then sending the women into prostitution and slavery—these things would have to be stopped, but in the meantime Caligula was emperor and he was also god. To defy him in any way or to allow the Jews to defy him would mean death for all. “I am going to raise my arm,” the irritated general warned. “When it falls we shall march forward, and if any Jew lies in our way …-Centurions, cut them to pieces!”
The Roman general, backed by an enormous might, stood in the sunlight facing the two inconsequential Jews, one a helper at an olive press, the other a farmer with no lands of his own, and he raised his right arm, holding in the air an ebony baton. About his arm muscle and his forearm he wore military bands of gold, and he made an imposing picture as he stood with the baton aloft. He seemed to be counting, but his voice could not be heard, for from the recumbent Jews opposing him came a mumble of prayer broken by an old man who whispered in a clear, soft voice, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” It was apparent to all that in defense of this basic doctrine—that there was and could be only one God, unbroken and undistributed—the Jews were prepared to die.
The centurions raised their swords. The slaves stepped aside, holding Caligula aloft in the brilliant sunlight, and for a long, long moment General Petronius wavered. With his arm raised he looked at Yigal and Naaman, who would be the first to die, and he saw that they had no intention of ordering their people to move aside. Indeed, each of the Jews was repeating the prayer which the old man was whispering.
“Bring these two back to the city,” Petronius commanded. Keeping his arm aloft he turned his back on the huddled Jews and ordered his men to follow him. Then slowly he lowered his arm, striking his right leg with the baton seven times. Behind him, in the plain, he could hear the Jews chanting, not a song of victory but of praise.
Inside the city Petronius told Yigal, “We’ll starve your Jews into common sense. They’ll commit their own suicide.” And he threw a cordon about the Jews, allowing none to leave the plain, and all through the blazing day the Jews lay in the sun while slaves dragged out from the city walls a gigantic statue of Caesar Caligula, placing it before the thirsty mob. In the cold night that followed, the watching troops could hear children crying as the benevolent visage of Caligula beamed down upon them in the moonlight. When dawn came there was no relief from the torrid sun, and the old man who had whispered the prayer died with its words still on his lips. Children fainted.
At four that afternoon, when the punishment was most terrible, General Petronius led Yigal and Naaman to the scene and asked if they would now order their Jews to disband. “We have come here to die,” Yigal said simply. Petronius then directed a slave to give Yigal a drink of cold water, and as the Jew drank under duress, standing in the shadow of the great statue, Petronius cried to the prostrate Jews, “See, he doesn’t suffer. He has plenty of water.” With his own hands he poured the remainder on the dry ground at the god’s feet, where it was immediately absorbed by the parched earth. Kicking the dust Petronius shouted, “Do not listen to this fool. Go home. Go home.”
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