“I was always out of place in my school,” Tabari recalled. “There was one swine from Leeds who used to knock me down eight times running in boxing, then say with his ruddy sportsmanship, ‘You fought the good fight, Tabari.’ Under me breath I used to mutter an old Arab curse, ‘I hope, you bloody barstard, you break every tooth in your head but one.’ Between those two concepts there’s quite a difference.”
“Why didn’t the Greek ideal catch hold in these parts?” Cullinane asked.
“For the same reasons it wasn’t acceptable in Rome,” Tabari explained. “It’s fun to chase after a running man, but it’s more fun to sit in a comfortable stadium and watch lions chase him. The Greeks and the English developed sports. The Romans and the Americans degenerated them into spectacles. And the Arabs and Jews said to hell with the whole silly mess.”
“But the sense of fair play, extended truce, that comes from games. We all need that,” Eliav said. “From what experience will we in this part of the world learn those lessons?”
“ ‘He kicked me in the back when I wasn’t looking,’ ” Tabari quoted from the motto of his family, “ ‘so I kicked him in the face, twice, when he was.’ ”
“How do you explain the big difference between Old Testament and New on these matters?” Cullinane asked. “I can remember dozens of quotes from St. Paul on athletics.”
“Could only have been the Greek influence,” Eliav said. “Paul attended the great games at Antioch. He speaks constantly of wrestling and running and gaining the prize. It was from him that Christians gained their idea of the moral life as a struggle against competitors, whereas we Jews abhorred the idea of competition in such fields. From the over-all point of view, I suppose the Christians were right.”
Cullinane tried to recite a passage from St. Paul dealing with athletes, but he bogged down and went to his office for a Bible, where in Corinthians he found the words which had been hammered into him as a boy: “ ‘Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.’ ” He closed the book and asked, “Isn’t that the sportsman’s ideal, fight to win but control yourself in doing so?”
“I’m rather pleased these days,” Eliav said, “when I see Jewish men and women competing in the Olympic games. Very late we’re discovering that in these matters the Greeks were right.”
“Now if the Arabs will do the same,” Tabari added, “and if we’ll both go the rest of the way and indoctrinate ourselves in the British attitude toward fair play when the game’s over, we might pick up where the Greeks left us more than two thousand years ago.” Through the glasses he studied the distant racers and reported, “The triangular sail’s far out in front, proving that St. Paul was right. In every race there can be only one winner. The question is what filthy tricks can you play on the other fellow, without being caught, to make sure he loses?”
• • •
The Ptolemais to which Gymnasiarch Tarphon led his runners in that gracious autumn of 167 B.C.E. bore no resemblance to the ancient Akka of the Egyptians or to the Accho of the Phoenicians. Those settlements had huddled inland upon a mound overlooking the Belus River, but Ptolemais, one of many cities throughout Asia Minor encouraged by the forward-looking Antiochus Epiphanes, stood boldly upon a peninsula jutting out into the sea, while the hinterland reached back to encompass the older site as well. Within an ambulating wall Ptolemais stood as one of the subtlest political inventions of man, a free Greek city-state with its own assembly, its right to mint its own coinage and its own particular system of government with elected officials subservient to Antioch and Antiochus only in matters of foreign policy and the higher reaches of religion. Along the waterfront it contained a noble theater built of marble, where the tragedies of Aeschylus and Euripides were seen and where the comedies of Aristophanes were offered to amuse the mob. Exquisite temples dotted the city, one to Antiochus Epiphanes but many to the local gods like Baal, and there were baths dedicated to Aphrodite. Factories produced glassware that would enchant all subsequent generations who loved beauty; silver from Asia and gold from Africa were worked into local jewelry that was famous as far away as Spain.
To explain in one instant the superiority of a true city-state, as compared to a town like Makor, which was ruled from Antioch, Tarphon took his runners to a bench-lined square where a tall, white-bearded Negro from Nubia stood majestically on a podium, arguing with any who cared to contest his intelligence. “He’s a sophist,” the gymnasiarch whispered to his athletes. “Listen.”
Tarphon stepped forth from the crowd and said, “Sir, I hold the earth is flat.”
“It must be round,” the dark sophist replied, and in a series of brilliant and logical deductions the former slave, trained in Athens, proved to any sensible man that the earth must be round. He cited Aristotle, travelers to Arabia, the common sense of men who could see the ocean and the flight of birds. When he paused for breath, Tarphon whispered to Menelaus, “Tell him it’s round.” And Menelaus did so, whereupon the sophist cast his luminous eyes at the youth and said, “Hold now! How in reason could the earth be round?” And one by one he demolished his own former arguments, calling again upon Aristotle and common sense to refute the idea that a thing so essential to life as the earth could be round, allowing men to fall off.
“Then it must stand on end,” a listener from Egypt suggested, and this proposition the sophist demolished with witty evidence until all had to confess that they were listening to a brilliant man whose white beard and black skin lent dignity to their city.
Ptolemais in those days contained some sixty thousand people, including businessmen from Rome, who sent secret reports back to their senate, and as the young athletes from Makor watched these rich and varied persons at their work they came to understand how precious Greek citizenship could be and what a treasure they would gain for themselves could they become citizens, too. Of the sixty thousand, only five thousand were citizens, some thirty thousand were slaves, and the remaining twenty-five thousand were residents possessing no rights of voting or claims to consideration by the city-state. Jews fell mostly into the latter category, but as Tarphon explained to Menelaus, “This is the essential reason why it’s prudent for you to visit the doctor. For if you win at Antioch, you will be made a full citizen of Ptolemais. Only citizens can compete in the Olympics at Greece.”
“Are you a citizen?” Menelaus asked.
“I won my citizenship in the wrestling arena,” Tarphon said with visible pride.
“I shall be a citizen of this city,” the youth vowed and he asked the gymnasiarch to lead him to the doctor.
In a side street, not far from the theater, an Egyptian doctor accepted the two strangers, listened as Tarphon explained, then said, “Gymnasiarch, now you shall go, for this must be a matter between the boy and me.” Tarphon nodded, gripped his protégé by the shoulder and whispered, “This is the path to citizenship,” and he was gone.
As soon as the door closed the Egyptian startled Menelaus by ripping aside a curtain to disclose the marble statue of an athlete, naked and powerful. Grabbing a knife the doctor took the statue’s penis in his left hand and pretended to slice it with four sharp, deep cuts, crying, “This is what we do.” He was watching not the statue but the patient and saw with satisfaction that although Menelaus flinched, and blood left his face, he did not look away but kept watching the marble penis so as to judge whether he could bear the pain. Satisfied that he could, he bit his lip and waited. “Under this pain,” the doctor explained, “a Jew older than you, from Jaffa, committed suicide.”
“He was not seeking the prize I seek,” Menelaus retorted, whereupon the E
gyptian moved swiftly at him with the knife, seeking to terrify him, but the young Jew did not flinch.
“I think you are ready,” the doctor said, “and you may scream as much as you will, for it will exhaust the pain.” And he made ready a table upon which the young man would lie, and called three slaves to hold him.
When Tarphon received satisfactory reports from Makor stating that the disobedient Jewish family had been executed and that any uneasiness resulting therefrom had subsided, and when the Egyptian doctor assured him that Menelaus had been unusually courageous and would soon mend, he assembled the rest of his team and led them home, where they were received in triumph, but it was soon noticed that Menelaus, the Jew, was not among them, and this, coming so soon after the executions, caused comment which the gymnasiarch allayed by announcing that a great honor had come to Makor: “Our young champion Menelaus has been invited to the imperial games at Antioch.” When the crowd stopped cheering he added, “He’s training in Ptolemais, but he will soon be home.”
He took three of the young men to the palace, where Melissa had a feast prepared for them, and there he announced that the young man Nicanor, who had triumphed over him in the race to Ptolemais, would henceforth be permitted to wear the town’s uniform, and ceremoniously he handed the young Phoenician the coveted garb. Melissa kissed the youth and then Tarphon said that he was going to the gymnasium, where he asked his slave to fetch Jehubabel.
The meeting was unpleasant. Tarphon began by explaining to the Jewish leader that in the case of the Paltiel family his hands had been tied. During his absence in Ptolemais the orders had come from Antiochus Epiphanes, and since he had not been able to return to Makor in time … Jehubabel looked at him with disgust, and this irritated Tarphon, who reminded him, “If I had been here I might have arrested you, too, for you must have been involved in this thing.” But Jehubabel, a timorous man in the beginning, was no longer to be frightened, and Tarphon, seeing this, tried to regain his friendship by other means, for the governor knew that if there was to be open enmity between them the control of Makor might become difficult. “Let’s forget Paltiel,” he suggested. “The important news is your son. He performed brilliantly. Wrestled with the best and defeated them all.” He pointed his finger at the pudgy Jew as if he were prophesying: “One day that boy will stand in the victor’s circle at Olympia.”
Jehubabel looked at Tarphon as if the latter were an imbecile, and he began to say what folly it was for the leader of a people to take pride in standing naked before them, as if athletic ability had any bearing on integrity; but instead he launched into an attack on Tarphon’s wife: “How can you presume to govern when you can’t control your own wife?”
Tarphon was stunned. “What do you mean?”
“My son. Your wife.” The round-faced Jew was scarcely intelligible, but Tarphon guessed that Jehubabel must have placed some ugly interpretation on a matter with which he was not acquainted.
“What has happened between your son and Melissa?” he asked.
“He’s in your house. At the gate she kissed him while you were watching. Have you no shame?”
Governor Tarphon looked down at his folded hands. How could one explain anything civilized to the Jews? All during his years in Athens, Tarphon had moved from one principal home to the next, where beautiful women patronized promising young men and suffered no compromise in doing so. Sensible Greek matrons knew how to conduct themselves, and Tarphon had found that one of the finest rewards of his marriage was the spacious room in which his beautiful wife met with young men of varied accomplishments and encouraged them to further attainment; it was this interchange of philosophy and art and politics that sustained life, and Tarphon pitied the narrow-minded Jew who interpreted the process otherwise.
“You should guard your wife,” Jehubabel warned. “Like a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout is a fair woman without discretion.”
“What are you trying to say?” Tarphon asked in some exasperation.
“A man whose wife is a whore, what peace can he know?”
“Get away from here!” Tarphon cried, rushing from his chair to push the dumpy Jew from his room. He had tried, the record would prove how desperately he had tried, to conciliate Jehubabel, but it was now obvious that there could be no fruitful discussion between them. When he had Jehubabel at the door he warned, “The law will be enforced. And when we find the next circumcised child, you too will die. For you shared in the guilt of Paltiel.”
He shoved his guest through the door, but this placed Jehubabel under the statue of Antiochus, and with a courage new to him Jehubabel said scornfully, using the joke of the Jews, “Antiochus Epimanes,” meaning the fool, after which he spit upon the discus thrower, crying, “This vanity will perish,” and he left the gymnasium.
That evening Tarphon repeated the conversation for Melissa, and she was distressed that the Jew had made such a fool of himself. That he had misunderstood her actions she was willing to forgive, for Greek ways must seem strange to austere Jews, but she could not understand his failure to appreciate his own son. “In Menelaus he has the finest youth in Makor, but he seems determined to crush his spirit. Why can’t he simply accept the wonderful thing the gods have given him? And not see him as a criminal?”
She became so agitated that she insisted upon talking with Jehubabel, there and then, but Tarphon refused to argue any further with the Jew; so exercising her freedom as a Greek woman she summoned two of her slaves, who bore small lamps into the street, and thus she made her way to the home of Jehubabel, surprising him by insisting upon coming inside and sitting like a familiar neighbor on one of the kitchen chairs.
“Jehubabel,” she began in the Koine, “I am distressed at the enmity which has grown up between you and Menelaus.”
The Jew thought: She has ensnared my son, and now she wishes to entrap me. But for what purpose?
“And I am even more distressed that you have opposed my husband. Truly, Tarphon is the best friend you Jews could have. He has tried to soften every law.”
The Jew thought: Ah! There’s some new edict which Tarphon is afraid to discuss with me face-to-face. He’s sent his wife to trick me.
“My husband and Menelaus have both told me what you think of me. Believe me, Jehubabel, you are wrong. I have tried to help Tarphon bring Makor a good government and I have tried to show your son the greatness of our empire. But I am not important. Menelaus is. Don’t you realize what a magnificent son you have? That he could one day be governor of this district?”
Jehubabel drew back from this tempting woman. Now he could understand why Benjamin had fallen victim to her allurements: she was graceful and desirable and it was appalling that such a woman should talk of empire and the education of young men.
“Unless you work with us,” she was saying, “we’ll have difficult times in Makor. Next week there’s to be another search. For the circumcised ones.”
Jehubabel heard no more of what she had to say. He could think only of the baker Zattu and his wife Anat. With them he had conspired to break the law and if they were apprehended it was certain that this time he too would be executed. It seemed to him that Melissa was speaking of the trivial manipulation of society—if the Jews behaved, a boy like Benjamin might one day become governor—while Jehubabel was being driven to consider the ultimate relationship of the chosen people with YHWH. In his moral arrogance he could not understand that Melissa was speaking of neither politics nor society but of something quite different: the hungry yearning felt by many Greeks for a stern moral structure to accompany their exquisite sense of artistic and philosophic beauty. “Don’t you suppose we’re ashamed of the flayings?” she asked. To his deaf ears she made an impassioned plea for harmony between Jew and Greek, but Jehubabel now saw the latter merely as an oppressor of savage malignity; she pleaded with him for a further temporizing with Antiochus IV and his aspiring plan to Hellenize the eastern world, but for the Jew there was only Epiphanes, the would-be god who slaughtered infant
boys. She tried to depict the world that could result when present religious irrationalities were controlled, but he would not hear. She spoke of a Greece that was reaching out to encompass the world, but he thought of a Judaism that was retreating within itself, seeking to purify itself for the tests ahead. The time for dialogue between Hellenism and Judaism had passed; briefly there had been a chance that between intellectual Greeks and moralistic Jews some kind of fruitful alliance might be achieved, with the lyric insights of the former uniting with the rugged power of the latter to create some new and vital synthesis, but the Greeks had behaved so stupidly and the Jews so stubbornly that now the rupture was beyond repair. Two hundred years from this night, not far from this very spot, Hellenism still searching would discover a more pliable religion arising in Galilee, and that union of philosophical Greek and Christian Jew would provide a spark which would ignite the world. Unaware that this was to happen, Melissa went sadly home, satisfied that in her generation the attempt would accomplish nothing.
When she was gone Jehubabel did not hesitate. He sent his wife to summon the leaders of the Jewish community, including the baker Zattu, and when they were assembled in his kitchen he said, “Next week there will be an inspection of all male babies.” Zattu paled, but he had known that sooner or later this moment must come, so he was prepared for it, but he looked to the older men for guidance, and Jehubabel was ready. He said, “We must leave Makor.”
“For where?” Zattu asked.
“The swamps. The mountains.”
“Can we live there?” the baker asked.
“Can we live here?” Jehubabel countered.
There was earnest discussion of how the Jews might survive outside the town, and all were apprehensive until Jehubabel reminded them, “For centuries our people lived in that manner, and we can do so again.”
“But we will be so few,” Zattu argued, even though it was he who risked the sentence of death.
The Source: A Novel Page 50
