Scene 1
The Castle on Zion. Alexandra’s Apartments. Alexandra. Sameas.
Alexandra.
You know it now.
Sameas.
It gives me no surprise.
No, in a Herod nothing gives surprise
Who once as stripling on the Sanhedrim
Declared a war: who with his gleaming weapon
Strode up before his judge and dropped the hint
That he himself was Headsman and the Headsman
Upon himself no sentence executes,
He may as man—Ha, I can see him now
As, front to front opposing the High Priest,
He leaned against a column ’mid a ring
Of his hired bravos, who in robber-hunting
Turned robber too—strange metamorphosis!
And took our total tally, head for head,
As though he stood before a thistle patch
And summed in mind a way to weed it clean.
Alex.
Yes, yes, that was an hour of hours for him,
A moment he may proudly call to mind.
A boyish madcap, scarce in his twentieth year,
He stands arraigned before the Sanhedrim,
Because in stark presumptuous sacrilege
He’d arrogated violence on the law;
Because his hand unsanctioned executed
A death-decree you had not yet pronounced.
The dead man’s widow, as he treads the threshold,
Counters him with her curse: within there sits
All in Jerusalem that’s old and grey.
But since he comes not sackclothed, and no ashes
Bestrew his head, you get a sag in the heart:
You think no more with punishment to greet him,
You think no more with threatenings to tame him!
You say him naught, he laughs you off and goes.
Sameas.
I spoke!
Alex.
Yes, when too late!
Sameas.
And had I done it
Before that moment it had been too soon.
Through reverence for the High Priest I was silent.
He was the eldest and the youngest I.
Alex.
No matter. Had you courage at that moment
To prove you held the simple heart of duty
The larger mood would not be urgent now.
Then look to’t well if you—Ho, ho! I see
Another loophole yet remains if you
Scarce relish combat with him, and in truth
’Twere risky play. Best ’ware him. So you’ll enter
For a mild bout with lions and with tigers
In this brute-battle that he now ordains.
Sameas.
What mean these words?
Alex.
You know the fighting-games
Of Rome? What, no?
Sameas.
Thank God I know them not.
I count it for no jot of gain to know
About the heathen but what Moses tells us.
Down go my eyelids every single time
I see a Roman soldier cross my path,
And then I bless my father in his grave
That he ne’er gave me tutoring in their tongue.
Alex.
And so you do not know that savage beasts
Are shipped by them from Africa to Rome
In hundreds?
Sameas.
No indeed, I know it not.
Alex.
Not know that there in a stone-built arena
They drive them at each other, and that slaves
Are hounded on them, who for life or death
Must face them in the fight, and they the while
Circled around upon high benches sit
All jubilant when wounds of death are gaping
And when the red blood spurts on sprinkled sand?
Sameas.
Such things the wildest fancy of my dreaming
Ne’er showed me; but it joys my very soul
If such they do. It fits the breed o’ them!
(With raised hands.) Lord, Thou art great; and though Thy will vouchsafe
The heathen life, he must requite the gift
By payment to Thee of a gruesome tribute.
Thou dost chastise him as he uses others.
Such games I could well see!
Alex.
Your wish will find
Fruition soon as Herod comes again.
He plans to introduce them.
Sameas.
Never, never!
Alex.
That’s what I said to you. Why not? We have
Lions enough for sure. The mountain herd
Will be rejoiced to see their tale diminished
By saving many kine and many calves.[6]
Sameas.
To raise no other point, where would he find
The fighters? In our folk there are no slaves
Bound to his beck and call for life or death.
Alex.
The first I see before me.
Sameas.
What?
Alex.
For sure!
You will, as now, twist up your angry face,
Forget yourself, perhaps, and clench the fists,
Set eyes at rolling and the teeth at gnashing
If spared to witness that high day on which,
August, as Solomon of yore the Temple,
He consecrates the heathenish arena.
This will not slip his eyes, and for reward
He passes you a signal that you enter
And show to the assembled folk your powers
When you stand face to face against a lion
Who’d been whole days before made sharp with hunger.
But since among our folk there’s lack of slaves,
The death-devoted criminals must needs
Supply their place; and who’s more death-devoted
Than he who openly defies the King?
Sameas.
He may——
Alex.
Dispel your doubts! It would go ill
If he should lose his head before his time.
There would be projects nipped along with him
That Pompey, who with brazen heathendom
Dared the approach unto the Holy of Holies,
Himself might——
Sameas (breaking out).
Antony, if thou’lt but grip him;
A whole year’s space I vow I will not curse thee!
And if thou dost it not—then good, we’re ready!
Alex.
He says that if our folk were not ordained
To mix with others, then had we this earth-ball
From God received for our sole dwelling-portion.
Sameas.
He says so?
Alex.
But since Fate has other will
There rises need the dam-walls to unbarrier
Which long have shut us, like a stagnant mere
Locked from the sea, away from other peoples,
And there’s no other method but that we
In use and custom mould us to their fashion.
Sameas.
In use and—(to Heaven) Lord, if I break not in raving
Send me Thy sign how such a churl shall die,
Sign of some death which every other death
Sucks of its horrors, and proclaim to me
That it is Herod for whose sake ’tis done.
Alex.
Be you then the Death-Angel?
Sameas.
Or for him
Or for myself! I swear’t! Can I not hinder
This ghastly plan, my impotence I’ll punish
With murder of myself (with a gesture towards his breast) ere that day comes,
The day that he shall first befleck with mire.
There is a binding oath that a misdeed
Will wring from me if for a hero-deed
I prove unfit. Who ever swore a greater?
Alex.
Good! But forget not this; if your own arm
Be over-weak to dash your foemen downwards,
A stranger’s arm must not then be contemned.
Sameas.
And such a stranger?
Alex.
You may arm with ease.
Sameas.
Speak plainer language!
Alex.
Who created Herod
A King?
Sameas.
Why, Antony; who otherwise?
Alex.
And wherefore did it?
Sameas.
While it pleased him so;
Perhaps, too, just because it pleased not us.
When had a heathen ever better grounds?
Alex.
And, further, what maintains him on the throne?
Sameas.
Not the folk’s blessing! Maybe ’tis its curse.
Who can say that?
Alex.
I! Nothing but his trick
Of sending every year ere reckoning-day
The tax that we are forced to pay the Romans,
Ay, and the same of his own will to double
If some new war has broken into blaze.
The Roman wants our gold and nothing more,
He leaves to us our Faith, he leaves our God,
Would even help to do Him reverence,
And, niched with Jupiter and Ops and Isis,
Grant Him a corner in the Capitol
That has been let lie vacant till to-day
If only He, as they, were made of stone.
Sameas.
If it be so, alas! and it is so,
What have you then to hope of Antony?
In this regard, yourself has said it, Herod
Yields each punctilious tittle. Why, I’ve seen
The tribute-panniers carried. One mule broke
His backbone ere it reached the city-gate.
For every drop of blood within his veins
He renders up to him an ounce of gold.[7]
Think you on your account he’ll send it back?
Alex.
’Twere bootless, if I steered my cause myself,
But Cleopatra does the deed for me,
And, so I hope, will Mariamne too.
Amazed? Fail not my meaning. Not in person;
In such a case she’d rather turn on me.
But through her picture, and not even through that,
No, through another close resembling her.
For as a wild wood harbours not alone
The lion, but his foe as well, the tiger,
So in the hot-bed of this Roman’s heart
Ennests itself a wormy brood of passions
Wrestling each other for the dominant place.
And thus, if Herod builds upon the first
I build upon the second, and I think
That mine’s a lustier wrestler than its fellow.
Sameas.
You are——
Alex.
No Hyrcan, tho’ I be his daughter.
But, lest you should misprise what I have done,
I am not Mariamne either. If,
To pave his way towards her, Antony
Destroys the man that has her in possession,
She still is mistress of herself and can
Enwrap her in eternal widow-weeds.
But this I hold for certain, that by now
He’s laid his hand on sword and if not yet
He’s drawn it, one sole point of pause detains him
That this luck-minion among soldiers, Herod,
Stands good to Romans for the iron ring
That all things here with us together clamps.
But once you furnish him with opposite proof,
Rouse insurrection, stir the flaccid peace,
And he will draw’t.
Sameas.
I’ll furnish easy proof!
The folk’s already struck him dead in thought,
They rumour that——
Alex.
Impress your seal thereon!
Then swiftly open his last testament;
You know the contents now, the fighting-games
Stand at the head, and then when every man
Believes him shortened of a hundred stripes
Through Herod’s death, or of the torture-cross,
Then each believes what he can dare believe.
For there are things that loom o’er Israel
Will wring from many a heart in its despair
The wish of agony that the Red Sea
Had gulfed the whole folk deep into its maw
And the twelve holy Tribes and Moses first.
Sameas.
I go, and ere the midday comes——
Alex.
I know
What you can work if you but take the sack-cloth
And thread the lanes with wailing-cry of “woe!”
As were your forebear Jonah here again.
And you will find there’s service in the knack
Of paying a chance visit to the Fisher
And sharing Goodman Gaffer’s bite and sup
From what he grants himself since no one buys it.
Sameas.
And you will find that all we Pharisees
Have not forgot the stigma that we suffered,
As you would seem to reckon. Hear then now
What only through the deed was meant to reach you—
We have been sworn against him long ere now,
We’ve dug our burrows under all Judaea,
And in Jerusalem, that you may see
How sure the count we have upon the folk,
There’s even a blind adherent to our band!
Alex.
What boots he?
Sameas.
Naught. He knows as much himself,
But he’s so crammed with hate, so grim with grudge,
That he’ll be joined with us in our emprise
And rather perish if it should miscarry
Than drag his life in such a world as this.
I have a notion that’s a promising sign!
[Exit.