It was the evening of September 24, in Iconium. Lystra and Derbe lay only a few hours south, and there, by the curious trick Fate has of interweaving lives, was the little Phyrygian lad, Onesimus, with his father’s Damascus caravans, beating southward for Damascus where he was first captured by the robber bands of Galilee and began his life of slavery, which took him first to Cæsarea, then to Rome, then seven years later, back over this very road where he rescued victims from crime as he had been rescued by Paul in Rome.
The city was thronged. Caravans returning from Ephesus had money to spend. Travelers from the Asian Desert going on to Ephesus wandered dazed amid the booths and shops, famed for their Tyrian purple damasks and gold-thread curtains and rugs of goat hair silky as finest fur. The plaza was a living mass of humanity clothed in brightest colors milling in endless circlings round the musicians under the central trees, who were paid by the city to give free entertainment to all visitors. The balconies of houses overhanging the city square began to open shutters; and dark eyes were seen above answering lovers’ signals below; but on the sill of one deep casement sat a girl alone. A rabble had gathered round a speaker in the city square. The speaker was short of stature, with thighs that had been lamed in war or accident, but he was clad in the black silk cloak of a man of distinction, and though his receding hair showed premature care, his forehead reflected the white light of an æsthetic; and as he declaimed, his eyes lighted up with a strange fire of faith. Near the speaker lounged a richly dressed, stout, prosperous Greek of the merchant class. He was not listening. He was watching with amused cynicism the changing concentrated expression of the girl’s intent face in the balcony above. The man twisted at the great emerald signet ring on his little finger. He clanked the sword dangling in its jeweled scabbard against the heel of his red morocco high boots. He stuck his thumbs in the gold sash belting his sky-blue silk jacket. Then he stroked his oiled curls projecting from the gold-and-blue turban cap. The girl’s eyes never once glanced his way. They were riveted as on a life and death messenger towards the little deformed orator round whom larger crowds were now pressing.
The stout, middle-aged Greek dandy flushed angrily and stepped sharply up to the house door below the balcony. He lifted the brass knocker and rapped loudly. The knocker was a great Roman eagle. The door was opened by a middle-aged woman, clad in rich purple silk, and he was led to an inner court open to the sky in the middle of the house. A fountain played in the center of the court, and over the railing of the stone stairs leading to the chambers off the upper balcony clung vines and blooming flowers scenting the night air.
“How now, my son, Thamyris?” smiled the middle-aged woman, showing teeth white as pearls between painted lips, and shaking the black jeweled pendants in her ears so they seemed part of the curls framing her ivory face.
“Not son—yet,” answered the man irritably, “unless your daughter Thecla has eyes for her lover rather than that Jewish babbler ranting in the square there.”
“A pest on these wandering synagogue ranters, who upset our daughters’ beliefs in the old gods.” The woman’s smile was hard as marble. “She has not moved from that window for three nights since the fellow strayed into Iconium and began speaking in the square! I can do nothing with her. I like not her silence, Thamyris! I would she stormed; but she sits silent as stone—listening, listening to that babbler! Who is he? A girl never knows herself till a man teaches her what love is. Can’t you get rid of him?” And the hard laugh of the girl’s mother had a sinister knowledge that was not of youth, as she shot a glance at the middle-aged man, which he read without words. “I want my daughter married. She is eighteen summers this night. She will marry as I bid her, or go to the temple gods and take her fate. I will have no daughter of eighteen summers betraying my years.”
The man laughed; but he laughed with angry red flush. He flung himself down on the bench. “And yet, my Mother, eighteen summers wed to fifty make not for peace to the man unless the maid come willingly. You ask—who is he? I know not, except that he has changed his name from Saul to Paul, follows the new sect of that Christus crucified in Jerusalem and boasts he is a Roman citizen, else we could have him crucified, too, for creating disorder by blaspheming against Greek gods. All I know is—he is a fool. When he came here first and worked miracles of healing, the people would have offered sacrifices to him as to a god—he could have grown rich from the gifts of one caravan. I would have pushed him, myself, for the profit in it, if he hadn’t played the fool and backed away from the rabble’s worship and gifts; but when the people were ready to crown him with garlands and make offerings of beasts and jewels and gold, he had to cry out he was only a man and stop them; and now the rabble are ready to stone him as a pious fraud. I could leave him to the rabble but I fear the damage is done—he has chilled Thecla’s love for me; and I’ll have no unwilling bride.”
“Can’t you get rid of him?” insistently repeated the mother.
“I’ll try. I can lodge a complaint and have him imprisoned for causing disorder; but he is Roman citizen—more than that, I dare not do—”
“More than that I will do,” added the mother harshly. “Unless she gives you your word this night, I turn her from my door into the streets. There you can seize her and carry her to your own house, Thamyris; or the city magistrate will seize her for wandering the streets without the badge of a courtesan on her forehead and have her burned at the faggots. Little headstrong fool! Does she think to change our Greek customs for a puny whim? I have given her dower to make a princess rich; and you have given her gifts of an empress; and she sits listening to that beggarly babbler, whom no one knows, stone to her blood mother’s commands and cold as a Venus in snow to her lover. Go to her! Plead not! Command! Do as you will! My ears are deaf! A girl denying her lover in Iconium would last long as a gazelle baited by hounds—Pah!”