The quenchless light

by Agnes C. Laut

The record of Thecla must now jump forward some twenty years.

The Roman Road on two sides of a square from Ephesus east to Antioch and from Antioch south to Jerusalem to this day has legends of what happened to her in these years. Some said she had escaped with the Lady Trefina dressed as a page boy. Others said she had joined Paul and Timothy at Derbe and Lystra. Others knew she had lived hidden in caves between Antioch and Daphne Gardens. About all that is authentic that can be gathered of this period is that the Lady Trefina adopted her in place of the dead daughter and left her a substantial fortune. Paul had gone to Rome, where Nero had beheaded him when he could not crucify a Roman citizen. Peter had come up from Babylon to take Paul’s place in Rome, hurrying over the same Roman Road from the Desert of the East and had been crucified in Rome, because he was not a Roman citizen. Nero, himself, had suicided. From Antioch to Damascus and Jerusalem, the Roman Road was now yearly packed with Imperial troops, for Titus, the Emperor Vespasian’s son, had taken the Holy City, and, except for the Herod Towers on the west, left not a stone standing of the Jewish capital. The Christian Sect, though hated by the Jews, had been driven by the war from Antioch to Ephesus, where they gathered strength each day; and in an era of universal persecution and massacre, Thecla was forgotten. She was now only one of countless martyrs to a despised faith; and the faith suffered less on the Roman Road than in the Imperial City or Judea, because these Greek trade cities of Asia Minor had been granted independent laws, provided they kept fealty to Rome. The only danger to them was the Emperor worship, which Rome had set up in every Greek temple—statues of Roman conquerors, side by side with Greek deities for worship and homage to unify the Empire. Some philosophers declared openly this was the worship of the Beast foretold in prophecy of Greek sibyl and Hebrew seer. Others said the name in whispers and bided their time for Rome’s fall from a pinnacle of intoxicated power.

Again it was the month of September. Grapes hung heavy on the vineyards lining the road. The olive groves alone shone brilliant green in the drought. The cactus hedges stood withered and gaunt, like ragged ghosts flinging wild arms out in the blue haze of late summer. On the broad Roman Road the dust was a yellow curse to man and beast, but at dusk and dawn it was a crimson glory against an amber skyline.

Two travelers coming up from Jerusalem to Antioch had been driven off their course by the press of troops going back to Rome after the fall of Jerusalem. One was mounted on a huge, grizzled camel in trappings of silver, with tassels and buckles of brass in the Roman eagle; but he was no Roman. He was a Greek Hebrew, clad all in white, with a sword to the gold cord round his neck, and he wore the long flowing white beard of philosopher, or doctor of the laws. The other rode a jaded horse and was a younger man, near the thirties or forties in age, pure Greek, with blue eyes and golden curled hair cut short to his neck. He, too, was clad in white cloak with sword scabbard hanging from the gold cord round his neck; and a pack of sumptuary mules and camels in charge of servants followed behind with tents and baggage. Failing to make way through the press of Roman legions on the road to Damascus, the travelers had skirted off to the left down by the sea path; but there, too, their progress was impeded by the departing troops. At Cæsarea, they could get quarters in neither khan nor inn, and had to camp outside the city wall. When they sought to take ship for Ephesus, they found decks and holds crammed, yes, crammed with the returning victorious legions; and the plunder every man carried was a king’s ransom. There were priceless Damascus hangings woven in gold thread taken from the Temple. Some of the soldiers had cast off their hot metal armor and swathed themselves in these gorgeous curtains and tapestries, and reeled sodden drunk from the stone quay back and forward to the taverns. Others carried plunder of gold coin and gold ornaments rifled from the houses of the destroyed city openly in pouches round their waist, and could be seen in the port streets dicing their gold away at a cheaper rate than a pound of gold for a grain of wheat, or an ounce of silver for a roll of goat’s cheese; and as it was the wine press season in Palestine and the new wine was heady and raw, the intoxicated soldiers drank more freely of the wine than the water, which had been poisoned by the bodies of the dead thrown into wells and pools. Men could be seen draining a deep tankard at one quaff, then throwing away the gold or silver cup, which came from the Temple, and stretching themselves out to sleep off their debauch, by roadside or in city gutter.

The two travelers stood on the broad breakwater, that ran out in a circle to the sea, and watched the captive Hebrews embarking for Rome. There were seven hundred, all over seventeen in years and under thirty—in the prime of manhood’s beauty, to grace the Triumph in the Imperial City. All other captives, men, women, children, were being sold into slavery to the Arabs and Egyptians for less than the price of a dog. A few thousand older than thirty were being kept for the gladiatorial combats that nightly entertained the Roman Legions in the hippodrome. Some women and aged men—it is recorded about two thousand—who could not bring a price as slaves—were being reserved to be thrown to the wild beasts between the acts of the gladiatorial fights.

The two Greek travelers stood watching the embarkation from the quay. Suddenly there was a great outcry of “Make way—make way—for King Agrippa”; and the last of the Herod line—a man in middle age—passed down the gangway, bent, broken, and gray of hair on his brow. He was accompanied by the Princess Bernice in litter chair or palanquin, but little did her pale face show the regal pride of the Herods, who had ruled Judea for a century. She lay back in her chair indifferent to the remarks of the gaping loungers, weary of life, with the cold hardness in her dark-ringed black eyes of one who has lost the prize and slain all hope in her soul.

The young Greek onlooker gave a start forward. The older bearded man laid a hand on his arm.

“Let the dead bury their dead—my Onesimus! If souls refuse rebirth into a new life and will remain in their own dungeons, they can but die! New wine in new bottles, son; for the new wine has burst the old bottles in the glad wine of a new life for the ages to come.”

It was impossible to get passage by sea to Ephesus; so the next morning, they resumed their journey along the sea road toward Antioch. It is unnecessary to trace the progress forward of that journey. Every stopping place was sacred to the past and to the future for all time—Tyre and Sidon and Carmel, whose glories had departed with memories of Elijah and Jonah and Solomon and Christ; then Seleucia, the port leading through mountain pass to Antioch; but here, while war had not left desolation, so many of the Roman officers had come up to pass the winter in rest and pleasure that the Greek travelers were again forced to camp outside the city walls and send their beasts and servants into one of the public khans, where they would have shelter when the autumn rains broke.

The desert and mountain clans had done as they are doing to-day and have done since time began—as the snows and rains of the upper mountains began to fall, they had driven their herds down to the plains to pasture for the winter or find sale to the Roman buyers. A yellow tent city of woven camels’ hair dotted the plains outside the city walls of white marble and gray stone.