A loud murmur of assent went round the benches when the speaker sat down, and Athenæus felt that he had made but small way with his audience.
Finding his theology and philosophy but ill received, Athenæus bethought him of what seemed a more hopeful method of proselytizing. Could not a specially powerful attraction be found in the festival of Dionysus, the wine-god? Vintage feasts, he reflected, are common to every country where wine is produced, and it would not be difficult to ingraft the Greek characteristics on a celebration to which the Jews were already accustomed. Some of the less scrupulous might be tempted to take part in such a festival, a beginning would be made, and more would follow in due time. How the scheme prospered will be told in the next chapter.
CHAPTER VIII.
SHALLUM THE WINE-SELLER.
“Things are growing worse and worse; only three customers yesterday, and not a single one to-day, though it must be at least an hour past noon. One would think that all the world had become Nazarites. Then, though there is next to nothing coming in, there is no stop to the going out. First comes the rascally tax-gatherer, and squeezes one as dry as a grape-skin in a press. And if, by chance, there happens to be a drop left, some snuffling priest is sure to turn up, and talk about one’s duty as a patriot and a Jew till he drags the last shekel out of one.”
The speaker was one Shallum, a Benjamite, who kept a little wine-shop in the Lower City. When he had finished his grumble, he thrust his hand into an empty wine-jar, drew from it a little leathern bag, untied the string which was round the neck, poured out the scanty contents on the counter and counted them. He knew the amount perfectly well, for he [pg 102]had gone through the counting process at least ten times before that day. But when a man is desperately anxious to make two ends meet, he will measure them again and again, though he may know exactly by how much they are too short.
“Twelve shekels and ten annas! And old Nahum will be here to-morrow, asking for his thirty shekels!”
Nahum was a Lebanon wine-grower, whose long-suffering had been already tried to the utmost by the delays of the impecunious Shallum.
At this moment his meditations were interrupted by the entrance of two visitors, who had been standing, listening and watching outside the door. They were traders in a small way, who had migrated from Joppa when they heard that Greek wares were becoming the fashion in Jerusalem.