Presently the Greek took the tesseræ and threw them. The Roman glanced at the numbers up and smiled a little. The Greek scowled.
"The old defeat," he muttered. "Fortune perches on the standards of Rome even in a game of dice. Oh, well, we have had our day!"
The Roman stowed away the sesterces in a wallet and hung it again inside his tunic.
"Yes, you have had your day," he replied. "Marathon, Thermopylæ and Platæa—in my philosophy you can afford to lose a game of dice to a wolf-suckled Roman!"
The Greek sat still with his chin upon his breast, and the Roman, getting upon his feet, scrutinized the sluggish group of on-lookers.
His interest was not idle curiosity in the men. Such as they were to be seen cumbering the markets and streets of Jerusalem by day or by night throughout the year. They were types of that which the world calls the rabble—at once a strength and a destruction, a creature or a master, as the inclination of its manipulators is or as the call of the situation may be. Individually, it has a mind; collectively, it has not; at all times it is a thing of great potentialities overworked, and of great needs habitually ignored. That the man in scarlet should scan each one of these, as one appraises another's worth in drachmæ, was a natural proceeding, old as the impulse in the shrewd to prey upon the unwary. Out of this or that one, perhaps he could turn an odd denarius at another game of dice.
But when he looked reflectively at the west, where the broad brow of the hills was outlined against a great radiance, he calculated on the hour of remaining daylight and the distance from that point to another in Bezetha far across Jerusalem, and felt of his wallet.
It was bulky enough for one day's winnings, and entirely too bulky to be lost to some of the criminals or vagrants that would walk the night. With a motion of his hand he saluted the defeated Greek and the gaping group which sat in its place and watched him, and turned down the Mount toward Jerusalem.
To a casual observer it would appear that he was a Roman. He wore the short garments characteristic of the race, was smooth-shaven, and displayed idolatrous images on his belt, and, in disregard of Judean custom, uncovered his head. But his features under analysis were Arabic, modified, not by the solidity of Rome but by the grace of the classic Jew.
He was built on long, narrow lines, spare as a spear stuck in the sand before a dowar, but Judean flesh rounded his angles and reduced the Arabian brownness of complexion. He was strikingly handsome and tall; not imposing but elegant, modeled for symmetry of his type, not for ideality, for refinement, not for strength. His hands were delicate almost to frailty, his feet slender and daintily shod. Never a Roman walked so lightly, never a Jew so jauntily.