Agrippa's chariot, following the way the centurion had quietly opened through the crowd, attracted little attention and the half-light of the twilight did not reveal his features, which he had been led further to conceal by an Egyptian cowl. A long white kamis covered his dress. But his eyes fell upon the idiot; he caught the mockery and its meaning from the crowd.
A quiver of rage ran through his frame. Laying hold of the Egyptian smock, he tore it off and threw it fairly into the faces of those nearest him; the white cowl followed, and he stood forth like a new-risen sun in a tissue of silver, mantled with purple, his fillet replaced by a tarboosh sewn with immense gems.
Defiance and insult and daring could not have been embodied in a more effective act. The continuous tumult burst into a yell of fury. In a twinkling his chariot was hemmed in and blocked and the raving rabble reached out to lay hands on him.
Marsyas, seeing destruction in Agrippa's recklessness, shouted to the centurion, who responded by hurling his prætorians, with broadsword and spear into the mob.
The protection of Cæsar, thus evidenced, beat back the astonished herd as a charge of cavalry might have done, but it fringed the lane opened before the royal Jew and raged.
Thereafter every inch of the way was contested.
Not even a show of interference was made by municipal authorities. Instead, here and there, soldiers of the city garrison could be seen, singly or in groups, as spectators and applauding. The riot began to take on the appearance of a holiday, for groups of upper classes began to appear on housetops, stairs and porches of houses, where they made themselves comfortable and listened to the demonstration as they were accustomed to watch contests in the stadia. Below in the long way toward the harbor-front, the lawless of any class indulged their love of disorder and amused the aristocrats.
The fugitives were almost in sight of the forest of masts which marked the wharves, when Marsyas detected a change in the tone of the tumult.
Derision and revilement began to lose impetus, flagging in the face of a freshened uproar of another temper, beginning far behind and sweeping down the street after the fugitives. It was savage, bloodthirsty and menacing. Out of the inarticulate volume he caught finally shouts about the Jews and Flora; next, about the dance of Flora; after that the whole declaration, sent thundering, like a sea over winter capes, that the dancing Flora was a Nazarene and the daughter of the alabarch!
Marsyas' face, turned toward Agrippa, was ghastly. The Herod felt the first quiver of terror he had experienced in years. He reached toward the lines, meaning to give Marsyas opportunity to return to the Regio Judæorum. But Marsyas was shouting mightily to the centurion to charge the crowds before them. The prætorian heard and his men presented a double row of spears and rushed. The lesser mob ahead broke, and Marsyas cried back to Cypros' charioteer.