"Thou seest Judea," Agrippa began, "thou heardest me aspire to it and thou didst abet me in mine ambition. But learn, for thy own comfort, Marsyas, the vagabond to whom thou hast attached thyself doth not grasp after another man's portion. Judea is mine! And Rome must yield me mine inheritance!" The prince's eyes glowed with youth's ambition.
Marsyas listened intently.
"A Herod's word is in disrepute," the prince continued. "Hence I am limited to action to prove myself. But look thou here, Marsyas. Judea is pillaged: so am I. Judea is despised: so am I! Judea weltereth in her own blood: am I not sprung from a murdered sire, who was son of a murdered mother—each dead by the same hand of father and husband? Dear Lord, I am an offspring of the shambles, mother-marked with wounds!"
He shuddered and drew his hand across his forehead.
"Having thus suffered the same miseries which are Judea's, is it not natural that I should relieve her when I, myself, am relieved? I should rule Judea as Judea would rule herself—"
He broke off with a gesture of impatience.
"How I hate the blatant vower of vows! Help me to mine opportunity, Marsyas."
As between Rome and Herod the Great as sovereign, there was no choice. Though the Asmonean Slave, as the Jewish patriots named the capable fiend, gave Judea the most brilliant reign since the glories of Solomon and the most monstrous since Ahab, the nominal independence offered by his administration was absolutely submerged and lost in the terror of his absolutism and the devilish genius in him for oppression.
Herod and Abaddon were names synonymous in Judea, and the mildness of his sons or their inefficiency had not been able to set the reproach aside. No able Herod had arisen since the founder of the house, except, as Marsyas hopefully believed, this man before him. Herod Agrippa was the son of Aristobolus, who was murdered in his youth before his capabilities developed. The Herods, Philip and Antipas, had been mild because they were incapable. The recurrence of mental strength in the blood was an untried contingency. All this came to Marsyas, now, suggested by the implied self-defense in the prince's words, and for a moment he wavered between concern for his people and anxiety for his own cause. Agrippa and Cypros watched him.
"Thou art a just youth," the prince went on in the winning voice that had already made its conquest over the Essene. "I can not prove myself until I am given trial, and judgment without trial is an abomination even unto the tyrant Rome!"