The Gladiators. A Tale of Rome and Judæa

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

A young girl, on the verge of womanhood, had been called away—called suddenly away—the pride and the flower and the darling of her father’s house. He was a good man and a brave, and a believer, yet every time his child’s face rose up before him, with its bright hair and its loving eyes, something smote him, sharp and cold, like the thrust of a knife.

When the grave was finally closed, the Christians gathered round it in prayer. Mariamne, taking Esca by the hand, came silently among them, and joined in their devotions. It was a strange and solemn sight to the barbarian. A circle of cloaked figures kneeling round an empty space, to worship an unseen power. On either hand a wilderness of ruin and devastation in the heart of a great city; above, an angry glare on the midnight sky, and the shouts of maddened combatants rising and falling on the breeze. By his side, the woman he loved so dearly, and whom he had thought he should never look on again. He knelt with the others, to offer his tribute from a grateful heart. Their prayers were short and fervent, nor did they omit the form their Master had given them expressly for their use. When they rose to their feet, one figure stood forth amongst the rest, and signed for silence with uplifted hand. This man was obviously a Roman by birth, and spoke his language with the ease, but at the same time with the accent and phrases of the lowest plebeian class. He seemed a handicraftsman by trade, and his palm, when he raised it impressively to bespeak attention, was hardened and scarred with toil. Low of stature, mean in appearance, coarsely clothed, with bare head and feet, there was little in his exterior to command interest or respect; [pg 264]but his frame, square and strongly built, seemed capable of sustaining a vast amount of toil or hardship, while his face, notwithstanding its plain features, denoted repressed enthusiasm, earnest purpose, and honest singleness of heart. He was indeed one of the pioneers of a religion, destined hereafter to cover the surface of the earth. Such were the men who went forth in their master’s name, without scrip or sandals, or change of raiment, to overrun and conquer the world—who took no thought what they should say when brought before the kings, and governors, and great ones of the earth, trusting only in the sanctity of their mission, and the inspiration under which they spoke. Having little learning, they could refute the wisest philosophers. Having neither rank nor lineage, they could beard the Proconsul on his judgment-seat or the Cæsar on his throne. Homely and ignorant, they feared not to wander far and wide through strange countries, and hostile nations, spreading the good tidings with a simple ungrudging faith that forced men to believe. Weak by nature it may be, and timid by education, they descended into the arena to meet their martyrdom from the hungry lion, with a quiet fortitude such as neither soldier nor gladiator had courage to display. It was a moral their Master never ceased to inculcate, that His was a message sent not to the noble, and the prosperous, and the distinguished, for these, if they wished to find Him, might make their own opportunities to seek Him out; but to the poor and lowly, the humble and forlorn, especially to those who were in distress and sorrow, who, having none to help them here, might rely all the more implicitly on His protection, who is emphatically the friend of the friendless.

Therefore, the men who did His work seem to have been chosen principally from the humbler classes of society, from such as could speak to the multitude in homely phrases and with familiar imagery; whose authority the most careless and unthinking might perceive originated in no aid of extraneous circumstances, but came directly from above.

As the speaker warmed to his subject, Esca could not but observe the change that came over the bearing and appearance of his outward man. At first the eye was dull, the speech hesitating, the manner diffident. Gradually a light seemed to steal over his whole countenance, his form towered erect as though it had actually increased in stature, his words flowed freely in a torrent of glowing and appropriate language, his action became dignified, and the whole man [pg 265]clothed himself, as it were, in the majesty of the subject on which he spoke.

That subject was indeed simple enough, sad, it may be, from an earthly point of view, and yet how comforting to the mourners gathered round him beside the new-made grave! At first he contented himself with a short and earnest tribute, clothed in the plainest form of speech, to the worth and endearing qualities of that young girl whom they had just laid in the earth. “She was precious to us all,” said he, “yet words like these seem but a mockery to some present here, for whom she was the hope and the joy, and the very light of an earthly home. Grieve, I say, and weep, and wring your hands, for such is man’s weak nature, and He who took our nature upon Him sympathises with our sorrows, and, like the good physician, pities while He heals. To-day your wounds are fresh, your hearts are full, your eyes are blind with tears, you cannot see the truth. To-morrow you will wonder why you mourn so bitterly; to-morrow you will say, ‘It is well; we are labouring in the sun, she is resting in the shade; we are hungry and thirsty in a barren land, she is eating the bread and drinking the waters of life, in the garden of Paradise; we are weary and footsore, wayfarers still upon the road, but she has reached her home.’

“Yea, now at this very hour, standing here where the earth has just closed over the young face, tender and delicate even in death, would you have her back to you if you could? Those who have considered but the troubles that surround us now, and to whom there is no hereafter, who call themselves philosophers, and whose wisdom is as the wisdom of a blind man walking on the brink of a precipice, have themselves said ‘whom the gods love die young’; and will you grudge that your beloved one should have been called out of the vineyard, to take her wages and go to her rest, before the burden and heat of the day? Think what her end might have been. Think that you might have offered her up to bear witness to the truth, tied to a stake in the foul arena, face to face with the crouching wild beast gathered for his spring. Ay! and worse even than this might have befallen the child, whom you remember, as it were but yesterday, nestling to her mother’s bosom, or clinging round her father’s knees! ‘The Christians to the panther, and the maidens to the pandar!’[12] You have heard the brutal shouts and shuddered with fear and anger while you heard. And [pg 266]you would have offered her, as Abraham offered Isaac, beating your breasts, and holding your breath for very agony the while. But is it not better thus? She has earned the day’s wages, labouring but for an hour at sunrise; she has escaped the cross, and yet has won the crown!

“But you who hear me, envy not this young maiden, though she be now arrived where all so long to go. Rather be proud and happy, that your Master cannot spare you, that He has yet work for you to do. To every man’s hand is set his appointed task, and every man shall find strength given him to fulfil it when the time arrives. Some of you will bear witness before Cæsar, and for such the scourges are already knotted and the cross is reared; but to these I need scarcely speak of loyalty, for to them the very suffering brings with it its own fortitude, and they are indeed blessed who are esteemed worthy of the glory of martyrdom! Some must go forth to preach the gospel in wild and distant lands; and well I know that neither toil, nor hardship, nor peril, will cause them to waver an hair’s-breadth from their path, yet have they difficulties to meet, and foes to contend with, that they know not of. Let them beware of pride and self-sufficiency, lest, in raising the altar, they make the sacrifice of more account than the spirit in which it is offered; lest in building the church they take note of every stone in the edifice, and lose sight of the purpose for which it was reared. But ye cannot all be martyrs, nor preachers, nor prophets, nor chief-priests, yet every one of you, even the weakest and the lowest here present—woman, child, slave, or barbarian—is none the less a soldier and a servant of the cross! Every one has his duty to do, his watch to keep, his enemy to conquer. It is not much that is required of you—little indeed in comparison with all you have received—but that little must be given without reserve, and with the whole heart. Has any one of you left a duty unfulfilled? when he departs from hence let him go home and accomplish it. Has any one an enemy? let him be reconciled. Has he done his brother a wrong? let him make amends. Has he sustained an injury? let him forgive it. Even as you have laid in the grave the perishable body of the departed, so lay down here every earthly weakness, every unholy wish, and every evil thought. Nay, as these chief mourners have to-night parted and weaned themselves from that which they loved best on earth, so must you tear out and cast away from you the truest and dearest affections that stand between you and your service, ay, even though you rend [pg 267]them from the very inner chambers of your heart. And then, with constant effort and never-ceasing prayer, striving, step by step, and winning, inch by inch, now slipping back it may be where the path is treacherous, and the hill is steep, to rise from your knees, humbled and therefore stronger, gaining more than you have lost, you shall arrive at last, where there is no strife, and no failing, where she for whom you weep to-night is even now in glory, where He whom you follow has already prepared a place for you, and where you who have loved and trusted, shall be happy for evermore!”

Ceasing, he spread his hands abroad, and implored a blessing on those who heard him, after which the Christians breaking up their circle, gathered round the bereaved parents with a few quiet words and gestures of sympathy, such as those offer who have themselves experienced the sorrows they are fain to assuage.

“I am in safety here,” whispered Mariamne to the Briton, as she pointed out a dark figure, with white flowing locks, whom he now recognised as Calchas. In another moment she was in the old man’s arms, who raised his eyes to heaven, and thanked God with heartfelt gratitude for her deliverance.

“Your father and I,” said he, “have sought you with fearful anxiety, and even now he is raising some of his countrymen to storm the tribune’s house, and take you from it with the strong hand. Mariamne, you hardly know how much your father loves his child. And I too was disturbed for your safety, but I trusted—trusted in that Heaven which never fails the innocent. Nevertheless, I sought for aid among my brethren, and they have raised, even the poorest of them, such a sum as would have tempted the prætor to interfere, even against a man like Placidus. I did but remain with them to say a prayer while they buried their dead. But now you are safe, and you will come back with me to your father’s house, and one of these whom I can trust shall go to tell him at the place where his friends were to assemble; and Esca, thy preserver for the second time, who is to me as a son, shall accompany us home—though we shall not need a guard, for thy father’s friends, tried warriors every man, and armed, will meet us ere we leave the wilderness for the streets.”