Constantius Describes a Campaign
“Let me speak from experience,” said Constantius. “Two years ago I was attached, with a squadron of galleys, to the expedition against the tribes of Mount Taurus. While the galleys wintered in Cyprus, I followed the troops up the hills. Nothing had been omitted that would counteract the severity of the season. Tents, provisions, clothing adapted to the hills, even luxuries despatched from the islands, gave the camps almost the indulgences of cities. The physical hardships of the campaign were trivial compared with those of hundreds in which the Romans had beaten regular armies. Yet the discontent was indescribable, from the perpetual alarms of the service. The mountaineers were not numerous and were but half armed; they were not disciplined at all. A Roman centurion would have outmaneuvered all their captains. But they were brave; they knew nothing but to kill or be killed, and it made no difference to them whether Death did his work by night or by day. Sleep to us was scarcely possible. To sit down on a march was to be leveled at by a score of arrows; to pursue the archers was to be lured into some hollow, where a fragment of the rock above or a felled tree, was ready to crush the legionaries. We chased them from hill to hill; we might as well have chased the vultures and eagles that duly followed us, with the perfect certainty of not being disappointed of their meal. Wherever the enemy showed themselves they were beaten, but our victory was totally fruitless. The next turn of the mountain road was a stronghold, from which we had to expect a new storm of arrows, lances, and fragments of rock.
“The mountaineers always had a retreat,” he continued. “If we drove them from the pinnacles of the hills, they were in a moment in the valleys, where we must follow them at the risk of falling down precipices and being swallowed up by torrents, in which the strongest swimmer in the legions could not live for a moment. If we drove them from the valleys, we saw them scaling the mountains as if they had wings, and scoffing at our tardy and helpless movements, encumbered as we were with baggage and armor. We at length forced our way through the mountain range, and when with the loss of half the army we had reached their citadel, we found that the work was to be begun again. To remain where we were was to be starved; we had defeated the barbarians, but they were as unconquered as ever, and our only resource was to retrace our steps, which we did at the expense of a battle every morning, noon, evening, and night, with a ruinous loss of life and the total abandonment of everything in the shape of baggage. The defeat was of course hushed up, and according to the old Roman policy, the escape was colored to a victory; I had the honor of carrying back the general into Italy, where he was decreed an ovation, a laurel crown, and a crowd of the usual distinctions; but the triumph belonged to the men of the mountains, and until our campaign is forgotten, no Roman captain will look for his laurels in Mount Taurus again.”
The Force of Invasion
“Such forever be the fate of wars against the natural freedom of the brave,” said I; “but the Cicilians had the advantage of an almost impenetrable country. Three-fourths of Judea is already in the enemy’s possession.”
“No country in which man can exist can be impenetrable to an invading army,” was the reply. “Natural defenses are trifling before the vigor and dexterity of man. The true barrier is in the hearts of the defenders. We were masters of the whole range. We could not find a thousand men assembled on any one point. Yet we were not the actual possessors of a mile of ground beyond the square of our camp. We never saw a day without an attack, nor ever lay down at night without the certainty of some fierce attempt at a surprise. It was this perpetual anxiety that broke the spirits of the troops. All was in hostility to them. They felt that there was not a secure spot within the horizon. Every man whom they saw, they knew to be one who either had drawn Roman blood or who longed in his inmost soul to draw it. They dared not pass by a single rock without a search for a lurking enemy. Even a felled tree might conceal some daring savage, who was content to die on the Roman spears, after having flung his unerring lance among the ranks or shot an arrow that went through the thickest corslet. I have seen the boldest of the legionaries sink on the ground in absolute exhaustion of heart with this hopeless and wearying warfare. I have seen men with muscles strong as iron weep like children through mere depression. With the harsher spirits, all was execration and bitterness, even to the verge of mutiny. With the more generous all was regret at the waste of honor, mingled with involuntary admiration of the barbarians who thus defied the haughty courage and boasted discipline of the conquerors of mankind. The secret spring of their resistance was its universality. Every man was embarked in the common cause. There was no room for evasion under cover of a party disposed to peace; there was no Roman interest among the people, in which timidity or selfishness could take refuge. The national cause had not a lukewarm friend; the invaders had not a dubious enemy. The line was drawn with the sword, and the cause of national independence triumphed, as it ought to triumph.”
Salathiel’s Determination
“But we are a people split into as many varieties of opinion as there are provinces or even villages in Judea,” observed Eleazar; “the Jew loves to follow the opinions of the head of his family, the chief man of his tribe, or even of the priest, who has long exercised an influence over his district. We have not the slavishness of the Asiatic, but we still want the personal choice of the European. We must secure the leaders, if we would secure the people.”
“Men,” said Constantius, “are intrinsically the same in every climate under heaven. They will all hate hazard, where nothing but hazard is to be gained. They will all linger for ages in slavery, where the taskmaster has the policy to avoid sudden violence; but they will all encounter the severest trials, where in the hour of injury they find a leader prepared to guide them to honor.”
“And to that extent they shall have trial of me!” I exclaimed. “Before another Sabbath I shall make the experiment of my fitness to be the leader of my countrymen. At the head of my own tribe I will march to the Holy City, seize the garrison, and from Herod’s palace, from the very chair of the Procurator, will I at once silence the voice of faction and lift the banner to the tribes of Israel.”