Salathiel’s Supplication
There was a thrilling influence in the words of Eleazar that left me without reply, and for a while I stood absorbed. When I raised my eyes again, I saw him following the melancholy train down the valley of slaughter. I rushed after him. He would not listen to my entreaties; he would suffer no ransom to be offered for his life. I supplicated the tribune of the escort for a moment’s delay until I could solicit mercy from Titus. The officer, himself deeply pained by the service on which he was ordered, had no authority, but sent a centurion with me to the general commanding.
I hurried my guide through the immense force drawn up to witness the offering to the shades of the Roman senators and soldiers. The morning was stormy, and clouds covering the ridges of the hills darkened the feeble dawn so much that torches were necessary to direct the movement of the troops. The wind came howling through the spears and standards, but with it came the fiercer sounds of human agony. As we reached the entrance of the valley, the centurion pointed to a height where the general stood in the midst of a group of mounted officers, wrapped in their cloaks against the snows that came furiously whirling from the hills. I darted up the steep with a rapidity that left my companion far below, and implored the Roman humanity for my countrymen and for my noble and innocent brother.
On my knee, that I had never before bowed to man, I besought the muffled form, whom I took for the illustrious son of Vespasian, to spare men “whose only crime was that of having defended their country.” I adjured the heir of the empire “to rescue from an ignominious fate, subjects driven into revolt only by violences which he would be the first to disown.”
“If,” exclaimed I, “you demand money for the lives of my countrymen, it shall be given even to our last ounce of silver; if you would have territory, we will give up our lands and go forth exiles. If you must have life for life, take mine, and let my brother go free!”
The form slowly removed the cloak and Cestius was before me.
“So,” said he, with a malignant smile, “you can kneel, Jew, and play the rhetorician; however, as you are here, your having escaped me once is no reason why you should laugh at justice a second time. Here, Torquatus,” he beckoned to a centurion, “take this rebel to the crosses and bring me an account of the way in which he behaves. You see, Jew, that I have some care of your reputation. A fellow careless as you are would probably have died like a slave in a skirmish; but you shall now figure before your countrymen as a patriot should, and die with the honors of a native rebel.”
The Valley of the Crosses
I disdained to answer. The officer came up, attended by his spearmen, and I was led down to the valley. A storm of extraordinary violence, long gathering on the sky, broke forth as I descended, and it was only by grasping the rocks and shrubs on the side of the declivity that we could avoid being blown away. We staggered along, blinded, and half frozen. The storm fell heavily upon the legions, and the heights were quickly abandoned for the shelter of the valley. The valley itself was a sheet of snow, torn up by blasts that drifted it hazardously upon the troops and threw everything into confusion. But the sight that opened on me as I passed the first gorge effaced storm and soldiery, and might have effaced the world, from my mind. Through the whole extent of the naked and rocky hollow were planted crosses. The ravine, dark even in sunshine, was now black as midnight, and its only light was from the scattered torches and the fires into which the bodies of the victims were flung as they died, to make room for others. On those crosses hung hundreds, writhing in miseries made only to show the hideous capability of suffering that exists in our frame. I was instantly recognized, and many a hand was stretched out to me imploring that I should mercifully hasten death. I heard my name called on as their prince, their leader, their countryman; I heard voices calling on me to remember and revenge! Horror-struck, I raved at the legionaries and their tyrant master until I sank upon the ground in exhaustion, covering my head with my mantle that I might exclude alike sight and sound.
Salathiel Awed by a Face