[20]—page 84.] The blow was a critical one for Judea, depriving it of its leader at the moment when that leader was most needed. It likewise dashed the high hopes of the leader and left him a madman, a prey to the wildest imagination that swept him through earth and sky, leaving him at last, for periods beyond all counting, the sleepless, conscious, vivid victim of misery unspeakable.
[21]—page 93.] The grove known as the Cedars of Lebanon consists of about 400 trees, standing in a depression of the mountain, quite apart from all other trees. The trees are about 6,500 feet above the sea, and 3,000 below the summit. About 37 of these are large and old, the 11 or 12 older ones being of immense size and each spreading itself widely round from several trunks, and reaching back in time 3,500 and more years—beyond Solomon and Abraham. They are naturally looked upon with much reverence by the natives of the region as living records of the glory of Solomon. The Maronite patriarch was formerly accustomed to celebrate there the festival of the Transfiguration at an altar of rough stones. In later years a chapel has been erected on the spot. The references of the author are to an earlier, and usually idolatrous, worship. Bands of robbers, such as that described, naturally sought the vicinity of such gatherings.
[22]—page 97.] The worship of the robbers at Lebanon illustrates the ease with which the Oriental mind conjoins religion with any form of villainy. This, however, is likely to be a feature of any religion that is a mere superstition.
[23]—page 103.] These Greek Christian hermits, dwelling apart from men in their rocky cavern, are a fair type of thousands of such bands, driven by the terrible persecutions of the Roman Emperor to take refuge in the bowels of the earth. They were often made up of the noblest and best of souls that most readily responded to the call and the ideal of Christianity. A similar state continued during much of the time until, in the age of Constantine, the Christians became so numerous as to be able to change from a policy of inaction to one of aggressive self-defense.
[24]—page 113.] History records the facts of Roman corruption and degeneracy during this period. During the absence of Salathiel, the oppression and extortion had maddened the Jews and reached a point beyond endurance. There resulted a succession of partial and premature uprisings. The empire everywhere seemed falling into decay, and preparing for dissolution; the evils and the evil line of rulers culminated in the administration of Gessius Florus.
[25]—page 133.] It was Gessius Florus who, by his barbarity in governing, finally forced the Jews into war. Josephus, contrasting him with Albinus, pictures Florus as a human monster: “Altho such was the character of Albinus, yet did Gessius Florus, who succeeded him, demonstrate him to have been a most excellent person, upon the comparison; for the former did the greatest part of his rogueries in private, and with a sort of dissimulation; but Gessius did his unjust actions to the harm of the nation after a pompous manner; and as tho he had been sent as an executioner to punish condemned malefactors, he omitted no sort of rapine, or of vexation; where the case was really pitiable he was most barbarous, and in things of the greatest turpitude he was most impudent. Nor could any one outdo him in disguising the truth, nor could any one contrive more subtle ways of deceit than he did. He indeed thought it but a petty offense to get money out of simple persons; so he spoiled whole cities and ruined entire bodies of men at once, and did almost publicly proclaim it all the country over that they had liberty given them to turn robbers, upon this condition: that he might go shares with them in the spoils they got. Accordingly, this, his greediness of gain, was the occasion that entire toparchies were brought to desolation, and a great many of the people left their own country and fled into foreign provinces.”
[26]—page 145.] In the Prophet Daniel’s vision the Roman world-empire was represented by iron, which dashed and broke in pieces all else. It is the wont to say that Rome had a genius for conquest and empire. Among the nations she represented power and law, as Greece represented culture and Judea religion. The Roman was lacking in the culture and religion needed to refine and control his rugged nature; hence, his drift toward the animal and brutal, and toward the outward show of life. Corruption was already far on its way, and was only delayed for a time by the spread and prevalence of the Christian faith.
[27]—page 147.] Nero was Emperor from A.D. 54 to A.D. 68. He was a nephew of Caligula, and was adopted by Claudius in A.D. 50. Even his own age, which had borne and nurtured him, regarded him in his later career a monster. He killed those whom he feared, among them his own mother and Britannicus, the son of Claudius, and rightful heir to the throne; those who stood in the way of his whims, as his first two wives, Octavia and Poppæa Sabina; and at last he killed everybody who attracted his attention. Under him occurred the insurrection of the Jews, put down by Vespasian, in which Josephus so ably led his countrymen. The conflagration in July, 64, in which two-thirds of Rome was destroyed, is believed to have been the work of Nero, who is said to have shown his indifference by playing the “Siege of Troy” on his fiddle while watching the flames from a high tower in his palace. He wantonly accused the Christians of setting it on fire, and sentenced them to be clad in tarred garments, set on fire, and driven as flaming torches through the streets of Rome. A conspiracy formed against him in A.D. 65 failed, and he sacrificed his old instructor, Seneca, and the philosopher’s nephew, the poet Lucan, the author of “Pharsalia”; but one formed in A.D. 68, extending over Gaul, Spain, and Rome itself, overwhelmed the tyrant on his return from a journey in Greece, where he had appeared as a singer on the stage, and drove him to despair and to suicide in June of that year.
[28]—page 149.] “Married, but not mated,” could not have been said of Nero, at least in the later years of his life. He had early married Octavia, the daughter of Claudius, his adopted father; but afterward became enslaved by the charms of a mistress, Acte, a beautiful freedwoman, who was content to be merely the Emperor’s plaything. In the year 58, Poppæa Sabina took the place of Acte. The new favorite was not satisfied, however, to be merely the plaything of Nero; she was resolved to be his wife. With consummate skill she set herself at once to remove the obstacles that stood in her way. By playing upon the passions and fears of Nero she accomplished her diabolical purposes. She wrought him up to a passion of hatred against Agrippina, his mother, and she was murdered. The trusted advisers of the Emperor were one by one made way with. Octavia, his wife, daughter of Claudius, now long neglected, was divorced, banished, and barbarously murdered. Poppæa’s triumph was now complete. “She was formally married to Nero; her head appeared on the coins side by side with his; and her statue appeared in the public places of Rome.” Her career shows her to have been anything but a “dove in a vulture’s talons.” Poppæa died in the autumn of the year 65, just after the great conflagration, and a little before the great pestilence consequent upon it.
[29]—page 160.] The dying appeal of the martyr St. Paul—whose name is not mentioned—is depicted with a delicacy rarely if ever seen in the present-day handling of sacred subjects in secular romances.