The news of the overwhelming defeat of Apollonius brought consternation to the Greeks, and especially to the renegades in Jerusalem. Every one who repeated the tidings added what he or she feared, until the numbers of the Jewish patriots were swollen to vast multitudes in the popular mind. The more sagacious assumed that the Jews must be in alliance with the great nations which were contesting the dominion of Antiochus beyond the deserts in the Euphrates valley. Some had it that the Egyptian Ptolemy had resumed war against Syria; and even Rome was rumored to have thrown her sword into the scale; for it was incredible that an untrained peasant, with so small a force of herdsmen as the Jews were reputed to have had, could outwit one of Apollonius' astuteness, and with a single blow shatter his phalanges.
Imagination, made sensitive by fright, pictured the valleys beyond the hills filled with strange armies. Squads of Greek horsemen would scurry rapidly across open fields, then halt for long observation on the hilltops before venturing another dash. Popular superstition transformed Judas himself into a demi-god, or one of the ancient worthies of Israel, Samson or Gideon, returned to earth.
"They say he is as big as Pelops, and carries a whole tree-trunk for his mace," said a Greek soldier, looking stealthily behind him, and watching an olive clump whose stiff branches shook in the evening breeze.
The gates of Jerusalem were now closed by day as well as by night. Watchers patrolled without the walls, so that not a goat approached without being scrutinized, "lest," said a Greek wag, "his horns should prove to be the head-piece of another Alexander, the great Macedonian, who wore such horns for his crest."
The only inhabitants permitted free access and egress at the city gates were the women who went daily to the brook Kedron, bearing loads of clothing which they hastily washed in the running water, with faces made white as the linen by the stories their fright invented. At any moment this terrible Judas might leap upon them out of the hills or the heavens.
A group of these women were one morning at the Siloam pool. Among them was one of well-bronzed face, and short black hair which sprayed out beneath the close folding of her soiled kerchief. This woman was accompanied by a child who sat upon the brink of the brook, that his feet might feel the brush of cool water as it flowed by. She untied a hamper of garments which she had carried upon her head, and, tying up her skirts above her knees, waded into the stream. Like the others, she dipped the pieces altogether into the water, pounded them one by one with a short wooden club, then wrung each garment into a tight little bundle, and flung it upon the bank.
Suddenly a cry arose among the women. A cloud of dust appeared upon the old road leading from Bethany. All gathered their laundered work, and hastily climbed the steep ascent to the southern gate of the city.
"Is it Judas?" asked the boy. "Can we get in before he catches us?"
"If we hurry," replied the woman. "Come."
"I wish it were Judas," said another, pausing in the shadow of the tower above the gate. "Since these Greek fashions have come there is nothing but wash, wash. The new Princess has enough white linen to cover the peak of Hermon as the snows do, and enough coloured garments to make her like a sunset."