For I am full of matter, the spirit within me constraineth me.” Altogether it was a scene of the unadulterated East—just such a scene as might have been witnessed any time these three thousand years.
The great memorial of Israel is her religion. To her it was given to know the Eternal God and to pass on that knowledge to all the nations of the world. Among the many impressions given by a journey through Palestine, none is so important and none so strong as this, that the land was eminently suited for that one purpose and for that alone. She tried many similar experiments, but they all failed utterly. The luxurious orientalism of Solomon, the democratic revolt of Jeroboam, the military ambitions of Baasha, and the attempt at commercial supremacy which Omri made—each of these was an imitation of one or other of the contemporary nations. For Israel they were alike impossible. Their successive failures proclaim her a peculiar people, set in a peculiar place for a peculiar purpose. For them, as Renan says, “to act like men”—i.e. like all the rest of the world—was a sort of degradation. All other experiments in greatness failed; their greatness lay solely in the knowledge of the Lord.
CHAPTER II
GRÆCO-ROMAN
Nothing strikes one more than the contrast in Palestine between the vanishing of Hebrew buildings and the permanence of Roman ones. You have come here to a land which you know to have been for many years under Roman government, but which still to your imagination is Oriental, with here and there a Roman touch. You find, among the very ancient buildings, hardly a remaining trace of anything that is not Roman; and of Roman work you find an amount which probably astonishes you. Before you have long left Jaffa, some part or other of one of the old Roman roads making for Jerusalem will be seen. Not long afterwards Bether comes in sight—that terrible little valley where the blood ran so deep when the siege ended and the Jews’ last hope was broken. So you move on from point to point of Roman story until, as you climb the steep ascent from the Jordan valley to Gadara, you realise that it was when encamped just here that Vespasian heard the news of Nero’s death and was proclaimed emperor by his legion.
The Roman work in Palestine seems to exaggerate its peculiar characteristics, so that here one notices these more distinctly than in any other land. A Roman tower in Switzerland, a Roman road in Scotland—certainly they are Roman, but they are not removed from all things Swiss or Scotch by so vast an interval as that which divides Roman from native work in Palestine. It is indeed an invasion of arms, this Roman life—an intrusion of what is, first and last, alien to the spirit of the place. The traveller to-day, to whom the very dust of this land is dear, inevitably feels about the Roman relics an air of obtrusive and uncomprehending indifference. They “cared for none of these things,” or, if they did care a little now and then and try to understand, they did it clumsily and unnaturally. Rome’s policy was that of wide toleration, but her spirit was absolutely unaccommodating. She might allow her provinces to govern themselves and to worship pretty much as they chose, but she herself, in her officials and their works, stood aloof from them and was Rome still. This is to be seen in Palestine in all its good and in all its bad aspects. In those solidly-constructed bridges and mighty aqueducts and imperishable causeways there is the very embodiment of the Roman virtus and gravitas, that output of manhood which never trifled nor spared itself, that solemn, business-like reality which is so full of purpose. In this hard reality of Rome there is not only purpose but pitilessness of force to accomplish what is planned. Every Roman road you chance upon seems to be feeling its way with an unerring instinct towards Jerusalem or some other goal, and you know that it will arrive. Just as impressive, on the other hand, is the sense of Rome’s limitations. Her works disclose her seeing a certain length, and you know beyond all doubt that she will get there. But there are very obvious and very clearly defined limits to the length she ever sees or will go. The work of Greece is far beyond the furthest reach of Roman work—the glad spring, the grace of conscious strength that is beautiful as well as strong, the restfulness withal of perfect harmony that is thinking of more than merely utilitarian values; of these Rome knows not the secret. Beside the flight of Greek art she is pedestrian; to the Greek artist she plays at best but the part of Roman artisan. Forceful, massive, successful up to its highest desire, the Roman work is finished and perfect. And it has attained finish and perfection on a lower level than that of any nation that ever yet dreamed dreams or “looked beyond the world for truth and beauty.”
Not that there are no other traces of Rome in Syria beyond the stones of Roman ruins. In many place-names Latin is discernible, and the country is full of inscriptions of all sorts. A still more permanent mark was left by that invasion of Roman spirit which, for a time, claimed Israel for Rome. Rome came to Syria next in succession to the invasion of Alexander the Great. After his death the Macedonian power remained in the East, and the seductive spirit of Greek humanism became the rival of the old Puritan Hebraism of the nation. It was this that led to the Wars of the Maccabees, who fought for the sterner against the more genial spirit. As in the days of English Cromwell, the Puritan was invincible while he remained true to his faith—that singularly effective blend of patriotism with religious belief which has made itself felt in so many national histories. The triumph of Hebraism lasted for about a century, and then came Pompey in 63 B.C. to Jerusalem. Hellenism regained its ascendency and the Greek cities of Palestine their freedom. About a quarter of a century later the figure of Herod the Great appears as a critical factor in the history of Palestine. An Idumean and a Sadducee, he had neither patriotism nor religion to check his ambition. The path of glory and of easy advancement, then, was by way of Rome, and there was much in Herod that found Rome congenial. As a young man he had made his name by clearing out a notorious band of robbers from the valley which led down the great road from the Mediterranean to the Sea of Galilee at Capernaum. This “Vale of Doves” is flanked by precipices pierced with many caves, in which the robbers lived. Josephus tells us how Herod fell upon the device of letting down cages with the bravest of his soldiers. These men, lowered by ropes from the edge of the cliff, sprang upon the robbers in their cave’s mouth, and when they retreated within, smoked them out with fires like vermin. The man who contrived and carried out that design was not unworthy of the title “Great” from the Roman point of view. He became the centre and the champion of the new Hellenism, which was really the worship of Rome, touched as Rome was with the Greek culture she had conquered and envied and sought in vain to acquire. Rome was clumsily Greek at this time, and Herod was clumsily Roman. Certainly he would have been a Roman if he could. He was prepared to go any length to serve his end. At the Banias springs of Jordan he built a temple to Augustus. Samaria and Cæsarea, his Roman cities, must have cost him a fabulous sum to build.
Of the actual architectural remains of Rome in Palestine, the smallest are perhaps the most impressive. Here and there, from south to north, you come upon tesseræ, the remains of inlaid mosaic floors of the ancient houses. Sometimes it is single little cubes that turn up among the gravel of the sea-shore or shine from the newly-ploughed furrow. At other times broken fragments of a hand-breadth’s size may be found, with enough variety of colour to suggest the beginning of a pattern. But here and there you may find whole floors of elaborately designed mosaic, with concentric circles of various colour and size, with large-scale pictures, or, as in one case at least, with an ancient map—one of the most ancient in the world. On many a spot of Palestine you ride over ground whose stones are capitals of carved pillars, and whose layers of caked earth disclose fragments of ancient mosaic floors.
The Roman roads are still frequently met with in Palestine, and these, perhaps more than any other of their works, help the imagination to realise the old life in its magnificence of power. Whether the causeway lies bare to the weather across a mountain, or whether it cuts its track along the sheer cliff of a gorge, there is the same uncompromising purpose and capacity in it—the stride of the road, that seems to be aware of whither it is going and the reason for its going there. In the cities of the Decapolis and others there is generally one straight line of Roman causeway—the “Street called Straight,” which is by no means peculiar to Damascus. It was a Roman hobby, this of straightness, and one of the most characteristic of Roman hobbies. The roads went, so far as that was possible, up hill and down dale in a direct line from place to place; and in the cities at least one columned street did the same. The milestones which may still be found occasionally seem to heighten the human interest, though that is considerably damped when we realise that none of these roads date from the early Roman days in Syria. The paths our Saviour walked on were but tracks, not unlike those which modern travellers follow.
But the bridges are older, and in some places they are used for traffic to-day, spanning Jordan and Leontes. There is little causeway at the ends of them—their one business in these old days was to do the difficult and needful task of crossing water. Once across, the traveller might find his path or make it for himself. Parapets are not provided on the old bridges, and the surface is a flight of broad and shallow steps. If you walk unwarily and are drowned in the torrent below, that is no concern of these resolute but unluxurious bridge-builders. Their business is simply to span the stream. So effectively and conscientiously have they done this, that even when time and floods have broken the bridge, you may see the half of it still standing: the huge pier of stone and of mortar almost harder than stone stands at the side, and the actual arch is still flung across the water, wedged into an almost unbreakable strength by its keystone, while all the surface building above the arch has long been washed away. Such a ruin may be seen to-day on the coast some miles to the north of Tyre. It was in her fight with water, either for it in aqueducts or against it in quays and bridges, that Rome seems to have put out her utmost strength of masonry. Along the coasts both of the Mediterranean and of the Sea of Galilee, submerged stones and fragments of building may be seen, which bear testimony to this; and at Taricheæ, where a large fish-curing trade had to be provided for, there are remains of a dam and quay where Jordan swept round in a circle, affording a great length of water-frontage. But perhaps the most noticeable monuments of Rome in this dry and thirsty land are the