The victory of the Jews at the Wady winged the fame of Judas far and wide. Among his own people the chosen war-cry "Mi-camo-ca-ba" gave place to the contracted word "Ma-ca-ba" or "Maccabee," the Hammer, a title significant of the swift and crushing blows with which he smote the enemy. Even the tribesmen about the borders of the Holy Land, the Horites in the caves of Petra, and the dwellers in the flint castles of the desert, wondered if a new deliverer had risen in Israel. In black tents on the plains and in strongholds among the cliffs were told again and again the old stories of the Jewish judges; while the Arab sheikhs of the Jordan valley deliberated if it were not wise to cast in their lot with a people who, even if not favored directly of heaven, might by such human valor as Judas and his men had displayed, beat back the deluge of Greek power which threatened to submerge their own as well as Israel's possessions. Among the Jews the enthusiasm was like a fire amid brambles, so rapidly did it spread. Simon, the Wise, was persistent in his counsel for patience, and for wide and cautious preparation. [Illustration] "Remember, my brethren," said he, "that we are not boiling a pot, but are to consume the very Cedars of Lebanon--for such is this gigantic power of the north which menaces us. The fight in the Wady was but the beginning of battles. Antiochus has many armies. He will gather fresh hordes from the nations which own his sway. We have only wounded this wild beast of Antioch. He will turn again upon us with more ravening strength." 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.