the Libyan valor and the Greek genius, is garrisoned at this hour by a single Roman legion! The Roman bird grasping the thunder in its talons, and touching with one wing the sunrise and with the other the sunset, throws its shadow over the world. Shall we call it to stoop upon us? Must we spread for it the new banquet of the blood of Israel?” [Sidenote: The Influence of Onias] How different is the power of speech upon men sitting in the common, peaceful circumstances of public assemblage, from its tyranny over minds anxious about their own fates! All that I had ever seen of public excitement was stone and ice to the burning interest that hung upon every word of the orator. The name of Onias was famous in Judea, but I now saw him for the first time. His had been a life of ambition, compassed often by desperate means, and wo be to the man who stood between him and his object. By the dagger and by subserviency to the Roman procurators he had risen to the highest rank below the throne. In the distractions of a time which broke off the regular succession of the sons of Aaron, Onias had even been High Priest; but Eleazar, heading the popular indignation, had expelled him from the Temple after one month of troubled supremacy. I could read his history in the haughty figure and daring yet wily visage that stood in bold relief before the central flame. But to the assemblage his declamation had infinite power; they listened as to the words of life and death; they had come, not to delight their ears with showy periods, but to hear what they must do to escape that inexorable fury which might within a few days or hours be let loose upon every individual head. All was alternately the deepest silence and the most tumultuous agitation. At his strong appeals they writhed their athletic forms, they gnashed their teeth, they tore their hair; some crouched to the ground with their faces buried in their hands, as if shutting out the coming horrors; some started upright, brandishing their rude weapons and tossing their naked limbs in gestures of defiance; some sat bending down and throwing back their long locks, that not a syllable might escape; others knelt, with their quivering hands clasped and their pallid countenances turned up in agony of prayer. Many had been wounded, and their foreheads and limbs, hastily bound up, were still stained with gore. Turbans and robes, rent and discolored with dust and burning, were on every side, and the whole immense multitude bore the look of men who had but just struggled out of some great calamity to find themselves on the verge of one still more irremediable.