Saul of Tarsus: A Tale of the Early Christians — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Saul of Tarsus: A Tale of the Early Christians
John Stuart Mill · en
Each felt the support of numbers, the momentum of unanimity, the
incentive of relaxed order, and the original cause, however heinous,
was forgotten in the joy of the reversion to primordial savagery.
Their quiet fellow stood on the outskirts and listened to the yelp of
the jackal in man. Before him was a wall of variously clad backs and
upstretched heads, beside him rows of raving men in profile, with
strained eyes, open mouths and working beards; and one of them was the
man who had shown, when asked, that he did not understand this
demonstration.
The man in scarlet finally shrugged his shoulders. He had suddenly
evolved an explanation--the blood of a fellow man. He turned away, not
because he had revolted--he had seen too many spectacles in the Circus
in Rome--but because he was disinclined to stand till he had learned
the particulars of the uproar. A gnarly hummock, white, harsh and dry,
as if it were a heap of disintegrated ashes, rose several rods away on
the brink of Kedron. He mounted it and sat. Yes; he would wait, also,
till he saw the Essene again, who, he was sure, had been buried in the
ring. It would be unkind to himself to permit a chance for a loan to
pass untried.
The tumult continued many minutes before he noticed abatement in the
forward ranks. Movement which had been general throughout the interval
increased at times, but the mob showed no signs of dispersing.
The western slope of Olivet was now in its own shadow, its ravines
already purpling with night. Only the glory on the summit of Moriah
blazed with undiminished fire, as the gold of the gates gave back the
gold of the sunset.
Presently a number of men, dressed alike in priestly robes, hurried
back through Hanaleel into the city. Hardly had they disappeared
before the gate gave up a number of radiant shapes in a column, which
broke suddenly and flung itself upon the great raving circle. The
flash of armor and the glitter of swords were suddenly interjected into
a demoralized eddy of stampeded hundreds. Another sort of clamor
arose, no less voluminous, no less fervid, but it was a howl of panic
and protest against the methods of Vitellius' legionaries sent to
disperse a crowd.
A solid core of fugitives drove through the gate beside Hanaleel and
the Sheep Gate; fragments, detachments and individuals rolled down the
banks into Kedron; screaming, tumbling, falling bodies fled north and
south by the roadway and wherever there was a gate or a niche or a
crevice it received fugitives who appeared no more. Dust arose and
obscured everything but the flash of arms and armor which rived through
it like lightning in a cloud. The uproar began to subside, and
presently the laughter and jests of the soldiers mounted above the
protest. Fainter and fainter the cries grew, fewer the sounds of
flying feet, and at last, strong, harsh and biting as the clang of a
sledge upon metal, the command of the centurion to fall in settled even
the shouts of the soldiers.