THE TRIBUNE'S FAREWELL CHAPTER TWO- Page 3

At this point, the tribune stopped speaking.

"So," Ben-Lemuel broke in, feeling a need to let Marcellus know that he had been carefully listening, "we see that kidnapping children is nothing new for Cassius."

After what seemed a long and painful silence, Marcellus looked Rabbi Ben-Lemuel directly in the eyes. In little more than a whisper, he said, "I am that child."

The usually composed rabbi caught his breath. Now, for the first time, he realized that the tribune had been relating the record of Cassius in order to make this startling revelation. He had said that it was because of Cassius that he was in Tarsus. How much more he had meant by that than Ben-Lemuel had suspected. Stunned at the announcement, he sat some moments in silence.

Marcellus sensed the impact of his statement and made no hurry to speak. When he did, he said, "I wonder sometimes if some of the blood of Mithridates may boil in my veins. His own mother tried to kill him as the rightful heir to the throne. Although he was only 11 years old, he fled to the woods and lived there for seven years. At 18, he took the throne, killing his mother, his brother, his three sons, and three daughters."

Ben-Lemuel now understood why accusing the Roman of acting as a Persian had touched a tender spot with this man. He regretted having said it. "Are you saying that sometimes you feel like killing your father?"

Again the tribune sat in silence. His thoughts now turned to Rome. After pausing, he spoke with a new tone of bitterness in his voice, "My father raised me in his home on the Palatine Hill in Rome. There, I was placed in the care of nurses, and an old guardian, a former slave named Milo. But when I was a child of 6 years, my father took me from Rome to Capua. He left me there to begin my military education at the school for gladiators.'

"I did not want to go. In our home, my old guardian Milo was the only true friend that I knew, and I did not want to leave him. I did not want to be enrolled in a boy's school in Capua, to be trained as a youth in Batiates' School.'

"It was a sad night when Milo packed my bag in preparation for my departure. I know he sensed that I would never return to Rome. I had asked Milo what happened to the slaves at the Gladiator school and he had only said, 'Tomorrow you will see.'

"On my last night in Rome, I slept little. I would have been happy going to Capua if Milo could go with me. I seldom saw my father, and there was no bond of affection between us. I felt as though I was just a piece of property that he looked on as he would a new sword, or a chariot. With Milo, it was so different. I felt as though he belonged to me. He was my guardian. I could always count on him to be near when I needed him. To separate me from Milo was like breaking the last fragile tie I had to what might be considered true love.'

"I had scarcely fallen asleep when I awakened to the sound of horses galloping up the driveway at daybreak. It had to be my father. He never drove like a normal person. He loved horses, wild horses, the wilder the better. He would only drive those he got from Arabia or Cilicia. From the window, I saw him coming furiously, as though charging into battle. My father gave the impression all the world was against him, but I heard men in Rome say that he was the most intelligent person in the Republican ranks."

"Do you see your father as you saw Julius Caesar? A great man with a great flaw?"

"No." Marcellus cleared his throat and went on. "Milo knew my father's impatience, and had me dressed quickly. We never dared to delay my father even a moment. Reluctantly Milo handed my bags to a servant, who placed them in the chariot. And then Milo turned his head away so I would not see the tears. His last words to me, Rabbi, were, 'Try to be brave, little man, and remember old Milo will never forget you.'

"My father handed Milo a bag of coins. I knew Milo would have preferred my father keep his money and thank him for his care of me. But it was not his way.'

"We were soon on the road, and my father ignored the latest rules in Rome which forbade horses on congested streets in the first hours of day. He laughed as though this was humorous, and said laws were made for the Plebs, and not for people like him. Watching my father guide his spirited horses through the congestion of Rome I wanted to be just like him, and I wanted to be nothing like him. It has always been so with me.'

"On reaching the Appian Way, my father gave the horses a free rein at brief intervals of open road. I remember the sky was clear, the sun was warm, and the morning air was fresh and pure, quite different from the smoke-laden atmosphere in Rome.'

"Suddenly at a turn in the road, there stood in front of us the most awful sight I had ever witnessed in my youth. On a cross was the decaying body of a man. The morning sun shone directly on the form that looked scarcely human. Before I realized what I was saying, I cried aloud, 'Father! Look! Look at that man!'"

"What was your father's answer?" Although the rabbi had been silently listening he could not resist asking the question.

"His only answer was to crack the whip over the backs of the horses, causing the chariot to lunge forward at greater speed. He did not even turn his head in the direction I had pointed. Then he began to explain to me, Rabbi, that he was one of the men responsible for putting them there. He was proud of it. He said he had taken many of these slaves prisoner in a war with Spartacus. He said that the rich and powerful patricians and Senators in the Senate had said, 'We must nail every slave on a cross and place crosses along the Appian Way. Everyone in Italy must know they are there. Slaves who move on the this road must see them, and every master and mistress must tell the slaves this will be their fate if they seek to escape.'

"The crosses lined the road almost all the way from Rome to Capua, Rabbi. For there was another, and another, and a hundred, and a thousand, and two thousand, and four, and finally before reaching Capua, the number totaled 6,000. I wanted to be like him because I feared such a fate for myself, the bastard son of a Roman soldier and a slave girl. Whose blood would rule my fate?'

"I tried to close my eyes to the sight, and my father, too, seemed intent on not looking at these crosses that stretched beside us on the entire journey. In a way we could not escape. I kept asking, 'Why are they there?' And my father would reply, 'Because they are enemies of Rome.' In childish innocence, I asked, 'Why did they fight against Rome?' And my father said, 'They sought to escape from the gladiator's school.' This answer sent a wave of terror over me. I was going to that same school. He was sending me there. If I failed or rebelled my fate would be as these crucified ones. I asked, 'Didn't they like the school, or want to be gladiators?' My father was growing impatient, and repeated they were enemies of Rome. 'Were they enemies of Rome because they did not want to be gladiators?' I asked, and, 'Why should that make them enemies?' My father explained, 'If these escaped from the school, then other slaves would want to escape from their masters. And if they escaped, there would be no workmen to till the fields and work in the mines, and do all the work needed for a great Republic like Rome.'

"I remember asking a final innocent question. 'Do the Romans not want to work?' My father was now angry, and of course, now I am old enough to understand why. He impatiently turned on me, and said, 'If the Romans had to remain at home to work, they could not go abroad to fight.' To myself I added, If they could not go abroad to fight, to kill more people, to take their land and possessions, and to take more prisoners, to bring back more slaves, they would not be masters of the world, holding all others as slaves.'

"I sensed my father looking at me. He seemed to be reading my thoughts. I turned to stare at the bodies on the crosses as we rushed by. Birds were circling the crosses and I covered my eyes when I saw them descend and peck at a man's face. I wanted to ask my father if Rome ever had enough slaves, but I dared not. I had heard it said in our home that there were many more slaves in Italy than there were citizens, many more. And in that same house it had been slaves who whispered the truth to me about my mother Vashti. They considered me to be one of them, I could tell. Now my father was sending me to the slave school for gladiators, confirming that he, too, saw me that way, not truly his son.'

"Now I was seeing the men on the crosses as my own kind, and I began to reject them, reject that part of myself that belonged to Vashti, my mother. Kill them, kill them all, I thought, they are only slaves. Even though I was headed to the slave school I vowed never to reveal my mixed blood to anyone. I wanted only to be a soldier now, not a gladiator. I wanted to become the worthy son of Cassius. I would put others on the crosses, never would that be my fate. But why was my father sending me to the slave school for gladiators? I felt a sudden wave of hatred for him, then I shut my mind to it and determined to serve Rome and nothing else. Never would I end up on one of my father's crosses."

After a moment of thoughtful silence, Ben-Lemuel said. "So, you became a good soldier and you stopped hating your father."

"Yes. Except for one small thing." Marcellus pulled his chair close and sat down. His voice took on an even more bitter edge. Drawing his broadsword from its scabbard he let its sharpened edge glint in the light of the oil lamp. "The first man I killed in combat looked ironically, much like Cassius to me. I remember his eyes, that moment of surprise that never left, as if he was seeing me, really seeing me for the first time. The next man I killed, even more resembled Cassius. Every man that has died on the point of this sword has in some way had my father's face."

Rabbi Ben-Lemuel could not stop his eyes from brimming with tears at these words. He swallowed a hot choking in his throat.

"Now, I want it to stop."

In these words the Rabbi took sudden hope. A hope quickly crushed.

"I do not want any other men to die with my father's face. I want to see him there." He thrust the sword through the air with a vicious swiftness. "Something about the cries of those children in the square, Rabbi, as I obeyed my father's orders. Something about the man who ripped me from the arms of Vashti and did not have pity though she suffered so as to take her own life. Something in all of this has changed me here in Tarsus. This, and the memory of all those slaves on crosses along the Appian Way as my own father took me to the school where they had been. I can hardly wait for the coming battle at Philippi, and not for reasons that are noble."

As Ben-Lemuel looked at Marcellus, he could see that he had become a desperate man, a dangerous man. "Marcellus, you have been told that your father had no pity on your mother, Vashti. Do you know that for certain?"

He leaped to his feet again, this time throwing the bottle of wine into the corner. He could not reply.

"I am a Rabbi, Tribune Marcellus, because I am supposed to possess a certain wisdom, my friend, my ally. If I do possess any wisdom it would tell me now that you should proceed with much caution. To act based on any false conclusion . . . Have you ever asked your father what he really felt?"

Marcellus could not speak. He uttered a strange kind of growl that was part agony, part hatred, part insanity. But once again he took his seat in front of the Rabbi. For a long time he stared at Ben-Lemuel with the eyes of a wolf, his mind working wordlessly through the pain and terror dredged up by the Rabbi's probing question. Finally he spoke in a rasp. "We are almost friends, Ben-Lemuel." He reached for another half empty bottle of wine and drained it before speaking again, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "I must sleep now. I must prepare to march against an idea whose time has come. These are evil times, Rabbi, and they suit my temper perfectly. Roman against Roman."

"But you can hardly have hope with such an attitude."

"It no longer matters. What is my life? What does it mean that I fought my way out of a gladiator's school where Cassius placed me as a boy? What does it matter that I have won rank in the world's greatest army? Julius Caesar's career ended with 23 stab wounds. Pompey's with a knife in the back. Crassus, with all of his fabulous wealth, was decapitated by the Parthians who poured molten gold in his mouth." Marcellus laughed crazily. "That fits! Life writes some poetry, does it not? What was the great Crassus' life worth in the end?'

"Or how about Sulla? Sulla accumulated a massive fortune from the people he conquered. When he defeated Fimbria in Lydia, and became master of the Greek East, he returned to Rome to spend his final years eating, drinking, and living the good life. I always thought that would be my ultimate goal. But how did it end for him, huh? In his lavish villa at Cumae, he surrounded himself with singers and dancers and beautiful women. I always wanted to do that as a young man. He married five times and enjoyed many other women not his own. When he felt he had extinguished every possible enemy who might threaten him, he was suddenly attacked by a strange foe that left him without defense---a horde of lice. They came by millions, they filled his bed, his bath, and no matter how desperately his aides sought to fight against them, they even infested his food. So, life is fatal, Rabbi, yes? And fate is fickle--- as fickle as the philandering gods and Caesar! You conquer the world and watch helplessly as the gods send lice to eat you out of every compliment in the end."

The verbal picture portrayed by the tribune seemed too stark and repulsive for Ben-Lemuel to dwell long on. But in the cruel darkness of the moment he was forced by this bitter soldier to see that his own Scriptures contained many such passages. He had more in common with this despairing tribune than he ever wanted to admit.

Roman and rabbi sat in silence for a time. Late as it was, neither seemed prone to move. They both felt the words they were speaking were the last they would exchange. Certainly these next thoughts must be culled very carefully. In the end, the Rabbi broke the silence, but he trusted not his own words.

"'A voice said Cry!'" Ben-Lemuel whispered. "'And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is as grass, and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but---" he paused dramatically, "the word of our God shall stand forever.'"

Marcellus trembled, perhaps from the wine, perhaps from much more than that. "Your prophets exceed your rabbis, Jew. Let me hear more of this."

"These words are the words of Isaiah. They arise from our own sad history, Marcellus. Jewish history is not so much a military history, though there is bloody fighting enough, but it much more hangs on the words of prophets and judges and patriarchs and angels and . . . burning bushes and words etched in stone by the finger of heaven. It is God's history, not yours or mine. It is God's revelation of Himself so that no matter how dark, how evil, how corrupt the times, nothing is lost forever that encounters His everlasting word. Eat his word and it will carry you above every battlefield into the shelter of His wings. In the end all things, and all times, arise and return to the One who created them . . . with His word."

Now it was Ben-Lemuel's turn to rise and pace as he spoke. "We Jews also had a rich king for an ancestor. His name was Solomon. Like Sulla, he said this; 'I said in my heart, I will prove thee with pleasure. I made me great works, I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards and orchards. I got me servants and maidens and more possessions than all kings in Jerusalem before me. Whatever my eyes desired, I kept not from them. And when I looked on the work of my hand, I hated it because I would leave it.'"

Marcellus nodded, his head resting on his folded hands as he listened with rapt attention. His eyes swam with a serious and faraway light.

Ben-Lemuel continued. "I am called wise by some. Am I wise? I think not. Solomon's father David said he would speak of wisdom. He said, 'the wise man dies like the fool. Their inward thought is that their houses shall continue forever. They call their lands after their own names. Nevertheless, man being in honor abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish, like sheep laid in the grave. When he dies his glory shall not descend after him.'"

"These words are for all people," Marcellus said. "They are for all histories, Rabbi. Greek, Roman, barbarian, Jew, rich, poor, citizen, soldier--- anyone could know the dark truth in your Scripture."

"All truth is not dark. Another king, David, the father of Solomon, and a psalmist, said in another place that the grave or hell need not be the ultimate end of life. 'God shall redeem my soul from the power of the grave: He shall receive me.' Marcellus, as you have recited your history to me I have compared it to my own and would not trade my life for yours, even though you are the conqueror of my city. You have brought to us hardship, death and destruction, and unspeakable horror. You entered Tarsus haughty and proud. Now, on this our final night together, you have given me a rare gift, you have shown me the man who lives beneath the tribune's armor. And now we know that we are both men, created of God, and perhaps, in our own ways, seeking Him. We will both die. But the word of the Lord will endure forever."

Rising from the chair, Marcellus reached out his hand to Rabbi Ben-Lemuel and shook it firmly.

"You were created for more than what you have seen and experienced, Tribune Marcellus. Your leaders, indeed your father, has misled you. Your so-called gods, who are not gods--- there is only one true God--- they have deceived you. But remember the true God, the Creator, He lives in spite of all we have said this night. Moses' words remain always true. When speaking as the oracle of God, he said, 'You, too, can find God, if you seek him with all your heart and all your soul."

"Thank you, Rabbi Ben-Lemuel," the Roman said as he began to ascend the stairs toward his bed. "Thank you."

"And Farewell," the rabbi answered.

Ben-Lemuel stayed until the stairs were empty. His mind swirled with a thousand thoughts and feelings. Mostly he sensed that the word of God had been spoken this night, and it had been heard in a way he thought impossible.

Suddenly Rebekah was at his side, her eyes filled with tears. "It has been a long evening for you, husband," she said. "Come to sleep."

"I am glad the tribune waited to share what was on his heart," he said.

"I know. I heard. And," she added with a husky voice, "I believe he, too, is glad he spoke with you tonight."

ON THE MORNING of August 2, the sound of bugles could be heard echoing from the Roman camp on the edge of Tarsus. The long-awaited day for the departure of the Roman legion had finally come. The military encampment was alive with activity. Cohorts of legionnaires moved through the city, loading wagons with the last of the spoils that they felt they could transport. The custom of Roman generals was to pay their soldiers, ignore their moral behavior to a great extent, and share with them the spoils of those they conquered. As some rushed from buildings carrying the last available treasures of the residents of Tarsus, there were few, if any, signs of resistance. Compared to the relief of seeing their oppressors depart, material possessions seemed of little value.

Tarsians lined the streets that were finally emptied of their Roman masters. There was no evidence of outward jubilation. Families robbed of children, and land, of homes and places of worship, people stripped of possessions; Tarsus seemed more like an empty shell of its old self, more like an open grave.

It would take many hours yet for people to realize they once again could breathe freely, and women could walk the streets without being following by those with evil eyes. Some Tarsians did walk to Lake Rhegma to watch the three ships of the Roman navy pick up the tribune and his personal staff. The ships also carted away the possessions not entrusted to those who would make the long overland trip to Macedonia and the coming battle at Philippi. The tribune's ship would sail to Patara, and stop at Miletus to take on another waiting tribune and his aides, before sailing on to Neapolis, near their destination.

Other Tarsians lined the roads and watched what seemed an endless caravan that slowly wound its way up the mountain road toward the famous pass called the Cilician Gates. Their route was the same that Xenophon had taken with his memorable 10,000 troops many years before. These infantry would continue their long march on to Thrace, where Philippi lay on the western border of Macedonia.

When the sound of wagons drawn by horses, and the echoes of 6,000 marching men began to fade in the distance, Rebekah and Ben-Lemuel turned back from the waterfront to their home. After almost two years of living under the scrutinizing eyes of their masters, and enduring the constant unreasonable demands, the house now seemed so empty and silent, it seemed dead.

As for the first time in two years, Rebekah reentered their bedroom, she suddenly called, "Ben-Lemuel! Come! Come quickly!" Hurrying up the stairs, Ben-Lemuel could not tell whether her cry was one of fear or distress. As it turned out, it was both. On the table in the center of the room were the family's irreplaceable treasures--- the silver plate and candlesticks made by the ancient craftsmen of Solomon's Temple. With these, on the table, was money equal to the amount that had been taken from Ben-Lemuel the day of the Romans' arrival. The scroll titled, 'The Wisdom of Ben-Lemuel' was also there. Beside them all was a hand-written message.

With trembling hand, Ben-Lemuel picked it up and read aloud: Rabbi Ben-Lemuel and wife, Rebekah:

He stopped and looked at Rebekah. "He knew."

She smiled and nodded. "But he kept our secret to protect us."

Ben-Lemuel bent and continued reading:

These treasures of silver are not the true treasures of the household of Ben-Lemuel. From you I have learned of that which cannot be purchased or stolen: 'The word of the Lord endures forever.' Keep those words for this soldier, Rabbi. If ever we meet again I will be in need of them, of that I am sure.

Marcellus Longinus Gaius

Tribune of Cassius

Republic of Rome

LATER THAT DAY, Rabbi Eliashib visited the house. Ben-Lemuel shared the note with him and told him in detail about the long and surprising conversation with Tribune Marcellus. Rabbi Eliashib listened, wiping at tears in his eyes again and again. Silently he shook his head, acknowledging the eternal power of the word of God. And then with an inimitable smile that always lightened his broad face like a rainbow after the rain, he said, "God did not hide his eyes, Ben-Lemuel. For a time, perhaps, we hid ours from Him."