Pearl-Maiden | Page 2

banished to Gaul, where
he was said to have committed suicide. In his day Pilate was unpopular
in Judæa, for he had taken the treasures of the Temple at Jerusalem to
build waterworks, causing a tumult in which many were killed. Now he
was almost forgotten, but very strangely, the fame of this crucified
demagogue, Jesus, seemed to grow, since there were many who made a
kind of god of him, preaching doctrines in his name that were contrary
to the law and offensive to every sect of the Jews.
Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Levites, priests, all called out against
them. All besought Agrippa that he would be rid of them, these
apostates who profaned the land and proclaimed in the ears of a nation
awaiting its Messiah, that Heaven-born King who should break the
Roman yoke and make Jerusalem the capital of the world, that this
Messiah had come already in the guise of an itinerant preacher, and
perished with other malefactors by the death of shame.
Wearied with their importunities, the King listened. Like the cultivated

Romans with whom he associated, Agrippa had no real religion. At
Jerusalem he embellished the Temple and made offerings to Jehovah;
at Berytus he embellished the temple and made offerings there to
Jupiter. He was all things to all men and to himself--nothing but a
voluptuous time-server. As for these Christians, he never troubled
himself about them. Why should he? They were few and insignificant,
no single man of rank or wealth was to be found among them. To
persecute them was easy, and--it pleased the Jews. Therefore he
persecuted them. One James, a disciple of the crucified man called
Christ, who had wandered about the country with him, he seized and
beheaded at Jerusalem. Another, called Peter, a powerful preacher, he
threw into prison, and of their followers he slew many. A few of these
were given over to be stoned by the Jews, but the pick of the men were
forced to fight as gladiators at Berytus and elsewhere. The women, if
young and beautiful, were sold as slaves, but if matrons or aged, they
were cast to the wild beasts in the circus.
Such was the fate, indeed, that was reserved for these poor victims in
the prison on this very day of the opening of our history. After the
gladiators had fought and the other games had been celebrated, sixty
Christians, it was announced, old and useless men, married woman and
young children whom nobody would buy, were to be turned down in
the great amphitheatre. Then thirty fierce lions, with other savage
beasts, made ravenous by hunger and mad with the smell of blood,
were to be let loose among them. Even in this act of justice, however,
Agrippa suffered it to be seen that he was gentle-hearted, since of his
kindness he had decreed that any whom the lions refused to eat were to
be given clothes, a small sum of money, and released to settle their
differences with the Jews as they might please.
Such was the state of public feeling and morals in the Roman world of
that day, that this spectacle of the feeding of starved beasts with live
women and children, whose crime was that they worshipped a crucified
man and would offer sacrifice to no other god, either in the Temple or
elsewhere, was much looked forward to by the population of Cæsarea.
Indeed, great sums of money were ventured upon the event, by means
of what to-day would be called sweepstakes, under the regulations of

which he who drew the ticket marked with the exact number of those
whom the lions left alive, would take the first prize. Already some
far-seeing gamblers who had drawn low numbers, had bribed the
soldiers and wardens to sprinkle the hair and garments of the Christians
with valerian water, a decoction which was supposed to attract and
excite the appetite of these great cats. Others, whose tickets were high,
paid handsomely for the employment of artifices which need not be
detailed, calculated to induce in the lions aversion to the subject that
had been treated. The Christian woman or child, it will be observed,
who was to form the /corpus vile/ of these ingenious experiments, was
not considered, except, indeed, as the fisherman considers the mussel or
the sand-worm on his hook.
Under an arch by themselves, and not far from the great gateway where
the guards, their lances in hand, could be seen pacing up and down, sat
two women. The contrast in the appearance of this pair was very
striking. One, who could not have been much more than twenty years
of age, was a Jewess, too thin-faced for beauty, but with dark and
lovely eyes, and bearing in every limb and feature the stamp