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42 DARKNESS AND DAWN
over his tunic. He was short, and had the aquiline nose and
general type of Judaic features. But though his eyes were
sadly disfigured by ophthalmia, there was something extraordinary
about his look. You know how those Jews can yell
when once their Eastern stolidity is roused to fury. Even in
Rome we have had some experience of that ;
and you remember
how Cicero was once almost terrified out of recollection of
his speech by the clamour they made, and had to speak in a
whisper that they might not hear what he said. To stand in
the midst of a mob of such dirty, wildly gesticulating creatures,
shouting, cursing, waving their garments in the air, flinging up
handfuls of dust, is
enough to terrify even a Roman. I, as
you know, am a tolerably cool personage, yet I was half appalled,
and had to assume a disdainful indifference which I
was far from feeling.
But this man stood there unmoved. If
he had been a Regulus or a Fabricius he could not have been
more undaunted, as he looked on his infuriated persecutors
witli a glance of pitying forgiveness. Every now and then he
made a conciliatory gesture, and tried to speak but
; though he
spoke in Hebrew, which usually pacifies these fanatics to silence,
they would not listen to him for an instant. But the perfect
dignity, the nobleness of attitude and aspect, with which that
worn little Jew stood there, filled me with admiration. And
his face ! that of Paetus Thrasea is not more striking. The
spirit of virtue and purity, and something more which I cannot
describe, seemed to breathe from it. It is an odd fact, but
those Jews seem to produce not only the ugliest and the handsomest,
but also the best and worst of mankind. I sat quiet
in my curule chair, and let the Jews yell, telling them once more
that, as no civil crime was charged against Paulus, I refused
to be a judge in matters of their superstition. At last, getting
tired, I ordered the lictors to clear the prsetorium, which they
did with infinite delight, driving the yelling Jews before them
like chaff, and not sparing the blows of their fasces. I thought
I had done with the matter then ;
but not at all ! It was the
turn of the Greeks now. They resented the fact that the Jews
should be allowed to make a riot, and they sided with Paulus.
He was hurried by his friends into a place of safety ;
but the
Greeks seized the head of the Jewish Synagogue a fellow
named Sosthenes and administered to him a sound beating
underneath my very tribunal.'