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578 DARKNESS AND DAWN
strangled in the Tullian Vault ? Judsea Captiva wept under
her palm-tree, desolate, broken-hearted, with her hair about
her ears, and the famous Arch of Triumph was built which
still shows the golden candlestick, and table of shewbread,
and vessels of incense beneath which it is said that no Jew
will walk, because even in a strange land they remember thee,
O Zion ! But the sleek priest and warrior who had been
selected as one of the defenders of his country, accepted an
assignment of land from devastated territories of his native
country; inhabited a suite of rooms in Vespasian's own
house ;
and continued to live in the sunlight of court favour,
not only under Titus, but also under Domitian. And then,
not by martyrdom, not as a patriot, but as the pensioned
favourite of those who had massacred his countrymen and
destroyed the tornbs and city of his fathers, he died, and went
to his own place, leaving behind him, even in the light of his
own falsified records, an ignoble and dishonoured name.
KING AGRIPPA II., after a considerable portion of his
domains had been reduced to a desert, lived also in Korne,
as a titular king, and died, at the age of seventy, in the reign
of Trajan the last prince of the House of Herod. Happy
had it been for him if St. Paul had, not almost, but altogether
persuaded him to be a Christian. He languished on, wealthy
and despised, with Josephus as his bosom friend. It might
have been said of him, in the language of the '
Prophet All
:
the kings of the nations, all of them, sleep in glory, every one
in his own house. But thou art cast away from thy sepulchre,
like an abominable branch. . . . Thou shalt not be
joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy
land, thou hast slain thy people.'
BERENICE, the widow of two kings, was no longer young
when she won Vespasian by her splendid presents, and Titus
by her Eastern beauty and fascination. But he listened to
the voice of duty when he dismissed her from Eome, and
when she returned he avoided seeing her. She, too, vanished
into the darkness, and died we know not when.
ALITURUS, no longer the apostate Jew, but the humble
Christian, found it, of course, impossible to play any longer
the part of the favourite pantomime of the Eoman stage.
He loathed the thought of ever again wearing his motley
before the grinning and degraded populace. He would fain