Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“I work at the olive press,” the small Jew replied.

From the Romans there was much laughter. Even Titus, the son of Vespasian, smiled at the picture of an olive worker negotiating with a general commanding three legions, but Vespasian himself did not laugh. All his life he had suffered ridicule because of the fact that he sprang not from any patrician family but from an ordinary farmer in the Sabine lands; and he knew from personal experience the single-minded moral force that such a man can generate. Respectfully he called, “Yigal, worker at the olive press, Emperor Nero of Rome demands that you throw open your town.”

“That we cannot do,” Yigal replied. “We will not accept Nero as a god.”

“Yigal!” the stocky old warrior shouted. “Open your gates now and let us share this night in peace.”

“That we cannot do,” the stubborn Jew repeated.

“You have seen our might. You know that in time we must crush you. This is the last chance—will you surrender honorably?”

“No. We will not worship your golden eagles.”

“I will see you in death, Yigal,” the great general called from the lowering darkness, and unseen by the Romans, Josephus tugged at Yi-gal’s robe and whispered, “You answered him well.”

In the darkness Vespasian, perplexed by the soldierly resistance of the Jews, assembled the Roman generals in his tent under the olive trees and asked, “Where do these Jews find their arrogance?”

“They’ve always been stubborn,” Trajan said. “They want few things, but those few they insist upon.”

“Have you fought them before?” Vespasian asked.

“No, but I’ve known them in Alexandria. On little points they gave no trouble, but on big ones …” The leader of the Fifteenth Apollinaris made a wry face.

“What big things?” Vespasian asked. “Like this matter of gods?”

“On religion they’re most stubborn,” Trajan reported.

“What is their religion?”

Titus explained, “Before we left Rome I inquired. The Jews worship an ass, carved of gold, which they keep in their temple in Jerusalem. Once each year every loyal Jew kisses the hind end of this ass.” The generals laughed, and Titus continued, “Their major god is Baal, whom our ancestors met at Carthage. They mutilate each other through their rite of circumcision, but this doesn’t seem to damage their fertility, for they number about three and a half million.”

Vespasian frowned, but Trajan reassured him: “The number sounds larger than it is. They’re a contentious lot and will submit to no regular military rule. At best they’re brave. At worst they’re a rabble easily disrupted.”

“I see in Yigal of the olive grove few signs of panic,” Vespasian said. He left his tent and wandered among the olive trees which his adversary had tended for so many years, and his farmer’s eye noted that they were well tended. Returning to his tent he stuck his head through the flap and asked the younger men, “Do you suppose this is his grove?”

“Whose?” Trajan asked.

“Yigal’s. He’s the one we’re fighting.” But before Titus could remind his father that Yigal said he worked in the olive grove, not that he owned it, Vespasian closed the flap and returned to his solitary wandering in the dark olive grove, and he came upon an old tree which had been cleverly pruned to increase the yield. He recognized the work of a master farmer. Striking the bark with his fist he muttered, “Yigal has spoken the truth. He is an olive grower. He cannot possibly know the tricks the Jews used this day.”

He stood by the tree, kicking angrily at the roots, then fell suddenly quiet. He gasped, clenched his fists and shouted into the night, “By the ghost of my father, the other one got here!”

Rushing back to the tent he tore open the flap and jerked Titus from his cot. “In Ptolemais you were wrong.”

“About what?”

“Josephus is in that town,” Vespasian said as he moved about the tent, raising a dust in spite of the rugs that covered the ground. “Somehow he slipped in before we got here. Because no olive grower could know enough to repel our towers as those Jews did today.”

“What are you going to do?” Trajan asked.

“I am going to haul General Josephus of the Jews back to Rome for an imperial triumph. And when the drums cease, I shall have him strangled.”

Vespasian went to bed, but an hour before dawn his servants wakened him, and he in turn went to his son Titus and his lieutenant Trajan, wakening them, for he was a peasant and was willing to humble himself before others. “We shall not leave this camp until we have crushed Makor. Today I want every available man thrown against it.”

Inside the walls General Josephus warned his Jews, “This is the second test. He will try to terrify us, but if we get through this day we are saved.”

It was twelve hours of horror, with a rain of spears and arrows and tremendous rocks being thrown at the town while the engines moved forward—huge towers from which spears could be thrown down upon the defenders, powerful ballistas which hurled rocks like small houses—and pressure was maintained throughout the day at all points. Frequently it seemed as if the numbing power of the Romans must prevail, but in these critical hours Josephus was superb. He ran from one exposed danger spot to the next, exhorting his men as if they were a hundred thousand, dodging Roman arrows and inviting death. Of this man’s personal bravery none could doubt, for he fought as if he alone were responsible for throwing the Romans out of Galilee, and without his valiant efforts that day Makor would have fallen.

It held. By some miracle the handful of Jews inside the walls built in David’s time and repaired by Jeremoth in the age of Gomer repulsed all that Vespasian could mount against them. Rocks crashed into the Augusteana and carried away the roof, but the main gate, which was the important thing, held fast. From the towers rained down much armament which crumbled the glorious pillars of the ancient Greek temple, but the postern gate was not broken, and when night fell it was obvious that the maximum effort of the Romans had collapsed in exhaustion without accomplishing much.

That night Yigal, as always, assembled his family of nineteen in his little home and gave thanks for what God had done for His Jews in that critical period when the death of the town hung in the balance. Placing his woolen shawl over his shoulders he rocked back and forth in the Jewish manner as he prayed prior to eating. Then he talked with his sons about the day’s warfare and played with his grandchildren, who were beginning to experience the hunger attendant upon any siege. They were also thirsty, because even though Makor had ample supplies of water from the hidden source, and although huge supplies had been stored in cisterns, General Josephus had prudently ordered rationing against the unlucky day when the well might somehow fall into the hands of the Romans. Other families cheated on this matter and drank what they wanted, but Yigal, as leader of the defense, understood what Josephus was trying to accomplish, and in Yigal’s house the rationing was observed.

Beruriah came in with the night meal—a frugal offering of beans and bread and olives—and Yigal ceremoniously served the little children, then watched them severely in the dim light lest they begin to eat before their elders. This was a game he had always played with his children, and hungry though they were they enjoyed participating in it, watching his sharp eyes as they passed from child to child, half smiling, half stern, while his skilled hands continued serving the meager portions. But this evening he was not to finish, for a messenger came running with a summons to the wall. Fearing some catastrophe Yigal put down the crushed olives and left his home, his prayer shawl still about his shoulders.