Chapter XIII: The Temple of the Sun

Their tricks of legerdemain, coupled with a thorough and accurate knowledge of astronomy, of which they made as great a mystery to the common people as a modern doctor of medicine does of the art of healing, enabled the Elimites, by taking advantage of a solar eclipse, and calling on the resources of a first-class juggler, to gain complete control of the Jewish government, and opened a plain highway to a complete revolution in the national religion as well as in the political aspect of things.

Corinthia, accompanied by her paramour Jokim, who thus found himself virtually a king, made a splendid progress through the land by chariot, driving with her own hand as the feminine representative of the firm of solar and lunar deities, and receiving the obeisance little short of worship indeed of her subjects. Her first official act on her return to Ophir was to issue a decree that tribute should be levied upon every male citizen of Israel for the purpose of building a magnificent Temple of the Sun where that glorious luminary and divine deputy might be worshiped with due respect to his greatness. Nothing was now too hard for the subjects of the bewitching queen to believe when proclaimed from her lips; and gold and silver flowed into the public treasury in abundance. New and larger expeditions than ever before were fitted out to the mines of Ophir for material with which to make the projected temple shine with the splendor of the sun himself. Workmen in vast armies began actively to prepare brick, stone and mortar, cedar and spruce, from the mountains, and skilled artisans fashioned costly and beautiful vases, enriched with scroll work of gold, and others modeled flowers and vines of silver and gold till the nation presented the appearance of a hive of bees intensely earnest in the work of laying up winter stores.

Slowly the dream of beauty evolved from the chaos of brick and stone, lime and mortar, cement and stucco. The mason’s trowel and the engraver’s chisel wrought unceasingly to make the airy castle that existed as a mental picture only become a substantial fact and the measure of its growth was the measure of the growth of the young queen into the affections of her people. They went wild over her wit and beauty, forgot her moral lapses, and unconsciously fell into a state of feeling toward her that was closely allied to the reverence we have for deity.

The enthusiasm among the deluded Jews was a molten sea of precious metals which the Accadian rulers directed into the mold of human designs and crystallized it into the magnificent Temple of the Sun. It was the record of spontaneous growth of national life, an era in national progress, the insignia of civic pride, pardonable in that its object was a worthy one, in the minds of the masses of the people who were led insensibly away from the religion and traditions of their fathers. As the religious fervor and physical energy of the nation culminated in this stupendous aggregation of wall and arch, roof and dome, as it was the expression of their highest ideal in their artists’, their architects’, and the engravers’ arts, so its completion was to make possible the last and highest step in the carefully matured plans of Jokim and his associates. It is not to be supposed that the motives of the judges in exalting Corinthia to the rulership of Israel were purely unselfish ones. They knew full well that the beauty and sex of Corinthia could overcome prejudices and difficulties that would for them be insurmountable, that would require decades, perhaps generations, of patient tutoring to smooth away. Power and position were of use to them only while they lived, and to die with the consciousness that their efforts had prepared the way for their posterity to reap glory and honor was but a poor incentive, for, according to their teachings, as of all other wise men of the world, was not human power a weariness to the flesh, and all human greatness vanity and vexation of spirit, and why should they wish to make so unsubstantial a bequest to their children?

Besides, troublesome questions as to a choice between many aspirants might arise to perplex and distract their offspring, and it was so plainly their duty to ward off trouble from their household that the ten wise judges, consulting with the almost equally wise, learned professions of the scribes or doctors of the law, and the priesthood, thought that at the dedication of the temple they should signalize that event, and by coupling it with that of instituting in full the system of worship taught them by their fathers in the land of Elim, namely the worship of the sun with all its accompanying rites; and as the wife of this solar deity was embodied in the person of Corinthia, they should have a deified representation of the sun himself, who should be supreme ruler as well as standing at the head of the priesthood.

Queen Corinthia, who doubtless understood this as the final step in the movement, and mindful of the fact that her power came from this source, made no objection, especially as every eye turned upon Jokim as the most suitable person to sacrifice his personal feelings for the common good.

So as the temple grew to perfection of symmetry, a day was proclaimed when it would be fittingly dedicated to the worship of Jehovah. The dedication was to be preceded by seven days of feasting and sport; races were to be run by footmen, trials of skill at archery were to take place, and on the seventh day a great chariot race was to occur as the culmination of a series of races during each day preceding. The winners of the six days’ trial should on the seventh have the honor of contending with the beautiful queen herself, who would drive the favorite royal equipage, a team of four milk-white horses of such docility, and so perfectly trained that they were the wonder and admiration of the City of Ophir. Corinthia herself was a daring, successful horsewoman, and had trained them largely with her own hand, and had achieved her first notoriety in the city by her superb horsemanship, driving at a furious rate through the crowded streets where collisions seemed impossible to avoid, when, at a word from her, the intelligent creatures would stop with astonishing suddenness, standing perfectly still until the crowd had scattered away, when at the given signal they would dash away again.

Three months’ notice was given to prepare for the festival, and the races and chariot driving at once became the absorbing topic of the day, and also the chief occupation of all who were fortunate enough to be able to possess horses and a vehicle.

It happened that among all the judges, Jokim had only one formidable rival, and he was formidable only because of the sinister methods he was capable of employing to accomplish his purpose. The hooked nose and eagle eye, somewhat hooded by heavy eyebrows, showed his Jewish origin and fiery ambition. He had ever viewed the advancement of Jokim, his superior in everything but the cunning of the jackal, with bitter jealousy and hatred, for a very good and sufficient reason, namely, that he had cherished plans of his own very similar to those of Jokim, their very similarity aiding him to interpret the motives that governed his opponent. His illicit affections had been lavished upon a young Jewess who was as noted for beauty and accomplishments in the city of license and luxury as Corinthia herself, until the latter had been exalted suddenly to a station far above hers, when crowned queen of Israel.

Her lover was as strictly an Elimite as Jokim, by birth and education, but being blessed with a cast of features more resembling the Jewish and possessed of the far-seeing wiles of a demagogue, he had upon coming to Ophir from a remote part of the country always proclaimed himself as an Accadian Jew, and changed his Accadian name to the Jewish one of Levi.

His infatuation for the fair Jewess, Rebecca, was largely prompted by motives of policy to enable him to curry favor with the preponderating element in the kingdom.

When the question of crowning a high priestess of the sun had been discussed by the judges, his manipulations had almost secured the nomination of Rebecca, instead of Corinthia, and on failing to do so, had nearly caused an insurrection among some of the Jews, when Corinthia, the Elimite, was enthroned.

If the hatred of Levi toward Jokim was cordial, what rancorous jealousy and intense hatred must have been engendered in the feminine heart of Rebecca toward her rival, whom she regarded as an alien whose unscrupulous mind had been so fortunate as to inhabit a beautiful body, enabling her to exert powerful fascination over all men with whom she came in contact, so that all she had to do was to look about her and choose her victim according to his political influence.

Corinthia did not make any pretense of loving her enemy or trying to heap coals of fire on her head, though she would have done so gladly if she could have been certain that it would have caused baldness on that head where the beautiful shining tresses of Rebecca reposed, or have dimmed the sparkle of the Jewish maiden’s eye.

The most potent cause of jealousy between men is political rivalry. The hatred of one woman toward another is a feminine instinct. But when women are found to add the political motives to their natural tendency to hate each other, we have a combination that nothing can withstand.

While Rebecca could have encircled the white neck of Corinthia with her lily fingers with an energy that would have wrenched bone and sinew asunder, Corinthia considered that she had already broken the neck of Rebecca, politically speaking, by her coronation; but she felt none of the pity that a generous victor feels for the vanquished, but only wild demoniacal exultation over her, and she failed not to remind her enemy of the fact on all occasions by a disdainful smile and a toss of her head, which would send her fallen foe off in a frenzy of baffled rage that boded no good for Corinthia or her kingdom should opportunity ever cross hands with her.

Among the Elimites it had come to be too much as it was in the effeminate latter days of the Grecian and Roman glory; the wives and mothers were the instruments of toil and drudgery, and the brilliant, beautiful, and accomplished mistresses, those exquisitely-whited sepulchers, were the companions of the lordly rulers and citizens of wealth. Theirs was the companionship with which they enjoyed the public walks and places of amusements. It was their gayety and sprightliness that charmed their leisure hours, and for them they bought costly chariots and high-bred horses. With their own hands they taught their temptresses to manage the mettled horses, and lavished their praises and flatteries upon the sodden mass of corruption, and laughed gayly at sallies of wit from the lips of her whose glory was her shame, of her whose footsteps take hold on hell, as the people of Israel were shortly to learn to their cost.

As Rebecca and Queen Corinthia had been instinctively rivals in social and political affairs, so feats of horsemanship were no exception to the rule. Rebecca’s lover, Levi, though not a willing charioteer himself, was driving a desperate race in which the prize was a kingdom and the forfeit chagrin bitter as death itself. Therefore, he was in no position to heed lightly Rebecca’s sly hints that Jokim’s mistress drove a splendid chariot, and showy team, and was likely to outshine the daughters of Israel and steal the affections of the people. Ruefully the niggardly Levi had set about finding a team as snowy, and a chariot as showy as that of his rival, and had succeeded so well that his identity had come near being swallowed in that of his hated rival, for the chariot of Jokim was a familiar sight on the streets of Ophir, and distinguishable at a glance from any other. But Levi’s purchase was destined in the end to change all this, for they so closely resembled Jokim’s horses that none but the closest observation could distinguish one from the other, and the presence of both vehicles in plain sight upon the street at once was necessary to convince spectators that there were two instead of one, and even then some of the ignorant and superstitious ones among them half-believed the newcomer to be a double of the other.

All this occurred some time prior to the coronation, when the rivals were on equal social footing, and it was a hotly-contested question among the adherents of the two beauties as to which of them was the better horsewoman.

Rebecca determined to contest the championship with all comers, and secretly she had almost begun to feel the thrill of triumph and hear the shouts of the populace that were to emphasize her success. Isidor was her trusted keeper and assistant as trainer of the horses for the momentous race; a burly Jew with neither the fear of man nor God before his eyes, subtle as the serpent of Eden, devoted to his employer; nothing of scruple in his nature stood in the way of his serving her to the utmost, and he added to this cast of character a wonderful knowledge of, and dominion over, the dumb creatures.

Long and earnest consultations between Rebecca and Isidor took place after the announcement of the festivities of the temple dedication. The first fruit of these consultations was that Abram, a brother of Isidor, who was at a distance from the city, was sent for. He had in common with Isidor the gift of mastery over the horse kingdom, and had made even better use of his gift for his own advantage, and was reported a very wizard in his power to handle and subdue vicious animals, and develop the intelligence of tractable ones.

A day or two after he was sent for, Abram met accidentally (?) on the street Jokim, whose agent he had been a year before in the selection and training of Corinthia’s famous team.

“Ah! thou art the man who was in my thoughts at this moment, Abram the wizard. I know that no other man in all Ophir can match thee in skill with chariot horses, and I am in need of thee just now. Where hast thou been all these months past? Hast thou not then heard of the famous race to be run on the seventh month in which our gracious queen will drive the horses that thou didst train so well?”

Abram disclaimed all knowledge of city events, having been on the plains, he said, helping to stay a dangerous distemper among the horses of the Israelites to the northward, and having but just come to Ophir for remedies with which he must hasten back to the plains.

“Say not so, Abram,” said Jokim, “I have urgent need of thee for some weeks, even to the time of our glorious festival of dedication. You must tarry with us and breathe your witcheries anew into the ears of our queen’s snowy beauties; our queen must win the race, and I have no fear with your faithful services to aid us.”

“It may not be, Father Jokim,” said Abram, “for mine honor I may not tarry. My word, which is ever my bond, has been given that not later than the hour of sunset, next day but one hence, I would return with more of the great remedy for the suffering animals.”

“Then will I relieve thy faithful mind of the responsibility of failing to keep thy word, for the queen has but just now sent me forth to put on foot inquiry concerning the whereabouts of the wizard horseman, Abram of Ophir, and commanded that a message should be sent with haste requiring his immediate presence before her.”

“Then is there none in all our new land of Canaan that will obey more joyfully than her humble servant Abram,” said that exceedingly suave equine healer; and forthwith he called one of his caravan and sent a message to his imaginary anxious patrons in the distant foothills of the condition of affairs, and then accompanied his employer-by-proxy to the presence of the lovely young ruler of Israel herself.

There was that in Abram’s obeisance before Corinthia which suggested that he blamed himself greatly for cumbering the ground, or encroaching upon the air with his presence and sordid needs, but also an earnest hint that if allowed the meanest corner in the barren desert he would like to continue in the cumbering business a little longer, not so much on his own account, but to show his gratitude to the woman to whom he had once been almost a companion when he had the matchless matches in training, and she was but a prospective queen.

But the adulatory posture of the horse-training Jew was of a kind of sweets none too highly seasoned for the taste of the queen but lately permitted to taste the draughts of power. She received him graciously, and urged upon his attention the fact that the cares of her present situation would render it impossible for her to give to her favorites the personal care that she had formerly bestowed upon them; therefore she had sent for him that as he knew her method of managing her horses, and as they too had succeeded so wonderfully in the past, she should be glad to submit her chances of success entirely to his keeping, and there must be no peradventure as to the final results, as she could not afford to be beaten in the presence of half the kingdom, and hinted that she had one rival in particular who would doubtless be a contestant in the race, and by whom she would not be beaten for half of Ophir.

Abram assured the queen that the kingdom did not contain the equals of her four docile animals, and that there was no possibility of defeat; and grovelling from the royal presence he betook himself to the royal stables, where he evened the account with nature by making his animals feel that they cumbered the ground only by his indulgence, and went to work upon his task with such vigor that though the chariot horses of Corinthia were already celebrated throughout the kingdom for wonderful intelligence and trained ability, he daily added some new horsely virtue to their already long list. Daily, too, or rather nightly, he might have been seen like a dark shadow of evil, flitting through the night from the palace grounds toward the quarters of his brother Isidor, with whom he held long and earnest consultations upon affairs that presumably were purely those of a brotherly nature, and not infrequently, when the ties of consanguinity had thus been cemented afresh by these dutiful conferences, Levi himself, accompanied by the beautiful black-eyed Rebecca, would honor them with a visit to inquire how the work of training went forward, if all the conditions of diet and quarters were perfect, and to ask with friendly concern how Abram’s work was progressing.

To be sure there were some business transactions of a purely confidential character between Levi, the wealthy and dignified ex-ruler, the first party, and Isidor and his brother Abram, second party, in which a bond was entered into by the first party, binding himself by a forfeit of one-half of his vast estate to give unto Isidor and Abram, upon the fulfillment of certain stipulations on their part, two certain “palaces of cedar in the outer part of the city of Ophir, as thou goest westward, and furthermore a forest of cedar and fir in the mountains of Ophir, as thou goest across the land to the westward, and the pastures that reach into the valley therefrom with their springs of living water, and all the flocks and herds that feed upon that pasture or lie beneath that forest of fir and cedar, to thee are they covenanted and to thy seed after thee.”

To Isidor and Abram this simple piece of parchment which they hid away very carefully seemed to speak a charmed language. Its various combinations of monotonous characters seemed to exert an exhilarating influence over their actions.

The days passed on, and the time of the great religious festival drew near. The streets were daily gay with the procession of chariots wending their way to and from the great racecourse just without the city. Excitement grew intense in anticipation of excitement, and speculation as to who should win was active, and feverish desire to know what was to be the meed to the victorious charioteer, for it was announced that upon the first day of the festival the terms and conditions to be observed, and the reward that was to crown the efforts of the victor would be made known. Meanwhile they were compelled to be content with the assurance from the queen that a reward adequate to the importance of the event and commensurate with the love of the queen for her dutiful subjects should fall to each of the winners of the series that was to end upon the sixth day; and that upon the seventh day to show her interest in the welfare of her people, and her cordial approval of their sports, the royal chariot driven by herself would enter the lists against the victors for the grand prize.

Isidor and Abram were as ignorant as the street rabble as to what the prize should be, and as indifferent as the little band of lepers who dwelt upon the hillside overlooking the city in a few miserable hovels, and were daily supplied from the queen’s table with food which was placed in a convenient spot at a safe distance from the little city, where hope was never known to enter, and whose inhabitants dragged out their miserable lives in plain view of the pleasure and grandeur, the vanities and excess of pleasures indulged in by the great city of the living world, while they were practically viewing the pageant from the grave.

The prize set before the two loving brothers was a more dazzling one than the wildest dreams of the contestants could conjure up as possible to be offered from the hand of Corinthia.

Meanwhile she was more than satisfied with the progress of Abram’s milky pupils. She condescended graciously to ride with him in his training course, which was attached to the palace grounds and walled in by a massive brick wall high and wide enough to exclude all the danger of interference or eavesdropping upon the secrets of Abram’s art, and was highly delighted with the progress in speed and tractability; and in her enthusiasm had one day increased the wages of Abram which were very meager, to the magnificent extent of one-twentieth part to be added to his daily pittance, and promised that should she win the race, Abram might expect to drive a chariot of his own some day.

This was a very hazy and indefinite promise, but a very safe one which the virtuous queen imagined would be amply sufficient to set on fire his most ardent ambitions. Abram was griped with pangs of deepest humility apparently, at the spontaneous overflowing generosity of his sovereign, and none but those who might have caught the light of a vicious gleam that flashed for a moment from beneath his eyebrows, could imagine that he was not overjoyed by her kindness and pained anew only on account of his cumbersome presence.