FOOTNOTES:

Queen Thusnelda, wife of Arminius, taken prisoner by the soldiers of the Roman general GermanicusQueen Thusnelda, wife of Arminius, taken prisoner by the soldiers of the Roman general GermanicusPainting by H. Koenig

The account circulated of the surrender of Segestes, and his gracious reception, affected his countrymen with hope or anguish as they were severally prone or averse to the war. Acting upon a temper naturally violent, the captivity of his wife and the child in her womb subjected to bondage drove Arminius to distraction: he flew about among the Cheruscans, calling them to arms against Segestes, against Germanicus; nor did he refrain from invectives—"An excellent father! a great general; a valiant army, whose many hands had carried off one bit of a woman! That before him three legions fell, three lieutenants-general; for his method of carrying on war was not by treason nor against pregnant women, but openly, against armed hosts. That the Roman standards were still to be seen in the German groves, there suspended by him to his country's gods. Segestes might live upon the vanquished bank; he might get the priesthood restored to his son; but the Germans would ever regard the fellow as the guilty cause of their having seen between the Elbe and Rhine rods and axes and the toga. That to other nations who know not the Romandomination, executions and tributes were unknown; and as they had thrown them off, and as Augustus (he who was enrolled with the gods) had retreated without accomplishing his object, and Tiberius, his chosen successor, let them not dread an inexperienced stripling and a mutinous army. If they preferred their country, their parents, and their ancient possessions, to masters and new settlements, they should follow Arminius, who led them to glory and liberty, rather than Segestes, who conducted them to infamous servitude."

By these means not the Cheruscans only were roused, but the bordering nations; and Inguiomer, paternal uncle to Arminius, a man long in high credit with the Romans, was drawn into the confederacy. Hence Germanicus became more alarmed, and to prevent the war falling upon him with unbroken force, sent Cæcina with forty Roman cohorts to the river Amisia, through the territories of the Bructerians, to effect a division in the army of the enemy. Pedo, the prefect, led the cavalry along the confines of the Frisians; he himself, embarking four legions, sailed through the lakes; and at the aforesaid river the whole body met—foot, horse, and fleet. The Chaucians, upon offering their assistance, were taken into the service; but the Bructerians, setting fire to their effects and dwellings, were routed by Lucius Stertinius, despatched against them by Germanicus with a band lightly armed. And amid the carnage and plunder he found the eagle of the Nineteenth legion lost in the overthrow of Varus. The army marched next to the farthest borders of the Bructerians, and the whole country between the rivers Amisia and Luppia was laid waste. Not far hence lay the forest of Teutoburgium, and in it the bones of Varus and the legions, by report, still unburied.

Germanicus, therefore, conceived a desire to pay the last offices to the legions and their leader; while the whole of the army present were moved to deep commiseration for their kinsmen and friends, and generally for the calamities of war and the condition of humanity. Cæcina having been sent before to explore the gloomy recesses of the forest, and to lay bridges and causeways over the watery portions of the morasses and insecure places in the plains, they enter the doleful scene, hideous in appearance and association. The first camp of Varusappeared in view. The extent of ground and the measurement of theprincipialeft no doubt that the whole was the work of three legions. After that a half-decayed rampart with a shallow foss, where their remains, now sadly reduced, were understood to have sunk down. In the intervening portion of the plain were whitening bones, either scattered or accumulated, according as they had fled or had made a stand. Near them lay fragments of javelins and limbs of horses. There were also skulls fixed upon the trunks of trees. In the adjacent groves were the savage altars, where they had immolated the tribunes and centurions of the first rank. Those who survived the slaughter, having escaped from captivity and the sword, related the sad particulars to the rest: "Here the commanders of the legions were slain; there we lost the eagles; here Varus had his first wound; there he gave himself another, and perished by his own unhappy hand. In that place, too, stood the tribunal whence Arminius harangued. How many gibbets he erected for the execution of his captives; what trenches he dug; and how, in proud scorn, he made a mock at the standards and eagles."

The Roman army which was on the spot buried the bones of the three legions six years after the slaughter: nor could anyone distinguish whether he buried the remains of a stranger or of a kinsman; but all considered the whole as friends, as relations, with heightened resentment against the foe, at once sad and revengeful. Germanicus laid the first sod used in raising a tomb, thus rendering a most acceptable service to the dead, and showing that he shared the sorrows of the living, a proceeding not liked by Tiberius; whether it were that upon every action of Germanicus he put a malignant construction, or that he believed that the impression produced by the sight of the unburied slain would dampen the ardor of the army for battle and inspire them with fear of the enemy. He also said that "A general invested with the office of augur and the most ancient religious functions ought not to have put his hand to the ceremonies of the dead."

Arminius, retiring into pathless places, was pursued by Germanicus, who, as soon as he reached him, commanded the horse to advance and dislodge the enemy from the post he hadpossessed. Arminius, having directed his men to keep close together and draw near to the wood, wheeled suddenly about, and to those whom he had hid in the forest gave the signal to rush out. Then the Roman horse were thrown into disorder by the assault of a new army, and the cohorts sent out to support them, broken in upon by the body of troops that fled, had augmented the consternation, and were now being pushed into the morass—a place well known to the pursuers, but dangerous to those unacquainted with it—had not Germanicus drawn out the legions in order of battle. Hence the enemy became terrified, our men reanimated, and both retired without advantage on either side. Germanicus, soon after, returning with the army to the Amisia, reconducted the legions, as he had brought them, in the fleet; part of the horse were ordered to march along the sea-shore to the Rhine. Cæcina, who led his own men, was warned that, though he was to return through well-known roads, yet he should with all speed pass the causeway called the Long Bridges. It is a narrow causeway, between vast marshes, and formerly raised by Lucius Domitius. The rest of the country is of a moist nature, either tough and sticky from a heavy kind of clay or dangerous from the streams which intersect it. Round about are woods which rise gently from the plain, which at that time were filled with soldiers by Arminius, who, by short cuts and quick marching, had arrived there before our men, who were loaded with arms and baggage. Cæcina, who was perplexed how at once to repair the causeway decayed by time and to repulse the foe, resolved to encamp in the place, that while some were employed in the work, others might begin the fight.

The barbarians, having made a vigorous effort to break through the outposts and fall upon those employed in the works, harass the troops, march round them, and throw themselves in their way. A mingled shout arose from the workmen and the combatants; all things equally combined to distress the Romans—the place deep with ooze, sinking under those who stood, slippery to such as advanced; their bodies were encumbered with their coats of mail, nor could they hurl their javelins in the midst of water. The Cheruscans, on the contrary, were inured to encounters in the bogs: their persons tall; theirspears long, so as to wound at a distance. At last the legions, already giving way, were saved from defeat by the approach of night; the Germans not feeling fatigue on account of their success, without refreshing themselves with sleep, even then diverted all the courses of the springs which rise in the neighboring mountains into the plains; thus the ground being flooded, and the work, as far as they had carried it, overturned, the soldiers had all to do over again. Cæcina, who had served forty years, either under others or in command, was experienced in the vicissitudes of war, prosperous or disastrous, and thence undaunted. Weighing, therefore, all probabilities, he could devise no other expedient than that of restraining the enemy to the wood until he had sent forward all the wounded and baggage; for between the mountains and the marshes there stretched a plain large enough to admit a small army. To this purpose the legions selected were: The Fifth, for the right wing, and Twenty-first, for the left; the soldiers of the First legion to lead the van of the Twentieth to oppose the pursuers.

It was a restless night to both armies, but from different causes. The barbarians, with festive carousals, songs of triumph, or horrid cries, filled the vales below and echoing wood. Among the Romans were feeble fires, low broken murmurs; they leaned, drooping here and there, against the pales, or wandered about the tents, more like men wanting sleep than quite awake. The general, too, was alarmed by direful visions during his sleep; he thought he heard, and saw, Quintilius Varus, rising out of the marsh, all besmeared with blood, stretching forth his hand and calling upon him, but that he rejected the call, and pushed back his hand as he held it toward him. At break of day the legions, posted on the wings, whether from perverseness or fear, deserted their post and took sudden possession of a field beyond the bogs; neither did Arminius fall straight upon them, though they lay open to assault; but when the baggage was set fast in the mire and ditches, the soldiers about it in disorder, the order of the standards confounded, and—as usual at such a time—each man acting hastily for himself, when the ears are slow to catch the word of command, he then commanded his Germans to charge, exclaiming vehemently, "Behold! Varus and his legions again subdued bythe same fate!" Thus he cried, and instantly, with a select body, broke through the mass, and chiefly against the horse directed his weapons. Floundering in their own blood and the slippery soil of the marsh, they threw their riders, overturned all they met, and trampled on those that were on the ground. The greatest distress was around the eagles, which could neither be carried against a shower of darts nor be planted in the slimy ground. Cæcina, while he sustained the fight, had his horse shot and, having fallen, would have been overpowered had not the First legion come up to succor him. Our relief came from the greediness of the enemy, who ceased slaying, to seize the spoil. And the legions, as the day closed in, by great exertion got into the open and firm ground. Nor was this the end of their miseries; a palisade was to be raised, an intrenchment digged; their instruments, too, for throwing up and carrying earth, and their tools for cutting turf, were almost all lost. No tents for the soldiers; no remedies for the wounded. While dividing among them their food, defiled with mire or blood, they lamented that mournful night; they lamented the approaching day, to so many thousand men the last.

It happened that a horse which had broken his fastenings and, as he strayed about, become frightened by a noise, had run over some that were in his way. This raised such a consternation in the camp—from a persuasion that the Germans had forced an entrance—that all rushed to the gates, especially to the postern,[19]as the farthest from the foe and safer for flight. Cæcina having ascertained that there was no cause for alarm, but unable to stop them or hold them back, either by his authority or prayers or even by force, prostrated himself on the threshold of the gate; and thus at length by appealing to their humanity—for if they proceeded it must be over the body of the general—he blocked the passage, and the tribunes and centurions satisfied them the while that it was a false alarm.

Then assembling them in the court, and desiring them to hear him with silence, he warned them of their difficulties, and their duty under them: "That their sole hope of safety was in their valor, but that must be guided by counsel; that they must keep close within their camp till the enemy, in hopes of taking it by storm, came up nearer to them; then make a sudden sally on every side, that by this sally they might make good their way to the Rhine; but if they fled, more forests, deeper marshes, and the fierce attack of the foe still remained to them; but that if they conquered, honor and renown awaited them." He reminded them of all that was dear to them at home, and the rewards to be obtained in the camp, but suppressed all mention of defeat. He next distributed horses, first his own, then those of the tribunes and leaders of the legions, to all the bravest warriors, without any flattery, that these first, and afterward the infantry, might charge the enemy.

The Germans were in no less agitation from hope, eagerness, and the opposite counsels of their leaders. Arminius proposed "To let them march out, and to beset them again in their way when they got into marshes and difficult passes." Inguiomer advised measures more resolute and acceptable to barbarians—"To invest the camp; it would be quickly captured; there would be more captives, and the plunder uninjured." As soon therefore as it was light, they level the ditch, cast hurdles into it, attempt to scale the palisade, there being but few men on the rampart, and those who were, standing as if paralyzed by fear. But when they were hampered in the fortifications, the signal was given to the cohorts; the cornets and trumpets sounded at once, and instantly, shouting and charging, they poured down upon their rear, telling them tauntingly "that there were no thickets, no marshes, but equal chances in a fair field." The enemy, expecting an easy conquest, and that the Romans were few and half-armed, were overpowered with the sounds of trumpets and glitter of arms, which were then magnified in proportion as they were unexpected; and they fell like men who, as they are void of moderation in prosperity, are also destitute of conduct in distress. Arminius fled from the fight unhurt, Inguiomer severely wounded. The men were slaughtered as long as day and rage lasted. At length, atnight, the legions returned, and though distressed by the same want of provisions and more wounds, yet in victory they found all things—health, vigor, and abundance.

Meanwhile a report had spread that an army was cut off, and a body of Germans on full march to invade Gaul; so that, under the terror of this news, there were those whose cowardice would have emboldened them to demolish the bridge upon the Rhine, had not Agrippina forbidden the infamous attempt. This high-minded woman took upon herself all the duties of a general, and distributed to the soldiers, gratuitously, medicines and clothes, according as anyone was in want or wounded. Caius Plinius, the writer of the German wars, relates that she stood at the head of the bridge as the legions returned, and bestowed on them thanks and praises; a behavior which sunk deep into the heart of Tiberius, for these attentions he thought were not disinterested; nor was it against foreigners she sought to win the army; for nothing was now left the generals to do, when a woman paid her visits of inspection to the companies, attended the standards, and presumed to distribute largesses; as if before she had shown but small tokens of ambitious designs in carrying her child (the son of the general) in a soldier's uniform about the camp and desiring that he be styled Cæsar Caligula. Already Agrippina was in greater credit with the army than the lieutenants-general, or even the generals—a woman had suppressed a sedition which the authority of the Emperor was not able to restrain. These jealousies were inflamed and ministered to by Sejanus, who was well acquainted with the temper of Tiberius, and supplied him with materials for hatred, prospectively, that he might treasure them up in his heart and draw them out augmented in bitterness.

Germanicus handed over the Second and Fourteenth of the legions, which he had brought in ships, to Publius Vitellius to conduct them by land, that his fleet, thus lightened, might sail on the shoally sea, or run aground with safety when the tide ebbed. Vitellius at first marched without interruption while the ground was dry or the tide flowed within bounds. Presently the ocean beginning to swell by the action of the northwest wind upon it, and also by the influence of the equinoxial constellation—at which season the sea swells most—the troopswere miserably harassed and driven about. The lands were completely inundated; the sea, the shore, the fields, had one uniform face: no distinction of depths from shallows, of firm from treacherous footing; they were overturned by billows, absorbed by the eddies; beasts of burden, baggage, and dead bodies floated among them and came in contact with them. The several companies were mixed at random, wading now breast high, now up to their chin; sometimes, the ground failing them, they fell, some never more to rise. Their cries and mutual encouragements availed them nothing; the noise of the water drowning them; no difference between the coward and the brave, the wise and the foolish; none between circumspection and hap-hazard, but all were involved in the sweeping torrent. Vitellius at length, having by great exertion gained the higher ground, withdrew the legions thither, where they passed the night without fire and without food, many of them naked or lamed, not less miserable than men enclosed by an enemy—for even such had the resource of an honorable death, while these must perish ingloriously. Daylight restored the land, and they marched to the river Unsingis, whither Germanicus had gone with the fleet. The legions were then embarked, while rumor reported that they were sunk; nor was their escape believed until Germanicus and the army were seen to return.

Stertinius, who had been sent before to receive the submission of Sigimer, the brother of Segestes, had now brought him and his son to the city of the Ubians; both were pardoned, the father promptly, the son with more hesitation, because he was said to have insulted the corpse of Varus. For the rest, Spain, Italy, and the Gauls vied in supplying the losses of the army, offering arms, horses, money, whatever each had at hand. Germanicus, applauding their zeal, accepted only the horses and arms for the war; with his own money he assisted the soldiers; and, to soften by kindness also the memory of the late disaster, he visited the wounded, extolled the exploits of individuals, and, looking at their wounds, with hopes encouraged some, with a sense of glory animated others, and by affability and attention confirmed them all in devotion to himself and to his service. Between the Romans and the Cheruscans flowed the river Visurgis. On its bank stood Arminius, with theother chiefs, inquiring whether Germanicus was come; and being answered that he was there, he prayed leave to speak with his brother. This brother of his was in the army, his name Flavius, remarkable for his fidelity, and for the loss of an eye under Tiberius. Permission was then granted. Flavius, advancing, was saluted by Arminius, who having removed his own attendants, requested that the archers ranged upon our bank might retire. When they were gone—"How came you," he asked his brother, "by that deformity in your face?" The brother having informed him where and in what fight, he desired to know "what reward he had received"? Flavius answered, "Increase of pay, the chain, the crown, and other military gifts"; which Arminius treated with derision, as the vile wages of servitude.

After that they began in different strains. Flavius urged "the Roman greatness, the power of Cæsar, the severe punishment inflicted on the vanquished; and the clemency vouchsafed to those who submitted; that neither the wife nor son of Arminius was treated as a captive." Arminius to this opposed "the claims of country, their hereditary liberty, the domestic gods of Germany; their mother, who joined in his prayer that he would not prefer the character of a deserter, and a betrayer of his kinsmen and connections, in short, of his race, to that of their general." From this they gradually proceeded to invectives; nor would the interposition of the river have restrained them from an encounter, had not Stertinius, running to him, held back Flavius, full of rage and calling for his arms and his horse. On the opposite side was seen Arminius, menacing furiously and proclaiming battle. For most of what he said in this dialogue was in Latin, having, as the general of his countrymen, served in the Roman camp.

Next day the German army stood in order of battle beyond the Visurgis. Germanicus, who thought it became not a general to endanger the legions in the passage without bridges and guards, made the horse ford over. They were led by Stertinius and Æmilius, one of the principal centurions, who entered the river at distant places to divide the attention of the foe. Cariovalda, captain of the Batavians, dashed through where the stream was most rapid, and was by the Cheruscans—whofeigned flight—drawn into a plain surrounded by woods. Then starting up at once, and pouring upon him on every side, they overthrew those who resisted, and pressed after those who gave way, who at length, forming themselves into a circle, were assailed by some hand-to-hand, by others were annoyed by missiles. Cariovalda, having long sustained the fury of the enemy, exhorted his men to break through the assailing bands in a solid body; he himself charged into the thickest, and fell under a shower of darts—his horse also being killed—and many nobles fell around him. The rest were saved by their own bravery, or by the cavalry under Stertinius and Æmilius, which came up to their assistance.

Germanicus, having passed the Visurgis, learned from a deserter that Arminius had marked out the place of battle; that more tribes also had joined him at a wood sacred to Hercules, and would attempt to storm our camp by night. The deserter was believed, the enemy's fires were in view, and the scouts, having advanced toward them, reported that they heard the neighing of horses and the murmur of a mighty and tumultuous host. Being thus upon the eve of a decisive battle, Germanicus thought it behooved him to learn the sentiments of the soldiers, and deliberated with himself how to get at the truth; "the reports of the tribunes and centurions were oftener agreeable than true; the freedmen had servile spirits; friends were apt to flatter; if an assembly were called, there, too, the counsel proposed by a few was carried by the clamorous plaudits of the rest. The minds of soldiers could, then, only be thoroughly known when, by themselves, free from all restraint, and over their mess, they gave unreserved utterance to their hopes and fears."

At nightfall, taking the path leading by the place of divination,[20]he went out with a single attendant, a deerskin covering his shoulders,[21]and proceeding by a secret way where there were no sentinels, entered the avenues of the camp, stationed himself near the tents, and eagerly listened to what was said of himself, while one magnified the imperial birth of his general,another his graceful person, very many his firmness, condescension, and the evenness of his temper, whether seriously occupied or in moments of relaxation; and they confessed that their sense of his merits should be shown in battle, protesting at the same time that those traitors and violators of peace should be made a sacrifice to vengeance and to fame. In the mean time one of the enemy who understood Latin rode up to the palisades, and with a loud voice offered, in the name of Arminius, to every deserter a wife and land, and, as long as the war lasted, a hundred sesterces a day. This affront kindled the wrath of the legions. "Let day come," they cried, "battle should be given, the soldiers would themselves take the lands of the Germans, lead away wives by right of conquest; they, however, welcomed the omen, and considered the wealth and women of the enemy their destined prey." About the third watch[22]an attempt was made upon the camp, but not a dart was discharged, as they found the cohorts planted thick upon the works, and nothing neglected that was necessary for a vigorous defence.

Germanicus had the same night a cheering dream: he thought he sacrificed, and, in place of his own robe besmeared with the blood of the victim, received one fairer from the hands of his grandmother Augusta. Elated by the omen, and the auspices being favorable, he called an assembly, and laid before them what in his judgment seemed likely to be advantageous and suitable for the impending battle. He said "that to the Roman soldiers not only plains, but, with due circumspection, even woods and forests were convenient. The huge targets, the enormous spears of the barbarians, could never be wielded among trunks of trees and thickets of underwood shooting up from the ground like Roman swords and javelins, and armor fitting the body; that they should reiterate their blows, and aim at the face with their swords. The Germans had neither helmet nor coat of mail; their bucklers were not even strengthened with leather or iron, but mere contextures of twigs, and boards of no substance flourished over with paint; their first rank was armed with pikes, in some sort, the rest had onlystakes burned at the end, or short darts. And now to come to their persons, as they were terrific to sight, and vigorous enough for a brief effort, so they were utterly impatient of wounds; unaffected with shame for misconduct, and destitute of respect for their generals. They would quit their posts or run away before the enemy; cowards in adversity, in prosperity despisers of all divine, of all human laws; if weary of marches and sea voyages, they wished an end of these things, by this battle it was presented to them. The Elbe was now nearer than the Rhine; there was nothing to subdue beyond this; they had only to place him, crowned with victory, in the same country which had witnessed the triumphs of his father and uncle, in whose footsteps he was treading." The ardor of the soldiers was kindled by this speech of the general, and the signal for the onset was given.

Neither did Arminius or the other chiefs neglect solemnly to assure their several bands that "these were Romans; the most desperate fugitives of the Varian army, who, to avoid the hardships of war, had put on the character of rebels; who, without any hope of success, were again braving the angry gods, and exposing to their exasperated foes, some of them backs burdened with wounds, others limbs enfeebled with the effects of storms and tempests. Their motive for having recourse to a fleet and the pathless regions of the ocean was that no one might oppose them as they approached or pursue them when repulsed; but when they engaged hand-to-hand, vain would be the help of winds and oars after a defeat. The Germans needed only remember their rapine, cruelty, and pride; was any other course left them than to maintain their liberty, and, if they could not do that, to die before they took a yoke upon them?"

The enemy thus inflamed, and calling for battle, were led into a plain called Idistavisus. It lies between the Visurgis and the hills, and winds irregularly along, as it is encroached upon by the projecting bases of the mountains or enlarged by the receding banks of the river. At their rear rose a majestic forest, the branches of the trees shooting up into the air, but the ground clear between their trunks. The army of barbarians occupied the plain and the entrances of the forest; the Cheruscans alone sat in ambush upon the mountain, in order to pourdown from thence upon the Romans when engaged in the fight. Our army marched thus: the auxiliary Gauls and Germans in front, after them the foot archers, next four legions, and then Germanicus with two prætorian cohorts and the choice of the cavalry; then four legions more, and the light foot with the mounted archers, and the other cohorts of the allies; the men were on the alert and in readiness, so that the order of march might form the order of battle when they halted.

As the bands of Cheruscans who had impatiently rushed forward were now perceived, Germanicus commanded the most efficient of his horse to charge them in the flank, and Stertinius with the rest to wheel round to attack them in the rear, and promised to be ready to assist them at the proper moment. Meanwhile an omen of happiest import appeared; eight eagles, seen to fly toward the wood and to enter it, caught the eye of the general. "Advance!" he cried, "follow the Roman birds; follow the tutelar deities of the legions!"

At once the foot charged, and the cavalry sent forward attacked their flank and rear, and, strange to relate, the two divisions of their army fled opposite ways; that in the wood ran to the plain, that in the plain rushed into the wood. The Cheruscans between both were driven from the hills; among them Arminius formed a conspicuous object, while with his hand, his voice, and the exhibition of his wounds he strove to sustain the fight. He had vigorously assaulted the archers, and would have broken through them had not the cohorts of the Rhætians, the Vindelicians, and the Gauls advanced to oppose him. However, by his own personal effort and the impetus of his horse he made good his passage, his face besmeared with his own blood to avoid being known. Some have related that the Chaucians, who were among the Roman auxiliaries, knew him and let him go; the same bravery or stratagem procured Inguiomer his escape; the rest were slain on all hands; great numbers attempting to swim the Visurgis perished either by the darts showered after them or the violence of the current, or, if they escaped these, they were overwhelmed by the weight of the rushing crowd and the banks which fell upon them. Some, seeking an ignominious refuge, climbed to the tops of trees, and, concealing themselves among the branches, were shot in sportby the archers, who were brought up for the purpose; others were dashed against the ground as the trees were felled. This was a great victory, and withal achieved without loss on our side.

This slaughter of the foe, from the fifth hour[23]of the day until night, filled the country for ten miles with carcasses and arms. Among the spoils, chains were found, which, sure of conquering, they had brought to bind the Roman captives. The soldiers saluted Tiberius as "Imperator"[24]upon the field of battle, and, raising a mount, placed upon it, after the manner of trophies, the German arms, with the names of all the vanquished nations inscribed below.

This sight filled the Germans with more anguish and rage than all their wounds, afflictions, and overthrows. They, who were just now prepared to abandon their dwellings and retire beyond the Elbe, meditate war and grasp their arms; people, nobles, youth, aged, all rush suddenly upon the Roman army in its march and disorder it. Lastly, they chose a position shut in by a river and a forest, the inner space being a confined and humid plain; the forest, too, surrounded with a deep marsh, except that the Angrivarii had elevated one side by erecting a broad mound to part them and the Cheruscans. Here their foot were posted; their horse were concealed among the neighboring groves, that they might be on the rear of the legions when they had entered the wood.

Nothing of all this was a secret to Germanicus. He knew their counsels, their stations, their overt movements and their concealed measures; and turned their subtlety to the destruction of themselves. To Seius Tubero, his lieutenant, he committedthe horse and the plain; the infantry he so formed that part might pass the level approaches into the wood, and the rest force their way up the rampart; whatever was arduous he reserved to himself, the rest he committed to his lieutenants. Those who had the even ground to traverse easily forced an entrance; but they who were to storm the rampart were battered from above, as if they had been assaulting a wall. The general perceived the inequality of this close encounter, and, drawing off the legions a small distance, ordered the slingers and engineers to discharge their missiles and dislodge the enemy. Immediately darts were poured from the engines, and the defenders of the barrier, the more conspicuous they were, with the more wounds were beaten down. Germanicus, having taken the rampart, first forced his way at the head of the prætorian cohorts into the wood, and there fought, foot-to-foot. Behind the enemy was the morass, behind the Romans the mountains or the river; no room for either to retreat, no hope but in valor, no safety but in victory.

The Germans were not inferior in courage, but in their method of fighting and the nature of their arms; as their vast numbers, hampered in narrow places, could not push forward, nor recover their immense spears, nor practise their usual assaults and rapid motions, being compelled by their crowded condition to adopt a stationary manner of fighting. On the contrary, our soldiers, with shields fitted to their breasts, and their hands firmly grasping their sword hilts, could gash the brawny limbs and naked faces of the barbarians, and open themselves a way with havoc to the enemy. Besides, the activity of Arminius now failed him, being either exhausted by a succession of disasters or disabled by his recent wound. Nay, Inguiomer, too, who flew from place to place throughout the battle, was abandoned by fortune rather than courage. Germanicus, to be the easier known, pulled off his helmet, and exhorted his men "to prosecute the slaughter; they wanted no captives," he said; "the extermination of the people alone would put an end to the war!" It was now late in the day and he drew off a legion to pitch a camp; the rest glutted themselves till night with the blood of the foe; the horse fought with doubtful success.

Germanicus, having in a public harangue praised his victorious troops, raised a pile of arms with this proud inscription: "That the army of Tiberius Cæsar, having subdued the nations between the Rhine and the Elbe, had consecrated these memorials to Mars, to Jupiter, and to Augustus." Of himself he made no mention; either fearful of provoking envy or that he felt satisfied with the consciousness of his own merit. He next charged Stertinius with the war among the Angrivarians, and he would have proceeded had they not made haste to submit; approaching as supplicants, and making a full confession of their guilt, they received pardon without reserve.

The summer being now far advanced, some of the legions were sent back into winter quarters by land; the greater part Cæsar put on board the fleet and conveyed them along the Amisia to the ocean. The sea, at first serene, resounded only with the oars of a thousand ships or their impulse when under sail; but presently a shower of hail poured down from a black mass of clouds; at the same time storms raging on all sides in every variety, the billows rolling now here, now there, obstructed the view and made it impossible to manage the ships. The soldiers, too, unaccustomed to the perils of the sea, in their alarm embarrassed the mariners, or, helping them awkwardly, rendered unavailing the services of the skilful. After this, the whole expanse of air and sea was swept by a southwest wind, which, deriving strength from the mountainous regions of Germany, its deep rivers, and boundless tract of clouded atmosphere, and rendered still harsher by the rigor of the neighboring north, tore away the ships, scattered and drove them into the open ocean, or upon islands, dangerous from precipitous rocks or the hidden sand-banks which beset them. Having got a little clear of these (but with great difficulty), the tide turned, and, flowing in the same direction as that in which the wind blew, they were unable to ride at anchor or bale out the water that broke in upon them. Horses, beasts of burden, baggage, even arms, were thrown overboard to lighten the holds of the vessels, which took in water at their sides and from the waves running over them. Around them were either shores inhabited by enemies or a sea so vast and unfathomable as to be supposed to be the limit of the world and unbounded by any land. Partof the fleet was swallowed up; many ships were driven upon remote islands where, without a trace of civilized humanity, the men perished through famine, or were kept alive by the carcasses of horses that were dashed upon the same shore. The galley of Germanicus alone reached the coast of the Chaucians[25]where, during the whole period of his stay, both day and night, amid the rocks and prominences of the shore, he reproached himself as being the author of such overwhelming destruction, and was hardly restrained by his friends from destroying himself in the sea. At last, with the returning tide and favoring gale, the shattered ships returned—almost all destitute of oars, or with garments spread for sails, and some towed by those which were less disabled. He repaired them hastily, and despatched them to search the islands. By this diligence the greater part were recovered; many were by the Angrivarians (our new subjects) redeemed from their more inland neighbors and restored; and some, driven into Great Britain, were sent back by the petty kings. Each according to the remoteness of the region he had returned from recounted the wonders he had witnessed: "the impetuosity of whirlwinds; strange birds; sea monsters of ambiguous form between man and beast"—things either seen or fancied from the effects of fear.

Intelligence of this wreck animated the Germans with hopes of renewing the war, which Germanicus, perceiving, resolved to check. He commanded Caius Silius, with thirty thousand foot and three thousand horse, to march into the country of the Cattians; he himself, with a greater force, invaded the Marsians, where he learned from Malovendus, their general—lately taken into our subjection—that the eagle of one of Varus' legions was hidden underground in a neighboring grove kept by a slender guard. Instantly two parties were despatched: one to face the enemy and draw him from his position, the other to march around upon the rear and open the ground. Success attended both. Hence Germanicus, advancing toward the interior with greater alacrity, laid waste the country and destroyed the effects of the late disaster. The foe, wherever they engaged, were instantly defeated; nor (as was learned from the prisoners) were they ever more dismayed. "The Romans," they exclaimed,"are invincible; no calamities can subdue them; they have wrecked their fleet, their arms are lost, our shores are covered with the bodies of their horses and men; and yet they have invaded us with their usual spirit, with the same firmness, and as if their numbers were increased."

The army was thence led back into winter quarters, full of joy to have balanced, by this prosperous expedition, their misfortunes at sea; and by the bounty of Germanicus their happiness was increased; since to each sufferer he paid as much as he declared he had lost; neither was it doubted but that the enemy was tottering and concerting measures for obtaining peace, and that the next summer would terminate the war. Tiberius, by frequent letters, pressed him "to come home to the triumph decreed him." He urged also that he had experienced enough of events and casualties; he had indeed fought great and successful battles, but he must likewise remember his losses and calamities, which (however, owing to wind and waves, and no fault of the general) were yet great and grievous. He himself had been sent nine times into Germany by Augustus, and effected much more by policy than arms. It was thus he had brought the Sygambrians into subjection, thus the Suevians, thus King Maroboduus had been obliged to submit to terms. The Cheruscans, too, and the other hostile nations—now the Roman honor was vindicated—might be left to pursue their own intestine feuds. Germanicus besought one year to accomplish his conquest, but Tiberius assailed his modesty with fresh importunity, by offering him another consulship, the duties of which would require his presence; he added "that if the war were still to be prosecuted, he should leave materials for the fame of his brother, Drusus, who, as there then remained no other enemy, could acquire the title ofImperator, and earn the privilege of presenting the laurel in Germany alone." Germanicus persisted no longer; though he knew that this was all hypocrisy, and that through envy he was torn away from a ripened harvest of glory.

FOOTNOTES:[19]There were four gates to a Roman camp. Livy says so in express terms: "Ad quatuor portas exercitum instruxit, ut, signo dato, ex omnibus portubus eruptionem facerent." The several gates were theprætorian; the gate opposite to it, at the extremity of the camp, called thedecuman; and two others, called therightandleft principals, because they stood on the right and left sides of the camp, fronting the street calledPrincipia.[20]In the camp a place was set apart for taking the auspices, on the right of the general's tent.[21]He assumed this disguise in order to appear like a German soldier.[22]The Romans divided the night into four watches. Each watch was on duty three hours, and then relieved by the next in turn. The third watch began about the modern twelve at night.[23]It appears that the battle was fought in July or the beginning of August,adulta jam æstate. If so, thefifthhour nearly agrees with our nine in the morning.[24]In the time of the republic, the title of Imperator was given by the soldiers in the field of battle to the commander-in-chief. The custom ceased under Augustus, who annexed the title to the imperial dignity, the prince being then generalissimo of all the armies of the empire. The name of Imperator, it is true, was afterward given to the general who gained a victory; but that was not done without the special permission of the prince. The same rule was observed under the following emperors; and accordingly we find that Tiberius was saluted Imperator; but the soldiers did not presume to do that honor to Germanicus.[25]The mouth of the Visurgis, or the Weser.

[19]There were four gates to a Roman camp. Livy says so in express terms: "Ad quatuor portas exercitum instruxit, ut, signo dato, ex omnibus portubus eruptionem facerent." The several gates were theprætorian; the gate opposite to it, at the extremity of the camp, called thedecuman; and two others, called therightandleft principals, because they stood on the right and left sides of the camp, fronting the street calledPrincipia.

[20]In the camp a place was set apart for taking the auspices, on the right of the general's tent.

[21]He assumed this disguise in order to appear like a German soldier.

[22]The Romans divided the night into four watches. Each watch was on duty three hours, and then relieved by the next in turn. The third watch began about the modern twelve at night.

[23]It appears that the battle was fought in July or the beginning of August,adulta jam æstate. If so, thefifthhour nearly agrees with our nine in the morning.

[24]In the time of the republic, the title of Imperator was given by the soldiers in the field of battle to the commander-in-chief. The custom ceased under Augustus, who annexed the title to the imperial dignity, the prince being then generalissimo of all the armies of the empire. The name of Imperator, it is true, was afterward given to the general who gained a victory; but that was not done without the special permission of the prince. The same rule was observed under the following emperors; and accordingly we find that Tiberius was saluted Imperator; but the soldiers did not presume to do that honor to Germanicus.

[25]The mouth of the Visurgis, or the Weser.

The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ took place on Friday of the Passover week of the Jews, in the yeara.d.30. This day is known and now generally observed by Christians as Good Friday. Crucifixion, as a means of inflicting death in the most cruel, lingering, and shameful way, was used by many nations of antiquity. The Jews never executed their criminals in this way, but the Greeks and Romans made the cross the instrument of death to malefactors. The cross was in the shape either of the letter T or the letter X, or was in the form familiar in such paintings of the Crucifixion as the well-known representation of Rubens. It was the usual custom to compel the criminal to carry his own cross to the place of execution. The cross was then set up and the criminal was usually tied to it by the hands and feet and left to perish of hunger and thirst. Sometimes he was given a narcotic drink to stupefy him. In the case of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ the victim was fastened to the cross by nails driven through his hands and feet.As Dr. Judson Titsworth has plainly pointed out, the men who were crucified with Jesus Christ were not thieves, but robbers (this is the term also used below by Farrar), or perhaps Jewish patriots, to the Romans political rebels and outlaws. They would then be classed with Jesus under the accusation that they were not loyal to the sovereignty of the Roman Emperor. During the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate there was a widely prevailing spirit of sedition and revolt among the Jews, and many rebels were sentenced to crucifixion. Such a rebel was the robber Barabbas, whom Pilate wished to substitute for Jesus as the victim of popular fury. The "robber" episode of the Crucifixion is treated by Farrar with a picturesque effect which heightens the vivid coloring in his account of the supreme event that marks "the central point of the world's history."

As Dr. Judson Titsworth has plainly pointed out, the men who were crucified with Jesus Christ were not thieves, but robbers (this is the term also used below by Farrar), or perhaps Jewish patriots, to the Romans political rebels and outlaws. They would then be classed with Jesus under the accusation that they were not loyal to the sovereignty of the Roman Emperor. During the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate there was a widely prevailing spirit of sedition and revolt among the Jews, and many rebels were sentenced to crucifixion. Such a rebel was the robber Barabbas, whom Pilate wished to substitute for Jesus as the victim of popular fury. The "robber" episode of the Crucifixion is treated by Farrar with a picturesque effect which heightens the vivid coloring in his account of the supreme event that marks "the central point of the world's history."

Utterly brutal and revolting as was the punishment of crucifixion, which has now for fifteen hundred years been abolished by the common pity and abhorrence of mankind, there was one custom in Judea, and one occasionally practisedby the Romans, which reveal some touch of passing humanity. The latter consisted in giving to the sufferer a blow under the armpit, which, without causing death, yet hastened its approach. Of this I need not speak, because, for whatever reason, it was not practised on this occasion. The former, which seems to have been due to the milder nature of Judaism, and which was derived from a happy piece of rabbinic exegesis on Prov. xxxi. 6, consisted in giving to the condemned, immediately before his execution, a draught of wine medicated with some powerful opiate. It had been the custom of wealthy ladies in Jerusalem to provide this stupefying potion at their own expense, and they did so quite irrespectively of their sympathy for any individual criminal. It was probably taken freely by the two malefactors, but when they offered it to Jesus he would not take it. The refusal was an act of sublimest heroism. The effect of the draught was to dull the nerves, to cloud the intellect, to provide an anæsthetic against some part at least of the lingering agonies of that dreadful death. But he, whom some modern sceptics have been base enough to accuse of feminine feebleness and cowardly despair, preferred rather "to look Death in the face"—to meet the king of terrors without striving to deaden the force of one agonizing anticipation, or to still the throbbing of one lacerated nerve.

The three crosses were laid on the ground—that of Jesus, which was doubtless taller than the other two, being placed in bitter scorn in the midst. Perhaps the cross-beam was now nailed to the upright, and certainly the title, which had either been borne by Jesus fastened round his neck or carried by one of the soldiers in front of him, was now nailed to the summit of his cross. Then he was stripped naked of all his clothes, and then followed the most awful moment of all. He was laid down upon the implement of torture. His arms were stretched along the cross-beams; and at the centre of the open palms the point of a huge iron nail was placed, which, by the blow of a mallet, was driven home into the wood. Then through either foot separately, or possibly through both together as they were placed one over the other, another huge nail tore its way through the quivering flesh. Whether the sufferer wasalsobound to the cross we do not know; but, to prevent thehands and feet being torn away by the weight of the body, which could not "rest upon nothing but four great wounds," there was, about the centre of the cross, a wooden projection strong enough to support, at least in part, a human body which soon became a weight of agony.

It was probably at this moment of inconceivable horror that the voice of the Son of Man was heard uplifted, not in a scream of natural agony at that fearful torture, but calmly praying in divine compassion for his brutal and pitiless murderers—aye, and for all who in their sinful ignorance crucify him afresh forever: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

And then the accursed tree—with its living human burden hanging upon it in helpless agony, and suffering fresh tortures as every movement irritated the fresh rents in hands and feet—was slowly heaved up by strong arms, and the end of it fixed firmly in a hole dug deep in the ground for that purpose. The feet were but a little raised above the earth. The victim was in full reach of every hand that might choose to strike, in close proximity to every gesture of insult and hatred. He might hang for hours to be abused, outraged, even tortured by the ever-moving multitude who, with that desire to see what is horrible which always characterizes the coarsest hearts, had thronged to gaze upon a sight which should rather have made them weep tears of blood.

And there, in tortures which grew ever more insupportable, ever more maddening as time flowed on, the unhappy victims might linger in a living death so cruelly intolerable that often they were driven to entreat and implore the spectators or the executioners, for dear pity's sake, to put an end to anguish too awful for man to bear—conscious to the last, and often, with tears of abject misery, beseeching from their enemies the priceless boon of death.

For indeed a death by crucifixion seems to include all that pain and deathcanhave of horrible and ghastly—dizziness, cramp, thirst, starvation, sleeplessness, traumatic fever, tetanus, publicity of shame, long continuance of torment, horror of anticipation, mortification of untended wounds—all intensified just up to the point at which they can be endured at all, but all stopping just short of the point which would give to the suffererthe relief of unconsciousness. The unnatural position made every movement painful; the lacerated veins and crushed tendons throbbed with incessant anguish; the wounds, inflamed by exposure, gradually gangrened; the arteries—especially of the head and stomach—became swollen and oppressed with surcharged blood; and while each variety of misery went on gradually increasing, there was added to them the intolerable pang of a burning and raging thirst; and all these physical complications caused an internal excitement and anxiety which made the prospect of death itself—of death, the awful unknown enemy, at whose approach man usually shudders most—bear the aspect of a delicious and exquisite release.

Such was the death to which Christ was doomed; and though for him it was happily shortened by all that he had previously endured, yet he hung from soon after noon until nearly sunset before "he gave up his soul to death."

When the cross was uplifted the leading Jews, for the first time, prominently noticed the deadly insult in which Pilate had vented his indignation. Before, in their blind rage, they had imagined that the manner of his crucifixion was an insult aimed atJesus; but now that they saw him hanging between the two robbers, on a cross yet loftier, it suddenly flashed upon them that it was a public scorn inflicted uponthem. For on the white wooden tablet smeared with gypsum, which was to be seen so conspicuously over the head of Jesus on the cross, ran, in black letters, an inscription in the three civilized languages of the ancient world—the three languages of whichoneat least was certain to be known by every single man in that assembled multitude—in the official Latin, in the current Greek, in the vernacular Aramaic—informing all that this Man who was thus enduring a shameful, servile death—this Man thus crucified between twosicariiin the sight of the world, was "The King of the Jews."

To him who was crucified the poor malice seemed to have in it nothing of derision. Even on his cross he reigned; even there he seemed divinely elevated above the priests who had brought about his death, and the coarse, idle, vulgar multitude who had flocked to feed their greedy eyes upon his sufferings. The malice was quite impotent against One whose spiritual andmoral nobleness struck awe into dying malefactors and heathen executioners, even in the lowest abyss of his physical degradation. With the passionate ill-humor of the Roman governor there probably blended a vein of seriousness. While he was delighted to revenge himself on his detested subjects by an act of public insolence, he probably meant, or half meant, to imply that thiswas, in one sense, the King of the Jews—the greatest, the noblest, the truest of his race, whom therefore his race had crucified. The King was not unworthy of his kingdom, but the kingdom of the King. There was something loftier even than royalty in the glazing eyes which never ceased to look with sorrow on the City of Righteousness, which had now become a city of murderers. The Jews felt the intensity of the scorn with which Pilate had treated them. It so completely poisoned their hour of triumph that they sent their chief priests in deputation, begging the governor to alter the obnoxious title. "Write not," they said, "'The King of the Jews,' but that 'Hesaid, I am the King of the Jews.'" But Pilate's courage, which had oozed away so rapidly at the name of Cæsar, had now revived. He was glad in any and every way to browbeat and thwart the men whose seditious clamor had forced him in the morning to act against his will. Few men had the power of giving expression to a sovereign contempt more effectually than the Romans. Without deigning any justification of what he had done, Pilate summarily dismissed these solemn hierarchs with the curt and contemptuous reply, "What I have written I have written."

In order to prevent the possibility of any rescue, even at the last moment—since instances had been known of men taken from the cross and restored to life—a quaternion of soldiers with their centurion were left on the ground to guard the cross. The clothes of the victims always fell as perquisites to the men who had to perform so weary and disagreeable an office. Little dreaming how exactly they were fulfilling the mystic intimations of olden Jewish prophecy, they proceeded, therefore, to divide between them the garments of Jesus. Thetalliththey tore into four parts, probably ripping it down the seams; but thecetoneth, or undergarment, was formed of one continuous woven texture, and to tear would have been to spoil it; theytherefore contented themselves with letting it become the property of any one of the four to whom it should fall by lot. When this had been decided, they sat down and watched him till the end, beguiling the weary lingering hours by eating and drinking, and gibing, and playing dice.

It was a scene of tumult. The great body of the people seem to have stood silently at gaze; but some few of them as they passed by the cross—perhaps some of the many false witnesses and other conspirators of the previous night—mocked at Jesus with insulting noises and furious taunts, especially bidding him come down from the cross and save himself, since he could destroy the Temple and build it in three days. And the chief priests, and scribes, and elders, less awe-struck, less compassionate than the mass of the people, were not ashamed to disgrace their gray-haired dignity and lofty reputation by adding their heartless reproaches to those of the evil few. Unrestrained by the noble patience of the sufferer, unsated by the accomplishment of their wicked vengeance, unmoved by the sight of helpless anguish and the look of eyes that began to glaze in death, they congratulated one another under his cross with scornful insolence: "He saved others, himself he cannot save;" "Let this Christ, this King of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe." No wonder then that the ignorant soldiers took their share of mockery with these shameless and unvenerable hierarchs: no wonder that, at their midday meal, they pledged in mock hilarity the Dying Man, cruelly holding up toward his burning lips their cups of sour wine, and echoing the Jewish taunts against the weakness of the King whose throne was a cross, whose crown was thorns. Nay, even the poor wretches who were crucified with him caught the hideous infection; comrades, perhaps, of the respited Barabbas, heirs of the rebellious fury of a Judas the Gaulonite, trained to recognize no Messiah but a Messiah of the sword, they reproachfully bade him, if his claims were true, to save himself and them. Soallthe voices about him rang with blasphemy and spite, and in that long slow agony his dying ear caught no accent of gratitude, of pity, or of love. Baseness, falsehood, savagery, stupidity—such were the characteristics of the world which thrust itself into hideous prominence beforethe Saviour's last consciousness, such the muddy and miserable stream that rolled under the cross before his dying eyes.

But amid this chorus of infamy Jesus spoke not. Hecouldhave spoken. The pains of crucifixion did not confuse the intellect or paralyze the powers of speech. We read of crucified men who, for hours together upon the cross, vented their sorrow, their rage, or their despair in the manner that best accorded with their character; of some who raved and cursed, and spat at their enemies; of others who protested to the last against the iniquity of their sentence; of others who implored compassion with abject entreaties; of one even who, from the cross, as from a tribunal, harangued the multitude of his countrymen, and upbraided them with their wickedness and vice. But, except to bless and to encourage, and to add to the happiness and hope of others, Jesus spoke not. So far as the malice of the passers-by, and of priests and sanhedrists and soldiers, and of these poor robbers who suffered with him, was concerned—as before during the trial so now upon the cross—he maintained unbroken his kingly silence.

But that silence, joined to his patient majesty and the divine holiness and innocence which radiated from him like a halo, was more eloquent than any words. It told earliest on one of the crucified robbers. At first thisbonus latroof the Apocryphal Gospels seems to have faintly joined in the reproaches uttered by his fellow-sinner; but when those reproaches merged into deeper blasphemy, he spoke out his inmost thought. It is probable that he had met Jesus before, and heard him, and perhaps been one of those thousands who had seen his miracles. There is indeed no authority for the legend which assigns to him the name of Dysmas, or for the beautiful story of his having saved the life of the Virgin and her Child during their flight into Egypt. But on the plains of Gennesareth, perhaps from some robber's cave in the wild ravines of the Valley of the Doves, he may well have approached his presence—he may well have been one of those publicans and sinners who drew near to him for to hear him. And the words of Jesus had found some room in the good ground of his heart; they had not all fallen upon stony places. Even at this hour of shame and death, when he was suffering the just consequence of his pastevil deeds, faith triumphed. As a flame sometimes leaps up among dying embers, so amid the white ashes of a sinful life which lay so thick upon his heart, the flame of love toward his God and his Saviour was not quite quenched. Under the hellish outcries which had broken loose around the cross of Jesus there had lain a deep misgiving. Half of them seem to have been instigated by doubt and fear. Even in the self-congratulations of the priests we catch an undertone of dread. Suppose that even now some imposing miracle should be wrought! Suppose that even now that martyr-form should burst indeed into messianic splendor, and the King, who seemed to be in the slow misery of death, should suddenly with a great voice summon his legions of angels, and, springing from his cross upon the rolling clouds of heaven, come in flaming fire to take vengeance upon his enemies! And the air seemed to be full of signs. There was a gloom of gathering darkness in the sky, a thrill and tremor in the solid earth, a haunting presence as of ghostly visitants who chilled the heart and hovered in awful witness above that scene. The dying robber had joined at first in the half-taunting, half-despairing appeal to a defeat and weakness which contradicted all that he had hoped; but now this defeat seemed to be greater than victory, and this weakness more irresistible than strength. As he looked, the faith in his heart dawned more and more into the perfect day. He had long ceased to utter any reproachful words; he now rebuked his comrade's blasphemies. Ought not the suffering innocence of him who hung between them to shame into silence their just punishment and flagrant guilt? And so, turning his head to Jesus, he uttered the intense appeal, "O Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom." Then he, who had been mute amid invectives, spake at once in surpassing answer to that humble prayer, "Verily, I say to thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise."

Though none spoke to comfort Jesus—though deep grief, and terror, and amazement kept them dumb—yet there were hearts amid the crowd that beat in sympathy with the awful sufferer. At a distance stood a number of women looking on, and perhaps, even at that dread hour, expecting his immediate deliverance. Many of these were women who had ministeredto him in Galilee, and had come from thence in the great band of Galilean pilgrims. Conspicuous among this heart-stricken group were his mother Mary, Mary of Magdala, Mary the wife of Clopas, mother of James and Joses, and Salome the wife of Zebedee. Some of them, as the hours advanced, stole nearer and nearer to the cross, and at length the filming eye of the Saviour fell on his own mother Mary, as, with the sword piercing through and through her heart, she stood with the disciple whom he loved. His mother does not seem to have been much with him during his ministry. It may be that the duties and cares of a humble home rendered it impossible. At any rate, the only occasions on which we hear of her are occasions when she is with his brethren, and is joined with them in endeavoring to influence, apart from his own purposes and authority, his messianic course. But although at the very beginning of his ministry he had gently shown her that the earthly and filial relation was now to be transcended by one far more lofty and divine, and though this end of all her high hopes must have tried her faith with an overwhelming and unspeakable sorrow, yet she was true to him in this supreme hour of his humiliation, and would have done for him all that a mother's sympathy and love can do. Nor had he for a moment forgotten her who had bent over his infant slumbers, and with whom he had shared those thirty years in the cottage at Nazareth. Tenderly and sadly he thought of the future that awaited her during the remaining years of her life on earth, troubled as they must be by the tumults and persecutions of a struggling and nascent faith. After his resurrection her lot was wholly cast among his apostles, and the apostle whom he loved the most, the apostle who was nearest to him in heart and life, seemed the fittest to take care of her. To him, therefore—to John whom he had loved more than his brethren—to John whose head had leaned upon his breast at the Last Supper, he consigned her as a sacred charge. "Woman," he said to her, in fewest words, but in words which breathed the uttermost spirit of tenderness, "behold thy son;" and then to St. John, "Behold thy mother." He could make no gesture with those pierced hands, but he could bend his head. They listened in speechless emotion, but from that hour—perhaps from that very moment—leading heraway from a spectacle which did but torture her soul with unavailing agony, that disciple took her to his own home.

It was now noon, and at the Holy City the sunshine should have been burning over that scene of horror with a power such as it has in the full depth of an English summer-time. But instead of this, the face of the heavens was black, and the noonday sun was "turned into darkness," on "this great and terrible day of the Lord." It could have been no darkness of any natural eclipse, for the Paschal moon was at the full; but it was one of those "signs from heaven" for which, during the ministry of Jesus, the Pharisees had so often clamored in vain. The early Fathers appealed to pagan authorities—the historian Phallus, the chronicler Phlegon—for such a darkness; but we have no means of testing the accuracy of these references, and it is quite possible that the darkness was a local gloom which hung densely over the guilty city and its immediate neighborhood. But whatever it was, it clearly filled the minds of all who beheld it with yet deeper misgiving. The taunts and jeers of the Jewish priests and the heathen soldiers were evidently confined to the earlier hours of the Crucifixion. Its later stages seem to have thrilled alike the guilty and the innocent with emotions of dread and horror. Of the incidents of those last three hours we are told nothing, and that awful obscuration of the noonday sun may well have overawed every heart into an inaction respecting which there was nothing to relate. What Jesus sufferedthenfor us men and our salvation we cannot know, for during those three hours he hung upon his cross in silence and darkness; or, if he spoke, there was none there to record his words. But toward the close of that time his anguish culminated, and, emptied to the very uttermost of that glory which he had since the world began, drinking to the very deepest dregs the cup of humiliation and bitterness, enduring not only to have taken upon him the form of a servant, but also to suffer the last infamy which human hatred could impose on servile helplessness, he uttered that mysterious cry, of which the full significance will never be fathomed by man:Eli, Eli, lama Sabachthani?("My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?")

In those words, quoting the psalm in which the early Fathersrightly saw a far-off prophecy of the whole passion of Christ, he borrowed from David's utter agony the expression of his own. In that hour he was alone. Sinking from depth to depth of unfathomable suffering, until, at the close approach of a death which—because he was God, and yet had been made man—was more awful to him than it could ever be to any of the sons of men, it seemed as if even his divine humanity could endure no more.

Doubtless the voice of the sufferer—though uttered loudly in that paroxysm of an emotion which, in another, would almost have touched the verge of despair—was yet rendered more uncertain and indistinct from the condition of exhaustion in which he hung; and so, amid the darkness, and confused noise, and dull footsteps of the moving multitude, there were some who did not hear what he had said. They had caught only the first syllable, and said to one another that he had called on the name of Elijah. The readiness with which they seized this false impression is another proof of the wild state of excitement and terror—the involuntary dread of something great and unforeseen and terrible—to which they had been reduced from their former savage insolence. For Elijah, the great prophet of the Old Covenant, was inextricably mingled with all the Jewish expectations of a Messiah, and these expectations were full of wrath. The coming of Elijah would be the coming of a day of fire, in which the sun should be turned into blackness and the moon into blood, and the powers of heaven should be shaken. Already the noonday sun was shrouded in unnatural eclipse; might not some awful form at any moment rend the heavens and come down, touch the mountains and they should smoke? The vague anticipation of conscious guilt was unfulfilled. Not such as yet was to be the method of God's workings. His messages to man for many ages more were not to be in the thunder and earthquake, not in rushing wind or roaring flame, but in the "still small voice" speaking always amid the apparent silences of Time in whispers intelligible to man's heart, but in which there is neither speech nor language, though the voice is heard.

But now the end was very rapidly approaching, and Jesus, who had been hanging for nearly six hours upon the cross, wassuffering from that torment of thirst which is most difficult of all for the human frame to bear—perhaps the most unmitigated of the many separate sources of anguish which were combined in this worst form of death. No doubt this burning thirst was aggravated by seeing the Roman soldiers drinking so near the cross; and happily for mankind, Jesus had never sanctioned the unnatural affectation of stoic impassibility. And so he uttered the one sole word of physical suffering which had been wrung from him by all the hours in which he had endured the extreme of all that man can inflict. He cried aloud, "I thirst." Probably a few hours before, the cry would have only provoked a roar of frantic mockery; but now the lookers-on were reduced by awe to a readier humanity. Near the cross there lay on the ground the large earthen vessel containing theposca, which was the ordinary drink of the Roman soldiers. The mouth of it was filled with a piece of sponge, which served as a cork. Instantly some one—we know not whether he was friend or enemy, or merely one who was there out of idle curiosity—took out the sponge and dipped it in the posca to give it to Jesus. But low as was the elevation of the cross, the head of the sufferer, as it rested on the horizontal beam of the accursed tree, was just beyond the man's reach; and therefore he put the sponge at the end of a stalk of hyssop—about a foot long—and held it up to the parched and dying lips. Even this simple act of pity, which Jesus did not refuse, seemed to jar upon the condition of nervous excitement with which some of the multitude were looking on. "Let be," they said to the man, "let us see whether Elias is coming to save him." The man did not desist from his act of mercy, but when it was done he, too, seems to have echoed those uneasy words. But Elias came not, nor human comforter, nor angel deliverer. It was the will of God, it was the will of the Son of God, that he should be "perfected through sufferings"; that—for the eternal example of all his children as long as the world should last—he should "endure unto the end."

And now the end was come. Once more, in the words of the sweet Psalmist of Israel, but adding to them that title of trustful love which, through him, is permitted to the use of all mankind, "Father," he said, "into thy hands I commend myspirit." Then with one more great effort he uttered the last cry—"It is finished." It may be that that great cry ruptured some of the vessels of his heart, for no sooner had it been uttered than he bowed his head upon his breast and yielded his life, "a ransom for many"—a willing sacrifice to his Heavenly Father. "Finished was his holy life; with his life his struggle, with his struggle his work, with his work the redemption, with the redemption the foundation of the new world." At that moment the veil of the Temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. An earthquake shook the earth and split the rocks, and as it rolled away from their places the great stones which closed and covered the cavern sepulchres of the Jews, so it seemed to the imaginations of many to have disimprisoned the spirits of the dead, and to have filled the air with ghostly visitants, who after Christ had risen appeared to linger in the Holy City. These circumstances of amazement, joined to all they had observed in the bearing of the Crucified, cowed even the cruel and gay indifference of the Roman soldiers. On the centurion who was in command of them the whole scene had exercised a yet deeper influence. As he stood opposite to the cross and saw the Saviour die, he glorified God and exclaimed, "This Man was in truth righteous"—nay, more, "This Man was a Son of God." Even the multitude, utterly sobered from their furious excitement and frantic rage, began to be weighed down with a guilty consciousness that the scene which they had witnessed had in it something more awful than they could have conceived, and as they returned to Jerusalem they wailed and beat upon their breasts. Well might they do so! This was the last drop in a full cup of wickedness: this was the beginning of the end of their city and name and race.

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