half-naked boys would gambol about the animals, and be scolded by their bearded fathers, and would beg of those fathers for a copper or two to purchase some honeyed sweet or chopped spicy meat in a leaf carried in other carts. Then the dust would be bright yellow in the sun and it would be very warm, and the tamarisk trees would lift their wide green clouds to the sky and the river would be full of traffic, and the distant harbor would be crowded with sails and the sun would He hotly on roof and wall and the stones of the road would burn through the thickest sole. Then herds of goats and sheep and cattle would fill the road on the way to market, complaining and bleating, and there would be fresh carts and wagons joining those on the roads, heaped with terrified and squawking chickens and geese, all tied together. Sometimes a detachment of Roman soldiers on horseback would roar through the colorful throngs, who would move off the road, cursing, to escape those hoofs which struck fire from the stones. Sometimes several Roman chariots from the cool suburbs would race along the margin of the road, carrying centurions and taxgatherers and clerks and bureaucrats to their stations and their offices, and many was the bronzed and muscular fist raised in imprecation as they swept by. The Romans’ faces would be set impassively, no eye glancing at the dusty peasants in their rough robes of brown and black and red and blue and at their swart faces partly concealed by head cloths to protect teeth and lips from the drying heat and dust. No Roman deigned to look down into those wild black eyes with the curse implicit in them. But a pretty slave girl standing shyly near the gate of a villa would attract their attention and a light salute, or even a whistle, and she would wave her hand in pleased answer. Cypresses would stand in stiff immutable ranks near the highway, and there would be glimpses of greening spring meadows and blossoming palms, and an occasional Roman guard tower. And everywhere would be the acrid scent of sweat and offal and animals and men on the seething road, and deafening clamor.
Saul knew of these things. He encountered the same throngs returning from Tarsus in the evening. He tried to avoid the road, walking on the stiff grass, stinging his feet with nettles, warily watching for snakes and lizards, and trying not to hear the furious uproar near at hand, trying to recite prayers, trying to step around pigeons and geese. He did not care to encounter the hordes in the morning. He was a citizen of Rome, but he did not love the Romans, who had enslaved his country. He did not love the people of Cilicia, though he had been born in their city of Tarsus. All was remote to him. Later in his life he was to say, “Never did I feel this world was my home nor my joy nor my comfort. I was an alien in the land.” He would think: Truly, I always loved God alone, with all my heart and all my soul and all my mind, as I loved none other, nay, not even my parents nor my teachers. My hours were haunted by God, my years knew Him only.
Some time before he had discovered a lonely clay road branching away from the stony Roman highway, and on an impulse of curiosity he had wandered a way upon it. He never knew whose estate he then surveyed, with lush pastures and little brooks and deep trees and palms and grain and grapevines, nor did he care. But he came upon, without warning, a sudden rise of steep and jutting rock formations, tall and tawny in the early light, like a wall set in his path, or the great ruins of a temple. From an upper crevice like a mouth burst a narrow cataract of pure green water, which made a soft though thunderous sound. At the foot of the rocks, now turning to broken gold before the rising sun, was a vast pool into which the cataract poured down, and the pool was the color of lemons and curiously quiet below such turbulence. Trees of many kinds grew wild about the pool and masses of wild flowers of every imaginable
Saul knew of these things. He encountered the same throngs returning from Tarsus in the evening. He tried to avoid the road, walking on the stiff grass, stinging his feet with nettles, warily watching for snakes and lizards, and trying not to hear the furious uproar near at hand, trying to recite prayers, trying to step around pigeons and geese. He did not care to encounter the hordes in the morning. He was a citizen of Rome, but he did not love the Romans, who had enslaved his country. He did not love the people of Cilicia, though he had been born in their city of Tarsus. All was remote to him. Later in his life he was to say, “Never did I feel this world was my home nor my joy nor my comfort. I was an alien in the land.” He would think: Truly, I always loved God alone, with all my heart and all my soul and all my mind, as I loved none other, nay, not even my parents nor my teachers. My hours were haunted by God, my years knew Him only.
Some time before he had discovered a lonely clay road branching away from the stony Roman highway, and on an impulse of curiosity he had wandered a way upon it. He never knew whose estate he then surveyed, with lush pastures and little brooks and deep trees and palms and grain and grapevines, nor did he care. But he came upon, without warning, a sudden rise of steep and jutting rock formations, tall and tawny in the early light, like a wall set in his path, or the great ruins of a temple. From an upper crevice like a mouth burst a narrow cataract of pure green water, which made a soft though thunderous sound. At the foot of the rocks, now turning to broken gold before the rising sun, was a vast pool into which the cataract poured down, and the pool was the color of lemons and curiously quiet below such turbulence. Trees of many kinds grew wild about the pool and masses of wild flowers of every imaginable
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