In the great hall of his palace by the Tiber, Caesar Augustus, master bookkeeper of the world, was casting up the accounts of the nations of the earth. Before him, stretched on a frame was a chart labeled laconically ORBS TERRARUM-IMPERIUM ROMANUM: The Circle of the Earth-The Roman Empire.
In the center of the chart, in unrelieved white, were Italy and those parts that had been granted the rights of Roman citizenry. Augustus did not concern himself with these. They paid no direct tax and were not subject to compulsory levies of troops. His business was with those blue and red and yellow and grey parts of the map of the world in which were marked the tributary, the auxiliary, the vassal, the enslaved nations.
The ravages of the civil wars by which Augustus had risen to the imperial throne had exhausted and demoralized tht.6nances of the Empire. Whole nations had escaped the tax for years by giving aid to one or other of the factions that had rent the world. System had disappeared. That magnificent, inflexible order on which the safety of Rome rested had fallen to pieces. The methodical, thrifty soul of Augustus revolted at the wasted opportunities, the unworked riches of which the Empire was being cheated and of which it now stood in so great need.
He had set his clerks to work upon the lists of the last census of the world, requiring minute reports from each upon the particular province that was assigned to him showing the estimated changes which must have taken place in the wealth and resources of that region in the time that had elapsed.
Now with his own hand, as his eye traveled over the circle of the tributary earth upon the chart, he was writing out the lists of returns in money and men which each province must deliver to the Empire. A careful and a thrifty man was Augustus, Caesar of the Earth. Nothing should escape. Not the stone cairn by the Rhine nor the onion patch in the Nile mud should go unvisited. A man of calculated magnificences this, with a soul that could measure down to the detail of a village clerk.
The Empire was at peace. He hated war with all the hate of his prudent soul for waste and destruction of wealth and unreturning outlay. He was determined that this peace should be lasting. He would bring such order and system out of the chaos he had found that war would be no more possible. He would bring such wealth and commercial security to the people that all men, in their prosperity, should abhor the name of war.
From the Western Ocean to the Persian plains, from the frozen north to the edge of the southern desert the list should go out from his hand, to governor and satrap and tetrarch and king.
The head tax, the land tax, the measure of the waving crop, the salt that came out of the earth, the fishes that came out of the sea, all must be returned upon his books.
Every ruler, whatever his title, would be held responsible for the full return of the tax. The tenure of his authority would depend upon the fidelity with which he filled out the figures that stood on the books of the clerk of the Tiber.
East, west, north, south the lists went out from Rome and were laid before the eyes of perspiring kings and governors and rulers of every description. It made no difference that this king had already by extravagance or the waste of war reduced his people to the edge of ruin. It was nothing to Rome that one of her governors, to satisfy his own greed or to enrich his favorites, had many times farmed the taxes down to the very roots that stood in the soil. The tribute to Caesar was another matter. It must be found.
The lists came to Herod where he sat in Jerusalem in his old cruel years, looking back over a reign that in it had little but rapacity, patricide and greed. None knew so well as he how little the country could afford to raise the heavy new tax. He knew that he had taken away the upper from the nether millstone. He had taken the seedlings and the growth from the ground. He had muzzled the ox that treaded out the corn. But this had no concern for him. This Herod was not a king of his people. His sycophantic loyalty to Augustus had kept for him the name of king, beyond this he was nothing. Nevertheless, because he was called king, the prudent Augustus, would leave to him the manner of the taking of the numbers of the people and would assure him against disturbance and revolt among them. And the tax must be found.
Through all the land the proclamation went forth that every man was to repair to the city of his fathers, there to enroll himself among his tribe. There was no word of taxes. It was enough for the present that Herod’s men should have the complete roster of all the men of the nation. Later, when every name had been accounted for, so that none might by any chance escape, the tax-gatherers would go forth.
But all men knew what the census meant. And from Bersheba in the far south at the desert line to Dan in the north there was murmuring of the people at this new oppression that was in store.
Once David in his pride had attempted the numbering of the people, and calamity had come upon the nation. Since then no king had dared to command a counting of heads except in the time-honored way of the temple-by counting the Iambs of the Passover sacrifice. So it had been done all the days. It was impiety and sacrilege and invasion of the temple rights to command any other count of the people. Disaster and ruin would surely follow.
Men said that this meant the end of Herod’s rule.
There would be no king in Israel more. Others proclaimed that Rome herself must fall as a consequence of the outrage.
To Nazareth the order came and was posted, with blowing of trumpets, in the public place. Through the upland country of Galilee it went, rousing fierce resentment and stiffening the back of rebellion that was to break out in terrible fury in the days to come. These were anxious times, when young men talked rashly and old men trembled in their helpless rage and all good men prayed that God would withhold his scourge from the backs of the people.
Men came to Joseph talking wild and unrestrained talk to him as he toiled. He was a just man, they said: a servant knowing the Law Was it well that men should submit to this impiety, for which even the great David had been punished; and go up that their heads might be counted for the stranger and the oppressor like unto the beasts of the field?
Was he not a son of that David? Would he thus bring shame upon the blood of his ancestors by putting his head meekly into the stanchion of the defiler of the word of the Lord? Would he not rather proclaim his lineage and his house here, where he stood, and rise to strike a blow for the afflicted in Israel? What shame that he should go cravenly into the city of his father, David, there to announce publicly, to the joy of the unholy, that here was a son of the kings of Judah who bowed a willing knee to the despoiler of his country!
Would he not flee into the mountain fastnesses with them, there to await the coming of the Lord and the hour of His deliverance, that they might then strike with Him, for Him and Israel?
But Joseph had gained wisdom in the ways of the Lord.
He knew that the Savior, the Holy One of Israel was coming. But He was not coming with the sword of the flesh for the bodies of men. He was coming with the sword of the spirit that should strike away the fetters from the souls of men. And He would come in His own appointed way, neither needing nor desiring the shedding of blood to prepare His path.
So Joseph saw that the way of submission was the way of God. He would go, as was the command, to his own city; there to place his name among those of his people.
But, Mary?
The long hand of the clerk of the Tiber had reached out to touch a string of life that was greater than all the strings of power that were held in his hands. Caesar Augustus did not know that he was determining the birthplace of the One who was to rule Rome forever. He was not, in truth, determining that fact; for long ago God had looked upon little Bethlehem of Judah, and the prophet had foretold its glory. Caesar Augustus, in his clerkly order, was but arranging the way for the working of God’s will.
Then Joseph, looking upon Mary, knew suddenly that he could not leave her even for the short time that his journey to Bethlehem might require. He must go, and Mary must go with him. The end of the journey must be with God.
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Down the road from Nain and Herod’s new city, Tiberias, thundering and clamping across the hard road of the plain there came a troop of Roman soldiers. These did not belong in the country, for no part of the land was, as yet, a Roman province; but they were continually coming and going either on errands from their masters, the governors of neighboring provinces, to Herod’s court, or they were passing through the country from Damascus and the eastern frontier to the sea. This troop, of about twenty men, was evidently on its way to Jerusalem, probably with dispatches for Herod; for had it been going to the sea it would have traveled by the road that ran back of Nazareth.
Mary rose up and swiftly, with eager, trembling fingers and noiseless, hurrying feet went about her meager little preparations for her journey.