Heinrich Ewald

Josephus had at all events then got rid of his most dangerous Judean opponent in Galilee; but the precious opportunity when he might have succeeded in converting this bulwark of Judea into a terrible basis for attacks upon the Romans had been lost in those persistent domestic contentions of the popular leaders amongst each other. It is true Josephus took Sepphoris by force of arms as soon as he learnt that its population, although preponderatingly Judean, had sent again to the Romans praying for help, and he succeeded in preventing its complete sack only by a stratagem. But, in consequence of the increasing uncertainty with regard to Judean affairs generally, it was found advisable in Tiberias to return to the idea of surrender to the king; even Justus, who had previously done most to join the Judean movement,2 now seized the first opportunity to flee from Josephus, from whom he thought he was in mortal danger, and surrender himself to the king. And Josephus had scarcely finished the fresh conquest of that changeable city,3 when Sepphoris was really occupied by a sufficiently strong number of Roman foot and horse soldiers; whereupon he tried in vain to take it by a siege and scaling the walls at night; his men, on the contrary, were seriously worsted by the Roman cavalry upon the great plain near Sepphoris. On the east, the royal forces, under a commander named Syllas, likewise advanced on horse and foot into the country, and they pitched such a strong camp outside Julias, above the north-east corner of the Lake of Galilee, that they were in a position both to advance easily to the west, over the Jordan, so as to threaten Galilee, and to the east, so as to command the great road which went northwards to Seleucia and

1 Vita, §§ 52, 60-64, 66. While, in howover, are of too insignificant a cha

B’ll. Jiul. ii. 21. 7. Josephus has given racter to bo retold here at length,

this sloryof the inquiry into his official * Ante, p. 534.

acts only’in very brief hints, he commit ni- 3According to Vita, § 15, he took

cates it in his7,;7piii great detail; but, Tiberias four times, Sepphoris twice, and

unhappily, we learn from it only the Gadara (which ought to be Gabara) once,

more directly and undeniably what an according to the laws of war, and he

amount of moral obliquity and weakness boasts that he had never proceeded cruelly

was in his mind, as in that of almost all against John even, the other men in power. The details,

southwards to Gamala; by which means those two important cities, which had previously surrendered to the Judeans,1 were practically cut off. With this new enemy Josephus was never engaged in anything more serious than skirmishes, in one of which he himself met with a fall from his horse in a quagmire, and had to be taken back to Capernaum.11

Vespasian in Galilee.

When Josephus had governed Galilee in this way not quite six months3 Vespasian arrived in Tyre, having travelled by land to Antioch, and then in Ptolemais. He was a man quite unknown in Asia, but he had become famous in German and British wars as a successful soldier and friend of soldiers; and representing in these degenerate times once more ancient Roman rigour and discipline, both towards himself and particularly towards the army, was destined soon to become not only the magnanimous conqueror of Asia, but also its benefactor, and at last its emperor. The evil tidings from Judea had come to Nero in the autumn of 66, when he was not very far away from the scene, as he was at that time staying in Achaia. He at last made the best arrangement which was possible there, in appointing the ablest of his generals, who was just then in Achaia, his representative (legatus) in Judea, and committing to him three legions; soon afterwards he appointed, as the successor of Cestius Gallus, who had died, Licinius Mucianus with four legions, if the above three should not be sufficient.4 Gessius Floras, too, of whose subsequent fortunes we know no particulars, appears to have soon met with his end, since Josephus was able as early as the year 75 to write without any reserve about him. Titus, Vespasian’s son, who was already experienced in war, and far superior to his father in tact and humane virtues, was sent from Achaia to Egypt to fetch thence the fifth and the tenth legions, to complete, with the fifteenth, the number of the three legions.

1 Ante. p. S39. Vita does Josephus supply the slightest

3 The above, according to Vita, §§ 67- chronological note as to this entire period,

73. Instead of Uima, § 71, which is not a fact which is very characteristic of him

at all appropriate here, we must read as a historian, and for us very troublesome,

with the better 31SS. Seleucia; and it is The above calculation is, however, on the

obvious from the context that Kephar- whole safe, as Vespasian was in full ac

nome, § 72, is the Capernaum of the tivity in May, 67, according to Bctt. Jud.

Gospels (see vol. vi. p. 252); on the other iii. 7. 3.

hand, the name Capernaum for a spring 1 According to Tac. Hist. i. 10, ii. 4,

furl her south, in the passage Bill. Jud. and the words Jato aut ttedio orcidit of

iii. In. 8, remains very surprising. Cestius v. HI, Jos. Bill. Jud. iii. 1.1 3

* Neither in his Bell. Jud. nor in his 2. 4, Vita, § 71.

THE FORTRESS OF JOTAPATA.

In Antioch already Agrippa met the new governor, but was then, on the accusation of the Tyrians, compelled by Vespasian to send the above-mentioned Philip 1 to Nero, to defend him; and in Ptolemais the Decapolis accused Justus2 of having devastated their villages at the beginning of the movement.3 The actual war Vespasian began by sending six thousand infantry and one thousand cavalry under Placidus to Sepphoris, who, with this city as their basis, devastated Galilee far and wide.4 Meanwhile Titus joined his father at Ptolemais; and to the three legions and twenty-four cohorts of various kinds, cavalry and infantry, were added six thousand archers and three thousand horsemen from the three kings Antiochus, Agrippa, and Sohem, who, as we have seen,5 had in the previous campaign sent many men into the field, and five thousand foot with one thousand horse from the Arabian king Malchus.6 This collected army—some sixty thousand men without camp-followers—was not only, as regards military efficiency, but also in numbers, so formidable that Josephus, after he had been rapidly driven back to Tiberias, in spite of his somewhat fortified camp near the little town Taris,7 in the plain, an hour’s march from Sepphoris, supposed that all he could do was to seek a preliminary defence for himself and his friends in the places that lmd been more carefully fortified. It may be, as he subsequently narrated,s that he was already at that time, after these repeated defeats, in doubt as to a successful result of the conflict with the Romans; but he undoubtedly did not then think of going over to them. On the contrary, after he had urgently besought the people in power at Jerusalem for reinforcements, he removed from Tibelias again into the centre of Galilee, though he retired into the fortified town which he regarded as the strongest and the citizens of which were favourable to him.

That fortified place was Jotapata, a town north of the plain near Sepphoris, almost exactly midway between Ptole

1 See ante, p. .r,03. read thus, Vita, §§ 71 and 74 likewise,

* See ante, p. 534. instead of Tarichaea. As, however, a 3 Jos. Vita, § 74. Turan has been found in this region (Roht The statement of Josephus regard- bison’s Researches, ii. p. 369), which in

ing his attempt to reconquer Sepphoris, point of situation suits this connection, it

Bell. Jud. iii. 4. 1, will refer to t he earlier is probably best to road Taris. But there

time mentioned ante, p. 541, if we com- was also, according to Bell. Jud. v. 11. 5, a

pare his more definite utterances in his town Garsis in Galilee, with which Garis

Life, § 74 with § 71. interchanges at this placo in tho MSS.;

* Ante, p. 511. and a D’DU is met with in the Talmud. 6 Malchus was probably the son of the Either this Garsis or Taris was therefore

A ret as referred to vol, vi. pp. 76 sq.

‘This name occurs as Garis also, Bell. Jud. iii. 6. 3; and it ought then to be

the original reading.
8 Bell. Jud. iii. 7. 2.

mais and Tiberias,1 to be approached on three sides only up steep precipices, and on the north alone somewhat more easily accessible; upon the artificial fortification of which Josephus had further expended great pains, and which any enemy must first take if he desired to subjugate the whole of Galilee, and especially if he desired to obtain a road to Tiberias. When Placidus some time before attacked the town, its inhabitants had bravely repulsed his attempt; but as soon as Vespasian with a great army, after the taking and devastation of Gabara2 and its territory, had with difficulty made a broad road to it, Josephus threw himself into the place on May 21,3 resolved to try his fortune there; many other brave soldiers had also taken refuge in it. In the defence of fortified places the Judeans were at that time always far more successful than in battles in level country; and if, as Josephus had desired, a large and well-led relieving force had advanced from Jerusalem, the defence of this excellently situated place would not have been hopeless. Indeed, if the people of Jerusalem had been wise they would have devoted all their resources to the defence of the fortified places of Galilee. But no one there carried such a proposal. The ultimate fall of Jotapata, in spite of the bravest and most tenacious defence on the part of the numerous soldiers that were crowded together within its limits, was therefore inevitable. Arms and provisions did not fall shert in the fortress, as Josephus had extended its walls on the north, but water was scarce during the oppressive heat of summer. After the close siege had gone on for a considerable time, and the enemy outside was compelled more and more loudly to admire the brave defence of the besieged, there broke out in the town of Japha, which lay a little south of Nazareth,4 and had already been subjugated, a threatening rising against the Romans, as if the inhabitants intended to go to the assistance of those in Jotapata. But Vespasian quickly despatched, under the command of Trajanus, the general of the tenth legion (father of the subsequent emperor), and then again under Titus, a considerable army against the town, which was

1 The Prussian Consul Schultz dis- ToSaprf, this better known town being

covered this town in the ruins of the probably often written instead of the

present Tell G’efaf, see ZeUtchrift des former less known one; comp. ante. p. i541.

Dcvt. Mortlad. Gvstlls. 1849, pp. ol sq.; » According to the remark Bell. Jud.

tho present name can only be abbreviated iii. 7. 3; from this point Josephus be

froni the old one, the situation agreeing comes generally move minute attain ns to

exactly with the description, Jos. Bell, dates, as soon as the history of Judui

Jiid. iii. 7. 7. [See Robinson’s Researches, comes once more into closer relation with

we must likewise read Ta$apd instead of and Vandevelde; coiup. ante, p. .540.

that of Borne.

4 According to the maps of Kiepert

‘In the pussage. Bell. Jud. iii. 7. 1,

THE SURRENDER AND DESERTION OF JOSEPHUS.

retaken on the 25th of June. Fifteen theusand men were said to have fallen, and only two thousand to have been taken prisoners.1 Jotapata was therefore once more left to its own resources, and even the most daring deeds of the entire garrison, and particularly of some of the soldiers, whom Josephus highly praises, could not, in spite of the serious injuries repeatedly inflicted on the ■Romans, including the wounding of Vespasian himself, avert its doom. After the Romans had besieged it forty-seven days, it was taken in July2 with the assistance of the first deserter, whilst the completely exhausted garrison was snatching its morning sleep. The detailed description of all the incidents of this protracted siege, of the various stratagems which Josephus employed in it, and of the numerous proofs of the exceedingly brave courage of the Judeans, is, as given by Josephus, very instructive, particularly with regard to the conduct of military operations in those times. The history of this siege shows likewise especially what a large number of resolute defenders of the newly-gained liberty there was in populous Galilee, and what might have been made of this people under better leaders. On the day of the taking of the place many voluntarily met death as true Zealots;3 forty thousand men were said to have been slain, and only twelve hundred taken prisoners.4

But Josephus himself at this point came badly out of the severe trial into which the entire Judean movement, since the previous autumn, and particularly this long siege, had led him. We cannot say that he was a traitor, still less that he was a man of a cruel disposition. But the want of thoroughness and clearness and the weakness of all the principles of the Pharisees, to which he remained faithful on the whole, notwithstanding the many bad things he ascribed to the Pharisees in history, and the really worldly tendency at bottom, which had cleaved more and more during upwards of two centuries to the Pharisaic school, became in his case more and more predominant and undisguised as all his astuteness and strategy lUiled him as a national leader and a general. Which may be taken as the plainest sign that in actual life a Pharisee must in trying positions either determine to rise to something much higher, or fall very low before all the world, and apparently

1 Bcll.Jud. iii. 7. 31. s Ante, p. 499.

2 The dates Brlt. Jud. iii. 7. 3, 29, 33, 4 Bell. Jud. iii. 7. 36. We have no 36; 8. 9; 9. 1, are a little contradictory, reason for supposing that these numbers unless we suppose that t he forty-seven days and the other circumstances of the siege of the siege were not reckened from the have been seriously exaggerated by day of the close blockade, but from the Josephus, although many details may earlier commencement of the siege. surprise us at first sight.

VOL. VII. K N

without any shame. With his customary astuteness Josephus had on certain occasions anticipated before he was shut up iu Jotapata that the Romans would be in the end victoriousand, trembling for his life, he had during the siege endeavoured, under the pretext of being in a better position outside for fighting the Romans, to get away from the place, though he remained at the wish of the multitude.2 But on the morning when the place was taken, instead of fighting at the head of his people, he secretly crept with forty men of eminence into a cave that could be easily defended; but was betrayed on the third day, and conducted negotiations for his surrender with messengers of Vespasian, through the almost inaccessible opening of the cave. It is easy to understand that Vespasian preferred to take him, and probably the whole of his forty companions in the cave, prisoners to killing them; but when he communicated to the latter noble Galileans, amongst whom there was not a Pharisee, his resolve to surrender himself alive, they were so indignant that they almost killed him. He vainly sought to convince them that suicide was in that case also not permissible.3 He persuaded them at last to kill each other in the order determined by lot, and, as by special good fortune in his lot/ found that he was left last with only one more companion, and him he persuaded easily to surrender himself alive with his commander. Vespasian proposed to have him strictly guarded, that he might on an early opportunity send him to Rome, to be at Nero’s disposal. But just then our son of a priest felt the sudden prophetic impulse to request the great general, who had him then in his power, to let him stay with him, as Vespasian himself would soon be Emperor instead of Nero. It is difficult to say what various powers and motives may have mingled in Josephus’s breast at this moment and led him to make this utterance, which was, however, fulfilled subsequently otherwise than he then expected. They may have been the dread of losing his life, a wide view of the affairs of the world of which he was capable as a general, the hope of triumphantly entering Jerusalem as the high-priest appointed by the Romans after the overthrow of the existing Hagioeracy,

1 Indeed, he once plainly gave the passages of the Pentateuch that it forlad elders of Tiberias to understand this, suicide, as we see from this instance that (Vim, § 35): from which we must not, the Pharisees then taught.

however, conclude that he was then think- 4 At all events ho must hare been a

ing of treason. very great liar if ho quite misrepresente d

2 BelU Jud. iii. 7. 15-17. the ease, Bell. Jud. iii. 8. 1 ad fin., whiih

3 In this respect the long speech. Sell, we must hesitate to suppose; the deJud. iii. 8. 5, is very instructive. It could scription of the similar case, vii. 9. 1, 1f only be arbitrarily inferred from certain undoubtedly plainer.

and the claim to higher religious and prophetic endowments ■which were still made by Judean priests, particularly amongst the Galileans, and were still gladly acknowledged.1 Vespasian, flattered by this prophecy, and especially influenced by the intercession of Titus, permitted Josephus thereupon to remain with him in honourable relations, and, indeed, gave him, as still a young man whose wife had remained in Jerusalem, one of the captive Jewesses.2 We can, in fact, scarcely find a more striking illustration of the degraded spirit and action, and the depraved treatment of the Scriptures then prevailing in the case of even the most distinguished Pharisees ;3 and the worst of it is that Josephus does not blush to tell all this of himself, and, indeed, to boast of it.

Whilst the siege of Jotapata was in full course, Vespasian sent the commander of the fifth legion, Cerealis, with three thousand foot and six hundred horse to Samaria, where the Samaritans had just taken up a threatening position on their holy mountain Gerizim itself. It may surprise us that these old enemies of the Judeans had now revolted against the Romans, and Josephus does not take the trouble to mention the immediate motive of their rebellion. We see from it, however, that the cry for liberation from the Roman yoke was passing through the length and breadth of the Holy Land; and the Samaritan also could undoubtedly complain at that time of the severity of Rome.4 The whole of Samaria was already surrounded by Roman forces, not only from the north,5 but from other sides ; a pressure on its frontiers which appears to have caused it to fly to arms. Cerealis lay round the mountain through a long hot summer day, when want of water on the top of the mountain compelled many to take to flight, and on the next day, 27th June, he demanded the surrender, and as that was refused, he attacked and defeated the enemy. Eleven theusand six hundred Samaritans covered the battle-field.6

Vespasian already turned his attention generally closely to

1 Comp. Vita, § 39 ad fin., and vol. vi. to this Rnman victory that he boasts of,

I p. 374- § 9- 3. is purely arbitrary in the way in

* Bell. Jud. iii. 8. 9; Vita, § 75 sq. which he is led to it simply by his feelings.

• We need not, it is true, suppose that It is often asked now-a-days in what > he is lying whenever he appeals to his passage of the Old Testament Josephus

own dreams and kindred prophetic phe- found his prophecy regarding Vespasian;

nomena, as he so often does; on the con- but the question is one of comparative

trary, a belief from old times may just then indifference to us when wo observe in what

have been prevalent in the case of sons an arbitrary way people like him in

of priests particularly. But the prayer terpreted the Old Testament, which he utters before his expressed de- * Comp. ante, pp. 419 sq. ‘termination to surrender. Bell. Jud. iii. 5 Ante, p. 538. 8. 3, is pitiable; and the interpretation of 6 Bell. Jud. iii. 7. 32, where Bekker

the Old Testament propbecios as pointing correctly reads ti instead of id.

H N a

L

the south, as if he had conceived the conquest of Jerusalem still possible that year. While at Jotapata he ordered two legions to Caesarea and one to Scythopolis, to recruit themselves for a time, as if the reduction of Galilee had been practically finished. But as many Judeans had meanwhile settled afresh amongst the ruins of Joppa,1 and from that place carried on a serious system of piracy in a large number of boats along the Syrian and Egyptian coast, and thus interrupted all sea traffic, he sent an army thither, which immediately drove all the pirates from the land to their ships: and a terrible storm ivhich overtook them the next day on their coast, almost destitute of harbours, completed their destruction.2 But he had now to learn that even in the north everything was far from secure, the Galileans after his departure from Jotapata having almost everywhere risen again, while even the royal territories suffered still from the most serious commotions. He acceded accordingly to an invitation of the king to his capital, Caesarea Philippi, in the far north, where he rested, with the remainder of his army, twenty days. But as the popular party under Jesus, whom we met with before,3 had just then got the upper hand in Tiberias, and Tarichaea, together with Gamala, still remained quite opposed to the king, Vespasian determined, in the first instance, to make a clear course in this important district, and ordered the entire army to be concentrated in the large and beautiful city of Scythopolis, as the most suitable base for carrying out these military operations. He sent only fifty horsemen towards Tiberias, to reconnoitre the position; they were repulsed by a sally of the Zealots, but the party opposed to the Zealots begged Vespasian to pardon the act; and after the Zealots had fled to TarichEea, he marched into Tiberias, not, however, until he had as a conqueror demolished a part of the city walls that had been raised in height by Josephus.” In the neighbouring town farther south, Tarichaea, which had all along taken a quieter but more decided part than Tiberias in the movement, troops of volunteers had long been collecting in great numbers from all quarters, particularly from the district of the Decapolis; Vespasian, however, committed to his son Titus the fiercer fighting which

1 Ante, p. 511. thereupon caused. triumphal coins to be

* See the detailed description, Bell, issued with ■Judaa navalis (eapta) on the

Jud. iii. 9. 2-4. In connection with the reverse side, such coins having now beta

frequently occurring uncertaintv whether found (comp. further below).

Joppa was to belong to Phoenicia or to * Ante, p. 540.

Judea, it had previously been accused of ‘Bell. Jud. iii. 9. 7, 8.

piracy, comp. Strabo, Geog. xvi. 2. Titus

their subjugation required. The town, built like Tiberias at the foot of a hill, had been but little fortified by Josephus, but presented, nevertheless, for the determined fighters that had been collected in it, the possibility of a protracted resistance, or at all events of a secure escape, in its numerous boats and the proximity of the Lake. In consequence of the want of discipline and leadership on the part of the Judean troops, however, the victory over them was comparatively easy. After the Romans had constructed their camp not far from the town, and had suffered a little from a sally of the volunteers of Jesus, the}* dispersed with their superior cavalry the troops that were still outside the town, and drove them for the most part within the walls. In consequence of the wild confusion which arose in the place at this, the Romans forced their way the more easily into it, and took possession of it with great bloodshed. They then compelled the vanquished to build quickly a number of large and secure rafts, that they might be able to pursue on them the large number that escaped in their boats. The seafight which then arose was made horrible by the desperation of the struggling Judeans; and the same lake which, some thirty years before, had been the chief scene of the operations of celestial peace amongst mankind, as we saw in the previous volume, became now the theatre of a horrible fight, such as its banks and waves had certainly never before witnessed.1 The number of those who perished in those land and sea fights was six thousand five hundred; but the number of the prisoners was so immense that Vespasian himself did not know what to do with them. He granted them accordingly permission to go to Tiberias, as they thought to be at liberty, but then shut them in the racecourse of that city, cut down twelve hundred old and weak men, sent six thousand of the strongest as slaves to Nero, who might just then employ many such slaves in the mad undertaking of piercing the Isthmus of Corinth,2 and sold or gave to the king, as far as they consented to be his subjects, the remaining thirty thousand and four hundred. But Agrippa found it necessary to sell his subjects for slaves, as he was just then in great want of money. All this had been accomplished by the 8th September.

The numerous larger and smaller towns of Galilee surrendered then; but there were two places that held out most obstinately, and the three Gaulonite towns above mentioned,3 moreover, declared themselves afresh against all

‘See the fuller description, Bell. Jud. Josephus, Bell. Jud. iii. 10.10, is further iii. 10. 9 sq. explained in Suet. Nero. 1!), 37.

– The reference which is too ■urief in 1 Ante, p. 039.

monarchical and Roman rule.1 Agrippa, however, succeeded without difficulty in bringing back Sogane and Seleucia. Gamala, which from its extremely secure situation 2 might, even more than Jotapata, cause an enemy the greatest difficulties, and had already been besieged seven months in vain by Agrippa’s soldiers, held out with all the greater obstinacy. The town suffered from want of water, but was of one mind under the two brave leaders Chares and Joseph.3 Of volunteers it had not received many, but had nevertheless, probably on account of the seven months’ siege just mentioned, not been able to lay in a sufficient supply of provisions. Vespasian, with the whole of his three legions, commenced his march against it from Emmaus, that is, ‘the warm baths,’ a short distance south of Tiberias, and began, without being able to completely surround the city, to besiege it according to the principles of military science. The citizens shot at the king, when, after the beginning of the siege, he sought, opposite one of the walls, to exhort them to surrender ; and when subsequently the Romans, having made a breach in the walls, rushed in and endeavoured to storm the higher parts of the city, they were repulsed with such severe loss that Vespasian was obliged to put forth all his efforts to get them to retreat in order; a number of the bravest leaders also had fallen. The rest which had thereby been made necessary was used by Vespasian in sending a division of cavalry under Placidus against the fortress which Josephus had built upon the Tabor on the southern frontier. Its warlike garrison was enticed by a stratagem of the Roman general’s into the plain and annihilated, so that the fortress which was suffering, moreover, from want of water, surrendered, whilst the bravest of the garrison withdrew to Jerusalem.4 Meantime in Gamala famine had been the best ally of the Romans, and many of the ablest defenders had already made their escape from it; still, neither in the town nor in the citadel did any one think of surrender. At last a tower, secretly undermined by some Romans, fell, and in the confusion thereby created the Romans forced their way into the city. It was, however, not until the next day, October 23rd, that they ventured to storm the citadel, in doing which they were assisted by a

1 We must, at nil events, conclude * ‘Joseph, tho son of the midwift,’

this from the few words Bell. Jud. iv. 1. Vita, § 37, is evidently the same man,

1, and 10 ad fin , although it is not plainly but the Chares of Vita, 35, 37, would

mid in the narrative of Josephus as we necessarily be an entirely different person

have it. from the Chares of Bell. Jiid., iv. 1.

* See the detailed description, Bell. 4, 9. Jud. iv. 1. 3, 9 sq. 4 Bell. Jud. iv. 1. 8.

violent storm of wind, which carried away the projectiles of the besieged. Though four thousand, chiefly weaker people and children, were slain, more than five thousand precipitated themselves into the deep valley below the citadel. The only persons saved were two daughters of the sister of the abovementioned Philip,1 who were probably retained there as hostages. The two popular leaders had fallen the day before. Titus did not take part in the struggle before the last day,2 because his father, who had then perceived the difficulty of a successful conclusion of the war, had sent him to the Syrian governor, Mucianus, at Antioch, to put himself in good relations with the latter. This, however, was not then very completely effected.

There remained then only Giskhala in Upper Galilee, which Josephus had fortified, with other northern towns, under the false supposition that the Romans would commence the war from the north; and that little place would also have long before surrendered, if John of Giskhala had not defended it with his veteran volunteers. It was not until after the disgraceful fall of Josephus that John’s ability and valour were properly appreciated. When Titus at last appeared before Giskhala with a great troop of horsemen, John had perceived that he would be unable to hold out against any serious siege; he therefore persuaded Titus to leave him in peace for the day, because it was the Sabbath; whereupon Titus rode into the heathen place, Kedas or Kydysa,3 lying considerably to the north of Giskhala. But in the night John left the fortress with most of the na tives and others who desired to escape, with the view of going to Jerusalem, which had really most unjustly neglected to help the Galileans. When Titus arrived the next day he found the town prepared to open its gates to him. He ordered his cavalry accordingly to pursue the fugitives, and (according to Josephus) they slew some six thousand people and took some three thousand women and children prisoners, without being able to overtake John; but he spared the town and its inhabitants, pulling down only a small piece of the wall to satisfy military honour.

1 Ante, p. S09. Bdl. Jud. iv. 2. 3, what is mennt by this

* What is said of theso deeds of Titus adjective is, that, although Tyrian, it was

in Suet. Tit. § 4, can be correctly under- at the same time situated on the high

stood only from Jos. Bell. Jud. iv. 1. 10. mainland, and not by the sea. Further

3 When this town is called fi«r6ytios, comp. on it ante, p. 507.

Vespasian in the South of Palestine. A Fresh Great Delusion of

the Judeans.

The winter camps received the Roman armies wearied with the difficulties of the campaign in Galilee; and as early as this winter many strange rumours regarding the tottering reign of Nero might have found their way thither from the distant west. Nevertheless, Vespasian adhered firmly to his purpose of prosecuting the war entrusted to him, and employed the repose of the winter in reimposing the Roman rule on the subjugated districts and destroying, as far as possible, the traces of the devastation.1 He also pushed troops into the south-west, as far as the towns Jamnia (Jabne) and Ashdod on the coast, put garrisons in them, and removed Judeans loyal to him into them, which, however, was not as yet successfully accomplished in the case of Jamnia.2

He resolved, therefore, in the first instance to clear the country on the other side the Jordan; and the citizens of Gadara, the most important city of the Decapolis next to Scythopolis, volunteered to lend him assistance in this. In that rich city the Judeans had not been completely extirpated in the revolution of the autumn of 66;3 their party had accordingly gradually recovered, and their opponents, with the rich mayor of the place, Dolesus, at their head, resolved secretly to invoke Vespasian’s assistance. The seditious party did not discover this fact until the Romans were already approaching the city; they despaired of being able to hold it, and after they had slain Dolesus and violated his dead body, they abandoned the place in wild flight. As early as March 4th of the year 68 the Romans marched into the city, amid the joyful acclamations of the inhabitants, the walls of which its own citizens had pulled down in their servility. Vespasian then returned to Caesarea, but sent Placidus, whose name was so terrible to all Judeans, with three thousand foot and five hundred horse, to pursue these who had escaped. They most likely proposed to take the road to Jerusalem, whither all such worsted bands of volunteers collected at that time, by way of Jericho; and they had already got near Bethannabris,4 n little north of the passage of the Jordan, when they were overtaken

‘Hell. Jud. iv. 8. I. HDJ J’JJ JV3 the same, therefore, met

2 Ibid. iv. 3, 2; eomp. iv. 8. 1. .’, . “, „ ,„ , • , ■

• Ante. p ,5o8 sq with in the 0. T. as npj, which has cow

‘The niimo of this place seems to be boeu rediscovered as Niinrin; the situation of the latter place suits exactly.

by the Romans. As they found in that small fortified place young men who were ready to join with them, they assumed the defensive, being, as usual, wholly without cavalry. The fight outside the walls was desperate, and the defeat in consequence more terrible, until they were forced back again into the town. Placidus did not take the place until after a fresh and still fiercer struggle, and he then drove the fugitives, with his overwhelming cavalry, into the Jordan, which was just then more than usually swollen by the rains, so that masses of corpses floated down into the Dead Sea, and he also pursued those that had escaped in boats into that sea. He was unwilling to pass the Jordan with his small forces, but he took the important towns situated there, Abila, Julias, and Bethjesimoth,1 and protected them with garrisons. The whole of Perea was thereby subjugated, at all events, for some time; the fortress of Machaerus only, quite in the south, he did not venture to attack.2

Vespasian himself then advanced with the largest part of his army from Crcsarea, to conquer all the country round about Jerusalem; and he pursued that object obviously this year also with the greatest determination, only it is described with less detail by Josephus,3 probably because he was not himself attending the general. He advanced first to Antipatris,4 and stayed there two days, for the purpose of settling the affairs of the city after the Roman manner. From there he overran and plundered the district of Thamna, and subjugated the towns Lydda, further to the west, and Jamnia (properly Jabne), not far from the sea, arranged their government on Roman principles, and transferred to them citizens from those towns that had already submitted to him. Thence he marched to Emmaus, in the direction of Jerusalem, on the slope of the range of hills,5 constructed there a camp for the fifth legion, and thereby cut off the entrances towards Jerusalem from the great plain. Thereupon, he advanced with the rest of his

1 With regard to Julias, see vol. vi. 5 We might he inclined to suppose

p. 72, and on 15eth-.Teshimoth, see vol. ii. the Emmaus here intended was that situ

p. 210; the latter place has been redis- uted, according to the correct reading of

covered as Sitaime, comp. GStt. Gel. Am. Luke xxiv. 13-28, and of Josephus, JJelt.

I866, p. 1576. We cannot, therefore, com- Jiid. vii. 6. 6, only thirty [see Die iirei

pare the Abila mentioned hero with the crsten Evantj. i. p. 450j stadia from Jeru

Abil discovered on the east of Gadara, salem, as Vespasian, according to tho

hut must supposo some town in the neigh- lattor passage, subsequently transferred a

bourhuod. colony thither, whence it is probably still

– IStU. Jul. iv. 7. 3-6. called Kulonich; but it is evident that,

* Ibid. iv. 8. 1 sq.; 9. 1. Josephus in the passage beforo us and elsewhere, undoubtedly used in this case the Com- Josephus must mean the more distant and mentariei of Titus (comp. the next vol.) much larger town.

* See ante, p. 514.

army further southward into the two districts of Lepteph 1 and Idumea, defeated in a great battle the Judeans of Idumea, who were determined to make resistance, when he slew upwards of ten thousand and took more than one thousand prisoners. In the heart of Idumea he took the two places Bethgabra2 and Caphartoba, planted military posts throughout the whole of Idumea at suitable places, in order to cut off all escape to Jerusalem, drove away many of the best of the inhabitants, and left behind a large number of soldiers to constantly overrun the district. With the remaining portion of his army he turned again rapidly, by Emmaus, north-eastwards to the ancient Sichem or Neapolis,3 as it was subsequently called, tbat he might similarly subdue the eastern side of Jerusalem by coming down from the north. On 2nd January he pitched a camp at Corea, on the northern frontier of Judea, and the next day entered the territory of Jericho, where Trajan, who had marched through Perea with another division of the army, joined him. The large population of Jericho had for the most part fled to the mountains over against Jerusalem; those who still held the city were at once cut down.4 It seemed to him unnecessary to advance farther south on that side. He returned therefore temporarily to Caesarea, after he had constructed a permanent camp for Jericho on the east, and another just opposite at Adida,5 west of Jerusalem; and as Adida might at any time be disturbed by the inhabitants of Gezara,6 who continued all along to be very seditious, he sent Lucius Annius with a considerable army against the place, who inflicted a cruel chastisement upon it; he slew one thousand of the younger men who could not escape in time, took the unarmed prisoners, gave the town up to his soldiers to be sacked, and laid it and the surrounding country waste.

But while Vespasian was thus making the last arrangements in Caesarea for attacking Jerusalem, which had already been surrounded at a distance and rendered all but helpless, and would probably have taken it before the close of that

1 The place is etrtainly not the present tobu was probably situated not far from

Lifla, n little north of Jerusalem which it.

is in no way appropriate hero—amongst * Or, according to the language of the

other reasons, because it lies too near country at that time, Mnhortfm, comp.

Jerusalem. The present liettif would be vol. v. p. 97.

more appropriate as regards locality and * The Onomati. of Eusebius, p. 234,

orthography, having probably arisen from ed. Larsov, narrates how Jericho was then

an ancient place, nj-II)^, Jos. Xv. 43. ^”(Jomp. on this place, vol. v. p. 332.

* Which must be read instead of * Which is the correct reading acBtjrapis, the later Eleutheropolis ; Caphar- cording to vol. v. p. 335.

year 68, he received reliable reports of the suicide of Nero on June 9th, and of the nomination of Galba as emperor by the Senate. When previously an emperor died, the authority of every one of his governors lapsed temporarily, and they were especially obliged to make inquiries as to what was to be done with the armies under their command. Vespasian was necessarily particularly uncertain whether he was to prosecute the war, and begin the new undertaking of a siege of Jerusalem. The occupation of the imperial throne of Rome had not been for a century so doubtful as it then was; and although all the legions in Asia and Africa, unlike those throughout Europe, had not hitherto shown the slightest inclination to interfere in the internal affairs of the empire, Vespasian might at this juncture seriously reflect whether he might not soon employ his army in a better way, for the restoration of domestic peace. He therefore put the war in abeyance, and in the first instance endeavoured through Titus to get a complete understanding with Mucianus, in which he succeeded at this juncture of general danger better than on the former occasion.1 As soon as it was certainly known that Galba had ascended the imperial throne, Vespasian sent Titus to Rome to congratulate him; Agrippa likewise went to Rome on the same errand. But as it was winter the journey took so long that they both heard of Galba’s assassination before they arrived; whereupon Agrippa continued his obsequious journey, being willing to throw himself at the feet of any actual imperator in Rome, but Titus returned to his father.2 Through these circumstances a fresh delay in the military projects against Jerusalem was occasioned, which lasted till the middle of the year 69, at which time all this was once more repeated (as we shall see), when Vespasian had actually come to the gates of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was thereby for the second time most unexpectedly saved as from inevitable destruction, and whilst the entire Roman empire appeared to be falling to pieces, it might once more rise as from the midst of ruin, and begin a new life of calm reflection and moderation and of true reform; indeed, the victory over its enemies which had been so painfully snatched from it, might seem once more to recall it to its standard. It was as if once more a final chance should be given to it, either of attaining in some good way a fresh rising from under the Roman supremacy or at all events of gaining once more the same condition of patient endurance in which it had

THE MODERATE IX CONFLICT WITH THE EXTREME PARTY. C61

themselves, especially with Eleazar,1 the son of Simon, and Zacharias, the son of Phalek;2 and the Zealots of the priestly profession, after the proposal had heen adopted by the people, took possession of the Temple, as if it belonged by law to them; and, as if they alone could protect it, they sought to convert it into a fortress against their enemies; they entered the inner sanctuary, also, without the marks of reverence 3 to which the people were accustomed. They actually chose by lot from the first priestly house Phannia, the son of Samuel, from the country village Aphtha,4 a plain man, who had first to be instructed in the functions of the high-priest.5 Similar revolutions in the judicial department were made by the Zealots.6

All actions and daring innovations of this kind could only end in a complete overthrow of the constitution that had been made in the stormy autumn of 66, and in a subversion of the rule of the moderate party in the State. The latter saw this clearly enough, and at their head arose at last, in the winter of 67-68, two of the most influential and irreproachable leaders, with the purpose of openly opposing the dangerous party of the Zealots, and of leading back the entire national movement to the position in which it had obtained its noblest victories during the first year. One of these two men was Chanan (Ananus), above mentioned,7 whom his office entitled to take this most serious step; he was also very popular with the masses of the people, and although advanced in years was still a powerful orator and an indefatigable worker.8 The other was Jesus, the son of Gamala, distinguished by similar excellent qualities,9 ;ind, next to Chanan, the oldest in the hereditary dignity of high-priest. The two were often spoken of as simply ‘the high-priests.’ Two of the noblest and most popular of the lay citizens—Gorion, the son of Joseph, probably the son of the

1 See ante, p. 529/ 3. 6-8. Many indications favour the view

2 Bell. Jud. iv. 4. 1 ; comp. ii. 20. 3; that what is narrated in § 6 is not essenv. 1. 2. Instead of Phalek, other anthori tially different from what is more definitely 1 ies read Amphicalus. This mif»ht bo a told again, 7, 8, and that Josephus, contemporaneous Greek form of the name, therefore, had not in this case rovised so that an early reader explained tho one his work so as to give greater unity to name by the other. what he had very nearly twice related.

* ‘With polluted feet,’ as is said Bell. * According to the indication Bell.

Jud. iv. 3. 6, comp. 7, 9 sq. Jud. iv. 3. 14 ad fin. compared with

‘An ancient priestly town of this iv. 5. 4. name is not known: tho name is written 7 Ante, p. 529.

Nron and KnSPI tnnSN), and Phannias » On the hitter point see the incidental

appears to be a Greek form of Pinehus. observation of Bell. Jud. iv. 3. 13, 4. 6;

A reminiscence of this incident has been further the general panegyric of him in

preserved in theTalmudic writings, comp. connection with his death, iv. 5. 2. Derenbourg’s Etsai, p. 269. 3 Regarding Jesu«, see particularly

5 The above is the most probable Bell. Jud. iv. 4. 3; 5 2. meaning of tho passage Bell. Jud. iv.

VOL. VII. O O

lay fellow-official of Chanau, above mentioned,1 and the famous Simeon,2 the son of Gamaliel, of whom we have spoken above,3 had been working longer than those two high-priests for the same end. No objection could be made against these men as friends of the people and sincere supporters of the liberty that had been won. When therefore those dangerous resolutions with regard to the complete revolutionising of the offices of the high-priest and the judges had been passed, and the first injurious effect of them had been felt, Chanan called upon the assembled people, in one of his most effective speeches, to retrace their steps on the downward path of destruction, into which they were about in their folly to hurl themselves ;4 and he succeeded in rousing them so thoroughly against the small party of the uncompromising that they revoked all their previous resolutions in favour of that party, and declared themselves prepared to follow their aged leader in everything. This assembly of the people was held in the market-place near the Temple; and preparations were forthwith made for attacking the Zealots, who were still securely encamped in the Temple, when they received early news of the great danger which threatened them, and immediately leaped forth with their weapons in self-defence, and, in<ited, for attack—a few individuals against many thousands, but fighting with the most marvellous energy. Blood was soon shed on both sides : the Zealots carried their bleeding comrades back into the inner Temple, thereby also showing how little they regarded any of the common opinions of the people, since the Temple was considered to be desecrated by the smallest drop of blood, and the more conscientious avoided above anything desecrating it in that way, or entering it when it had been so desecrated.5 By the aid of the innumerable numbers of the infuriated populace, the moderate party gained the day and drove the Zealots back into the Temple ; but it was against Chanan’s principle to enter that sacred edifice desecrated as it then was with blood. On that account he rested satisfied for a time with having blockaded the inner Temple, which had been at once closed by the Zealots, with six thousand guards from the citizens; everyone of the citizens had to serve in order

1 Ante, p. 529. situation at the time, and have so far

1 Bell. Jful. iv. 3. 9. considerable value.

3 Ante, p. 539. » ‘It was their blood alone (and not 1 The long speech of Chanan, iv. 3. 10, that of the heathen) that polluted the and the equally long one of the son of Sanctuarv,’ and produced therefore its Gamala, iv. 4. 3, owe the artistic beauty final destruction by the wrath of Go<l. of their arrangement and style to Jose- Josephus says accordingly, iv. 3. 12, seefcphus, but in their historical aspects pre- ing in this, as in other cases, the reasonsent a very faithful general view of the of that destruction in his superstition.

JOHN OF GISKHALA.

in this guard, though rich men might have a substitute. For the first time after regaining its liberty, Jerusalem became the theatre of internal feuds; and Chanan was destined very soon to repent his partial victory.

For just at this climax of the raging internal strife, we see John of Giskhala, whose importance in the Galilean movement we have already described, for the first time taking a decided part in those relations with which he, as one of the principal leaders, was destined ever afterwards to be identified. When, in the late summer of 67, he entered Jerusalem with a considerable army of disciplined Galilean soldiers,1 he was as highly honoured as his opponent in Galilee, Josephus, was deeply despised, on account of his treachery ; * and soou the leaders in Jerusalem contended for his favour. Moreover, he had now become quite at home in the liberated Jerusalem, and was conscious of possessing the power to give a more definite direction to affairs there. His previous connection as a Pharisee with Simon, the son of Gamaliel, and his friends,3 attached him to the moderateparty, and it was afterwards said that he earnestly sought to obtain the favour of the aged and esteemed Chauan; but the fire of his nature, and his experiences in Galilee, led him more and more decidedly to the Zealots. Whilst therefore Chanan kept the Zealots besieged in the inner Temple, and perceived that such a state of things could not continue for weeks, he hit upon the idea of employing John as a mediator acceptable to both parties, and sent him with amicable proposals to them. Those proposals appear to have been to the effect that the Zealots should be pardoned if they would open the Temple for a great penitential sacrifice, to be solemnised by Chanan and the whole people. John himself (it was said by many later) promised to use his influence in favour of these proposals.4 But the Zealots, who were so few in numbers, feared that they would be easily overpowered by Chanan’s hosts, looked about for stronger guarantees, and resolved, on John’s suggestion, to invoke the aid of the Idumeans, who dwelt further to the south of Jerusalem. These plain and hardy Idumeans, who were for the most part very baibarous though brave, had at that time long been the most orthodox Judeans, having been converted to Judeanism by force more than a century and a half previously,5 and next to the Galileans, who had

1 John’s soldiers were snlsequently ‘We can hardly understand in any always called Galileans from this nucleus, other way what Josephus says 111 his Bill. Jud. iv. 9. 10. customary prejudice against John, iv. 3.

» Bell. Jud. iii. 9. 5, 6; iv. 3. 1. 13, 14.

» Ante, p. 535. 5 See vol. v. pp. 350 uq.

o o 2

now been subdued, they were the ablest soldiers.1 The Zealots, then guardians of the Temple, moreover, were undoubtedly regarded everywhere in the provinces as the best support of the Hagiocracy and the most reliable enemies of Rome. And ofteu the Idumeans may have sent to them in the Temple the message, that they were always ready to venture everything in the defence of the Sanctuary.

These Idumeans, therefore—some twenty thousand strong, and well armed—advanced, under four commanders,2 from the south; but found the gates of the capital closed, Chanau having heard just in time of their approach. The surprise, however, of the moderate party, and the fear of the interference of these peasants, who were looked upon as semi-robbers, were so great that one of the two high-priests, Jesus, used his utmost endeavours to get them to return amicably. But, spurred on by one of their commanders, Simon, the son of Cathla, they were determined not to make the expedition for nothing, and resolved to remain before the gates for the next night. Early that night commenced such a horrible tempest and deluge of rain that the moderate party, in accordance with the old superstition with which such rare celestial disturbances were regarded in Israel,* saw therein the wrath of God poured out on the Idumeans, and went to rest for the night after the exertions of the previous days and hours. But in the midst of this commotion from above, which checked with its overwhelming force the heat and passion of men, a few of the Zealots, having sawed in two the bars of the gates, crept out of the inner Temple, went to the city-gate where the Idumeans waited for them and opened it in the same way, conducted them then to the sleeping guards, and having joined their comrades, began with them’a merciless massacre. By morning eight thousand five hundred had been slain, amid incessant plundering; and seeing that they were the conquerors, the Zealots, with their barbarous allies, began in earnest a furious chase of the leaders of the moderate party, to slake their thirst for vengeance in their massacre, and to gain at last the undisputed supremacy. They murdered accordingly the two high-priests, Chanan and Jesus, and did not ev^n grant them the honour of burial; they murdered one of the

1 We must not here overlook the fact 3 Comp. ante, p. 283. But Josephus,

that the campaign of Vespasian did not iv. 4. 6, who in his prejudiced blindness

reach the Idumeans before the summer of seeks for every conceivable explanation of

68, see ante, p. 554; but even then they the final overthrow of bis nation, and

r endered comparatively the strongest re- yet never finds the right one, sees in thi

sistance. case, as in so many others, only a maliciou

‘Whose namTM are specified by Jose- trick offatum, or tlfiapfiwi). pluis, Bed. Jud, iv. •!. 2,

THE ZEALOTS COMMENCE .\ REIGN OF TERROR. 505

richest men, Zacharias, the son of Baruch, after they had brought him before a mock jury of seventy men, threw all the influential men of the moderate party whom they in any way suspected into prison, amid the greatest cruelties, and abandoned themselves to all the horrors of a mad reign of vengeance.1 It is true many of these horrible deeds were committed only by some barbarous individuals who had joined the party which had so suddenly become victorious, and who indulged their cruel passions under its banners.2 It is also very remarkable that, in describing the horrors, Josephus cannot give the name of one notable leader, not even that of his mortal enemy John, as directly engaged in or promoting them. But the worst thing was the very fact that the leaders did not condemn and could not punish such abominable deeds. After a time the Idumeans withdrew again to their mountains, partly because the fierceness of the Zealots soon really roused their disgust, and partly because an eloquent, and not less well-meaning than respected man,3 endeavoured to persuade them to that course by his arguments. Indeed, before they left they opened the newly filled prisons and permitted some two thousand to escape from the city. But the Zealots then made the more undisturbed use of their victory; and they converted their power more and more into a reign of terror and intimidation. They afterwards executed Gorion, who, it is true, had endeavoured to rouse the people to oppose them,4 but against whom nothing else could be brought. Indeed, they condemned Niger even, who had rendered the most distinguished services at the commencement of the revolt.5 He was dragged through the streets to death, loudly complaining and pointing to the wounds he had received in fighting against the Romans, in his death asserting his innocence, and uttering the worst prophecies, and indeed, imprecations against his non-Roman enemies.6

The Zealots reigned unopposed in Jerusalem for a long time after the winter of 67-68; and if there were before perhaps some in Jerusalem who, in the anticipation of a bad issue of the entire national movement, desired the return of the

1 See the details Sell. Jud. iv. 5. 1-3. that he was himself a leader of the Zea

2 Zacharias, for instance, was stabbed lots; only this would not accord with the unawares by two infuriated assassins only, character of his speech, although the Bell. Jud. iv. 5. 4. translators understood the above words

* It is odd that Josephus (iv. 5. 5), in that sense. It is undoubtedly best to

speaks of this man, who had so much in- take them as meaning one coming clan

fluence, and whose name would above all dettinely (without anyone observing it)

others have been deserving of preserva- from the Zealots.

tion, only as r\s, although ho gives his 4 See ante, p. 561.

speech. Indeed, we should naturally sup- * See ante, pp. 512, 530.

pose from the words Tij imb tav foAurfi*

HE IS IXYITED IXTO JERUSALEM BY THE PEOPLE. 571

most to his rapid successes in that design. It is true, he effected the increase of his forces in Idurnea by such means as drove many to flee from him to Jerusalem, where from that time a powerful band of Idumeans, similar to the Galileans, but soon opposed to them, was collected. But although Simon then really began the siege of the capital, it was observed in the city that John allowed people devoted to him only greater licence, and that on the one hand they became robbers of the rich, and on the other degenerated into effeminate men, and, in fact, men that actually aped women’s habits, which may be tolerably well explained from the remarks above.1 The majority of the quiet inhabitants of Jerusalem, it is true, greatly dreaded the barbarity and cruelty of Simon’s bands which already surrounded the city; but they had become equally tired of the doings of the smooth and learned Zealots, who warmed themselves in their sun. Just then broke out a division amongst the armed bands themselves within the city; the Idumeans suddenly declared themselves against the Galileans, that is the largest number of the Zealots attached to John; they surprised and killed a large number of them, drove them into the palace of the Princess Grapte of Adiabene,2 and from thence back into the Temple, and then turned to plundering that palace, where John dwelt and kept his treasures concealed. Meanwhile John got his men fully collected in the fortified Temple, and it was feared that the next night there would be again one of those mad outbreaks, by which the Zealots in their greatest despair often restored the life of their waning cause, and one of which the city had experienced in that night of terror a year previously.3 The people, having come together in crowds, advised with the high-priests as to what was to be done in the circumstances. There was, undoubtedly, immediate help close at hand against the madness of the refined Zealots, inasmuch as all that was needful was to call in the bands of the brave popular Zealots that surrounded the city. They were in any case the enemies most dreaded by the luxurious Zealots of John, and constituted, moreover, the one powerful army that could be employed against the Romans, if they should advance the next summer, as it was to be feared they would, against the city. Accordingly the high-priest Matthias, probably the same man that had been appointed by king Agrippa,4 was authorised to invite the proud young leader Simon to occupy the city as its protector. He entered with

Lis soldiers in April 69, and at once confiscated all the possessions which could be found in the city belonging to John.

It is impossible not to see that in these popular Zealots an exceedingly efficient army, and one that was animated with simple devotion in the defence of the Sanctuary, entered the city. In the end, too, it was an army which in the last mortal struggle with the Romans accomplished most for the city, and held out longest with the most marvellous bravery. But if the struggle in which they were immediately engaged was to turn out successful, it was necessary that Simon should not rest until he had completely expelled the Zealots under John from the city. He attacked them, it is true, with the assistance of the inhabitants; but they defended themselves, although very much smaller in number, with such persistence from their superior elevation, and with great expedition constructed with such skill four new towers at the four most suitable corners of the Temple, that Simon’s soldiers gradually lost their first zeal.1 Moreover, it was to his disadvantage that Judeans still preserved their strong scruples against doing any great injury to their Temple, or in any case destroying it, the more conscientious amongst them scarcely daring to pollute it in any way.2 Thus the city remained in the hands of two hostile armies, which were constantly engaged in hostilities against each other, and neither of which was able to overcome the other, while both lived at the expense of the people and showed few scruples as regards the means used to procure the necessaries of life.

Vespasian at the gates of Jevusalem. The Zealot Priests.
Eleazar the son of Simon.

At the approach of the summer of 69, after he had acknowledged Otho as Emperor,3 and whilst Otho and Vitellins were still contending in the West for the possession of Rome, Vespasian seemed, it is true, inclined to resume the struggle, which might be less difficult to him in consequence of these internal conflicts in Judea. But it was as if all he wished to do was to show the mad Judeans that he was still in the country and could easily capture them if he desired. It was not until the 5th of June that he put an army in movement, which was this time to approach Jerusalem from the north, himself commanding. He occupied the two toparchits of Gophna and northern Acra

1 See on all this, Bell. Jud. iv. 9. » Ante, p. 562. 10-12. » Xac. Hist. i. 76.

batene and the two small towns of Bethel and Ephraim,1 and from thence he ordered cavalry to make scouring expeditions as far as Jerusalem. His general, Cerealis, he sent with infantry and cavalry into Upper, or Southern, Idumea, where he took by surprise a little town Caphar-Teramim,2 and burnt it; another strongly fortified town, Capharabin, Cerealis was on the point of besieging, when it opened its gates to him. The famous ancient city Hebron caused Cerealis more difliculty, inasmuch as it was defended, probably on account of its sacredness, by many Judeans with greater obstinacy. He was compelled to force an entrance, cut down all the soldiers left in it, and burnt the city itself. With that the entire country round about Jerusalem was subjugated; there were only the three strong fortresses Herodium, Massada, and Machaerus that still offered resistance. But just when the time had come for commencing the siege of Jerusalem, the reports of Otho’s death and of the elevation of Vitellius arrived, which threw all Vespasian’s soldiers into such commotion and so exclusively directed their thoughts to the elevation of their own commander to the position of Imperator, that the war against Jerusalem was for the time forgotten, with Vespasian’s own consent. He departed for the north to discuss with the Syrian governor, Mucianus,3 the affairs of Rome; and as he lent a willing ear to the prophecies of Josephus, so he also listened on Carmel to the favourable prognostications of a prophet who at that time sought, on this ancient scene of Elijah’s labours,4 to effect a combination of true religion and heathenism.5

As soon as Vespasian had resolved to become Emperor, he endeavoured to make sure of the co-operation of that governor of Egypt, Tiberius Alexander, whom we met with above;6 and he was promised it. But before he left Palestine he set Josephus, who was all the time a prisoner,7 at liberty, as a man whose prediction had then come true; and, at the request of Titus, he gave him the reparation of having his chain, as if it ought

1 Ephraim is the town mentioned vol. Kemalellin, p. 122. 136.

vi. p. 375, east of Bethel, probably he- * See an Antiochian coin of his of the

longing, therefore, to Acrabatcno. year 68, with an acknowledgment nf Galha,

* After the best MSS., Belt. Jud. It. in Leake’s Supplem., p. 17.

9. 9, only that in them the first part of 4 Vol. iv. p. 68.

the word is contracted into KatpBtp-, s We may say as much as this from

generally still further into KmptBpd. All the description in Tac. Hist. ii. 78, Suet,

the names of places beginning with “193 Vesp. § 5: the man was pmUibly a

probably arose in Judeaafter the Idumean f ama_r‘fiin‘ ,,ike,,Siabove referred to

conquest and settlement, and are therefore (p- ] 7°’■and ca od h,s God Ciir»1cl

not to be sought in Jos. xv. The above . A“‘r‘ p- rename probably arose from Qhl “153, an‘l

must be then compared with

never to have been put on him, cut through with an axe, after the Roman custom. He then set sail with Titus and Josephus for Alexandria, where it was agreed that Titus should, with the aid of the best troops from the two Egyptian legions, and attended by Josephus as his adviser and assistant, accomplish with all expedition the conquest of Jerusalem. Vespasian thereupon departed thence for Rome, and Titus, with his large new army, by land along the sea coast, for Caesarea, where he made all arrangements for the siege of the proud city which had offered resistance for nearly four years.1 At the same time, M. Antonius Julianus was appointed governor of Palestine,2 who was able to place at the command of Titus all the resources of the province.

The feeling that the decision must now at last come soon look possession of the leaders in Jerusalem also. The defeat in Galilee in 67 was followed by that of the moderate party in Jerusalem and the complete victory of the Zealots in 68; then the great successes of Vespasian in the south were succeeded by the almost accomplished fall of the cultivated Zealots and the rise of the popular Zealots about the Easter of 69; and now the fresh victory of Vespasian in the summer of 69, and the menacing proximity of Titus, produced a revolution in Jerusalem, and called forth a power which had hitherto been as it were in chains, and which appeared to be able to effect something by its own strength in delivering the sacred city and the revered Sanctuary within it. We see thus how completely the interaction of the internal and the external history was exemplified.

The power referred to was that of the priests. The prophetic power had long before so completely disappeared amongst the people that it scarcely revived even for a moment in early Christianity. The priestly power, as we saw in the last volume but one, had played an important part in founding the second Jerusalem six centuries before. In conjunction with Biblical learning, it had ever since endeavoured most carefully to preserve all sacred things; in the recent great national rising it gladly co-operated ; indeed, not a few of its members belonged, as by a profound recollection of all the glory of its past history, and as urged by the stimulating consciousness of an hereditary duty, from the very first to the Zealots. Must they not, therefore, at the last moment, make the utmost effort to preserve

1 Bell. ./ii</. iv. 10. 6. 7; 11.1-3, v. 1. 1 A fact mentioned by Josephus only 1, 6, Vita, § 75, comp. Con. Apion. i. 9, incidentally, Bell. .hid. vi. 4. 3. Tac. Hist. ii. 74-82, iii. 48, iv. 81, 82.

ELEAZAR, SON OF SIMON.

those holy things which had really been entrusted to them by the Law? Indeed, in proportion as the hereditary priesthood had historically almost coalesced with the ancient religion, if not with its inmost nature,1 and in proportion as that religion again had for a thousand years been connected with the one Sanctuary in Jerusalem, that priesthood was necessarily the more profoundly called upon to attempt whatever was still possible for deliverance, and it had the more clearly to be shown, finally, whether it could really save the Sanctuary, the nation, and the religion. In point of numbers, too, the priesthood was not to be despised; each of the four divisions into which it had from ancient times been divided 2 numbered at this time upwards of five thousand men,3 and in times of necessity they could all be assembled, well-armed and well-disciplined, in defence of the Sanctuary.

Eleazar, the son of Simon,had been, as we have seen,4 from the first, and afterwards on all decisive occasions, a faithful Zealot. He had at first taken possession of the inner Temple for the Zealots exclusively, and had always willingly submitted to John in everything reasonable. But the victory of the Zealots over the moderate men had soon caused a division amongst their own number, inasmuch as some (amongst whom, undoubtedly, our Eleazar was prominent) refused to submit to the imperious commands of the man of Giskhala, while others adhered to him the more closely. At that time (the year 68), however, the two parties, as if conscious of their perilous position, had promised, in spite of their disunity, not to take up arms against each other, and at that time blood had rarely been shed between them. The rise of the popular Zealots, and their entrance into the city about Easter, 69, might likewise serve to unite them again somewhat in the presence of the common enemy; but the domestic repugnance continued; and it was easy to charge the Galilean with all kinds of arbitrary and cruel acts. Moreover, the Inner Sanctuary, at all events, ought, according to the Law, to be protected by the priests alone. Did it not seem to suffer, and its divine deliverance to be impossible, as long as it was not again committed solely to the hands of priests? Such thoughts may have influenced the mind of Eleazar when, with the help of his sworn friends, he suddenly, at the beginning of 70. separated from John, took exclusive possession of the inner circle of the Temple, with the court of the priests, and set up his arms, as for a sign, over the doors

had collected within the walls far too small a quantity of corn for such a mass of people, famine might soon arise. Numerous diseases, too, threatened on account of the crowding together of too large numbers.

Want of water in the neighbourhood of the city had in previous times often proved a great hindrance to the besiegers, especially when the besieged had sufficiently early taken advantage of that circumstance in their favour.1 Those then in power in Jerusalem had been less provident in this respect, many soon supposing that water had in some marvellous way become more abundant with the arrival of the Romans before Jerusalem.2 Yet we know that the Romans had to suffer much in the course of the summer from this calamity.3

The same was the case with the fortification and the general geographical position of the city. Not even a city by the sea could be more secure than it, as regards both natural situation and artificial strength. Whenever it had been taken before and its walls partly or wholly destroyed, they were always, as soon as circumstances allowed, reconstructed upon the same almost indestructible foundations, and, indeed, strengthened and added to. In the immediately preceding hundred years, in spite of all the Roman jealousy of both Herod and all his successors, as far as they held the Judean faith, the fortification of the city had been zealously prosecuted; Herod, acting from fear of the rebellious spirit of his people, and his successors from fear of Rome, as if apprehensive of a final and unavoidable collision with that power. And only a short time before the heads of this Hagiocracy had themselves been active in this respect.4 Within the city itself, moreover, fortress followed fortress, and not fewer than five or six could be distinguished closely connected with and protecting each other within its precincts; so that whoever had taken one or another fortress belonging to this frowning range, could always be as obstinately resisted again from another. Hence the great confidence which the Judean soldiers placed in this spot of earth, increased undoubtedly immensely in the case of most by their faith in its sacredness. Nevertheless, the fortifications were now as such not without their defects. The last great wall, as we have seen,5 was not quite so high and strongly finished as had been proposed. And the injuries which some

1 See vol. iv. p. 175. 1 Cassius Dio, lxvi. 4, 5.

* Which Josephus mentions again 4 See ante, p. 414.

only incidentallv, in his speech Bell. Jud. 5 Ante, p. 265. v. 9. 4.

important works had suffered when the Romans were expelled in the year 66,1 had not been completely repaired by the ne w labours rapidly undertaken during the last winter.2 But in order that we may more fully understand the history of the siege, we must describe more in detail the position of the city and the Temple as it then was; just as Josephus, though at a somewhat later place, supplies such a description.3

The ancient part of the city, sometimes called still simply the City,* or usually the Upper City, situated in the south, had been enclosed from Nehemiah’s days 5 in one circumvallation with the south spurs of the Temple hill Ophel, or Ophla as it was pronounced in the times before us. The wall, therefore, ran southwards round the western edge of the high plateau, enclosing on that side the part of the city then called Bethso; then northwards along the eastern edge of the high plateau, as far as the gate called the Gate of the Essenes, on the north of the Tyropoeon ravine;6 then again turning south on the west edge of the Temple hill, it enclosed on the south the Siloah spring, and on the east what was then the Pool of Solomon, running past Ophla and so forming the eastern wall of the Temple. In its northern course it ran above the Tyropoeon ravine up to the west side of the Temple. It consisted, therefore, essentially of two lines of wall, in such a form that although the Temple hill with its southern slope might have been taken, the Upper City was still quite surrounded with a wall. This entire wall is called by Josephus the first, inasmuch as it was the oldest as far as its foundations were concerned; but, in his

1 Ante, p. 498. Fergusson’s suppositions; and with retard

* A fact which Josephus again only to T. Lewin’s^work, The Siege of Jeenincidentally alludes to, vi. 6. 2. salon by Titus (London, 1864), romp.

• Bell. Jud. v. 4. 5, with which Ant. Gia– fi’l-Anz.\i6i, pp. 721 sq. xv. 11. 5, and many other remarks in As BeU; 5; l

Josephus, must always be properly com- See voL it– pp- 254 s1- i v– pp- 151 pared. It has, however, been long per- *!• . ceived that Josephus’s statements must , 6 If we do not conceive these positions be supplemented by more careful exnmi- thus definitely but suppose the wall nation of the present localities and by lengthened to the south, right up to the thorough excavation; duriug the last few extreme eastern point, making it turn years especially, Tobler, de Saulcv, Pier- there to the north, the Tyropoeon ravine rotti, the English Palestine Exploration would have been completely without proSocietv, and others, have done much in tcction so that the Romans, e.g., after this respect, and much more important they had taken the Temple and the hill discoveries may bo expected in the future. pphUi (Bell. Jud. vi. 6. 3), might at once The great work of the Count de Vogue, have passrd over that TM>\ej into the Le Temple de Jerusalem (Paris. 1864), is UM)er ^ty. Bt,9tm Is probably rather of importance principally for the Byzan- TM& “‘3 High-home than XIV rV3 House

tine-Arab periods; G. Roson’s Das IJaram of filth; and the Gate of the

von Jerusalem and der Tumpelplatz des took, probably, its name from the fact that

Moria (Gotha, 1866), seeks mainly to Essenes approached the Temple from it

do the unnecessary work of refuting without presenting sacrifices there.

account of the siege, he calls it the third, from the point of view of the camp of Titus on the north of the city; and it will also be called the third in our subsequent description. The height of this wall was considered to be thirty cubits all round.1 The second wall was much shorter. It did not probably receive its final form before the period of the Asmoneans, and was primarily constructed only for further enclosing the castle Baris, erected on the north-west of the Temple to protect it; the castle from the time of Herod being called Antonia.2 In that Lower City very great changes in the surface had taken place during the century immediately preceding, all of them made principally on account of the Temple, which was situated on the lower hill on the north-east. The hill which lay north of the Upper City, extended from the west to the north-east in the form of a half-moon, and left between it and the Temple hill a broad valley; but it was itself higher than the Temple hill, though lower than the Upper City, so that it, together with its valley, was included under the name of the Lower City. As an early New City, or suburb, it had at first no walls, but Solomon even cast up a high earthwork as an artificial castle, called Akra in Greek, on the south-east of it opposite the Temple, and this south-eastern part of it primarily, and then the whole Lower City, was called thence Akra.3 But when the second Temple was built, a castle of that description was restored, under the new name of Baris, which the Asmonean kings immediately converted into a more strongly fortified place, by filling up the entire valley and lowering the western hill. In that way the Temple was, by means of this castle, more directly connected with the city, while the castle towered aloft without any obstruction on the west, and under Herod was once more reconstructed, as Antonia.4 To enclose this Baris, together with the Lower City of that time, as within a new fortification, the second wall was erected, beginning on the

1 According to the incidental remark the Upper City into the Akra, which would Bell. Jud. v. 4. 4 sq. certainly not have been possible on the

2 See vol. v. p. 435. north-western side of that wall, where * See vol. iii. p. 2S8, comp. p. 123: its three strongest towers stood. But

the word &Kpa, as a castle generally, passed Josephus everywhere distinguishes Akra

in the Greek age even into the dialect of plainly from the Antonia, and it did not

the country, as the non-Aramaic word constitute in his day a separate part of the

Nlpn shows. At an appropriate place fortifications of the city. We must, there

Josephus uses this name for the whole for0, gathe^ from the connection of each

Lower City, v. 4.1; but in another passage pass;if what ,s,Mnt by **

he uses the name of only a part of it. e.g., Josephus gives the name, even to the

in the very clear passage vi. 6. 3; and summit of the Temple hill itself, Ant.

that that part was the south-eastern xv■ L” *J

follows from the remark, vi. 8. 4, that ‘Bell. Jnih v. 4. 1; 5. 8. 8; Ant. xv.

many deserters had fled from the wall of 11. 4.

south-west at the point in the old wall where the Gennath or Garden Gate was, and embracing the Antonia on the north-east.1 —Inasmuch therefore as the city was doubly protected through the main extent of its weakest part, the northern, but on the north-western end there was still nothing but the old wall, Herod the Great determined to thoroughly remedy that defect, by building there a series of three extremely strong towers, very close to each other. In the angle itself farthest to the northwest, he erected the Hippicus, so called from one of his friends, from which tower, therefore, Josephus traces the course of the first wall; the other two were the Phasael and the Mariamme, so-called from Herod’s brother and his murdered wife. They were the three towers, the marvellous strength, height, and beauty of which Josephus so much admires,2 and they were undoubtedly of greatest importance in the general defence of the city. In the middle one, which was fitted up like a small royal palace, Simon, the son of Giora, had taken up his chief quarters on entering the city.3 South of these three towers Herod had built his own royal palace, which was likewise surrounded by a wall thirty cuhits high, and could be reckoned, on account of its great extent, as a separate fortress within the Upper City; and in this entire war it played accordingly an exceedingly important part.4 On the east of the palace ran as far as the Temple hill, the covered portico (the Xystus), which was no small ornament to the city; but on the south, close by the first wall in the Lower City, stood the archive office,” farther on the palace of Helena,6 also the council house,7 so that this Hue from

1 Bell. Jud. v. 4, 2. Robinson maintained to the last, that ttic

2 Ibid. v. 4. 3, 4. second wall commenced near Hippicus, s See ante, p. 571. is baseless and contrary to the manifest ‘See especially Bell. Jud. v. 4. 4, vi. meaning of the language of Josephus.

7. t. The most probable view is that the three

s To ipxeioi’. towers stood close together in the north

8 Ante, p. 406. western anglo of the old city, and that

7 As we may clearly gather from the the Gennath Gate therefore was far enough

indications Hell. Jud. v. 4. 2, vi. 6. 3, to the west to embrace within the wall

comp. vi. 3. 2; 6. 2, ii. 17. 6.—If Jo- the site of the later Christian ehurcb.

sephus had particularly mentioned the But the third wall was also preceded by

situation and the extent of each of these an inferior one, as wo have seen, p. 2Go.

three towers, and if we further knew According to the most recent reports, some

accurately the position of the Gennath traces of the course of the second wall

Gate, wo might be able to settle the have been found east of the Church of the

question whether the present church of Holy Sepulchre (comp. especially Vogue

the Holy Sepulchre can be on the s:te Lc Temple dc Jerusalem, pp. 114 sq.l:

of Golgatha (comp. vol. vi. p. 440); but but I have shown in Giitt. Gel. An-. 1861,

Josephus does not, unfortunately, speak pp. 725 sq., that that would establish

definitely, and reliable traces of the Gen- nothing as regards the-■ position of Gol

nath Gate, or of the course of the second gatha. [The results of the Palestine Ei

wall, have not as yet been discovered (see ploratiou Fund furnish no information as

Robinson’s Researches, vol. iii. pp. 212 to the position of the Gennath Gate, or of

sq.). On the other hand, tho view which the course of the second wall. They are

the west to the east, between the Old City and the suburb and the Temple, could be considered as the finest part of the whole city next to the Temple.

The third, that is, the most recent wall the origin of which was described above,1 enclosed, at last, two portions of the city which had till then been regarded as mere suburbs, and which afterwards occupied, as equally privileged new cities, the largest area. In the north of the city there was situated a high hill upon an elevated plateau, of such an eminence that it hid the view of the Temple from anyone approaching from the northwest; but the city had long been extending around it on that plateau as it was only towards the north that it could freely expand. This fourth hill, which was thus at last included within the precincts of the city, was called Bezetha.2 This large double town was generally called simply Bezetha; but in more precise usage Bezetha and the New City were distinguished and also called the upper and the lower New City.3 As this double town, which had in quite recent times grown so large, was to be wholly enclosed, this third wall was the longest. It was carried on the south-west from the first wall and the tower Hippicus northwards, and then passed over a broad ridge on the north as far as the north-east corner, where it turned to the south and joined the first again along the east side of the Temple. In construction this wall was unusually strong; it was made of stones twenty cubits in length and ten cubits in breadth, as if it was meant to rival, even in those late times, the structures of Solomon.4 It was not less than ten cubits thick; but because the Romans prevented its completion, it was only carried to a height of twenty, or, including battlements and parapets, twentyfive cubits. But on its north-west corner the high tower, Psephinus, octagonal in form and seventy cubits high, was completely and beautifully finished, and from its summit a view was commanded as far as the Dead Sea and the high mountains beyond the Jordan.1

now presented in the large volume The (Hell, Jud., ii. 19. 4) the New City from

Survey of Western Palestine—Jerusalem. Bezetha. For the attempt to understand

By Lieut.-Col. Warren and Captain the Greek words of the latter passage as

Conder (London: 1884).] if they expressed the identity of the two

1 Ante, p. 265. names must fail. The Talmud calls the

3 When Josephus, Bell. Jud. v. 4. 2, Mount of Olives nnt^Ijmn after the

explains this name as meaning Hew City, ,ater meaning of m&6.

as if it were only a shorter form of JV3 , i, »IW^ Katp6lr0K,s, Bell. Jud. v.

Kflin, that explanation is in itselt very j2 2

incorrect (comp. vol. v. p. 320, and the ‘■_ , … „.,„

various readings in the Greek and Latin Comp- vo1‘ 1»• pp- 233 s9

MSS. of John v. 2), and is refuted by 5 Bell. Jud. v. 4. 3: the name points

Joseph us himself when ho distinguishes to its Mo

The entire circumference of the city round the outer wall was thirty-three stadia.1 The old wall had sixty towers, the second fourteen, the third ninety at a distance of two hundred cubits apart. The city was, therefore, towards both the north2 and the south, far larger than the modern Jerusalem, which really occupies only the large central portion or tbe trunk of the site of the ancient city. The walls were for the most part built in a zigzag line, after the manner of the ancients, so that assailants could be met from both sides of the angles; and where the level of the ground was lower, the towers were raised proportionately,3 so that the whole city presented from the outside also a pleasing appearance.

Within these three walls, and admirably protected by all of them, stood the Temple, with its numerous adjacent structures, courts and cloisters, itself again like a fortress above the deep ravine in the north-east,4 and defended on the north-west by the Antonia, being connected on the south with the old town by a bridge built over the Tyropceon ravine.5 That sacred edifice with its extensive premises, which constituted it a small town in itself variously fortified, had remained so far substantially as it was when restored by Herod,6 although subsequently very much had been added in the way of surrounding buildings and ornamentation.7 When the visitor ascended to it from below he found himself at first on the immense quadrangle which contained the sanctuary in the widest sense, and in the north-western corner of which was situated the castle Antonia. It had walls three hundred, and in some places more than three hundred, feet high, which, however, rose only partially above the ground; and on

1 Bell. Jud. v. 4, 3. was; comp. ante, p. 457.

3 G. Rosen, de Vogue, and others now 5 Which is often mentioned by Joseseek to show that the third wall did not phus, Bell. Jud. vi. 6. 2. run farther to the north than the present • See vol. v. pp. 432 sq. one; but on his fifth journey Tobler 7 The description of the Temple, Bell. found traces of the contrary, Ausland, Jud. v. 5 (compared with the shorter but 1866, p. 275. independent one, Cont. Ap. ii. 8-10), is on

* For both points, see Tac. Hist., v. the whole clear, and presents an adequate, 11: but Josephus leaves both unnientioned, though in some respects incomplete, picand only incidentally mentions, in con- ture of it. The description in the M. nection with the deep ditch by which the Midduth of the Talmud is specially imAntonia was separated from Bezetha, that portant for its information regarding the the towers at that point were considerably numerous separate subsidiary buildings, raised by the depth of the fosse, Bell, with their names and purposes; but it Jud. v. 4. 2; those towers, however, must really contains only very vague and scathave belonged to the second wall. tered recollections of various Rabbis with

4 Here at the extreme north-east of regard to the Temple as a whole, and

the Sanctuary was undoubtedly the irrtpi- deserves little credit when it differs from

ywv rov Upov, Matt. iv. 5; and Josephus Josephus. We must also make use of

describes, Hell. Jud. vi. S. 2, 4, how other disconnected details, e.g. M. D^pS*

frightful the look-down from that corner vi. 3.

its sides, including even the Antonia, it was surrounded by the most magnificent cloisters of thirty cubits broad, and internally it was laid with stones of all sorts and was open to the heavens. The immense quadrangle was regarded as only the first sanctuary, or the outer court, and heathen also could enter it quite freely.1 When that court had been passed, a very small ornamental boundary wall, only three cubits high, was reached, on the numerous columns of which could be read, in Greek and Latin characters, that the strictly sacred part of the building commenced there, and that no heathen might pass that line, on pain of death.2 For beyond that wall the second sanctuary began, called also the sanctuary simply, or the Court of Israel, which Judeans alone might enter. It formed likewise a large square enclosed by a strong wall of its own, forty cubits high; but it was situated so much higher up the hill that it had to be ascended by fourteen steps, and as they were placed in the front of the wall the latter was thereby to some extent hidden. The wall also did not begin to be visible for ten paces behind these steps and a fresh additional platform; and again five steps higher the gates were erected that led into the great court itself. Of these exceedingly magnificent gates there were really seven: on the east, as the direct approach to the inner sanctuary, the largest and most beautiful one, and on the north and the south three respectively. But, as on the east, in front of the inner sanctuary, a special large court, the Court of the Women, was built, which extended the whole length of the second sanctuary from north to south, and had also its own wall, there were added two doors to the latter, one on the north and one on the south, and a third one on the east opposite the inner sanctuary, so that altogether there were ten gates. The nine gates that were visible from the outside had then been adorned magnificently with gold plates by the rich Alexandrinic relative of Philo,3 but they were surpassed by that erected, on account of the Court of the Women, farther to the east, as directly opposite the inner sanctuary, inasmuch as it was constructed entirely of Corinthian brass.4 The Court of the Women itself was evidently regarded as a comparatively

1 See vol. v. p. 173. 4 This gate, ofton called by Josephus

2 But Josephus, Bell. Jiid. vi. 2. 4, the ‘brazen gate,’ does not occur under describes how Titus reproached the this name amongst those enumerated Judeans with having themselves polluted Midduth, i. 4, 3, 6, unless the gato the Temple that had been thus guarded , called Nicanor’s there (ante, p. 406) is inin fact, in the case of every heathen tended to be the same; but there can be temple murder and blood were regarded little doubt that the ‘Gate Beautiful’ in as pollution. the Acts is identical with it.

s Seo ante, p. 196.

less important sanctuary, was situated fifteen or twenty steps lower, might be entered by women and they might not pass beyond it, and was open even to heathen women.1 Between all these gates ran cloisters, interrupted by the treasuries of the Temple.2 Each gate was seven cubits high and twenty wide. Farther on twelve steps conducted to the third sanctuary, or the sanctuary of the priests, and railing, only one cubit high, made of beautiful stones, marked the confines of the altar and of the Temple {Naos) in the strictest sense. If therefore the inner court was once taken, nothing prevented the conqueror from entering the inner sanctuary at once; but that court was protected by its own strong wall on all sides.3

Relying on the material strength of their inner or outer sacred place, on its divine inviolability, and on their own courage, the besieged, in the midst of the perpetually protracted course of the severe struggle, obtained twice the most brilliant advantages in the teeth of the whole besieging army of the Romans, so that in the midst of the approaching ruin the brightest hope of a successful issue of the heroic struggle for the Sanctuary shone upon them, and the prophecies of the indestructibility of the Temple that they heard seemed as if they must soon be fulfilled. Once more it was manifested in the life and death struggle of the nation, how it clung to its ancient Sanctuary, and sought thereby to defend its own existence as well as its religion—a rare exhibition of daring heroism and enduring tenacity in the midst of the most extreme sufferings. The nation was also at all events in a better position than before for a terrible struggle with the Romans as having added to its knowledge of the arts of war and being inured to bear its vicissitudes. But inasmuch as the selfdeception of the besieged only increased with the two great victories which they at first won at this stage of the conflict,

1 Which accords with the general are not less vaguely mentioned, ii. 6 ad estimation of women, Antiquities, pp. fin., from an entirely different reminis194 sq. Including the Court of the cence. According to i. 3 the whole Temple Women, to which all unpurified men and hill had at its lowest edge five gates: children had access, four courts were two gates of Hulda (vol. iv. p. 234) on often counted, to which the Holy of Holies the south; the gate Qipponus (from Copowas then added as the fifth part. nius, vol. vi. p. 62) on the west; Tadi on

2 Comp. Mark xii. 41, John viii. 20. the north, but quite disused (therefore 8 The depart ure from the above in the ‘TO in error for ‘3D. the gate of the An

description of the Middoth it is scarcely tonia ?, in which case its being closed necessary to refer to here iu detail. Thus could be explained); and the South tinte, the seven gates of the Court of Israel (i. 4), ‘on which the castle of Susa was repreare quite conceivable; but with regard to sented’ (accordingly from the time of the relation of the Court of the Women and Zcrubbabel ?). Josephus leaves quite units gates correct statements are nowhere noticed these outermost gates, which must given, and on the contrary, thirteen gates have existed.

PREVIOUS TO THE FIRST SERIOUS DEFEAT OF THE ROMANS. 580

their final ruin was necessarily only the more complete. We have thus indicated the three stages of the tragedy which was now about to descend from its highest climax to its necessary issue, and we must now carefully distinguish them.

To the First more serious Defeat of the Romans.

The very beginning of the siege appeared to be in varioua ways favourable to the Romans. Titus advanced with two legions through Samaria to the Judean frontier town of Gophna, to which Vespasian had sent a Roman garrison,1 encamped there for the night, marched the next day as far as Gabath-Saul, a place situated about thirty stadia from Jerusalem, where Saul had once held his royal court,2 and encamped there in the Thorn Meadow.3 As he found the road to Jerusalem quite open, and deemed the Judeans far more intimidated than they actually were, he resolved at once to begin an inspection of the city with the aid of six hundred chosen horsemen; but scarcely had he turned aside from the road towards the wall on the west near the tower of Psephinus with the greater part of his horsemen than a large number of Judean soldiers rushed out of the gate, flung themselves amongst the Roman horsemen, and, whilst the larger number of them fled, intercepted Titus with a few others. His position between the walls and trenches of the many gardens outside the city wall was really desperate, and he fought his way through with his few attendants only by using the utmost daring and exertion, and, after the loss of a few horsemen, effected his escape with the rest by rapid flight. But while the Judeans regarded this as an important victory, Titus joined the same night the legion that was advancing from Emmaus, and on the next day he ordered two camps to be pitched for all three legions only about seven stadia to the north of Jerusalem. That elevation, from which a splendid view of Jerusalem and the Temple was obtained, was the point called in Greek Scopus, where the last Roman army that stood before Jerusalem had encamped.4 The legion that was advancing at the same time from Jericho was commanded to encamp six stadia to the east of the city at the Mount of Olives.

But before this legion had completed the fortification of its camp at the Mount of Olives, just opposite the Temple, a great

1 See ante, p. 572. * See vol. iii. p. 22.

s Comparo Sauley’s Voyage en terre sainte, i. p. 90.
t Ante, p. 513.

army of Judeans, drawn from all the parties, which had suddenly become unanimous, rushed early in the morning in the wildest fury upon it, and being constantly increased by fresh comrades, they drove the Romans, who had been taken by surprise in fortifying their camp, from the entire camp even, amid great loss. Titus hastened over the hills with the ablest soldiers of the two other legions to the relief of his sorely-pressed legion, and by his valour pressed the Judeans back into the valley of the Kidron again; but while the fierce struggle was thus protracted until past noon, his command to the soldiers who had at first been repulsed to return quickly to the work of fortifying their camp, produced on the outlookers from the walls of Jerusalem the impression that the Romans were fleeing again up the Mount of Olives,1 so that a fresh multitude of Judeans rushed out of the gate with the overwhelming force of the intoxication of victory and flung themselves upon the Romans of the other legions that were still fighting and drove them in wild flight up the northern hill. At this point Titus, who refused to yield at the persuasion of his friends alarmed for his safety, once more came into obvious peril of his life; but he continued the combat in the most critical moments, though attended only by a few who were entirely devoted to him, until many of those who had been ordered to the camp fortifications on the Mount of Olives hastened back to the battle-field, and all the Romans, filled with shame and using their favourable higher position on the hills, gradually forced the Judeans back into the valley. So that the long and fierce struggle of that day after all was of no avail to the Judeans, and the Romans went on fortifying without obstruction their three camps from the fourteenth of April, or the day of the Passover (on which, thirty-seven years previously, Christ had been crucified.)

Titus had then plainly enough perceived what a hard struggle he had before him, and the besieged too began to look more seriously into the future. The leaders necessarily felt most keenly that the domestic division in the three parties and in the command was most detrimental to the successful defence of the city; and once more a change, which really facilitated the struggle with the Romans, though it appeared again to be capable of being put into effect only by strategy, was proposed by John of Giskhala, as the most zealous and most astute of all the Zealots. He thought that the last party division that

1 The sign agreed upon was the shak- the friends should similarly put tbeming of the clothes of the sentinel, a

501

arose at the beginning of the year 70,1 to his own and the city’s injury, must be put an end to; and on Easter Day, when the doors of the Temple were thrown open to the crowds of worshippers, he ordered a multitude of his adherents, dispersed amongst the worshippers, to creep into the Temple with concealed weapons. They then commenced at once a merciless massacre of the surprised priestly Zealots, who maintained that they were the only faithful representatives of the party, and they were compelled to hide themselves in the subterranean passages of the Temple. Many of the people who took no part in the conflict suffered terribly for their presence in that completely consecrated place, and many a quiet citizen who was regarded a s a friend of the priestly Zealots, or who had on some occasion offended the victorious leaders then in the Temple, was at that opportunity put out of the way. But the leaders of the priestly Zealots, Eleazar and Simon, the son of Jair,2 soon felt that to yield was most advisable, and they with their followers acknowledged once more the supreme command of John, The city was once more commanded by two supreme leaders only, each of whom had to command an army more voluntarily attached to him in addition to his own. To John, with his six thousand heavy-armed men, Eleazar attached himself with two thousan d four hundred men; to Simon, the son of Giora, with his ten theusand soldiers under fifty captains, the Idumeans attached themselves, with five hundred men under ten captains. The first had under him the entire Temple and its precincts, with the Ophla hill in the south, the valley of the Kidron, and a large district round the Temple.3

In order to render the sorties from the city less injurious, and to bring the works of the siege as near to it as possible, Titus kept one portion of his army always under arms against any sortie; the other portion he employed in levelling the ground round the city, and in removing all trees, hedges, and other garden fences, from the Scopus as far as Herod’s tomb, in the neighbourhood of the Serpents’ Pool.4 Josephus, too, was then compelled for the first time to try close at hand what he could do before the walls as a Roman ambassador of peace. As in bitter scorn of his efforts, the besieged arranged a wicked

1 Ante, p. 575. * According to all indications in the

* He had a brother, Judas, almost north-west of the city, where the first

equally renowned; hut the MSS. differ Herod had had tombs built, not fur hi m

hetween Jair and Art as the name of the self but for the members of his family,

father, BtU. Jud. v. 6. 1; vi. 1. 8, 2. 6; which are elsewhere also called the ‘royal

vii. 6. 5. tombs,’ Bell. .Jud. v. 3. 2; 4. 2; 12. 2. » Ibid. v. 3. 1; 6. 1.

feint for the next day. From the northern wall apparently respectable citizens were seen begging for a peaceable surrender and beseeching the Romans to come to their assistance, while others pretended to be fleeing from their fellow-citizens; but when the Roman soldiers approached the gates, to assist those who were thus seeking aid, and at the same time to take the city, the petitioners suddenly changed into enemies, inflicted much injury on the Romans in the confusion, and were soon in a position to loudly exult over the complete success of their feint. However, this little rebuff to the Romans had been brought about in the teeth of the warnings of Titus; he used it, therefore, in making his soldiers, by his severe censure, more guarded for the future. And, after the threatening position which he proposed to take up had been completely secured, he pitched his own commander’s camp only about two stadia from the wall opposite the tower Psephinus on the north-west, and that of his army somewhat more to the west, near the Hippicus, whilst the one legion remained at the Mount of Olives. But when, shortly afterwards, he rode round the city to find the best point of attack, he ordered, nevertheless, in addition to Josephus, one of his citizen friends, Nicanor, who had formerly been so anxious and skilful in persuading Josephus at Jotapata to desert,1 once more to address pacific words to the besieged ; and soon afterwards he sawNicanor seriously wounded by a missile from the city wall. He therefore urged on the actual commencement of an attack upon the walls, ordered his soldiers to lay completely waste the surroundings of the city, and, by felling all the trees still remaining in the suburbs, collected materials for the attacking banks.2

After a long examination, he selected as the most suitable point of attack a place near the sepulchre of the high-priest John,3 because the outer or first wall had been left lower there, and no second wall behind it prevented the approach to the third. From April 23rd he had entrenchments dug, ramparts and towers built, the slingers and archers placed between the ramparts, and the heavy hurling machines put in motion. The part of the city opposite to this section of the wall was in the possession of Simon the son of Giora; he was soon very active in defending it, while John kept quiet in the east of the city.

1 We may suppose that the Nicanor 7- 3; 9. 2. This John may have been

of v. 6. 3 is identical with the man of the the early high-priest mentioned, vol. r.

same name iii. 8. 2. p. 124, just as a ‘Tomb of King Alcxan

• Bell. Jud. v. 3. 3-5; 6. 2. der ‘ is mentioned Bell. Jud. v. 7. 3 (vol. v.

3 Near the middle of the western side pp. 386 sq.). ot the city; conip. Hell. Jud. v. 6. 2;

ALL TIIR TERSOXAL BRAVKRY OF TITUS REQUIRED. 693

The defenders fought bravely from the wall, and made frequent sorties against the Romans; but the hurling machines taken from the Romans in the year 66, which were now used against them, were no longer in good condition, and were not skilfully enough handled, whilst the Romans inflicted great injury by the skilful management of theirs.1 It was not until a later period in the siege that the Judeans learnt how to use those instruments better. But as soon as the works were sufficiently advanced, Titus ordered the battering-rams under shelter to begin their work, from towers brought as near to the wall as possible; and it required these prodigious blows on the walls to sound through the city, to unite on that side of it all the Judean soldiers against the Romans. But when John then yielded to the request of Simon for help, the resistance to the Romans was revived so much by incessant successful sorties, that all their efforts were for several days unavailing; and when a brief respite from fighting then arose on both sides, the Judeans ventured to make such a fierce sally from the llippicus, that they succeeded in putting the Romans to flight, and setting their siege instruments on fire. Only the chosen soldiers just come from Alexandria held their ground with the greatest bravery, until Titus, hastening up with his select cavalry, and himself slaying twelve Judeans at their head,2 recovered the battle by his courageous example, and drove all the enemies back into the city. One of them, whom he took prisoner, he ordered to be crucified, as a warning, from which we plainly perceive how unsatisfactory the situation of the Romans was. But during the retreat, one of the most respected Judeans—John, the leader of the Idumeans—fell upon the wall by the dart of an Arabian; and in the course of the following night the accidental fall of one of the three siegetowers caused a great panic amongst the Romans.

But as the Romans then resumed all their labours with increased energy, and put in incessant motion their battering7ams especially, the zeal of the Judeans in defending themselves considerably diminished ; and the thought which arose probably

1 It is not clear how it was that the stone from the womb of the instrument, large white stones hurled by the Romans, * It is plain that Suetonius’ words,

Bell. Jud. v. 6. 3, could 1» seen coming Tit. § 5, iiovissima Hierosolymorum op

by the Judean sentinels, but not the black pugiialiotie tepttm propiignaioret tolidem

ones afterwards selected. But when the sagittariim ictibue confeeit, do not refer

sentinels cried out’ the son comes!’ when to this incident; comp. however, below,

thev saw a piece of rock of that kind But Titus probablv then received lho

coming, it was probably a jocuUr phrase severe injury to his shoulder and hand of

intentionally chosen for the bitter thing, which Cassius Dio speaks, lxxvi. 5. alluding to the difficult arrival of the

VOL. VII. Q Q

in many a breast, that that was not after all the Temple wall, which was deemed impregnable, and that the Romans might, perhaps, be expelled again from the city with far greater success, may perhaps have had a paralysing effect. So, on May 7, the first Romans entered the city through the breaches made by the rams; and whilst the Judean guards retreated to the second wall, the Romans quickly occupied the most northern portion of the city completely, as far as the Kidron on the east, and destroyed a great part of the wall taken and of that part of the city; for Titus supposed that he would then soon finish his task, and removed his principal camp to the place then still called ‘the Assyrian camp,’1 opposite the second wall. But the Judeans of both parties now resumed, with increased energy, the most obstinate struggle in the best order, behind the second wall and in the south-west, near the tomb of John and the gate leading to the Hippicus. The next five days the conflict was continued day and night on both sides with the utmost exertion and marvellous coolness of blood. Subsequently, stories were told of the many wonderful exhibitions of bravery shown then, especially of the daring of a Roman Longinus,2 of the courage, allied with the utmost cunning, and, indeed, with a contempt of all Romans, of a Judean named Castor, with ten comrades, who finally made their escape by setting fire to a falling tower. For the first time it was seen by the Romans that the Judeans fought with the greatest contempt of death, and only from the purest sense of duty as taught by their commanders themselves, whilst Titus sought to check the foolhardy valour of his men, aud to spare their blood with greatest prudence.

On the fifth day after the storming of the first wall, the Romans actually took the second also, in consequence of the falling of the tower just mentioned; and already Titus proclaimed to the quiet citizens who would submit to him that their lives and possessions should be spared. But scarcely had lie, with one theusand heavy-armed men and his other chosen soldiers, entered the New City, with its markets and narrow lanes, than the Judean soldiers, as if only waiting for that, rose for a deadly struggle on all sides—from the houses as well as in the narrow streets, and, indeed, at and outside the gates, and compelled the Romans everywhere to retreat. In fact, the

1 See vol. iv. p. 182. before (ante, p. 513); in the last edition

2 The Longinus mentioned in this of vol. vi. p. 444,1 have suggested a more passage, Brll. Jud. v. 7. 3, was, therefore, natural origin of tho name of the man another man than the Louginus met with there intended.

son of Giora obtained, in this case, one of his greatest victories, and all the Romans that had entered the city might very well have been slain if Titus, supported by the tribune, Domitius Sabinus,1 a friend and relation of his, had not planted himself at the gate, to keep back, with his own utmost personal effort, the rush of the Judeans, and to protect the flying Romans.2 But these few hours frustrated almost all the previous labours of the Romans, and occasioned them a loss which, if it had been quickly and decisively used, might have brought about the end of the whole siege.

To the Burning doivn of the Roman Works.

But the exultation in the Judean camp at this victory was greater than the determination to follow it up at once with energy. It was already proudly believed that the Romans would not venture a fresh attack, while, at the very moment, they resumed their former attack without delay, and in defiance of the brave resistance which the Judeans then, on their part, renewed, continued it with so much courage and caution, that as early as the fourth day they took the second wall again. Thereupon Titus commanded the complete demolition of the more northern portion of it, and placed a garrison in the towers of the southern portion, directing his attention also at once to the storming of the third wall.

As he, however, clearly perceived then that the capture of the two strongest parts of the town still to be effected might be protracted, and that the siege would necessarily become more difficult during the approaching summer season, he determined at the same time to leave no stone unturned in inducing the Judeans at once to come to a surrender that would be honourable to the Romans. Four consecutive days, on the distribution of the full military pay, and probably of a special present of honour, he commanded his whole army to appear drawn up in order and in full uniform before the eyes of the besieged, with the view of terrifying them the more by letting them see tha,t the Romans had abundance of everything, while they themselves were already threatened with famine. Thereupon he ordered the commencement of the new siege-works on the east, near the tower of Antonia, with the view of taking the

1 With whom he had formerly first scaled the walls of Jotapata, Bell. Jud. iii. 7. 34.

3 The shooting of darts by Titus is

here expressly mentioned, Bell. Jud. v. 8. 1, and he may have thcro hlain the seven meutioLed ante, p. 5′.t2

spirators, executed as a traitor. Josephus, whose parents were kept in prison, gave himself all along great pains to entice from the city many deserters to the Romans, and on one of his walks round the walls he was himself so severely wounded on his head by a stone from the Judeans, that for a considerable time he was compelled to remain quiet. But the desire to desert was soon most painfully checked through the fault of the Roman soldiers themselves, as the rumour, which was in itself sufficiently well founded, spread among them that the deserters had swallowed pieces of gold. Two thousand of the deserters were said to have been ripped up to extract the gold pieces from their bellies; and altheugh Titus prohibited the practice under threats of the severest punishment, instances of it continued still to occur; nor were these who took part in these horrible cruelties by any means confined to the soldiers belonging to the Asiatic allies.

Meanwhile the Romans, soon after they had finished the great wall round the city, commenced four new banks near the Antonia, still longer and more firmly constructed than those which had been burnt down, although to procure the wood for the purpose they were obliged to fell all the trees round the city to a distance of ninety stadia. When at the end of a month, at the beginning of July, these banks were at last finished, John undertook a sally with a view of destroying them by fire. But this time the Judeans failed in the exact and skilful execution of the complicated series of assaults, and the Romans were now too much on their guard and too undaunted to permit the attempt to succeed as the former one had done. After the battering-rams, therefore, had been some days incessantly at work, one night the portion of the wall fell in under which John had previously carried the subterranean passage for the destruction of the first Roman banksbut the morning showed the surprised Romans that another wall had already been carried up behind it. Impatient at the new delay, Titus provoked the martial spirit of individual soldiers, by exhortation and promises, to try to scale that hastily-erected wall and to drive the Judeans from the Antonia. But on July 3rd an extremely brave Syrian, Sabinus, sacrificed his life in vain in that way. Not until two days later did twenty men of the front watch, concurrently with the standard-bearer of the fifth legion, two horsemen, and a trumpeter, scale the wall at the beginning of the last night watch, slay the sleeping

sentinels, surprise the besieged by sounding the trumpet, so that they fled to the Temple, imagining that the whele Roman army had come up, and give to Titus, who was waiting, the signal to advance with his chosen men.1 And already the Romans in large numbers entered through that subterranean passage and planted their feet in the outer court of the Temple, when the Judeans, collecting themselves at last, fought with the gr< atest valour in the closest hand-to-hand struggle, and finally compelled the resisting Romans to flee. On the side of the Romans a noble Bithynian centurion, Julianus, delayed most the final success of the Judeans by his marvellous heroism in single combat, until in the end he also fell, and the Romans contented themselves with the occupation of the Antonia. In this engagement, in which the drawn sword had to decide, the Judeans of all parties had shared with equal unanimity and bravery; the priestly Zealots also fought by the side of John, although he had begun to use for military purposes the most precious sacred gifts of the Temple, and, indeed, its stores of oil and wine required for the sacrifices.2 Titus, however, commanded that the foundation walls of the Antonia should be demolished, so far as to permit the whole army to get up into that place, which was in immediate proximity to the Temple. A week was spent in effecting that.

The weeks between the taking of the Antonia and the 8th August were occupied only with the further preparation of the Romans for storming the Temple, and the most desperate efforts of the Judeans to save it, which led to a number of the most murderous melees and single combats, much against the will of the Romans. With the daily increasing peril of having the Temple fall into the hands of the heathen, the heroic resolve on the part of so many thousands to make a wall round it with their bodies only increased; and it was never seen so clearly as in these days of extreme trial, what a marvellous alacrity animated men’s minds to live or die for it alone. On the 17th July the daily sacrifice was given up, because the hundreds of hands, which were required for its presentation, would be better employed in fighting for the Temple. When Titus heard of this, he once more caused representations to be made to John by Josephus with regard to the unreasonable resistance, earnestly deprecating his responsibility for the crime of the interruption of the sacrifices, and the threatening destruc

1 The same daring and stratagem by against Israel I which Gideon had once conquered Israel’s 2 Bell. Jud. vi. 1. 8, comp. v. 13. 6. enemies (vol. ii. pp. 385 sq.) now turned

tion of the entire Temple. But this was interpreted by the Judeans as a sign of the incipient embarrassment of the Roman general, and the resistance was continued the more energetically. According to ancient ideas, it is true, the holiest things of religion were practically annihilated by the interruption of the daily sacrifice;1 and the inmost apartments of the Sanctuary, which the foot of a soldier, or even of a common man, ought never to tread at all, began now to be worn by the steps of blood-stained soldiers of all kinds. As if indignant at that, eight men of high-priestly extraction2 fled to Titus, were ordered by him to the most northerly frontier town, Gophna, for their own safety, and then, when the rumour spread amongst the besieged that they had been murdered by the Romans, were brought back and openly shown before the walls; but all that did not subdue the courage of the genuine Judeans, which they showed in the most brilliant manner on the occasion of a nocturnal assault which Titus to no purpose ordered to be executed by all the choicest soldiers of his army under the lead of Cerealis, the general of the legion.3 On another day the sortie of a few Judeans, impelled by famine merely, against the Mount of Olives, had almost broken through the ranks of the Romans and upset the whole siege; and from the Upper City also a Judean dwarf even waged a successful handto-hand combat with a Roman hero, but was in the end treacherously shot down by a brutal Roman centurion.4 In the Upper City itself, however, famine ravaged amongst the civilians to such an extent that it was soon said of a rich widow, who had escaped from Jerusalem to Perea, that she had killed her own child and eaten half of it.*

Meanwhile the four new banks grew up, which two Roman legions erected, upon the base of the captured castle, over against the west and the north sides of the Temple-hill; and as the Temple cloisters were in too close proximity to the Castle at that point, the besieged themselves were the first to set fire to them, on July 22nd; soon afterwards the Romans laid the remaining portion of them in ashes. On the 27th of that month many of the bravest Romans met with a most painful death,

1 See Antiquities, pp. 129 sq. They Israel was invariably victorious even in

were not interrupted in previous sieges, sueh a case. See vol. ii. p. 402 ; iii. p. 72. as Josephus expressly mentions, Ant. xiv. * For details see Bell. Jud. vi. 3. 3-5.

4, 3; 16. 2. When Josephus in this instance says with

3 Who are separately enumerated Bill, such emphasis that such deeds had never

Jud. vi. 2. 2 ; as to Ismael, who was killed beeu done in previous history, he shows

in Cyrene, see below. that he has not read the Old Testament

* The details Belt. Jud. vi. 2. 5, 6. even carefully enough; comp. vol. iv,

4 Bell. Jud. vi. 2. 8, 10. Formerly p. 91.

by fire and a surprise, in a pit which had been laid bystratagem between the columns of the west cloister, Titus considering it impossible to go to their relief.1 On August 8th, after all the banks had been finished, the battering-rams, however, still continued to play in vain against the immense stones of the walls and gates of the Temple, which seemed to stand impregnable; and when Titus on that day commanded an attack with ladders, in consequence of the unyielding defence by the Judeans, so many Romans, and even their standard-bearers, were precipitated, that a repetition of such open attacks appeared impossible, although on the same day two of the Judean combatants who had been till then most faithful, though moat barbarous, voluntarily surrendered to the Romans.2 But the common Roman soldiers had then long become so excessively exasperated at the desperate resistance of the besieged, and so eager, moreover, for the spoil of the Temple treasures, which they deemed inexhaustible, that, witheut any higher command, they took in hand the speediest destruction of the Temple itself, and on that same 8th of August set fire to the northern pate,3 which the Judeans despaired of being able to quench. Titus, it is true, on the 9th commanded the fire to be put out, and in a council of war carried a resolution that the Temple as a sacred building should be spared as much as possible ; but after the Judeans had almost entirely rested on that day, aa from exhaustion and despair, early on the 10th they renewed their attacks with such fierceness and sujh effect that Titus himself, with his choicest horsemen, was compelled to advance to drive them back. When at midday, while Titus had retired into his tent, they renewed the attack with equal ferocity, they were again repulsed, but a Roman soldier, lifted sufficiently high by his comrade, flung a firebrand through the gilded door which conducted from the north into the houses adjoining the Temple. Having been thus kindled, the fire flamed up rapidly; the Judeans used the utmost efforts to quench it, but the Roman soldiers, eager for spoil and slaughter, refused to help in putting it out, even at the command of Titus, who hastened to the spot, but, on the contrary, in the most terrible melee cut down even the crowds of defenceless people who had collected densely around the altar, and who sought only by their prayers to avert the destruction of the Sanctuary. Titus still ‘found just time to inspect with his generals the whole

1 Bell. Jud. vi. 2. 9; 3. 1, 2. Titus, when (vi. 4. l)he makes Titus him

3 Ibid. vi. 4. 1, 2. self order the gates to be set on fire, and

3 Josephus contradicts himself, and, then (§ 3) relates that he ordered the fire

moreover, not to the honour of his patron to be put out.

THE HORRORS OF THE BURNING OF THE TEMPLE. 605

interior of the Temple; but his command to restrain the soldiers, even by blows, from storming the sacred edifice produced so little effect that one of them, having forced his way into the interior, laid fire on the door-hinges, and Titus with his attendants scarcely fouud time to escape.1

The whole Temple hill was soon like one mass of flame; those who fought under the Roman banner could, as far as this was permitted by the conflagration they had kindled, indulge all their rapacious and murderous desires; and nothing but the lamentations of even the half-famished from that hill and the southern portion of the city, re-echoed from the valleys and hills on the east2 in view of the Temple, were heard above the exultation of the brutal conquerors. The extensive cloisters and other buildings connected with the Temple that were still standing were also burnt down or otherwise destroyed; and in the treasuries of the Temple hill, whither the rich had carried off their own precious things also, the conquerors found in gold, garments, and other valuables, so much booty that gold suddenly sank in value throughout Syria one half.3 In the cloister of the outer part of the Temple the Romans found a multitude of six thousand defenceless people crowded together; they set fire to that cloister likewise, and not one of the people escaped. According to ancient belief it was the duty of the priests to die at the altar in its defence; and, as a fact, those whe had remained all along faithful fled to the highest Temple walls, about eight cubits in breadth, which were still standing; some of them tore up the iron spikes forming part of the ornament, and threw them as missiles at the Romans; two, Meir, the son of Belga, and Joseph, the son of Daleus, east themselves down from that wall into the flames of the Temple ruins ; the rest at last, tormented by hunger and thirst, descended, with the view of surrendering themselves to Titus, who, however, ordered them all to be executed.4 But

1 Sulpieius Sevcrus, in his Chron. ii. 30. 6-8, relates that Titus, according to the advico of many, destroyed the Templo especially for the reason that that would be the hest way to exterminate the Judean and the Christian religion at the same time. Bat it appeai’s from the fact, amongst other things, that ho immediately narrates, ii. 31. 3, that Hadrian, existi7»mts ee Christ ianam fidem loci injuria jicremturiim, set up idols on the Temple and on the Holy Sepulchre, that this was only a late whollv unfounded opinion regarding Titus. All that is told ns one connected story, but is so preposterous

that we must hesitate to refer that passage to Tacitus. Comp. the essay thereon in Gottingischen Nachrichten, 1861, pp. 252 sq.

– The irtpala, Bell. Jud. vi. 5. 1, must he the country just beyond the Kidron; in the first instance, the entire valley farthest east.

3 Hell. Jnd. vi. 5. 2; 6. 1.

1 Ibid. vi. fi. 1; 6. 1; the name M7)i>, “I’KP, which is so frequent in tho later centuries, occurs here for the first time. The Fourth Book of Ezra x. 22, comp. with xii. 14, is the first to speak of burnt priests.

Josepkus, who then found his wholly different thirst for revenge slaked, consoled himself at all events subsequently, as was his habit, with all kinds of superstitious ideas, for instance, that as the first Temple had fallen on the 10th of August, so the second necessarily fell on the same day, by divine decree.1

But before the 10th was over the Judeans had cut their way through the outer court into the Upper City, which could be easily disconnected from the Temple hill.2 The Romans also suffered them to escape the more easily, as they themselves were occupied solely with their triumphal revels, proclaimed Titus Imperator, and planted their ensigns, with the eagles on them, witbin the precincts of the Temple, opposite the eastern gate, in order to present their heathen sacrifices to them, as if they were determined to take full revenge for the indignity which the Judeans had so long shown to their eagles.3 In his subserviency to the conquerors, Josephus ventures scarcely to hint at the heathen abominations with which the Sanctuary was then polluted,4 but they were undoubtedly only too fully practised.

5. The filial Frays. The Roman use of the Victory.

John and Simon were now shut up in the Upper City, and the utmost straits compelled them more than ever to agree upon some common plan. Three possible courses only lay before them: surrender to the Romans, a continuation of the mortal struggle to the bitter end, or withdrawal into the deserts of Arabia and other countries on the south and east beyond the limits of the Roman Empire, with the view of resuming the conflict from that basis at a more favourable opportunity. It is evident that their feeling inclined to the latter course,

It is elsewhere especially said by him
that the Up6v of Herod was quadran-
gular (vol. v. p. 434) ; but it apprars from
Middiilh, ii. 1 5, 6, v. I, that the quad-
rangle of the Court of Israel, for instance,
was not deemed perfectly equiangular, as
if the Holy ot Holies only might be that,
vol. iii. pp. 235 sq. When, therefore, John
endeavoured by a new wall to fill up the
breach which was made in the wall at
the north-western corner by the takiug of
the Antonia, an evil omen might be dis-
covered in the attempt.
* See ante, p. 0S6.
» See vol. vi. pp. 65 sq.
< Dell. Jud. vi. 6. 1.

1 Bell. Jiid. vi. 4. 5, 8; comp. vol. iv. p. 274. In reality August 8th might equally well have been reckened as the day when the destruction of the Temple commenced; but subsequently it was preferred to commemorato the calamity of the destruction of both Temples on the same day. Another of the superstitious notions of Josephus was that, according to a prophecy of the Sacred Scriptures, the holy city would necessarily be destroyed whenever the Sanctuary should be four-square, and that after the demolition of the Antonia it was made foursqu«re (vi. 5. 4); but he forgets to mention the particular prophecy referred to, and how I he Sanctuary was made four-square.

and we see accordingly that Arabia was from that time full of Judean fugitives as it had never been before.1 The first possible course could not be seriously contemplated by them; but they would easily perceive that after the loss of the Temple the conflict had at that time no further object. Still, both commanders were undoubtedly entreated by many who had hitherto been the more resolute combatants to make terms with the Eomans. So far as they themselves were concerned, the two men had often shown their determination in favour of fighting to the last, and they knew that all the Zealots were bound to do so by their oaths;2 but, in order to satisfy the demands presented to them, they sought an interview with Titus. He granted it, and proclaimed to them, over the bridge leading from the Temple hill to the Upper City, that he was prepared, if they surrendered at once, to pardon the majority and punish only a few.3 But they desired for all simply liberty to retire through the wall which Titus had made, that they might then go into the desert with their arms. When Titus indignantly refused such terms, the relatives of king Monobazos4 surrendered themselves to him, and were subsequently sent by him to Rome as hostages for the king’s fidelity. But the war began again at once with increased fury. Titus ordered the Archives, the Akra,5 the Council-house, and the Ophra-hill6 to be set on fire, which caused the destruction of many houses. The Judean soldiers at once fell upon the royal palace adjoining the bridge, into which the Romans had already in the confusion got.7 The Judeans drove them out, taking only two prisoners; they also put to death eight thousand four hundred defenceless fellow-Judeans, who had earned off their treasures into the palace and put themselves under the protection of the Romans; they plundered them of their treasures, and appeared determined to permanently establish themselves in the city. The Romans, on the other hand, on the following day set fire to all that they held of the city from the north to the farthest point south, but found only a little spoil: whilst the Judeans, although already looking for the numerous

1 The Sibylline poet, xii. 107, mimes devastate the Ophel on the south of the

Assyrian, that is, Parthian, countries. Temple, as the Temple was still protected

3 Ante, p. 499. on the west by the walls, we must re

» The long speech of Titus, Bell. Jud. member that after the first wall had been

vi. 6. 2, is certainly instructive reading, taken they could get to that hill round

as Josephus explains in it many import- the Temple on the east, ant details which he elsewhere does not ‘It is to bo lamented that here again

allude to. Josephus has nowhere previously men

1 Ante, p. 512. tionod, still less described in detail, this

5 Ante, p. 583 important fact, which he alludes to vi.

6 If it is asked how tho Romans could 7. 1.

subterranean passages of the Upper City as their final refuge, nevertheless still refused to hear any of the admonitions which Josephus persisted in addressing to them from a distance, but, on the contrary, put to death and plundered everyone who sought in any way to escape.

When, therefore, Titus, on August 20th, ordered new works to be thrown up against the Upper City, the commanders of the Idnmeans consulted amongst themselves whether it would not be better to surrender to the Romans, and really sent a deputation to Titus on that account. The inexorable son of Giora succeeded in quickly preventing the execution of the design, punished the commanders with death, and set a stricter watch than ever over the Idumeans; but desertion continued nevertheless to increase, so that Titus commanded that no single deserter should be received, and that those who brought their wives and children with them should be sold. But as soon as the Roman works were finished, which was in eighteen days, on September 7th, and the battering-rams began to play, some of the weaker towers also falling, the most courageous still dared to drive the Romans back, and sought then in several places to break through their wall. They found, however, nowhere the requisite support any more on the part of their own people, and withdrew into the subterranean passages, whilst the Romans scaled the walls on all hands, plundered the almost empty city, murdered all whe came across their path, and set fire to the houses: the conflagration lasted till the next day.

As no agreement of any kind had been come to between the conqueror and the conquered, the entire soil, as well as the whole nation, according to the ancient laws of war, was given over entirely to the arbitrary will of the victor, and his indignation was too much provoked to make it probable that he could show any mercy to those whose hostility, to judge from the Zealots, as the heart of the whole movement, seemed likely to cease only with their death. Titus accordingly commanded that the destruction should be fully executed in deadly earnest. Since the destruction of Carthage and Corinth there had not been, at all events in the civilised world of those times, a similar ease in Roman history. All the great chief cities of the conquered nations had been left standing and continued to flourish, and amongst them Jerusalem. But, on the other hand, there had not hitherto been such a struggle as this, which in the end really turned upon two fundamentally different religions; and when the essence of the matter was examined, it was not the Roman

State which conquered in this case but heathenism, not Jerusalem and the Temple that were devoted to destruction, but Judeanism in the form which it had been assuming during so many centuries. Titus commanded that the city and the Temple should be laid completely even with the ground, although it was difficult to execute such a command to the letter, and several houses were spared for the Roman garrison. For, in order that the dispersed Judeans might not gather together again on their sacred soil, Titus resolved to construct there a Roman camp, under the command of Terentius Rufus,l and, with a view to that object, left the three strongest and finest towers—Hippicus, Phasael, and Mariamme—with the western city-wall, standing. He found it more difficult to decide what to do with the almost countless number of prisoners, or of people who were otherwise liable to be put to death. He ordered the aged and weak to be at once put to death, and the rest to be temporarily brought together in what was formerly the Women’s Court of the Temple. Of the latter, all who could bear arms were forthwith executed, which was made easy for the Romans, inasmuch as.the victims became informers against each other, whilst the nobler of them committed suicide, and only the tallest and fairest were spared for the triumphal entry into Rome. Of the rest, those who were upwards of seventeen years of age were put in chains, either for the public forced labours in Egypt,” or for the public theatrical games in all the Roman chief cities. Those under seventeen were sold. But before they were thus separated, many thousands of them died either of hunger or by their own hands. Such a mode of dealing with the conquered was so exceptionally severe, that only a Josephus could as historian pass over it without any display of feeling. The entire nation, as it then was, was really thereby affixed to the cross, as if it had been the most criminal slave, only that there was not wood enough at hand for such wholesale crucifixion; and, above all, the conqueror sought to obtain something—glory, or money, or pleasure perhaps—from the business. Those who were allotted to the public games, were obliged to slay one another as gladiators, or to be torn to pieces by wild beasts. Those who were condemned to the unhealthy forced labours of Egypt were necessarily soon thereby carried off, and suffered, moreover, that disgrace in view of a nation

1 Bell. Jud. vii. 2. 2; Vita, § 76. reminds us also of the similar labours in

2 The brief phrase To Kot’ “Aiytnrrov Sardinia, vol. vi.p 83. In the Colosseum f)rya. Bell. Jud. vi. 9. 2, reminds us of at Rome, also, many of them may have ergastuluui and ergastularius, which, in done similar forced labour.

fact, get thence their Latin name; and it

which had been in early and more recent times separated from Israel by the deepest national repugnance. And all Israelites without distinction were then with one blow made the scorn of the whole world, whilst only a short time before they had supposed that they had a right to rule or to despise that world! The number of prisoners taken during the war was reckoned at ninety-seven thousand; that of those who perished during the siege at eleven hundred thousand, probably with some exaggeration; and a large number of individuals bad long before escaped.

The most zealous of all, who could not effect their escape, had fled into the subterranean passages; all that were found there were massacred, but more than two thousand perished in those passages of hunger or by suicide. John, with his brothers, surrendered under the pressure of hunger, and was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. Simon defended himself longer, digging further into his subterranean refuge; but at last he also appeared above ground in disguise, was recognised, and preserved as the principal sacrifice for the triumphal procession into Rome.1 The end of the other principal leaders is little known.2 The cruelties enacted in Jerusalem on a large scale were repeated in the country, in some instances with still greater severity. Josephus, who, when the Romans met with disaster during the siege, was often threatened by them with death as an evil adviser, boasts that he obtained by his entreaties the liberty of many Judeans in Jerusalem, and that in the country he rescued from the cross three men known to him whom he saw crucified amongst many others.3 And although Josephus does not describe worthily the end of his nation as it was then accomplished, even heathens were compelled to applaud the marvellous courage with which the Zealots, when they saw everything lost on the holiest spot of earth, offered themselves voluntarily to be transfixed by the Romans, or joyfully ascended the funeral pyres, or even slew themselves and each other.4

Titus himself could then quite safely set out for the magnificent display at his triumph in Rome. To make it as splendid as possible, he had, in accordance with Roman custom, been long preparing, and for that purpose had also spared the lives of two Judean priests, who assisted him in finding the Temple

1 Bell. Jud. vi. 9. 4, vii. 2. 2. narrative of Josephus has been lost.

» But it is certnin, from the sense of * Vita, § 7othe passage about Judas, the son of Jair, ‘Cassius I)io, lxxvi. 6. vii. 6. fi, thit an important piece of the

THE TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION AT ROME. Gil

treasures that were still hidden. A certain Jesus, the son of Thebuthi, and, a little later, the treasurer at the time of the Temple, Phineas (unworthy of that honoured name), lent themselves for that lamentable service, and drew from their hiding-place two candelabra like those placed in the Temple, as well as tables, mixing bowls, and phials, all well-preserved and of solid gold, the precious Temple veils, and further material for them, the garments of the high-priest, priests’ garments, likewise materials for incense, and many other precious things.1 Spoil of this kind was intended to gratify the eyes of the Eomans in the triumphal procession, and partly to be represented on the triumphal arch to be erected.

Titus returned, therefore, to Caesarea, whence he had moved in the spring; he complied then with an invitation of Agrippa to Caesarea Philippi,2 where he was obliged, while on the sacred soil of Israel, for the first time to sacrifice the vanquished Israelites in gladiatorial shows; and an Agrippa and even a Josephus could be spectators of such scenes! The same horrible sight was repeated immediately afterwards at Berytus, that heathen city upon which the Herods had lavished so much money from the Judean revenues ; likewise in other Syrian towns through which he travelled, and in all of which the Judeans had long been so much disliked. It is not difficult to understand that thereby the old national hatred of the Judeans was more stimulated than pity for them; and when Titus was in Antioch he was urgently besought to banish them from that city, or, at all events, to cancel the ancient privileges which they enjoyed there;3 for the strong hatred of them which had been shown them three years before 4 had not yet abated; and at the beginning of that very year they had been acquitted only by the firmness of the Roman governor of the charge which that Antiochus, who was a renegade from them, had hurled at them, that they had caused a great conflagration which destroyed the finest buildings of the city. But, after long consideration, Titus did not yield to that demand, inasmuch as the Judeans must, after all, reside somewhere; and he also left them their privileges.5

On the occasion of the triumph in Rome, which Titus arranged, in company with Vespasian and Domitian, immediately after his return, and which Josephus considers it so important to describe in detail, John and Simon were produced,

with seven hundred handsome young men, and, according to all accounts, Simon only was executed after the ancient Romau custom. It is specially remarkable that the long series of articles taken as spoil was closed with the Law, obviously as a sign that that Law itself had been vanquished and rendered profane; since the entire war, in fact, had become essentially a religious war, and the Romans had taken great pains to destroy the sacred books also.1 But we do not know whether that Law was the standard copy found, perhaps, in the Temple, as Josephus is silent on the point; he states expressly that the golden candelabra did not correspond to that standing in the Temple.2 These spoils from Jerusalem Vespasian caused to be deposited in hi3 new Temple to Pax ;3 the Law and the Temple veils only he kept in his own house. Upon the magnificent triumphal arch which was immediately afterwards erected in memory of the victory, and which still stands, some of these articles were represented; and memorial coins of Judcea Capta in Greek and Roman characters were struck in large numbers,4 but neither Vespasian nor Titus adopted such an epithet of victory as Judaicus, manifestly in contempt of the hated nation, which, after it had lost its country, was no longer regarded as properly a nation at all.

How determined Vespasian was to exterminate the Judean commonwealth appears most plainly from the two legal arrangements which he instituted as soon as possible, and put into execution by a new governor, Liberius Marimus. The Holy Land, as far as it had been in the possession of the Judeans, and had now come into his hands by right of conquest, he caused to be sold to the highest bidder, proposed thereby, according to his habit, to fill his treasury, and thereby cancelled, as if intentionally, the ancient Mosaic law, that the whole of Canaan should be Jahveh’s land.5 To eight hundred pensioned soldiers only he allotted, as a new Roman colony.

1 As Josephus remotely intimates when he says ( Vita, §75) that he requested of Titus nothing else than the liberation of certain people and the Sacred Books; the latter, therefore, he rescued whenever he could from Roman hands.

2 See further Bell. Jud. vii. 5. 5 ad

fin.

3 As we know that that Temple was burnt down under Commodus, it is deubtful whether the so-called gold table of Solomon was brought by the Vandals from Rome to Spain (see vol. iii. p. 319), or, as others maintained, to Carthago

(comp. N. Davis’s Carthage and her Remain/, p. 488).

1 These plentiful coins have been often discussed; comp. Eckhel, Doctr. JV’iiin«. vi. pp. 326, 330; de Saulcy’s Numis. Jndiiique, pp. 155 sq.; Fr. Lenormant, Description des Medailles de Jirhr (1857. p. 199); Numis. Chronicle, 1862, p. 114; and Maddens Jewish Coinage, pp. 183-96 [2nd ed. pp. 208-229]. Those mentioned above, p. 548. with the inscription Jud. NatxUis, are not earlier than ibis period.

5 According to Antiquities, pp. 177 sq. and Jos. Belt. Jud. vii. 6. 6.

THE REDUCTION OF THE FORTRESSES IN THE SOUTH. 013

the little town of Emmaus, not far to the west of Jerusalem,1 to serve also as a protection for the Roman Camp at Jerusalem itself. Secondly, he commanded that every Judean should ‘bring to the Capitol,’ as Josephus puts it, probably from shame, the annual poll-tax which he had formerly paid to the Temple, and which in reality had. henceforth to be paid to Jupiter Capitolinus;2 by which arrangement the supreme claims of heathenism upon every individual Judean then living were established. The two laws were thus the complement of each other, and made every Judean henceforth dependent on the mercy of heathenism and the Emperor.

But after Jerusalem had fallen there still stood in the south-east the three fortresses above mentioned,3 in which many of the most belligerent Judeans and greatest enemies of the Romans continued their earlier mode of life. It was the task of the legate, Lucilius Bassus, to take them, but their fate varied greatly with their situation and their garrison;4 in fact, we can discover in them the three parties into which the whole nation had been divided during the war. The nearest fortress, that undoubtedly occupied by the royal party, that is, the moderate men, Herodium,5 soon surrendered. The struggle for Machaerus, by the east side of the Dead Sea,6 was much more severe, partly on account of the extremely favourable situation of the place for defence, and partly because many of the best soldiers of the party in power had fled thither. The place consisted of the castle in the strict sense and a tolerably large lower city, likewise fortified, in which the remnants of the old inhabitants of the land, of Moabite descent, although having evidently long adopted the Judean faith, had settled, though only as ‘ strangers,’ according to the re-inforced Mosaic law; a remarkable proof of the manner in which it was sought to put the ancient law in force again,7 and of what would have become of the world if the Zealots had been victorious.s As a fact the Judeans of pure descent withdrew by themselves into the citadel at the approach of danger, made frequent sallies, and had skirmishes with the Romans, not altogether without success, and would probably have defended themselves

1 See ante, p. 553. With regard to When poets like Statius (Silva, iii. 3.

the situation of the place, seo further 140) speak of Vespasian’s Idunuvus tri

Jahrbb. d. B. W., xi. pp. 181 sq.; Gbtt. umphu», that can he explained from the

Gel. Am., 1866, pp. 438. observations in vol. v. pp. 396 sq.

* BeU. Jud. vii. 6. 6; Cassius Dio, 5 See vol. v. p. 435.

lxvi. 7; comp. Suet. Domit. § 12. • Vol. vi. pp. 199 sq.

3 Ante, p. 572. 7 According to the law explained

‘Which Josephus (Bell. Jud. vii. 6. Antiquities, pp. 238 sq.

1-3, and vii. 8 sq.) relates at length. 8 Comp. ante, p. 506.

successfully for a long time if a young man named Eleazar, highly distinguished by his birth and valour, had not been taken prisoner and threatened, by the strategy of the Roman general, with crucifixion before the eyes of the besieged. To prevent that, they all surrendered, on certain conditions, and received permission to retreat. But in those terms the ‘strangers ‘ of the lower city were not included; indeed, when these unfortunate people sought to make their escape during the night before the execution of the treaty, they were betrayed to the Romans by the Judeans of pure descent themselves; whereupon the bravest of them fought their way out, but seventeen hundred soldiers were slain and all the women and children were sent into captivity. Thus did these representatives of the Hagiocracy now understand the interpretation and application of the sacred Law! A great number of those who had escaped from Machaerus and Jerusalem had retired into an extensive and remote forest; they also were betrayed, and though they defended themselves desperately against the Roman soldiers, and inflicted on them some loss, they were soon all cut down. Amongst the three thousand who thus fell was their noble leader, the priestly Zealot, Judas, the son of Jair,1 who had escaped from the caves of Jerusalem to end thus.2

There was then left in the whole circuit of the Holy Land but one spot where Judeans collected unsubdued, and which defied the Romans—the fortress of Massada,3 on the south-west side of the same Dead Sea ; and, as at the very beginning of the whole movement,4 Eleazar, as a relative of theephemeral kingMenahem, the son of Judas the Gaulonite,5 and thus doubly the genuine representative of the original Zealots, had retired into this fortress with his Sicarii, so notwithstanding all the vast changes of the interim he had thus far maintained without any alteration his position in it together with his followers. Thus the real end of the long sad tragedy was to be at this place; and the same fire of marvellous zeal which had kindled this entire life-anddeath movement of Israel from the very first appearance of that ancestor of Eleazar, the Gaulonite, was destined once more to break out in its last purest flame, that it might even by its very mode of extinction surprise the world. This pinnacle of rock, Massada, had been afresh converted by Herod the

1 See ante, p. 590. * On its position see especially Fey’s

* Bell. Jud. vii. 6. 5. The ‘I<fpSijj Voyage dans le Hauran, pp. 287 sq.; Tris

Spvfi6s, the position of which Josephus tram’s Land of Israel, pp. 303-315.

docs not mention, is probably meant to be 4 Ante, p. 503.

simply rny,, i.e. forest; comp. Seetzcn’s 5 According to Bell. Jud. ii. 17. 8, but

Sciseii, iv. p. 382. not according to vii. 6. 4.

Great, with great labour and skill, into the strongest citadel, supplied with the most powerful weapons and other stores, and had been made, by utilising its extremely favourable position, into a fortification almost impregnable to ordinary besiegers, with the view of defending himself in it to the last, should the necessity arise. After a century it was still as secure, but only to witness the inevitable end, not of the Herods, who had long sunk so low, but of Judeanism itself. It was Flavius Silva, who, after the death of Bassus, advanced to take it. He perceived perfectly the difficulty of the task; cautiously carried a wall round the entire mass of rock, and on the basis of the nearest opposite rock, Leuke, erected, with immense difficulty, his banks for attacking the fortress with his rams. When all this proved of no avail, he caused a great fire to be kindled as near as possible to the wall, which threatened at first to be dangerous to the Romans themselves, but then being driven by the wind against the wall seized upon it in such a way that the assault necessarily succeeded the next day. The garrison of the lofty rock was small, and certain death with all the horrors of the conquest was to be expected at the hands of the Romans; and the genuine Zealots were already bound by oath to prefer death to submitting to the rule of any heathen or other human king. Eleazar accordingly persuaded all his people during that night to kill their wives and children and then themselves, but to burn all their treasures first. The next day the Romans found only nine hundred and sixty dead bodies, whilst but two women with five children hid themselves in caverns and were discovered.1 The Easter of the year 73,2 just seven years from the beginning of the great movement and forty years after Christ’s crucifixion, saw this end of the whole tragedy.

Yet Zealotism itself did not therewith cease to ferment in the hearts and brains of many partial or full adherents of the party; and whilst that fire had been quenched in the blood of most of the older generation, it was soon seen to revive in many young men with the most marvellous force. Quenched and smothered outwardly to such an extent that it appeared to be for ever put out, this zeal continued in the inmost heart of the remaining fragment of the ancient nation its devouring fire for

1 The two speeches of Eleazar, Bell, year if we follow Josephus, as he had

Jvd. vii. 8. 6, 7. were, of course, put into spoken of the fourth year of Vespasian

their present shape by Josephus; but they (vii. 7. 1) just before the last mention of

serve admirably as illustrations of some the month (vii. 9. 1); and, in itself, it is

of the principal ideas of the Zealots. hardly credible that the Romans longer.

* At all events we n,ust adopt this delayed.

some time longer with the more consuming effect. The schism between Zealots and Anti-Zealots was perpetuated wherever Judeans dwelt in considerable numbers, and the indignation which had been forcibly kept under often broke out in remembrance of the last years the more unmanageably against quieter co-religionists or even against individual heathen. It was especially the Judean population in Egypt, which continued to be large, amongst which this deep exasperation raged most violently. Many Judeans were seen in that country to bear the most extreme punishments and sufferings rather than submit to call the Emperor their king. But it was just there also that the turbulent spirit was soon broken by its own immoderation. Some of the more quiet Judeans had been murdered; in these circumstances the Anti-Zealots themselves appealed to the Romans for assistance, and six hundred of the Zealots were seized, to be punished with death; others were fetched from southern Egypt, whither they had fled; but the governor, Lupus, then prohibited also, at the command of the Emperor, the use of the Temple of Onias,1 lest that sanctuary should perhaps take the place of the Temple of Jerusalem; he deprived it of all its ornaments of every kind, and blocked up the approaches to it. In addition the most despicable displays of passion and mutual denunciation soon played a part. A certain Jonathan, of low rank, revered by many as a thaumaturgist, was first denounced in Cyrene by the richer Judeans to the Roman governor as misleading the people; but, in turn, when his adherents had been sanguinarily dispersed, he accused many of the most respected Judeans of Cyrene, Alexandria, and Rome (amongst whom was Elavius Josephus) of many crimes, procured the ruin of some of them, and was first unmasked in Rome itself by Vespasian, and punished by being burnt to death.2 Thus by this means also the zeal which had long degenerated was painfully put down; and the rest of profound exhaustion after all such struggles appeared at last to extend to the still living members of the community of the former people of Israel, as they were now dispersed everywhere far more than they had ever been before.

1 See vol. v. p. 356. then that the high-priest Ismael was

2 The above according to Sell. Jud. beheaded in Cyrene, as is incidentals vii. 10 sq.; Vita, § 76. It was probably told us Bell. Jud. vi. 2. 2.

INDEX.