CHAPTER LXIV

_The Destruction of Jerusalem_

[Sidenote: To the Tower of Antonia]

The sounds of the footsteps increased. Overwhelmed as I was by the trial

that my mind had just undergone, I sat nearly unconscious of external

things till I was roused by a strong grasp from behind and saw myself

surrounded by armed men. I was passively bound; and indifferent to

fortune, was flung into a litter and conveyed to the Tower of Antonia.

In this vast circle of fortifications, the citadel of the former Roman

garrison, the Jewish government was now held, or rather Onias lorded it

over the population. He had discovered my dwelling, and the first fruit

of his knowledge was my seizure and that of my family. He was now playing

the last throw of that desperate game to which his life had been given.

Power was within his reach, yet there I stood to thwart him once more,

and he was resolved to extinguish the first source of his danger. Yet I

was popular, and with all his daring, he desired to cast the odium of my

death on the Sanhedrin. I was to be tried on the ground of treating with

the enemy; my family were seized, to shake my courage by their peril, and

I was to be forced to an ignominious confession as the price of saving

their lives.

At the mouth of a dungeon a torch was put into my hands. I was left to

make my way, and the iron door was closed that had shut out many a wretch

from light and life. At the bottom of the steps I found a man sleeping

tranquilly on the stone. The glare of the torch disturbed him; he started

up, and, looking in my face, exclaimed in the buoyant and cheerful tone

by which I should have recognized him under any disguise:

[Sidenote: The Captain Tells of Constantius]

“By Jupiter! I knew that we were to meet! If I had to sleep to-night at

the bottom of the sea, I should wager my simitar to a straw that our

bodies would be found lying side by side. I presume we mount the scaffold

together to-morrow for the benefit of Jewish morality. Well, then, since

our fates are to be joined, let us begin by—supping together.”

It was the captain! He laid his store on the ground; but I was heartsick,

and could only question him of Naomi, and the misfortune which had

betrayed him into the hands of the tyrant.

“Our history is the briefest in the world,” was the answer; “we found

ourselves pursued, and we fled. The pursuers followed faster than my fair

mistress could run, or I could carry her. So we were overtaken before

we could clear the rocks, and our captors were forthwith carrying us to

the Roman camp, in great joy at their prize. But it was intended to be

an unlucky day for the legions. We came across a Jewish troop, headed

by a fine, bold fellow, who dashed upon the captors and fluttered them

like a flight of pigeons. Nothing could promise better than the affair,

for my new captor turned out to be an old friend, and one of the most

gallant that ever commanded a trireme. Many a day the Cypriot and I

chased (Nemesis forgive us for it!) the pirates through the Cyclades: I,

however, did not know then what pleasant personages the brothers of the

free-trade might be.”

He smiled, and the sigh that followed the smile told how little he had

since found to compensate for his old adventures.

“A Cypriot. Your captor was my son, my Constantius!” I exclaimed.

“The very man. When he had found me out under my Arab trappings, he was

all hospitality, and invited me to share the honors of his princely

father’s house. His troop soon scattered every man to his home, and I

was gazing at the head of an incomparable knave and early acquaintance,

Jonathan, nailed up over the gate for some villainy which he had not been

as adroit as usual in turning to profit, when Constantius, myself, and

that lovely girl, whom I shall never see more”—he bent his brows at the

recollection—“were seized by the guard, separated, and sent, I suppose,

alike to the dungeon.”

[Sidenote: The Egyptian’s Papers]

Shortly after midnight I was brought before the tribunal. Onias was my

accuser, and I was astonished at the dexterity, number, and plausibility

of his charges—magic, treachery, the betrayal of my army, the refusal

to push the defeated enemy to a surrender, lest by the cessation of the

war my ambition should be deprived of its object; and last and most

astonishing, the assassination of my kinsman, Jubal, through fear of his

testimony!

I made my defense with the fearlessness of one weary of life. Some of the

charges I explained; others I promptly repelled. To the imputation of

treachery I answered in a single sentence.

“Read that correspondence with the enemy and judge which is the traitor.”

I took the Egyptian’s papers from my sash and flung them on the table.

The aspect of my accuser at the words was one that might have made his

sternest hater pity him. He gasped, he trembled, he gnashed his teeth in

rage and terror, and finally took refuge in the ranks of his followers.

But the judges themselves were in visible perplexity; they looked over

the papers, held them to the lamps, and examined them in all imaginable

ways, until the chief of the Sanhedrin rising, with a frown that fixed

all eyes on me, flung the papers at my feet. The deepest silence was

round me as I took up the rejected proofs. To my astonishment they were

utterly blank!

[Sidenote: The Secret of the Signet]

I now recollected that on my entrance I had been pressed upon by the

crowd. In that moment the false papers must have been substituted. I

saw the Egyptian gliding away from the side of Onias, and saw by the

countenance of my accuser that the tidings of the robbery had just

reached him. He now declaimed against me with renewed energy. He was

eloquent by nature; the habit of public affairs had given his speaking

that character of practical vigor and reality which is essential to great

public impression; his fortunes hung in the scale—perhaps his life; and

he poured out the whole collected impulse in a torrent of the boldest

and most nervous declamation upon my head. Still my name was high; my

rank was not to be lightly assailed; my national services were felt; and

even the corrupt judicature summoned for my ruin were not so insensible

to popular feeling as to violate the forms of law to crush me. The trial

lasted during the night. I had the misery to see my wife, my children,

Constantius, Naomi, my domestics, my fellow warriors, every human being

whom there was a chance of perplexing, or terrifying into testimony,

brought forward against me.

As a last resource, on the secret suggestion of the Egyptian, who had

his own revenge to satisfy, the adventures of the pirates’ cavern were

declaimed upon, and the captain was summoned from his cell. His figure

and noble physiognomy made him conspicuous, and a general murmur of

admiration arose on his advance to the tribunal. Miriam was at my side. I

felt her tremble; her color went and came, and she drank in every tone of

his voice with an intense anxiety. But when, in answer to the questions

of Onias, he detailed his story, and in answer to the charge of his being

an enemy denied that he was either Roman or Greek, Miriam’s spirit hung

upon every word.

“A soldier’s best pedigree,” said he, concluding, “is his sword. I know

no more than that I was reared in the house of a Cypriot noble, to whom

I had been brought by a trader of Alexandria. My protector made me a

sailor, and would have made me his heir, but Roman insolence disgusted

me, and I left my command, bearing with me no other inheritance than a

heart too proud for slavery, my simitar, and this signet, which I have

worn from my infancy.”

He took from his bosom a large sculptured gem fastened to a chain of

pearls. Miriam put forth her trembling hand for it, read with a starting

eye her own name and mine, and exclaiming, “My son! my son!” tottered

forward and fell fainting into his arms.

[Sidenote: Salathiel’s Farewell]

I flew to them both, and never did a wo-worn heart beat with keener

joy than when I, too, clasped my son, my long-lost, my first-born. Yet

the cloud gathered instantly. Had he not come to take the earliest

embrace of his parents in the crisis of their fate—the promise of an

unbroken lineage, found only in the day when my country was in the jaws

of destruction—the father awaking to those loveliest and happiest

ties of nature only when the ax of the traitor or the sword of the

enemy was uplifted to cut them asunder forever—the prince, the patriot,

the warrior, summoned to the first exercise of his noble rights and

duties—when in the next hour a heap of dust might be all that was left of

his family and his people!

I clung to my son with a fondness thirsting to repay its long arrear.

His desertion in the hands of strangers; the early hardships; the loss

of a mother’s love and a father’s protection; the insults and privations

that the struggler through the world must bear; the desperate hazards

of his life; even the errors into which necessity and circumstance had

driven him, rose up in judgment against me; I reproached myself even for

the accident, perhaps the irresistible accident, that gave my infant to

the roaring waters. But the tears and exclamations of the people round

us recalled us. I might then have walked from the hall without any man’s

daring to lay a hand upon me, for the public feeling, touched by the

discovery of my son, was loud for my instant liberation. But I was not

to be satisfied with this imperfect justice, and I demanded that the

tribunal should proceed.

[Sidenote: “Shed Not the Innocent Blood”]

The presence of my family was felt too strong for the fears of my

persecutor, and he demanded that they should retire. An impression, like

the warning of a superior spirit, instantly told me that the parting was

forever! The same impression was evidently on their minds, for their

parting was like an eternal farewell. The whole group at once gathered

round me. Constantius and Salome knelt before me for final forgiveness.

My son and his betrothed bowed their heads to ask my blessing. Miriam

and Esther came last, and silently hung upon my neck, dissolved in tears

of matchless anguish and love. I lifted my eyes and heart to Heaven, and

tho oppressed with the terrible conviction of my own fate, put forth my

hands and blessed them in the name of the God of Israel. I saw them pass

away. My firmness could bear no more; I wept aloud. But with my sorrow

there was given a hope—a light across the gloom of my soul. When I saw

their stately forms solemnly move along through the fierce and guilty

multitude, and the distant portal shut upon them, I thought of the sons

and daughters of the great patriarch passing within the door of the ark

from the midst of a condemned world.

The night wore on; the people, exhausted by the length of a trial,

protracted for the purpose, had left the hall nearly empty; and Onias,

now secure of a tribunal that dreaded nothing but the public eye, urged

the decision. The judges were his creatures through corruption or fear;

his followers alone remained. Sure to be crushed, the fluctuations of

hope were gone; and I listened to the powerful and high-wrought harangue

of my enemy without a feeling but of admiration for his extraordinary

powers, or of pity for their perverter. While he stood, drinking in with

ears and eyes the wonder and homage of the audience, I myself called for

sentence.

“Scorning,” said I, “to reason with understandings that will not

comprehend, and consciences that can not feel, I appeal from the man of

blood to the God of mercies; from the worse than man of blood, from the

corrupter of justice, to HIM who shall judge the judge; to Him who shall

yet pass sentence on all in the sight of earth and heaven.”

The chief of the tribunal rose; my condemnation was upon a lip quivering

and pale; he had already in his hand the border of the robe which he was

to rend, in sign that the accused was rent from Israel.

A confusion at the portal checked him, and the words resounded: “Shed

not the innocent blood!” The voice was as a voice from the sepulcher,

melancholy, but searching to the very heart. The guard gave way, and

a man, covered from head to foot with a sepulchral garment, rushed up

the immense hall. At the foot of the tribunal he flung off the garment,

and disclosed a face and form that well might have ranked him among the

dwellers of the grave.

“I have come from the tombs,” exclaimed he; “I had lain down to die in

the resting-place of my fathers, in the valley of Jehoshaphat. A man in

white raiment stood beside me and commanded me to come and bear witness

of the truth. The Romans were round me—he led me through them; the

battlements were before me—he led me through them; riot, fury, and frenzy

stood in my path through your city—he led me through them; and lo! here I

come, and proclaim by his command: ‘Shed not the innocent blood.’”

[Sidenote: Onias the Accused]

Onias stood paralyzed. No memory of mine could recall the haggard

features of the stranger. The chief of the tribunal in manifest confusion

required his name.

“My name,” he answered, with a wild wave of his hand, “is nothing—air—is

gone. What I was, is past; what I shall be, the tomb alone must tell; but

what I am, is the witness, commissioned to proclaim Onias the betrayer of

the blood of your nobles, the slave of Rome, the traitor to his country,

the apostate to his religion.”

All hands were lifted up in astonishment. Onias, sick at heart, made a

feeble gesture of denial.

“Dares the traitor deny his own handwriting?” was the indignant reply.

“Let him read his treason, committed within these twelve hours.”

He stalked over to the guilty Onias and held his letters to the Roman

general before his shrinking eye.

While my eyes were fixed on the portal through which had vanished my

last hope of happiness, I was startled by an outcry, and I saw the gleam

of steel at my throat. Onias, in despair of smiting me by the arm of

the law, had made a frenzied effort to destroy me by his own. Quick as

lightning the stranger threw himself between us and grasped the assassin;

they struggled—they were involved in the large and loose robe and fell

together. I sprang forward to separate them. But the deed was done. Onias

lay rolling upon the ground; the dagger was in the stranger’s grasp, and

it was crimson to the hilt. I could feel no vindictiveness against the

dying, and I offered him my hand. He threw a violent expression of scorn

into his stiffening features, and cried at convulsive intervals:

“No compassion—no hypocrisy for me—I die as I lived. I hated you, for you

thwarted me.—You have the best of the game now; but if I had lived till

to-morrow, I should have been lord of Jerusalem.—The Romans will settle

all.—You and yours would have been in my power.—You shall perish.—That

boy is your son; he was brought to me in his infancy; I hated you as my

rival; and I swore that you should never see your first-born again. I

sold him to the Alexandrian.—You shall not live to triumph over me; your

dungeon shall be your tomb; another night, and you sleep no more, or

sleep forever.”

He gathered his mantle over his face and died.

His followers, after the first consternation, demanded vengeance on the

stranger. But it was now my time to protect him, and I declared that no

man should strike him but through me.

[Sidenote: The Last of Jubal]

“This is noble and generous,” interrupted he, “but useless. I, too, am

dying; but I rejoice that I am dying by the wound meant for you. Have

I at last atoned? Have you forgotten? Can you forgive? Then, prince of

Naphtali, lay your hand upon this heart, and while it beats believe that

there you are honored. Time has changed me; misery has extinguished the

last trace of what I was. Farewell, my kinsman, friend, chieftain—and

remember—Jubal.”

I caught him in my arms; my heart melted at his sufferings, his generous

attachment, his heroic devotion, his deep repentance.

“You have more than atoned,” I exclaimed; “you are more than forgiven.

Live, my manly, kind, high-hearted Jubal; live for the honor of your

race—of your country—of human nature.”

He looked up with a smile of gratitude, and faintly uttering, “I die

happy,” breathed in my arms the last breath of one of the most gallant

spirits that ever left the world.

Loud shouts abroad and blazes that colored the roof with long columns of

lurid light put an end to the deliberation of the tribunal. The enemy

were assaulting the citadel, and the mockery of justice was summarily

closed by returning me to my dungeon, to await times fitter for the

calmness of judicial murder.

[Sidenote: The Dungeon’s Heat]

The assault continued for some hours; but to my cell, sunk in the very

foundations of the fortress, day never came; and I lay, still buried in

darkness, when I heard sounds like the blows of pickaxes, and from time

to time the fall of heavy bodies, followed by a roar. The air grew close,

and chill as the dungeon had been, I experienced a sensation of heat

still more painful. The heat increased rapidly. I tried to avoid it by

shifting my place in the vault. But the evil was not to be baffled—the

air grew hotter and hotter. I flung myself on the pavement to draw a cool

breath from the stones; they began to glow under me. I ran to the door of

the dungeon; it was iron, and the touch scorched me. I shouted, I tore at

the walls, at the massive rings in the floor, less perhaps from the hope

of thus escaping than from the vague eagerness to deaden present pain by

violent effort. But I tore up the pavement and broke down the fragments

of the walls in vain. The walls themselves began to split with the heat;

smoke eddied through the crevices of the immense stones, and the dungeon

was filled with fiery vapor. My raiment encumbered me; I tore it away,

and on the floor saw it fall in ashes. I felt the agonies of suffocation;

and at last, helpless and hopeless, threw myself down, like my raiment,

to be consumed.

I had scarcely touched the stone when I felt it shake and vibrate from

side to side. A hollow noise like distant thunder echoed through the

vault; the walls shook, collapsed, opened, and I was plunged down a

chasm, and continued rolling for some moments in a whirl of stones, dust,

earth, and smoke.

When it subsided, I found myself lying on the green sward, in noonday,

at the bottom of a valley, with the tower of Antonia covered with the

legionaries, five hundred feet above me. The remnants of huge fires round

pillars of timber explained the mystery. The enemy had undermined the

wall, and by burning the props, had brought it down at the moment of the

assault. Onias, the planner of the attack, for which he was to be repaid

with the procuratorship of Judea, had placed me in the spot where ruin

was to begin, and cheered his dying moments with the certainty that,

acquitted or not, there I must be undone!

[Sidenote: Preparations]

I long lay confused and powerless beside my dungeon! But the twilight

air revived me, and I crept through the deserted entrenchments of the

enemy until I reached one of the gates, where I announced my name, and

was received with rejoicings. The heart of my countrymen was heroic to

the last, and deeply was its heroism now demanded; for the whole force

of the enemy had been brought up for final assault, and when I entered,

every portion of the walls was the scene of unexampled battle. Where

the ground suffered the approach of troops, the enemy’s columns, headed

by archers and slingers innumerable, rushed to the rampart, climbing

up the breaches, with their shields covering their heads. Against the

towers were wheeled towers filled with troops, who descended on the

wall and fought us hand to hand. We felt the continued blows of the

battering-rams, shaking the battlements under our feet. Where the ground

repelled direct assault, there the military machines poured havoc, and

those were the most dreaded of all.

The skill of man, exerted for ages on the arts of compendious slaughter,

has scarcely produced the equals of those horrible engines. They threw

masses of unextinguishable fire, of boiling water, of burning oil, of

red-hot flints, of molten metal, from distances that precluded defense,

and with a force that nothing could resist. The catapult shot stones of

a hundred-weight from the distance of furlongs, with the straightness

of an arrow, and with an impulse that ground everything in their way

to powder. The fortitude that scorned the Roman spear, and exulted in

the sight of the columns mounting the scaling-ladders, as mounting to

sure destruction, quailed before the tremendous power of the catapult.

The singular and ominous cry of the watchers, who gave notice of its

discharge, “The son cometh,” was a sound that prostrated every man upon

his face, until the crash of the walls told that the blow was given.

[Sidenote: “Wo to the City!”]

Every thought that I had now for earth was in the tower of Antonia!

But there the legions rendered approach impossible, and I could only

gaze from a distance and see, in the bitterness of my soul, the enemy

gradually forcing their way from rampart to rampart. It was in vain that

I strove to collect a few who would join me in a desperate attempt to

succor its defenders. I was left alone, and sitting on the battlements, I

took the chance of some friendly spear or stone.

Through all the roar I heard the voice of Sabat, the Ishmaelite: the

eternal “Wo!—wo!—wo!” loud as ever, and in appalling unison with the

hour. He now came rushing along the wall with the same rapid and vigorous

stride as of old, but his betrothed no longer followed him. She was borne

in his arms! The stones from the engines thundered against the wall; they

tore up the strong buttresses like weeds; they struck away whole ranks of

men, and whirled their remnants through the air. They leveled towers and

swept battlements away with their defenders at a blow. But Sabat moved

unshrinking on his wild mission. His cry now was terrible prophecy.

“A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four

winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the

bridegroom and the bride, a voice against this whole people.”

He stopped before me, and pointing to the face of his bride, said with

a sudden faltering and tears: “She is gone; she is dead. She died last

night. I promised to die too. She follows me no more. It is I that must

follow her.”

Death was in his face, and my only wonder was that a form so utterly

reduced could live and move. I offered him some provision from the basket

of a dead soldier at my feet. For the first time he took it, thanked me,

and ate. Not less to my surprise, he continued gazing round him on the

movements of the enemy, on the temple, the tower of Antonia, and the

hills. But his station was eminently perilous, and I pointed out one of

the military engines taking its position to play upon the spot where we

were. He refused to stir.

“The look may be long,” said he, “when a man looks his last.”

[Sidenote: The Conflict of Heaven and Earth]

I heard the roar of the engine, and leaped from the rampart to escape the

discharge. Sabat stood, and again began his cry: “Wo to the city, and to

the holy house, and to the people!” The discharge tore up a large portion

of the battlement. Sabat never moved limb or feature. The wall was cut

away on his right and left, as if it had been cut with an ax. He stood

calmly on the projecting fragment with his lips to the lips of his bride.

I saw the engine leveled again, and again called to him to escape. He

gave me no answer but a melancholy smile; and crying out, with a voice

that filled the air: “Wo to myself!” stood. I heard the rush of the

stone. It smote Sabat and his bride into atoms![55]

The fall of our illustrious and unhappy city was supernatural. The

destruction of the conquered was against the first principles of Roman

polity, and to the last hour of our national existence, Rome held out

offers of peace, and lamented our frantic determination to be undone. But

the decree was gone forth from a mightier throne. During the latter days

of the siege, a hostility to which that of man was as the grain of sand

to the tempest that drives it on, overpowered our strength and senses.

Fearful shapes and voices in the air; visions startling us from our short

and troubled sleep; lunacy in its most hideous forms; sudden death in the

midst of vigor; the fury of the elements let loose upon our unsheltered

heads; we had every terror and evil that could beset human nature,

but pestilence; the most probable of all in a city crowded with the

famishing, the diseased, the wounded, and the dead. Yet, tho the streets

were covered with the unburied, tho every wall and trench was streaming

with gore, tho six hundred thousand corpses lay flung over the rampart,

naked to the sun—pestilence came not; for if it had come, the enemy would

have been scared away. But the “abomination of desolation,” the pagan

standard, was fixed, where it was to remain until the plow passed over

the ruins of Jerusalem!

[Sidenote: The Last Sign]

On one night, that fatal night! no man laid his head upon his pillow.

Heaven and earth were in conflict. Meteors burned above us; the ground

shook under our feet; the volcano blazed; the wind burst forth in

irresistible blasts, and swept the living and the dead in whirlwinds, far

into the desert. We heard the bellowing of the distant Mediterranean, as

if its waters were at our side, swelled by a new deluge. The lakes and

rivers roared and inundated the land. The fiery sword shot out tenfold

fire. Showers of blood fell. Thunder pealed from every quarter of the

heaven. Lightning, in immense sheets, of an intensity and duration that

turned the darkness into more than day, withering eye and soul, burned

from the zenith to the ground, and marked its track by forests on flame,

and the shattered summits of the hills.

Defense was not thought of, for the mortal hostility had passed from the

mind. Our hearts quaked for fear, but it was to see the powers of heaven

shaken. All cast away the shield and the spear, and crouched before the

descending judgment. We were conscience-smitten. Our cries of remorse,

anguish, and horror were heard through the uproar of the storm. We howled

to the caverns to hide us; we plunged into the sepulchers to escape the

wrath that consumed the living; we would have buried ourselves under the

mountains! I knew the cause, the unspeakable cause, and knew that the

last hour of crime was at hand. A few fugitives, astonished to see one

man among them not sunk into the lowest feebleness of fear, came round

me, and besought me to lead them to some place of safety, if such were

now to be found on earth. I told them openly that they were to die, and

counseled them to die in the hallowed ground of the Temple. They followed

me through streets encumbered with every shape of human suffering, to the

foot of Mount Moriah. But beyond that, we found advance impossible. Piles

of cloud, whose darkness was palpable, even in the midnight in which we

stood, covered the holy hill. Still, not to be daunted by anything that

man could overcome, I cheered my disheartened band, and attempted to lead

the way up the ascent. But I had scarcely entered the cloud when I was

swept downward by a gust that tore the rocks in a flinty shower round me.

[Sidenote: “Let Us Go Hence”]

Now came the last and most wondrous sign that marked the fate of Israel.

While I lay helpless, I heard the whirlwind roar through the cloudy

hill, and the vapors began to revolve. A pale light, like that of the

rising moon, quivered on their edges, and the clouds rose and rapidly

shaped themselves into the forms of battlements and towers. The sound of

voices was heard within, low and distant, yet strangely sweet. The luster

brightened, and the airy building rose, tower on tower, and battlement

on battlement. In awe that held us mute, we knelt and gazed upon this

more than mortal architecture, which continued rising and spreading, and

glowing with a serener light, still soft and silvery, yet to which the

broadest moonbeam was dim. At last it stood forth to earth and heaven,

the colossal image of the first Temple, the building raised by the wisest

of men, and consecrated by the visible glory.

All Jerusalem saw the image, and the shout that, in the midst of their

despair, ascended from its thousands and tens of thousands, told what

proud remembrances were there. But a hymn was heard that might have

hushed the world. Never fell on my ear, never on the human sense, a sound

so majestic, yet so subduing; so full of melancholy, yet of grandeur. The

cloudy portal opened, and from it marched a host such as man had never

seen before, such as man shall never see but once again; the guardian

angels of the city of David!—they came forth glorious, but with wo in all

their steps; the stars upon their helmets dim; their robes stained; tears

flowing down their celestial beauty.

“Let us go hence,” was their song of sorrow; “Let us go hence,” was

answered by the sad echoes of the mountains. “Let us go hence,” swelled

upon the night to the farthest limits of the land. The procession

lingered long on the summit of the hill. Then, the thunder pealed; and

they rose at the command, diffusing waves of light over the expanse of

heaven. Their chorus was heard, still magnificent and melancholy, when

their splendor was diminished to the brightness of a star. The thunder

roared again; the cloudy temple was scattered on the winds; and darkness,

the omen of her grave, settled upon Jerusalem!

I was roused from my consternation by the voice of a man.

[Sidenote: A Glance toward the Temple]

“What!” said he, “sitting here, when all the world is stirring? Poring

over the faces of dead men, when you should be the foremost among the

living? All Jerusalem in arms, and yet you scorn your time to gain

laurels?”

The haughty and sarcastic tone was familiar to my recollection; but to

see, as I did, a Roman soldier within a few feet of me was enough to make

me spring up, and draw my simitar, careless of consequences.

“You ought to know me,” said he, without moving a muscle; “for tho it is

some years since we met, we have not been often asunder. And so here you

have been sitting these twelve hours among corpses, to no better purpose

than losing your time and your memory together!”

I looked round; the sun was in his meridian. The little band that I had

led to the foot of the mountain were lying dead, to a man.

“Are you not a Roman?” I exclaimed.

“No; but I conclude that nearly as much absurdity and mischief may be

committed under these trappings as under any other, and therefore I wear

them. But you may exchange with me if you like. This cuirass and falchion

will help you to money, riot, violence, and vice—and what more do

nine-tenths of mankind ask for in their souls? Take my offer and you will

be on the winning side; another thing that men like. But be expeditious,

for before this sun dips his forehead in the Asphaltites, the bloodshed

and robbery will be over.”

His laugh, as he uttered the words, was bitterness itself, and I felt

my flesh instinctively shudder. But a glance toward the Temple told me

that the words were true. The legions had forced their way to the foot

of the third and weakest rampart, which I now saw flying in pieces under

the blows of the battering-rams. They must have marched by the very spot

where I had sat since midnight, and I probably escaped only by being

taken for one of the dead. I wrung my hands in agony. He burst into a

wild roar of derision.

[Sidenote: Salathiel Beholds Epiphanes]

“What fools you lords of the creation are! What is the loss of life to

the naked wretches that you see running about like frightened children

on those battlements, or to the clothed wretches that you see ready to

massacre them, for the honor and glory of a better-clothed wretch?—a

dinner too much will revenge them on the Emperor of the earth. The spear

or the arrow comes, and quick as thought their troubles are at an end.

Man!—the true misery is to live, to be constrained to live, to feel the

wants, wearinesses, and weaknesses of life, yet to drag on existence; to

be—what I am.”

He tore the helmet from his forehead, and, with a groan of agony, flung

it to a measureless distance in the air. In amaze and terror I beheld

Epiphanes! The same Greek countenance, the same kingly presence, the same

strength and heroic stature, and the same despair, were before me that,

in the early years of my wo, I had seen on the shores of the Dead Sea.

“I told you,” said he, with a sudden return to calmness, “that this day

would come; and to tell you so required no spirit of prophecy. There is a

time for all things, long-suffering among the rest; and your countrymen

had long ago come to that time. But one grand hope was still to be given;

they cast it from them! Ages on ages shall pass before they learn the

loftiness of that hope or fulfil the punishment of that rejection. Yet,

in the fulness of time, shall the light break in upon their darkness.

They shall ask, Why are we the despised, the branded, the trampled, the

abjured, of all nations? Why are the barbarian and the civilized alike

our oppressors? Why do contending faiths join in crushing us alone? Why

do realms, distant as the ends of the earth, and diverse as day and

night—alike those who have heard our history, and those who have never

heard of us but as the sad sojourners of the earth—unite in one cry of

scorn? And what is the universal voice of nature but the voice of the

King of nature?”

I listened in reverence to language that pierced my heart with an intense

power of truth, yet with a pang that made me writhe. I longed, yet

dreaded, to hear again the searching and lofty accents of this being of

unwilling wisdom.

“Man of terrible knowledge,” said I, “canst thou tell for what crime this

judgment shall come?”

Awe was written upon his mighty brow, and his features quivered as he

slowly spoke.

“Their crime? There is no name for it. The spirits of heaven weep when

they think of it. The spirits of the abyss tremble. Man alone, the man of

Judea alone, could commit that horror of horrors.”

He paused and prostrated himself at the words; then rising, rapidly

uttered: “Judge of the crime by its punishment. From the beginning,

Israel was stubborn, and his stubbornness brought him to sorrow. He

rebelled, and he was warned by the captivity of a monarch or the

slaughter of a tribe. He sinned more deeply, for he was the slave of

impurity; then was his kingdom divided; yet a few years saw him powerful

once more. He sinned more deeply still, for he sought the worship of

idols. Then came his deeper punishment, in the fall of his throne and the

long captivity of his people. But even Babylon sent back the forgiven.

“Happy, I say to you, happy will be the hour for Israel—for mankind, for

creation—when he shall take into his hand the records of his fathers,

and, in tears, ask, What is that greater crime than rebellion? than

blasphemy? than impurity? than idolatry? which, not seventy years, nor a

thousand years, of sorrow have seen forgiven; which has prolonged his wo

into the old age of the world—which threatens him with a chain not to be

broken but by the thunder-stroke that breaks up the universe!”

“And still,” said I, trembling before the living oracle,—“still is there

hope?”

“Look to that mountain,” was the answer, as he pointed to Moriah. Its

side, covered with the legions advancing to the assault, shone in the

sun like a tide of burning brass. “It is now a sight of splendid evil!”

exclaimed he. “But upon that mountain shall yet be enthroned a Sovereign

before whom the sun shall hide his head, and at the lifting of whose

scepter the heaven and the heaven of heavens shall bow down! To that

mountain shall man, and more than man, crowd for wisdom and happiness.

From that mountain shall light flow to the ends of the universe, and the

government shall be the Everlasting!”

[Sidenote: The Roar of Assault]

The roar of the assault began, and my awful companion was recalled to the

world.

[Sidenote: In Front of the Sanctuary]

“I must see the end of this battle,” said he, in his old mixture of

sarcasm and melancholy; “man’s natural talent for making himself

miserable may go far, but he is still the better for a teacher. On the

top of that hill there are twenty thousand men panting for each other’s

blood like tigers; and yet without me they would leave the grand business

undone, after all.”

“But one word more,” I cried, giving my last look to the tower of

Antonia, on which the eagles now glittered.

He anticipated me.

“All are safe—they are in the hands of Septimius, who will deal with

them in honor. He solicited the command, that he might provide for their

security. They comfort themselves with the hope that you will return. But

return you never will. They will be happy in the hope—until sorrow is too

long shut out to find room when it comes; they love you, and will love

you long, but there is an end of all things. And now, farewell!”

“And now, onward,” said I. “But every spot is crowded with the Roman

columns. How am I to pass those spears?”

He laughed wildly, flung his arm round me, as of old, and ran, with the

speed of a stag, round the foot of the hill to an unobstructed side. The

ascent was nearly perpendicular; but he bounded up the crags without

drawing a breath, placed me on a battlement, and was gone!

[Sidenote: The Mark of Ruin]

Below me war raged in its boundless fury. The enemy had forced their way,

and the exasperated Jews, contemptuous of life, fought them with the rage

of wild beasts. When the lance was broken, the knife was the weapon; when

the knife failed, they tore with their hands and teeth. Masses of stone,

torches, even dead bodies, everything that could minister to destruction,

were hurled from the roofs on the assailants, who were often repulsed

with deadly havoc. But they still made way; the courts of the Gentiles,

of the Israelites, and of the priests were successively stormed; and the

legions at length established themselves in front of the Sanctuary. A

howl of wrath, at the possible profanation of the Holy of Holies, rose

from the multitude. I rushed from the battlement, and showing myself

to the people, demanded “who would follow me?” The crowd exulted at the

sight of their well-known chieftain; and in the impulse of the moment

we poured on the enemy, and drove them from the court of the Sanctuary.

Startled by the sudden reverse, the Roman generals renewed their proposal

for a surrender, and Titus himself, at the most imminent hazard, forced

his way to the portal, and besought me to surrender and save the Temple.

But Jerusalem was marked for ruin. While I was in the very act of

checking the shower of spears, I heard the voice of one of those

extraordinary beings who, by mad predictions of the certain succor of

Heaven, kept up the resistance while there was a man to be slaughtered.

He was standing on the roof of a vast cloister, surrounded by a crowd of

unfortunate men, whom his false prophecies were infuriating against the

offer of life. I recognized the impostor, or the demon, by whom the Roman

mission had been destroyed. The legionaries pointed in vain to the flames

already rising round the cloisters. The predictions grew bolder still,

and the words of truth were answered by showers of missiles. The flames

suddenly burst out through the roof, and the whole of its defenders,

to the number of thousands, sank into the conflagration. When I looked

round after the shock, this fearful being, without a touch of fire on his

raiment, was haranguing in a distant quarter, and whether man or fiend,

urging the multitude to their fate!

This was the day of days, the ninth day of the month Ab, the anniversary

of the burning of the Temple by the king of Babylon. One thousand one

hundred and thirty years, seven months, and fifteen days were past, from

its foundation by our great King Solomon! My attack had repelled the

legionaries, and Titus, exhausted and dispirited, began to withdraw the

routed columns from the front of the Temple. It was the fifth hour; the

sun was scorching up their strength, and I looked proudly forward to

victory and the preservation of the Temple!

[Sidenote: The Enemy—Fire]

As I was standing on the portal of the court of the Sanctuary, and gazing

at the rout of the troops toward the tower of Antonia, I heard a voice

close to my ear: “I told you that this day would end in nothing without

me.” I turned, but he was already far away among the crowd; and before I

could even speak, I saw him, torch in hand, bound into the Golden window,

beside the veil of the Holy Place. The inner Temple was instantly in a

blaze. Our cries and the sight of the flames brought back the enemy at

full speed. I saw that the fatal hour was come, and collecting a few

brave men, took my post before the veil, to guard the entrance with my

blood.

But the legions rushed onward, crying out that “they were led by the

Fates,” and that “the God of the Jews had given His people and city into

their hands.” The torrent was irresistible. Titus rushed in at its head,

exclaiming, that “the Divinity alone could have given the stronghold into

his power, for it was beyond the hope and strength of man.” My devoted

companions were torn down in an instant. I was forced back to the veil of

the Holy of Holies, fighting at random in the midst of the legionaries,

who now saw no enemies but each other. In the fury of plunder they

deluged the Portico and the Sanctuary with blood.

The golden table of Pompey, the golden vine, the trophies of Herod, were

instantly torn away. Subordination was lost. The troops trampled upon

their officers. Titus himself was saved only by cutting his way through

those madmen. But I longed to die, and give my last breath and the last

drop of my veins to the seat of Sanctity and Glory. I fought—I taunted—I

heaped loud scorn on the profaners—I was covered from head to foot with

gore; but it was from the hearts of Romans—I toiled for death; but I

remained without a wound. Yet, wo to the life that came within the sweep

of my simitar. The last blow that I struck was at an impious hand, put

forth to grasp the veil that shut the Holy of Holies from the human gaze.

The hand flew from the body, and the spoiler fell groaning at my feet. He

sent up an expiring look, and I knew the countenance of my persecutor,

Cestius!

[Sidenote: The Ruin of the Temple]

But a new enemy had come, conqueror alike of the victor and the

vanquished—fire.[56] I heard its roar round the sanctuary. The Romans,

appalled, fled to the portal; but they were doomed. A wall of fire stood

before them. They rushed back, tore down the veil, and the Holy of Holies

stood open. The blaze melted the plates of the roof in a golden shower

above me. It calcined the marble floor; it dissipated in vapor the

inestimable gems that studded the walls. All who entered lay turned to

ashes. So perish the profaners! But on the sacred Ark the flame had no

power. It whirled and swept in a red orb round the untouched symbol of

the throne of thrones. Still I lived, but I felt my strength giving way:

the heat withered my sinews—the flame extinguished my sight.

Bleeding, blind, frantic, I still fought until I sank under a heap of

dead. In defiance of all prediction, I now believed my death inevitable.

At once I heard the shouts of the conquerors and the fall of the pillars

of the Temple. I welcomed the living grave! In all the wildness of the

uproar I heard the voice: “TARRY THOU TILL I COME!” The world disappeared

from before me!

* * * * *

Here I pause. I had undergone that portion of my unhappy career which was

to be passed among my people. My life as father, husband, and citizen was

at an end. Thenceforth I was to be a solitary being.

My fate had yet scarcely fallen upon me, but I was now to feel it in

the disruption of every gentler tie that held me to life. I was to make

my couch with the savage, the outcast, and the slave. I was to see the

ruin of the mighty and the overthrow of empires. Yet in the tumult that

changed the face of the world, I was still to live and be unchanged.

Every sterner passion that disturbs our nature was to reign in successive

tyranny over my soul. And fearfully was the decree fulfilled.

[Illustration: “I heard the shouts of the conquerors, and the fall of the

pillars of the Temple.”

[_see page 532._

Copyright, 1901, by Funk & Wagnalls Company, N. Y. and London.]

[Sidenote: Salathiel the Eternal Wanderer]

In revenge for the fall of Jerusalem, I traversed the globe to seek out

an enemy of Rome. I found in the northern snows a man of blood; I stirred

up the soul of Alaric and led him to the rock of Rome. In revenge for the

insults heaped on the Jew by the dotards and dastards of the city of

Constantine, I sought out an instrument of compendious ruin: I found him

in the Arabian sands, and poured ambition into the soul of the enthusiast

of Mecca. In revenge for the pollution of the ruins of the Temple, I

roused the iron tribes of the West, and at the head of the crusaders

expelled the Saracens. I fed full on the revenge, and I felt the misery

of revenge!

A passion for the mysteries of nature seized me. I toiled with the

alchemist; I wore away years in perplexities of the schoolmen; and I felt

the guilt and emptiness of unlawful knowledge.

A passion for human fame seized me. I drew my sword in the Italian

wars—triumphed—was a monarch—and learned to curse the hour when I first

dreamed of fame!

A passion for gold seized me. I felt the gnawing of avarice—the last

infirmity of the fallen mind. Wealth came, to my wish and to my torment.

In the midst of royal treasures I was poorer than the poorest. Days and

nights of misery were the gift of avarice. I felt within me the undying

worm. In my passion I longed for regions where the hand of man had never

rifled the mine. I found a bold Genoese, and led him to the discovery of

a new world. With its metals I inundated the old, and to my own misery

added the misery of two hemispheres!

But the circle of the passions, a circle of fire, was not to surround

my fated steps forever. Calmer and nobler aspirations were to rise in

my melancholy heart. I saw the birth of true science, true liberty, and

true wisdom. I lived with Petrarch, among his glorious relics of the

genius of Greece and Rome. I stood enraptured beside the easel of Angelo

and Raphael. I conversed with the merchant kings of the Mediterranean.

I stood at Mentz beside the wonder-working machine that makes knowledge

imperishable and sends it with winged speed through the earth. At the

pulpit of the mighty man of Wittenberg I knelt; Israelite as I was, and

am, I did voluntary homage to the mind of Luther!

[Sidenote: The Future]

But I must close these thoughts, as wandering as the steps of my

pilgrimage. I have more to tell—strange, magnificent, and sad.

But I must wait the impulse of my heart. Or, can the happy and the

high-born, treading upon roses, have an ear for the story of the Exile,

whose path has for a thousand years been in the brier and the thorn!

FINIS

APPENDIX

ANNOTATIONS

[1]—page 3. The legend of the Wandering Jew first appeared in the

thirteenth century, in the chronicle of Matthew of Paris, who professes

to have received his information from an Armenian bishop to whom the hero

had himself communicated the events. According to this version, he was a

servant in the house of Pilate, named Cartaphilus, and gave Christ a blow

as He was dragged out of the palace to execution. Another and perhaps

more familiar version, probably of the fifteenth century and of German

origin, states that he was a shoemaker named Ahasuerus. As Jesus bore His

cross along the _via dolorosa_, staggering with pain and weakness, He

leaned for a moment against the doorway of the rude shopkeeper, who, with

cursing and bitterness, ordered him to “go on.” The sufferer looked upon

him and said: “I go, but tarry thou till I come!” From that awful moment

he found life a burden and death an impossibility. From time to time he

was able to rejoice in gray hairs and a stooping form, but regularly

these indications of the end would vanish, and clothed again in the form

of youth, he felt the look and heard in his soul the dread voice bidding

him wander on and on forever. All versions agree touching the verdict of

Christ, that he should wander on earth till the Second Coming.

In its deepest import, “the tradition is simply a wonderful picture of

a people—a people forever suffering and yet undying; forever doomed to

wander; without a home or any fixed abiding-place; safe nowhere, and yet

immortal; trampled and beaten; robbed and persecuted, and yet, strangely,

living and flourishing in spite of all. The most vigorous, virile, and

healthful people under the sun; the bravest and most enduring in battle

or siege; the most patriotic and loyal of all peoples, they stedfastly,

through all their wanderings and sorrows, cling to a land which is but a

memory or a dream.”

In this story, Dr. Croly adds to the typical traditions, peculiar

features of his own. Having such a hold on popular imagination, the

Wandering Jew has figured very largely in fiction, particularly in the

works of A. W. Schlegel, Klingemann, Béranger, Eugene Sue, Hans Christian

Andersen, and others.

[2]—page 11. The Mount of Corruption lay to the south of Jerusalem, across

the Valley of Hinnom. Its summit looks down upon the spot in connection

with which the Jewish ideas of the future life of the wicked were formed.

The valley, named, according to Dean Stanley, from “some ancient hero,

the son of Hinnom,” is first mentioned in Joshua (xv. 8; xviii. 16),

in marking out the boundary-line between Judah and Benjamin. Solomon

erected high places there for Moloch (1 Kings xi. 7), whose horrid rites

were revived by later idolatrous kings. Ahaz and Manassah made their

children “pass through the fire” in this valley (2 Kings xvi. 3; 2 Chron.

xxviii. 3; xxxiii. 6); and the fiendish custom of sacrificing infants

to the fire-gods seems to have been kept up for some time in Tophet,

its southeastern extremity (Jer. vii. 31; 2 Kings xxiii. 10). To put

an end to these abominations, Josiah polluted the place to render it

ceremonially unclean (2 Kings xxiii. 10, 13, 14; 2 Chron. xxxiv. 4, 5),

and it became the common cesspool of the city, and the laystall where all

the solid filth was collected.

[3]—page 16. It is difficult to conceive of the magnificence and the extent

of the Temple, as rebuilt by Herod, one of the greatest royal builders

that ever lived. Edersheim calls it “a palace, a fortress, a sanctuary

of shining marble and glittering gold.” Of it the Jewish tradition ran:

“He that has not seen the Temple of Herod, has never known what beauty

is.” As the pilgrim ascended the Mount, crested by that symmetrically

proportioned building, which could hold within its gigantic girdle not

fewer than 210,000 persons, his wonder might well increase at every step.

The Mount itself seemed like an island, abruptly rising from out deep

valleys, surrounded by a sea of walls, palaces, streets, and houses, and

crowned by a mass of snowy marble and glittering gold, rising terrace

upon terrace. Altogether it measured a square of about one thousand feet.

[4]—page 16. The High Priest was Caiaphas, before whom Jesus had

just been on trial. The beginning of the public ministry of Jesus

was contemporaneous with the accession of Pontius Pilate to the

procuratorship and the appointment of Caiaphas by Pilate to the high

priesthood. Under the administration of Pilate, Roman rule reached the

deepest depths in “venality, violence, robbery, persecutions, wanton,

malicious insults, judicial murders without even the formality of a legal

process, and cruelty.” History records of Caiaphas that he was appointed

High Priest, not because of his piety—the Talmud describes in terrible

language the “gross self-indulgence, violence, luxury, and even public

indecency” of the high priests of that day—but because in him was found

“a sufficiently submissive instrument of Roman tyranny.” The irreverence

here displayed is the natural expression of an utterly godless nature,

and the supernatural events that centered in that crucifixion hour could

not have failed to call forth such manifest feelings of horror.

[5]—page 18. The supernatural events mentioned in the narrative

are recorded by the evangelists, and confirmed by tradition and

contemporaneous history, as having occurred in connection with the

Crucifixion—deep darkness enveloped the earth from the sixth hour to the

ninth hour of the day; the veil of the Temple that shut in the Holy of

Holies was rent from top to bottom; and a mighty earthquake terrified the

multitudes. Lange has well said: “The moment when Christ, the creative

Prince, the principle of life to humanity, and the word, expires,

convulses the whole physical world.” Dr. Philip Schaff has said: “The

darkness was designed to exhibit the amazement of nature, and of the

God of nature, at the wickedness of the Crucifixion of Him who is the

light of the world and the sun of righteousness.” The horror from such

dense darkness is brought out powerfully by Lord Byron in his dream of

“Darkness.” The extent and character of the Temple-Veil will account for

the fact that it produced so profound an impression when it was seen rent

from top to bottom and hanging in two parts from its fastenings above and

at the side. The Veils before the most Holy Place were sixty feet long,

and thirty wide, of the thickness of the palm of the hand, and wrought in

seventy-two squares joined together. They were so heavy that it was said

that three hundred priests were needed to manipulate them. The rending

was seen to be the work of God’s own hand.

[6]—page 23. The description of the priests and their residences would

indicate an ideal condition. When the Israelites settled in Canaan,

Joshua assigned to the priestly families thirteen cities of residence,

with “suburbs” or pasture-grounds for their flocks (Josh. xxi. 13-19).

The Levites were scattered over all the country, but the cities of the

priests were all near Jerusalem and embraced within the bounds of Judah,

Simeon, and Benjamin. When the priests were divided into twenty-four

courses, each course officiated a week at a time. The interval of

twenty-three weeks, between the successive times of service of a course,

was a time for home life and high-priestly pursuits. The opportunities

for leisurely culture were undoubtedly very great. In addition to the

large number residing at this time in these priestly cities, who took

their turn in the courses, there were no less than 24,000 stationed

permanently at Jerusalem, and 12,000 at Jericho; so that it was a

tradition among the Jews “that it had never fallen to the lot of any

priest to offer incense twice.” Their proportion to the number of the

people must, therefore, have been much greater than that of the clergy

has ever been in any Christian nation. Their leisure and opportunities

for culture, especially in the Sacred Books, must have been exceptional.

The number of the priestly class was doubtless increased through

intermarriage with the other tribes. Salathiel was a priest, and hence

a Levite; but he was also connected with the tribe of Naphtali, through

marriage of a daughter of that tribe; so that when consciousness returned

he found himself being borne, not by his priestly associates to the

cities of the priests about Jerusalem, but by his tribal kinsmen to the

domain of Naphtali under the shadows of Lebanon.

[7]—page 26. Before the Roman conquest, the hatred of the Samaritan for the

Jew made Samaria largely a land of brigands, through which a Jew could

not safely travel. To Herod the Great belongs the credit of breaking up

this brigandage, so far as it was an organized system. Josephus relates

that Herod, after taking Sepphoris, the metropolis of Galilee, “hasted

away to the robbers that were in the caves, who overran a great part of

the country, and did as great mischief to its inhabitants as war itself

could have done.” He defeated them with a great slaughter, and drove them

out of the land.

[8]—page 28. The region through which the caravan was passing not only

brought them in view of the scenes of many of the greatest events

in Jewish history, individual and national—Mounts Carmel and Gilboa

and Tabor and Hermon, and the theater of patriarchal and prophetic

activity—but across what has been the battle-field for the armies of the

world-empires of three continents as they have crossed and recrossed,

from the days of Abraham down through the Crusades. It is aptly

designated “a living history of Providence.”

[9]—page 33. The “Haphtorah” (Isa. liii.) contains the most graphic

Old-Testament picture of Jesus as the rejected, suffering atoning

Messiah. It was this that the Ethiopian eunuch of Queen Candace was

reading when Philip went up to him in his chariot (Acts viii. 29), and by

the explanation of which he was converted to the Christian faith. Through

its wonderful picture Eleazar seems already to have been led to look upon

Jesus as the Messiah; but his hopes, roused by Salathiel’s renunciation

of the priesthood, were dashed in finding that the veil was still over

the face of the latter, as it was over the many of Israel.

[10]—page 43. Jubal is a typical Israelitish mountaineer, hunter, and

warrior in one, combining with a sense of wild freedom a touch of the

ancient Jewish enthusiasm. The incident here narrated gives a glimpse of

his deeper nature, and his outburst of patriotic exultation at sight of

the grave of the hosts of Sisera was one in which every true Israelite

could join.

[11]—page 47. The life of a whole generation is passed in inactivity

after the home is made in Naphtali—an inactivity that served to deepen

the shadow of his doom and the remorse for his unspeakable crime. In

this period the preparation is being made for the final conflict of

Jew with Roman authority, and at the end of it Salathiel is thrust,

by a malevolent power, into the leadership in that desperate first

struggle, described by Josephus, that promised to sweep the Romans from

Judea. His fate, however, pursues him, and he languishes for years in a

dungeon—leaving the Jews, now without competent leadership, again under

Roman control and oppression.

[12]—page 51. Antiochus IV., king of Syria—the son of Antiochus the

Great—known in history as Epiphanes the Illustrious, but to many of

his contemporaries as Epimanes the Madman—was for ages the chief name

of horror to the Jews. His father had conquered Palestine, B.C. 203,

and his brother and predecessor, Saleucus Philopator, had plundered

the Temple, and Syria had disputed the control of the land with Egypt.

Epiphanes conquered Jerusalem, B.C. 169, and held it for three years and

a half. The obstinate resistance of the Jews led to the most dreadful

deeds of cruelty recorded in history. Those who adhered to Ptolemy were

mercilessly butchered. He plundered the city and the Temple. He forbade

the Jewish religion, tore up and burned the Sacred Scriptures, put a stop

to the daily Sacrifice of expiation, and dedicated the Temple to Zeus

Olympios. He compelled the people to keep their infants uncircumcised,

and to sacrifice swine’s flesh upon the altar. Kurtz says: “This was the

abomination of desolation in the Holy Place, spoken of by Daniel (ch. xi.

31)—a type of another desolation that still belonged to the future (Matt.

xxiv. 15)”—before the Second Coming of Christ. Added to all the rest, his

system of unspeakable barbarities and horrible tortures at length drove

the people to desperation, and led to the successful uprising and heroic

struggle for freedom under Judas the Maccabee—truly God’s hammer—and his

brothers (recorded in the Apocryphal books bearing that name). Help

in understanding the Jewish feeling toward Antiochus may be found in

Josephus, Prideaux, Edersheim, etc.

[13]—page 61. Eleazar, as he appears in the narrative, is not the real

name of a historic leader of the Jews at this time. Josephus, indeed,

speaks of a certain Jew “who was called Eleazar, and was born at Saab, in

Galilee. This man took up a stone of great size, and threw it down from

the wall upon the ram, and this with so great a force that it broke off

the head of the engine. He also leaped down and took up the head of the

ram from the midst of them, and, without any concern, carried it to the

top of the wall, and this, while he stood as a fit mark to be pelted by

all his enemies.” Disregarding his many wounds, he showed himself a hero

in other daring exploits, like some of those attributed by the author to

Salathiel.

Josephus tells also of another Eleazar, who, at the time when the Jews

took the fortress of Masada by treachery, was the governor of the Temple.

He was the son of Ananias, the High Priest, and was a very bold youth. He

“persuaded those that officiated in the divine service to receive no gift

or sacrifice from any foreigner. And this,” adds Josephus, “was the true

beginning of our war with the Romans; for they rejected the sacrifice of

Cæsar on this account.”

The real leader in this early Jewish war was, however, Flavius Josephus,

the historian. After the destruction of the army of Cestius Gallus in

A.D. 66, the patriots precipitated a revolution, and Josephus was sent

to organize the defense of Galilee. He led in the desperate struggle

against Vespasian, but fell into the hands of the Romans after the fall

of the stronghold of Jotapata and the subsequent massacre there. He saved

himself by predicting the future elevation of Vespasian to the imperial

throne. He was present in the Roman army at the destruction of Jerusalem,

and accompanied Titus to Rome, where he resided for the rest of his life.

He was a great leader, and Salathiel in his exploits often seems to

personate him.

[14]—page 64. Onias is not brought forward as a historical character, but

as the representative of a class of Jews who were equally treacherous

in their dealings with their patriotic countrymen and with the Romans.

He appears as one of the marplots of the history—the personification of

hatred and malice—from this council of war until the final catastrophe,

when he dies by the hand of Jubal. The speech which the writer puts in

his mouth was, however, undoubtedly suggested by the remarkable oration,

recorded by Josephus (Bk. II., ch. xvi.), which Agrippa (the same

mentioned in the Acts) addressed to the Jews, in the gallery adjoining

the Temple and in the presence of his sister Bernice, who was above in

the palace of the Asmoneans, and in which he sought to dissuade the

people from going to war with their oppressors. In this speech of Agrippa

we have “an authentic account of the extent and strength of the Roman

empire when the Jewish war began,” from which becomes the more apparent

the madness that hurried the Jews to their final destruction.

[15]—page 70. In these foreglimpses of national doom, the representative

character of Salathiel is brought out and the sense of his own personal

doom, as the arch-crucifier of Jesus, deepened.

[16]—page 72. It has often been remarked that the selection of Judea as

the home of the chosen people bears the marks of divine wisdom. At the

point where the three continents of the ancient world meet, surrounded

by desert, mountain, and sea, broken by rugged ranges and defiles

impassable in the face of even a small opposing force, and filled with

a dense population, it was not only unique in character but impregnable

to foreign foe so long as Israel remained faithful to its covenant with

Jehovah. When the barriers, which at first excluded the people from the

outside world in their earlier development, were broken down, it became

the one place from which all the world was most accessible for the spread

of the Hebrew Theism and of Christianity.

[17]—page 74. The Year of Jubilee, recurring every fiftieth year, was a

remarkable feature of the Jewish system. It was inaugurated on the Day

of Atonement with the blowing of trumpets throughout the land, and by a

proclamation of universal liberty. Its main provisions were: (1) The soil

was left uncultivated and the chance produce was free to all comers.

(2) Every Israelite recovered his right to the land originally allotted

to the family to which he belonged, if he, or his ancestor, had parted

with it. Houses in walled cities were an exception, altho these were

redeemable at any time within a full year of the time of sale. (3) All

Israelites who had become slaves, either to their own countrymen or to

resident foreigners, were set free in the Jubilee. Josephus states that

in his time all debts were remitted in the Year of Jubilee. It was a

wonderful provision for preventing the accumulation of inordinate wealth

in the hands of the few, and for relieving and giving new opportunity to

those whom misfortune or fault had reduced to poverty. (See Smith’s Bible

Dictionary.)

[18]—page 75. Small as was Judea—no larger than one of our smaller

States—it yet has the distinction of embracing within its bounds

the temperatures and productions of all climes. Notwithstanding the

covenant unfaithfulness of its people and their failure in obedience to

Jehovah, it is still true that it bequeathed to mankind all the forms of

Theism—Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism—and with and through them

the chief enlightening and power-giving influences since operative among

the nations. It is not, then, too much to say that, with faithfulness to

God and to its unequaled privileges, “Judea might have changed the earth

into a paradise.”

[19]—page 79. The elevation of Salathiel to the leadership, as the Prince

of Naphtali, in the war now decided upon, seems contrary to the natural

order, as he was a priest and allied to the tribe of Naphtali by marriage

merely; but the plea that it was a holy war prevailed, and the superhuman

qualities that had been manifested in him clearly marked him for the

position. The exaltation and exultation were to be simply the prelude to

a sharp recall to a deeper sense of the curse that was upon him, and upon

all else because of his crime.

[20]—page 84. The blow was a critical one for Judea, depriving it of its

leader at the moment when that leader was most needed. It likewise dashed

the high hopes of the leader and left him a madman, a prey to the wildest

imagination that swept him through earth and sky, leaving him at last,

for periods beyond all counting, the sleepless, conscious, vivid victim

of misery unspeakable.

[21]—page 93. The grove known as the Cedars of Lebanon consists of about

400 trees, standing in a depression of the mountain, quite apart from

all other trees. The trees are about 6,500 feet above the sea, and 3,000

below the summit. About 37 of these are large and old, the 11 or 12 older

ones being of immense size and each spreading itself widely round from

several trunks, and reaching back in time 3,500 and more years—beyond

Solomon and Abraham. They are naturally looked upon with much reverence

by the natives of the region as living records of the glory of Solomon.

The Maronite patriarch was formerly accustomed to celebrate there the

festival of the Transfiguration at an altar of rough stones. In later

years a chapel has been erected on the spot. The references of the author

are to an earlier, and usually idolatrous, worship. Bands of robbers,

such as that described, naturally sought the vicinity of such gatherings.

[22]—page 97. The worship of the robbers at Lebanon illustrates the ease

with which the Oriental mind conjoins religion with any form of villainy.

This, however, is likely to be a feature of any religion that is a mere

superstition.

[23]—page 103. These Greek Christian hermits, dwelling apart from men in

their rocky cavern, are a fair type of thousands of such bands, driven

by the terrible persecutions of the Roman Emperor to take refuge in

the bowels of the earth. They were often made up of the noblest and

best of souls that most readily responded to the call and the ideal of

Christianity. A similar state continued during much of the time until, in

the age of Constantine, the Christians became so numerous as to be able

to change from a policy of inaction to one of aggressive self-defense.

[24]—page 113. History records the facts of Roman corruption and degeneracy

during this period. During the absence of Salathiel, the oppression and

extortion had maddened the Jews and reached a point beyond endurance.

There resulted a succession of partial and premature uprisings. The

empire everywhere seemed falling into decay, and preparing for

dissolution; the evils and the evil line of rulers culminated in the

administration of Gessius Florus.

[25]—page 133. It was Gessius Florus who, by his barbarity in governing,

finally forced the Jews into war. Josephus, contrasting him with Albinus,

pictures Florus as a human monster: “Altho such was the character of

Albinus, yet did Gessius Florus, who succeeded him, demonstrate him

to have been a most excellent person, upon the comparison; for the

former did the greatest part of his rogueries in private, and with a

sort of dissimulation; but Gessius did his unjust actions to the harm

of the nation after a pompous manner; and as tho he had been sent as

an executioner to punish condemned malefactors, he omitted no sort of

rapine, or of vexation; where the case was really pitiable he was most

barbarous, and in things of the greatest turpitude he was most impudent.

Nor could any one outdo him in disguising the truth, nor could any one

contrive more subtle ways of deceit than he did. He indeed thought it

but a petty offense to get money out of simple persons; so he spoiled

whole cities and ruined entire bodies of men at once, and did almost

publicly proclaim it all the country over that they had liberty given

them to turn robbers, upon this condition: that he might go shares with

them in the spoils they got. Accordingly, this, his greediness of gain,

was the occasion that entire toparchies were brought to desolation, and

a great many of the people left their own country and fled into foreign

provinces.”

[26]—page 145. In the Prophet Daniel’s vision the Roman world-empire was

represented by iron, which dashed and broke in pieces all else. It is the

wont to say that Rome had a genius for conquest and empire. Among the

nations she represented power and law, as Greece represented culture and

Judea religion. The Roman was lacking in the culture and religion needed

to refine and control his rugged nature; hence, his drift toward the

animal and brutal, and toward the outward show of life. Corruption was

already far on its way, and was only delayed for a time by the spread and

prevalence of the Christian faith.

[27]—page 147. Nero was Emperor from A.D. 54 to A.D. 68. He was a nephew

of Caligula, and was adopted by Claudius in A.D. 50. Even his own age,

which had borne and nurtured him, regarded him in his later career a

monster. He killed those whom he feared, among them his own mother and

Britannicus, the son of Claudius, and rightful heir to the throne; those

who stood in the way of his whims, as his first two wives, Octavia

and Poppæa Sabina; and at last he killed everybody who attracted

his attention. Under him occurred the insurrection of the Jews, put

down by Vespasian, in which Josephus so ably led his countrymen. The

conflagration in July, 64, in which two-thirds of Rome was destroyed,

is believed to have been the work of Nero, who is said to have shown

his indifference by playing the “Siege of Troy” on his fiddle while

watching the flames from a high tower in his palace. He wantonly accused

the Christians of setting it on fire, and sentenced them to be clad in

tarred garments, set on fire, and driven as flaming torches through the

streets of Rome. A conspiracy formed against him in A.D. 65 failed, and

he sacrificed his old instructor, Seneca, and the philosopher’s nephew,

the poet Lucan, the author of “Pharsalia”; but one formed in A.D. 68,

extending over Gaul, Spain, and Rome itself, overwhelmed the tyrant on

his return from a journey in Greece, where he had appeared as a singer on

the stage, and drove him to despair and to suicide in June of that year.

[28]—page 149. “Married, but not mated,” could not have been said of Nero,

at least in the later years of his life. He had early married Octavia,

the daughter of Claudius, his adopted father; but afterward became

enslaved by the charms of a mistress, Acte, a beautiful freedwoman,

who was content to be merely the Emperor’s plaything. In the year 58,

Poppæa Sabina took the place of Acte. The new favorite was not satisfied,

however, to be merely the plaything of Nero; she was resolved to be

his wife. With consummate skill she set herself at once to remove the

obstacles that stood in her way. By playing upon the passions and

fears of Nero she accomplished her diabolical purposes. She wrought

him up to a passion of hatred against Agrippina, his mother, and she

was murdered. The trusted advisers of the Emperor were one by one made

way with. Octavia, his wife, daughter of Claudius, now long neglected,

was divorced, banished, and barbarously murdered. Poppæa’s triumph was

now complete. “She was formally married to Nero; her head appeared on

the coins side by side with his; and her statue appeared in the public

places of Rome.” Her career shows her to have been anything but a “dove

in a vulture’s talons.” Poppæa died in the autumn of the year 65, just

after the great conflagration, and a little before the great pestilence

consequent upon it.

[29]—page 160. The dying appeal of the martyr St. Paul—whose name is

not mentioned—is depicted with a delicacy rarely if ever seen in the

present-day handling of sacred subjects in secular romances.

[30]—page 173. The account given by the historian Tacitus, in his “Annals,”

of the origin of the Christians, of their persecution, and of the

satiating of the popular rage, is of peculiar interest as illustrating

this narrative. Of the Christians, Tacitus says:

“This name was derived from one ‘Christus,’ who was executed

in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator of Judea, Pontius

Pilate; and this accursed superstition, for a moment repressed,

broke forth again, not only through Judea, the source of evil,

but even through the city, whither all things outrageous and

shameful flow together and find many adherents. Accordingly

those were first arrested who confessed, afterward a vast

number upon their information, who were convicted, not so much

on the charge of causing the fire, as for their hatred to the

human race. To their execution there were added such mockeries

as that they were wrapped in the skins of wild beasts and torn

in pieces by dogs, or crucified, or set on fire and burnt, when

daylight ended, as torches by night. Nero lent his own gardens

for the spectacle, and gave a chariot race, at which he mingled

freely with the multitude in the garb of a driver or mounted

on his chariot. As the result of all, a feeling of compassion

arose for the sufferers, tho guilty and deserving of condign

punishment, on the ground that they were destroyed not for the

common good, but to gratify the cruelty of one man.”

[31]—page 187. “Unconquerable fortresses” proclaimed the name and sway of

Herod the Great. Among these were Essebonitis and Machærus in Peræa, and

Alexandreian, Herodion, Hyrcania, and Masada in Southeastern Judea, near

the shore of the Dead Sea. According to the description of Masada by

Josephus:

“There was a rock not small in circumference, and very high.

It was encompassed with valleys of such vast depth downward

that the eye could not reach their bottoms; they were abrupt,

and such as no animal could walk upon, excepting at two places

of the rock, where it subsides, in order to afford a passage

for ascent, tho not without difficulty. Now, of the ways that

lead to it, one is that from the Lake Asphaltitis, toward

the sun-rising, and another on the west, where the ascent is

easier; the one of these ways called the Serpent, as resembling

that animal in its narrowness and its perpetual windings; for

it is broken off at the prominent precipice of the rock, and

returns frequently into itself, and lengthening again by little

and little, hath much ado to proceed forward; and he that would

walk along it must first go on one leg, and then on the other;

there is also nothing but destruction in case your feet slip;

for on each side there is a vastly deep chasm and precipice,

sufficient to quell the courage of everybody by the terror it

infuses into the mind. When, therefore, a man had gone along

this way for thirty furlongs, the rest is the top of the hill,

not ending at a small point, but is no other than a plain upon

the highest part of the mountain. Upon this top of the hill,

Jonathan, the High Priest, first of all built a fortress and

called it Masada; after which the rebuilding of this place

employed the care of King Herod to a great degree.”

[32]—page 233. It was in Masada that Herod the Great, when he fled to Rome

to appeal to Antony, had left his mother, sister, and children. In later

years, after he had been established in the kingdom by order of Rome, he

rebuilt, strengthened, and beautified the fortress. Soon after Florus,

by his extortion and cruelty, had driven the Jews to rebellion, history

records that Masada was taken by surprise, and the Roman garrison put to

the sword. This is the historical basis of this chapter of the story.

[33]—page 247. Josephus follows his description of the fortress of Masada

by an account of Herod’s palace, that justifies the description here

given, and reveals the motive of the king in its construction:

“Moreover, he built a palace therein at the western ascent;

it was within and beneath the walls of the citadel, but

inclined to its north side. Now the wall of this palace was

very high and strong, and had at its four corners towers sixty

cubits high. The furniture, also, of the edifices, and of the

cloisters, and of the baths, was of great variety and was very

costly; and these buildings were supported by pillars of single

stones on every side; the walls also, and the floors of the

edifices were paved with stones of several colors.… As for the

furniture that was within this fortress, it was still more

wonderful, on account of its splendor and long continuance.…

There was also found here a large quantity of all sorts of

weapons of war, which had been treasured up by that king, and

were sufficient for ten thousand men; there were cast-iron,

and brass, and tin: which show that he had taken much pains

to have all things here ready for the greatest occasions; for

the report goes, how Herod thus prepared this fortress on his

own account, as a refuge against two kinds of danger: the one

for fear of the multitude of the Jews, lest they should depose

him, and restore their former kings to the government; the

other danger was greater and more terrible, which arose from

Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, who did not conceal her intentions,

but spake often to Antony, and desired him to cut off Herod,

and entreated him to bestow the kingdom of Judea upon her.

And certainly it is a great wonder that Antony did never

comply with her commands in this point, as he was so miserably

enslaved to his passion for her; nor should any one have been

surprised if she had been gratified in such her request. So the

fear of these dangers made Herod rebuild Masada, and thereby

leave it for the finishing stroke of the Romans in this Jewish

war.”

[34]—page 253. The record of history at the basis of this part of the

narrative is, that immediately after the capture of Masada, “Manahem—a

younger son of the celebrated Judas of Galilee, who had perished in a

revolt soon after the exile of Archelaus, leaving to a powerful party the

watchword, ‘We have no king but God,’—proclaimed himself the leader of

the zealots and marched upon Jerusalem. The outworks of the palace were

mined and burned, and the garrison capitulated. The Jews and the troops

of Agrippa were allowed to depart; the Roman soldiers retired to the

three strong towers built by Herod, and all left in the palace were put

to death. The success was followed by the execution of the High Priest

Ananias and his brother, who were found hidden in an aqueduct; but these

and other excesses displeased the people; and when Manahem proceeded

to assume the royal diadem, he was put to death by the partizans of

Eleazar. In him the insurgents lost the only hope of a competent leader.

The Roman soldiers in the towers were soon compelled to surrender on

promise of their lives; but they had no sooner piled their arms than

they were cut to pieces. This baptism of blood, by which the zealots

committed themselves to a war of extermination, which they at the same

time deprived of the dignity of a patriotic struggle, was perpetrated on

a Sabbath; and on the same day the Jews of Cæsarea were massacred by the

Greeks to the number of 20,000. These deeds mark the character of the

conflict, not only as an insurrection of Judea against the Romans, but as

an internecine struggle of the Jewish and Greek races in Palestine and

the neighboring lands.”—_Philip Smith_, “History of the World.”

[35]—page 254. These Mosaic regulations for exemption from war are found in

Deut. xx. They are unique and peculiar to the Jewish code.

[36]—page 263. The historian records that the capture of Jerusalem brought

down the Romans upon the insurgents:

“Cestius Gallus, the governor of Syria, set his forces in

motion, with the forces of Agrippa, who had now openly taken

the Roman side, and other allies, added to his Roman legions.

He advanced upon Jerusalem through the pass of Bethhoron,

at the season of the Feast of Tabernacles, A.D. 66, with an

army of 25,000 men. Regardless alike of the feast and of the

Sabbath, the Jews rushed out to meet the enemy on the spot

consecrated by the victories of Joshua and Judas Maccabeus;

crushed the Roman van with the slaughter of more than 500 men,

and with a loss of only 22. A charge of light troops on the

Jewish rear saved the army of Cestius from destruction, and

gave him time to entrench his camp, and the Jews were obliged

to retire to Jerusalem.” Cestius then advanced and encamped at

Scopus, a mile to the north of the city. After five days of

irregular attacks, he advanced against the northern wall of

the Temple and began the work of mining; but, notwithstanding

encouragements from the factions in the city, he suddenly and

unaccountably withdrew, and, after a night’s rest on Scopus,

“commenced his retreat with the hostile population gathering

round him at every step, and reached Gabas with loss. Here the

beasts of burden were killed and the baggage abandoned. As soon

as the Romans had entered the pass of Bethhoron, they were

assailed in flank and rear and the passage blocked in front.

Night alone saved them from utter destruction; and Cestius,

displaying the standards and leaving 400 men, to make a show of

defending the empty camp, fled with the remnant of his army,

pursued by the Jews as far as Antipatris. He lost 5,300 foot

and 380 horses; and the engines of war, which he had carried up

for the siege of Jerusalem, became an invaluable help to its

defense. Having secured this prize, and collected the immense

booty, the Jews returned to the city with hymns of triumph,

fancying that the days of the Maccabees had returned, and

forgetting that the power they had defied wielded the resources

of the whole civilized world, while they had forfeited the aid

of Omnipotence.”—_Philip Smith._

[37]—page 276. It was during this interval, in which the Jews were without

competent leadership, that the Romans made and carried forward their

plans for conquering Judea. The news of the revolt and the defeat of

Cestius reached Nero when he was on his theatrical tour of Greece. He

at once entrusted Vespasian (afterward Emperor) with the command of all

the forces of Syria and the East. Vespasian immediately “sent his son

Titus to Alexandria, to lead the fifteenth legion into Palestine, while

he hastened through Asia Minor and Syria, collecting troops and engines

as he advanced. In the spring of the following year, three legions, with

a large force of allies, were assembled at Ptolemais (Acre). The sense

of being committed to so great a conflict, and the six-months’ interval

for preparation, had restored some order among the still divided Jews.

The avowed friends of Rome had either taken refuge with her armies or

been compelled to join the insurgents.” So writes the historian. In the

interval the moderate party, who would have been content to acknowledge

the supremacy of Rome if their liberties were secured, had, by their

numbers and character, obtained the ascendency over the zealots.

[38]—page 280. Jubal appears in this strange manner, after two years

had been passed in the dungeon, and rehearses the story of the war.

The attack of Vespasian fell first upon Galilee, which lay in his

way to Jerusalem. The moderate party had placed Joseph, the son of

Matthias—better known as the author of “Jewish Antiquities,” and by his

Roman name, Flavius Josephus, which he later assumed, as the client of

Vespasian in command in Galilee. His account given in “The Jewish War”

proves that the horrors of the conflict in Galilee were not overdrawn

by Jubal. Josephus, who was undoubtedly possessed of military genius

of no mean order, was driven at last to stake the fate of Galilee on

the defense of Jotapata. Before it Vespasian was wounded, but the

hill-fortress was finally stormed. The story of the marvelous escape of

the Jewish leader and of his recapture is related by himself. He was

thereafter attached to the suite of Vespasian “in a character between

a prisoner and a companion; and, after acting throughout the war as a

mediator between his countrymen and the Romans, he was rewarded with a

grant of land in Judea, together with a pension and the Roman franchise.”

Some of the most interesting features in Dr. Croly’s romance would seem

to have been suggested by experiences in the life of Josephus. The

horrors of the war were indescribable. Toward the close of the Galilean

campaign, Trajan was despatched by Vespasian to seize Joppa, the only

port held by the Jews. “Here the unfortunate inhabitants took to their

ships, which were dashed to pieces by a storm, and the few survivors

killed by the Romans as they gained the land. At the other captured

cities (Tiberias, Taricheia, Gamala, Itabyrium, and Gischala) all the

elder inhabitants were massacred and the younger sold as slaves. Never

was a war marked by greater atrocities on both sides than that which now

desolated the Holy Land.”

[39]—page 284. The numerous caves, owing to the chalky limestone of which

the rocks of Syria and Palestine chiefly consist, are one of the marked

features of this region. The Scriptures are full of references to them,

as they were used for dwelling-places, burial-places, places of refuge,

and other purposes. The bold shores of the Mediterranean, affording as

they do so little good harborage, are well suited to furnish caverns,

approachable from the sea only, in which the robber band is represented

as holding its orgies.

[40]—page 291. Such a robber group was not uncommon in that age, made up

as it was of such diverse races and dispositions. The corruption of the

Roman rule under Nero brought an approach to anarchy in many of the

provinces. Owing to the favorable character of its topography and the

strange mixture of its population, Palestine, and indeed the whole Syrian

shore of the Mediterranean, was at the worst in this regard. Robbery, by

sea and by land, was so widely practised as to gather to itself a degree

of respectability not usually associated with it. German, Chiote, Syrian,

Arab, Egyptian, and Ethiopian, all develop here in the most marked way,

under the influence of over-much wine, their national idiosyncrasies and

their natural quarrelsomeness.

[41]—page 328. This chance meeting with Naomi, the granddaughter of Ananus,

the late High Priest, furnishes the key to many of the situations and

strange adventures of the closing volume of this romance. It was during

the period of Salathiel’s incarceration in the dungeon, and while

Vespasian was pushing on to Jerusalem, that the death of Ananus occurred.

Josephus represents Ananus, or Annus, as a man who might have saved

the nation from destruction. At this time he shared the supreme power

in Jerusalem, under the Sanhedrin, with Simon, the son of Garion, the

bravest of the zealots, the moderate party being thus the controlling

power in the city. Later, however, when the tide of devastation directed

by Vespasian had entirely swept over Galilee and Perea, the death of

Nero brought a brief respite until Vespasian himself had been chosen

Emperor. Meanwhile the efforts of Ananus to make preparation for defense

were paralyzed by the zealots. The historian relates how “Jerusalem

became the refuge and sink of the fugitives from every quarter. Crowds

brought fresh confusion, and added to the fatal power of the zealots.

At length John of Giscala arrived, with his panting men and horses,

from the fall of the last Galilean fortress. In spite of the tale which

their appearance told, the crafty leader announced that the Romans were

exhausted, and pointed to the long resistance of the northern cities as

a presage of their failure before Jerusalem. His arrival animated the

zealots; and the robbers and assassins who had come into the city from

every quarter enacted scenes which are only paralleled by the September

massacres of Paris in 1792.” Ananus set himself against this sacrilegious

reign of terror, but the zealots prevailed, and he was put to death,

and his naked corpse “thrown out to the dogs and vultures, in a land

where it was a sacred custom to bury even the worst malefactors before

sunset. The moderate party was crushed, and the zealots followed up their

triumph, first by a series of massacres, in which, says Josephus, ‘they

slaughtered the people like a herd of unclean animals,’ to the number of

12,000, and then by murders under the form of law.” Faction then ran riot

as the doomed city awaited the coming of Titus, who succeeded his father

Vespasian, for its final destruction.

[42]—page 347. When Vespasian was made Emperor, he departed for Rome,

leaving Titus to work the wrath of God upon the doomed city—doomed

because of unfaithfulness to its covenant with Jehovah. Early in the year

70, Titus, having collected his forces at Cæsarea, moved upon Jerusalem

with not less than 80,000 men, arriving before the city when, at the last

Passover ever celebrated, it was crammed, as Josephus relates, with a

million persons keeping that feast and without any provision having been

made for their sustenance. The garrison of the Holy City was made up of

three principal factions, as ready to fight with one another as with the

Roman. Eleazar, the leader of one faction of the zealots, with 2,400

men, held the Temple and four strong towers that had been erected at its

corners. John of Giscala, leader of a mediating party, had succeeded to

the position of Ananus in the Temple courts and the lower city, and with

6,000 men besieged Eleazar’s forces. Simon, son of Gioras, occupied the

hill of Zion with 10,000 Jews and 5,000 Idumeans, and confronted both the

other leaders. Titus found these factions carrying on an incessant fight

with one another by means of the war-engines left behind by Cestius in

his flight. With such a state of things existing, there could be little

hope of defense against the conquerors of the world.

[43]—page 353. The Prince arrived after Titus had pushed the siege far on

toward completion. The historian records that on the first day of the

feast, the Jewish leaders for a moment suspended their mutual hostilities

to make a combined attack upon the single legion stationed on the Mount

of Olives. The Romans, at work on their entrenchments, were suddenly

beset by hosts that kept pouring out of the city, and were driven back to

the summit of the hill; but by a desperate effort they at last succeeded

in beating them back. On the next day, the second of the feast, the

factions renewed the internal conflict, and the party of John gained

possession of the Temple; and thus the factions were reduced to two.

[44]—page 356. The Christian inhabitants of Jerusalem alone formed an

exception to the judicial blindness that had fallen upon Israel. Warned

by the prophecy of Jesus (Luke xxi. 20, 21), they had departed in a

body, before the city was surrounded, to Pella, a village of Decapolis,

beyond the Jordan.

[45]—page 360. When the siege at length shut in the city, it was no

longer possible to furnish the priests or the offerings for the daily

sacrifice twice a day for the sins of the people; hence when it ceased,

on the 17th of the month Tamuz, the universal horror of a people undone

expressing itself in a universal outcry. Concerning the cessation of the

daily sacrifice, Whiston, the translator and editor of Josephus, has the

following note: “This was a remarkable day indeed, the 17th of Panemus

(Tamuz), A.D. 70, when, according to Daniel’s prediction, six hundred and

six years before, the Romans, in half a week, caused the sacrifice and

oblation to cease (Dan. ix. 27). For from the month of February A.D. 66,

about which time Vespasian entered on this war, to this very time, was

just three years and a half.”

[46]—page 367. The historical record is that, on April 13 A.D. 70,

when Titus advanced in person at the head of six hundred cavalry

to reconnoiter the city, not a man was to be seen; but as he rode

incautiously near the wall, he was suddenly surrounded by a multitude

that poured out from a gate behind him. Bareheaded and without a

breastplate, he forced his way through the hosts with his horse and

sword, amid a storm of darts that transfixed many of his followers, and,

tho he escaped unharmed to the camp, the Jews could boast that the first

act of the siege was Cæsar’s flight.

[47]—page 378. What with faction within and assault from without, the

wretchedness of Jerusalem at this time had become almost inconceivable.

The historian graphically says:

“Soon there was literally a battle for life within the city.

The weak and the starving had their last morsels of food

snatched from them by the strong; and the strong were tortured

and executed because their looks convicted them of having a

concealed store. ‘Every kind feeling, love, respect, natural

affection, was extinct through the all-absorbing want. Wives

would snatch the last morsel from husbands, children from

parents, mothers from children; they would intercept even

their own milk from the lips of their pining babes.’ If we

are allowed to doubt whether Josephus has exaggerated these

horrors, we may be sure that his picture of the cruelties of

his imperial patron is but too true. As the famine became more

intolerable, so did the measures of Titus to force the people

to surrender. Wretches who prowled outside the walls during the

night, to pick up scraps of food, were scourged and crucified,

sometimes to the number of five hundred at a time, and twisted

into ludicrous postures by the wantonness of the soldiers; the

soldiers bade those that desired peace to behold these examples

of Roman mercy.”

[48]—page 387. It is to the honor of Titus that he made earnest and

repeated efforts to save the Temple as well as to prevent its desecration

by the Jews themselves. After the destruction of Antonia and before his

final assault upon the defenses of the Temple, he made a last experiment

of clemency. According to the historian, many accepted his offer of

mercy; and when the rest had fled to Zion and the Temple, he sent to

Josephus to offer them free egress if they would come out and fight,

rather than see the sanctuary polluted. His words, uttered in their own

language, were beginning to make some impression, when his old enemy,

John, sternly interrupted him, declaring that he feared not the taking of

the city, for God would protect His own: and Josephus narrowly escaped

capture. The captives just admitted to quarter, including many of the

chief priests, next appeared before the Temple gate to entreat the

zealots to save the house of God from ruin; but the merciless John, who

had already butchered many of their relatives, answered with a shower of

missiles, which—says Josephus—strewed the ground with bodies as thickly

as the places where the slaves were thrown out unburied. Titus himself

pleaded the inconsistency of filling with arms and blood the courts of

the Holy Place, nay, even the Holy of Holies, which they had always

guarded with jealousy. “I call on your gods,” said he, “I call on my

whole army—I call on the Jews who are with me—I call on yourselves—to

witness that I do not force you to this crime. Come forth, and fight in

any other place, and no Roman shall violate your sacred edifice.” But the

zealots, in their judicial blindness, rejected all offers of mercy, and

waited for God to save the Temple by miracle.

[49]—page 409. The historian records that the year preceding the final

revolt (A.D. 65) was marked by the direst prodigies of impending war and

of the desolation of the Temple. During a whole year, a comet shaped

like a simitar hung over the city, and many an eye-witness testified to

the appearance described by Milton:

“As when, to warn proud cities, war appears

Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush

To battle in the clouds; before each van

Prick forth the airy knights, and couch their spears,

Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms

From either end of heaven the welkin burns.”

Those who witnessed the splendid comet of Donati (A.D. 1858) will at once

be able to recognize the form of the flaming sword across the sky.

“The brazen gate of the Temple, which required twenty men to move it on

its hinges, flew open of its own accord in the dead of night, as if to

let in the advancing armies of the heathen.” (See Philip Smith.)

[50]—page 419. The doom of the Holy City had been rendered inevitable by

the conduct of the people in forsaking their covenant with Jehovah. The

Evangelist Luke (xix. 41-44) represents Jesus as pausing as He approached

the city, and shedding bitter tears over the remedilessness of the fate

of the city and people. The passage is of interest on account, not only

of this weeping, but also of the prophecy so remarkably fulfilled by

Titus. The words of the Gospel are as follows:

“And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over

it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this

thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they

are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee,

that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass

thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee

even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they

shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou

knewest not the time of thy visitation.”

[51]—page 428. It will be remembered that when Titus gathered his forces at

Cæsarea for an advance upon Jerusalem, he drew from Alexandria, Egyptian

and Ethiopian troops.

[52]—page 446. The loss of life among the Jews during the siege of

Jerusalem was almost incredible. Josephus reckoned it at 1,100,000, a

number not difficult to credit if we remember that “nearly the whole male

population of Judea had been gathered together for the Passover when the

city was beleaguered. The prisoners taken in the whole war were 90,000.”

Had it not been for the Jews of the dispersion, the nation would have

perished with the city. It was due to the compassion of Titus that a

movement that might have destroyed even this remnant was stopped almost

at its inception. When persecution of the Jews began at Antioch, where

several Jews were put to death for an alleged plot to set fire to the

city, from which it would probably have spread over the empire, Titus put

an end to it by his famous order and rebuke: “The country of the Jews is

destroyed, thither they can not return; it would be hard to allow them no

home to retreat to; leave them in peace.”

[53]—page 459. By his Roman prenomen, Titus, is usually known Titus Flavius

Sabinus Vespasianus, the eleventh of the twelve Cæsars, Emperor from 79

to 81 A.D. He was in some respects one of the most remarkable of the

Cæsars. “Educated in the imperial court, he was thoroughly trained in

all elegant accomplishments: he could speak Greek fluently, and could

compose verses; he was proficient in music; he could write short-hand,

and could imitate handwriting so skilfully that he used to say that he

might have been a most successful forger. He was very handsome, with a

fine commanding expression and a vigorous frame, well trained in all

the exercises of a soldier.” His long and varied military and executive

experience, under the guidance of his father Vespasian and especially

in the Jewish war, made him a consummate warrior and administrator. For

a time, however, after he became formally associated with his father

in the government, with the title of Cæsar, and practically controlled

the administration during the last nine years of Vespasian’s reign, he

developed “the character of being luxurious, self-indulgent, profligate,

and cruel,” and seemed to have in himself the promise of being a second

Nero. The scandal connecting his name with the shameless beauty

Berenice, the sister of the Agrippa of the Acts of the Apostles, outraged

public opinion at Rome, but ended in his sending her back to the East.

The death of Vespasian, in 79 A.D., wrought a transformation in Titus,

and he became known as the “love and delight of mankind.” “He had the

tact to make himself liked by all. He seems to have been thoroughly

kindly and good-natured; he delighted in giving splendid presents, and

his memorable saying, ‘I have lost a day,’ is said to have been uttered

one evening at the dinner-table when he suddenly remembered that he had

not bestowed a gift on any one that day.”

[54]—page 467. The fine portrait here drawn of Titus Flavius Vespasianus,

the tenth of the Twelve Cæsars, known in history as Vespasian, is in

striking contrast with that previously sketched of his son Titus. The

father had little of the princely and imposing personality of the

son. He was a thoroughly able soldier, while simple and frugal in

his habits; in short, Tacitus says that “but for his avarice he was

equal to the generals of old days.” A better judgment, however, would

probably attribute the avarice, with which both Tacitus and Suetonius

stigmatize him, to “an enlightened economy, which, in the disordered

state of the Roman finances, was an absolute necessity.” He could be

abundantly “liberal to impoverished senators and knights, to cities and

towns desolated by natural calamity, and especially to men of letters

and of the professor class, several of whom he pensioned with salaries

of as much as £800 a year.” He was a blunt, plain soldier, without

distinguished bearing, and perhaps for that very reason a greater

favorite with the army and the common people. “By his own example of

simplicity of life he put to shame the luxury and extravagance of the

Roman nobles, and initiated in many respects a marked improvement in the

general tone of society,” while devoting much thought to the spread and

promotion of those intellectual tastes with which he was not personally

in sympathy.

[55]—page 523. The tragic fate of Sabat is a matter of history, tho the

story of the dead bride is a legendary attachment. Josephus tells us that

he “was one Jesus, the son of Ananus, a plebeian and a husbandman, who

four years before the war began, and at a time when the city was in very

great peace and prosperity, came to that feast whereon it is our custom

for every one to make tabernacles to God in the Temple, and began on a

sudden to cry aloud: ‘A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a

voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house,

a voice against the bridegroom and the bride, and a voice against this

whole people.’ This was his cry as he went about by day and by night,

in all the lanes of the city.” The efforts of the people and even of

the Roman procurator to suppress his cry were unavailing; and when the

scourge was applied, at every stroke of the whip his answer was: “Wo,

wo to Jerusalem!” “This cry was the loudest at the festivals; and he

continued this ditty for seven years and five months, without growing

hoarse or being tired therewith, until the very time that he saw his

presage in earnest fulfilled in our siege, when it ceased; for as he was

going round on the wall, he cried out with his utmost force, ‘Wo, wo to

the city again, and to the people, and to the holy house!’ And just as he

added at the last, ‘Wo, wo to myself also!’ there came a stone out of one

of the engines, and smote him, and killed him immediately; and, as he was

uttering the very same presage, he gave up the ghost.”

[56]—page 531. Josephus gives a somewhat detailed account of the final

struggle and of the burning of the Temple. After sharp conflict and

setting fire to the doors and outer courts of the Temple, Titus retired

into the tower of Antonia, and “resolved to storm the Temple the next

day, early in the morning, with his whole army, and to encamp round about

the holy house.” The Jews, however, after a little, attacked the Romans,

who drove back those that were quenching the fire in the inner court of

the Temple, and those that guarded the holy house, and pursued them as

far as the Holy Place itself. The record is that at this time, on the

tenth day of the month Ab, the day on which it was formerly burned by the

king of Babylon, “one of the soldiers, without staying for any orders,

and without any concern or dread upon him at so great an undertaking, and

being hurried on by a certain divine fury, snatched somewhat out of the

materials that were on fire, and being lifted up by another soldier, he

set fire to a golden window or lattice, through which there was a passage

to the rooms that were round about the holy house, on the north side of

it. As the flames went upward, the Jews made a great clamor, such as so

mighty an affliction required, and ran together to prevent it; and now

they spared not their lives any longer, nor suffered anything to restrain

their force, since that holy house was perishing, for whose sake it was

that kept guard about it.”

The utmost efforts of Titus to save the sacred building were utterly

vain. “The legionaries either could not or would not hear; they rushed

on, trampling each other down in their furious haste, or, stumbling over

the crumbling ruins, perished with the enemy. Each exhorted the other,

and each hurled his blazing brand into the inner part of the edifice, and

then hurried to the work of carnage. The unarmed and defenseless people

were slain in thousands; they lay heaped, like sacrifices, round the

altar; the steps of the Temple ran with streams of blood, which washed

down the bodies which lay upon it.”

JESUS OF NAZARETH FROM THE PRESENT JEWISH POINT OF VIEW

In this age and land, Jew and Christian seem destined at last to give

one another the glad hand. The old spirit of misunderstanding and often

of hate (which to our shame—more to the shame of the Christian than

of the Jew—has now lasted nearly a score of centuries), in this light

of noon, now and here, is intolerable. At the dawn of the twentieth

century, antisemitism in America, even the feeblest whisper of it, is an

anachorism, and an anachronism of the grossest sort.

That spirit was natural enough with the church of the early ages, for

the church, nearly all of it, was simply the pagan tiger baptized, and

labels changed, but not the nature of the beast. The Christ that was

presented to the Jew the Jew did well to hate, for he was a Christ of

barbaric cruelty, a monster who drove millions of Jews through fire and

starvation, out of the world, and this entire people for ages from their

homes and countries. If the Jews had not hated and spit on the very name

of that Christ, they had been more or less than human.