THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM.
Bella, sublimis, inclyta divitiis,
Olim fuisti celsa ædificiis,
Mœnibus clara, sed magis innumerum
Civium turmis.
The events at Rome which elevated Vespasian to the throne were the
principal reasons that the siege of Jerusalem was not actually
commenced till the early summer of the year 70, when, in April Titus
began his march from Cæsarea. His army consisted of four legions:
the 5th, under Sextus Cerealis; the 10th, under Lartius Lepidus; the
12th, that which had suffered defeat under Cestius, and was still in
disgrace, and the 15th. Besides this formidable force of regulars,
he had a very large number of auxiliaries. The exact number of his
troops is not easy to estimate. We may at once put aside, as clearly
below the mark, the estimate which puts Titus’s army at thirty
thousand; for if we agree in accepting Josephus’s statement[3] with
regard to Vespasian’s army in the year 67, it consisted of sixty
thousand, including the auxiliaries. The campaign in Galilee cost
him a few, but not many, killed in the sieges. We may deduct a small
number, too, but not many, for garrison work, for the conquest of
the country had been, after the usual Roman fashion, thorough and
complete. Not only were the people defeated, but they were
slaughtered. Not only was their spirit crushed, but their powers of
making even the feeblest resistance were taken away from them;[4]
and all those who were yet desirous of carrying on the war, those of
the fanatics who escaped the sword of Vespasian, had fled to
Jerusalem to fall by the sword of Titus. A very small garrison would
be required for Galilee and Samaria, and we may be very sure that
the large army which was with Vespasian in 67 nearly all followed
Titus in 70. The legions had been filled up, and new auxiliaries had
arrived.[5] Besides these, Josephus expressly says that the army of
Vespasian, and therefore that of Titus, was accompanied by
servants[6] “in vast numbers, who, because they had been trained up
in war with the rest, ought not to be distinguished from the
fighting men; for, as they were in their masters’ service in times
of peace, so did they undergo the like danger with them in time of
war, insomuch that they were inferior to none either in skill or in
strength, only they were subject to their masters.”
Footnote 3:
Let us take the opportunity of stating our opinion that Josephus’s
testimony may generally be relied upon. It was for a long time the
fashion to hold up his exaggerations to ridicule. Thus, when he
spoke of the height of the wall as being such as to make the head
reel, travellers remembered the fifty feet of wall or so at the
present day and laughed. But Captain Warren has found that the
wall was in parts as much as 200 feet high. Surely a man may be
excused for feeling giddy at looking down a depth of 200 feet.
Whenever Josephus speaks from personal knowledge, he appears to us
to be accurate and trustworthy. There is nothing on which he could
speak with greater authority, which would sooner have been
discovered, than a misstatement as regards the Roman army.
Footnote 4:
Milman gives a list of the losses of the Jews in this war compiled
from the numbers given by Josephus. It amounts to more than three
millions. Deductions must, of course, be made.
Footnote 5:
No argument ought to be founded on the supposed numbers of the
legions. The number _generally_ composing a legion in the time of
the Empire was 6000, and before the Empire, was 4000. But at
Pharsalia Cæsar’s legions were only 2000 each, while Pompey’s were
7000.
Footnote 6:
It is very curious that these “servants” are not mentioned either
by Mr. Lewin or Mr. Fergusson. Mr. Williams puts down the number
of the legions at 10,000 each, perhaps including the servants.
It is not easy to make any kind of estimate of the number of these
servants. Perhaps, however, we shall be within the mark if we put
down the whole number of forces under Titus’s command at something
like eighty thousand—an army which was greatly superior in numbers
to that of the besieged. It was also fully provided and equipped
with military engines, provisions and material of all kinds. It
marched, without meeting any enemy, from Cæsarea to Jerusalem, where
it arrived on the 11th of April.[7]
The city, meanwhile, had been continuing those civil dissensions
which hastened its ruin. John, Simon Bar Gioras, and Eleazar, each
at the head of his own faction, made the streets run with blood.
John, whose followers numbered six thousand, held the Lower, New,
and Middle City; Simon, at the head of ten thousand Jews and five
thousand Idumeans, had the strong post of the Upper City, with a
portion of the third wall; Eleazar, with two thousand zealots, more
fanatic than the rest, had barricaded himself within the Temple
itself. There they admitted, it is true, unarmed worshippers, but
kept out the rest. The stores of the Temple provided them with
abundance of provisions, and while the rest of the soldiers were
starving, those who were within the Temple walls[8] were well fed
and in good case. This was, however, the only advantage which
Eleazar possessed over the rest. Their position, cooped up in a
narrow fortress—for such the Temple was—and exposed to a constant
shower of darts, stones, and missiles of all sorts, from John’s men,
was miserable enough. John and Simon fought with each other in the
lower ground, the valley of the Tyropœon, which lay between the
Temple and Mount Zion. Here were stored up supplies of corn
sufficient, it is said, for many years’ supply. But in the sallies
which John and Simon made upon each other all the buildings in this
part of the town were destroyed or set on fire, and all their corn
burned; so that famine had actually begun before the commencement of
the siege.
Footnote 7:
The dates of the siege are all taken from Professor Willis’s
‘Journal,’ given in Williams’s ‘Holy City,’ vol. i. p. 478.
Footnote 8:
After Eleazar had succumbed to John.
“And now,” to quote the words of the historian, “the people of the
city were like a great body torn in pieces. The aged men and the
women were in such distress by their internal calamities that they
wished for the Romans, and earnestly hoped for an external war, in
order to deliver them from their domestic miseries. The citizens
themselves were under a terrible consternation and fear; nor had
they any opportunity of taking counsel and of changing their
conduct; nor were there any hopes of coming to an agreement with
their enemies; nor could such as wished to do so flee away, for
guards were set at all places, and the chiefs of the robbers agreed
in killing those who were for peace with the Romans.”
Day and night, he goes on to tell us, the wretched inhabitants were
harassed with the shouts of those who fought, and the lamentation of
those who mourned, until through the overwhelming fear, every one
for himself, relations ceased to care for each other, the living
ceased to mourn for the dead, and those who were not among the
defenders of the walls ceased to care for anything or to look for
anything except for speedy destruction; and this even before the
siege began.
And yet, with the city in this miserable and wretched condition,
with the certain knowledge that the Romans were coming, the usual
crowds of Jews and Idumeans flocked to the city to keep the feast of
the Passover. Their profound faith was proof against every disaster.
That the Temple should actually fall, actually be destroyed, seems
never even to have entered into their heads; and there can be little
doubt that the rude, rough, country people, coming to keep the
Passover with their wives and children, were filled with a wild hope
that the God of Joshua was about to work some signal deliverance for
them. The population thus crowded into the city is estimated by
Tacitus at six hundred thousand; by Josephus at more than double
that number. There are reasons for believing the number at least as
great as that stated by Tacitus. A register of the buried had been
kept in the city, and the registrar of one gate, out of which the
dead were thrown, gave Josephus a note of his numbers. The historian
conversed with those who escaped. A list of the captives would be,
no doubt, made—the Romans were not in the habit of doing things
carelessly, even after a great victory—and they would be accessible
to Josephus. So far as these go we ought to allow Josephus’s right
to the consideration due to an eye-witness; and it seems to us
absolutely unwarranted by any historical or other arguments, to put
down, as has been done, the population of this city during the siege
at sixty or seventy thousand.[9] This was doubtless something like
the ordinary population; but it was swelled tenfold and twentyfold
by the crowds of those who came yearly to keep the feast. Again, the
argument based by Mr. Fergusson on the area of the city fails for
the simple reason that it is founded on wrong calculations[10] as to
the number of square yards. Moreover, it seems to assume the
besieged to have been all comfortably lodged; it ignores altogether
the estimate taken by Cestius; while, if the numbers adopted by Mr.
Fergusson be correct, the horrors of the siege must have been
grossly exaggerated, and the stories told by Josephus cannot be
accepted; and, for a last objection, it appears to be assumed, what
is manifestly incorrect, that every able-bodied man fought. For this
vast mass of poor helpless people were like a _brutum pecus_; they
took no part whatever in the fighting. Nothing is clearer than the
statement made by Josephus of the fighting men. They were
twenty-three thousand in all at the beginning: they did not invite
help, and probably would not allow it, from the population within
the walls. These, who very speedily found relief, in the thinning of
death, for their first lack of accommodation, sat crouching and
cowering in the houses, desperately hoping against hope, starving
from the very commencement, beginning to die in heaps almost before
the camp of the 10th Legion was pitched upon the Mount of Olives.
The numbers given by Josephus may not be correct within a great many
thousands; there is reason enough, however, to believe that, within
limits very much narrower than some of his readers are disposed to
believe, his numbers may be fairly depended on. After all, it
matters little enough what the numbers really were; and even if we
let them be what any one chooses to call them, there yet remains no
doubt that the sufferings of the people were very cruel, and that,
of all wretched and bloody sieges in the world’s history, few, if
any, have been more wretched or more bloody than the siege of
Jerusalem by Titus.
Footnote 9:
Fergusson’s Art. ‘Jerusalem,’ Biblical Dictionary.
Footnote 10:
Taking the shape of the city to be circular and 33 stadia in
circumference (it was more nearly circular than square), we find
its area to have been rather more than 3,500,000 square yards.
This, at 30 square yards to one person, gives about 120,000 for
the ordinary population. And there were extensive gardens and
numerous villas to the north and east which contained another
population altogether quite impossible to estimate. And it must
not be forgotten that Cestius (Joseph. ‘Bell. Jud.’ vi. ix. 3)
caused an estimate to be made, a very few years before the siege,
of the numbers actually present at the Passover, and that the
_official_ return was 2,560,500 persons. The whole question is
clearly stated by Mr. Williams (‘Holy City,’ vol. i. p. 481). And,
as he points out very justly, it is not a question how many would
be comfortably accommodated in Jerusalem, but how many were
actually _crammed_ into it.
The people knew full well, of course, that the Romans were coming.
Fear was upon all, and expectation of things great and terrible. As
in all times of general excitement, signs were reported to have been
seen in the heavens, and portents, which, however, might be read
both ways, were observed. A star shaped like a sword, and a comet,
stood over the city for a whole year. A great light had shone on the
altar at the ninth hour of the night. A heifer, led up to be
sacrificed, brought forth a lamb in the midst of the Temple. The
eastern gate of the inner court, so heavy that it required twenty
men to move it, flew open of its own accord in the night. Chariots
and troops of soldiers in armour were seen running about in the
clouds, and surrounding cities. When the priests were one night busy
in their sacred offices, they felt the earth quaking beneath them,
and heard a cry, as of a great multitude, “Let us remove hence!” And
always up and down the city wandered Jesus, the son of Ananus,
crying, “Woe, woe to Jerusalem!” until the siege began in earnest,
when he ceased; for being on the wall, he cried, “Woe, woe to the
city again! and to the people, and to the holy House!” and then, as
he added, “Woe, woe to myself also!” a stone from one of the engines
smote him and he died.
Titus posted the 10th Legion on the Mount of Olives, and the 12th
and 15th on Mount Scopus, the 5th remaining some little distance
behind. As the 10th were engaged in pitching their camp, the Jews,
whose leaders had hastily patched up a kind of peace, suddenly
sallied forth from the eastern gate, and marching across the valley
of the Kedron, charged the Romans before they had time to form in
battle. [Sidenote: April 11.] Titus himself brought a chosen body to
their relief, and the Jews were, with great difficulty, driven back.
The next four days were spent in clearing the ground to the north of
the city, the only part where an attack could be made. “They[11]
threw down the hedges and walls which the people had made about
their gardens and groves of trees, and cut down the fruit-trees
which lay between them and the wall of the city.”
Footnote 11:
Joseph. ‘Bell. Jud.’ v. iii. 2.
The Jews, furious at sight of this destruction, made a sally,
pretending at first to be outcasts from the city, and hiding their
weapons until they were close upon the enemy. On this occasion the
Romans were utterly routed, and fled, pursued by the Jews “as far as
Helen’s monument.” It was a gleam of sunshine, and nearly the only
gleam that fell to the lot of the besieged. Titus removed his camp
to the north side of the city, and, leaving the 10th still on the
Mount of Olives, placed the 5th on the west of the city, over
against the towers of Hippicus and Pharsaelus, and the 12th and 15th
on the north. A cordon of men, seven deep, was drawn round the north
and west of the city. This must have taken some twenty-five thousand
men to effect.
[Sidenote: April 23.]
On the morning of the Passover, John contrived—taking advantage of
the permission freely granted to all who chose to enter the Temple
unarmed—to send in his own men, choosing those whose features were
not known to Eleazar’s followers, with concealed weapons. Directly
they got into the Inner Temple, they made an attack on the men of
the opposite faction. A good many were slaughtered, and the rest,
finding it best to yield, made terms with their conquerors,
Eleazar’s life being spared. There now remained only two factions in
the city, Simon holding the strongest place—the Palace of Herod,
which commanded the Upper Town—and John the Temple Fortress, without
which the Lower Town could not be taken.
It was determined to begin the assault with the north-western part
of the wall, that part of it where the valley turns in a
north-westerly direction and leaves a level space between the wall
and its own course. The engines used by the Romans were those always
employed in the conduct of a siege—the ballistæ, the towers, and the
battering rams. Then banks were constructed, on each of which was a
tower and a ram. In the construction of these last all the trees
round Jerusalem were cut down. Nor have they ever been replanted,
and a thousand years later on the siege of the city by the
Crusaders, only inferior in horror to that of Titus, nearly
miscarried for want of timber to construct the towers of assault.
As soon as the banks were sufficiently advanced the battering rams
were mounted and the assault commenced. The Jews, terrified by the
thunder of the rams against the city, annoyed, too, by the stones
which came into the city from the ballistæ, joined their forces and
tried a sortie from a secret gate near Hippicus. Their object was to
destroy the machines by fire; and in this they well-nigh succeeded,
fighting with a desperation and courage which no Roman troops had
ever before experienced. Titus himself was in the conflict; he
killed twelve Jews with his own hands; but the Romans would have
given way had it not been for the reinforcement of some Alexandrian
troops who came up at the right moment and drove back the Jews.
On the fifteenth day of the siege the biggest battering ram,
“Nikon,” the Conqueror, effected a breach in the outer wall. The
Jews, panic-stricken, forgot their wonted courage and took refuge
within the second wall. Titus became therefore master of Bezetha, in
the New Town; forming about a third of the city.
As nothing is said about the population of this, which was probably
only a suburb and never actually filled with people till the siege
began, we may suppose that very early in the assault they hastened
out of reach of the ballistæ and arrows by fleeing to the inner
city. And by this time a fortnight of the siege had passed away and
already their numbers were grievously thinned by starvation.
Between the palace of Herod and the Temple area there stretched the
second wall across the Tyropœon valley, which was filled, before the
faction fights of Simon and John, with houses of the lower sort of
people. This was the most densely populated part of the city. The
wall which defended it was not so strong as the rest of the
fortifications, and in five days, including an unsuccessful attempt
to storm the palace of Herod, a breach was effected and the Romans
poured into the town, Titus at their head.
In hopes of detaching the people from the soldiers, Titus ordered
that no houses should be destroyed, no property pillaged, and the
lives of the people spared. It was an act of mercy which the fierce
passions of the Jews interpreted as a sign of weakness, and renewing
their contest, fighting hand to hand in the streets, from the
houses, from the walls, they beat the Romans back, and recaptured
their wall, filling the breach with their own bodies. The battle
lasted for four days more when Titus, entering again, threw down the
whole northern part of the wall and became master of the whole Lower
Town.
Partly to give his troops rest, partly to exhibit his power before
the Jews, Titus gave orders that the paying of the troops should be
made the opportunity for a review of the whole army almost under the
walls of the city, and in full view of the besieged. The pageant
lasted four days, during which there was a grand march-past of the
splendid Roman troops, with burnished armour and weapons, and in
full uniform.
“So the soldiers, according to custom, opened the cases where their
arms before lay covered, and marched with their breastplates on; as
did the horsemen lead the horses in their fine trappings.... The
whole of the old wall and the north side of the Temple were full of
spectators, and one might see the houses full of such as looked at
them; nor was there any part of the city which was not covered over
with their multitudes; nay, a great consternation seized upon the
hardiest of the Jews themselves, when they saw all the army in the
same place, together with the success of their arms and the good
order of the men.”[12]
Footnote 12:
Joseph. ‘Bell. Jud.’ v. ix. 1.
The Jews saw and trembled. But they did not submit. There could be
no longer any hope. The multitude, pent up in limits too narrow for
one-tenth of their number, daily obtained more room by death, for
they died by thousands. The bodies were thrown out into the valleys,
where they lay rotting, a loathsome mass. Roaming bands of soldiers
went up and down the city looking for food. When they came upon a
man who looked fat and well-fed they tortured him till he told the
secret of his store: to be starving or to appear to be starving was
the only safety: and “now,” says Josephus, “all hope of escaping was
cut off from the Jews, together with their liberty of going out of
the city. Then did the famine widen its progress, and devoured the
people by whole houses and families; the upper rooms were full of
women and children that were dying by famine; and the lanes of the
city were full of the dead bodies of the aged; the children also and
the young men wandered about the market-places like shadows, all
swelled with the famine, and fell down dead wheresoever their misery
seized them. As for burying them, those that were sick themselves
were not able to do it; and those that were hearty and well, were
deterred from doing it by the great multitude of those dead bodies,
and by the uncertainty there was how soon they should die
themselves; for many died as they were burying others, and many went
to their coffins before that fatal hour was come! Nor was there any
lamentation made under these calamities, nor were heard any mournful
complaints; but the famine confounded all natural passions; for
those who were just going to die, looked upon those that were gone
to their rest before them with dry eyes and open mouths. A deep
silence also, and a kind of deadly night, had seized upon the city;
while yet the robbers were still more terrible than these miseries
were themselves; for they brake open those houses which were no
other than graves of dead bodies, and plundered them of what they
had; and carrying off the coverings of their bodies, went out
laughing, and tried the points of their swords on their dead bodies;
and, in order to prove what mettle they were made of, they thrust
some of those through that still lay alive upon the ground; but for
those that entreated them to lend them their right hand, and their
sword to despatch them, they were too proud to grant their requests,
and left them to be consumed by the famine. Now every one of these
died with their eyes fixed upon the Temple. Children pulled the very
morsels that their fathers were eating out of their very mouths, and
what was still more to be pitied, so did the mothers do as to their
infants; and when those that were most dear were perishing under
their hands, they were not ashamed to take from them the very last
drops that might preserve their lives; and while they ate after this
manner, yet were they not concealed in so doing; but the seditious
everywhere came upon them immediately, and snatched away from them
what they had gotten from others; for when they saw any house shut
up, this was to them a signal that the people within had gotten some
food; whereupon they broke open the doors, and ran in, and took
pieces of what they were eating, almost up out of their very
throats, and this by force: the old men, who held their food fast,
were beaten; and if the women hid what they had within their hands,
their hair was torn for so doing; nor was there any commiseration
shown either to the aged or to infants, but they lifted up children
from the ground as they hung upon the morsels they had gotten, and
shook them down upon the floor; but still were they more barbarously
cruel to those that had prevented their coming in, and had actually
swallowed down what they were going to seize upon, as if they had
been unjustly defrauded of their right. They also invented terrible
methods of torment to discover where any food was, and a man was
forced to bear what it is terrible even to hear, in order to make
him confess that he had but one loaf of bread, or that he might
discover a handful of barley-meal that was concealed; this was done
when these tormentors were not themselves hungry; for the thing had
been less barbarous had necessity forced them to it; but it was done
to keep their madness in exercise, and as making preparation of
provisions for themselves for the following days.”
At night the miserable wretches would steal into the ravines, those
valleys where the dead bodies of their children, their wives, and
kin, were lying in putrefying masses, to gather roots which might
serve for food. The lot of these was pitiable indeed. If they
remained outside they were captured by the Romans, and crucified,
sometimes five hundred in a morning, in full view of the
battlements: if they went back laden with a few poor roots of the
earth, they were robbed by the soldiers at the gate, and sent home
again to their starving children, starving themselves, and unable to
help them.
The cruelty of Titus, designed to terrify the Jews, only stimulated
them to fresh courage. Why, indeed, should they surrender? Death was
certain for all; it was better to die fighting, to kill one of the
enemy at least, than to die amid the jeers of the triumphant
soldiers. Besides, we must remember that they were defending their
sacred mountain, their Temple, the place to which every Jew’s heart
looked with pride and fondness, whither turned the eyes of those who
died with a sort of sad reproach. Simon and John were united in this
feeling alone—that it was the highest duty of a Jew to fight for his
country. The portraits of these two commanders have been drawn by an
enemy’s hand. We must remember that the prolonged resistance of the
Jews was a standing reproof to Josephus, who had been defeated,
captured, and taken into favour. No epithets, on his part, can be
too strong to hurl at John and Simon. It is impossible now to know
what were the real characters of these men, whether they were
religious patriots, or whether they were filled with the basest and
most selfish motives. One thing is quite certain and may be said of
both: if John hated Simon much, he loved the city more. Neither, at
the worst moment, hinted at a surrender of the town; neither tried
to curry favour for himself by compassing the fall of his adversary.
And the Jews, though emaciated by hunger, reeling and fainting for
weakness, were yet full of courage and resource. While Titus was
spending seventeen days of arduous labour in getting ready his new
banks against the Temple, the Jews were busy burrowing beneath his
feet; and when the rams had been mounted and already were beginning
to play, a subterranean rumbling was heard, and the works of weeks
fell suddenly to the ground.
“The Romans had much ado to finish their banks after labouring hard
for seventeen days continually. There were now four great banks
raised, one of which was at the tower of Antonia; this was raised by
the 5th Legion, over against the middle of that pool which was
called Struthius. Another was cast up by the 12th Legion, at the
distance of about twenty cubits from the other. But the labours of
the 10th legion, which lay a great way off these, were on the north
quarter, and at the pool called Amygdalon; as was that of the 15th
legion, about thirty cubits from it, and at the high priest’s
monument. And now, when the engines were brought, John had from
within undermined the space that was over-against the tower of
Antonia, as far as the banks themselves, and had supported the
ground over the mine with beams laid across one another, whereby the
Roman works stood upon an uncertain foundation. Then did he order
such materials to be brought in as were daubed over with pitch and
bitumen, and set them on fire; and as the cross beams that supported
the banks were burning, the ditch yielded on the sudden, and the
banks were shaken down, and fell into the ditch with a prodigious
noise. Now at the first there arose a very thick smoke and dust, as
the fire was choked with the fall of the bank; but as the suffocated
materials were now gradually consumed, a flame brake out; on which
sudden appearance of the flame a consternation fell upon the Romans,
and the shrewdness of the contrivance discouraged them; and indeed,
this accident coming upon them at a time when they thought they had
already gained their point, cooled their hopes for the time to come.
They also thought it would be to no purpose to take the pains to
extinguish the fire, since, if it were extinguished, the banks were
swallowed up already [and become useless] to them.”
The other banks against the west wall were not more fortunate. For
Simon’s soldiers, with torches in their hands, rushed out suddenly
when the engines were beginning to shake the walls. They seized the
iron of the engines, which was red hot, and despite this held them
till the wood was consumed. The Romans retreated: the guards, who
would not desert their post, fell in numbers, and Titus found his
whole army wavering under the attacks of a half-starved and haggard
mob, whose courage arose from despair. And the engines had all been
burned, the labour of three weeks gone. Titus held a council to
decide what should next be done. It was resolved, on his own
suggestion, that a wall of circumvallation should be raised round
the city, and that a strict blockade, cutting off all communication
with the country, should be established, until starvation should
force a surrender.
The wall, which was probably little more than a breastwork, though
strong and solid, was completed, together with thirteen external
redoubts, in three days,[13] every soldier giving his labour. No
attempt seems to have been made by the Jews to prevent or hinder the
work. Probably they were too weak to attempt any more sorties. A
strict watch was set by the Romans—up to this time the blockade does
not seem to have been complete—and no one was allowed to approach
the wall. And now the last feeble resource of the Jews, the furtive
gathering of roots under the city walls, was denied them; and the
sufferings of the besieged became too great for any historian to
relate. Titus himself, stoic though he was, and resolute to succeed
in spite of any suffering, called God to witness, with tears in his
eyes, that this was not his doing.
Footnote 13:
This alone is sufficient to prove the extent of Titus’s army. An
army of thirty thousand would be utterly unable to accomplish such
a work in three days.
Even the obstinacy of the Jews gave way under these sufferings, and
more than one attempt was made to introduce the Romans. Matthias
opened a communication with the enemy. He was detected, and, with
three sons, was executed. One Judas, the son of Judas, who was in
command of a tower in the Upper City, concerted with ten of his men,
and invited the Romans to come up and take the tower. Had Titus at
once ordered a troop to mount, the Upper City might have been easily
taken. But he had been too often deceived by feints, and hesitated.
The plot was discovered, and Judas, with his ten fellows, was hurled
over the ramparts at the feet of the Romans.
It was then that Josephus, whom of all men the besieged hated, was
wounded in the head, but not seriously, by a stone. The Jews made a
tremendous acclamation at seeing this, and sallied forth for a
sortie, in the excess of their joy. Josephus, senseless, was taken
up and conveyed away, but the next day reappeared and once more
offered the clemency of Titus to those who would come out. The
hatred which his countrymen bore to Josephus, as to an apostate,
natural enough, shows remarkably the love of justice which in all
times has distinguished the Jew. His father and mother were in the
city. They were not, till late in the siege, interfered with in any
way: and his father was set in prison at last, more, apparently, to
vex his son than with any idea of doing him an injury.[14]
The miserable state of the city drove hundreds to desert. They came
down from the walls, or they made a pretended sortie and passed over
to the Romans; but here a worse fate accompanied them, in spite of
Josephus’s promises, for Josephus had not reckoned on the
expectation that the Jews, famishing and mad for food, would, as
proved the case, cause their own death by over-eating at first. And
a more terrible danger awaited them. It was rumoured about that the
deserters swallowed their gold before leaving the city, and the
auxiliaries in the Roman camp, Arabians and Syrians, seized the
suppliants, and fairly cut them open to find the gold. And though
Titus was incensed when he heard of it, and prohibited it strictly,
he could not wholly stop the practice, and the knowledge of this
cruelty getting into the city stopped many who would otherwise have
escaped: they remained to die. One of those who kept the register of
burials and paid the bearers of the dead, told Josephus that out of
his gate alone 115,880 bodies had been thrown since the siege began,
and many citizens, whose word could be depended on, estimated the
number who had died at 600,000.
Footnote 14:
Josephus narrates how his mother wept at the false report of his
death, and quotes with complacency her lamentation that she had
brought so distinguished a man into the world for so early a
death.
Banks, meanwhile, were gradually rising against the fortress of
Antonia. The Romans had swept the country clear of trees for ninety
furlongs round to find timber for their construction: they took
twenty-one days to complete, and were four in number. The besieged
no longer made the same resistance. Their courage, says Josephus,
was no longer Jewish, “for they failed in what is peculiar to our
nation, in boldness, violence of assault, and running upon the enemy
all together ... but they now went out in a more languid manner than
before ... and they reproached one another for cowardice, and so
retired without doing anything.” The attacks of the enemy were,
however, courageously defended. For a whole day the Romans
endeavoured with rams to shake the wall, and with crows and picks to
undermine its foundations. Darkness made them withdraw, and during
the night the wall, which had been grievously shaken, fell of its
own accord.
But even this calamity had been foreseen by the defenders, and, to
the astonishment and even dismay of Titus, a new wall was found
built up behind the old, and the Jews upon it, ready to defend it
with their old spirit. Titus exhorted his soldiers, who were getting
dejected at the renewal of the enemy’s obstinacy, and offered the
highest rewards to him who would first mount the wall. His
exhortation, like the rest of the speeches in Josephus, is written
after the grand historic style, and embodies all those sentiments
which a general ought to feel under the circumstances, together with
a verbosity and length quite sufficient to deprive it of all
hortatory effect.
One Sabinus, with only eleven others, made the attempt. He alone
reached the top of the wall, and after a gallant fight was killed by
the Jews. His followers were also either killed or wounded. Two days
afterwards “twelve of the men who were in the front,” to give the
story in Josephus’s own words, “got together, and calling to them
the standard-bearer of the fifth legion and two others of a troop of
horse, and one trumpeter, went out noiselessly about the ninth hour
of the night through the ruins to the tower of Antonia. They found
the guards of the place asleep, cut their throats, got possession of
the wall, and ordered the trumpeter to sound his trumpet. Upon this
the rest of the guard got up suddenly and ran away before anybody
could see how many they were who had got into the tower.” Titus
heard the signal and came to the place. The Jews, in their haste to
escape, fell themselves into the mine which John had dug under the
banks; they rallied again, however, at the entrance of the Temple,
and the most determined fight, in a narrow and confined space, took
place there. The Temple was not to fall quite yet, and after a whole
day’s battle the Romans had to fall back, masters, however, of
Antonia.
[Sidenote: July 17.]
But on that very day the daily sacrifice failed for the first time,
and with it the spirit of the starving besieged.
The end, now, was not far off. In seven days nearly the whole of
Antonia, excepting the south-east tower, was pulled down and a broad
way opened for the Roman army to march to the attack of the Temple.
Cloisters, as we have seen, united the fortress with the Temple, and
along these either on the flat roofs or along the galleries.[15]
Footnote 15:
Mr. Lewin makes this very clear. It seems to us to be made still
clearer by taking his graphic description and applying it to any
plan which follows the old traditions.
And now many of the priests and higher classes deserted the falling
city and threw themselves upon the clemency of Titus. They were
received with kindness and sent to Gophna. John’s last resource was
to pretend they had all been murdered, and Titus was obliged to
parade them before the walls to satisfy the suspicions thus raised.
An attempt was made to take the Temple by a night attack. This,
however, failed, and Titus foresaw the necessity of raising new
banks. Fighting went on daily in the cloisters, until the Jews set
fire to them, and occasional sorties were made by the besieged in
hopes to catch the enemy at unguarded moments.
The banks were finished on the 1st of August. Titus ordered that
they should be brought and set over against the western wall of the
inner Temple. For six days the battering rams played against the
masonry of the inner Temple, for by this time the beautiful
cloisters which surrounded it, and ran from east to west, were all
destroyed, and the inner Temple, a fortress in itself, stood naked
and alone, the last refuge of John and his men. Had they yielded
this at least would have been spared. But it was not to be. With a
pertinacity which had no longer any hope in it the obstinate zealots
held out. On the north side the Romans undermined the gate, but
could not bring it down; they brought ladders and endeavoured to
tunnel the wall. The Jews allowed them to mount, and then killed
every one and captured their ensigns. And thus it was that Titus,
fearing perhaps that the spirit of his own troops would give way,
ordered the northern gate to be set on fire. This was done, and the
cloisters, not those of the outer court, but of the inner, were soon
destroyed. But Titus resolved still to save the Holy of Holies.
[Sidenote: Aug. 9.]
It was the day on which Nebuchadnezzar had burned the Temple of
Solomon. The Jews made another sortie, their last but one. They
could effect nothing, and retired after five hours’ fighting into
their stronghold, the desecrated Temple, on whose altar no more
sacrifices were now made, or ever would be made again.
Titus retired to Antonia, resolving to take the place the next day;
but the Jews would not wait so long. They made a last sortie, which
was ineffectual. “The Romans put the Jews to flight, and proceeded
as far as the holy House itself. At which time 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, set fire to a
golden window, 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 clamour, 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 they kept such a guard about it.”[16]
Footnote 16:
Joseph. vi. iv. 5.
Titus, with all his staff, hastened to save what he could. He
exhorted the soldiers to spare the building. He stood in the Holy of
Holies itself, and beat back the soldiers who were pressing to the
work of destruction. But in vain: one of the soldiers threw a torch
upon the gateway of the sanctuary, and in a moment the fate of the
building was sealed. And while the flames mounted higher the carnage
of the poor wretches within went on. None was spared; ten thousand
were killed that were found there—children, old men, priests and
profane persons, all alike; six thousand fled to the roof of the
royal cloister, that glorious building which crowned the Temple wall
to the south, stretching from “Robinson’s Arch” to the valley of the
Kedron. The Romans fired that too, and the whole of the multitude
perished together.
“One would have thought that the hill itself, on which the Temple
stood, was seething hot, full of fire in every part; that the blood
was larger in quantity than the fire; and those that were slain more
in number than those that slew them, for the ground nowhere appeared
visible for the dead bodies that lay on it; but the soldiers went
over heaps of these bodies as they ran from such as fled from
them.”[17]
Footnote 17:
Joseph. vi. v. 1.
The really guilty among the Jews, the fighting men, had cut their
way through the Romans and fled to the upper city. A few priests
either hid themselves in secret chambers or crouched upon the top of
the wall. On the fifth day they surrendered, being starving. Titus
ordered them to execution.
And so the Temple of Herod fell.
The Roman army flocked into the ruins of the Temple which it had
cost them so many lives to take; sacrifices were offered, and Titus
was saluted as Imperator. An immense spoil was found there, not only
from the sacred vessels of gold, but from the treasury, in which
vast sums had been accumulated. The upper town, Zion, still held
out. Titus demanded a parley. Standing on that bridge, the ruined
stones of which were found by Captain Warren lying eighty feet below
the surface of the ground, he for the last time offered terms to the
insurgents. He explained that they could no longer entertain any
hope, even the slightest, of safety, and renewed his offers of
clemency to those who should yield.
But the offers of Titus were supposed to be the effect of weakness.
Again the insurgents, now indeed possessed with a divine madness,
declined them. They demanded that they might be allowed to march out
with all their arms, and what would now be called the honours of
war. This proposition from a handful of starved soldiers surrounded
by the ruins of all that they held dear, with a triumphant army on
all sides, was too monstrous to be accepted even by the most clement
of conquerors, and Titus resolved with reluctance on the destruction
of the whole people. The royal family of Adiabene, descendants of
Queen Helena, had not left Jerusalem during the siege; on the
contrary, they had lent every aid in their power to the Jews. Now,
however, seeing that no hope was to be got from any but Titus, they
went over in a body to the Romans and prayed for mercy. Out of
consideration for their royal blood this was granted. But the Jews
revenged the fainthearted conduct of these royal proselytes by an
incursion into the lower New Town (on the Hill of Ophel), burning
their palace and sacking the rest of the town. The last part of the
siege, which Mr. Lewin finely calls the fifth act of a bloody
tragedy, was commenced by the usual methods of raising banks, all
attempts to carry the Upper City by assault being hopeless. These
were raised over against the Palace of Herod on the west, and at a
point probably opposite Robinson’s Arch in the east. And now, at the
last moment, no longer sustained by any hopes of miraculous
interference,—for if their God had allowed his Temple to fall, why
should he be expected to spare the citadel?—the Jews lost all
courage and began to desert in vast numbers. The Idumeans, finding
that Simon and John remained firm in their resolution of defence to
the last, sent five of their chiefs to open negotiations on their
own account. Simon and John discovered the plot; the five
commissioners were executed; care was taken to entrust the walls to
trusty guards, but thousands of the people managed to escape. The
Romans began by slaying the fugitives, but, tired of slaughter,
reserved them as prisoners to be sold for slaves. Those who were too
old or too worn out by suffering to be of any use they sent away to
wander about the mountains, and live or die. One priest obtained his
life by giving up to Titus the sacred vessels of the Temple, and
another by showing where the treasures were—the vestments of the
priests, and the vast stores of spices which had been used for
burning incense daily.
[Sidenote: Sept. 8.]
It took eighteen days to complete the siege-works. At last the banks
were ready to receive the battering-rams, and these were placed in
position. But little defence was made. Panic-stricken and cowering,
the hapless Jews awaited the breach in the wall, and the incoming of
the enemy. Simon and John, with what force they could collect,
abandoned the towers, and rushed to attempt an escape over Titus’s
wall of circumvallation at the south. It was hopeless. They were
beaten back; the leaders hid themselves in the subterranean chambers
with which Jerusalem was honeycombed, and the rest stood still to be
killed. The Romans, pouring into the town, began by slaying all
indiscriminately. Tiring of butchery they turned their thoughts to
plunder; but the houses were filled with dead and putrefying
corpses, so that they stood in horror at the sight, and went out
without touching anything. “But although they had this commiseration
for such as were destroyed in this manner, yet had they not the same
for those that were still alive; and they ran every one through whom
they met with, and obstructed the streets with dead bodies, and made
the whole city run with blood to such a degree, indeed, that the
fire of many of the houses was quenched with their men’s blood.”
And then they set fire to the houses, and all was over.
As for the prisoners who remained alive, they were destined to the
usual fate of slaves. To fight as gladiators; to afford sport among
the wild beasts in the theatres; and to work for life in the mines,
was their miserable lot. Woe, indeed, to the conquered in those old
wars, where defeat meant death, whose least cruel form was the
stroke of the headsman, or, worse than death, life, whose least
miserable portion was perpetual slavery in the mines. It would have
been well had Josephus, after narrating the scenes which he tells so
well, gone to visit these his miserable fellow-countrymen in
slavery, and described for us, if he could, the wretchedness of
their after-life, the unspeakable degradation and misery which the
Jew, more than any other man, would feel, in his condition of
slavery. Their history began with the slavery in Egypt: to these
unfortunate captives it would seem as if it was to end with slavery
in Egypt.
The Romans, knowing that Jerusalem had a sort of subterranean city
of excavated chambers beneath it, proceeded to search for hiding
insurgents and for hidden wealth. The chambers were, like the
houses, often full of dead bodies. They found fugitives in some of
them; these they put to death. In others they found treasure; in
others they found corpses.
Simon and John were not among the prisoners, nor were they among the
killed. John, several days after the capture of the city, came out
voluntarily from his hiding-place, and gave himself up to Titus. He
was reserved for the triumph. And then came the grand day of
rejoicing for the conquerors. Titus made a long and laudatory
oration to the army, adjudged promotions, coronets, necklaces, and
other prizes of valour, and with lavish hand distributed the spoils
among his soldiers. For three days the troops banqueted and
rejoiced. Then Titus broke up his camp, and departed for Cæsarea
with the 5th and 15th Legions, leaving the 10th, under Terentius
Rufus, to guard the city, and sending the 12th to the banks of the
Euphrates.[18]
Footnote 18:
Joseph. vii. v. 3.
It was not till October that Simon gave himself up. To prevent being
killed at once, he emerged by night from his hiding-place dressed in
a long white robe, so that the astonished soldiers took him for a
ghost. “I am Simon, son of Gioras,” he cried. “Call hither your
general.” Terentius received him as a prisoner, and sent him to
Titus.
One of the most important things in the conduct of a triumph at Rome
was the execution of the general of the vanquished army. Titus had
both generals to grace his procession. He assigned to Simon the post
of honour. At the foot of the Capitoline Hill the intrepid Jew was
led to the block, with a halter round his neck, and scourged
cruelly. He met his death with the same undaunted courage as he had
defended his city. John of Giscala remained a prisoner for life.
No historian, except perhaps Milman, whose sympathies are ever with
the fallen cause, seems to us to have done justice, not only to the
bravery and heroism of the Jews, but also to the heroism of their
leaders. Their leaders have been described by an enemy and a
rival—that Josephus, son of Matthias, who, after making an heroic
resistance at Jotapata, obtained his life by pretending to be a
prophet, and continued in favour with the conquerors by exhorting
his fellow-countrymen to submission. That Simon and John were men
stained with blood, violent, headstrong, we know well; but it does
not seem to us that they were so bad and worthless as Josephus would
have us to believe. After the siege fairly began they united their
forces: we hear no more of the faction-fights. If their soldiers
committed excesses and cruelties, they were chiefly for food; and
everything was to give way to the preservation of the defenders.
Moreover, discipline was not thought of among the Jews, whose notion
of fighting was chiefly a blind and headlong rush. But we must again
recall the religious side of the defence. To the Jew his Temple was
more, far more, than Mecca can ever be to a Mohammedan. It had
traditions far higher and more divine. The awful presence of Jehovah
had filled the sanctuary as with a cloud. His angels had been seen
on the sacred hill. There, for generation after generation, the
sacrifice had been offered, the feast kept, the unsullied faith
maintained. The Temple was a standing monument to remind them by
whose aid they had escaped captivity; it taught them perpetually
that freedom was the noblest thing a man can have; it was the
glorious memorial of a glorious history; it was a reminder that
theirs was a nation set apart from the rest of the world. To defend
the Temple from outrage and pollution was indeed the bounden duty of
every Jew. And these Romans, what would they do with it? Had they
not the keys of the treasury where the vestments of the priests were
laid up? Had not one of their emperors ordered a statue of himself
to be set up, an impious idol, in the very Holy of Holies?
A handful of men, they offered war to the mistress of the world.
True, the insurgents were rude and unlettered, who knew nothing of
Rome and her power. Even if they had known all that Rome could do,
it would have mattered nothing, for they were fighting for the
defence of all that made life sweet to them; and they were sustained
by false prophets, poor brainstruck visionaries, who saw the things
they wished to see, and foretold what they wished to happen. God
might interfere; the mighty arm which had protected them of old
might protect them again. The camp of the Romans might be destroyed
like the camp of the Assyrians; and because these things might
happen, it was a natural step, to an excited and imaginative people,
to prophesy that they would happen. But when the time passed by,
when none of these things came to pass, and the deluded multitude
hoped that submission would bring safety at least, the tenacity of
their leaders held them chained to a hopeless defence. Whether Simon
and John fought on with a stronger faith, and still in hope that the
arm of the Lord would be stretched out, or whether they fought on
with the desperate courage of soldiers who preferred death by battle
to death by execution, it is impossible now to say.
It has been suggested by Josephus, as well as by modern writers,
that the courage of the Jews was shaken by predictions, omens, and
rumours; but if there were predictions of disaster, there were also
predictions of triumph. If Jesus, whom a few called Christ, had
prophesied the coming fall of the city, there were others who had
announced the fall of the enemy. Omens could be read either way. If
a sword-shaped comet hung in the sky, who could deny that the sword
impended over the heads of the Romans? And when the gate of the
Temple flew open, did it not announce the opening of the gates for
the triumph of the faithful? In that wild, unsettled time, when
there was nothing certain, nothing stable, the very faith of the
people would be intensified by these prophecies of disaster; their
courage would be strengthened by the gloomy foretellers of defeat;
and, as the Trojans fought none the worse because Cassandra was with
them, so the Jews fought none the worse because voices were
whispering among them about the prophecies of him whom some
recognised as the Messiah.
Let us, at least, award them the meed of praise for a courage which
has never been equalled. Let us acknowledge that, in all the history
of the world, if there has been no siege more bloody and tragic, so
there has been no city more fiercely contested, more obstinately
defended; and though we may believe that the fall of Jerusalem had
been distinctly prophesied by our Lord, we must not therefore look
on the Jews as the blind and fated victims of prophecy. The city
fell, not in order to fulfil prophecy, but because the Jews were, as
they ever had been, a turbulent, self-willed race; because they were
undisciplined, because they loved freedom above everything else in
the world except their religion; and their religion was the ritual
and the Temple.