CHAPTER XIX.

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.

At last the circle of fire had wound itself around the unfortunate city, never more to relax its hold. As soon as the season permitted, Titus left Alexandria, reached Cesarea, and from that city, at the head of a formidable army, advanced towards Jerusalem. He had with him four legions, the 5th, Macedonian, the 10th, Fretensis, the 12th, Fulminata, the 15th, Apollinaris, not to speak of the numerous auxiliary troops furnished by his Syrian allies, and many Arabs who had come to pillage. All the Jews who had rallied to him, Agrippa, Tiberius Alexander, now prefect of the prætorium, Josephus the future historian, accompanied him: Berenice doubtless waited at Cesarea. The military valour of the captain corresponded with the strength of the army. Titus was a remarkable soldier, and especially an excellent officer of genius, while he was also a very sensible man, a profound politician, and considering the cruelty of the manners of the age, very humane. Vespasian, irritated by the satisfaction the Jews showed in seeing the civil wars, and the efforts they were making to bring about an invasion by the Parthians, had ordered great severity. Gentleness, according to him, was always interpreted as weakness by haughty races, persuaded that they were fighting for God and with God.

The Roman army arrived at Gabaoth-Saul, a league and a half from Jerusalem, in the early days of April. They were just on the eve of the feast of the Passover; an enormous number of Jews from all countries had assembled in the city; Josephus gives the number of 256those who perished during the siege at 1,100,000; it appeared as if the whole nation had made a rendezvous in order that they might be exterminated. About the 10th April, Titus established his camp at the angle of the tower of Psephina (Kasr-Djalond of the present day). Some partial advantages gained by surprise, and seven wounds Titus received at first, gave the Jews an exaggerated confidence in their strength, and shewed the Romans with what care they must guard themselves in this war with furious people.

The city could be reckoned among the strongest in the world. The walls were a perfect type of those constructions in enormous blocks which were always affected in Syria; in the interior, the enceinte of the temple, that of the high city, and that of Acra formed as if partition walls, and appeared to be so many ramparts. The number of the defenders was very great; provisions, although diminished by the fires, abounded still The parties in the interior of the city continued to fight still; but they combined for defence. At the beginning of the days of the Passover, Eleazar’s faction nearly disappeared and merged itself in John’s. Titus conducted the operations with consummate skill; never had the Romans shown such a skilful poliorcétique. In the closing days of April, the legions had forced the first enceinte from the north side and were masters of the northern portion of the city. Five days after the second wall, the wall of Acra, was taken, the half of the city was thus in the power of the Romans. On the 12th May, they attacked the fortress Antonia. Surrounded by Jews who all, Tiberius Alexander excepted, desired the preservation of the city and the temple, ruled more than he would confess by his love for Berenice, who appears to have been a pious Jewess and much devoted to her nation, Titus sought, it is said, a means of reconciliation, and made acceptable offers; all was useless. The besieged replied to the propositions of the conqueror only by sarcasm.

The siege then assumed a character of horrible cruelty. The Romans displayed instruments of the most hideous tortures; the audacity of the Jews only increased. On the 27th and 29th of May they burned the machines of the Romans, and even attacked them in their camp. Discouragement fell on the besiegers. Many were persuaded that the Jews spoke the truth, and that Jerusalem was impregnable; desertion began. Titus, giving up the hope of carrying the place by sheer force, blockaded it closely. A wall of countervallation, raised rapidly (in the beginning of June) and doubled on the side of Perea by a line of castella, crowning the heights of the mount of Olives, totally separated the city from without. Up till then vegetables were procured from the neighbourhood; famine now became fearful. The fanatics, provided with necessaries, cared little for this. Rigorous perquisitions, accompanied by tortures, were made to discover concealed grain. Whoever wore a certain look of strength at once passed as culpable in hiding provisions. Pieces of bread were torn from people’s mouths. The most fearful diseases developed in the heart of this huddled-up, enfeebled, fevered mass. Some terrible stories were circulated and redoubled the terror.

From that moment hunger, rage, despair, and madness inhabited Jerusalem. It was a cage of wild madness, a city of shrieks, of cannibals, a hell. Titus, on his side, was cruel; five hundred unfortunates per day were crucified with odious refinements in sight of the city. There was not sufficient wood to make crosses, and there was no room to place them.

In this excess or evils, the faith and fanaticism of the Jews shewed themselves more ardently than ever. They believed the temple to be indestructible. The greater number were persuaded that, the city being under the special protection of the Eternal, it was impossible to take it. Prophets spread themselves among the people, announcing approaching succour. 258The confidence on this point was such that many who could have escapted, remained to see this miracle of Jehovah. The frenzied people, nevertheless, ruled as masters. They slew all those who were suspected of advising capitulation. Thus perished, by order of Siomon, son of Gioras, the hight priest Matthias, who had caused this brigand to be received into the city. His three sons were executed before his eyes. Many people of distinction were likewise put to death. The mere fact of weeping together or holding a meeting was a crime. It was forbidden from the smallest assembly. Josephus, from the Roman camp, tried vainly to have some spies in the place; he was suspected by both sides. The position had been reached in which reason and moderation have no longer any chance of being heard.

Yet Titus became weary of these delays; he longed only for Rome: its splendours and its pleasures. A city taken by famine appeared to him an exploit insufficient to inaugurate brilliantly a dynasty. He then caused to be constructed four new aggeræ for a sharp attack. The trees of the gardens in the suburbs of Jerusalem were cut down a distance of four leagues. In twenty-one days everything was ready. On the 21st July the Jews attempted the operation in which they had succeeded on the former occasion; they went out to burn and sap the tower Antonia. On the 5th July Titus was master of it, and caused it to be almost entirely demolished, to open a large passage for his cavalry and his machines, at the point where all his efforts converged, and where the last struggle must take place.

The temple, as we have said, was by its peculiar method of construction the strongest of fortresses. The Jews who had entrenched themselves with John of Gischala prepared themselves for battle. The priests themselves were under arms. On the 17th the perpetual 259sacrifice ceased for want of ministers to offer it. That made a great impression upon the people. It became known outside the city. The interruption of the sacrifice was for the Jews a phenomenon as grave as a stop in the progress of the universe. Josephus seized this occasion to try anew to conquer John’s obstinacy. The fortress Antonia was only about 60 yards from the temple. From the parapets of the tower Josephus cried out in Hebrew by order of Titus (unless the story of the Wars of the Jews is false) that John could retire with as great a number of his men as he wished, that Titus would charge himself with having the legal sacrifices continued by the Jews, that he would allow John even the choice of those who should offer them. John refused to listen. Those whom fanaticism had not blinded escaped at this moment to the Romans. Everyone who remained chose death.

On the 12th July Titus began his works against the temple. The struggle was most bloody. On the 28th the Romans were masters of the whole gallery of the north from the fortress Antonia up to the vale of Kedron. The attack commenced then against the temple itself. On the 2nd August the most powerful machines were put to assail the walls wonderfully constructed with porticos which surrounded the inner courts. The effect was scarcely felt; but on the 8th of August the Romans succeeded in setting the gates on fire. The stupor of the Jews was then inexpressible; they had never believed that this was possible. At sight of the flames which leapt up they poured upon the Romans a flood of curses. On the 9th August Titus gave orders that the fire should be extinguished, and held a council of war at which there were present Tiberius Alexander, Cerealis, and his principal officers. The question was as to whether the temple should be burned. Many were of opinion that so long as the edifice remained the Jews would never be quiet. As to Titus, it is difficult to know what he meant, for 260on this point we have two opposing stories. According to Josephus, Titus was of opinion that such an admirable work should be spared, as its preservation would do honour to his reign and prove the moderation of the Romans. According to Tacitus, Titus insisted upon the necessity of destroying an edifice with which two superstitions equally fatal were associated, that of the Jews, and that of the Christians. “These two superstitions,” he is said to have added, “although contrary to one another are of the same source; the Christians come from the Jews, the root torn up, the shoot will perish quickly.”

It is difficult to decide between two versions so absolutely irreconcilable, for the opinion attributed to Titus by Josephus may very well be regarded as an invention by that historian, jealous of shewing the sympathy of his patron for Judaism, cleansing himself in the eyes of the Jews of the crime of having destroyed the temple and of satisfying the ardent desire of which Titus had to pass for a very moderate man. It cannot be denied that the brief discourse put by Tacitus in the mouth of the victorious captain may be, not only for the style but for the order of ideas, an exact reflex of the sentiments of Tacitus himself. We have a right to suppose that the Latin historian, full of spite against the Jews and the Christians, and of that bad temper which characterizes the age of Trajan and the Antonines, had made Titus speak like a Roman aristocrat of his time, while in reality the middle-class Titus had more complacence for oriental superstitions than the high noblesse who succeeded the Flavii had for them. Living for two or three years with Jews who had boasted to him of their temple as the wonder of the world, won by the caresses of Josephus, Agrippa, and still more of Berenice, he might very well desire the preservation of a sanctuary whose worship many of his friends represented to him as being quite peaceable. It is therefore possible that, as Josephus has it, some orders had been 261given that the fire lit the evening before should be extinguished, and that in the frightful tumult which they foresaw, some measures should be taken against fire There was in the character of Titus, besides real goodness, much pose and a little hypocrisy. The truth is doubtless that he did not order the fire, as Tacitus says; did not countermand it, as Josephus says, but allowed it to go on, presenting some appearances for all the theories which people may be allowed to maintain in the different regions of probability, whatever may be on this point difficult to ascertain. A general assault was decided against the building, which had already lost its gates; as to military work, what remained to be done was an effort, bloody perhaps, but whose issue could not be doubtful.

The Jews anticipated the attacks. On the 10th of August in the morning they delivered a furious attack without success. Titus retired into the Antonia to rest and to prepare for the assault next day. A detachment was left to prevent the fire from being relit. Then took place, according to Josephus, the incident which led to the ruin of the sacred pile. The Jews threw themselves with rage upon the detachment which watched near the fire; the Romans repulsed them, entering pell-mell into the temple with the fugitives. The irritation of the Romans was at its height. A soldier “without any one commanding him, and as if impelled by a supernatural movement,” took a joist which was in flames, and having raised it, with one of his companions, threw the brand through a window which opened upon the porticos of the north side. The flame and the smoke rose rapidly. Titus was resting at that moment in his tent. They ran to call him. Then, if Josephus must be believed, a sort of struggle was begun between him and his soldiers; Titus with voice and gesture ordered the fire to be extinguished; but the disorder was such that they did not understand him; those who might doubt his intentions affected not to hear him. In place of stopping the fire the legionaries 262stirred it up. Drawn by the wave of invaders, Titus was borne into the Temple itself—the flames had not reached the central building. He saw intact this sanctuary of which Agrippa, Josephus, and Berenice had spoken to him so often with admiration, and found it much superior to what they had told him. Titus redoubled his efforts, made them evacuate the interior, and gave even an order to Liberalos, a centurion of his guards, to strike those who refused to obey. All at once a jet of flame and smoke rose from the gate of the Temple. At the moment of the tumultuary evacuation a soldier had set fire to the interior. The flames gained on all sides; the position was no longer tenable. Titus retired.

This recital of Josephus includes more than one probability. It is difficult to believe that the Roman legions could have shown themselves so disobedient to a victorious leader. Dion Cassius declares, on the contrary, that Titus needed to employ force to make the soldiers penetrate into a place surrounded by terrors, and of which all the profaners were believed to be struck dead. One thing only is certain—that Titus some years afterwards would have been glad if in the Jewish world they had told the same thing as Josephus did, and that they should have attributed the burning of the Temple to the discipline of his soldiers, or rather to a supernatural movement of some agent, unconscious of a superior will. The history of the war of the Jews was written about the end of the reign of Vespasian, in 76, or rather sooner, when Titus already aspired to be “the delight of the human race,” and wished to pass as a model of gentleness and goodness. In the preceding years, and that of another world than that of the Jews, he would surely have received eulogia of a different kind. Among the tableaux which were borne in the triumph of the year 71 was the image of “the fire set to the Temple,” in which certainly they would not seek to represent that fact otherwise than as 263glorious. About the same time the court poet, Valerias Flaccus, proposed to Domitian, as the finest employment of his poetical talent, to sing the war of Judea, and to represent his brother scattering burning torches everywhere—

The struggle during this time was hot in the court and parvis. A frightful carnage was made round the altar, a sort of truncated pyramid, surmounted by a platform, which was raised in front of the Temple; the corpses of those whom they killed upon the platform rolled over upon the steps and reached to the feet. Rivers of blood flowed on all sides, nothing was heard but the piercing cries of those whom they killed and who died adjuring heaven. There was time still to take refuge in the high city; many liked rather to go to be killed, regarding as a lot to be envied dying for their temple; others threw themselves into the flames; others still precipitated themselves upon the swords of the Romans, while some slew themselves or each other. Some priests who had succeeded in gaining the crest of the Temple roof, tore the points which they found there with their leaden sockets and threw them upon the Romans; they continued this up till the time the flames enveloped them. A great number of Jews had assembled around the holy place, upon the word of a prophet, who had assured them that the very moment had come when God was about to shew them the signs of salvation. A gallery where it is said six thousand of these wretches had retired (nearly all women and children) was burned. Two gates of the Temple and a part of the enceinte reserved for the women were only preserved for the moment. The Romans planted their ensigns upon the place where the sanctuary had been, and offered the worship to which they had been accustomed. The old Zion remained; the high town, the strongest part of the city, having its ramparts still 264intact, and which still gave safety to John of Gischala, Simon son of Gioras, and a great number of combatants who had succeeded in forcing a way through the conquerors. This stand of madmen demanded a new siege. John and Simon had established the centre of their resistance in the palace of the Herods, situated near the, site of the present citadel of Jerusalem, and covered by the three enormous towers of Hippicus, of Phasaël, and Mariamne. The Romans were obliged, to carry this last refuge of Jewish obstinacy, to construct some aggerae against the western wall of the city, opposite the palace. The four legions were occupied in this work for the space of eighteen days (from 20th August to 6th September). During this time Titus made them set fire to the parts of the town which were in his power. The low town especially, from Ophel up to Siloam, were systematically destroyed. Many of the Jews belonging to the middle classes were able to escape. As to, the people of inferior condition, they were sold at a very low price. This was the origin of a multitude of Jewish slaves who, coming down upon Italy and upon the other countries of the Mediterranean, took from thence the elements of a new ardour of propagandism. Josephus reckons the number at 97,000. Titus gave pardon to the princes of Adiabene; the pontifical dresses, the precious stones, the tables, the cups, the candelabra, and the hangings were brought to him. He ordered that they should be preserved carefully, that they might be used in the triumph he was preparing, and to which he wished to give a particular mark of foreign pomp, by exhibiting there the rich material of the Jewish worship.

The aggeræ being finished, the Romans began to batter the wall of the high tower. At the first attack, 7th September, they overturned a part as well as some of the tower. Attenuated by famine, undermined by fever and rage, the defenders were nothing more than skeletons. The legions passed in without difficulty; up till 265the end of the day, the soldiers burned and slew; the greater part of the houses into which they went to pillage were full of corpses. The wretches who could escape fled to Acra, which the Roman force had nearly evacuated, and to those vast subterranean cavities, which mark the subsoil of Jerusalem. John and Simon grew weaker at this time. They possessed still the towers of Hippicus, of Phasaël, and Mariamne, the most astonishing marks of military architecture in antiquity. The ram had been powerless against enormous blocks, collected with unequalled perfection, and bound together by iron cramps. Amazed and lost, John and Simon quitted these impregnable works, and sought to force the line of countervallation on the side of Siloam. Not succeeding, they went to rejoin those of their partisans who were concealed in the sewers.

On the 8th all resistance was over; the soldiers were fatigued—they killed the weak who couldn't march. The remainder, women and children, were pushed like a flock towards the enceinte of the Temple, and enclosed in the inner court which had escaped the fire. Of this multitude set aside for death or slavery, they made lists. Everyone who had fought was massacred. Seven hundred people, the finest in figure and the best made, were reserved to follow the triumph of Titus. Among the others, those who had passed the age of 17, were sent into Egypt, their feet in irons, for the forced works, or divided among the provinces to be slain in the amphitheatres. Those who were less than 17 were sold. The sorting of the prisoners occupied many days, during which there died thousands, it is said, some because they gave them no food, others because they refused to accept it.

The Romans employed the following days in burning tits rest of the city, overturning the walls, and rumaging in the sewers and subterranean passages. They found there great riches and many of the insurrectionists living, whom they killed at once, and more than two thousand corpses, without speaking of prisoners whom 266the Terrorists had shut up. John of Gischala, constrained by hunger to come forth, demanded quarter from the conquerors, who condemned him to perpetual imprisonment. Simon, son of Gioras, who had some provisions, remained concealed till the end of October. His food failing then, he took a singular step. Clothed in a white cloth with a mantle of purple, he came forth unexpectedly from under the earth to the place where the Temple had been. He imagined by this to astonish the Romans, and to pretend that he had been raised from the dead—perhaps to make himself pass as the Messiah. The soldiers were, in fact, a little surprised at first. Simon would only name himself to their commandant, Terentius Rufus. He made them put him in chains, sent the news to Titus, who was at Paneas, and caused the prisoner to be taken to Cesaræa.

The Temple and the great constructions were demolished to the very foundations. The sub-basement of the Temple was, however, preserved, and constitutes what is called at this day Naramesch-scherif. Titus wished also to preserve the three towers of Hippicus, Phasaël, and Mariamne, to make posterity know against what walls he had had to fight. The wall of the western side was left standing to shelter the camp of the 10th legion Fretensius, which was sent to hold guard over the ruins of the fallen city. Lastly, some houses on the extremity of Mount Sion escaped the destruction, and remained in the condition of isolated ruins. All the rest disappeared. From the month of September, 70, to the year 122, when Hadrian re-built it under the name of Ælia Capitolina, Jerusalem was nothing but a field of rubbish, in a corner of which the tents of a legion always on guard were set up. They believed they saw at every instant the fire re-lit which lay under these calcined stones. They trembled lest the spirit of life should come into the corpses which appeared still at the depths of their charnel-house, to raise their arms and declare that they had with them the promises of eternity.