07-CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 7
“...in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things...” —Predictions of Moses,Deuteronomy 28:48 “Away with him, away with him; crucify him, crucify him.” —Jews before Pilate “I am innocent of the blood of this just man.” —Pilate “His blood be on us, and on our children.” —Jews
Though the seditious would not listen to the arguments of Josephus, yet many of the people sold their possessions for a small value and deserted to Titus, who let many of them go into the country where they pleased. But as for the richer sort, it was all the same with them whether they stayed in the city, or attempted to leave it; for they were put to death by the seditious under pretense that they were intending to desert, but in reality that they might plunder them. John and Simon now began to watch more carefully those that wished to flee out of the city than they did against the Romans coming in and if any one was suspected of deserting, he was put to death immediately.
“The madness of the seditious did also increase together with their famine, and both those miseries were every day inflamed more and more; for there was no corn which anywhere appeared publicly, but the robbers came running into and searched men’s private houses: and then, if they found any, they tormented them, because they had denied they had any, and if they found none, they tormented them worse, because they supposed they had more carefully concealed it. The indication they made use of, whether they had any or not, was taken from the bodies of these miserable wretches; which, if they were in good case, they supposed they were in no want at all of food; but if they were wasted away, they walked off without searching any farther: nor did they think it proper to kill such as these, because they saw they would very soon die of themselves for want of food.
“Many there were, indeed, who sold what they had for one measure; it was of wheat, if they were of the richer sort, but of barley if they were poorer. When these had so done, they shut themselves up in the inmost rooms of their houses, and ate the corn they had gotten; some did it without grinding it, by reason of the extremity of the want they were in, and others baked bread of it according as necessity and fear dictated to them: a table was nowhere laid for a distinct meal, but they snatched the bread out of the fire, half baked, and ate it very hastily.
“It was now a miserable case, and a sight that would justly bring tears into our eyes, how men stood as to their food, while the more powerful had more than enough, and the weaker were lamenting for want of it. But the famine was too hard for all other passions, and it is destructive to nothing so much as to modesty; for what was otherwise worthy of reverence was in this case despised; insomuch that 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 the 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 torments (too horrid to relate) to discover food: and this was done when these tormentors were not themselves hungry; for the thing had been less barbarous had necessity forced them to it; but this was done to keep their madness in exercise, and as making preparation of provisions for themselves for the following days.
“These men went also to meet those that had crept out of the city by night, as far as the Roman guards, to gather some plants and herbs that grew wild; and when those people thought they had got clear of the enemy, these snatched from them what they had brought with them, even while they had frequently entreated them, and that by calling upon the tremendous name of God, to give them back some part of what they had brought; though these would not give them the least crumb, and they were to be well contented that they were only spoiled, and not slain at the same time.
“These were the afflictions which the lower sort of people suffered from these tyrants’ guards; but for the men that were in dignity, and withal were rich, they were carried before the tyrants themselves; some of them were falsely accused of laying treacherous plots, and so were destroyed: others of them were charged with designs of betraying the City to the Romans; but the readiest way of all was this, to suborn somebody to affirm that they were resolved to desert to the enemy. And he who was utterly despoiled of what he had by Simon was sent back again to John; as of those who had been already plundered by John, Simon got what remained; insomuch that they drank the blood of the populace to one another, and divided the dead bodies of the poor creatures between them: so that, although on account of their ambition after dominion they contended with each other, yet did they very well agree in their wicked practices; for he that did not communicate what he got by the miseries of others to the other tyrant seemed to be too little guilty, and in one respect only; and he that did not partake of what was so communicated to him grieved at this as at the loss of what was a valuable thing, that he had no share in such barbarity.
“It is, therefore, impossible to go distinctly over every instance of these men’s iniquity. I shall, therefore, speak my mind here at once briefly, that neither did any other city ever suffer such miseries, nor did any age ever breed a generation more fruitful in wickedness than this was, from the beginning of the world. Finally, they brought the Hebrew nation into contempt, that they might themselves appear comparatively less impious with regard to strangers. They confessed what was true, that they were the slaves, the scum, and the spurious offspring of our nation, while they overthrew the city themselves, and forced the Romans to gain a melancholy reputation by acting gloriously against them, and drew that fire upon the temple which they seemed to think came too slowly; and, indeed, when they saw that temple burning from the upper city, they were neither troubled at it, nor did they shed any tears on that account, while yet those passions were discovered among the Romans themselves.
“Titus’ banks were advanced a great way, notwithstanding his soldiers had been very much distressed from the wall. He then sent a party of horsemen, and ordered they should lay ambushes for those that went out into valleys to gather food. Some of these were, indeed, fighting men, who were not contented with what they got by rapine; but the greater part of them were poor people, who were deterred from deserting by the concern they were under for their own relations: for they could not hope to escape away together with their wives and children without the knowledge of the seditious; nor could they think of leaving these relations to be slain by the robbers on their account; nay, the severity of the famine made them bold in thus going out; so nothing remained but that, when they were concealed from the robbers, they should be taken by the enemy, and when they were going to be taken, they were forced to defend themselves for fear of being punished; as after they had fought, they thought it too late to make any supplications for mercy: so they were first whipped, and then tormented with all sorts of tortures, before they died, and were then crucified7before the wall of the city.
“This miserable procedure made Titus greatly to pity them, while they caught every day five hundred Jews; nay, some days they caught more; yet did it not appear to be safe for him to let those that were taken by force go their way, and to set a guard over so many, he saw would be to make such as guarded them useless to him. The main reason why he did not forbid that cruelty was this, that he hoped the Jews might perhaps yield at that sight, out of fear lest they might themselves afterward be liable to the same cruel treatment. So the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest, when their multitude was so great that room was wanting for the crosses.
“But so far were the seditious from repenting at this sad sight that, on the contrary, they made the rest of the multitude believe otherwise; for they brought the relations of those that had deserted upon the wall, with such of the populace as were very eager to go over upon the security offered them, and showed them what miseries those underwent who fled to the Romans; and told them that those who were caught were supplicants to them, and not such as were taken prisoners. This sight kept many of those within the city who were so eager to desert till the truth was known; yet did some of them run away immediately as unto certain punishment, esteeming death from, their enemies to be a quiet departure, if compared with that by famine.
“So Titus commanded that the hands of many of those that were caught should be cut off, that they might not be thought deserters, and might be credited on account of the calamity they were under, and sent them in to John and Simon, with this exhortation, that they would now at length leave off their madness, and not force him to destroy the city, whereby they would have those advantages of repentance, even in their utmost distress, that they would preserve their own lives, and so fine a city of their own, and that temple which was their peculiar.’ He then went around about the banks that were cast up, and hastened them, in order to show that his words should in no long time be followed by his deeds.
“In answer to which, the seditious cast reproaches upon Caesar himself, and upon his father also, and cried out with a loud voice, that ‘they contemned death, and did well in preferring it before slavery; that they would do all the mischief to the Roman they could, while they had breath in them; and that for their own city, since they were, as he said, to be destroyed, they had no concern about it, and that the world itself was a better temple to God than this. That yet this temple would be preserved by Him that inhabited therein, whom they still had for their assistant in this war, and did therefore laugh at all his threatenings, which would come to nothing; because the conclusion of the whole depended upon God only. These words were mixed with reproaches, and with them they made a mighty clamor.
“Now as the Romans began to raise their banks on the twelfth day of the month Jyar, so they had much ado to finish them by the twenty- ninth day of the same month, after they had labored hard for seventeen days continually. For there were now four great banks raised, one of which was at the tower Antonia; this was raised by the fifth legion, over against the middle of that pool which was called Struthius. Another was cast up by the twelfth legion, at the distance of about twenty cubits from the other. But the labors of the tenth legion, which lay a great way off these, were on the north quarter, and at the pool called Amygdalon; as was that of the fifteenth 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 plain flame broke out, on which sudden appearance of the flame a consternation fell upon the Romans, and the shrewdness of the contrivance discouraged them: and in deed 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.
“Two days after this, Simon and his party made an attempt to destroy the other banks; for the Romans had brought their engines to bear there, and begun already to make the wall shake. And here one Tephtheus of Garsis, a city of Galilee, and Megassarus, one who was derived from some of Queen Mariam’s servants, and with them one from Adiabene, (he was the son of Nabatus, and called by the name of Chagiras, from the ill fortune he had, the word signifying a ‘lame man,’) snatched some torches, and ran suddenly upon the engines. Nor were there, during this war, any men that ever sallied out of the city, who were their superiors, either in their own boldness, or in the terror they struck into their enemies. For they ran out upon the Romans, not as if they were enemies, but friends, without fear or delay; nor did they leave their enemies till they had rushed violently through the midst of them, and set their machines on fire. And though they had darts thrown at them on every side, and were on every side assaulted with their enemies’ swords, yet did they not withdraw themselves out of the danger they were in till the fire had caught hold of the instruments; and when the flames went up, the Romans came running from their camp to save their engines.
“Then did the Jews hinder their succors from the wall, and fought with those that endeavored to quench the fire, without any regard to the danger their bodies were in. So the Romans pulled the engines out of the fire, while the hurdles that covered them were on fire; but the Jews caught hold of the battering rams through the flame itself, and held them fast, although the iron upon them was become red hot; and. now the fire spread itself from the engines to the banks, and prevented those that came to defend them; and all this while the Romans were encompassed around about with the flame, and despairing of saving their works from it, they retired to their camp. Then did the Jews become still more and more in number, by the coming of those that were within the city to their assistance; and as they were very bold upon the good success they had had, their violent assaults were almost irresistible; nay, they proceeded as far as the fortifications of the enemies’ camp, and fought with their guards.
“Now there stood a body of soldiers in array before that camp, which succeeded one another by turns in their armor; and as to those, the law of the Romans was terrible, that he who left his post there, let the occasion be whatsoever it might be, he was to die for it; so that body of soldiers, preferring rather to die in fighting courageously than as a punishment for their cowardice, stood firm, and at the necessity these men were in of standing to it, many of the others that had run away, out of shame turned back again; and when they had set the engines against the wall, they kept the multitude from coming more of them out of the city, which they could the more easily do, because they had made no provision for preserving or guarding their bodies at this time; for the Jews now fought hand to hand with all that came in their way, and without any caution fell against the points of their enemies’ spears, and attacked them, bodies against bodies; for they were now too hard for the Romans, not so much by their other warlike actions, as by these courageous assaults they made upon them; and the Romans gave way more to their boldness than they did to the sense of the harm they had received from them.
“And now Titus was come from the tower of Antonia, whither he was gone to look out for a place for raising other banks, and reproached the soldiers greatly for permitting their own walls to he in danger, when they had taken the walls of their enemies, and sustained the fortune of men besieged, while the Jews were allowed to sally out against them, though they were already in a sort of prison. He then went around about the enemy with some chosen troops, and fell upon their flank himself; so the Jews, who had been before assaulted in their faces, wheeled about to Titus, and continued the fight. The armies also were now mixed, one among another, and the dust that was raised so far hindered them from seeing one another, and the noise that was made so far hindered them from hearing one another, that neither side could discern an enemy from a friend. However, the Jews did not flinch, though not so much from their real strength as from the despair of deliverance. The Romans also would not yield, by reason. of the regard they had to glory, and to their reputation in war, and because Caesar himself went into the danger before them; insomuch that I cannot but think the Romans would in the conclusion have now taken even the whole multitude of the Jews, so very angry were they at them, had these not prevented the upshot of the battle, and retired into the city. However, seeing the banks of the Romans were demolished, these Romans were very much cast down upon the loss of what had cost them so long pains, and this in one hour’s time. And many indeed despaired of taking the city with their usual engines of war only.”