Jewish War — Book 4

Josephus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

As for the Galileans who had revolted from Rome after the fall of Jotapata, they surrendered once the people of Tarichaeae had been defeated, and the Romans took over all the strongholds and cities except Gischala and the men who held Mount Tabor. Joining these holdouts was Gamala, a city lying across the lake opposite Tarichaeae. It belonged to Agrippa's realm, along with Sogane and Seleucia, and all three lay within Gaulanitis: Sogane belonged to the district called Upper Gaulan, Gamala to the Lower; Seleucia stood by Lake Semechonitis. This lake measures thirty stadia in width and sixty in length; its marshes extend as far as the district of Daphne, a delightful place in every respect, with springs that feed the stream called the Little Jordan, which they send on beneath the temple of the golden calf into the greater Jordan.

Agrippa had won over the people of Sogane and Seleucia to his side with pledges of good faith at the very outset of the revolt, but Gamala would not come over, trusting in the strength of its position even more than Jotapata had. A rugged ridge descending from a high mountain rises in the middle into a kind of spine, and from that height it stretches forward, dropping away as much in front as behind, so that its shape resembles a camel — hence its name, though the local people do not pronounce the word precisely. Along its flanks and its front it breaks off into impassable ravines; only at the tail end does it offer any easier going, where it is cut off from the mountain, and even there the inhabitants had rendered it difficult by cutting a trench across it. Built against the steep slope, the houses stood packed one on top of another in extraordinary fashion, and the city, seeming almost to hang in mid-air, tumbled in upon itself because of the steepness of the slope. It leaned toward the south, and its southern ridge, rising to an immense height, formed the city's citadel; above it, unwalled, a cliff dropped away into the deepest of ravines. A spring lay within the wall, at the point where the town came to an end.

Being a city naturally hard to attack, Joseph fortified it further, strengthening it with tunnels and trenches. Its people, trusting in the natural strength of the site, were bolder than the defenders of Jotapata had been, though far fewer of them were fighting men; and confident in their position, they did not think they needed more, even though the city was crowded with refugees who had fled there for its security. This is why it also held out against the forces Agrippa had sent ahead for the siege, for seven months.

Vespasian now broke camp at Ammathus, where he had been encamped before Tiberias — Ammathus, translated, means "hot springs," for there is in it a spring of hot water good for healing — and marched to Gamala. Given how the city lay, he could not surround it entirely with a ring of guard-posts, but he stationed watches at the points where this was possible and occupied the mountain that overlooked the city. When the legions had fortified their camps above it, as was their custom, work began on siege-ramps at the tail end of the ridge: the eastern section, where the city's highest tower stood, was assigned to the Fifteenth legion, the Fifth worked opposite the middle of the city, and it was left to fill in the trenches and ravines — to the Tenth.

Meanwhile King Agrippa approached the walls and tried to open talks with the men stationed there about surrender, but one of the slingers struck him on the right elbow with a stone. He was quickly surrounded and helped away by his own men, but the incident spurred the Romans on to press the siege harder, both from anger on the king's behalf and from fear for themselves — reasoning that men who would leave no extreme of cruelty untried against foreigners and enemies would show no less savagery toward one of their own kinsmen, a man giving them counsel for their own good.

The ramps were completed quickly, thanks to the sheer number of hands at work and their practiced skill, and the siege engines were brought up. Chares and Joseph, the two most powerful men in the city, drew up their men-at-arms despite their fear, since they did not suppose they could hold out in the siege for long, given that their water and other supplies would not last. Even so, after rousing their men's spirits, they led them out to the wall, and for a short while beat back those bringing up the engines; but under fire from catapults and stone-throwers they withdrew into the city. The Romans then brought their battering rams up on three sides, shook the wall down, and poured in over the ruins with a great blast of trumpets and clashing of weapons, shouting their war cry as they closed with the defenders.

For a while the townspeople held their ground at the first points of entry, blocking the way forward and stubbornly keeping the Romans back; but overwhelmed by superior numbers pressing in from every side, they were driven back toward the upper part of the city, then turned and fell upon the enemy pursuing them, forcing them back down the slope and, trapped in the narrow, difficult ground, cut them down. The Romans, unable either to fight off the men above them or to force their way forward — their own comrades were pressing in from behind — took refuge on the roofs of the houses nearby, which were low, single-story buildings. But the houses quickly collapsed under the crowding, unable to bear the weight; as one house fell it brought down several others beneath it, and those in turn brought down others still lower. This destroyed a great many of the Romans; for out of sheer desperation, even as they watched the roofs sagging beneath them, they kept leaping onto them. Many were buried under the debris; many, trying to escape, were caught by parts of their bodies as they fled; and the dust choked and killed a great many more.

The people of Gamala took this for God's own help, and, careless of the harm it also did to them, pressed the attack, driving the enemy back onto the roofs, and as they slid and stumbled in the narrow alleys, kept killing from above any who fell. The ruins supplied them stones enough, and the enemy's own dead supplied them iron: pulling the swords from the fallen, they used them to finish off men in their death agony. Many, seeing the buildings already collapsing beneath them, threw themselves down and died. And even for those who turned to flee, escape was not easy; for in their ignorance of the streets, and blinded by the thick dust, they could not even recognize one another, and cut each other down or trampled one another underfoot. With difficulty the Romans found their way to the exits and withdrew from the city.

Vespasian, meanwhile, kept staying close to his hard-pressed troops — a terrible anguish had gripped him at seeing the city collapsing on top of his army — and, forgetting his own safety, found himself, without noticing it, drawn little by little to the highest point of the city, where he was left in the very midst of the danger with only a handful of men — for his son Titus was not with him at that moment, having been sent to Mucianus in Syria. To turn and run he judged neither safe nor fitting; so, calling to mind the hardships he had endured from his youth and his own courage, as though seized by some divine inspiration, he locked his men's shields together with his own, body to body and arm to arm, and stood his ground against the battle pouring down on him from above, holding firm without flinching before the mass of the enemy or their missiles, until the enemy, sensing the almost superhuman steadiness of his spirit, slackened their onset. As their pressure grew weaker, he himself withdrew step by step, never turning his back, until he was clear of the wall.

A great many Romans fell in this battle, among them the decurion Aebutius, a man who had proved himself outstandingly brave not only in the engagement in which he fell but on every earlier occasion, and had inflicted great harm on the Jews. A centurion named Gallus, cut off in the confusion with ten soldiers, slipped into a house, and there, overhearing the people inside talking over dinner about what the town council was planning against the Romans or concerning themselves, he and his men (both he and those with him were Syrians) rose up in the night, cut every one of them down, and with his soldiers made his way safely back to the Romans.

Vespasian now set about consoling an army disheartened by an unfamiliar defeat — for they had never before suffered a setback of such magnitude — and even more ashamed at having left their general alone amid the dangers. Of his own danger he said nothing, so as not even to seem to be finding fault with the ordeal; instead he spoke of the common cause, saying they must bear the nature of war bravely, bearing in mind that victory is never won without bloodshed, and that fortune both takes her toll and stands beside us in turn.

"After killing so many tens of thousands of Jews," he said, "we have paid only a small toll to fate in return. Just as it is crass to be carried away by success, so it is unmanly to cower under reverses; for change comes swiftly in either direction, and the best man is the one who stays level-headed even in success, so that his good spirits hold and he can wrestle his way back from failure. What has happened now came about neither through any weakness on your part nor through any valor on the Jews' side; rather, the terrain itself is to blame both for their advantage and for our failure. If any of you were to blame anything, it would be the recklessness of your charge: when the enemy fled up to the higher ground, you ought to have held back, and not chased danger standing directly above your heads, but instead, once masters of the lower town, drawn out those who had fled upward, little by little, into a safe and stable fight. As it was, in your uncontrolled rush for victory, you neglected your own safety. Recklessness in war, and a maddened onrush, is not the Roman way — we win everything through experience and discipline — it is the way of barbarians, and it is exactly what defeats the Jews themselves. You must instead call your own courage back to mind, and feel anger rather than despair at a setback that was undeserved. Let each man seek the best consolation from his own right hand: that way you will avenge the fallen and punish those who killed them. I myself will try, as I did today, to lead you against the enemy in every battle, and to be the last to withdraw."

With words like these he restored the army's spirits. As for the people of Gamala, their success — coming as it did so unexpectedly and on so great a scale — gave them courage for a short while; but reflecting afterward that they had thereby cut off their own hopes of surrender on terms, and realizing that they had no way of escape, since provisions were already running out, they fell into deep despondency and their spirits sank. Even so, they did not neglect what they could do for their own safety: the bravest among them manned the breaches in the wall, while the rest held the parts still standing, keeping watch. When the Romans reinforced their ramps and made ready to renew the assault, many of the townspeople slipped out of the city by way of ravines too rough for guard-posts to be placed, and through underground tunnels. Those who stayed behind, for fear of being caught, wasted away from want, since all the food to be had was gathered up for the men still able to fight.

While the people of Gamala endured such sufferings, Vespasian, as a side-operation to the siege, turned his attention to the men who held Mount Tabor, which lies midway between the great plain and Scythopolis. Its height rises to thirty stadia, and it can barely be climbed even on its northern face; the summit is a plain of twenty-six stadia, entirely walled around. Joseph had raised this great circuit of walls in just forty days, supplied from below with both building material and water — for the settlers there had only rain-water to rely on. Once a great crowd had gathered there, Vespasian sent Placidus with six hundred cavalry against it. For him, scaling the mountain was out of the question, so he tried to draw down the majority with offers of pledges and appeals for peace. They came down, but with a counter-scheme of their own: Placidus spoke gently, hoping to catch them out in the open plain, while they came down pretending to be persuaded, meaning to fall upon him off his guard. But Placidus's cunning won out: when the Jews opened the fighting, he feigned flight, and having drawn his pursuers far out onto the plain, he wheeled his cavalry about, routed them, and killed most of them, then cut off the remainder and blocked their way back up the mountain. Some abandoned Tabor and fled toward Jerusalem; the local inhabitants, whose water had by now run out, took pledges of safety and surrendered both the mountain and themselves to Placidus.

Meanwhile, at Gamala, the more daring of the defenders managed to slip away in flight, undetected, while the weak died of hunger; the fighting men kept up the resistance until, on the twenty-second of the month Hyperberetaeus, three soldiers of the Fifteenth legion crept up during the morning watch to a tower that projected in front of their position and quietly began undermining it. The guards stationed above neither noticed them approaching nor noticed them once they had arrived, for it was night. The soldiers, taking care to avoid noise, rolled out five of the largest stones and slipped clear. The tower suddenly collapsed with a tremendous crash, bringing its guards down with it in the fall; the men on the other watch-posts, thrown into confusion, fled, and the Romans killed many who tried to force their way out — among them Joseph, who was struck down and killed by a man's missile as he tried to escape over the broken section of wall.

Those in the city who were shaken by the noise ran about in a panic, as though the enemy had already broken in everywhere. There too Chares, who lay sick and under treatment, died, his terror joining with his illness to bring about his death. The Romans, still mindful of their earlier reverse, did not force their way in until the twenty-third of the same month. Titus, who had by now arrived, in his anger at the blow the Romans had suffered in his absence, picked out two hundred cavalry, together with a body of infantry, and entered the city quietly. When he had made his way in, the sentries, noticing him, rushed to arms with a shout, and word of the breach quickly spread to those inside as well; some snatched up their children and wives, dragging them along, and fled up toward the citadel, wailing and crying; others, running straight into Titus, fell without a pause; and those who, in their confusion, were prevented from reaching the summit, stumbled instead into the Roman guard-posts. On every side rose the endless groaning of the dying, and blood ran down the slope until it flooded the whole city.

Vespasian now brought his entire force in to reinforce the men chasing those fleeing toward the citadel. The summit was rocky on every side and hard to climb, rising to an immense height, and everywhere hemmed in and cut across by ravines of unfathomable depth. There the Jews harassed the men climbing up with missiles of every kind, and by rolling down boulders on them, while they themselves, by virtue of the height, were hard to reach with any weapon in return. But then, against them, there arose a sudden storm sent by God for their destruction — one that carried the Romans'

and shouting, while those who ran into Titus's path fell without ceasing; and those who were kept from scrambling up to the peak were driven by sheer helplessness down onto the Roman guard-posts. Everywhere the groaning of the dying was endless, and blood, pouring down the slope, drowned the whole city. Vespasian brought up his whole force to support the men chasing the fugitives up to the citadel.

The peak itself was rocky on every side and hard to climb, rising to an immense height, and hemmed in all around by ravines that fell away into the depths. There the Jews harassed the men climbing toward them with missiles of every kind, and especially by rolling down boulders; they themselves, because of the height, were hard for any missile to reach. Then, to their ruin, a violent and seemingly supernatural gale struck head-on, carrying the Romans' missiles into them while turning their own aside and sweeping them off course. Because of the force of the wind the defenders could get no footing to stand on the cliff edges, having nothing steady to hold to, nor could they even see the men climbing up. So the Romans pressed on upward, and once they had surrounded them, some they cut down before they could defend themselves, others while they still held out their hands in surrender; and the memory of all they had lost in the first assault fanned their fury against everyone alike.

Giving up all hope of survival, most of the people, gathering up their children and wives around them, flung themselves over the cliff into the ravine below the citadel, which was extremely deep at that point. As it turned out, the fury the Romans vented on them proved gentler than the despair the captured people inflicted on themselves: some four thousand were slaughtered by Roman hands, but more than five thousand were found to have thrown themselves down. Of all the women, none survived except two, the daughters of a sister of Philip — Philip himself being a distinguished man who had served as tetrarch under King Agrippa. They survived because they escaped notice during the massacre that followed the city's fall; for at that time not even infants were spared, many of them being repeatedly seized and hurled from the citadel. So Gamla was taken on the twenty-third of the month Hyperberetaios, the revolt there having begun on the twenty-fourth of Gorpiaios.

Only Gischala, a small town in Galilee, still remained unconquered. Most of its population wanted peace — they were mostly farmers who depended entirely on hopes for their harvests — but no small band of bandits had infiltrated among them, and some of the townspeople joined in their sickness. The man who drove them into revolt and organized them was the son of a certain Leius, John, a cunning man of the most shifting character, quick to hope for great things and clever at achieving what he hoped for, and plainly devoted to war as a path to power. Under him the rebellious element in Gischala had been arrayed, and because of these men the common people, who might well have sent envoys about surrender, instead awaited the Roman advance as if war were still their lot. Against them Vespasian sent Titus with a thousand cavalry, while he withdrew the tenth legion to Scythopolis.

He himself, with the two remaining legions, returned to Caesarea, giving the men rest from their continual exertions and expecting that, thanks to the abundance of the cities, both their bodies and their spirit would be built back up for the struggles still to come; for he foresaw no small labor still awaiting him at Jerusalem, since that city was the capital and stood over the whole nation, and into it were streaming all who were fleeing the war. Its natural strength, together with the construction of its walls, created anxiety enough on its own; and he judged the spirit and daring of its men, even apart from the walls, hard to deal with. For this reason he kept training his soldiers like athletes preparing for a contest.

When Titus rode up to Gischala, it would have been easy to take the city by immediate assault, but he knew that if it were taken by force the soldiers would slaughter the population without restraint. He was already sated with killing, and he pitied the thought of the greater part of the innocent perishing indiscriminately along with the guilty; so he preferred to bring the city over by terms. And indeed, as the wall was crowded with men, most of them from the corrupted rebel band, he told them he was astonished:

on what did they rely, being the only ones left still bearing arms against Rome after every other city had fallen, when they had seen far stronger cities overthrown by a single assault, while those who had trusted in Rome's pledge of good faith now enjoyed their own property in safety — a pledge he was even now extending to them, bearing no grudge for their obstinacy? Hope of freedom, he said, was forgivable, but persistence when it was hopeless was not; for if they would not be won over by generous words and pledges of good faith, they would soon feel the full weight of Roman arms without mercy, and it would very quickly become clear that their wall, in which alone among the Galileans they placed such confident trust, would buckle under Roman siege engines, proving them stubborn captives.

To this the ordinary townspeople had no chance to reply, nor even to go up onto the wall, for the whole of it had already been seized in advance by the bandits, and men stood guard at the gates so that no one could go out to the negotiations or let any of the cavalry into the city. John himself replied that he welcomed the terms and would either persuade or compel those who refused them; but he asked that Titus grant that one day —

for it was the Sabbath — out of respect for the law of the Jews, under which it was as forbidden for them to take up arms as it was to conclude a treaty of peace. Nor were the Romans ignorant, he said, that the whole cycle of the Sabbath was for them a day free from all work, and that to violate it was no less an impiety for the one who compelled the violation than for those compelled to commit it. And no harm at all, he said, would come to Titus from this postponement;

for what could anyone plan to do by night beyond flight, when it was open to him to surround the town with his camp and keep watch? It would be a great gain for them not to transgress any of their ancestral customs, and it befitted one who was granting unexpected peace to those he was sparing to respect their laws as well. With such arguments he outwitted Titus, aiming not so much at the Sabbath as at his own survival; for he feared that if the city were taken at once he would be caught inside it, and his only hope of life lay in escaping by night.

It was, then, God's own doing — God who was preserving John for the destruction of Jerusalem — not only that Titus was persuaded by the pretext of the postponement, but also that he pitched camp farther from the city, near Kedasa, an inland village of the Tyrians, strong and always full of hatred and hostility toward the Galileans because of its large population, a hostility that its natural strength only encouraged the more.

During the night, when John saw no Roman guard posted around the city, he seized the moment and fled toward Jerusalem, taking with him not only the armed men around him but also a great many of the less active townspeople, together with their families. Up to about twenty stades it was possible for him, hard pressed as he was by fear of capture and of death, to bring along with him the crowd of women and children, but beyond that point they were left behind, and the wailing of those left to fend for themselves was terrible; for the farther each person's own family fell behind, the nearer they imagined the enemy to be, and thinking the men who would take them captive were already upon them, they were struck with terror, and turned at the mere sound made by one another's running, as though those they were fleeing were already there.

Many of them stumbled off the road entirely, and around the highway many were crushed in the rivalry of those pressing ahead of one another. Pitiful was the destruction of the women and children, and some, taking heart, called out with wailing cries to their husbands and kinsmen to wait for them. But John's own order prevailed, as he shouted to them to save themselves and take refuge wherever they could, since they would also be able there to avenge those left behind, should the Romans seize them. So the mass of fugitives scattered, each according to their own strength or speed.

Titus, when day came, arrived at the wall to conclude the agreement. The people opened the gates to him, and coming out with their families they acclaimed him as a benefactor who had freed the city from siege; for they revealed at once John's flight and begged him to spare them and, entering the city, to punish those revolutionaries who remained behind.

He, setting the people's petitions in second place for the moment, sent a detachment of cavalry in pursuit of John. They did not overtake him — he had already made his escape into Jerusalem — but of those who had fled with him they killed some six thousand, and rounded up and brought back women and children numbering close to three thousand. Titus was vexed that he had not been able to punish John at once for his deception, but, having in the great number of captives and the slain a sufficient consolation for his frustrated anger, he entered the city amid acclamations, and after ordering his soldiers to pull down a small part of the wall, as a token that it had been taken by right of conquest, he restrained those who were stirring up trouble in the city by threats rather than punishment;

for he saw that many, out of personal hatreds and private quarrels, would denounce the innocent as guilty if he set out to distinguish those deserving punishment. It was better, he judged, to leave the guilty man hanging in suspense and fear than to destroy along with him someone who did not deserve it; for the guilty man might perhaps even be brought to his senses by fear of punishment, out of respect for the pardon granted for what was past, whereas a punishment inflicted on someone already destroyed could never be undone. Still, he secured the city with a garrison, by which he meant to hold the revolutionaries in check and leave the peace-loving citizens more confident.

So all of Galilee was conquered, after costing the Romans much hard toil on their way toward Jerusalem. As John made his entrance, the whole population poured out, and around each of the men who had escaped with him a vast crowd gathered, asking after news of the disasters abroad. Their still-heaving, gasping breath betrayed the desperation of their flight, yet even in their misery they boasted, claiming they had not fled the Romans but had come to fight them from a position of safety; for it was senseless and useless, they said, to risk their lives recklessly for Gischala and other weak little towns, when they ought instead to husband their weapons and their strength for the capital and guard it together.

In saying this they were hinting at the fall of Gischala, and most people understood their so-called dignified withdrawal for what it really was — flight. But when word of what had happened to the captives was heard, no small confusion seized the population, and they drew heavy conclusions about their own coming ruin from it. John himself was not much abashed by the losses; going around to each group he spurred them on to war with hopes, making Roman strength out to be weak and exaggerating his own force, and mocking the ignorance of those inexperienced in warfare,

claiming that not even if the Romans grew wings could they ever get over the wall of Jerusalem, they who had struggled so hard around the villages of Galilee and worn out their siege engines against the walls there. By such talk most of the young men were further corrupted and roused for war, while among the sober and the old there was not one who, foreseeing what was coming, did not already mourn as though the city were as good as lost.

So the populace was in such confusion, while the population of the countryside had already split off from the factional strife within Jerusalem even before this. For Titus went from Gischala to Caesarea, and Vespasian went from Caesarea to Jamnia and Azotus, brought both under his control, installed garrisons in them, and returned bringing with him a great number of those who had come over willingly to the Roman side. In every city there arose

turmoil and civil war, for as soon as men had breathing room from the Romans they turned their hands against each other. There was bitter strife between those in love with war and those who longed for peace. First the spirit of rivalry took hold within households among people once of one mind, then dearest friends, growing estranged from one another, and each gathering to those who shared his own choice, at last stood arrayed against each other in whole factions.

Faction was everywhere, and the revolutionary element eager for arms got the upper hand over the age and prudence of their elders through sheer youth and daring. At first each group turned to plundering the local inhabitants, then, organizing themselves into companies, to banditry throughout the countryside, until in cruelty and lawlessness they were no different from the Romans toward their own countrymen, and being plundered by Romans came to seem, to the victims, far the lighter fate.

The garrisons in the cities, partly from reluctance to expose themselves to hardship and partly from hatred of the nation, gave little or no help to those being wronged, until, glutted with plunder from the countryside, the chief bandits from every band gathered together, and, having become a single mass of villainy, infiltrated into Jerusalem — a city with no commander-in-chief and one that, by ancestral custom, admitted without question anyone of its own people,

at a time when everyone supposed that all who were pouring in came as allies out of goodwill. This, quite apart from the factional strife, later helped drown the city; for the useless and idle crowd used up in advance the supplies that might have sustained the fighting men, and thereby brought upon themselves, in addition to the war, factional strife and famine as well. Other bandits, too, came in from the countryside into the city, and,

joining forces with those already inside and becoming still more dangerous, no longer left off any atrocity. They did not confine their daring to plunder and robbery but went as far as murder — not by night or in secret or against random victims, but openly, in broad daylight, and beginning with the most eminent men. The first they seized was Antipas, a man of royal blood and one of the most powerful men in the city,

trusted enough to have charge of the public treasury; him they arrested and imprisoned. After him they seized a certain Levias, one of the notables, and Syphas son of Aregetes, whose family was likewise of royal blood, and who was reckoned among the leading men of the countryside. A terrible panic gripped the population, and, as though the city had already been taken by an enemy in war, each person clung only to his own individual safety.

But the chains of those they had seized were not enough for them, nor did they think it safe to keep such powerful men under guard for long; for their households, they reasoned, being far from lacking in numbers, were quite capable of striking back in their defense, and moreover the populace itself might well rise up if stirred by such lawlessness. So they resolved to kill them, and sent a certain John, the most ready of their number for murder, who was called

'son of Dorcas' in the local tongue; with ten men he came together into the prison and, swords drawn, butchered the prisoners there. For so great a crime they told great lies, inventing pretexts — they claimed the men had been negotiating with the Romans about surrendering Jerusalem, and that they had killed traitors to the common freedom, altogether boasting of their crimes as though they had become the city's benefactors and saviors. Matters came to such a pitch

that the people sank into abject humiliation and terror while these men rose to such a pitch of madness that even the election of the high priests lay in their hands. They made void the family lines from which, by hereditary succession, the high priests had always been appointed, and installed men obscure and low-born, so as to have accomplices in their impieties; for men who had come by the highest office undeservedly were bound to obey those who had given it to them. And they set at odds

the men in authority too, with all manner of schemes and slanders, seizing their opportunity in the rivalries the leading men engaged in among themselves as they tried to restrain them, until, gorged past all measure on crimes against men, they turned their outrage even against what was sacred, and with feet still defiled walked into the Holy Place. When the populace at last began to rise up against them — for the eldest of the chief priests, Ananus, a man of the greatest good sense, was urging them on, and perhaps

...and would have saved the city, had he escaped the conspirators' hands. But they made the temple of God their own fortress and their refuge from the people's uprisings, and the sanctuary became their tyrants' den. Mockery mixed with these horrors, more painful still than the acts themselves: testing the people's terror and gauging their own strength, they undertook to fill the high-priesthood by lot

though the succession to that office ran, as we have said, by family line. The pretext for their scheme was an ancient custom, on the ground that the high priesthood had once, long ago, been filled by lot; but the truth of it was the overthrow of a more binding law, a device by which men installed officers of their own through themselves, for the sake of power. So they summoned one of the priestly clans, called Eniachin, and cast lots for a high priest. By chance the lot fell

on the very man whose choice most exposed their lawlessness: one Phanni by name, son of Samuel, of the village of Aphtha - a man not only unconnected with the high-priestly line but who, out of sheer rusticity, did not even clearly know what the high priesthood was. They dragged him from the countryside against his will and dressed him up, as if for a part on a stage, in a mask not his own, putting the sacred vestments on him and instructing him, as the occasion demanded, in what he had to do.

To them this monstrous impiety was a joke and a game, but the other priests, watching from a distance as the law was mocked, were moved to tears and lamented the destruction of the sacred honors. This outrage the people would not endure, but rose as one man, as if to overthrow a tyranny. Indeed those who seemed to stand foremost among them - Gorion son of Joseph and Symeon son of Gamaliel - stirred them up, both in full assemblies and by going about privately to each man, urging that at last they take vengeance on these destroyers of freedom and cleanse the sanctuary of men of blood; and the most respected of the high priests, Jesus son of Gamalas and Ananus son of Ananus, in their meetings repeatedly reproached the people for their sluggishness and roused them against the zealots - for this was the name

these men had given themselves, as though for admirable pursuits, rather than because they had rivaled, and outdone, the worst deeds ever done. Now when the people had gathered in assembly, and all were indignant at the seizure of the sanctuary, at the plundering, and at the killings, but had not yet been roused to strike back, since they judged - rightly - that the zealots would be hard to overcome, Ananus stood up among them and,

looking many times toward the temple, his eyes filling with tears, said: "It would have been good for me to have died before I saw the house of God burdened with such abominations, and its untrodden, holy places crowded with the feet of murderers. Yet here I stand, wearing the high priest's robe and bearing the most honored of all revered titles, still alive, still clinging to life, unwilling even for my old age's sake to accept a glorious death - if indeed I must die alone, giving up, as if in some wilderness, only my own life for God. For what is the good of living among a people numb to its own disasters, among men who have lost all power to feel what is being done to them with their own hands? You let yourselves be robbed and say nothing; you are beaten and stay silent; no one so much as groans aloud for the murdered. Oh, the bitterness of this tyranny!

But why do I blame the tyrants? Were they not nursed by you, by your own long-suffering? Was it not you who, by overlooking the first conspirators while they were still few, made them many, and who, staying quiet while they armed, turned those very weapons against yourselves - when you ought to have crushed their first stirrings, back when they were only hurling abuse at their kinsmen? Instead you paid no heed, and so spurred these criminals on to plunder, and when houses were being sacked no one said a word; so at last they seized the very owners of those houses, and as they were dragged through the middle of the city no one came to their aid. Others they tortured in chains - men you yourselves had betrayed; I will not say how many, or who they were - but no one helped those in bonds, uncharged and untried. It followed naturally that we should see the same men murdered. We watched even that, like a flock of dumb animals always losing its finest victim to the slaughter, and not one of you so much as raised his voice, let alone his hand.

Bear it, then - go on bearing it, watching the holy things trampled underfoot, having set every rung of this ladder of crime beneath these godless men's feet yourselves, and do not now balk at how high they have climbed; for indeed, even now, they would certainly have gone further still, had they had anything greater left to destroy among the holy things. The strongest part of the city is already in their grip - let the temple now be called a citadel, or a fortress, if you will. With such a tyranny entrenched over you, with your enemies looking down on you from the height, what are you deliberating, and on what do you pin your hopes? Will you wait for the Romans, to come and rescue our holy places for us? Have things truly come to such a pass for this city, that even our enemies should have to pity us?

Will you not rise up, most wretched of men, and, turning to face the blows - a thing one can see even in wild beasts - defend yourselves against those who strike you? Will you not, each of you, call to mind your own private disasters, and, setting what you have suffered before your eyes, sharpen your resolve at last to strike back? Has the most precious and most natural of all passions died in you - the love of freedom? Have we become lovers of slavery and of masters, as if we had inherited submission from our forefathers? Yet they fought many great wars for their self-rule, and yielded neither to the power of Egypt nor to that of the Medes rather than do as they were commanded. But why speak of our forefathers? Even this present war against the Romans - I will not stop to argue whether it serves us or the reverse - what pretext does it have, if not freedom?

And shall we, who could not endure the masters of the whole world, put up with tyrants of our own race? And yet, to submit to outsiders one might set down to a fortune that has once defeated us; but to give way to wicked men of our own house is the mark of the base, and of men who choose their servitude. And since I have once mentioned the Romans, I will not hide from you a thought that came to me in the middle of this speech and turned my mind: that even if we should fall under their power - though may that trial never come to pass - we could suffer nothing harsher than what these men here have already done to us. Is it not enough to make one weep, to see the Romans' own offerings standing in the temple, while men of our own blood have stripped its spoils and destroyed the nobility of our mother city, and have murdered men whom even the Romans, had they been the victors, would have spared?

The Romans have never once crossed the boundary set for the profane, nor transgressed a single one of our sacred customs; they have shuddered even at a distance before the holy precincts. Yet men born in this very land, raised under our own customs, and called Jews, walk about in the midst of the holy places with hands still warm from the blood of their own countrymen. Does anyone, then, fear a foreign war, when set beside enemies within our own walls who are far more moderate than we ourselves? Indeed, if names must be fitted honestly to facts, one might well find that the Romans are the guarantors of our laws, and the enemy is within.

But that the plotters against our freedom deserve utter destruction, and that no punishment one could devise would match their deeds, I think you have all come here already convinced, roused to act against them by your own sufferings even before my words. Perhaps many of you are alarmed at their numbers, their daring, and further at the advantage their position gives them. But all this arose, as it were, out of your own neglect, and will only grow if you delay further still; for their numbers swell daily, as every villain deserts to join his like, and nothing so far has checked their daring, holding as they do the higher ground - and they will use it, and with preparation too, if we give them time.

But believe me: if we press upon them, their own conscience will make them the more cowed, and reflection will strip away the advantage of their height. Perhaps the divine power, once outraged, will turn their own missiles back upon them, and these impious men will be destroyed by their own weapons. Let them only see us before them, and they are already undone. And it is a fine thing, even where some danger attends it, to die at the sacred gates, and to give up one's life, if not for wife and children, then for God and for the holy things. I myself will lead you, in counsel and in arm alike, and you will find no plan wanting from me for your safety, nor will you see me sparing my own body."

With these words Ananus roused the people against the zealots, well aware that they were already hard to overcome, given their numbers, their youth, and their high spirit, and still more because of their guilty conscience for what they had done - for he knew they would never yield, hoping for no ultimate pardon for their crimes. Even so, he chose to suffer anything at all rather than stand by while the state fell into such confusion. The people shouted for him to lead them against those he had denounced, and each man stood ready to be first into danger.

While Ananus was enrolling and arraying the men fit for battle, the zealots learned of the undertaking - for informants brought them word of everything the people were doing - and, enraged, burst out of the temple in a body and by companies, sparing none they came upon. Ananus quickly gathered the populace, who outnumbered the zealots but fell short of them in arms and in discipline. On both sides eagerness made up what was lacking: the men from the city had taken up an anger stronger than any weapon, while those from the temple brought a daring that surpassed any numbers.

The one side supposed the city unlivable unless they cut the brigands out of it; the zealots supposed that, if they failed to prevail, no punishment would be spared them. So, driven by their passions, they clashed - at first, in the city and before the temple, hurling stones at one another and shooting missiles from a distance, but once either side broke and fled, the victors turned to their swords. Slaughter was great on both sides, and the wounded were many. The people's fallen were carried off to their homes by their kinsmen, but any zealot who was struck went up into the temple and stained the holy pavement with his blood - so that one might truly say it was their own blood that defiled the sanctuary.

In these skirmishes it was the brigands, always sallying out and back, who kept the upper hand; but the people, growing angrier and ever more numerous, reproaching those who gave ground and, pressing from behind, giving those who turned no room to retreat, threw their whole weight against the enemy. When the zealots could no longer hold against that force and began, little by little, to fall back into the temple, Ananus and his men burst in along with them.

Panic fell on the zealots at the loss of the outer court, and, fleeing into the inner precinct, they quickly barred the gates. Ananus decided against storming the sacred gates - not least because the defenders were hurling missiles down from above - and, besides, he judged it unlawful to bring the people in, even in victory, without their having first undergone purification. So he chose about six thousand armed men by lot from the whole body and posted them as guards along the porticoes; others relieved these in rotation, and every man was bound to take his turn on watch in his proper order, though many men of rank, released by those in command, hired poorer men to stand guard duty in their place.

The ruin of all these men was brought about by John, whom we have said fled from Gischala - a most treacherous man, carrying in his heart a terrible passion for tyranny, who had long been plotting from a distance against the state of affairs. And now, pretending to hold the people's views, he went about with Ananus, joining the leading men in council both by day and by night as they made their rounds of the guard posts, but reported their secrets to the zealots, so that every plan of the people, before it was even properly settled, became known to their enemies through him.

To avoid falling under suspicion he lavished excessive attentions on Ananus and the leaders of the people. But his very eagerness worked against him: his groundless flattery only made him the more suspected, and his being everywhere, uninvited, gave the impression that he was betraying their secrets. For they saw that the enemy was aware of everything they planned, and no one seemed a more likely source for such reports than John.

It was not easy to be rid of him, since he was a capable man in wickedness and, besides, no obscure figure, having also armed and attached to himself many of the council's own members; so instead they resolved to bind him by oaths to good will. John readily swore that he would be well disposed to the people, that he would betray to their enemies neither counsel nor action, and that he would join in putting down the aggressors, by hand and by counsel alike.

Ananus and his party, trusting these oaths, now admitted him to their deliberations without suspicion, and even sent him as an envoy to the zealots to discuss terms - for they were anxious above all that the sanctuary not be defiled through their own doing, and that none of their countrymen should fall within it. But John, exactly as he had sworn to the zealots to favor them and not act against them, went inside, and, standing in their midst, declared that he had many times put himself at risk on their behalf, so that they should remain ignorant of none of the secret plans that Ananus and his party had made against them;

and that now he and all of them together were courting the gravest danger, unless some more-than-human help should come to their aid. For Ananus, he said, meant to delay no longer: he had already persuaded the people to send envoys to Vespasian, urging him to come at once and take the city, and had proclaimed a day of purification against them for the following day, so that the people might close with them either by entering under cover of the rite or by force. He said he could not see how much longer they could hold out on guard, or how they could stand in battle against so many.

He added that he himself had been sent, by God's providence, as their envoy to discuss these terms - terms Ananus was offering only so that he might fall upon them the less suspecting. They must therefore either plead for their lives with the guards in words, or procure some help from outside; for those who warmed themselves with hope of pardon, should they be overpowered, had forgotten their own crimes, or supposed that as soon as the wrongdoers repented, their victims must at once be reconciled to them. But wronged men, he said, often come to hate their wrongdoers all the more, and

...repentance, while for the wronged their anger grows harsher once they have the power to indulge it; and lying in wait for them were the friends and kinsmen of the dead, and a populace so vast and so enraged over the overthrow of the laws and courts that even if some small part of it were inclined to pity, that part would be swallowed up by the much greater number raging in fury.

Such were the various threats John heaped up all at once to intimidate them, though he did not dare speak openly of help from outside — he only hinted at the Idumaeans. And to provoke the leaders of the zealots individually as well, he accused Ananus of savagery and claimed he was threatening them by name. Among them was Eleazar son of Gion, who indeed seemed the most capable of the group both at grasping what needed to be done and at carrying it out, and a certain Zacharias son of Amphicalleus, both of priestly descent.

These two, on top of the general threats, heard also of threats made against themselves in particular, and further that Ananus's faction, in securing power for itself, was calling in the Romans — for John had invented this charge too. For a long while they were at a loss what to do, caught in so sudden a crisis; the people, they were told, were preparing to attack them before long, while the very speed of the plot against them had cut off any hope of outside help, since everything would be done to them before their allies even learned of it.

Even so, they decided to call in the Idumaeans. They wrote a brief letter claiming that Ananus was betraying the capital to the Romans after deceiving the people, that they themselves had revolted for the sake of freedom and were now held under guard in the temple, and that only a little time remained to decide their fate: unless the Idumaeans came quickly to help, they themselves would fall to Ananus and his allies, and the city would fall to the Romans first. They charged the messengers to say most of this by word of mouth to the Idumaean leaders.

Two vigorous men were chosen for the errand, capable speakers and persuasive in argument, and — more useful still — remarkably swift on their feet; for they knew the Idumaeans would need no persuading, being a turbulent and undisciplined people, always primed for upheaval and delighting in change, stirred to arms by the slightest flattery from those in need, and rushing to battle as though hurrying to a festival. Speed was essential, and the two men sent, sparing no effort, both happened to be named Ananias. They duly reached the Idumaean leaders.

The Idumaeans, stunned by the letter and by what the messengers reported, ran through the nation as though possessed, proclaiming the call to arms. The mass mustered faster than the summons could reach them, and all seized their weapons as though fighting for the freedom of the capital itself. Organized into twenty thousand men, they marched on Jerusalem under four commanders: John, James son of Sosas, and with them Simon son of Thakeas and Phineas son of Clusoth.

Ananus knew nothing of the messengers' departure, any more than the guards did, but the Idumaeans' approach did not escape him. Forewarned, he shut the gates against them and kept the walls under close guard. Still, he did not decide on outright war with them, but chose to persuade them with words before resorting to arms. Jesus, the senior chief priest after Ananus, took his stand on the tower facing them and spoke.

"Many and varied troubles have gripped this city, but in none of them have I marveled at fortune as I do now, that it should even cooperate with the wicked in doing the unthinkable. Here you stand, ready to defend the most depraved of men against us, with as much eagerness as would have suited an advance against barbarians answering the capital's own call. Had I seen your ranks made up of men resembling those who summoned you, I would not think your zeal unreasonable — nothing binds goodwill so firmly as kinship of character. But examine them one by one, and each will be found to deserve a thousand deaths. They are the dregs and refuse of the whole city, men who squandered their own estates and trained their madness beforehand in the villages and towns around us, and finally crept unnoticed into the holy city itself — bandits who, through the sheer excess of their crimes, defile even the ground that must not be profaned. You can see them now, drinking themselves senseless on holy things without a shred of fear, and gorging their insatiable bellies on the spoils of the murdered. Your own numbers and the splendor of your weapons would suit a summons from the capital to a shared council, as allies against foreigners. What is one to call this but the mockery of fortune, when a whole armed nation is seen locking shields with a gang of criminals? For a long time I have wondered what could have stirred you so suddenly — surely no one takes up full armor without grave cause, and against kinsmen at that. But when we heard talk of Romans and treachery — words some of you were just now shouting — and that you had come to liberate the capital, we marveled, more than at any of their other outrages, at these villains' brazen invention. Men naturally devoted to freedom, and for that very reason most eager to fight foreign enemies, could be roused against us in no other way than by fabricating a story of betrayed freedom. But you at least ought to weigh who is making these accusations, and against whom, and gather the truth not from invented words but from the plain facts. What could we possibly have suffered that would make us sell ourselves to the Romans now, when it was open to us either never to have revolted in the first place, or, having revolted, to come over to them quickly while the country around us still stood unravaged? As it is, even if we wished to make terms it would not be easy, since the fall of Galilee has made the Romans contemptuous of us, and it would bring us a shame worse than death to court them now that they are already so near. For my own part I would rather have peace than death, but once war is joined and I have taken the field, I would choose a glorious death over life as a captive. Do they claim that we, the leaders of the people, sent secretly to the Romans, or that the people voted it openly? If it was we, let them name the friends who were sent, the servants who carried out the betrayal. Was anyone caught leaving the city? Seized on his return? Have any letters been intercepted? How is it that so many fellow citizens, with whom we mingle at every hour, never noticed, while the few men under guard, who cannot even leave the temple for the city, somehow learned what was being done in secret across the countryside? They have only just discovered it, now that punishment for their own crimes is due; while they went unafraid themselves, was any one of us ever suspected as a traitor? And if they lay the blame on the people, surely the people deliberated in the open, and no one stayed away from the assembly — so the report would have reached you all the sooner and more plainly. And besides, should envoys not have been sent once such terms were voted? Who was appointed? Let them say. No — this is merely the pretext of men facing a painful death, trying to deflect punishments already close at hand. For even if the city's betrayal had truly been fated, only these same slanderers would have dared it, men whose reckless crimes lack only one thing — betrayal. But since you are here, weapons in hand, the most just course for you is to defend the capital and help destroy these tyrants who have overturned the courts, men who have trampled the laws and pronounced judgment at the point of their own swords. They have dragged men of distinction, wholly uncharged, out of the middle of the marketplace, bound and abused them, and put them to death without allowing them so much as a word in their own defense. You may go inside — not under the laws of war — and see with your own eyes the proof of what I say: houses stripped bare by their plunder, the wives and children of the slain dressed in mourning black, wailing and lamentation throughout the entire city. There is no one who has not tasted the assault of these godless men. They have run so far into madness that they have carried their bandits' daring not only from the countryside and outlying towns onto the face and head of the whole nation, but from the city itself into the temple. That has become their base and refuge, the storehouse of their preparations against us — the place revered by the whole world, honored even by foreigners at the ends of the earth by reputation alone, is trampled by the beasts bred here. Already, in their desperation, they boast of setting people against people and city against city, and levying war against the nation from its own vitals. In return for this, the finest and most fitting course — as I have said — is for you to join in destroying these villains, and to avenge the very deception by which they dared call allies those they ought instead to fear as avengers. But if you shrink from such accusations, then at least you may lay down your arms, enter the city as kinsmen would, and take the middle ground between ally and enemy by becoming judges. Consider, though, how much they stand to gain — men who granted not even a hearing to the uncharged — if they are tried by you on charges this well established and this grave. Let them at least receive that favor from your arrival. But if you think it right neither to share our indignation nor to sit in judgment, there remains a third course: leave both sides be, neither trespassing on our misfortune nor joining the plotters against the capital. Even if you deeply suspect that some have indeed dealt with the Romans, you can watch the approaches yourselves, and if any of these charges is ever proven in fact, come then and guard the capital, and punish the guilty once they are caught — for the enemy could hardly outrun you, camped as you would be so close to the city. But if none of this strikes you as fair or reasonable, then do not be surprised at the bars on our gates, so long as you bear arms."

Such were the words of Jesus. But the mass of the Idumaeans paid him no heed; they were enraged that entry was not granted them at once, and their generals bristled at being told to lay down their arms, taking it as a mark of captivity to be ordered by anyone to throw down their weapons. Simon son of Cathla, one of the commanders, with difficulty quieted the uproar among his own men, then stood where the chief priests could hear him and spoke.

"I no longer wonder that the champions of freedom are kept under guard in the temple, when some men are already shutting even the whole nation out of its own common city — preparing, it seems, to receive the Romans, perhaps even to garland the gates for them, while they lecture the Idumaeans from the towers and order them to throw down the arms they carry for freedom's sake. Distrusting their own kinsmen with the guarding of the capital, they make these very kinsmen judges of their quarrels, and while accusing some of killing without trial, they themselves condemn the whole nation to disgrace. The city thrown open to every foreigner for worship, you now wall off from your own people! We were indeed in a great hurry for bloodshed, rushing to make war on our own countrymen — we, who came here in haste for the very purpose of keeping you free! Such, it seems, are the wrongs you too have suffered at the hands of those under guard, and I suppose that is how you have gathered such plausible suspicions against them. And then, holding by force, inside the city, all who care for the common good, and shutting out with such insolent commands the very nations closest to you in kinship, you call yourselves the tyrannized, and you hang the name of tyranny on those you yourselves tyrannize! Who could stomach the irony of such words, set against the plain contradiction of the facts — unless indeed it is the Idumaeans who are shutting you out of the capital now, when it is you who bar them from their ancestral worship! One might justly blame the men besieged in the temple for this much: that having found the courage to punish the traitors — men you call distinguished and uncharged only because you shared in their guilt — they did not begin with you, and cut off in advance the most vital parts of this betrayal. But if they proved too gentle for what the moment required, then we, the Idumaeans, will guard the house of God and fight for our common homeland, warding off as enemies both those who attack from outside and those who betray it from within. Here, before your walls, we will remain under arms, until the Romans grow weary of watching you, or until you come to your senses about freedom and change your minds."

At these words the mass of the Idumaeans roared their approval, and Jesus withdrew, disheartened at seeing the Idumaeans set on showing no restraint, and the city under attack from two sides at once. Yet the Idumaeans themselves were far from easy in their minds. They were angered at the insult of being shut out of the city, and seeing that the zealots' strength, which they had believed so formidable, offered them no help at all, many of them grew troubled and regretted having come. But shame at turning back having accomplished nothing overcame their regret, and so they stayed where they were, camped miserably before the wall.

That night an overwhelming storm broke — violent winds together with the heaviest downpours, unbroken lightning, dreadful thunder, and the monstrous roar of the earth as it shook. It was plain that this convulsion of the whole natural order portended ruin for mankind, and no one could suppose these portents the product of some ordinary mischance. Both the Idumaeans and the people within the city drew the very same conclusion from it, though in opposite directions: the one side thought God was angry at their expedition and that they could not escape punishment for bearing arms against the capital, the other — Ananus's party — thought they had won without a battle, and that God himself was fighting on their behalf.

But they proved poor judges of what was to come, and in reading omens against their enemies they were unwittingly foretelling what was about to happen to their own side. For the Idumaeans, huddling their bodies together and locking their shields over their heads, suffered comparatively little from the rains, while the zealots, tormented more on the Idumaeans' account than by any danger of their own, met together to consider whether they could devise some way to help them. The more hotheaded among them favored forcing the guards at swordpoint, then bursting into the middle of the city and openly throwing the gates open to their allies, reasoning that the guards, thrown into confusion by the unexpected assault, would give way — especially since most of them were unarmed and untrained in war — and that the mass of the people in the city would be hard to rally, penned into their homes as they were by the storm. And even if some danger arose from it, they thought it right to risk anything rather than stand by while so great a host perished shamefully on their account. But the more level-headed among them rejected the use of force, seeing...

they saw that not only was their own guard at full strength, but the wall of the city was carefully watched too, because of the Idumaeans. They supposed that Ananus was everywhere and inspected the watches at every hour. That was true on other nights, but on this one the watch was relaxed — not through any carelessness of Ananus, but so that he himself, and the whole body of the guards, might perish, fate directing the outcome.

That night, as it wore on and the storm grew more violent, fate lulled the guards on the portico to sleep and put it into the zealots' minds to take up saws from the temple stores and cut through the bars of the gates. The noise of the wind and the continuous rolling of thunder helped them go undetected. Slipping unseen out of the temple, they came to the wall and, using the same saws, opened the gate on the Idumaean side.

At first the Idumaeans were thrown into confusion, supposing Ananus's men were attacking them, and every man's hand went to his sword to defend himself. But they quickly recognized who had come and went in. Had they then turned loose on the city, nothing would have stopped the whole populace from being destroyed, so great was their fury. As it was, being eager above all to rescue the zealots from the siege — and being begged besides, by the men who had let them in, not to overlook them in the midst of such dangers, nor to bring a still harsher peril down on their own heads, since if the guards were captured it would be easy for them to move against the city, but if they stirred up the city first they would never afterward master the guards, for the guards would organize against them and block the approaches — the Idumaeans agreed to this and went up through the city toward the temple, while the zealots, on tiptoe, watched eagerly for their arrival.

When they came in, the zealots too took courage and came forward from the inner sanctuary. Joining with the Idumaeans, they fell upon the guards, killing some of those posted for the night watch while they slept; and at the cry of those who were awake, the whole body of guards rose up and, seizing their weapons in a panic, rushed to defend themselves. So long as they supposed only the zealots were attacking, they took heart, confident of overpowering them by numbers; but when they saw others pouring in from outside, they realized the Idumaeans had broken in, and most of them at once, their spirit failing, threw down their arms and gave themselves over to lamentation. A few of the younger men, however, formed a barrier and bravely met the Idumaeans, covering the more sluggish crowd for a long while.

By their shouting they signaled the disaster to those in the city, but none of them dared come to their aid once they learned the Idumaeans had broken in; instead they cried out uselessly in answer and wailed back, and a great keening of women arose as each one feared for some kinsman among the guards. The zealots raised the war-cry together with the Idumaeans, and the storm made the combined shouting of everyone still more terrifying. The Idumaeans spared no one, being by nature most savage killers, and now further embittered by the storm, they vented their rage on those who had shut them out. Men who begged for mercy and men who fought back fared alike; many who reminded them of their kinship and begged them to show respect for the temple they shared were run through with the sword all the same.

There was no room to flee and no hope of safety; pressed together against one another, they were cut down, and most were simply forced over the edge. When there was no longer any place to retreat to, with the killers pressing in, in their helplessness they threw themselves down into the city — enduring, it seems to me, a worse fate by their own choice than the destruction from which they were fleeing. The outer court of the temple was flooded with blood from end to end, and daybreak found eight thousand five hundred corpses there.

Even this did not satisfy the fury of the Idumaeans. Turning on the city, they plundered every house and killed whoever they came upon. The mass of ordinary people they regarded as not worth the trouble, but they hunted down the chief priests, and against these most of their violence was directed. These were quickly caught and put to death, and standing over their bodies, the Idumaeans mocked Ananus for his goodwill toward the people, and mocked Jesus for his speeches from the wall. They went so far in their impiety as to throw the bodies out unburied, even though the Jews take such great care over burials that they take down and bury even those condemned and crucified, before sunset.

I would not be wrong in saying that the death of Ananus marked the beginning of the city's fall, and that from that day the wall was overturned and the fortunes of the Jews were ruined, since on that day they saw the high priest, the very guardian of their own safety, slaughtered in the middle of the city. He was, in every respect, a man of dignity and the utmost justice; and despite the weight of his noble birth, his rank, and the honor he held, he loved treating even the humblest as his equals. He was extraordinarily devoted to liberty and an admirer of democracy, always putting the common good ahead of his private advantage and valuing peace above everything else, for he knew the power of Rome was irresistible. Yet, forced by necessity, he also made provision for the war, so that if the Jews could not come to terms, they might at least hold out with skill.

To sum it up: had Ananus lived, they would certainly have come to terms, for he was a formidable speaker, able to persuade the people, and he was already gaining the upper hand over those who obstructed peace; or, had war continued, under such a general they would have given the Romans a very long struggle. Jesus was joined with him, second to him in comparison but surpassing all the others. But I believe that God, having condemned the city to destruction as polluted, and wishing to purge the sanctuary by fire, cut off those who clung to it and loved it dearly. These men, who shortly before had worn the sacred vestments, led the worship of the whole world, and were reverenced by those who came from every corner of the earth to visit the city, were now seen thrown out naked, food for dogs and wild beasts. I think Virtue herself groaned over these men, lamenting that she had been so thoroughly overcome by vice.

Such, then, was the end that befell Ananus and Jesus. After them, the zealots and the mass of Idumaeans fell upon the people and slaughtered them as though they were a herd of unclean animals. The common sort were destroyed wherever they happened to be caught, but the well-born and the young were seized and locked up in prison, kept bound in the hope that some of them might come over to their side — deferring the killing. But no one gave in; instead, all chose death rather than enroll themselves alongside the wicked against their own country. They endured terrible torments for their refusal, being whipped and racked, and only when their bodies could no longer bear the torture were they at last granted the sword. Those seized during the day were killed by night, and the bodies were carried out and dumped to make room for other prisoners.

So great was the people's terror that no one dared openly weep for a dead relative, or bury him; instead, shut up in their houses, they wept in secret and with great care, watching lest any enemy overhear, for the mourner suffered instantly the same fate as the one he mourned. At night some would gather a little dust in their hands and scatter it over the bodies, and by day, if anyone was bold enough to do the same. Twelve thousand of the well-born young were destroyed in this way.

The men who by now had grown weary of indiscriminate killing began to mock up courts and trials. Having decided to kill one of the most eminent men, Zacharias son of Baris — they were provoked by his intense hatred of wickedness and love of liberty, and he was also rich, so that they hoped not only to plunder his estate but also to remove a man capable of overthrowing them — they summoned by order seventy of the leading citizens to the temple, and, giving them, as though on a stage, the appearance of judges without any real authority, they accused Zacharias of betraying the cause to the Romans and of sending word of the treason to Vespasian.

There was no proof of the charges and no evidence at all, but they themselves declared they were well satisfied, and demanded that this count as confirmation of the truth. Zacharias, seeing that no hope of safety was left him — for he had been summoned by a trick into a prison, not before a court — did not despair of his life without speaking out. Standing up, he laughed the plausibility of the accusations to scorn and refuted, briefly, the charges brought against him. Then, turning his speech against his accusers, he went through all their lawless acts one by one and lamented at length the chaos into which affairs had fallen. The zealots were in an uproar and could scarcely keep their hands from their swords, wanting to carry the farce of the court's pretense through to the end, and also wishing to test the judges further, to see whether, even at their own peril, they would remember justice.

All seventy cast their votes for the acquittal of the accused, choosing to die with him rather than bear the guilt of his execution on their record. At this a shout went up from the zealots against the acquittal, and everyone was furious at the judges for failing to grasp the mockery of the authority granted them. Two of the boldest fell upon Zacharias in the middle of the temple and killed him, and as he fell they jeered at him, saying, "Now you have our vote too, and a surer acquittal," and they threw him at once from the temple down into the ravine below. The judges they drove out of the precinct, striking them with the flats of their swords as an insult, sparing them only from slaughter for this one purpose: that, scattered through the city, they might serve as messengers to everyone of their enslavement.

By now the Idumaeans regretted having come, and were disturbed at what was being done. One of the zealots gathered them and, coming to them privately, laid out for them the lawless acts committed together with those who had summoned them, and went through the wrongs done against the mother city. He told them there was no evidence at all that the chief priests had betrayed the mother city to the Romans, as had been claimed when they were called to arms, but rather that those pretending this were themselves daring the deeds of war and tyranny. It had been right for the Idumaeans to prevent this from the start, but since they had once fallen into complicity in civil bloodshed, they ought at least to set a limit to the wrongdoing and no longer remain, lending their strength to men overturning their ancestral ways.

And if some are still angered that the gates were shut and armed entry was not readily granted them, let them consider that those who shut them out have already been punished: Ananus is dead, and in a single night nearly the whole people has been destroyed. Many of their own kin, he said, he perceived now regretted it, while those who had called them in showed a cruelty without measure, having no shame even before the very men for whose sake they had been spared. In full view of their allies they dared the most shameful acts, and their lawlessness was being laid at the Idumaeans' door, as long as no one restrained them or separated himself from what was being done. It was necessary, then, since the slander of treason had come to nothing and no Roman advance was expected, while a hard-to-overthrow tyranny had been entrenched upon the city, for them to withdraw home, and by refusing to share further in these base men's deeds, to clear themselves of everything into which they had been deceived into taking part."

Persuaded by this, the Idumaeans first released about two thousand of the citizens held in the prisons, who at once fled the city and made their way to Simon, whom we shall speak of shortly; then they departed from Jerusalem and went home. Their withdrawal turned out unexpectedly for both sides: the people, unaware of the Idumaeans' change of heart, took brief courage, feeling relieved of enemies, while the zealots grew still bolder, not as men abandoned by their allies but as men freed from those who had restrained and shamed them out of wrongdoing. There was no longer any hesitation or deliberation in their crimes; they used the swiftest schemes for everything, and carried out their decisions faster even than they conceived them. They killed above all for courage and noble birth, destroying the one out of envy and the other out of fear, for they supposed their only safety lay in leaving none of the powerful alive.

Among many others, Gurion was put to death in this way — a man preeminent in rank and family, democratic in spirit and as full of a free man's pride as any Jew; his outspokenness, more than his other advantages, destroyed him. Nor did Niger the Peraean escape their hands, a man who had proved himself outstanding in the wars against the Romans. Crying out repeatedly and displaying his scars, he was dragged through the middle of the city. When he had been brought outside the gates, despairing of his life, he begged only for burial; but they, having already threatened not to grant him the earth he most desired, carried out the killing.

As he was being put to death, Niger called down upon them the Romans as avengers, and famine and plague besides for their war-making, and above all, one another's hands turned against each other — all of which God ratified against these impious men, and most justly, for not long afterward, falling into civil strife among themselves, they were destined to taste this very madness they had unleashed on each other. Niger's death eased the zealots' fears about their own overthrow, yet there was no part of the people for whom some pretext for destruction was not devised: those who had once quarreled with any of them had long since been destroyed, while those who had given no offense found convenient charges laid against them in the very time of peace — the man who never approached them at all was suspected of arrogance, the man who approached boldly was suspected of contempt, and the man who paid court was suspected of scheming. For both the gravest charges and the most trivial there was but a single punishment, death, and no one escaped it unless he was utterly lowly, either through lack of standing or through fortune.

As for the Romans, all the other commanders, thinking the enemy's internal strife a godsend, were eager to move against the city and urged Vespasian on, as the man with authority over everything, saying that providence was fighting on their side by turning their enemies against one another; the moment was pressing, they said, and the Jews would soon come to terms with them again, either worn down by their own civil disasters or repenting of them.

Vespasian replied that they were badly mistaken in what the situation required, wanting, as if on a stage, to make a display of arms and manpower at needless risk, rather than looking to what was advantageous and safe. For if he moved against the city at once, he said, he would only unite the enemy and turn their strength, still at its height, against himself; but if he waited,

"they would need fewer troops, since the fighting would have used up the enemy's numbers. God, he said, made a better general than himself: he was handing the Jews over to the Romans without effort and granting the army its victory without danger. So while their enemies were destroying themselves with their own hands and suffering the worst of evils, civil strife, it was better to sit back as spectators of the danger than to come to grips with men bent on death and raging against one another. And if anyone thought the glory of a victory would be staler without a battle, he should recognize that a success won in quiet was more profitable than one gained through the hazard of arms; men who accomplished the same ends by self-control and judgment deserved no less credit than those who won distinction by force. Besides, while the enemy dwindled, his own army, given rest from its continuous labors, would be led on with fresh vigor. And in any case this was not the moment for those aiming at a brilliant victory: the Jews were not spending their time building weapons or walls or gathering allies, so that delay would only work against those providing such things; rather, ground down daily by civil war and dissension, they were suffering worse than anything the Romans could inflict on them once captured. Whether one looked to safety or to the greater glory of the achievement, there was no reason to attack men already sick at home: the victory, if won now, would rightly be credited not to the Romans but to the sedition itself."

When Vespasian said this the officers agreed, and at once the wisdom of the plan became evident, for many deserted daily, slipping away from the Zealots. Flight was difficult, however, since guards had blocked every way out and killed anyone caught trying to leave for the Romans, whatever the circumstances. Yet a man who paid money was let go, and only the one who did not pay was treated as a traitor, so that the rich bought their escape while only the poor were left to be slaughtered. Corpses piled up in great heaps along every road, and many who had set out to desert chose instead the destruction that awaited them within the city, since the hope of burial made death in one's own homeland seem the milder fate.

The rebels sank to such depths of cruelty that they would not allow burial either to those killed inside the city or to those lying along the roads, but, as though they had made a pact to overturn the laws of their country along with the laws of nature, they left the corpses to rot and decay under the sun, adding this pollution of the divine to their crimes against men. Death was the penalty even for burying a relative, a penalty shared with deserters, and a man who did this favor for another needed burial himself at once. In short, no decent human feeling was so thoroughly destroyed in that time of disaster as pity; for the very things that should have moved men to compassion instead provoked the criminals to fury, and they turned their rage from the living against the dead, and from the dead against the living. Such was the excess of their terror that survivors envied those already killed as men at rest, and those tortured in the prisons judged even the unburied dead more fortunate by comparison. Every human law was trampled underfoot, and the things of God were mocked, and they jeered at the oracles of the prophets as mere charlatans' tales.

Yet the prophets had foretold much about virtue and vice, and by transgressing these the Zealots brought to fulfillment even the prophecy spoken against their own country. For there was an old saying of certain men... that the city would be taken and the most holy place burned to the ground by the law of war, if ever sedition should seize it and native hands defile the temple of God first. The Zealots, not disbelieving this, made themselves the instruments of its fulfillment.

By now John, aspiring to tyranny, resented being treated as an equal among equals, and gradually, gathering to himself the worse sort of men, broke away from the party's common counsel. Always disregarding the decisions of the others and giving his own orders in a more despotic manner, he made it clear he was aiming at sole rule. Some yielded to him out of fear, others out of goodwill, for he was skilled at winning men over by deceit and by speech, and many judged it safer for their own security that responsibility for what was being dared should rest on one man rather than on many. His effectiveness in both action and counsel provided him no small bodyguard. A great number of those opposing him, meanwhile, held back, for although resentment was strong among men who thought it a hard thing to be subjected to one who had lately been their equal, caution about his monarchy proved the stronger restraint; they had no hope of easily overthrowing him once he had gained full power, and feared he would find a pretext against them for having opposed his rise in the first place. Each of them therefore preferred to suffer anything at all by fighting rather than to be enslaved willingly and perish in the condition of a slave. So the sedition split along these lines, and John set himself up as a rival king against those opposed to him. Yet in their dealings with one another they kept to a wary watch, and there was little or no exchange of missile fire between them; instead they competed against the common people, rivaling one another over which side would carry off the greater plunder. And since the city was battered by three of the greatest evils at once — war, tyranny, and sedition — by comparison the war seemed the milder to the ordinary people; indeed many, fleeing their own countrymen, escaped to the foreigners and found among the Romans the safety they had despaired of finding among their own.

A fourth evil now stirred toward the nation's ruin. There was a very strong fortress not far from Jerusalem, built by the ancient kings both as a refuge for their property in the crises of war and as a place of safety for themselves, called Masada. Those known as the Sicarii, having seized this stronghold, at first only raided the neighboring districts to secure supplies, being restrained by fear from any greater plundering. But once they learned that the Roman army was inactive and that the Jews in Jerusalem were split by their own sedition and tyranny, they turned to bolder ventures. During the festival of Unleavened Bread, which the Jews celebrate as a memorial of deliverance, when after their slavery under the Egyptians they returned to their ancestral land, they slipped past those in their way by night and overran a small town called Engaddi. There they scattered and drove out of the town, before it could take up arms and rally, those capable of resisting, and killed more than seven hundred of those less able to flee — women and children. Then, having stripped the houses and seized the ripest of the crops, they carried it all off to Masada. From there they plundered every village around the fortress and laid waste the whole countryside, with no small number joining them daily from every quarter.

Banditry, which had until then lain quiet, now stirred throughout the rest of Judea's districts as well, just as when the ruling organ of a body inflames, every limb falls sick along with it; for because of the sedition and disorder in the capital, the wicked out in the countryside gained free rein. Each band plundered its own district and then withdrew into the wilderness. Gathering together and conspiring by companies, too numerous for an army but too few for mere brigandage, they fell upon shrines and towns, and those they attacked suffered as if caught in open war, while their own defenses were always too late, since the raiders fled with their plunder like common thieves. There was no part of Judea that did not share in the ruin of the leading city.

All this was reported to Vespasian by deserters. For although the rebels guarded every way out and killed anyone who tried in any way to leave, still there were some who slipped through and, taking refuge with the Romans, urged the general to come to the city's aid and save what remained of its people; because of their goodwill toward Rome, they said, most had already been killed and those who survived were in danger. Vespasian, already pitying their misfortunes, moved against Jerusalem seemingly to besiege it outright, but in truth to free it from siege. Yet first he needed to subdue what remained elsewhere and leave nothing outside to hinder the siege. So he advanced to Gadara, the strong capital of Perea, and entered the city on the fourth of the month Dystrus.

For the leading men of the city had secretly, unknown to the rebels, sent envoys to him about surrender, desiring peace and anxious for their property — many wealthy men lived in Gadara. The rival faction had known nothing of this embassy, and when Vespasian was already close by they learned of it. They saw they could not hold the city themselves, being outnumbered by their enemies within and seeing the Romans not far off, and though they resolved to flee, they were ashamed to do so without bloodshed and without first exacting some punishment from those responsible. So they seized Dolesus — a man first not only in rank and birth in the city but also thought responsible for the embassy — killed him, and in their excess of rage abused his corpse before fleeing the city. As the Roman force drew near, the people of Gadara received Vespasian with acclamations, received pledges of good faith from him, and were given a garrison of cavalry and infantry to guard against the raids of the fugitives; they themselves had torn down their wall before even asking the Romans to do so, so as to give proof that they loved peace by making themselves unable to wage war even if they wished it.

Vespasian sent Placidus with five hundred cavalry and three thousand infantry against those who had fled from Gadara, while he himself returned with the rest of the army to Caesarea. The fugitives, catching sudden sight of the pursuing cavalry before coming to close quarters, crowded together into a village called Bethennabris. There, finding no small number of young men, they armed them, some willingly and some by force, in a haphazard fashion, and rushed out against Placidus's men.

At the first charge these gave a little ground, cunningly drawing the enemy further from the wall; then, once they had them at a convenient distance, they wheeled around and hurled javelins at them. The cavalry cut off those trying to flee, while the infantry vigorously destroyed those still engaged in close fighting. The Jews, for all their display of daring, gained nothing by it; falling upon Romans drawn up in close order, walled in as it were by their armor, they themselves found no gap through which to strike and had not the strength to break the line, while they were pierced by the enemy's missiles, and, like the most savage of beasts, rushed onto the steel; some fell struck in the face by swords, others scattered by the horsemen.

Placidus was intent on cutting off their routes back to the village. Wheeling continually along that side and then turning back, using his javelins with unerring aim, he killed those who came close and, through fear, turned back those still at a distance, until the bravest of them forced their way through and fled to the wall. Uncertainty gripped the guards there: they could not bring themselves to shut out the men from Gadara because of their own kinsmen inside, and yet if they let them in they expected to perish along with them — which is exactly what happened. As the fugitives were pressed against the wall, the Roman cavalry very nearly forced their way in along with them; but even though the defenders managed to close the gates first, Placidus pressed the attack and, fighting bravely until evening, gained control of the wall and of those inside the village. The unresisting mass was destroyed, while the more capable fled; the soldiers plundered the houses and set the village on fire.

Those who had escaped from it roused the people of the countryside, and, magnifying their own disasters and claiming that the whole Roman army was advancing, shook everyone everywhere with terror; gathering in vast numbers, they fled toward Jericho, since this alone still kept alive their hopes of safety, being strong in the number of its inhabitants. Placidus, emboldened by his cavalry and his preceding successes, pursued them, killing all he overtook as far as the Jordan, and then, driving the whole mass to the river, drew up his line facing them, for they were hemmed in by the current, which, swollen by rains, was impassable. Necessity drove men with nowhere left to flee into battle, and stretching themselves out as far as possible along the banks they received the Roman missiles and cavalry charges, which struck down many of them into the stream.

Fifteen thousand perished in this close fighting, while the number forced to leap into the Jordan by compulsion, and those who leapt in of their own accord, was beyond counting. About two thousand two hundred were taken prisoner, along with an immense quantity of plunder — donkeys, sheep, camels, and cattle. To the Jews this blow seemed no less severe, and even greater, than any before it, not only because the whole region through which they fled was filled with slaughter and the Jordan itself became impassable because of the corpses, but because even the Dead Sea was filled with bodies swept down by the river in vast numbers.

Placidus, favored by good fortune, pressed on against the surrounding towns and villages, capturing Abila, Julias, and Besimoth, and all the towns as far as the Dead Sea, stationing in each the deserters best suited for the task. Then, putting his soldiers aboard boats, he seized those who had taken refuge on the lake. And so all of Perea submitted or was taken, as far as Machaerus.

Meanwhile news arrived of the uprising in Gaul, of Vindex's revolt together with the leading men of the region against Nero — events recorded in greater detail elsewhere. This report spurred Vespasian on toward the war, since he already foresaw the civil wars to come and the danger threatening the whole empire, thinking that by first pacifying the East he would ease the fears troubling Italy. So while winter still held, he secured the districts already subdued, garrisoning villages and towns, setting decurions over the villages and centurions over the towns, and rebuilding much of what had been destroyed. At the beginning of spring he took the greater part of his force and led it from Caesarea to Antipatris, where he spent two days settling affairs in the city and on the third advanced,

burning and plundering all the surrounding country. Having subdued the region of the toparchy of Thamna, he moved on to Lydda and Jamnia, and after bringing both under control he installed in each enough settlers from among those who had already come over, and arrived at Emmaus. There, seizing the passes leading to the capital, he fortified a camp, and, leaving the Fifth Legion behind in it, advanced with the rest of his force toward Bethleptenpha.

...toparchy. He destroyed it and the neighboring one by fire, and fortified the surrounding forts of Idumea at strategic points. Then, seizing the two most central villages of Idumea, Bethabris and Caphartobas, he killed more than ten thousand and took more than a thousand prisoners, drove out the rest of the population, and stationed there no small part of his own force, who ranged the whole hill country and ravaged it.

He himself returned with the remainder of the army to Ammaus, and from there, through Samaria and past the town called Neapolis, or Mabartha by the local people, he came down to Korea and camped on the second of the month Daisios. On the following day he arrived at Jericho, where he was joined by Trajan, one of his commanders, bringing the force from Peraea, which had by then subdued the region across the Jordan.

Most of the great multitude from Jericho had escaped their approach in time, fleeing into the hill country opposite Jerusalem, but a considerable number who were left behind were destroyed. They found the city deserted. It lies in a plain, above which rises a bare, fruitless mountain of very great length: on the north it extends to the territory of Scythopolis, and on the south to the region of Sodom and the far end of the Dead Sea.

The whole of it is rugged and uninhabited because of its barrenness. Facing it, on the other side, is the mountain range along the Jordan, beginning at Julias and the northern regions and running south to Somoron, which marks the boundary of Arabian Petra. In this range is also the mountain called the Iron Mountain, extending as far as Moabitis. The land between the two ranges is called the Great Plain, reaching from the village of Ginnabris to the Dead Sea. Its length is twelve hundred stadia and its width one hundred and twenty; it is divided in the middle by the Jordan and contains two lakes, the Dead Sea and the Sea of Tiberias, of opposite character to one another—

the one salty and barren, that of Tiberias sweet and fruitful. In summer the plain is scorched, and because of the extreme dryness the air there breeds disease, for it is entirely without water except for the Jordan. For this reason the palm groves along its banks are more flourishing and productive than those set farther back. Near Jericho, however, there is a spring, abundant and excellent for irrigation, welling up beside the old city which Joshua son of Nun, the general of the Hebrews, was the first to take by force of arms from the land of the Canaanites.

Tradition holds that this spring at first not only blighted the fruits of the earth and the trees but also women's wombs, and was in every way unhealthy and destructive, until it was tamed and made instead the most wholesome and fertile of springs by Elisha the prophet, a disciple and successor of Elijah. Elisha, having been a guest among the people of Jericho, and finding them unusually hospitable toward him, repaid both the people and the land with a lasting favor. He went out to the spring, cast into its flow a clay vessel full of salt, then raised his right hand toward heaven in righteousness

and poured out upon the ground libations of appeasement, asking that the flow be softened and sweeter veins opened, and that a more fertile air be blended with the stream, granting the local people at once abundance of crops and continuance of children, and that the water which produces these should never fail them, so long as they remained just. Having performed many further rites over these prayers according to his skill, he transformed the spring, and

the water which had once been the cause of childlessness and famine among them became from that time on the source of fruitful offspring and plenty. Indeed, its power in irrigation is so great that even if it merely touches a field, the effect is more nourishing than that of waters which linger there a long time. For this reason those who use it lavishly gain little benefit, while the small amount required yields an abundant supply. It waters more land than all

the other springs together—a plain seventy stadia long and twenty wide—and nurtures within it the loveliest and most luxuriant orchards. Among the irrigated palm trees are many varieties differing in taste and quality; the richer of these, when pressed, yield an abundant honey not much inferior to the rest. The land is also good for bees, and produces opobalsam as well, the most valuable of its fruits, along with henna and myrobalanum, so that one would not be wrong to call the place divine, since it produces the rarest and finest things in abundance. For its other fruits, hardly any region of the inhabited world could easily be compared to it—so richly does what is sown there multiply. The cause, it seems to me, is the heat of the air and

the vigor of the waters, the one drawing forth and spreading what grows, the other, by its moisture, rooting each plant firmly and supplying it strength through the summer heat. So scorching is the region that no one can easily go about in it. The water, drawn before dawn and then exposed to the open air, becomes very cold, taking on a nature opposite to its surroundings; in winter, on the contrary, it grows warm

and is most pleasant to those who bathe in it. The surrounding air, too, is so temperate that the local people wear linen while the rest of Judea is covered in snow. It is a hundred and fifty stadia from Jerusalem and sixty from the Jordan. The stretch toward Jerusalem is desert and rocky, while that toward the Jordan and the Dead Sea, though lower-lying, is likewise desert

and barren. But enough has been said, sufficiently, about the region of Jericho and its great prosperity. It is worth also describing the nature of the Dead Sea, which is, as I said, bitter and barren, yet by its buoyancy carries even the heaviest objects thrown into it back up to the surface, and it is not easy even for one who tries to sink to its bottom. Vespasian, indeed, having come to see it out of curiosity,

ordered some men who could not swim to be bound behind the hands and thrown into the depths, and it happened that all of them floated up, as though forced upward by some wind. There is also, in connection with this, a remarkable change of color: three times each day the surface alters its appearance and gives back the rays of the sun in different hues. In many places it casts up black lumps of bitumen,

which float on the surface, resembling in shape and size headless bulls. The workers of the lake row out and, taking hold of the floating mass, haul it into their boats, but once the boat is full it is not easy to cut the bitumen free—by its own tenacity it clings to the boat—until it is dissolved with the menstrual blood and urine of women, the only things to which it yields. It is useful

not only for caulking ships but also for the healing of bodies, and it is mixed into many medicines. The length of this lake is five hundred and eighty stadia, extending as far as Zoar in Arabia, and its width a hundred and fifty. Bordering it is the region of Sodom, once a prosperous land because of its crops and the wealth of its cities, but now

entirely burned. It is said that because of the impiety of its inhabitants it was consumed by lightning, and indeed there remain to this day traces of the divine fire, and the shadows of five cities can still be seen, and ashes still form again even within the fruits, which have the color of things edible but, when plucked by the hand, dissolve into smoke and ash. Thus the things told of the land of Sodom find confirmation

in what can be seen with one's own eyes. Vespasian, meanwhile, walling in on every side those in Jerusalem, raised camps at Jericho and at Adida and stationed garrisons in both, drawn from the Roman and allied forces. He also sent Lucius Annius to Gerasa, giving him a squadron of cavalry and a considerable number of infantry. Taking the city at the first assault, he killed

a thousand of the young men who had not managed to flee in time, took the women and children captive, and allowed the soldiers to plunder their property; then, after burning the houses, he advanced against the surrounding villages. The strong fled and the weaker perished, and all that was left behind was set on fire. And with the war having by now spread over the whole of the hill country and the plain alike, those in

Jerusalem had every way out cut off from them: those who wished to desert were watched closely by the Zealots, while those not yet inclined toward the Romans were held in by the army, which surrounded the city on every side. But when Vespasian had returned to Caesarea and was preparing to march with his whole force against Jerusalem itself, word reached him that Nero had been killed, after reigning thirteen years and eight days. Concerning him,

how he abused his power outrageously, entrusting affairs to the vilest of men, Nymphidius and Tigellinus, unworthy freedmen; and how, plotted against by them, he was abandoned by all his guards, and fled with four faithful freedmen to the outskirts of the city, where he took his own life; and how those who brought him down soon paid the penalty for it; the

war in Gaul and how it ended; how Galba, proclaimed emperor, returned to Rome from Spain, and how, accused by the soldiers of stinginess, he was murdered in the middle of the Roman forum, and Otho was proclaimed emperor in his place; Otho's campaign against Vitellius's generals and its collapse; then the disturbances under Vitellius and the

fighting at the Capitol; and how Antonius Primus and Mucianus destroyed Vitellius and the German legions and put an end to the civil war—all this I have chosen not to relate in detail, since it is tiresome to everyone and has been recorded by many writers, both Greek and Roman. But for the sake of the continuity of events, and so that the history should not be disjointed, I note each of them briefly. Vespasian, then,

at first put off the campaign against Jerusalem, watching to see into whose hands power would fall after Nero. Then, hearing that Galba was emperor, he took no action before writing to him as well about the war, but sent his son Titus to greet him and to receive his instructions concerning Judea. For the same reasons King Agrippa sailed to Galba together with Titus.

Since it was winter, they sailed around by way of Achaia in large ships, but news reached them that Galba had been killed after seven months and as many days, and that Otho had taken over the government, claiming the throne for himself. Agrippa resolved to go on to Rome regardless, undeterred by the change; but Titus, moved by some divine impulse, sailed from Greece

to Syria and reached Caesarea quickly, to rejoin his father. Those preoccupied with the larger crisis, now that Roman rule itself was shaken, set aside the campaign against the Jews, judging that an attack on a foreign people was ill-timed while they feared for their own homeland. Meanwhile another war arose against Jerusalem. There was a son of Gioras,

a certain Simon, a native of Gerasa, a young man inferior in cunning to John, who already held the city, but superior in bodily strength and daring. For this reason, exiled by the high priest Ananus from the toparchy of Acrabetene, which he held, he came to the bandits occupying Masada. At first they regarded him with suspicion, and so allowed him

to enter only the lower fortress, along with the women he brought with him, while they themselves occupied the higher ground. Later, however, because his character resembled their own and he seemed trustworthy, he went out raiding with them and helped plunder the country around Masada. Yet he could not persuade them to attempt greater things, for they, accustomed to the fortress, were afraid to go far from it, as if leaving a den, while he,

aspiring to power and great things, on hearing of Ananus's death withdrew into the hill country, and by proclaiming freedom to slaves and reward to free men, gathered around him the wicked from every quarter. Once his band had grown strong, he overran the villages of the hill country, and as more men continually joined him, he grew bold enough to descend into the lower regions. And when he had by now become a terror to whole cities, many

of the powerful were corrupted by the strength of his position and the steady run of his successes, so that his force was no longer one of slaves and bandits alone, but included not a few ordinary citizens who obeyed him as they would a king. He overran the toparchy of Acrabetene and the territory as far as greater Idumea, for at a village called Ain he built a wall and used it as a fortress for security, while at the ravine

called Pheretae he enlarged many caves and found many more already suited to his purpose, and used them as storehouses for his treasure and receptacles for his plunder. He deposited there, too, the crops he had seized, and many of his companies made their quarters in those caves. It was plain that he was training his force and making preparations against Jerusalem. For this reason the Zealots, fearing his design against them and

wishing to forestall the threat that was being nurtured against them, went out in full force, most of them armed. Simon met them, and drawing up his men for battle, killed a good many of them and drove the rest back into the city. Not yet confident enough in his strength to attack the walls, he undertook first to subdue Idumea, and with twenty thousand heavy infantry he marched against its borders.

The rulers of Idumea, quickly gathering from the country the most warlike men, about twenty-five thousand, and leaving the greater number to guard their own property against the raids of the sicarii of Masada, met Simon at the border. There, engaging him and fighting through the whole day, they came apart neither victors nor vanquished, and he withdrew to

Nain, while the Idumeans dispersed to their homes. Not long after, Simon set out again into their territory with a greater force, and having camped near a village called Tekoa, close to the garrison at Herodium, he sent one of his companions, a certain Eleazar, to persuade them to surrender the fortress. The guards received him eagerly, not knowing the reason for which he had come.

When the man spoke of surrender, they drew their swords and went after him, and with no room left to run he threw himself off the wall into the ravine below. He died on the spot, but the Idumeans, already dreading Simon's strength, decided to reconnoiter the enemy's forces before engaging. One of their commanders, Jacob, readily volunteered for the mission, with treachery in mind.

Setting out from Alurus—for it was there that the Idumean army had then gathered—he came to Simon and arranged to hand over his own home town to him first, taking oaths that he would always be treated with honor, and he promised to help him against the whole of Idumea besides. Simon received him warmly and feasted him, and, buoyed by splendid promises, once he had returned to his own men he first lied to them, claiming Simon's army was many times its true size; then, ingratiating himself with the commanders and, group by group, with the whole body of men, he pressed them to accept Simon and hand over the entire command to him without a fight. While engineering this, he also kept sending messengers to Simon, promising to scatter the Idumeans—a promise he kept.

For when the army was already close, he was the first to leap onto his horse and flee, along with his fellow conspirators. Panic seized the whole force, and before battle was joined they broke ranks and each man withdrew to his own home. Simon, against all expectation, rode into Idumea without shedding blood, and, attacking unexpectedly, took the small town of Hebron first, where he seized a great deal of plunder and looted a vast quantity of produce.

According to the local people, Hebron is older not only than any town in that region but even than Memphis in Egypt—they reckon its age at twenty-three hundred years. They also tell the legend that it was the dwelling place of Abraham, ancestor of the Jews, after his migration from Mesopotamia, and that his children went down from there into Egypt. Their tombs are still shown to this day in that small town, worked in very fine marble with great craftsmanship. Six stadia from the town a huge terebinth tree is also pointed out, and they say the tree has survived from the creation of the world down to the present.

From there Simon advanced through the whole of Idumea, not only sacking villages and towns but ravaging the countryside as well: apart from his regular troops, forty thousand men followed him, so that supplies could not meet the demand of such numbers. To their needs was added his own savagery and his rage against the people, which made the devastation of Idumea all the worse. Just as one can see a whole forest stripped bare in the wake of locusts, so a wasteland was left behind Simon's army.

Some places they burned, others they razed to the ground; everything growing in the countryside they either destroyed by trampling underfoot or consumed by grazing, and the cultivated ground, worn hard by the marching columns, they left harder than the barren land. In short, no trace was left to those who had been plundered that anything had ever stood there.

This roused the zealots once again, though they were too afraid to meet him openly in battle; instead they set an ambush along the roads and seized Simon's wife, along with a good number of her attendants. Then they returned to the city rejoicing, as though they had captured Simon himself, expecting that he would lay down his arms at once and beg for his wife's return. But no pity entered him—only rage over the woman who had been seized. He came to the wall of Jerusalem and, like a wounded animal that cannot reach the one who wounded it, vented his fury on whomever he found.

Any who had gone out beyond the gates to gather vegetables or firewood—unarmed men, old men—he seized, tortured, and killed, so consumed with anger that he came close to tasting the bodies of the dead. Many others he mutilated by cutting off their hands and sent them back into the city, both to terrify the enemy and to try to turn the people against those responsible.

He instructed them to say that Simon swore by God, overseer of all things, that unless they returned his wife to him at once, he would breach the wall and treat everyone in the city the same way, sparing no age and making no distinction between the guilty and the innocent. At this, not only the people but the zealots themselves were terrified, and they sent his wife back to him. For a while, appeased, he took a brief rest from his continual killing.

It was not only in Judea that there was civil strife and war, but in Italy as well. Galba had been killed in the very middle of the Roman forum, and Otho, proclaimed emperor, was at war with Vitellius, who aspired to the throne, for the legions in Germany had chosen him. A battle took place at Bedriacum in Gaul against Valens and Caecina, Vitellius's generals: on the first day Otho had the advantage, on the second the army of Vitellius. After great slaughter, Otho took his own life at Brixellum on learning of the defeat, having held power for two days and three months; his army then went over to Vitellius's generals, and Vitellius himself marched down into Rome with his forces.

Meanwhile Vespasian, setting out from Caesarea on the fifth of the month Daisios, advanced against the parts of Judea not yet subdued. Going up into the hill country he took two toparchies, the one called Gophnitic and the one called Acrabetene, and after them the small towns of Bethel and Ephraim; having posted garrisons in these, he rode as far as Jerusalem on horseback. Many were killed in the taking of these places, and many more taken captive.

Cerealis, one of his commanders, took a detachment of cavalry and infantry and laid waste what is called Upper Idumea; he took the sham little town of Caphethra by storm and burned it, then attacked another called Charabis and laid siege to it. Its wall was very strong, and though he expected to be delayed there a long time, the defenders suddenly threw open the gates, came out bearing olive branches, and surrendered themselves.

Having received their submission, Cerealis moved on against Hebron, another very ancient city, which lies, as I have said, in the hill country not far from Jerusalem. Forcing his way in, he put to the sword every one of military age he found there and burned the town. With everything now subdued except Herodium, Masada, and Machaerus—which were held by the bandits—the Romans now had Jerusalem itself in their sights.

As for Simon, once he had rescued his wife from the zealots he turned back again to what remained of Idumea, and, driving the population from every side, forced most of them to flee to Jerusalem. He himself followed close on the city, and, encircling the wall once more, killed any laborers from the countryside whom he caught approaching. To the people, Simon outside was more terrifying than the Romans, and the zealots within were harsher than either; and among these, in cruelty of invention and daring, the band of the Galileans surpassed the rest. It was they who had raised John to power, and he in turn, in return for the dominance they had won for him, allowed each of them to do whatever he pleased.

Their appetite for plunder knew no limit; they searched the houses of the wealthy, murdered men and outraged women for sport, and, still smeared with blood, gorged on what they had stolen, then, growing bold, gave themselves over unashamed to effeminate excess—braiding their hair, putting on women's clothing, drenching themselves in perfume, and lining their eyes for beauty's sake. Not content with imitating women's dress, they imitated their passions too, and, carried to depraved extremes, devised forbidden forms of lust, wallowing in the city as though it were a brothel and defiling it entirely with unclean deeds.

With faces made womanish, they killed with their right hands, and mincing along in their walk they would suddenly turn into warriors, drawing swords from beneath their dyed cloaks and running through whomever they met. Those fleeing from John, Simon received still more murderously, and any man who escaped the tyrant within the wall was destroyed by the one stationed before the gates. Every road of escape was cut off for those wishing to desert to the Romans.

The force under John was itself torn by faction, and all the Idumeans in it broke away and moved against the tyrant, out of both envy of his power and hatred of his cruelty. Joining battle, they killed many of the zealots and drove the rest into the royal courtyard built by Grapte, a woman related to Izates, king of Adiabene. The Idumeans burst in with them, and from there drove the zealots out into the temple, then turned to plundering John's wealth—for it was in that same courtyard that he himself had been staying, and there he had stored the spoils of his tyranny. Meanwhile the zealots who had been scattered throughout the city gathered in the temple with those who had escaped there, and John made ready to lead them down against the people and the Idumeans.

But these, though the more warlike of the two sides, were less afraid of a direct assault than of the men's desperation—that they might slip out of the temple by night, kill them, and set the city ablaze. So they met together with the chief priests and deliberated on how best to guard against the attack. But God, it seems, turned their counsels to a bad end, and they devised a remedy for their safety worse than destruction itself: in order to bring John down, they resolved to admit Simon, and with entreaties bring in a second tyrant over themselves. The plan went forward, and they sent the high priest Matthias to beg Simon—the very man they had so feared—to enter. Those from Jerusalem who had fled to the zealots joined in the appeal too, longing for their homes and property.

Simon, granting their request with an arrogant nod of consent to become their master, entered as though he would free the city from the zealots, hailed by the people as its savior and protector; but once inside with his forces, he turned his attention to securing his own power, and counted those who had called him in no less his enemies than those against whom he had been summoned. In this way Simon gained control of Jerusalem in the third year of the war, in the month Xanthicus.

John and the mass of the zealots, now shut out from the exits of the temple and having lost their hold on the city—for Simon's men immediately plundered their property—found themselves in desperate straits for safety. Simon assaulted the temple with the people's support, but the defenders, stationed on the porticoes and battlements, beat back the assaults. Many of Simon's men fell and many more were carried off wounded, for the zealots, shooting down from higher ground, made their shots easy and unerring. Taking advantage of their position, they built four huge additional towers so as to shoot from an even greater height: one at the northeast corner, one above the Xystus, a third at another corner opposite the lower city, and the last above the roof of the priests' chambers, where by custom a priest stood each week to announce with a trumpet, at evening, the coming in of the Sabbath, and again its ending, at one time proclaiming rest to the people, at another the resumption of work. On these towers they set up dart-throwers and stone-throwers, along with archers and slingers.

At this point Simon began to press his assaults more cautiously, since the greater part of his men had lost heart, but he still held on thanks to his superior numbers; meanwhile missiles from the engines, carrying farther, killed many of the combatants. At about this same time, grievous troubles also beset Rome. Vitellius arrived from Germany bringing with him, along with his soldiers, another huge crowd besides, and, since the quarters assigned to the troops could not hold them, he turned the whole of Rome into a military camp and filled every house with armed men. These men, unused to seeing such Roman wealth, and surrounded on every side by silver and gold, could barely restrain their greed from turning to plunder and killing anyone who stood in their way. Such was the state of affairs in Italy.

Vespasian, having subdued the areas near Jerusalem, returned to Caesarea and heard of the disturbances in Rome and of Vitellius's proclamation as emperor. This news provoked him to anger, skilled as he was in obeying no less than in commanding well; he thought it beneath him to accept as master a man who had run riot over a leaderless empire, and, deeply pained by the situation, he could not bear to endure the outrage, yet with his homeland being torn apart he could not turn his attention to other wars either. But as much as his anger drove him toward retaliation, so much did the thought of the distance restrain him—fortune, playing many tricks, might well have anticipated him before he could cross over into Italy, especially sailing in winter—and so he kept his seething rage in check for the time.

But his commanders and soldiers, meeting together in their companies, were already openly discussing a change of regime, and cried out indignantly that the soldiers at Rome, living in luxury and unable to bear even the rumor of war, chose emperors as they pleased and proclaimed men to the throne in hope of gain, while they themselves, who had gone through so many hardships and were growing old under their helmets, were handing power to others when they had among themselves a man far more worthy to rule. What juster reward could they ever give in return for their own goodwill toward him, if they let slip the present opportunity?

Vespasian, they said, had as much more right to rule than Vitellius as they themselves had over the men who had proclaimed Vitellius—for they had waged wars no smaller than those fought in Germany, nor had they been defeated in arms by those who had brought the tyrant to power. And there would be no need of a contest, for neither the Senate nor the Roman people would tolerate Vitellius's debauchery in place of Vespasian's self-control, nor choose a most brutal tyrant in place of a good ruler, nor a childless protector in place of a father—for nothing mattered more to the security of peace than legitimate succession of rulers. So then, if it was fitting that rule belong to the experience of age, they had Vespasian; if to the vigor of youth, Titus—for the advantages of both their ages would be blended together. They themselves would furnish not only

their own strength to the men proclaimed, but, holding three legions and the alliances of the client kings, they had preserved everything toward the east and whatever part of Europe was free from fear of Vitellius, as well as the allies in Italy—Vespasian's brother and his other son—of whom many young men of rank would attach themselves to the one, while the other also commanded the garrison of the city.

...had been entrusted to them — no small part of a bid for supreme power. And in any case, if they themselves were slow to act, the senate, they said, would soon appoint some man dishonored by the very soldiers who had kept him safe. Such was the talk that ran through the ranks in knots of soldiers. Then, gathering together and cheering each other on, they proclaimed Vespasian emperor and begged him to save the empire now in danger. He had long been anxious about the state of affairs as a whole, but he had no intention of ruling himself; he judged himself worthy by his deeds, yet he preferred the safety of a private life to the dangers of splendor. When he refused, the officers pressed him all the harder, and the soldiers crowded around him, swords drawn, threatening to kill him if he would not consent to live as he deserved. After many efforts to fend off the command, when he could not persuade them, he finally yielded to those who had named him.

When Mucianus and the other officers now urged him, as emperor, to lead the rest of the army against every remaining rival, he turned first to the affairs of Alexandria, knowing that Egypt was the greatest part of the empire because it supplied the grain; if he held it, he hoped, should the war drag on, to bring down Vitellius even by force, since the populace of Rome would not endure hunger — and he also wanted to win over the two legions stationed at Alexandria. He also had in mind that the country would serve as a bulwark against the uncertainties of fortune.

For Egypt is hard to invade by land and harborless along its coast: to the west it is fronted by the waterless wastes of Libya, to the south by Syene, which marks the border with Ethiopia, and by the Nile's cataracts, impossible to sail; to the east, the Red Sea, which spreads up to Coptos. Its northern wall is the land stretching to Syria and the sea called Egyptian, all of it without anchorage. Egypt is thus walled on every side. The distance between Pelusium and Syene is two thousand stades, and the voyage up from Plinthine to Pelusium is three thousand six hundred stades. The Nile is navigable as far as the city called Elephantine, beyond which the cataracts already mentioned bar further passage. Even in peacetime the harbor of Alexandria is difficult for ships to approach, for its entrance is narrow and its straight course is bent by submerged rocks. Its left side is fortified with man-made moles, and on the right lies the island called Pharos, which carries a very great tower that beams fire to sailors from three hundred stades away, so that ships can anchor by night far off, given how difficult the approach is. Around this island enormous man-made walls have been built; the sea, dashing against them and breaking on the barriers opposite, roughens the channel and makes the narrow entrance treacherous. Yet the harbor within is perfectly safe, thirty stades across, and into it are brought whatever the country lacks for its prosperity, while its own surplus goods are dispersed to the whole inhabited world.

Vespasian, then, reasonably set his sights on affairs there to secure the whole empire, and at once wrote to Tiberius Alexander, who governed Egypt and Alexandria, informing him of the army's enthusiasm and explaining that he had taken up the burden of empire out of necessity, and was enlisting him as a partner and helper. Alexander read the letter aloud and eagerly swore in the legions and the populace to Vespasian's cause; both obeyed gladly, knowing the man's merit from his command nearby. And so, with authority now entrusted to him, Alexander began preparing matters relating to the government and to Vespasian's arrival.

But rumor outran even his planning and announced the new emperor of the East everywhere, and every city held festival, offering good tidings and sacrifices on his behalf. The legions in Moesia and Pannonia, which shortly before had been stirred by Vitellius's daring bid, now swore allegiance to Vespasian with even greater joy. He himself moved from Caesarea to Berytus, where many delegations met him, both from Syria and from the other provinces, bringing crowns and decrees of congratulation from each city. Mucianus too, the governor of the province, was present, reporting the enthusiasm of the peoples and the oaths sworn city by city.

As fortune everywhere advanced according to his wishes and affairs had for the most part come together favorably, it now occurred to Vespasian to reflect that it was not without divine providence that he had laid hold of power, but that some just fate had brought the mastery of the whole world round to him. He recalled the other signs, many of which had appeared to him everywhere foretelling his rule, and also the words of Josephus, who while Nero still lived had dared to address him as emperor.

He was struck that this man was still a prisoner in his custody, and summoning Mucianus together with his other officers and friends, he first related Josephus's energetic conduct and all that they had suffered at Jotapata because of him, and then the prophecies, which he himself had at the time suspected were fabrications born of fear, but which time and events had proven divine. "It is shameful, then," he said, "that the man who foretold my rule and served as the mouthpiece of God's voice should still endure the status of a captive or the fortune of a prisoner." And calling Josephus to him, he ordered that he be freed. At this act of requital toward a foreigner, the officers found themselves hoping for splendid things concerning their own prospects as well. Titus, who was with his father, said, "Father, it is right that along with his chains Josephus's disgrace also be removed. He will become as though he had never been bound at all, if instead of releasing his fetters we simply cut them through — for that is what is done in the case of those who were bound without just cause." This was agreed, and someone came forward and severed the chain with an axe. Josephus, having received this as a reward for his earlier services, now also carried full credibility regarding what was yet to come.

Vespasian, having given audience to the embassies, and having appointed governors for each province justly and through worthy men, arrived at Antioch. Deliberating where to turn, he judged the affairs of Rome more urgent than his drive toward Alexandria, seeing that Egypt was secure while Italy was in turmoil under Vitellius. He therefore sent Mucianus into Italy, entrusting him with a substantial force of cavalry and infantry. Mucianus, fearing to sail because of the depth of winter, led the army on foot through Cappadocia and Phrygia.

Meanwhile Antonius Primus, taking up the third legion of the Moesian forces, of which he happened to be in command there, hastened to give battle to Vitellius. Vitellius sent Caecina Alienus to meet him with a large force, placing great confidence in the man because of his victory over Otho. Caecina, marching swiftly from Rome, caught up with Antonius near Cremona in Gaul; this city lies on the border of Italy. Seeing there the size and good order of the enemy forces, he did not dare to engage, and reckoning retreat too dangerous, he plotted treason instead. Gathering the centurions and tribunes under his command, he urged them to go over to Antonius, disparaging Vitellius's position and extolling Vespasian's strength, saying that with one man lay only the name of power, with the other its substance, and that they themselves would do better to anticipate necessity and turn it to their advantage, forestalling with their judgment a danger they were bound to lose by arms — for Vespasian, he said, was capable of acquiring even what he still lacked without their help, while Vitellius could not even keep what he had, even with it.

With many such arguments he persuaded them, and deserted to Antonius along with his force. But that same night remorse fell upon the soldiers, along with fear of the man they had sent ahead should he prevail; drawing their swords, they set out to kill Caecina, and the deed would have been done had the tribunes not thrown themselves down and begged them off. They held back from killing him, but bound the traitor, intending to send him to Vitellius. On hearing this, Primus at once roused his own men and led them under arms against the mutineers. These drew up in battle order and held out briefly, but then broke and fled into Cremona. Primus, taking his cavalry, cut off their approaches to the city, surrounded the greater part of the crowd before the walls and destroyed them, and having broken in with the rest, gave the town over to his soldiers to plunder. There many foreign merchants perished, and many of the local people, and the whole army of Vitellius besides — thirty thousand two hundred men; of the Moesian forces Antonius lost four thousand five hundred. He freed Caecina and sent him to Vespasian to report what had happened; and when he arrived, Vespasian received him and covered over the disgrace of his treason with honors beyond his hopes. Meanwhile in Rome, Sabinus took new heart as word came that Antonius was near, and gathering the cohorts of the night watch, seized the Capitol by night. By day many distinguished men joined him, including Domitian, his brother's son — the greatest asset of all for their hopes of prevailing.

Vitellius cared little for Primus, but was enraged at those who had defected with Sabinus, and driven by his innate savagery and thirst for the blood of noble soldiers, he unleashed the force that had come down with him upon the Capitol. Much daring was shown on both sides, from this force and from those fighting from the temple, but in the end the Germans, overwhelming them by numbers, took the hill. Domitian, along with many Romans of rank, escaped by what seemed almost divine intervention; the rest of the crowd was cut down entirely, and Sabinus, led before Vitellius, was put to death. The soldiers plundered the temple's offerings and set it on fire. The next day Antonius entered with his force; Vitellius's men came out to meet him, and, engaging in three places throughout the city, were all destroyed. Vitellius himself came forth drunk from the palace, gorged as if at the last course of a wasteful banquet. Dragged through the crowd and abused with every kind of outrage, he was butchered in the middle of Rome, having held power eight months and five days; had it fallen to him to live longer, I think his empire would have run out before his lust did. Of the rest of the dead, more than fifty thousand were counted. These events took place on the third of the month Apellaeus. The following day Mucianus entered with his army and stopped Antonius's men from killing further — for even then, searching the houses, they were killing, in their rush of anger, many soldiers of Vitellius and many ordinary citizens as his supposed followers, outpacing careful judgment. Mucianus brought Domitian forward and set him before the people as their leader until his father's arrival. The populace, now free of its fears, acclaimed Vespasian emperor, and celebrated at once both his confirmation and the fall of Vitellius.

When Vespasian had reached Alexandria, the good news from Rome arrived, along with envoys from every part of his own empire offering congratulations; and Alexandria, the greatest city after Rome, proved too small for the crowds.

With his power over the whole empire now ratified and Rome's fortunes saved beyond hope, Vespasian turned his thoughts to what remained of Judea. He himself, however, was eager to sail for Rome once winter had ended, and quickly settled affairs at Alexandria, sending his son Titus with a picked force to destroy Jerusalem. Titus advanced on foot as far as Nicopolis, twenty stades from Alexandria, and from there embarked the army on river boats and sailed up the Nile through the Mendesian district to the city of Thmuis. Disembarking there, he marched on and camped for the night at the small town of Tanis. His second stop was Heracleopolis, and his third Pelusium. There he rested the army for two days, and on the third set out through the passes of Pelusium; advancing one stage through the desert, he camped by the temple of Zeus Casius, and the next day at Ostracine — this stage was waterless, and the local people use water brought in from elsewhere. After this he rested at Rhinocorura, and from there advanced to Raphia, a fourth stage; this city marks the beginning of Syria. The fifth camp he pitched at Gaza, after which he came to Ascalon, then Jamnia, then Joppa, and from Joppa reached Caesarea, having decided to gather the rest of his forces there.

← All of Josephus: The Complete Works