Jewish War — Book 6

Josephus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

The disasters at Jerusalem grew worse day by day. The rebels, goaded on all the more by their misfortunes, and famine, having already devoured the common people, now preyed on them as well. The heaps of corpses piled up throughout the city were a horrifying sight and gave off a pestilential stench, and they hindered any sortie against the enemy, since men advancing had to trample the bodies underfoot, as if marching across a battlefield already churned up by countless slaughter. Yet those who trod on them felt neither horror nor pity, nor took the outrage done to the dead as an evil omen for themselves; instead, with hands still stained by the blood of their own countrymen, they rushed out to fight the foreign enemy, reproaching, it seems to me, the divine for its slowness in punishing them. For their war was no longer driven by hope of victory but by despair of survival.

The Romans, though they had labored greatly to gather timber, raised their earthworks in twenty-one days, having stripped bare, as already mentioned, the whole country around the city for ninety stadia in every direction. The sight of the land itself was pitiable: places once adorned with trees and pleasure gardens now lay stripped and desolate on every side, their timber cut away. No foreigner who had seen the old Judea and the city's beautiful suburbs, and then looked upon the desolation now before him, could fail to grieve and groan at so great a change. The war had ruined every mark of its former beauty, and no one who had known the place before could have recognized it if suddenly set down there; rather, standing on the very spot, he would still have gone looking for the city.

The completion of the earthworks struck Romans and Jews alike with an equal dread, though from opposite causes. The Jews expected that if these works too were burned, the city would fall; the Romans, for their part, feared that if these were destroyed as well, they would never take the city at all. For timber was scarce, and the soldiers' bodies were worn out by their labors, while their spirits were worn down by one setback after another. Indeed, the disasters within the city weighed more heavily on Roman morale than on that of the besieged. For despite such great suffering, the defenders showed no softening in their fighting; rather, the Romans found their hopes constantly dashed - by the enemy's schemes against the earthworks, by the solidity of the wall against their engines, and by the daring of those they grappled with hand to hand. Worst of all, amid faction, famine, war, and so many evils, they still found the Jews' courage undiminished. They concluded that these men's onslaughts were irresistible and their cheerfulness under disaster unconquerable - for what would such men not endure, if fortune ever favored them, seeing that misfortune itself only drove them to greater strength? For these reasons the Romans kept a stronger guard over the earthworks.

John and his men at the Antonia, looking ahead to what would happen if the wall were breached, took precautions of their own; and before the battering rams could be brought up, they moved first against the works. But they did not succeed in their attempt: advancing with torches, they turned back, their courage cooler than their hope, before they had even reached the earthworks. In the first place, their plan showed no coordination - they dashed out in scattered groups, in fits and starts, hesitant and fearful, in short, nothing like the Jewish way of fighting: gone was the nation's characteristic boldness, the rush and charge of the whole body together, and the refusal to turn back even when struck down. Advancing with less than their usual vigor, they found the Romans, too, drawn up in stronger than customary order. With their bodies and full armor the Romans had fenced in the earthworks on every side so that fire could find no opening anywhere, and each man had steeled his spirit not to leave his post before death. For besides the loss of all their hopes if these works too should be burned, the soldiers felt a fierce shame at the thought that in the end craft would defeat courage, desperation defeat weapons, numbers defeat experience - and that Jews would defeat Romans.

At the same time their artillery joined in, striking down those who darted forward; a man falling became an obstacle to the one behind him, and the danger of advancing further made the rest more hesitant. Those who ran in under the range of missiles were, some of them, terrified before they even came to close quarters by the enemy's discipline and close ranks, others driven back by the jabs of long spears; and in the end, hurling accusations of cowardice at one another, they withdrew without accomplishing anything. This attack took place on the first of the month Panemus.

Once the Jews had withdrawn, the Romans brought up their siege engines, though pelted with stones from the Antonia and with fire and iron and every kind of missile that necessity supplied to the Jews; for though they placed great confidence in their wall and despised the Roman engines, they still tried to prevent the Romans from bringing them up. The Romans, supposing that the Jews' eagerness to keep the Antonia from being struck arose from weakness in the wall, and hoping the foundations were unsound, pressed their efforts all the harder in response. But the part under attack did not give way; some men, though continually under fire and yielding to none of the dangers from above, kept the siege engines working, while others, when their numbers grew too thin and they were being battered by the stones, roofed themselves over with shields and, working with hands and levers beneath this cover, undermined the foundations, and by persistent effort dislodged four stones. Night gave both sides a rest, and during it the wall - already shaken by the battering rams, and undermined at the point where John, in his counter-scheme against the earlier earthworks, had dug his tunnel, which now gave way - suddenly collapsed.

This event, coming unexpectedly, affected the spirits of each side in an unexpected way. The Jews, who might have been expected to lose heart, instead took courage, since the collapse had not caught them unprepared - they had already fortified themselves against it, believing the Antonia would still stand. But the Romans' unexpected joy at the wall's fall was quickly extinguished by the sight of a second wall, which John and his men had built up from within. Still, this assault appeared easier than the last: it seemed simpler to climb up through the rubble of the fallen wall, and this inner wall seemed far weaker than the Antonia itself, and, being hastily built, they supposed it would soon give way. Yet no one dared to climb up, for death was the certain fate awaiting whoever went first.

Titus, believing that the eagerness of fighting men is roused above all by hope and by words, and that exhortation and promises often banish the memory of danger and sometimes even contempt for death itself, gathered the bravest of his men together and tried to move them, speaking as follows.

"Fellow soldiers, to urge men on to dangers that bring them no benefit is itself an inglorious thing to do, and indeed it brings upon the one urging it a charge of cowardice. Exhortation, I think, should be reserved for undertakings that are genuinely hazardous, since anything else is worth doing on its own merits. So then, I myself set before you plainly how hard the climb to that wall will be. But that it is above all fitting for men who aspire to valor to contend with difficulties, that death in glory is a noble thing, and that the courage of those who lead the way will not go unrewarded - this I will explain.

"First, let something that might discourage some of you instead spur you on: the endurance of the Jews, and their capacity to bear hardship. For it would be shameful for men who are Romans and soldiers of mine - who have been trained for war in peacetime and are accustomed to victory in war - to be inferior to Jews in either strength of arm or strength of spirit, and this too when we stand at the very threshold of victory, with God fighting on our side. Our setbacks have come from Jewish desperation; their sufferings grow through your courage and God's cooperation. Faction, famine, siege, and walls falling without the aid of siege engines - what could these be but God's wrath against them and God's help to us? It would not be right for us not only to be outdone by lesser men but also to betray the divine alliance granted to us.

"And is it not shameful that Jews, for whom defeat and enslavement carry little disgrace since they have grown used to it, should hold death in contempt in order to escape it no longer, and should often rush out into our very midst, not in hope of victory but simply to display their courage - while you, who rule nearly the whole earth and sea, for whom not to win is itself a disgrace, and who have not once ventured against the enemy, sit here idle waiting for famine and fortune to do the work against them, though armed as you are, when with only a moment's risk you could accomplish the whole task? Once we have climbed up to the Antonia, we hold the city. And even if there should still be some fighting against those within - which I do not expect - holding the high ground and sitting astride the enemy's very breath will quickly guarantee complete victory.

"For my part, I will set aside for now any praise of death in war, and any talk of the immortality that awaits those who fall in the fury of battle, and instead I will pronounce a curse on those who choose otherwise - on those who die in peacetime from disease, for whom the soul is buried along with the body. For who among good men does not know that souls released from the flesh by the sword in battle are welcomed by the purest of elements, the ether, and set among the stars, appearing to their own descendants afterward as benevolent spirits and kindly heroes - while souls that waste away in diseased bodies, however free from stain or pollution they may be, are swallowed by a darkness beneath the earth and received into deep oblivion, losing at once their life, their bodies, and even the memory of themselves? But if death by necessity is spun out for all men alike, and the sword is a gentler servant to it than any disease, how can it be anything but base to refuse to circumstance what we shall in any case owe to fate? I have said all this as though those who make the attempt could not survive it. But even from the most perilous ventures, survival is possible for men who act with courage. First, what has already fallen is easy to climb; and besides, anything hastily built is easily broken down. You who go in greater numbers, take courage and be to one another both encouragement and support, and your own resolve will quickly break the enemy's spirit. Perhaps the success will even cost you no blood at all, if only you make the beginning: for while they will likely try to stop you as you climb, once you have gotten past them unnoticed and forced your way in, they will no longer be able to hold out, however few of you get there first. As for the one who leads the way, I would be ashamed not to make him an object of envy for the rewards he receives; and while the living will command men who are now his equals, blessings will follow the fallen as well, in the form of highest honors."

While Titus was saying such things, most of the men were afraid at the magnitude of the danger. But among those serving in the cohorts was one named Sabinus, a Syrian by birth, who proved himself best in both strength of arm and strength of spirit. And yet, to judge merely by his physical build, one would not have expected him to be even an ordinary soldier: he was dark-skinned, thin, and his flesh was shrunken close to the bone - but within that slight frame, far too narrow for the strength it held, dwelt a truly heroic spirit. He was the first to stand up. "I offer myself to you eagerly, Caesar," he said. "I will be the first to climb the wall. And I pray that my strength and resolve may keep pace with your fortune; but if I should fail in the attempt, know that I did not fall through misjudgment, but chose death deliberately, for your sake." With these words, holding his shield above his head with his left hand and drawing his sword with his right, he advanced toward the wall at about the sixth hour of the day.

Eleven others followed him, the only men who proved themselves rivals in courage; the man himself pressed far ahead of them all, driven by something like a divine impulse. The guards on the wall hurled javelins down at them, showered them with countless missiles from every side, and rolled down huge stones, which swept some of the eleven away; but Sabinus, meeting the missiles head-on and buried under a hail of projectiles, did not check his charge until he had reached the top and put the enemy to flight. For the Jews, terrified by his strength and force of spirit, and thinking that many more men had climbed up besides him, turned and fled. Here one might justly accuse fortune of begrudging men their virtues and of always thwarting extraordinary achievements. For this man, just when he had won his goal, stumbled, tripped against a rock, and fell forward upon it with a tremendous crash. The Jews, turning back and seeing him alone and fallen, pelted him with missiles from every side. He rose to his knees, and covering himself with his shield, at first defended himself and wounded many of those who came close; but then, overwhelmed by the number of his wounds, his right arm gave way, and at last, before he could breathe his last, he was buried under the missiles - a man who deserved, for his courage, a better fortune, though his fall matched the greatness of his undertaking. Of the others, three who had already reached the top were crushed with stones and killed, while the remaining eight, wounded, were dragged back and carried to the camp. This happened on the third of the month Panemus.

Two days later, some twenty of the sentries who kept watch by night at the earthworks banded together. Pretending to be the standard-bearer of the Fifth Legion, along with two cavalrymen from the squadrons and a single trumpeter, at about the ninth hour of the night they advanced quietly through the ruins toward the Antonia. Cutting the throats of the first guards, who were asleep, they took possession of the wall and ordered the trumpeter to sound the signal. At this, the rest of the guards leaped up in sudden panic and fled before anyone could see how few of the attackers there actually were; for both their fear and the trumpet call gave them the impression that a great number of the enemy had climbed up. When Caesar heard the signal, he armed his forces with all speed and, together with his officers, was himself the first to climb up, with his chosen men beside him. The Jews had fled into the Temple, and the Romans too now poured in through the tunnel which John had dug toward the Roman earthworks. The rebels of both factions, John's and Simon's, spread out and blocked them, sparing no effort of either strength or determination.

...beyond measure: they took the Romans' entry into the sanctuary as marking the end of the city's capture, and the Romans took it, for their part, as the beginning of mastering it. A fierce battle broke out around the entrances, the Romans forcing their way in to seize the temple as well, the Jews pushing them back toward the Antonia.

Arrows and spears were useless to both sides; they drew their swords and grappled hand to hand, and in the crush it was impossible to tell which men were fighting for which side—the combatants were jumbled together in the narrow space, and the shouting, swelled by its sheer volume, carried no meaning. The slaughter on both sides was heavy, and the fighters trampled and shattered the bodies and armor of the fallen as they fought. Wherever the tide of battle happened to press, there were cheers from the side gaining ground and wailing from the side giving way. There was no room either for flight or for pursuit; instead the battle-line, all mixed together, swayed one way and then the other in near-even balance. Men in the front ranks had no choice but to kill or be killed, since there was no way to retreat—those pressing forward from behind on both sides left their own comrades no gap to fall back into, not even within the fighting itself.

The Jews' fury was gaining the upper hand over the Romans' skill, and the whole battle-line was now on the point of giving way—they had been fighting from the ninth hour of the night to the seventh hour of the day. The Jews fought in a single mass, with the danger of the city's capture supplying them courage, while the Romans fought with only part of their force, since the legions had not yet come up; the men then engaged were husbanding their strength for them, judging that for the present it was enough to hold the Antonia.

There was a centurion named Julianus, from Bithynia, no obscure man—among all those whose deeds I recorded in the course of that war, he was the best in skill at arms, in bodily strength, and in steadiness of soul. He was standing beside Titus at the Antonia, and when he saw the Romans already giving ground and defending themselves badly, he leaped forward and, single-handed, drove back the Jews just as they were winning, all the way to the corner of the inner temple.

The whole crowd fled before him, unable to believe that his strength and daring were human. Darting this way and that through the scattering men, he cut down everyone he overtook, and neither Titus nor anyone else present ever beheld a more astonishing or more terrifying sight. But he too, it turned out, was being pursued by fate, which no mortal can escape.

His boots were studded with thick, sharp nails, like every other soldier's, and as he ran over the paved stone he slipped; falling on his back with a tremendous clatter of armor, he made the fleeing men turn around. A cry went up from the Romans on the Antonia, fearing for him, and the Jews closed round him in a mass and struck at him from every side with spears and swords.

He caught much of the iron on his shield, and though he tried again and again to get up he was knocked down by the sheer number of men striking him; even lying there he kept stabbing many with his sword. He was not killed quickly, protected as he was by helmet and breastplate and pulling in his neck to guard every vital spot for a deathblow, until his other limbs were hacked at and, with no one daring to come to his aid, he finally gave out. Titus was overcome with grief to see so brave a man cut down before so many eyes; the ground kept him, eager as he was, from going to help, and terror kept back those who could have. Julianus, then, after a long, hard death, leaving few of his killers unwounded, was at last cut down, leaving behind the greatest renown not only among the Romans and with Titus but among the enemy as well.

The Jews seized his body, then turned on the Romans again and drove them back, shutting them up in the Antonia. Among the Jews, those who distinguished themselves in this battle were Alexas and Gyphtheus of John's company; from Simon's men, Malachias and Judas son of Merto; Jacob son of Sosas, commander of the Idumaeans; and, among the Zealots, two brothers, sons of Ari, Simon and Judes.

Titus ordered the soldiers with him to demolish the foundations of the Antonia and to prepare an easy ascent for the whole army; then he summoned Josephus. He had learned that on that very day—the seventeenth of Panemus—the daily sacrifice called the tamid had lapsed for lack of men to offer it, and that the people were deeply distressed by this. He therefore told Josephus to say to John again what he had said before: that if some fatal passion for fighting possessed him, he was free to go out with as many men as he wished and fight, without dragging the city and the temple down with himself; but that he must stop desecrating the sanctuary and sinning against God, and that he was welcome to carry out the sacrifices that had lapsed, using whichever Jews he chose to select.

So Josephus, positioning himself where not only John but the crowd as well could hear him, delivered Titus's message in Hebrew, and added many pleas of his own: to spare the homeland, to drive back the fire that was already tasting the temple, and to restore the offerings to God.

At this the people fell into gloomy silence, but the tyrant, after heaping abuse and curses on Josephus, added at the end that he would never fear the city's capture, for the city belonged to God.

To this Josephus cried out: "You have indeed kept it pure for God—the sanctuary remains undefiled, and against the ally you hope for you have committed no offense; he is receiving his customary sacrifices! But if someone took away your daily food, you utterly godless man, you would count him an enemy—yet the very God you have robbed of his eternal worship, do you expect to have him as your ally in this war? And do you lay the blame on the Romans, who to this day care for our laws and are forcing the sacrifices you cut off to be restored to God? Who would not groan and lament over the city's astonishing reversal, when foreigners and enemies are correcting your impiety, while you, a Jew raised in the law, prove harsher toward it than they are? But John, there is no shame in repenting of wrongdoing even at the last, and if you wish to save your country a noble example lies before you: Jeconiah, king of the Jews, who, when the Babylonian marched against him on his own account, willingly gave himself up before the city was taken, and endured captivity of his own free will, along with his family, rather than hand over these holy things to the enemy and stand by while the house of God went up in flames. For this reason a sacred tradition celebrates him among all the Jews, and a memory flowing down through the ages, ever fresh, hands him on immortal to those who come after. A noble example, John, even if it carries danger—and I myself pledge you pardon from the Romans as well. Remember that I urge this as your countryman, and promise it as a Jew, and you should consider who is advising you, and from where. May I myself never become so much a captive while I live that I cease to belong to my people or forget my ancestral ways. You grow indignant again, and shout abuse at me—deserving, I admit, of still harsher words, since I am urging something flatly against fate and forcing the men God has condemned to be saved. Who does not know the writings of the ancient prophets, and the oracle now already bearing down on this unhappy city? For they foretold its capture whenever one of its own people should begin the slaughter of kinsmen. And is not the city, is not the whole temple, filled with your own people's corpses? God, then—God himself is bringing the purifying fire, together with the Romans, and is tearing away a city stuffed with so much pollution."

As Josephus spoke these words, his voice broke with sobbing amid his grief and tears. The Romans pitied him for his suffering and admired his resolve, but John's men were only further provoked against the Romans, desiring now to get Josephus himself into their power as well. Still, his words moved many of the nobility; some, afraid of the rebels' guards, stayed where they were, though they had already given up themselves and the city for lost; others watched for their chance, found a safe way out, and fled to the Romans. Among these were the chief priests Josephus and Jesus; three sons of the high priest Ishmael, who had been beheaded at Cyrene; four sons of Matthias; and one son of another Matthias, who had escaped after his father's death—his father having been killed, along with three sons, by Simon son of Gioras, as already related. Many other nobles went over to the Romans along with the chief priests.

Titus received them kindly in every respect, and knowing that living among people of foreign customs would be unpleasant for them, he sent them off to Gophna, advising them to stay there for the time being; once he had leisure after the war, he said, he would restore each man's property. So they withdrew gladly to the little town assigned them, in complete safety. But when they were no longer seen, the rebels once again spread the rumor that the deserters had been killed by the Romans—clearly meaning to frighten the rest away from deserting. And, as before, the trick worked for a while; men were held back from deserting by fear.

But later, when Titus recalled the men from Gophna and had them go around the wall with Josephus so that the people could see them, a great many fled over to the Romans. Gathering in a body and standing before the Romans, they begged the rebels, weeping and wailing, first to receive the Romans into the whole city and save their homeland after all, or failing that, at least to withdraw from the temple and spare it for them—for the Romans, they said, would never dare burn the sanctuary except under the direst compulsion.

But this only made the rebels more contentious: shouting back much abuse at the deserters, they stationed catapults, spear-throwers, and stone-throwing engines at the sacred gates, so that the temple's surrounding precincts came to resemble a mass grave for the sheer number of dead, and the sanctuary itself a fortress. They rushed with their weapons into the holy places, forbidden to enter, their hands still warm with the blood of their own kinsmen, and carried their lawlessness so far that whatever indignation the Jews would have felt had the Romans committed such outrages against them, that same indignation now came from the Romans against Jews who were desecrating what was their own. Indeed, there was not a single soldier who did not gaze at the temple with a shudder and bow before it, praying that the rebels would repent before disaster beyond remedy overtook them.

Titus, overcome with feeling, once more reproached John's men, saying: "Was it not you, you utterly vile men, who set up this stone balustrade in front of the holy places? Was it not you who erected the pillars on it, inscribed in Greek and in our own language, forbidding anyone to cross the barrier? And did we not allow you to kill anyone who crossed it, even if he were a Roman? Why then, you polluted wretches, do you now trample corpses inside it? Why do you drench the temple with the blood of foreigners and of your own people alike? I call to witness the gods of my fathers, and any god who ever watched over this place—though I doubt any still does—I call to witness my own army, the Jews who serve with me, and you yourselves, that I am not forcing you to defile this. If you will only shift the site of your battle, no Roman will approach the holy places or insult them; I will preserve the temple for you, even against your will."

When Josephus relayed this message from Titus, the rebels and the tyrant, supposing that these entreaties came not from goodwill but from cowardice, only grew more contemptuous. Titus, seeing that the men showed neither pity for themselves nor any regard for the temple, turned again, reluctantly, to war. He could not bring his whole force against them, since the ground would not hold it, so he picked out the thirty best men from each century, assigned a thousand to each tribune, put Cerealis in command of them, and ordered them to attack the guard posts around the ninth hour of the night.

He himself had put on his armor and was prepared to go down with them, but his friends held him back because of the sheer danger, and so did the advice of his officers: they told him he would accomplish more by sitting at the Antonia and directing the battle for his soldiers than by going down to risk himself in the front line, since with Titus watching, all the men would fight bravely. Persuaded by this, and telling the soldiers he would stay behind for this one reason—so that he could judge their merits, so that no brave man would go unrewarded and no coward unpunished, and so that the one who held power both to punish and to honor might himself see and witness everything—he sent the men off to carry out the action at the appointed hour, while he himself went forward to a spot on the Antonia with a clear view and waited tensely to see what would happen.

Yet those who were sent did not find the guards asleep, as they had hoped; the guards sprang up and immediately closed with them, shouting. At the noise of the men roused from their beds, the rest inside poured out in a mass. The Romans held off the first onrush; but those coming up behind fell in confusion among their own ranks, and many treated their own comrades as enemies. Recognition by voice was made impossible by the shouting mingled together on both sides, and recognition by sight was taken away by the darkness; men were blinded besides, some by rage, some by fear—so that it was impossible to tell whom one struck when one struck at whoever came in reach.

The Romans, however, since they kept their shields locked together and advanced in formation, suffered less from this confusion, for each man kept the watchword in mind. The Jews, by contrast, were always scattering and making their attacks and retreats without order, so that they often gave one another the impression of being enemies; in the dark, each man took a comrade returning to his side for an advancing Roman. More of them, in fact, were wounded by their own side than by the enemy, until day came and the fighting could at last be told apart by sight; then they drew up in ranks and used their missiles and their defenses in proper order. Neither side yielded or grew weary; the Romans, as though under Titus's own eyes, vied with one another man against man and company against company, each one striving for...

...that day would be his to begin, if only he fought bravely. What drove the Jews to their daring was fear for themselves and for the temple, and the tyrant standing over them, urging some on and whipping others into action with threats. For the most part the fighting stayed within a stade's length, but the balance of it swung back and forth quickly and within a short space, since neither side had room for a long flight or a long pursuit. The uproar from the Antonia kept pace with whatever was happening, as men shouted encouragement to their own side when it had the upper hand and called on it to stand firm when it gave ground. It was like a kind of theater of war: nothing that happened in the battle escaped Titus or the men around him. In the end, having begun at the ninth hour of the night, they broke off after the fifth hour of the day, neither side clearly forcing back the other, but leaving the victory suspended between them, evenly balanced. Many Romans fought with distinction; on the Jewish side, from Simon's men, Judes son of Mareotus and Simon son of Hosaia; from the Idumeans, Jacob son of Achatelas and Simon son of Sosas; from John's men, Gephthaeus and Alexas; and from the zealots, Simon son of Ari.

Meanwhile the rest of the Roman force spent seven days demolishing the foundations of the Antonia and clearing a broad road all the way to the temple. When the legions drew near the first enclosure they began raising earthworks at four points: one opposite the corner of the inner temple, which lay to the north and west; a second opposite the northern exedra, between the two gates; a third opposite the western portico of the outer temple; and the fourth outside, against the north side. The work went forward, but only with great toil and hardship, since they had to bring the timber in from a hundred stades away. They also suffered from ambushes here and there, though their overwhelming strength made them less cautious, and the Jews, now past hoping for their own survival, grew bolder still. Whenever some of the cavalry went out for wood or to gather fodder, they would unbridle their horses during the time it took to collect it and let them graze — and the Jews would dash out in a body and seize them. This kept happening, and Caesar, rightly judging that the losses came more from his own men's carelessness than from Jewish courage, decided to deal more sternly with the rest to make them guard their horses. He ordered one of the soldiers who had lost his horse led away to execution, and the fear of that kept the others watchful from then on — they no longer let the animals out to graze but took them out only as needed, staying close beside them as if grown together with them. The legions, for their part, went on pressing the siege of the temple and pushing the earthworks forward.

A day after they had begun this ascent, many of the insurgents, now running short of plunder and hard pressed by famine, banded together and attacked the Roman guard posts on the Mount of Olives at about the eleventh hour of the day, thinking that they would catch them unprepared, and further, that the men would already be attending to their own needs and so be easy to break through. But the Romans sensed their approach in advance and, rallying quickly from the nearby forts, kept them from leaping the barricade wall or forcing a breach in it. In the fierce clash that followed, both sides performed many acts of courage — the Romans relying on strength combined with skill in war, the Jews on reckless impulse and uncontrollable fury. What drove the one side was a sense of honor, the other necessity: it seemed utterly shameful to the Romans to let Jews slip free once caught as if in a net, while the Jews had only one hope of survival, to force their way through and break the wall. One of the cavalry from a squadron, a man named Pedanius, when the Jews had already begun to give way and were being pressed together down toward the ravine, rode past at an angle and, snatching up one of the fleeing enemy — a young man, powerfully built and in full armor — seized him by the ankle. He leaned so far down from his galloping horse, and showed such strength of arm and body besides, along with sheer skill in horsemanship, that he simply carried the man off as if he were some prize, and brought his captive to Caesar. Titus, marveling at the strength of the one who had made the capture, ordered the one who had been caught punished for his attack on the wall, and himself returned to the fighting around the temple and to pressing on the earthworks.

During this time the Jews, worn down by the constant clashes as the war crept ever nearer, coiling closer around the sanctuary, kept cutting off the parts already infected, like limbs from a rotting body, to stop the disease spreading further. They set fire to the section of the northern and western portico that connected to the Antonia, and then, working with their own hands, tore away about twenty cubits of it, so beginning to burn the sacred building themselves. Two days later, on the twenty-fourth of the month already named, the Romans set the next stretch of portico ablaze, and once the fire had eaten its way along for fifteen cubits, the Jews likewise cut away the roof, never entirely abandoning the work and cutting the section joined to the Antonia loose from the rest. So although they could have stopped the fire spreading, they instead held back until it reached the point they wanted, and so measured out its advance to their own advantage. Around the temple the fighting never let up; the war ran on continuously as men in turns rushed out against each other. Among the Jews at this time was a man short in stature and unimpressive to look at, of no distinction by birth or otherwise — his name was Jonathan — who came forward by the tomb of the high priest John and hurled arrogant taunts of every kind at the Romans, challenging their best man to single combat.

Most of the men drawn up there simply despised him, though some, quite reasonably, were afraid; and a thought not without sense occurred to a few — that it was unwise to grapple with a man courting death, since men who have given up on their own survival let their impulses run unchecked and no longer fear the divine, and that risking a fight against such a man made victory of little worth while a shameful defeat would be dangerous — this was not courage but recklessness. For a good while no one came forward, and the Jew kept mocking them at length as cowards, until a certain Pudens, one of the cavalry of a squadron, a man full of his own conceit and contemptuous of the Romans besides, revolted by the man's words and insolence — and no doubt also, without thinking it through, emboldened by the fellow's small stature — leaped forward. He had the better of the exchange in every other respect, but was betrayed by fortune: as he fell, Jonathan rushed up and cut his throat. Then, standing over the corpse, he brandished his bloodied sword, raised his shield in his left hand, and shouted taunts at the army, boasting over the fallen man and jeering at the watching Romans — until, as he pranced about in his mockery, a centurion named Priscus shot an arrow through him. A cry went up at once from both Jews and Romans, though of very different kinds. Jonathan, spinning from the pain, fell across the body of his enemy — proof, if war ever needed it, of how swiftly retribution can overtake a man whose luck has run beyond reason.

The insurgents up on the temple went on openly resisting the soldiers at the earthworks, defending against them day after day; and on the twenty-seventh of the aforesaid month they contrived the following stratagem. They filled the space between the beams and the ceiling beneath them, in the western portico, with dry wood, and with asphalt and pitch besides; then they pretended to give way, as if worn down. Many of the less cautious Romans, carried away by the impulse of the moment, pressed after the retreating men and set ladders against the portico and scrambled up onto it, while the more sensible ones, suspecting the Jews' flight was too irrational to be genuine, held back. Even so, the portico filled up with those who had climbed up — and at that moment the Jews set the whole thing ablaze. As the flame shot up suddenly on every side, a terrible panic seized the Romans who were outside the danger, and helplessness seized those trapped within it. Surrounded by the fire, some flung themselves backward into the city, others among the enemy, and many, hoping to save themselves, leaped down among their own comrades and broke their limbs; the fire overtook the flight of most, and some found the flame reaching them by way of the sword as well, for it spread out and consumed even those trying to escape by other means over a wide stretch.

Caesar, though angry at the men for having climbed up without orders, was nonetheless moved to pity for them; and since no one could go to their aid, this at least was some comfort to the dying — to see the man for whose sake they were giving up their lives grieving on their behalf. For he could be seen shouting to them, springing forward, and urging the men around him to help however they could. Each man, in his cries and in his bearing, met death cheerfully, carrying it off as though it were some glorious burial garment. Some retreated onto the broad section of the portico wall and so escaped the fire, but were then surrounded by the Jews; for a long while they held out under repeated wounds, but in the end they all fell — the last of them a young man named Longus, who crowned the whole tragic scene, and who, though every one of the fallen deserved to be remembered man by man, proved the best of them all. The Jews, admiring his valor and unable in any case to kill him outright, called on him to come down to them under pledge of safety, while his brother Cornelius, from the other side, urged him not to disgrace his own reputation and that of the Roman army. Persuaded by this, and lifting his sword in plain view of both armies, he took his own life. Among those trapped by the fire, a man named Artorius saved himself by a trick: calling out to a fellow soldier named Lucius, his tent-mate, he shouted at the top of his voice, "I leave you heir to my property, if you come and catch me." Lucius ran up readily to catch him; the one who threw himself down survived, landing on him, but the one who caught him, crushed by the weight, was dashed against the pavement and died on the spot.

This disaster caused the Romans some despair for a time, but it also, in the longer run, left them not without a lesson: it made them more guarded and helped them become more wary of Jewish tricks, the kind that had cost them so much before through ignorance of the terrain and of the character of the men they faced. The portico burned as far as John's tower, which he had built during his war against Simon, above the gates leading out over the terrace; the rest of it the Jews cut away themselves, once the men who had climbed up were already dead. The next day the Romans in turn burned the whole northern portico as far as the eastern one, at the corner where it joined the ravine called the Kidron, which was built up high above it — a spot whose depth alone was enough to inspire dread. Such, then, was the state of affairs around the temple.

Of those perishing from famine throughout the city, the number that fell was beyond counting, and the sufferings that took place defy description. In every house, wherever the least shadow of food appeared, war broke out, and the closest of kin came to blows with one another, snatching away the wretched provisions that kept the soul in the body. Not even the dying were trusted in their want: the brigands searched even the dying as they breathed their last, in case someone was concealing food under his clothes and merely feigning death. Men gaping with hunger reeled about like mad dogs, stumbling against doors as if drunk, and in their desperation would burst into the same houses two or three times within a single hour. Need drove them to gnaw at anything at all, and they forced themselves to collect and eat things not fit even for the filthiest of dumb animals; in the end they did not even refrain from belts and shoes, and stripped the leather from their shields and chewed on it. Some fed on tufts of old hay, for there were those who gathered the fibers and sold the smallest weight of it for four Attic drachmas. But why should I speak of the shamelessness the famine showed even toward lifeless things? I am about to reveal a deed of a kind recorded neither among Greeks nor among barbarians — dreadful to tell, and scarcely believable to hear. For my own part, I would gladly have passed over this calamity, for fear of seeming to later generations to be telling a monstrous tale, had I not had countless witnesses to it among my own contemporaries. And besides, I would be doing my homeland a cold favor if I suppressed, in my account, the sufferings it actually endured.

There was a woman among those living beyond the Jordan, named Mary, daughter of Eleazar, from the village of Bethezuba — which means "house of hyssop" — a woman distinguished by family and wealth, who had fled with the rest of the crowd into Jerusalem and was now caught up in the siege with them. Most of her possessions, everything she had gathered up and brought with her from Perea into the city, the tyrants had already plundered; and whatever remained of her valuables, along with any food she managed to find or think up from day to day, the guards would burst in and seize. A terrible indignation took hold of the woman, and time and again she would curse and abuse the plunderers, trying to provoke them into killing her. But since no one, whether out of anger or out of pity, would put her to death, and since finding any food at all had become exhausting even for others, while everywhere it had grown simply impossible to find any —

— the famine worked its way through her very insides and marrow, and her rage burned hotter still than the hunger. Taking fury as her counselor, together with necessity, she turned against nature itself. She had a child still at the breast; snatching up the infant, she said: "Poor child, in war, famine, and civil strife, for what am I to keep you? Slavery awaits us under the Romans, if we should even live to see them — but famine will overtake that slavery first, and the rebels are crueler than either. Come, be food for me, an avenging spirit to the rebels, and a story for the world — the one thing still missing from the calamities of the Jews." And as she said this she killed her son; then she roasted him and ate half, and covered up and kept the rest. The rebels were on her at once, having caught the forbidden smell, and threatened to cut her throat then and there unless she showed them what she had prepared. She told them she had kept a fine portion for them too, and uncovered the remains of her child. They were seized at once with horror and dread and stood frozen at the sight. She said, "This is my own child, and my own doing. Eat — for I too have eaten..."

I have eaten. Do not become softer than a woman or more tender-hearted than a mother. But if you are pious men and turn away from my sacrifice, then I have already eaten my share — let the rest remain for me as well.

At this the men went out trembling, cowards in this one thing alone, and barely yielding this food to the mother. At once the whole city was filled with the pollution, and each man, picturing the horror before his eyes, shuddered as though he himself had dared it. Those who were starving were eager for death, and counted blessed those who had died before hearing and seeing evils so great.

The horror was soon reported to the Romans as well. Some of them refused to believe it, others pitied the Jews, but most were driven by it to a still fiercer hatred of the nation. Caesar, for his part, defended himself before God on this very matter too, declaring that he had offered the Jews peace, self-government, and amnesty for all their offenses, but that they had chosen sedition over concord, war over peace, and famine over abundance and plenty, and had with their own hands begun to burn down the temple that he had been preserving for them — for that they deserved even such food as this. He said he would nonetheless bury the abomination of this child-eating beneath the ruin of their own homeland, and would not leave standing under the sun, for all the world to see, a city in which mothers were fed in such a way. And yet, he said, such food was more fitting for fathers than for mothers — fathers who, even after such sufferings, still remained under arms.

Even as he said all this he thought of the men's desperation: for it was unlikely, he judged, that men who had already suffered everything a man could suffer would ever recover their senses without going on to suffer still more.

Now that the two legions had finished their earthworks, on the eighth of the month Loos he ordered the battering rams brought up against the western portico of the outer temple. For six days before this the strongest of all the siege-engines had been battering the wall without effect; the great size and close fitting of the stones defeated it, as they did the others. Meanwhile other soldiers were undermining the foundations of the northern gate, and after great labor managed to lever out the stones in front. The gate was held up by the stones behind it and stood firm, until, giving up on their efforts with machines and levers, they brought ladders up to the porticoes. The Jews did not manage to stop them in time, but fell upon the men once they had climbed up and fought them — thrusting some backward off the wall to their deaths, cutting down others as they met them, striking down with their swords many more before they could even set their shields as they stepped off the ladders, and tipping over some ladders still crowded with soldiers, hurling them down from above. Their own losses too were not small. The men who had carried the standards up fought to the last around them, thinking it a fearful disgrace to let them be seized. In the end the Jews captured the standards and killed the men who had climbed up; the rest, dismayed at the fate of the fallen, withdrew. On the Roman side not a single man died without a fight, but among the rebels those who had also distinguished themselves bravely in earlier battles fell now as well, among them Eleazar, nephew of the tyrant Simon.

Titus, seeing that his forbearance toward the temple of a foreign people was only bringing harm and death to his own soldiers, ordered the gates set on fire. At this point two men deserted to him — Ananus of Emmaus, the most murderous of Simon's bodyguard, and Archelaus son of Magadatus — hoping for pardon now that the Jews were losing ground. But Titus reproached them for this very treachery, and having learned of their savagery toward their own people besides, was moved to kill them both, saying they had come over only under compulsion, not by choice, and did not deserve to be spared, since they had leapt clear of their homeland only after it was already in flames because of them. Yet good faith prevailed over his anger, and he let the men go, though he did not rank them equally with the rest.

By now the soldiers had set fire to the gates, and the silver melting on them quickly carried the flame into the woodwork, from which it spread in a mass and caught hold of the porticoes. As the Jews watched the fire ringing them, their spirits failed along with their bodies, and out of sheer shock no one made a move to fight it or put it out — they simply stood parched and stared. Yet even the ruin of their possessions did not dishearten them into caution for what remained; rather, now that the sanctuary itself was burning, they sharpened their fury against the Romans all the more. That day and the following night the fire held sway, for the Romans had not been able to set the porticoes alight all at once, but only bit by bit.

The next day Titus, having ordered part of his force to put out the fire and to clear the ground by the gates for an easier approach for the legions, called his commanders together. When the six most senior men had assembled — Tiberius Alexander, prefect of the whole army; Sextus Cerealis, commander of the Fifth legion; Larcius Lepidus of the Tenth; Titus Frigius of the Fifteenth; along with Fronto Haeterius, camp commander of the two legions from Alexandria, and Marcus Antonius Julianus, procurator of Judea — and after these the procurators and tribunes had also gathered, he put before them the question of the temple.

Some thought the law of war should simply be applied, since the Jews would never stop their rebellions so long as the temple stood, since it was the gathering point for people from everywhere. Others advised that if the Jews abandoned it and no one took up arms upon it, it should be spared, but that if they fought from within it, it should be burned — for then it would be a fortress, no longer a temple, and the impiety would belong to those who had forced it, not to the Romans. But Titus said that even if the Jews fought from it, he would not take revenge on lifeless things in place of men, nor would he ever burn down so great a work, since the loss would fall on Rome, just as its survival would be an ornament to his own command. Emboldened by this, Fronto, Alexander, and Cerealis came round to his view. He then dismissed the council, and having ordered the commanders to let the rest of his forces rest, so that he might use fresher men in the coming assault, he directed the picked men from the cohorts to clear a path through the rubble and to put out the fire.

That day exhaustion and shock kept the Jews' impulses in check, but the next day, having gathered their strength and recovered their courage, they sallied out through the eastern gate against the guards of the outer temple at about the second hour. The guards received their charge staunchly, locking their shields together in front like a wall and closing up their line, but it was plain they would not hold out much longer, overwhelmed as they were by the numbers and fury of the attackers.

Caesar, watching the balance of the fight tip from his post on the Antonia, for he could see it from there, came to their aid with his picked cavalry. The Jews could not withstand the charge, and once the first ranks fell most of them turned and fled; as the Romans fell back they pressed close upon them, and as the Romans wheeled about they fled again, until about the fifth hour of the day those who had been driven back were shut up inside the inner sanctuary.

Titus withdrew to the Antonia, resolved that at dawn the next day he would attack with his whole force and surround the temple. But God, it seems, had long since condemned it to the fire, and the fated day had come round in its cycle — the tenth of the month Loos, the very day on which it had once before been burned by the king of the Babylonians. The flames took their beginning and their cause from the Jews' own men: for when Titus had withdrawn, the rebels, after a brief pause, attacked the Romans again, and a clash broke out between the guards of the temple and those putting out the fire in the inner sanctuary, who routed the Jews and pursued them right up to the temple itself. There one of the soldiers, waiting for no order and fearing no such daring act, moved by some more-than-human impulse, snatched a burning brand and, boosted up by a fellow soldier, threw the fire in through a golden window that gave access, on the north side, to the chambers around the temple.

As the flame rose, a cry went up from the Jews worthy of the calamity, and they rushed together to fight it off, sparing themselves no longer and holding nothing back of their strength, now that the very thing they had been guarding so carefully was slipping away. Someone ran and reported it to Titus. He happened to be resting in his tent after the fighting, and just as he was he leapt up and ran toward the temple to stop the fire. All his commanders followed after him, and the legions, alarmed, followed them in turn; there was shouting and confusion, as was natural with so great a force moving without order.

Caesar, by voice and by gesture, signaled to the fighting men to put out the fire, but they could not hear him shouting, their ears already filled with a greater din, nor did they heed the signs of his hand, some intent on the fighting, others carried away by rage. As the legions poured in, neither exhortation nor threat could hold back their impulse, but fury alone commanded them all; crowding at the entrances, many were trampled by one another, and many, falling among the still-hot and smoking ruins of the porticoes, met the same fate as the defeated. Drawing near the temple, they pretended not even to hear Caesar's orders, and urged the men in front of them to throw in the fire. By now the rebels were helpless to bring any aid; there was slaughter and rout everywhere. Most of the dead were ordinary, unarmed, and powerless people of the city, cut down wherever they were caught; around the altar the bodies piled up in heaps, and blood ran in streams down the temple steps, the corpses of those killed above sliding down with it.

When Caesar found he could not restrain the soldiers in their frenzy, and the fire was gaining the upper hand, he went in with his commanders and viewed the sanctuary of the temple and everything within it — far surpassing, he found, its reputation among foreigners, and fully living up to its renown and glory among his own people. Since the flame had not yet reached inside anywhere but was still feeding on the chambers around the temple, he judged, rightly, that the building could still be saved, and rushed forward himself, trying to urge the soldiers to put out the fire, and ordered the centurion Liberalis, of his own bodyguard of spearmen, to beat back with clubs any who disobeyed. But the men's fury overcame their reverence for Caesar and their fear of the one restraining them, as did their hatred of the Jews and a certain fiercer battle-lust; most of them, besides, were driven by hope of plunder, believing that everything inside was full of treasure, and seeing that all around them was made of gold. But before this, one of the men who had gotten inside, just as Caesar had rushed out to hold back the soldiers, threw fire into the hinges of the gate, in the darkness; and then, as flame suddenly blazed up from within, the commanders withdrew along with Caesar, and no one any longer stopped those outside from setting fire to it. So it was that the temple was burned against Caesar's will.

One might well lament, considering the work itself, all that we have received by sight and by report of its wonders — the skill and scale of its construction, the costliness of every part, and the glory of its holy places — and yet find the greatest comfort in this: that fate is inescapable, for works and places just as for living beings. One might also marvel at the precision of its cycle: it kept, as I have said, the very same month and the very same day on which the temple had earlier been burned by the Babylonians. From its first founding, laid by King Solomon, to its present destruction, which took place in the second year of Vespasian's reign, the sum comes to one thousand, one hundred and thirty years, seven months, and fifteen days; and from its later founding, which Haggai carried out in the second year of King Cyrus's reign, to its capture under Vespasian, six hundred and thirty-nine years and forty-five days.

While the temple was burning, plunder was seized from all who fell in its path, and the slaughter of those who were caught was boundless; no mercy was shown for age, no respect for rank — children and old men, laymen and priests alike were cut down together, and the war swept up every class of person, both those who begged for mercy and those who fought back. The roar of the flame, carried far and wide, mingled with the groans of the falling; and because of the height of the hill and the scale of the burning structure, one might have thought the whole city was ablaze. As for the outcry, nothing more overwhelming or more terrible could be imagined: the war-cry of the Roman legions surging forward, the screams of the rebels ringed by fire and sword, the terror-stricken flight of the people trapped above toward their enemies, and their wailing at their fate. The crowd throughout the city answered the cries of those on the hill with cries of its own; and now many who were wasting away from famine and had lost the power of speech, when they saw the fire on the temple, found strength once more for weeping and lament. Perea and the surrounding mountains echoed back, deepening the roar. Yet more terrible than the noise itself was what lay behind it: one might have thought the temple hill was being shaken to its very roots, so full was it of fire on every side, yet more abundant still was the blood than the fire, and more numerous the slain than the slayers — nowhere could the ground be seen for the corpses, but the soldiers ran over heaps of bodies in pursuit of those who fled. The mass of the rebels, at last, forced their way past the Romans and broke out, with difficulty, into the outer court and from there into the city; the remnant of the ordinary people fled for refuge to the outer portico. Some of the priests at first tore out the spikes of the temple and their sockets, cast in lead, and hurled them at the Romans; but then, seeing this achieved nothing and that the fire was bursting in upon them too,

They withdrew to the wall, eight cubits thick, and there held their ground. But two men of note, though they could have gained safety by going over to the Romans or held out to share the fate of the rest, threw themselves into the fire instead and were burned up together with the temple—Meirus son of Belgas and Joseph son of Daleus.

The Romans, judging it now useless to spare what remained round about while the temple itself was burning, set fire to everything: the remnants of the porticoes and the gates, except two, one on the east and one on the south—and these too they later tore down. They also burned the treasuries, in which lay an immense quantity of money, an immense quantity of clothing, and other valuables; in short, the whole accumulated wealth of the Jews had been stored there, since the rich had moved their household goods into it.

They came also to the one remaining portico of the outer temple, where a mixed crowd of women, children, and common people, some six thousand in all, had taken refuge. Before Caesar could decide anything about them or give an order to his commanders, the soldiers, carried away by rage, set fire to the portico. It happened that some died by throwing themselves out of the flames, and others

perished inside it; of so great a number not one survived. The man responsible for their destruction was a false prophet, who had proclaimed to the people in the city that very day that God commanded them to go up to the temple to receive the signs of their salvation. There were many such prophets at that time, planted by the tyrants to urge the people

to wait for help from God, so that fewer would desert, and so that hope might steady those already gripped by fear and under guard. A man in distress is quickly persuaded; and when the deceiver adds the promise of release from present evils, the sufferer gives himself over entirely to hope. So it was that the wretched people were led astray then by impostors who lied in God's name, while the clear signs that plainly foretold

the coming desolation they neither heeded nor believed, but, as if thunderstruck and possessing neither eyes nor minds, disregarded the warnings of God—once when a star resembling a sword stood over the city, and a comet that lasted a whole year; and again when, before the revolt and the stirring toward war, as the people were gathering for the feast of

unleavened bread, on the eighth of the month Xanthicus, at the ninth hour of night, so great a light shone round the altar and the temple that it seemed to be broad daylight, and this lasted half an hour. To the inexperienced it seemed a good omen, but the sacred scribes judged at once, from what followed, what it meant. And at the same feast a cow, led by someone to

the sacrifice, gave birth to a lamb in the middle of the temple court. And the eastern gate of the inner sanctuary, though made of bronze and very massive, and though it took twenty men, closing it with difficulty toward evening, and though it was fitted with iron-bound bars and had bolts sunk very deep into the threshold, itself a single unbroken block of stone, was seen at the sixth hour of night to have opened of its own accord. The temple

guards ran and reported it to the captain, who went up and, with difficulty, managed to shut it again. To ordinary people this too seemed a most excellent omen: that God had opened for them the gate of blessings. But the learned understood that the security of the sanctuary was loosening of itself, and that the gate was being opened as a gift to the enemy, and among themselves they declared the sign to portend desolation. Not many days after

the feast, on the twenty-first of the month Artemisius, a supernatural apparition was seen, one beyond belief. What I am about to tell would seem a fable, I think, had it not been reported also by eyewitnesses, and had the sufferings that followed not matched the signs. For before sunset, chariots were seen suspended in the air over the whole country, and armed battalions rushing through the clouds

and encircling the cities. And at the feast called Pentecost, the priests, entering the inner sanctuary by night as was their custom for their services, said they first became aware of a movement and a din, and after that of a massed voice saying, "We are departing from here." More frightening still than these was the case of a certain Jesus son of Ananias, a common man from the countryside, who four years before the

war, when the city was enjoying the fullest peace and prosperity, came up for the feast at which it is the custom for everyone to build booths for God, and suddenly began to cry out in the temple: "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the temple, a voice against bridegrooms and brides, a voice against all the people!" This, by day

and by night, he went about crying through all the alleys of the city. Some of the leading citizens, angered at the ill-omened cry, seized the man and beat him with many blows. But he said nothing in his own defense, nor anything in private to those striking him, and kept uttering the very same cries as before. The magistrates, concluding—rightly, as it turned out—that the man's impulse was something more than human, brought him before the

Roman prefect. There, though torn by scourges to the bone, he neither begged for mercy nor wept, but, twisting his voice into the most plaintive tone he could manage, answered every blow with, "Woe, woe to Jerusalem!" When Albinus—for he was then prefect—asked him again and again who he was, where he came from, and why he cried out such things, he answered not a word to any of it, but kept up his lament over the city without

pause, until Albinus, judging him mad, released him. For all the time up to the war he approached no citizen and was never seen to speak, but daily, as if he had rehearsed a prayer, lamented, "Woe, woe to Jerusalem!" He never cursed any of those who struck him day after day, nor blessed those who gave him food; to everyone alike he gave the same grim

reply. Above all at the festivals he would cry it out, and this he kept up unbroken for seven years and five months, his voice never growing dull nor tiring, until in the siege, having seen the deeds his cry foretold, he fell silent. For as he went about along the wall crying, "Woe again to the city," and to the people, and to the temple, in a piercing voice, and as at the very last he added, "and woe

to me too"—a stone hurled from a catapult struck him and killed him on the spot, and his soul departed still uttering those same cries. Anyone who reflects on this will find that God cares for mankind and gives every kind of warning to his own people of what would bring them safety, but that they perish through folly and evils of their own choosing—for the Jews, after the demolition of the Antonia,

made the temple square, though it was written in their oracles that the city and the temple would be taken once the temple became square. But what incited them to war more than anything was an ambiguous oracle, likewise found in their sacred writings, that at that time someone from their country would rule the world. This they took to refer to themselves,

and many of their wise men were led astray in their judgment of it; but in truth the oracle signified the rule of Vespasian, who was proclaimed emperor on Jewish soil. But it is not possible for men to escape their fate, even when they foresee it. And of the signs, they interpreted some to their liking and dismissed others, until at last, by the capture of their homeland and their own ruin,

they were convicted of their folly. As for the Romans, once the rebels had fled into the city, and while the temple itself and everything around it was burning, they carried their standards into the sanctuary, set them up opposite the eastern gate, and there offered sacrifice to them, and with the loudest acclamations hailed Titus as imperator. And the soldiers were all so glutted with plunder that

throughout Syria the price of a pound of gold fell to half what it had been before. Meanwhile, among the priests still holding out along the wall of the temple, a boy, overcome with thirst, begged the Roman guards for a pledge of safety, confessing his need. Moved to pity by his youth and his distress, they gave him their word; he came down, drank, and, filling the vessel he

had brought with water, made off, fleeing back up to his own people. None of the guards was able to catch him, and they cursed him for his bad faith. But he said he had broken none of the terms: the pledge had been given only for him to come down and get water, not to remain with them, and both of these he had done—so that he was judged to have kept faith after all. The rebels marveled at the boy's cunning,

chiefly on account of his youth. On the fifth day the priests, now starving, came down, and, being brought before Titus by the guards, begged to be granted their lives. He told them that the time for pardon had passed them by, that the one for whose sake he might reasonably have spared them was gone, and that it was fitting for priests to perish along with their temple, and he ordered the men put to death. Meanwhile, those

around the tyrants, seeing that they were being overpowered on every side by the war, and that, walled in as they were, there was no way of escape, called on Titus for a parley. He, both because he was by nature humane and wished, if nothing else, to save the city, and because his friends urged him—for he now supposed the rebels were growing more moderate—took his stand on the western side of the outer temple; for there, above the

colonnade, there were gates, and a bridge joining the temple to the upper city; and this now stood between the tyrants and Caesar. The crowd on each side pressed close together, the Jews around Simon and John poised on the hope of pardon, the Romans around Caesar waiting eagerly to hear their terms. Titus ordered his soldiers to hold their anger and their weapons in check, stationed his interpreter beside him—itself a mark that he held the upper hand—and was the first to speak:

"Have you not by now had your fill of your country's sufferings, men? You who took account neither of our strength nor of your own weakness, and who, by reckless impulse and madness, have destroyed your people, your city, and your temple, and are yourselves now about to perish justly as well—you who, from the very time

Pompey took you by force, never once ceased your revolutionary stirrings, and then at last openly declared war on Rome! Was it trust in numbers? Yet the smallest fraction of Rome's army was more than a match for you. Trust in allies, then? What nation outside our empire was ever going to choose the Jews over the Romans? Strength of body? Yet you know the Germans are our slaves. Strength of

walls? What barrier is greater than the ocean's own wall, wrapped in which the Britons still bow before Roman arms? Endurance of spirit and the cunning of your generals? Why, you knew well enough that even the Carthaginians were conquered. So then, it was Roman generosity that stirred you up against Rome—we who first gave you land to till and set kindred kings over you, who then preserved your ancestral laws, and allowed you to live not only

among yourselves but toward others as well, exactly as you wished; and, greatest of all, we allowed you to collect tribute for your God and to gather offerings, and never reproached or hindered those who brought them—so that you might grow richer at our expense and arm yourselves, with our own money, against us. And then, after enjoying such great benefits, you turned the surfeit of them against those who had granted them, and, like

untamed serpents, spat your venom back at the very hands that fondled you. Well, grant that you despised Nero's indolence: like ruptures or sprains that lie maliciously quiet the rest of the time, you broke out during the worse sickness, and stretched your hopes into shameless, boundless desires. My father came into this country not to punish you for what you did to Cestius, but to warn you; for had he

come intending the destruction of your nation, he should have gone straight for your root and razed this city at once. Instead he laid waste to Galilee and the surrounding country, giving you time to repent. But you mistook his humanity for weakness, and from our mildness nursed your own boldness. Once Nero was gone, you did exactly what the worst of men would do: you took heart from our civil troubles, and when I

and my father had withdrawn to Egypt, you seized the moment to prepare for war, and were not ashamed to trouble men who had become emperors—men you had already tested as humane generals. Indeed, when the empire came to us as a suppliant, and while everyone else under it kept quiet, and the nations beyond it sent embassies and rejoiced with us, the Jews alone remained our enemies, and your embassies went out to those

beyond the Euphrates to stir up revolt; new circuits of walls were built up again; factions and rivalries among tyrants, and civil war—fit only for men so wicked as you. I came against the city myself, against my own will, carrying grim orders from my father. Hearing that the people were peaceably disposed, I was glad. I called on you to stop short of war; for a long time, even while you kept fighting, I spared you; I gave pledges of safety to deserters; I kept faith with those who took refuge with me;

I pitied many prisoners; those who pressed for punishment I chastised only after examination. Was it my own choice to bring siege engines against your walls? I held back my soldiers, who were always thirsting for your blood; after every victory, as if I were the one defeated, I called on you to make peace. When I came near the temple, I again willingly set aside the laws of war, and urged you to spare your own holy places and save the temple for yourselves, granting you

leave to go out unharmed, a pledge of safety, and, had you wished, the chance to fight it out elsewhere. All this you scorned, and burned the temple with your own hands. And now, foulest of men, do you call me to a parley? What is left for you to save, of the sort that has already perished? What safety do you think yourselves worthy of, now that the temple is gone? And yet even now you stand there under arms, and not even in this final extremity do you so much as play the part of suppliants,

wretches that you are—trusting in what? Is not your people dead? Is not your temple gone? Is not your city in my hands, and your very lives in my grasp? Do you then imagine that a hard death is a mark of courage? No—I will not contend against your desperation: throw down your weapons, surrender your bodies, and I grant you your lives, as I would to members of my own household...

a mild master, punishing only what could not be healed and preserving the rest for himself. To this they answered that they could not accept his right hand, since they had sworn never to do so; instead they asked for a way out through the encircling wall, with their wives and children, meaning to go into the desert and leave the city to him. Titus, angered that men in the position of the conquered were offering him terms as though they were the victors, ordered a proclamation made to them that no one was to desert any longer, and no one was to hope for his right hand, for he would spare no one; instead they were to fight with all their strength and save themselves however they could, since he himself would now do everything according to the law of war. To the soldiers he gave leave to burn and plunder the city.

For that day they held back, but on the next they set fire to the archive building, the citadel, the council chamber, and the district called Ophlas, and the fire spread as far as the palace of Helena, which stood in the middle of the citadel. The lanes and houses burned, all of them full of the dead who had perished from famine.

On that same day the sons and brothers of King Izates, together with a number of prominent citizens who had gathered with them, begged Caesar to grant them his right hand. Though he was furious with all who remained, he did not change his character and received the men. For the time he kept them all under guard, but later he had the king's children and kinsmen put in chains and taken to Rome, to serve as a pledge of good faith as hostages.

The rebels, meanwhile, made a rush for the royal palace, where many had deposited their possessions because of its strength; they drove the Romans out of it, and after slaughtering the whole crowd of citizens gathered there, some eight thousand four hundred people, they plundered the money. They also took two Romans alive, one a cavalryman and one a foot soldier. The foot soldier they killed at once and dragged around the city, as though avenging themselves on the whole Roman people in one man's body. The cavalryman said he could suggest something useful for their safety, and so was brought before Simon; but having nothing to say to him, he was handed over to one of the commanders, a certain Ardalas, to be executed. Ardalas bound the man's hands behind him, blindfolded him, and led him out opposite the Romans to behead him; but the man managed to slip free and escape to the Romans before the Jew could draw his sword.

Titus would not allow this man, who had escaped from the enemy, to be put to death; but judging him unworthy to be a Roman soldier because he had let himself be taken alive, he stripped him of his weapons and expelled him from his legion — a punishment that, to a man with any shame, was harder to bear than death.

The next day the Romans drove the brigands out of the lower city and burned everything as far as Siloam. They were glad to see the city consumed, but got no plunder from it, for the rebels had already stripped everything and withdrawn into the upper city. They felt no remorse at all for their crimes; instead they were as boastful as if they had done something good. Looking out at the city in flames, they said with cheerful faces that they were glad to await the end, now that the people had been slaughtered, the temple burned, and the city set ablaze, leaving nothing for the enemy.

Josephus, however, did not tire of pleading with them, even at this last extremity, on behalf of what remained of the city. He said much against their cruelty and impiety, and offered much advice toward saving themselves, but got nothing for it beyond mockery. Since they could neither bring themselves to surrender because of their oath, nor were still able to fight the Romans on equal terms, hemmed in as if in a prison, the habit of killing still moved their hands: scattering among the ruins in front of the city, they lay in wait for those trying to desert. Many were caught, and since hunger had left them too weak even to run, all were butchered and their bodies thrown to the dogs. Every kind of death seemed lighter than famine, so that even those who had already given up hope of mercy from the Romans still fled to them, willingly throwing themselves in the way of the rebels' murderous swords. No spot in the city was free of the dead; every place was filled with corpses of those who had perished by famine or by the civil strife.

The tyrants and the brigand band with them were sustained by one last hope, resting on the underground passages, into which they fled expecting not to be searched out even after the city's complete capture, once the Romans had withdrawn; then they would come out and try to escape. But this was a mere dream to them, for they were never going to escape the notice of God or of the Romans. For the time being, though, trusting in these underground places, they set more fires than the Romans themselves, and those who fled from the burning buildings into the tunnels they killed indiscriminately and robbed; and if they found any food, however soaked in blood, they seized and devoured it. There was already war among themselves over the plunder, and I think that, had they not been overtaken by the city's fall, in their excess of cruelty they would even have tasted the dead.

Caesar, since it was impossible to take the upper city without earthworks, given its steep and precipitous position, distributed the army to the works on the twentieth of the month Loos. The gathering of timber for all the ramparts was difficult, since, as I have said, the country around the city had been stripped bare for a hundred stadia to build the earlier mounds. So the works of the four legions were raised on the western side of the city, opposite the royal palace, while the allied troops and the rest of the crowd worked at the Xystus, the bridge, and Simon's tower, which he had built as a stronghold in his war against John.

During these same days the leaders of the Idumeans met secretly and resolved to surrender themselves; they sent five men to Titus begging him to grant them his right hand. Titus, hoping that the tyrants too would give way once the Idumeans, who made up a large part of the fighting force, had been drawn off, agreed to spare them, slowly but still agreed, and sent the men back.

But as they were preparing to leave, Simon noticed, and at once killed the five who had gone to Titus; the other leaders, the most prominent of whom was Jacob son of Sosas, he arrested and imprisoned. The Idumean rank and file, thrown into confusion by the loss of their leaders, were kept under closer guard, and the wall was watched with still greater care. Even so, the guards could not hold back the deserters, and although a great many were killed, far more still got away. The Romans took in all of them, since Titus, out of leniency, had let his earlier orders lapse, and the soldiers themselves, sated with killing, refrained from it now, hoping for profit instead: leaving only the common people aside, they sold the rest of the crowd, along with their wives and children, each for the lowest price, since there were so many for sale and so few buyers.

Although Titus had proclaimed that no one was to desert alone, so that families might be brought out together, he still accepted these people as well, but set men to examine them and pick out any who deserved punishment. The number of those sold was beyond counting; the common people who survived numbered more than forty thousand, and Caesar let each go wherever he pleased.

In these same days one of the priests, a son of Thebuthi named Jesus, having received an oath of safety from Caesar in exchange for handing over some of the sacred treasures, came out and delivered from the wall of the temple two lampstands like those kept in the sanctuary, together with tables, mixing-bowls, and bowls, all of solid gold and very heavy. He also handed over the veils and the vestments of the high priests, with their precious stones, and many other vessels used in the sacred rites.

Also arrested was the treasurer of the temple, a man named Phineas, who disclosed the tunics and sashes of the priests, a great quantity of purple and scarlet cloth kept for the needs of the veil, along with a large amount of cinnamon and cassia and a mass of other spices, which the priests mixed together and burned as incense to God every day. He also handed over many other treasures and no small amount of sacred ornaments; and for this, though he had been taken by force, he was granted the pardon given to deserters.

When the earthworks had at last been finished, after eighteen days, on the seventh of the month Gorpiaeus, the Romans brought up their siege engines. Of the rebels, some had already given up on the city and withdrew from the wall into the citadel; others hid themselves in the underground tunnels; but many stood their ground, scattered along the wall, and resisted those bringing up the battering engines. The Romans overcame these too, by sheer numbers and force, and above all because they fought with confidence against men already disheartened and worn down. When part of the wall was breached and some of the towers, battered by the rams, gave way, those defending it fled at once, and even greater fear than the danger warranted gripped the tyrants themselves; before the enemy had even crossed over, they were paralyzed and already poised for flight. It was pitiful to see men who had once been so arrogant, so insolent in their crimes, now humbled and trembling, even amid the worst of men.

They rushed to the encircling wall meaning to force back the guards and break through to escape, but when they saw that their old confederates were nowhere to be found — for these had already fled wherever necessity advised — while others came running to report that the whole western wall had been torn down, or that the Romans had already broken in and were close by searching for them, and still others claimed to see the enemy from the towers, though fear was distorting their sight, they fell on their faces and wailed over their own derangement, and, as if the very sinews of flight had been cut from them, they were at a loss what to do.

Here above all one could recognize the power of God against the impious and the fortune of the Romans: the tyrants stripped themselves of their own safety and came down from the towers of their own accord — towers that could never have been taken by force, but only by famine. The Romans, after such labor over the weaker walls, now gained by fortune what their engines could not achieve, for the three towers described above were stronger than any siege device. Abandoning these towers — or rather, cast down from them by God — they fled at once into the ravine below Siloam, and after a little recovery from their terror, made a dash for the encircling wall at that point. But their courage now fell short of what necessity demanded, for their strength had already been broken along with their spirit by fear and disaster, and they were pushed back by the guards; scattering from one another, they plunged down into the underground tunnels.

The Romans, now masters of the walls, planted their standards on the towers and, with clapping and rejoicing, sang the paean of victory, having found the end of the war far lighter than its beginning. Indeed, mounting the last wall without bloodshed, they could hardly believe it, and finding no opponent in sight, they were at a loss what to do. Pouring into the narrow streets with swords drawn, they killed without mercy all they overtook, and set fire to the houses of those who had fled inside, families and all. Often, when they broke in to plunder, they came upon whole families of corpses and rooms full of the victims of famine, and, shuddering at the sight, went out again empty-handed.

Yet they showed no pity for those who had died so, and treated the living no differently: running through anyone in their path, they choked the streets with corpses and flooded the whole city with blood, so much so that many of the fires were even quenched by the bloodshed. The killing ceased toward evening, but through the night the fire raged on, and dawn rose over a burning Jerusalem on the eighth of the month Gorpiaeus — a city that had endured such disasters during the siege that, had it enjoyed an equal share of blessings since its founding, it would certainly have been envied by all, and that deserved its calamities for no other reason than for having produced the generation that brought it down.

Titus, entering the city, marveled both at its other defenses and at its towers, which the tyrants in their derangement had left standing. Seeing the massive height of them, the size of each stone, and the precision of their joints, and how broad and how tall they rose, he said, "We have fought with God on our side, and it was God who cast the Jews down from these strongholds — for what could the hands of men, or their engines, do against towers like these?" He spoke much more of this kind to his friends at the time, and released the tyrants' prisoners, all those found in the fortresses. Later, when he was leveling the rest of the city and demolishing its walls, he left these towers standing as a monument to the fortune that had fought alongside him and given him victory over what could not otherwise have been taken.

Since the soldiers were now growing weary of killing, and yet a great number of survivors kept appearing, Caesar ordered that only armed men still resisting should be killed, and the rest of the crowd taken captive. The soldiers, along with what had been ordered, killed the old and the weak, and drove those in their prime and fit for use into the temple, shutting them up within the enclosure built for the women. Caesar set one of his freedmen to guard them, and his friend Fronto to determine the fate each deserved. Fronto put to death all those denounced by one another as rebels or brigands, and chose out the tallest and handsomest of the young men to keep for his triumph. Of the rest of the crowd, those over seventeen he had bound and sent to labor in the mines of Egypt, while Titus gave away a great many more to the provinces, to be destroyed in the theaters by the sword or by wild beasts; those under seventeen were sold. During the days when Fronto was making these decisions, eleven thousand of them died of want — some because the guards, out of hatred, withheld food from them, others because they refused what was offered; for besides this, there was a shortage of grain for so great a multitude.

The total number of captives taken throughout the entire war came to ninety-seven thousand, and the number who perished during the whole siege to one million one hundred thousand. Most of these were of the same nation but not natives of the city; for people had gathered there from the whole country for the feast of unleavened bread

they had gathered for the feast of unleavened bread when the war suddenly closed around them, so that the cramped space first bred a plague-like destruction among them, and then a still swifter famine.

That the city could hold so many is clear from the count taken under Cestius, who, wanting to show Nero, who despised the nation, how great the city was at its height, urged the chief priests, if it were at all possible, to number the people. So, when the feast called Passover came around, at which they sacrifice from the ninth hour to the eleventh, and no fewer than ten men gather as a kind of company around each victim, for it is not permitted to feast on one alone, while many even come together in groups of twenty, they counted two hundred fifty-five thousand six hundred victims. Reckoning ten diners to each, that comes to two million seven hundred thousand men, all of them ritually clean and holy: for neither lepers nor those with a discharge nor women in their courses nor anyone else defiled was allowed to share in this sacrifice, nor even foreigners who were present for the worship, though a great crowd of these gathers from outside as well.

At that time, then, the whole nation was shut in as if in a prison by fate, and the war encircled the city, packed as it was with people. The number of those who perished, in any case, surpasses every destruction wrought by man or by God: for besides those visibly killed or taken captive by the Romans, when they searched the sewers and tore up the ground, they killed everyone they found, and there too more than two thousand corpses were discovered, some slain by their own hands, some by one another's, but most destroyed by famine.

A dreadful stench from the bodies met those who came upon them, so that many turned back at once, while others, driven by greed, pushed in, treading on the heaped-up corpses; for many valuables were found in the passages, and gain made every path seem permitted. Many prisoners of the tyrants were also brought out to be killed, for even at the last they did not cease from their cruelty.

But God did indeed repay both of them as they deserved. John, starving together with his brothers in the sewers, begged for the right hand of the Romans which he had so often scorned to accept; Simon, after struggling long against necessity, as we shall show in what follows, surrendered himself. The one was kept for the triumph, to be slaughtered; John was kept in chains for life. The Romans burned the outlying parts of the city and razed the walls.

So Jerusalem was taken in this way, in the second year of the reign of Vespasian, on the eighth day of the month Gorpiaeus. Having been taken five times before, this was its second devastation. Asochaeus, king of the Egyptians, and after him Antiochus, then Pompey, and after these Sossius together with Herod, took the city but preserved it. But before all of them, the king of the Babylonians conquered it and laid it waste one thousand four hundred sixty-eight years and six months after its founding. The one who first founded it was a Canaanite ruler, called in the ancestral tongue 'righteous king,' for such indeed he was. For this reason he was the first to serve as priest to God, and the first to build the temple, and he renamed the city Jerusalem, though it had previously been called Salem.

The king of the Jews, David, drove out the Canaanite people and settled his own there, and four hundred seventy-seven years and six months after him it was razed by the Babylonians. From David the king, who was the first Jew to rule there, to the destruction carried out by Titus, is one thousand one hundred seventy-nine years. From the first founding to the last capture is two thousand one hundred seventy-seven years. But neither its antiquity, nor its deep wealth, nor its people spread across the whole inhabited world, nor the great fame of its worship, availed at all to save it from destruction.

Such, then, was the end of the siege of Jerusalem.

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