maus, and with them fifteen men of figure he threw them down before the wall of the Now when Judas, the son of Judas, who was one of Simon's under-officers, and a person intrusted by him to keep one of the towers, saw this procedure of Simon's, he called together ten of those under him, that were the most faithful to him; and partly out of pity to those that had so barbarously been put to death, but principally in order to provide for his own safety, he spake thus to them: "How long shall we bear these miseries? Or what hopes have we of deliverance, by thus continuing faithful to such wicked wretches? Is not the famine already come against us? Are not the Romans in a manner gotten within the city? Is not Simon become unfaithful to his benefactors? And is there not reason to fear he will very soon bring us to the like punishment, while the security the Romans offer us is sure? Let us surrender up this wall, and save ourselves, and the city. Nor will Simon be very much hurt, if, now he despair of deliverance, he be brought to justice a little sooner than he expects. Now these ten were prevailed upon by those arguments. So he sent the rest of those that were under him, some one way, and some another, that no difficulty might be made of what they had resolved upon. Accordingly, he called to the Romans, from the tower, about the third hour. But they, some of them out of pride, despised what he said, and others did not believe him to be in earnest; though the greater number delayed the matter, as believing they should get possession of the city in a little time, without any hazard. But when Titus was just coming thither with his armed men, Simon was acquainted with the matter, and presently took the tower into his custody, before it was surrendered; and seized upon these men, and put them to death, in the sight of the Romans: and when he had mangled their dead bodies, Hereupon some of the deserters, having no other way, leaped down from the wall imme diately; while others of them went out of the city, with stones, as if they would fight them: but thereupon they fled away to the Romans. But here a worse fate accompanied these, than what they had found within the city: and, 4 they met with a quicker dispatch from the too || said, "What! have any of my own soldiers great abundance they had among the Romans, done such things as this, out of the uncertain than they could have done from the famine hope of gain, without regarding their own among the Jews. For when they came first weapons, which are made of silver and gold? to the Romans, they were puffed up by the Moreover, do the Arabians and Syrians now famine, and swelled like men in a dropsy: first of all begin to govern themselves as they after which, they suddenly overfilled those please, and to indulge their appetites in a bodies that were before empty, and so burst foreign war? and then, out of their barbarity. asunder, excepting such only as were skilful in murdering men, and out of their hatred to enough to restrain their appetites, and by de- the Jews, get it ascribed to the Romans?" For grees took in their food. Yet did another this infamous practice was said to be spread plague seize upon those that were thus pre-among some of his own soldiers also. Titus served. For there was among the Syrian deserters a certain person, who was caught gathering pieces of gold out of the excrements of the Jews. For the deserters used to swallow such pieces of gold, as we said before, when they came out and for these did the seditious search them all. For there was a great quantity of gold in the city insomuch that as much was now sold in the Roman camp for twelve Attic drams as was sold before for twenty-five. But when this contrivance was discovered in one instance, the fame of it filled their several camps, that the deserters came to them full of gold. So the multitude of the Arabians, with the Syrians, cut up those that came as supplicants, and searched their bellies. Nor does it seem to me that any misery befell the Jews that was more terrible than this: since, in one night, about two thousand of these deserters were thus dissected. then threatened that he would put such men to death, if any of them were discovered to be so insolent as to do so again. He gave it also in charge to the legions, that they should make a search after such as were suspected, and should bring them to him. But it appeared that the love of money was too hard for all their dread of punishment;t and a vehement desire of gain is natural to men, and no passion is so venturesome as covetousness. Otherwise such passions have certain bounds, and are subordinate to fear. But in reality it was God who condemned the whole nation, and turned every course that was taken for their preservation to their destruction. This, therefore, which was forbidden by Cæsar under such a threatening, was ventured upon privately against the deserters; and these barbarians would go out still, and meet those that ran' away, before any saw them; and looking about them to see that no Roman spied them, When Titus came to the knowledge of this they dissected them, and pulled this polluted wicked practice, he had like to have surround-money out of their bowels: which money ed those that had been guilty of it with his cavalry, and to have put them to death; and he had done it, had not their number been so very great; and those that were liable to this punishment would have been manifold more than those whom they had slain. However, he called together the commanders of the auxiliary troops he had with him, as well as the commanders of the Roman legions: (for some of his own soldiers had been also guilty herein, as he had been informed:) and had great indignation against both of them, and was still found in a few of them; while yet a great many were destroyed by the bare hope there was of thus getting by them: which miserable treatment made many that were deserting to return back again into the city. But as for John, when he could no longer plunder the people, he betook himself to sacrilege, and melted down many of the sacred utensils which had been given to the temple; as also many of those vessels which were necessary for such as administered about holy things: the caldrons, the dishes, and the tables. might even destroy them. Yet they were not deterred from the practice. Avarice is insatiable and incurable. B. Nay, Nay, he did not abstain from those pouring || dead bodies, in the interval between the fourvessels that were sent them by Augustus, and teenth day of the month Xanthicus, or Nisan, his wife. For the Roman emperors did ever when the Romans pitched their camp by the both honor and adorn this temple: whereas city, and the first day of the month Panemus, this man, who was a Jew, seized upon what or Tamuz. This was itself a prodigious were the donations of foreigners; and said to multitude. And though this man was not those that were with him, that it was proper himself set as a governor at that gate, yet was for them to use divine things, while they were he appointed to pay the public stipend for fighting for the Divinity, without fear and carrying these bodies out, and so was obliged that such whose warfare was for the temple of necessity to number them: while the rest should live of the temple. On which account were buried by their relations. Though all he emptied the vessels of that sacred wine and their burial was but this, to bring them away, oil, which the priests kept to be poured on the and cast them out of the city. After this man burnt offerings, and which lay in the inner there ran away to Titus many eminent citicourt of the temple, and distributed it among zens, and told him the entire number of the the multitude; who, in their anointing them-poor that were dead, and that no fewer than selves, and drinking, used each of them above a hin of them. And here I cannot but speak my mind, and what the concern I am under dictates to me: I suppose, that had the Romans made any longer delay in coming against these villains, that the city would either have been swallowed up by the ground opening under them; or been overflowed by water; or else been destroyed by such thunder as the country of † Sodom perished by. For it had brought forth a generation of men much more atheistical than were those that suffered such punishment. For by their mad-mon shores and old dunghills of cattle, and ness it was that all the people came to be destroyed. six hundred thousand were thrown out at the gates: though still the number of the rest could not be discovered. And they told bim further, that when they were no longer able to carry out the dead bodies of the poor, they laid the corpses on heaps in very large houses, and shut them up therein. As also that a medimnus of wheat was sold for a talent and that when, a while afterward, it was not possible to gather herbs, by reason the city was all walled about, some persons were driven to that terrible distress, as to search the com to eat the dung which they found there and what they of old could not endure so much as to see, they now used for food. When the Romans heard all this, they commiserated their case: while the seditious, who saw it also, did not repent; but suffered the same distress to come upon themselves. For they were blinded by that fate which was already coming upon the city, and upon themselves. || place, and in his Palestino, Tom. I. pages 254-258. Though I rather suppose part of that region of Pentapolis to be now under the waters of the south part of that sea, but perhaps not the whole country. ‡ A. D. 70.. BOOK VI. Containing an Interval of about one Month. FROM THE EXTREMITY TO WHICH THE JEWS WERE REDUCED TO THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM BY TITUS. CHAP. I. OF THE AUGMENTATION OF THE MISERIES SUSTAINED BY THE JEWS; AND OF AN ASSAULT WHICH THE ROMANS MADE UPON THE TOWER OF ANTONIA. THUS HUS did the miseries of Jerusalem grow worse and worse every day; and the seditious were still more irritated by the calamities they were under, even while the famine preyed upon themselves, after it had preyed upon the people. And, indeed, the multitude of carcasses that lay in heaps one upon another was a horrible sight, and produced a pestilential stench, which was a hinderance to those that would make sallies out of the city, and fight the enemy. But as those were to go in battle array, who had been already used to ten thousand murders, and must tread upon those dead bodies as they marched along, so were not they terrified, nor did they pity men as they marched over them. Nor did they deem this affront offered to the deceased to be any ill omen to themselves. But as they had their right hands already polluted with the murders of their own countrymen, and in that condition ran out to fight with foreigners, they seem to me to have cast a reproach upon God himself, as if he were too slow in punishing them. For the war was not now gone on with as if they had any hope of victory; for they gloried after a brutish manner in that despair of deliverance they were already in. And now the Romans, although they were greatly distressed in getting together their materials, raised their banks in twenty-one days; after they had cut down all the trees that were in the country that adjoined to the city, and for ninety furlongs round about; as I have already related. And, indeed, the very view of the country was a melancholy thing. For those places which were before adorned with trees, and pleasant gardens, were now become desolate every way; and their trees were all cut down. Nor could any foreigner that had formerly seen Judea, and the most beautiful suburbs of the city, and now saw it as a desert, but lament and mourn sadly at so great a change. For the war had laid all the signs of beauty quite waste. Nor if any one, that had known the place before, had come on a sudden to it now, would he have known it again: but though he were at the city itself, yet would he have inquired for it notwithstanding. For And now the banks were finished, they afforded a foundation for fear, both to the Romans and to the Jews. For the Jews expect ed that the city would be taken, unless they could burn those banks; as did the Romans expect that if these were once burnt down, they should never be able to take it. there was a great scarcity of materials, and the bodies of the soldiers began to fail with such hard labors, as did their souls faint with so many instances of ill success. Nay, the very calamities themselves that were in the city proved a greater discouragement to the Romans than to those within the city. For they found the fighting men of the Jews to be not at all mollified among their sore afflictions; + while they had themselves perpetually less given them up to hardness and insensibility of heart. It is not, therefore, to be expected, that outward danger or and that all their hopes were cut off, in case these works were once burnt, the soldiers were greatly ashamed that subtility should be too hard for courage, madness for armor, multitude for skill, and Jews for Romans. The Romans had now also another advantage, in and less hopes of success, and their banks were || forced to yield to the stratagems of the enemy, their engines to the firmness of their wall, and their closest fights to the boldness of their attacks. And, what was their greatest discouragement of all, they found the courageous souls of the Jews to be superior to the multi-that their engines for sieges co-operated with tude of the miseries they were under by their them in throwing darts and stones as far as sedition, their famine, and the war itself. In- the Jews, when they were coming out of the somuch that they were ready to imagine that city. Whereby the man that fell became an the violence of their attacks was invincible; impediment to him that was next him; as did and that the alacrity they shewed would not the danger of going farther make them less be discouraged by their calamities. For what zealous in their attempts. And for those that would not those be able to bear, if they should || had run under the darts, some of them were be fortunate, who turned their very misfor- terrified by the good order and closeness of tunes to the improvement of their valor? the enemies' ranks, before they came to a close These considerations made the Romans to fight; and others were pricked with their keep a stronger guard about their banks than spears, and turned back again. At length they formerly had done. they reproached one another for their cowardice, and retired, without doing any thing. This attack was made upon the first day of the month Panemus, or Tamuz. So when the Jews were retreated, the Romans brought their engines, although they had all the while thrown stones at them from the tower of Antonia, and were assaulted by fire and sword, and by all sorts of darts which necessity afforded the Jews to make use of. For although these had great dependence on their own wall, and a contempt of the Roman engines, yet did they endeavor to hinder the Romans from bringing them. Now these Romans struggled hard, on the contrary, to bring them: as deeming that this zeal of the Jews was in order to avoid any impression to be made on the tower of Antonia; because its walls were but weak, and its foundations rotten. However, that tower did not yield to the blows given it from the engines. Yet did the Romans bear the impressions made by the enemies' darts, which were perpetually cast at them, and did not give way to any of those dangers that came upon them from above; and so they brought their engines to bear. But then, as they were beneath the other, and were sadly wounded by the stones thrown down upon them, some of them threw their shields over their bodies, and partly with their hands, partly with their bodies, and partly with crows, rather, as was actually the case, render them despe But now John and his party took care for securing themselves afterward, even in case this wall should be thrown down and fell to work before the battering rams were brought against them. Yet did they not compass what they endeavored to do; but, as they were gone out with their torches, they came back under great discouragement, before they came near to the banks. And the reasons were these: that, in the first place, their conduct did not seem to be unanimous; but they went out in distinct parties, and at distinct intervals, and after a slow manner, and timorously: and, to say all in a word, without a Jewish courage. For they were now defective in what is peculiar to our nation, that is, in boldness, in violence of assault, in running upon the enemy all together, and in persevering in what they go about, though they do not at first succeed in it. But they now went out in a more languid manner than usual; and, at the same time, found the Romans set in array, - and more courageous than ordinary; and that they guarded their banks both with their bodies, and their entire armor; and this to such a degree on all sides, that they left no room for the fire to get among them; and that every one of their men were in such good courage, that they would sooner die than desert their ranks. For besides their notion difficulties would make any impression upon them; but rate. |