holy things: the caldrons, the dishes, and the tables. Nay, he did not abstain from those pouring vessels that were sent them by Augustus, and his wife. For the Roman emperors did ever both honour and adorn this temple: whereas this man, who was a Jew, seized upon what were the donations of foreigners; and said to those that were with him, that it was proper for them to use divine things, while they were fighting for the Divinity, without fear and that such whose warfare was for the temple should live of the temple. On which account he emptied the vessels of that sacred wine and oil, which the priests kept to be poured on the burnt-offerings, and which lay in the inner court of the temple; and distributed it among the multitude; who, in their anointing themselves, 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 madness it was that all the people came to be destroyed. And indeed, why do I relate these particular calamities? While Manneus, the son of Lazarus, came running to Titus at this very time, and told him, that there had been carried out through that one gate, which was intrusted to his care, no fewer than a hundred and fifteen thousand eight hundred and eighty dead bodies, in the interval between the fourteenth day of the month Xanthicus, or Nisan, when the Romans pitched their camp by the city, and the first day of the month Panemus, or Tamuz. This was itself a prodigious multitude. And though this man was not himself set * The court of the priests. + Josephus, both here, and before, IV. 8. esteems the land of Sodom, not as part of the lake Asphaltites, or under its waters, but near it only; as Tacitus also took the same notion from him, Hist. V. 6, 7. which the great Reland takes to be the truth, both in his note on this place, and in his Palestine, 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. as a governor at that gate, yet was he appointed to pay the public stipend for carrying these bodies out, and so was obliged of necessity to number them: while the rest were buried by their relations. Though all their burial was but this, to bring them away, and cast them out of the city. After this man there ran away to Titus many eminent citizens, and told him the entire number of the poor that were dead, and that no fewer than six hundred thousand were thrown out at the gates: though still the number of the rest could not be discovered. And they told him 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 common shores, and old dunghills of cattle, and 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 that city, and upon themselves. : 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 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. : And now the banks were finished, they afforded a foundation for fear, both to the Romans and to the Jews. For the Jews expected 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. For there was a great scarcity of materials, and the bodies of the soldiers began to fail with such hard labours, 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 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 See Chap. 12. The obduracy of the Jews was judicial. God had given them up to hardness and insensibility of heart. It is not, therefore, to be expected, that outward danger or difficulties would make any impression upon them; but rather, as was actually the case, render them desperate. B. Jews to be superior to the multitude of the miseries they were under by their sedition, their famine, and the war itself. Insomuch that they were ready to imagine, that the violence of their attacks was invincible; and that the alacrity they showed would not be discouraged by their calamities. For what would not those be able to bear, if they should be fortunate, who turned their very misfortunes to the improvement of their valour? These considerations made the Romans to keep a stronger guard about their banks than they formerly had done. : 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.Yed did they not compass what they endeavoured 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 armour; 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 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 armour, multitude for skill, and Jews for Romans. The Romans had now also another advantage, in that their engines for sieges co-operated with them in throwing darts and stones, as far as the Jews, when they were coming out of the city. Whereby the man that fell became an impediment to him that was next to him; as did the danger of going farther make |