petrated unheard of atrocities. While they professed to act from the exclusive motive of zeal for the glory of God, they soon conducted some of the noblest persons in Jerusalem to the scaffold; and under pretence of detecting conspiracies with the Romans, they rendered all those who opposed their atrocious proceedings, obnoxious to the punishment of death. By obtaining the power of appointing to the chief priesthood, they engrossed the principal authority in the state; and encouraged by past success, they proceeded to degrade the religion of their fathers, and to pollute the temple of their God. To secure themselves from the resentment of an injured and indignant people, they made the temple their fortress, and sallied from the sacred walls to commit their outrages of licentiousness and blood. Ananus, who had sustained the office of high-priest about six years before, and who possessed in an eminent degree, those endowments which might have qualified him to be the deliverer of his country, opposed the infamous proceedings of the Zealots with all the influence of his character, and all the power of his eloquence. Matthias, the son of Theophilus, at this time was highpriest; but the Zealots treating with contempt all that was sacred in the office, and all that was awful in the responsibilities which it involved, deposed Matthias from his station and elevated Phannias, a man ignorant, imbecile, and contemptible, who knew not how to perform one duty of his office, and whose continual mistakes they made the subjects of their brutal laughter and entertainment. Ananus, with pathetic and irresistible eloquence, addressed a general assembly of the people, and urged them by force of arms to avenge their aggravated wrongs, and to save the polluted sanctuary of God; his appeal aroused all the passions of his auditors; the Zealots were unable to resist their numbers and their rage; they were driven from the outer into the second court of the temple; the reverence of the Jews for the sacred edifice induced them to refrain from further violence within its walls, but they took every precaution to retain that part of the building they had won, and to block up their sacrilegious enemies in close and uninterrupted siege.

Give the character of John of Gischala.

A. D. 69.

Well would it have been for Jerusalem, if John of Gischala had never entered its walls. This base, unprincipled, and treacherous man, pretended to be devoted to the interests of the peaceable party, while all along he was betraying them to the Zealots. The people having exacted from him an oath of fidelity, appear to have had no suspicions of his perfidy; and Ananus actually sent him to the temple to treat with the Zealots upon the terms of a peace. John had no sooner entered the temple, than he threw off the mask, declared himself the partizan of the Zealots, and succeeded in persuading Eleazar and Zecharias their chiefs, together with the whole gang, to apply for the assistance of the Idumæans.

Who became the auxiliaries of the Zealots and what were their actions in Jerusalem?

The Idumæans received the invitation of the Zealots with exultation, twenty thousand of them immediately marched to Jerusalem, and encamped around its walls. But the gates were shut by the prudent jealousy of Ananus, who maintained strong guards in the temple to repress the sallies of the Zealots, and on the walls to resist any attack of the Idumæans. On that very night there came on a tremendous tempest of unexampled violence. Amidst the rushing of the rain, the roaring of the wind, the pealing of the thunder, and the trembling of the earth, the Zealots sawed off the bolts and hinges of the temple gates without being heard, penetrated to the city walls, and let in the army of the Idumæans. The shouts of battle now mingled with the sound of the elemental war; the Zealots and Idumæans were successful; and the next morning, eight thousand five hundred of the people were discovered to have been slain. But this was not enough. The fury of the Zealots and the fierceness of the Idumæans continued to deluge the city with blood; Ananus, and Jesus the son of Gamaliel, who had actively supported his patriotic measures, were murdered; the people, in the language of Josephus, were massacred like a herd of unclean animals; mere death was not sufficient to satiate the cruelty of these execra

ble savages; the most revolting tortures were added to common assassination; twelve thousand of the best and noblest citizens in Jerusalem were destroyed; and the bodies of the slain, instead of receiving the rites of sepulture, were left for the birds or thrown to the dogs.

Continue the narration of the proceedings of the Zealots and Idumæans.

This indiscriminate slaughter at length disgusted even the Idumæans, and the Zealots set up a mock court of judicature for the trial of the obnoxious. One of the first men who was brought before this tribunal, was Zecharias the son of Baruch. This man, whose gallantry and excellence extorted general esteem, when placed upon his trial, not only refuted with ease the calumnious charges which were brought against him, but he turned upon his accusers, and charged them so pointedly, so justly, and so irresistibly with their crimes, that even his prostituted judges were compelled to pronounce him guiltless. So incensed were the Zealots with this tribute to his innocence, and this virtual condemnation of themselves, that they murdered him on the spot, and drove the judges with ignominy from their seats, as incompetent for the sanguinary purposes for which the tribunal was constituted. When the Idumæans had left the city, which they did in disgust, having first liberated from prison two thousand persons who instantly fled to Simon the son of Gorias, the Zealots continued their massacres and crimes. Most melancholy is the description which Josephus gives of the state of the people under their ferocious despotism. To have once seemed to oppose them was a capital crime; to be inactive was to be declared a spy; to applaud their actions, was to be disaffected; to be rich, or to be suspected of being so, or even to have the misfortune of being disliked by them, was to be guilty, and for every crime there was but one punishment-death.

Why did Vespasian delay the siege of Jerusalem?

During all this time Vespasian remained at Cæsarea, and his principal officers expressed their astonishment that he did not immediately march on Jerusalem.

But that wily general told them, that his inaction was only protracted, that his conquest might be effected with the least trouble and waste of the blood of his soldiers; that the Jews were effecting their own destruction, by their mutual animosities and massacres ; and that his troops, invigorated by rest, would be able in an instant to crush their ferocious and maddened opponents into submission or destruction.

What divisions continued among the Jews?

It was predicted that when the Jews should be their own destroyers, and should pollute their own temple, their city would be taken, and their sacred edifice would be consumed. That prediction was evidently on the verge of fulfilment. The Zealots had no sooner secured the possession of the supreme authority, than they became divided among themselves. John of Gischala erecting the fabric of his own aggrandisement upon the ruin of his country, attached the most ferocious and profligate of the party to his own cause; while the other chiefs, who were disgusted by his assumption, arrayed themselves against him. Actuated with malignant animosity against each other, the only thing in which they agreed, was to plunder and to murder the unhappy people. The neighbouring country was in no better condition. The Sicarii or assassins, who had made the strong fortress of Massada the place of their retreat, destroyed the resources, by desolating the produce, of the country. Simon the son of Gorias was at their head; this bold, fierce, brutal, and audacious man, filled to the very brim the cup of the national misery; the Idumæans and the Jews were equally the subjects of his cruelty or extortion; his army was soon prodigiously increased, amounting to forty thousand men, besides his heavy armed troops; an insult which he sustained from the Zealots, who carried off his wife a prisoner to Jerusalem, inflamed his fury to madness; he came before the walls of Jerusalem; barbarously mangled and murdered all the inhabitants who came within his reach; and only withdrew when he had terrified the Zealots into the restoration of his wife, and when he had discovered that the strength of the walls might bid defiance to an assault.

CHAPTER XIII.

FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM BY THE ROMANS TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CITY.

SECTION I.

TO THE FIRST ASSAULT OF THE CITY.

WHEN Vespasian became the emperor of Rome, to whom did he entrust the conduct of the Jewish war?

THERE cannot be a more affecting eviA. D. 69, 70. dence of the judicial infatuation of the unhappy inhabitants of Jerusalem, than their desperate feuds during the two years of delay which took place in the operations of the Romans, in consequence of the changes which occurred in the imperial government. The death of Nero, the successive destruction of Galba and Otho, and the beastly excesses of Vitellius, opened to Vespasian an easy way to the throne of the Cæsars. While the fate of the empire was in suspense, the attention both of Vespasian and Titus was fixed upon Rome, rather than Jerusalem; nor was it likely that they would particularly regard the affairs of a remote province, when the destinies of the civilized world were to be decided. But when the metropolis and the provinces had gladly submitted to the authority of Vespasian, and he found himself firmly seated on his throne, he determined to put a final period to the war of Judæa; Titus was sent to extinguish the embers of rebellion by the capture of Jerusalem; he arrived at Cæsarea; and, after a short interval of active preparation, he commenced his march at the head of a formidable army of nq less that four complete legions, and a great number of Asiatic auxiliaries.