17
“Gird yourselves and be valiant men and be ready against the morning, that you may fight with these nations that are assembled against us to destroy us and our Sanctuary. For it is better for us to die in battle than to see the evils of our nation and of the [Holy] of Holies.”
FIRST BOOK OF THE MACCABEES, III, 58-59
TACITUS IMPLIES THAT for Titus the siege of Jerusalem was just another step in his career, a means of showing the world that he was a gifted soldier and of demonstrating that sheer ability justified the Flavians’ occupation of the imperial throne. Yet at the time it must have seemed all too obvious that if Titus should fail to capture the city, then a humiliation on such a scale would be so shattering that it might easily topple his father, the new Emperor Vespasian.
On the other hand, for the Jewish people—however low may have been Josephus’s opinion of their capital’s defenders—it was a vital struggle to preserve the faith, the nation, and the land. More than life or death was at stake, on both sides.
It is important to remember that at no time in their history had the Romans ever besieged such a big city before, nor such a strong one. (Carthage was far smaller.) Shocked by Pompey’s humiliating occupation, the Jews had been preparing since King Herod’s time for a siege against Jerusalem, methodically bribing Roman officials to let them fortify the place as strongly as possible. Survivors who saw the capital in all its glory gave Tacitus the benefit of their recollections, and he describes how daunting it must have looked to the Romans:
Standing on a height which is naturally difficult of access, Jerusalem was rendered even more impregnable by ramparts and bastions that would have made even places on a flat plain more than adequately fortified. Two very high hills were surrounded by walls that in some places jutted out but in others curved in, so that the flanks of any besiegers were exposed to enemy fire. Moreover, the hills were bordered by crags and ravines. Since the towers on the hills stood sixty feet high and those on level ground a hundred and twenty, they made an astonishing impression on anyone seeing them for the first time—from far away they seemed to be the same height. Inside the city there were further fortifications defending the royal palace, together with the fortress of the Antonia with its awesome turrets—named by Herod in honor of Mark Antony. The Temple was designed like a citadel, enclosed by walls that were thicker and more elaborate than anywhere else.1
Even the Temple’s colonnades were defense works in their own right. A spring down in Siloam supplied it with drinking water, but in case it should run dry, huge cisterns stored the rain. As for food, further supplies could supposedly be brought in through secret tunnels under the walls, although this was not borne out by events.
According to Tacitus—Josephus gives us a much bigger figure—Jerusalem contained at least 600,000 men, women, and children, who preferred to die rather than leave the holy city. Many were refugees, including, in the words of Tacitus, “the most indomitable spirits.” Among these fanatical hard-liners were 2,000 Tiberians, burning for revenge. In theory, it possessed a more-than-adequate garrison. Simon bar Giora had 10,000 followers under fifty officers, and he had been joined by 5,000 Idumeans with ten officers, of whom the senior were James ben Sosias and Simon ben Cathlas. In the Temple, John of Gischala had about 6,000 men and twenty officers, supplemented by the 2,400 Zealots who had gone over to him after Eleazar’s death and were led by Simon ben Ari.
At a conservative estimate, the garrison of Jerusalem therefore amounted to over 20,000 well-armed troops, who still possessed the artillery they had captured from the Romans. Unfortunately, they were divided into two mutually hostile factions. This lack of unity was made even more serious by an obsession with exterminating the remaining members of the ruling class who had not become Zealots.
Simon bar Giora occupied the Upper City and the Great Wall, as far as the Kedron, along with a large part of the Old Wall, where it curved around east from Siloam and went downward to the palace of King Monabazus (of Adiabene). He also occupied the fountain together with a good deal of the Lower City, extending right up to the palace of Queen Helena, Monabazus’s mother. John of Gischala held the Temple and much of the surrounding neighborhood, with Ophel and the Kedron Valley. The two leaders had already wrecked the area in between, demolishing houses to get a clearer field of fire at each other. At this stage, apart from the brief moment of reality when they made their first sortie, they never stopped fighting, despite the Romans being just outside the walls.
“They did more harm to each other than anything the Romans did so that nothing worse could happen to the city,” comments Josephus in The Jewish War. “No horrors more dreadful can possibly be imagined.”2 As Josephus puts it, their ceaseless, fratricidal combat undermined the defense, until the Romans finally put an end to the feuding—“even harder than destroying the walls.”
Titus, this time with an adequate escort, rode around the imposing walls of Jerusalem, searching for the best place to attack. It was not an easy decision, since on the south and on the east the city was protected by the steep ravines of Hinnom and the Kedron, which would make it impossible for the besiegers to use battering rams and siege towers. The northern side was a bit more feasible, without any precipices or valleys in front of its ramparts. Although the Old Wall here had recently been supplemented by two additional walls, they were still a considerable way from completion, especially the outermost, Agrippa’s Wall.
Titus decided to launch his main assault on this side, the weakest spot in the defenses, from a position that lay northwest of the Jaffa Gate and more or less opposite the tomb of John the High Priest. The ramparts were still unfinished; Agrippa’s Wall was not yet high enough, and there was a big gap in the Second Wall. His plan was to smash through the first two walls, and then through the Old Wall, so that he would be able to push on into the Upper City and capture the Antonia Fortress, and finally the Temple.
Almost certainly Titus consulted his tame Jewish general, who, as a native of Jerusalem, had been familiar with the city since boyhood. Josephus may even have suggested the exact spot where the main assault should be launched. He had become an indispensable member of the Roman staff. Even so, he was distrusted by most officers, and throughout the campaign he had to keep as close to Titus as possible. However, it looks as though one or two had confidence in him. He tells us that he accompanied Titus during his ride of inspection around the walls and that his old friend, the tribune Nicanor, was wounded by an arrow in the shoulder when he himself was shouting up at the ramparts and advising the defenders to make peace.3
Titus ordered the construction of three siege ramps. To create these huge mounds of earth and timber, the legionaries demolished the suburbs and cut down trees for miles around to provide the building materials. As soon as the mounds began to rise and could give enough shelter, Titus positioned archers and javelin men between them and placed scorpions, catapults, and stone-projectors in front—their job being to fend off Jewish sorties and pick off defenders who were shooting from the ramparts in an attempt to slow up the work
According to The Jewish War, many in Jerusalem were delighted to see the siege making such rapid progress, hoping they might be left alone while their persecutors were distracted. They even looked forward to the Zealots getting their due when the Romans succeeded in capturing the city.4 When he wrote this, however, Josephus must have meant survivors of the ruling class rather than the population as a whole.
For the moment, John of Gischala was too nervous about an attack by Simon Bar Giora to make any useful contribution to the defense, and so Simon’s followers had to do most of the fighting, since they controlled the area where the main assault was expected and were in the front line. Simon mounted captured artillery on the ramparts, but his men proved incapable of operating them at long range, save for a few who had learned from deserters. Instead, they only had bows and slings to shoot at the legionaries who were building the ramps, sometimes sallying out to attack them.
The legionaries were amply protected, however, by wooden hurdles stretched across palisades, while their own artillery coped with raiding parties. The engines of the Tenth Legion proved especially lethal; in addition to utilizing exceptionally large stone-projectors, they employed unusually powerful, quick-firing scorpions that fired volley after volley of iron bolts. These machines kept the Jewish sorties at bay besides killing many defenders on the ramparts. The stone-projectors had a range of about 400 yards and hurled rocks as big as a cow that weighed over half a hundred-weight (38 kilos) and had a devastating impact. The Jews knew immediately when they were fired—not only from the noise made by the missiles as they whizzed through the air but also from their light color—having posted lookouts on the wall towers to monitor the loading of the projectors and to give warning—until the Romans painted the rocks black. Despite heavy casualties, the defenders managed to delay the ramps’ construction by harrying the builders day and night.5
After measuring the distance to Agrippa’s Wall by means of lead and lines thrown from the mounds—bowmen shooting from the ramparts made it impossible to measure across open ground—the engineers reported that the ditch below the wall had been filled in and the ground in front was completely flat. Everything was now ready for the Roman battering rams to go into action. Titus gave orders for his artillery to bombard the ramparts and make the defenders keep their heads down, so that the three monstrous machines could be moved up from the shelter of the mounds.
Suddenly, the tremendous thudding of the rams against the walls echoed throughout the city, terrifying everybody within. The feuding forces of Simon and John started yelling accusations at each other that they were helping the enemy but then became sufficiently frightened by the relentless hammering to man the walls together, shooting flaming arrows and throwing firebrands at the rams and their crews. A party of Jews dashed out to attack them, trying to pull off the protective hurdles, but it was driven back by cavalry and archers that Titus had placed here in readiness and commanded in person. For the moment, however, Agrippa’s Wall remained firm despite the unremitting hammer blows it was receiving, except for a corner of a wall tower that was knocked down by the ram manned by the Fifteenth Legion.
The defenders began to think the Romans had lost heart. Emerging from a postern door in the wall next to the tower Hippicus, a large detachment of Jews charged the siege works to set fire to the rams. A savage struggle began, with many casualties on both sides until, fighting with desperate courage, the Jews seemed to be getting the upper hand. The fire had already taken hold of the rams, which would certainly have been destroyed if some crack troops from Alexandria had not put up an unusually stubborn fight. Then Titus appeared at the head of a troop of cavalry, personally cutting down a dozen of his opponents and driving the rest back to the city. One of the raiding party was taken prisoner, and Titus had him crucified in full view of the ramparts, trying to frighten the defenders into surrender.
The Jews suffered another loss with the death of James, the general who commanded the Idumeans in the city. He had been talking to a soldier on the walls when he was hit in the chest by an arrow shot by an Arabian archer and dropped dead. The defenders were shocked since he had been a particularly tough and effective soldier.
On the following night, Titus gave orders for three siege towers, known by legionaries as helepoles (“city-takers”), to be erected on top of the ramps. These menacing structures were seventy-five feet tall, with five wooden platforms or more on top of each other, guarded against arrow-fire by a carapace of iron plates. One had been badly constructed and collapsed, creating a frightening clamor in the dark of night, spreading panic among the Romans, until Titus made sure everybody was told what had happened. It was only a brief setback. Soon archers, javelin men, and slingers were shooting down from the two other towers, making it impossible for Jews on the ramparts to harass the ram crews.
Finally, Agrippa’s Wall began to crumble under ceaseless blows from the biggest ram, which was wryly called Nikon or “Victor” by the Jews because it always succeeded in bulldozing everything in its path. As soon as the Romans stormed in through a breach made by the ram, the defenders fled to the Second Wall without striking a blow, after which the attackers opened the gates to let in their comrades. Josephus comments that the Jews must have been either too worn out or too lazy to defend Agrippa’s Wall properly, or perhaps even too confident—there were still another two walls behind. This took place on the fifteenth day of the siege.6
Titus now moved his camp inside Agrippa’s Wall to a place known as the Camp of the Assyrians, after an earlier siege. It covered a large area of ground down to the Kedron but was far enough away from the Second Wall to be out of range of missiles. The Jews went on fighting with the utmost courage. John of Gischala’s Zealots directed their defense from command points on the Antonia, the northern colonnade of the Temple, and King Alexander’s tomb, while Simon bar Giora’s men concentrated on defending the areas around the monument to John the High Priest and the watergate of the Hippicus Tower. Protecting Bezetha, the “New City,” the Second Wall was much stronger than Agrippa’s, with a tower at each end and a larger tower in the center, and in every way easier to defend since, as Tacitus notes, it zigzagged in and out, making it easy for defenders to shoot at the besiegers’ flanks.
After the battering rams recommenced their work, shaking not just the Second Wall but buildings that stood some distance behind it, John of Gischala recognized Simon bar Giora as the leader of the city’s defense, allowing his followers into the Temple. Even he had been frightened into acknowledging that the city would be lost unless some sort of cooperation existed between their two forces.
The Romans’ main point of attack was the central tower, which stood over a gate from where a path led out to Golgotha. There were a number of concealed posterns in the curving wall, so that the Jews were able to make sorties. However, they were always beaten back by their opponents’ superior weaponry.
“A spirit of daring, strengthened by fear, and supported by the natural fortitude of their race in the face of misfortune, gave heart to the Jews,” comments Josephus, who could not help admiring the indomitable courage of his fellow countrymen.7 They fought the Romans from dawn to dusk but found the hours of darkness harder to bear. “For both sides the nights were a time without sleep that was more oppressive than daytime, since one lot dreaded that the wall might be captured at any moment while the other was afraid the enemy might suddenly attack their camp. The two armies spent the hours of darkness under arms, ready for battle at dawn.”8
The Jewish War says that the Jews were always prepared to risk their lives to please their officers, especially Simon who had such magnetism that his followers were ready to die for him, and even commit suicide should he order it. In Josephus’s opinion, what gave the Romans courage was the habit of winning and never being defeated, pride in their empire’s grandeur, and above all, the presence of Titus, who seemed everywhere at the same time, standing by each soldier. If he congratulated a man on his bravery, it was considered to be a good enough reward; many troops found courage that until then they had never known they possessed. This sometimes resulted in Homeric duels before the walls, although these were frowned on by Titus.
On one occasion, when a force of Jews emerged from the walls and began throwing javelins from a distance, a cavalry trooper named Longinus suddenly charged them single-handedly, killing two of the toughest; he stabbed the first Jew through the face, wrenched the spear out, and plunged it into the side of the next, and then safely rejoined his comrades. Several other Roman soldiers tried to copy him. Some of the Jews had the same contempt for danger and worried only about savaging their opponents, unconcerned about dying so long as they took an enemy with them. However, Titus seemed more concerned for his men’s safety than winning, and he discouraged them from heroics of this sort. He issued orders that Roman troops were not to show off by risking their lives.
While Josephus relished the epic dimension, there were incidents that appealed to his keen if savage sense of comedy, such as the story of Castor. The Jewish War tells us that after Titus had concentrated his bombardment against the second wall’s big central tower and the great ram Nikon had been hammering away at its masonry for a few days, it began to show signs of collapsing. A sustained hail of bolts from scorpions, which was supplemented by archery fire, forced most of the defenders to abandon it. However, “a certain crafty Jew called Castor,” with ten resourceful companions, refused to quit, crouching down behind the ramparts.
As the tower began to crumble beneath them, Castor stood up and, in a piteous voice, begged Titus to forgive him. Thinking that the man was sincere and that the defenders were starting to lose heart, Titus immediately stopped the battering ram’s hammering and the bombardment and shouted back, asking Castor what he wanted. The Jew answered that he would like to come down under a safe conduct. In reply, Titus said how delighted he was that Castor was being so sensible and that he would be even more pleased if everybody else had the same idea, promising to guarantee the safety of the entire city. Five of Castor’s comrades joined in this fake plea for mercy, while the other five made them seem sincere by yelling they would never be Roman slaves and were going to die as free men. The parley went on for some time, as did the halt to the bombardment.
As the parley continued, Castor sent to Simon bar Giora for instructions, saying that he could go on fooling the Roman general for some time. Meanwhile, he ostentatiously tried to force the five “patriots” to accept Titus’s terms. In response, they brandished their swords and then fell down as if the other five had killed them. Unable to see from below what was happening on the ramparts, Titus and his staff could not help admiring their loyalty. Meanwhile, Castor was wounded in the nose by an arrow and complained that he had been betrayed, whereupon Titus reprimanded the archer responsible. Then he asked Josephus to go up to the walls and bring Castor back. Josephus had already smelled treachery and refused, besides restraining his friends from going. However, a Jewish deserter named Aeneas ran forward when Castor promised to throw money down to anyone who showed sympathy. As soon as he reached the tower and was within range, Castor hurled a huge rock at Aeneas, who managed to dodge it, although it wounded a soldier who had followed him.
Furious, Titus ordered the recommencement of the bombardment and the battering. The tower soon gave way, the honey-tongued Castor and his comrades setting fire to the ruins as it was collapsing, before jumping down through the flames. They landed in the cellars below and escaped through a cave, but the Romans thought they had chosen to die in the flames rather than surrender and were deeply impressed by such heroism. One cannot help suspecting that, for a moment at least, the author of The Jewish War was on the defenders’ side.9
The destruction of the tower opened a breach that was wide enough to enable the Romans to storm the Second Wall a mere four days after the fall of Agrippa’s Wall. The Jews fled, and Titus, escorted by his bodyguard, charged in at the head of a thousand men, into a part of the New City that contained the clothes market and the metal workers’ shops. Always too inclined to optimism, he had become overconfident and received a nasty surprise.
“If he only had immediately knocked down a bigger section of the second wall or demolished every house inside the area captured, as he was entitled to do by the rules of war, he would have suffered no further casualties,” comments Josephus in The Jewish War. “But he thought that if he showed himself reluctant to do the Jews any more harm when it was so obviously in his power, then they would be impressed [by his magnanimity]. So he did not bother to widen the breach in a way that would allow his men to withdraw swiftly. He was under the illusion that people were going to repay him with equally decent behavior if he treated them kindly.”10
On entering the New City, Titus gave orders that prisoners must not be killed or houses torched. Any Jew who wished to go on fighting could join his comrades on the Old Wall, while any citizen who wanted peace would be given back his property. Titus still hoped to capture Jerusalem intact and save the Temple. But while he was right in assuming that ordinary citizens were ready to accept whatever conditions he offered, his surprisingly generous terms convinced the Zealots that he had given up hope of defeating them and was acting from weakness.
Threatening to kill anybody who mentioned the word surrender, executing anyone who suggested making peace, the Zealots regrouped and attacked the Romans inside the New City, ambushing them in the streets and alleys or from houses, or jumping down on them from the ramparts. The Roman guards on the captured wall were so badly shaken that they abandoned their posts and ran back to the safety of their camps. Shouts for help came from legionaries trapped inside the New City, who were hemmed in on all sides. Growing in numbers and strength, the Jews drove them by sword or spear back through the streets toward the breach. However, since it was so narrow, only a few men at a time could pass through, and the rest had to stand and fight against overwhelming odds.
If Titus had not brought up reinforcements in the nick of time, every single Roman soldier who was still inside would certainly have been slaughtered. Stationing archers at the end of each street with orders to shoot toward where the enemy was thickest, he kept the Jews at bay by the sheer force of firepower, holding them off until the last of his troops had got out. However, he had lost possession of the Second Wall, a humiliating although very minor defeat.
In The Jewish War, Josephus describes the determination of the Zealots:
Intoxicated by their success, the spirits of the war party rose to fever pitch. They were convinced the Romans would never dare set foot in the New City again, and that they themselves would be unbeatable when they next marched out to battle. Yet because of their sinful deeds God made them blind to the real situation—they ignored the number of Roman troops outside, far more than those they had driven out, and the famine that was almost upon them. Until now they had been able to batten on the misery of the general public and drink the city’s blood. But decent people had been starving for some time, and already many were dying from lack of food. However, the death of such folk encouraged the patriots, since it left more to eat. They only cared about the lives of those who were against peace at all costs and lived only to fight Romans. They were delighted by the way moderates were dropping dead from hunger at the roadside, men whom they regarded as encumbrances—that is how they felt about fellow citizens. Meanwhile, having manned the breach and blocked it with their bodies, they beat back the Romans who were trying to storm in once again.11
For three days they held off the besiegers, fighting with extraordinary ferocity, but on the fourth day they gave way before Titus’s repeated assaults. Once he had regained possession of the Second Wall, he immediately demolished its northern section, placing garrisons in the surviving towers. Then he called off the offensive for a brief interval, to see if the loss of the Second Wall or fear of famine might persuade the Jews to open negotiations. He believed, mistakenly, that they could not feed themselves for much longer solely by robbing their neighbors.
He decided to impress them by holding a carefully staged pay parade in front of the wells but just out of range. Behind the menacing eagles, legionaries and auxiliaries marched at a strictly regulated pace onto a neatly marked out parade ground, having polished their weapons, helmets, accoutrements, and horse furniture. The cavalry led the parade, with dazzling horse trappings. Everywhere there were gleams of gold and silver.
The focus of attention was, of course, the glittering figure of the commanding general, Titus, who was accompanied by his staff, every one of them in fine cuirasses or jerkins scaled in burnished steel or bronze, helmets with stiff crests of red horsehair and cloaks colored according to rank, shining metal greaves on their legs. Titus and some of the staff may have worn ceremonial masks of gilded metal over their faces. All officers, including centurions, put up full decorations—gold and silver torques, armbands, and neck chains, together with the regulation sets of nine medallions of gold or silver on their chests. Even their splendidly caparisoned horses’ harnesses and their saddles were adorned with gilded bronze plates.12
The city’s entire population watched from the Old Wall or the Temple. The spectacle must have put many in mind of the description in the first book of the Maccabees of the Seleucid host that confronted Judas Maccabaeus. “Now when the sun shone upon the shields of gold and of brass: the mountains glittered therewith and they shone like lamps of fire.”13 The watchers might also have remembered how on another occasion the intrepid Judas had told his outnumbered followers, “Fear ye not their multitude, neither be ye afraid of their assault,” and gone on to triumph over his enemies.14
On this occasion, however, the people of Jerusalem were not feeling quite so optimistic. “When they saw the entire Roman army assembled on one piece of ground, the quality of their equipment and their discipline, even the bravest defender was horribly dismayed,” The Jewish War tells us. “I am convinced that the rebels might have changed their minds if they [had] not given up hope of obtaining mercy from the Romans after the awful way in which they had treated the people [of Jerusalem]. Since laying down their arms [and surrendering] would mean inevitable punishment and death, they thought it preferable to die in battle.”15 But Josephus never does justice to the Zealots’ belief in their cause.
After four days, all the soldiers had received their pay and the parade came to an end, but the defenders remained uncowed. Receiving no offers of peace from them, on the fifth day, Titus formed his four legions into two army groups and began building more ramps, this time opposite the Antonia and the tomb of John the High Priest—the Antonia being an especially difficult nut to crack as it was defended by a huge ditch, which in places was fifty feet deep and would have to be filled. Basically, his plan was to break into the Upper City from the Antonia and into the Temple from John’s tomb; unless he gained possession of the Temple, his occupation of the city was always going be at risk.
In repeated sorties Simon’s troops and their Idumean allies had considerable success in slowing up the besiegers’ work at the tomb of John the High Priest, while those at the Antonia were seriously hindered by John’s Zealots. Everywhere, the Jews did serious harm to the besiegers, not merely in hand-to-hand combat, in which they had the advantage of fighting from higher ground, but also by undermining the ramps. They also had learned to use the captured artillery to lethal effect, practicing every day to improve their accuracy. They had 300 quick-loading, bolt-firing scorpions and 40 stone-projectors that made life extremely unpleasant for the Romans who were trying to build the ramps.
It was probably now that Titus was hit on the shoulder by a stone from one of the Jews’ projectors. It was a serious injury that left him with a weak left arm for the rest of his life. Josephus does not mention the incident, which we only know from a third-century Roman historian, Dio Cassius. 16 However, it does not seem to have noticeably reduced Titus’s energy or lessened his determination.
Still eager to capture Jerusalem intact, Titus never abandoned his hopes of persuading the Jews to surrender. He constantly shouted up at the walls that good terms remained on offer for those who would accept them. He used Josephus to try and talk the defenders into a more sensible frame of mind, under the illusion that they might be more likely to listen to a fellow countryman. Josephus had to go all around the wall before he could find a spot from where he could be heard without too much danger of being shot at. Anticipating the role of a Jewish “Lord Haw-Haw”—the sardonic Nazi propagandist—he then begged the defenders at considerable length to spare themselves and the Jewish people, above all to spare their country and the Temple, and show more concern for them than defeating foreigners.
To a large extent his speech can be reconstructed from The Jewish War. Even if polished up several years later, and no doubt including what he would like to have said, extracts are worth quoting, since they give a useful insight into his mind and how he saw relations between Jews and Romans. It is almost as if he had been talking to himself.
Although they do not share your beliefs, the Romans genuinely respect your holy places and have so far avoided doing any damage to them—in contrast, some of the people whom you’ve brought into this city seem bent on wrecking them. You can see how your strongest walls came tumbling down, and that the only remaining one is the weakest of the lot, while you know perfectly well that nothing can stand up to Roman power. You also know that the Jews are used to being governed by them. If fighting for the sake of freedom is so honorable, then you ought to have started fighting years ago, but after giving in and letting yourselves be ruled for such a long time, a war like this can only be the work of men who are in love with death, not of men who love liberty.
It is all very well despising rulers who are inferior to one, but these people happen to rule the world. The only places which don’t belong to the Romans are not worth having, because they are either too hot or too cold. Everywhere, Romans have had a monopoly of good luck, and God who gives sovereignty to nations has taken up his residence in Italy. It is a well known law of nature, even among wild beasts as well as us men, that the strongest are always going to win and that being on top belongs to those who fight best. That is why your ancestors who, body and soul, were infinitely better people than you are in every other way, gave in to the Romans—something they would never have done if they had thought God was on their side.
Just why are you so confident about being able to hold out when most of your city has already been captured and when those inside what is still left of it are suffering far worse than being taken prisoner? The Romans know perfectly well that famine is raging in this city, that it is already killing citizens and that soon it is going to kill plenty of those under arms as well. Even if the Romans decide to call off the siege and not to storm the place at the edge of the sword after all, a new and very different sort of war is coming nearer every hour. But perhaps you will put away your weapons and fight the famine, and somehow contrive to show us you are the only men who are able to conquer nature?
You would be wise to change the way you have chosen to behave before total disaster becomes unavoidable and to take some helpful advice while there is still a chance of doing so. The Romans are not going to bear a grudge against you because of what has happened, so long as you stop being stupid. They like to be merciful when they win and they always prefer to do something positive instead of taking revenge—something that does not mean exterminating the city’s entire population and reducing the whole country to a desert. That is why our Caesar is still ready to take you under his protection, even now. But if he has to take the city by storm, then he will slaughter every single one of you, for turning down his offer when you were very nearly beaten. You can tell how quickly the Old Wall is going to be captured from the way the other two were taken. And even if that particular job turns out to be difficult, remember that famine is fighting for the Romans.17
Josephus must have had lungs of leather if he said all this at the top of his voice. The Jews’ reaction was disappointing. They felt he was talking down to them, sensing his anger and contempt. In his account he makes no attempt to conceal the fact that he was jeered from the ramparts, with many defenders yelling insults and others throwing stones or javelins at him. Luckily, they missed and he went on shouting.
You miserable crew! Don’t you know who your real friends are? How can you explain why you’re fighting the Romans with nothing more than weapons and human hands? Have we ever succeeded in defeating another nation like this? When did the God who created us ever fail to avenge genuine wrongs done to the Jews? Why can’t you turn round and look behind you [at the Temple], then remember the holy place from where you go out to battle and realize how omnipotent is the Ally you have polluted? Surely you remember the numberless superhuman victories that were won by our fathers and the countless terrifying enemies they destroyed in times gone by, all through His help for our sake? I am horrified at having to remind such worthless hearers of what God did for them. All the same, you can listen to me, so that you will understand that you are not just fighting Romans but God.
Wars had always been disastrous for Jews who were meant to rely on divine and not human power, Josephus explained. “Do you really think that what you’ve done has been blessed by the Lawmaker?” he asked the defenders. “You have not exactly avoided secret sins, have you—thieving and adultery—while you compete with each other at murder and rape, inventing new forms of evil. The Temple, which even Romans respect despite their own customs, is open to anybody and polluted by our own countrymen.” The Romans were simply demanding the normal tribute that had always been paid, in return for which they guaranteed family, property, and the Law. It was madness for the Jews to expect help from God in such a war. Instead of blessing them, so far he had blessed Vespasian, who had become emperor, and Titus, for whom fresh springs of water had flowed miraculously during his campaign
He made a final, tearful appeal. “Men with iron hearts! Why don’t you drop your weapons and take pity on a country already on the brink of destruction? Turn round and look at the beauty you are betraying—what a city, what a temple!” He ended by expressing a personal wish to save Jerusalem, however much it cost him. “I am fully aware that I have a mother, a wife and a fine family, and belong to an ancient and illustrious clan, and that every one of them is in danger. Perhaps you think I’m giving you advice only to save their lives? Well, kill them, if you want. Shed the blood of my kindred, so long as you think that it’s going to save you. I am ready to die myself, provided you learn some sense after my death.”18
There can be no doubt that Josephus regarded his harangues as more than psychological warfare and that, standing below the walls and bellowing up at the Zealots, he had begun to see himself as a prophet in the full sense. He took very seriously indeed the prophecies in the Torah and in other sacred writings that foretold terrible disasters for Jerusalem—warnings that had come true—and he applied them to the circumstances of 70 CE. After all, as he saw it, he was doing his best to save the Holy Places of Israel.
From a careful reading of his writings it is clear that he was fascinated by prophets because they saw into the future. “Nothing is more valuable than the gift of prophecy,” he wrote in his Antiquities.19 He regarded Daniel as a particularly great prophet, “a man who could discover what was impossible for anyone else to find out,” somebody who really must have spoken with God, because he had been so specific about what was going to happen.20 He also admired the Hasmonean King of Judea, John Hyrcanus, to whom he unhesitatingly attributes the gift of prophecy. “For the Deity conversed with him, and he was not ignorant of anything that was to come afterwards,” he wrote in the early part of The Jewish War.21 As has already been said, the gratifying accuracy of his own prediction about Vespasian becoming Emperor of Rome can only have added to his confidence in this field. Presumably, as at Jotapata, he was having nightly dreams during the siege of Jerusalem—this time about the ghastly fate in store for the Jewish people—while no doubt he was poring over the scriptures as well, in the best Essene style.
Reminding his listeners of how the King of Babylon had overthrown King Zedekiah and demolished the city and the Temple, Josephus went so far on one occasion as to compare himself with Jeremiah. “Neither king nor people tried to kill him. You, in contrast—I ignore what goes on behind your walls since I’m incapable of describing all the horrors you omit—howl abuse at me for begging you to save yourselves, and throw javelins.” It has to be admitted that few prophets were more justified in their warnings.22