19
“A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land.”
JEREMIAH, V, 30
THE SITUATION WAS so discouraging for the Romans that Titus summoned a council of war. Some of his officers were in favor of an all-out assault on the Old Wall by every soldier who was available, backed by a massive bombardment, arguing that so far the Jews had only been engaged by a small part of the imperial army. Others proposed rebuilding the ramps. A third group at the council suggested blockading the city and letting starvation do its work; too many casualties were bound to result from fighting men who so obviously preferred death in battle to crucifixion.
For the first time Titus showed that he was beginning to understand the value of caution. While he rejected the idea of a general assault as suicidal, and while for the moment he could see no point in rebuilding the ramps, he did not want to remain inactive. There was always a danger of the Jews launching further sorties, and they might bring in enough food for their soldiers through secret tunnels. In his view, the best solution was to build a wooden wall around the city, a circumvallatio, a method that had been used by Julius Caesar in Gaul a hundred years earlier, although never against such a big city. The idea, which may have come from Titus’s chief of staff, Tiberius Alexander, was applauded by his officers.
According to The Jewish War, the entire Roman army, who by now hated Jews with an obsessive hatred, was no less delighted by the plan. All the troops showed extraordinary keenness, legion competing with legion, cohort with cohort. Titus personally inspected progress several times a day. When completed, the wall ran from his headquarters at the Camp of the Assyrians to the New City below and then through the Kedron to the Mount of Olives. Then it bent to the south, around the rock called the Dovecote and the nearby hill that overlooks the valley next to Siloam. To the west it went down into the valley of the fountain, after which it went up past the tomb of Ananus the High Priest, taking in the hill where Pompey had camped. Going north it reached the village known as the House of Peas and then went around Herod’s mausoleum until it reached Titus’s camp, the point from where it started. Nearly five miles long, the wall was strengthened by thirteen forts, each of which was 200 feet in circumference. Thanks to the legionaries’ unflagging enthusiasm, the whole structure was finished in three days, astounding even the Romans.
Now that he had enclosed Jerusalem inside a wall and garrisoned the forts, Titus showed his appreciation of the army’s remarkable achievement by taking the first night’s watch himself, personally making the rounds of inspection. Tiberius Alexander took the second, and the third watch was shared out among the legates commanding the legions.
Josephus’s frightful description of what went on inside the city at this period deserves quoting. It carries conviction and must be based on reports given to him by spies or by inhabitants who lived through it:
All chance of leaving Jerusalem came to an abrupt end and the Jews inside suddenly found themselves deprived of any hope of survival. Famine was raging more terribly than ever, devouring entire houses and families. The upper rooms were full of dying women with their infants, and the lanes were filled by old men who had already died. Bloated with hunger, youths and children wandered like shadows around the market places, remaining on the ground wherever they dropped dead. Famished men were too weak to bury their kindred, while anyone who was still strong enough did not bother because there were so many corpses and because they themselves expected to die soon. The few people who made some sort of effort to inter the dead expired while doing so, while others got into their shrouds to await death.
Amidst all this misery there was little weeping or wailing. Starvation had killed all sense of affection, so that the slowly dying gazed with dry eyes and open mouths at anyone who had passed away before them. A deep silence resembling darkness reigned throughout the city, as though to proclaim the presence of death. Still more dreadful were the robbers, who broke into houses that had become tombs, plundering the dead bodies, laughing as they stole the clothes off them. They tried out their swords on corpses, and to test their blades’ sharpness ran through dying men who were still breathing—but refused to kill anyone who begged them to finish him off. All these citizens [who died from the famine] drew their last breath with eyes firmly fixed on the Temple, trying to ignore the rebels. Finding the stench that arose from so many dead bodies all over the city almost unbearable, at first the rebel leaders gave orders for them to be buried at the public expense, but when the sheer number made it impossible they had them thrown over the walls into the ravines below.1
The Jewish War contains a flattering vignette of the Roman general’s compassion, no doubt intended for imperial eyes. “Going the rounds [on his new wall], when Titus saw the ravines filled with corpses and the great stream of rotting matter that flowed from them, he groaned and called on God to bear witness that it was not his doing.”2 However, one may feel that Josephus goes a little too far in claiming that Titus’s wish to rescue the survivors was the reason why he issued orders to start building new ramps at four sites opposite the Antonia. This was difficult, since all the trees round the city had been cut down for the wall, and the legionaries had to fetch timber from ten miles away.
Within Jerusalem, the rebels appeared to remain completely unshaken by the wall that cut them off so finally and completely from the world outside. Nor were they moved by the sufferings of the civilian population. They felt no pity for those who were starving and “continued like dogs to maul the very carcass of the people, packing the prisons with the feeble,” says Josephus.3 Yet to some extent his obvious anger may be due to his feelings of outrage at further attacks on rich magnates.
Not even Matthias ben Boethus escaped, although it was he who had persuaded the citizens to ask Simon bar Giora to take over the city. Wealthy and a well-known member of a high priestly family, he was an obvious target. He was summoned before Simon, accused of being a supporter of the Romans, and condemned to death with three of his sons. A fourth had fled. Reminding Simon that it was he who had invited him into Jerusalem, Matthias begged to be executed before his sons, but his request was refused. He was killed on top of his sons’ corpses, on the Old Wall where they had been led out to die in view of the Romans and butchered in front of their father’s eyes. Nor would Simon allow any of them burial. Among others executed were Ananias ben Masambalus, who was a distinguished priest, and Aristeus, a former secretary of the Sanhedrin, with over a dozen equally eminent men.
But has Josephus given us the whole story? All these unlucky nobles who perished, including Matthias and his sons, may conceivably have been supplying Titus with information or guilty of defeatist talk. They may even have been conspiring to let the Romans into the city.
In contrast, Josephus’s father, Mattathias, and his mother were merely sent to prison by Simon, although it was proclaimed that on pain of death no one should speak to Mattathias or express regret at his arrest. It seems extraordinary that the couple escaped being executed out of hand, as parents of an arch-traitor. Again, we can only speculate on the possibility that Josephus might have retained some sort of influence within the city. It certainly looks as though he had some important contacts inside the walls. Did he negotiate a secret deal with Simon?
Not all Simon’s followers obeyed him blindly. Judas ben Judas, a junior officer in command of a tower on the Old Wall, was outraged by the executions. “How much longer must we put up with such crimes?” he asked ten trusted subordinates. “What chance of survival can we possibly have if we stay loyal to this evil man? Aren’t we suffering from famine and aren’t the Romans practically inside the city? Simon likes to betray even the people who have done him a good turn and he might easily decide to get rid of us too, while at least we can trust the Romans. We ought to hand over our part of the wall to them, and make sure of saving ourselves and the city. Simon won’t suffer all that much more if he gets what’s coming to him just a little bit sooner—in any case, he’s already given up hope.”
Early next morning, Judas and his ten companions tricked the rest of the tower’s garrison into leaving and then shouted to the Romans that they wanted to surrender, but it was a long time before they were taken seriously. The legionaries did not trust them, fearing a trap, and only jeered in response to the offer, until Titus came up to the wall with his bodyguard. However, by now Simon had been warned. He got there first. Quickly, he stormed the tower, killing Judas and his friends and throwing their mutilated bodies down from the wall. Josephus observes with his usual cynicism that while to some extent Judas may possibly have been driven to rebel by pity, his real motive must have had more to do with providing for his own safety.4
Meanwhile, Josephus was still indefatigable in shouting up at the wall, daily telling the defenders how crazy they were not to surrender. On one occasion he was knocked senseless by a well-aimed stone thrown from the ramparts. The Jews rushed out to drag him into the city, but luckily Titus saw the incident and sent troops to rescue him. Barely conscious of what was happening, Josephus was pulled to safety. The rebels thought they had killed him and yelled with delight.
Inside the city many of the Romans’ secret supporters were depressed by the supposed death of the man who was always encouraging them to desert. In prison, his mother coldly told the guards, “That is what I’ve been expecting this since Jotapata—I never saw much of him when he was alive.” In private, she was grief-stricken, telling her maids—it seems to have been an unusually comfortable prison—that “This is all one gets from bringing children into the world, not even being able to bury a son whom I had expected would one day bury me.” But Josephus made a speedy recovery and reappeared before the ramparts, shouting that before long he would be taking his revenge on whoever had thrown the stone at him. He also shouted that deserters would still find protection.5
This was not quite true. Most of the deserters who jumped down from the walls or ran toward the Roman lines, pretending they meant to throw stones at the enemy, were bloated by starvation and looked as if they suffered from dropsy. However, when they arrived, they were given as much food as they wanted, so that many stuffed themselves until they literally burst their bellies.
There was an even more lethal form of welcome. A group of Syrian auxiliaries spotted a deserter sifting through his excrement to pick out gold coins he had swallowed before escaping. (Because of the collapse of trade, the value of gold circulating in Jerusalem, mainly Attic drachma, had fallen by half.) Instantly, a rumor spread among the besiegers that Jewish deserters were stuffed with gold, and Arab and Syrian troops immediately started cutting them open in order to search their intestines. “In my opinion, nothing more dreadful has ever happened to Jews,” says Josephus. “Two thousand were ripped up during one night alone.” Many of the victims had deserted after listening to Josephus’s reassurances about good treatment.6
When he heard about these atrocities, Titus was so angry that for a moment he thought of encircling the perpetrators with his cavalry and riding them down, but too many in the army were implicated. What made him angrier still was that Roman legionaries as well as auxiliaries had been carving up the refugees. Summoning the commanders of all units, he told them they ought to be ashamed of their men, giving strict orders that any legionary involved must be brought to him for punishment, and the auxiliaries were warned that in the future the crime would incur the death penalty. Even so, local troops continued to disembowel deserters discreetly, despite finding gold in only a few cases. The refugees grew so terrified that many fled back to Jerusalem.
Inside, the citizens had been so savagely plundered that most of them had nothing left worth stealing, so John of Gischala turned his attention to the Temple treasury, melting down all gifts of precious metal, together with ceremonial vessels such as bowls, dishes, and tables—many made from gold or silver. Josephus was particularly horrified at his appropriating some wine flagons that had been presented by the late Emperor Augustus and the Empress Livia.
“This so-called Jew . . . told his fellow thugs that they could make use of God’s property without being afraid in the slightest since it was all for God’s benefit, and that as men who were fighting for the Temple they had every right to consume it,” The Jewish Warinforms us.7 John then seized the sacred wine and oil, which were stored in a chamber at the southwest corner of the Women’s Court. Although these were reserved for the ritual burnt offerings, he shared them among his followers, some of whom often drank over a hin of wine, which was more than five liters.8
“In this instance, I cannot restrain myself from expressing my inmost thoughts,” says Josephus bitterly. “In my considered opinion, had the Romans put off punishing such animals as these were, then the earth would have opened and swallowed up the city, or else it would have been swept away by a flood or struck by lightning like Sodom, because it had spawned a far more godless people. The madness of these men was dragging the whole of the nation down with them in their ruin.”9
Mannaeus ben Lazarus was a deserter who managed to escape to Titus without having his belly ripped open. He told the Romans that between 14 April, the date when they first set up camp, and 1 July, he had counted 115,800 corpses, all paupers, carried out through a gate he superintended. Although not in charge of their interment, he was responsible for paying the cost from the public fund and had to keep a reckoning. Many more had been taken out by relations. In all cases, interment merely consisted of removing them from the city. Other upper-class deserters who got out after Mannaeus said that the bodies of 600,000 poor men and women had been thrown out, but clearly it was impossible for anyone to arrive at an accurate estimate of the true figure. When it became too difficult to remove the paupers’ corpses, they were piled inside some of the larger houses, whose doors were kept locked.
Josephus claims that when the Romans learned how dreadful life was in Jerusalem, despite the hatred that they had by now developed for Jews, even the tough legionaries could not help feeling a certain pity. He says that in contrast, the rebels remained totally unshaken by their fellow countrymen’s sufferings, although after their private supplies of food had been eaten, they knew that they too would have to starve. They were blind to the horror that was about to come upon the city and upon themselves.
Bad as it already was, the misery within the great city deepened every day. For a long time, tiny amounts of wheat had fetched astronomical sums, and after the building of the wooden wall it became impossible to creep out at night and gather herbs. People were reduced to such misery that to find something to eat they scoured the sewers or sifted through cow dung, eating whatever they could find. What had once revolted them now became their normal diet.
When the rebels themselves ran short of food, they became still more savage. The piles of rotting dead bodies all over the city, daily growing higher and giving off a sickening stench, lay in their way whenever they went out to do battle. Yet although they had to walk over corpses as if on a battlefield, they showed no emotion. Nor did they seem to realize just how ill-omened it was to insult the dead so grossly when charging out to fight foreigners with their hands stained by the blood of fellow countrymen. It was “as if they themselves were rebuking God for having taken so long to punish them,” comments Josephus.10 In his view, they went on fighting not because they still hoped to win regardless of the odds, but because they were frightened of what was going to happen to them after their inevitable defeat. He refuses to admit that the Zealots fought on because they were convinced that the God of Israel was on their side.
Meanwhile, the Romans finished the new siege ramps in only three weeks, after turning the country outside the walls into a blasted heath of craters and tree stumps. What had been a landscape of woodland alternating with pleasure gardens was turned into a desert by tree felling. Even a foreigner who had seen Jerusalem’s enchanting suburbs would have been reduced to tears at the spectacle, says The Jewish War.11 Above all, the doomed city was shut off from the outside world by that terrible wooden wall.
For Romans as well as Jews, the completion of the new siege works was a moment of terror. The defenders knew very well that if they failed to destroy them, Jerusalem was going to fall, while the besiegers realized that should the ramps go up in flames like the previous ramps, they would lose all chance of capturing the place. Their timber was exhausted; it would be impossible to obtain further supplies before winter. Not only were the Roman troops worn out, but they were demoralized by the Jews’ ferocious resistance. Rumors of awful suffering inside the city were largely discounted, since the defenders seemed in no way cast down. The legionaries remembered only too well how the Jews had demolished their previous ramps, had stood up to their siege engines, and had launched such lethally effective sorties.
Above all, the Romans were daunted by the extraordinary courage of the Zealots, who were seemingly unaffected by desertion, famine, or the most formidable onslaughts. They were equally shaken by their resourcefulness and resilience in the face of disaster; after any reverse they fought more fiercely than ever. Yet in the long run this despondency was going to work in the legionaries’ favor, since it made them keep a sharper lookout for sorties and drove them to strengthen as much as possible the fortifications around the ramps.
Josephus hints eloquently at the feverish atmosphere in the Roman camps during these anxious days when the future of the siege hung in the balance. Although he does not mention it, this must have been a time when he felt more than ever threatened by the legionaries, who were still convinced that this ubiquitous, smooth-talking renegade Jew could only be a Zealot spy.
John of Gischala and his followers, who were based in the Antonia and manned its fortifications, made preparations for a new line of defense in case the Old Wall should fall. In the meantime, however, they intended to do their utmost to stop it from happening. During the night of 1 July—“on the new moon of the month Panemus”—a band of Zealots charged out by torchlight and attacked the Roman siege works, which they hoped to destroy before those terrible rams could start battering the wall.
The sortie was badly coordinated, however, and the Zealots rushed forward at intervals in disorganized groups without proper orders. They showed “a good deal of hesitation and fear, not a bit like Jews,” comments Josephus, who adds that this time they seemed to lack their nation’s natural fighting qualities of daring and impetuosity, of charging as though they were one man and, if beaten back, of retreating only step by step.12
Already on the alert and ready for the attack, the Romans were undeterred by the Zealots’ frenzied gallantry. Commanded on the spot by some exceptionally good junior officers, they fought with cool determination to protect the siege engines. Their armor and swords gave them a big advantage at close quarters, while their artillery—instead of firing into the Jews en masse as it had on previous occasions—concentrated on the front ranks so that the bodies of dead and wounded slowed up those behind. The attack lost momentum, as some Zealots recoiled when they came up against the disciplined ranks of armored legionaries in row upon row, while others bolted on receiving a mere scratch from a javelin. Demoralization turned into panic, as the men hurled accusations of cowardice at each other. The sortie disintegrated and the attackers ran back behind the Old Wall.
As soon as it was clear that the Zealots had been beaten back—presumably about dawn—the Romans brought up their storming towers, which became a target for stones, javelins, firebrands, and anything else the Jews could find to throw at them. Although the defenders still had complete confidence in their ramparts, which were built of huge, finely cut, carefully mortised blocks of marble, they were nonetheless afraid of the great rams inside the towers. This encouraged the legionaries, who began to suspect that the defenders knew that their ramparts were not so indestructible after all. Throughout the day the Antonia resisted the fiercest battering, as many besiegers were killed by the unceasing hail of missiles, especially by the rocks thrown down on them.
One group of legionaries formed a tortoise, their shields interlocked above them, while they tried to dislodge the masonry with picks and crowbars and even their bare hands. After superhuman efforts, they managed to prize out just four stone blocks, but the wall stayed firmly intact. At nightfall, the discouraged Romans called off the attack until the next day.
However, in countermining one of the besiegers’ ramps with a tunnel, John’s men had unknowingly weakened a stretch of the wall’s foundations, which were further sapped by heavy rain. During the night, a segment collapsed without warning. With his usual interest in the combatants’ psychology, Josephus was struck by the unexpected reaction on both sides. The Zealots were undaunted because the Antonia was still standing, whereas the legionaries’ delight at such a piece of luck vanished when they saw that a new wall had been built behind the old one, blocking the breach. Even if it was a ramshackle structure, made easier to climb by the debris of the old wall, the first men in would almost certainly lose their lives.
Both sides knew that this was the critical moment of the siege. If the Antonia fell, then Jerusalem would fall. If the Romans should fail, however, then they would have to pack up and go home. Before launching any important assault, Titus must have consulted Josephus about the Zealots’ morale. Like all intelligence officers it was the former Jewish general’s job to find out what the enemy was thinking, and his report would have been thoroughly discouraging: they were as ready as ever to fight to the death.
Predictably, The Jewish War contains an oration by Titus that reads just like a set piece from Livy. No doubt, Josephus would have supplied one even if the Roman had remained silent. Nevertheless, the speech is plausible enough when stripped down into plain language—the sort of thing a commander might well have said to his men before going into action against a very strong position.
Soldiers, using fine words to ask men to do a job that does not involve danger is talking down to them and makes the speaker look an idiot. In my book, encouragement is needed only when the job is really dangerous, because otherwise men just get on with it. So I am admitting to you frankly that climbing that wall will certainly be a very nasty business indeed. On the other hand, I should like to remind you that anyone who wants to make a name for himself always has to beat a challenge, that it is a glorious thing to die a hero and that people who show guts by going in first earn big rewards.
First of all, what ought to make you keener, even if it puts a few of you off, is the Jews’ sheer toughness, the grit they show when things go wrong. Wouldn’t you be ashamed of yourselves, as Romans and as my soldiers, men who spend peace time in training and war time in winning, to find yourselves inferior to Jews in courage and staying power at a moment when you’re on the brink of victory and getting help from above? We’re held back only by the Jews fighting desperately—they find everything much harder than we do, because of our combat skills and the gods being on our side. Feuding, famine, siege, walls falling down without being battered, things like that only happen if the gods are angry with them and are helping us.
Allowing ourselves to be beaten by inferiors, and letting down all those gods who are our allies, is out of the question. It would be an unforgivable disgrace. Defeat means nothing to Jews, since they know what it is to be slaves and make sorties not because they hope to win but to show their courage. But you are men who have conquered every land and every sea, men who feel humiliated if they don’t win. Yet now it looks as if you would prefer not to risk your lives in hand-to-hand combat, but simply sit here with your first rate weaponry, waiting for famine and fate to do your work, when at comparatively small risk it is within our power to finish the job. Because if we get into the Antonia, we capture the city. Even if there is any further resistance from the people inside, which personally I don’t expect, we shall be looking down on them, controlling the air they breathe, which will guarantee us a quick and complete victory.
I’m not going to talk about how wonderful war is, how people who die drunk with battle fever live on forever. But I hope that anyone who feels differently and wants to die in bed from illness does it in a living grave.
Every brave man knows that souls set free from the flesh by the sword on the battlefield are welcomed on the other side by souls of the same sort and by ether, purest of elements, and placed among the stars where they shine down on their children as good spirits and benign heroes. In contrast, souls that fade away in bodies wasted by disease, however blameless and undefiled they may be, disappear into an underground night and oblivion, while their lives, their bodies and all memory of them pass away together. But if death is man’s inevitable fate, and as the sword brings it more gently than sickness, then it is obscene to refuse to accept it for the common good since all of us are going to die in the end.
So far I’ve been talking as though anybody who makes the attempt is bound to be killed. Yet survival is far from impossible for a brave man, even when he’s at such close quarters with danger. It won’t be too hard getting up on to the wall where it has collapsed while the new one has been thrown together so quickly that it should not be too difficult to pull down. The more of you who can find the courage needed, the easier it is going to be for you to cheer each other on, so that your impetus will soon knock the stuffing out of the enemy. You may even win a bloodless victory, if only you’ll make the effort. No doubt, they will try to stop you climbing up, but if you can do it without being seen, then it is quite possible that they won’t be able to put up much of a fight so long as a handful of you take them by surprise. As for the man who leads the attack, I should blush for shame if my rewards didn’t make him envied while any man who survives will receive instant promotion. Those who die in the attempt are going to be buried with every conceivable honor.13
Josephus comments that this rousing offer of immortality failed to reassure the army, who were appalled by what lay ahead. Even their commander had said openly that the Zealots were superb fighting men, more or less admitting that in some respects they were better than legionaries. His troops knew it already, from painful experience.
The first to respond was a wizened, black-skinned little legionary called Sabinus, a Syrian, so emaciated that he looked unfit to be a soldier, yet “there was a certain heroic soul in this small body,” Josephus tells us.14 “I will cheerfully do what you want, Caesar,” he announced. “I shall be the first to scale the wall and I hope your accustomed good luck will help my physical strength and determination, but if fortune goes against me, then please remember that it was scarcely unexpected and that I chose death for your sake.”15Having said this, he held his shield over his head with his left hand and drawing his sword with his right marched up to the new wall, followed by only eleven others. It was about midday. The Jews immediately began to hurl rocks and javelins at him, but Sabinus pushed on until he reached the top.
Under the delusion that he was being followed by a large detachment of legionaries, the enemy lost their nerve and ran. However, when he fell over a rock onto his face with a loud crash, they turned round and attacked him. He got up on one knee, protecting himself with his shield, and fought back, wounding several of them, but was eventually overwhelmed by javelins—“covered in darts.” Three of his comrades were killed by the stones, and the remaining eight were badly wounded and pulled down to safety. Josephus comments that he was “a man whose gallantry deserved a better fate but whose death was only to be expected from such audacity.”16
It was two days before the Romans tried again. Twenty of the legionaries who were guarding the siege engines invited the standard-bearer of the Fifth Legion to accompany them in a further attempt on the new wall. On 5 July at about two o’clock in the morning, joined by two cavalrymen and a trumpeter, they climbed over the ruined wall and then up the new one into the Antonia. Finding the sentries asleep, they knifed them and took control of the new wall, after which they ordered the trumpeter to sound the alarm. Other guards nearby bolted, convinced it was a full-scale attack. Hearing the trumpet call, Titus reacted quickly, charging into the Antonia with his senior officers and bodyguard and bringing up the rest of his troops as fast as possible, some entering the fortress through John’s ill-fated tunnel. The defenders of the Antonia fled to the Temple.
As so often, the Zealots, despite all their bravery, were fatally handicapped by lack of discipline. They possessed no proper command structure that might have enabled them to respond faster and drive the legionaries from the Antonia. Now it was too late. Nonetheless, when the Romans tried to push on into the Temple, they rushed to meet them and fought it out hand to hand. At such close quarters, both sides could use only their swords. Even Josephus has to admit that the Zealots behaved magnificently, forcing the legionaries back to the Antonia. The crush was so great at the Temple entrance that there was no possibility of retreat. The men in front on both sides fought to kill or be killed, forced on by those behind them, trampling on dead bodies, deafened by the clash of weapons and the yelling. The struggle went on for twelve hours, from two in the morning until one o’clock in the afternoon. The legionaries were unable to exploit their superior weaponry in such a confined space, and in the end the Zealots’ fury got the better of their opponents’ discipline. The entire Roman line gave way, and the legionaries retreated. But they kept possession of the Antonia.
For a moment, however, the Zealots were almost driven back once again during a Homeric episode. When the Roman line collapsed, a Greek centurion from Bithynia called Julianus, who had been standing at Titus’s side inside the Antonia, tried to retrieve the situation by charging forward alone. Rushing into the enemy, he cut down Jew after Jew, until their comrades began to run from this terrifying swordsman, much to Titus’s delight. Then his hob-nailed army boots slipped on the marble pavement, and he fell on his back with a loud crash. Recovering their nerve, the Zealots rallied. Crowding around Julianus as he lay on his back, they aimed blows at him from all sides with their spears and swords. Trying unsuccessfully to get back on his feet, he warded off many of their thrusts with his shield and, protected by his helmet and breastplate, even managed to wound several of them with his sword. However, hacking at his arms and legs, the enemy soon finished him off. Titus was deeply upset at losing such a gallant officer, who seems to have been attached to his staff.
“A man of good birth and one of the genuinely outstanding soldiers whom I got to know during the campaign, distinguished by his knowledge of warfare, his physical strength and his unfailing courage,” is Josephus’s encomium. Clearly, he was not only a friend of Julianus but must have watched his heroic death, just as he had seen Sabinus die, either while he was standing beside Titus or from a vantage point on one of the towers of the wooden wall.17