In 66 AD the Jews of the Roman province of Judaea (most of modern Israel) rose in revolt against the rule of the Emperor Nero. Revolt had been and would remain uncommon within the Roman world. That of Boudicca in Britain in 61 AD, and of theJews in 66, were exceptional; most of the peoples subjected to Roman rule after conquest accepted its benefits. The Jews, however, were an exceptional people, the empire’s only monotheists. The early emperors refrained from interfering in their religious practices. With the rise of emperor worship, however, a conflict between their demands to be venerated as gods and Jewish insistence on the uniqueness of the God of the Bible threatened. The command of the Emperor Gaius (37-41 AD) that a statue of himself be erected in the Temple at Jerusalem, a demand that was the ultimate sacrilege to the Jews, was averted only by the Emperor’s murder by his enemies in Rome. Religious differences rumbled on in subsequent reigns. In 66 AD the Emperor’s representative in Judaea, the procurator Gessius Florus, confiscated part of the Temple treasure and put down the Jews’ protests with force. Rebellion quickly spread throughout the whole province. It was effectively repressed, until the only centre of resistance remained the walled city of Jerusalem.
The siege laid to it in 69 AD is described by Flavius Josephus, a Jewish official of the Roman administration who had abandoned his own people and later rose to wealth and high political rank within the Roman imperial system. His account of the siege is one of the best surviving descriptions of the attack and defence of fortified places in the ancient world. It contains anomalies, particularly vast exaggerations of the numbers of casualties, a common failing of ancient historians. It is also partisan, lauding his own part in the operations, though he is honest enough to reveal that the Jews regarded him as a traitor, particularly for the atrocities he had committed at Jotapata, earlier in the war. He may also exaggerate the divisions within the city, and the extent of the quarrels between Simon, leader of the resistance, and his followers. The story of dissent, common in sieges, is nevertheless credible. So, too, is his account of conflict over food, secretion of wealth and robbery of the weak by the strong, who, under the abnormality of siege conditions, turned to crime, in a short-sighted attempt to profit from their isolation from the outside world.
Many of the places mentioned by Josephus - the pool of Siloam, the brook of Kidron, the Temple Mount - are still identifiable at Jerusalem. The city eventually fell to Titus, the Roman commander, son of the new Emperor Vespasian, in September 70. The Jews outside the city, which was laid waste in the aftermath of the siege, continued their resistance. The last rebels, who occupied the mountain stronghold of Masada, were overcome in 73.
The Romans had begun work on the 12th May (69 AD), but they only completed the platforms on the 29th, after seventeen days of continuous toil; for all four were of vast size. One, facing Antonia, was raised by the Fifth Legion opposite the middle of the Quince Pool; another, built by the Twelfth, was thirty feet away. A long way from these, to the north of the City, was the work of the Tenth, near the Almond Pool; forty-five feet from this the Fifteenth built theirs by the High Priest’s Monument. But from within the City John tunnelled through the ground near Antonia, supporting the galleries with wooden props, and by the time the engines were brought up he had reached the platforms and left the works without solid support. Next he carried in faggots daubed with pitch and bitumen and set them alight, so that as soon as the props were burnt away the entire tunnel collapsed, and with a thunderous crash the platforms fell into the cavity. At once there arose a dense cloud of smoke and dust as the flames were choked by the debris; then when the mass of timber was burnt away a brilliant flame broke through. This sudden blow filled the Romans with consternation; the ingenuity of the Jews plunged them into despondency; as they had felt sure that victory was imminent the shock froze their hope of success even in the future. To fight the flames seemed useless, for even if they did put them out their platforms were already swallowed up.
Two days later Simon’s forces assaulted the other two platforms; for the Romans had brought up their Batterers on this side and were already rocking the wall. Tephthaeus, who came from Garis in Galilee, and Megassarus, a servant of Queen Mariamne, accompanied by a man from Adiabene (the son of Nabataeus) nicknamed because of a disability Ceagiras (‘Cripple’), picked up firebrands and rushed at the engines. In the whole course of the war the City produced no one more heroic than these three, or more terrifying. They dashed out as if towards friends, not massed enemies; they neither hesitated nor shrank back, but charged through the centre of the foe and set the engines on fire. Pelted with missiles and thrust at with swords on every side, they refused to withdraw from their perilous situation till the weapons were ablaze. When the flames were already shooting up the Romans came running from the camps to the rescue. But the Jews advanced from the wall to stop them, grappling with those who attempted to quench the flames and utterly disregarding their personal danger. The Romans tugged at the Batterers while the wicker covers blazed: the Jews, surrounded with the flames, pulled the other way, and seizing the red-hot iron would not leave go of the Rams. From the engines the fire spread to the platforms, outstripping the defenders. Meantime the Romans were enveloped in flames, and despairing of saving their handiwork began to withdraw to their camps. The Jews pressed them hard, their numbers constantly swelled by reinforcements from the City, and emboldened by their success attacked with the utmost violence till they actually reached the Roman fortifications and engaged the defenders.
There is an armed picquet, periodically relieved, which occupies a position in front of every Roman camp and is subject to the very drastic regulation that a man who retires, no matter what the circumstances, must be executed. These men, preferring death with honour to death as a penalty, stood their ground, and their desperate plight shamed many of the runaways into making a stand. Quick-loaders were set up on the wall to drive off the mass of men that poured out of the City without the slightest thought for their own safety. These grappled with all who stood in their path, falling recklessly upon the Roman spears and flinging their very bodies against the foe. It was less by actions than by supreme confidence that they gained the advantage, and it was Jewish audacity rather than their own casualties that made the Romans give ground.
At this crisis Titus arrived from Antonia, to which he had withdrawn to choose a site for more platforms. He expressed the utmost contempt for the soldiers, who after capturing the enemy’s walls were in danger of losing their own, and were enduring a siege themselves through letting the Jews out of prison to attack them! Then he put himself at the head of a body of picked men and tried to turn the flank of the enemy, who although assailed from the front wheeled round to meet this new threat and resisted stubbornly. In the confusion that followed, blinded by the dust and deafened by the uproar, neither side could distinguish friend from foe. The Jews stood firm, not so much through prowess now as through despair of victory; the Romans were braced by respect for the honour of their arms, especially as Caesar [that is, Titus] was in the forefront of danger. The struggle would probably have ended, such was the fury of the Romans, with the capture of the whole mass of Jews, had they not forestalled the crisis of the battle by retreating to the City. With their platforms destroyed the Romans were downhearted, having lost the fruits of their prolonged labours in a single hour; many indeed felt that with conventional weapons they would never take the City.
Titus held a council of war. The more sanguine spirits were for bringing the whole army into action in a full-scale assault. Hitherto only a fraction of their forces had been engaged with the enemy; if they advanced en masse the Jews would yield to the first onslaught, overwhelmed by the rain of missiles. The more cautious urged either that the platforms should be reconstructed, or that abandoning these they should merely blockade the City and prevent the inhabitants from making sallies or bringing in food, leaving them to starve and refraining from combat. For there was no battling with despair, when men desired only to die by the sword and so escape a more horrible fate. Titus himself thought it unwise to let so large a force remain idle, while there was no point in fighting those who were certain to destroy each other. To throw up platforms was a hopeless task with timber so scarce, to prevent sallies still more hopeless. For to form a ring of men round so big a City and over such difficult terrain was impracticable, and highly dangerous in view of sudden attacks. The known paths might be blocked, but the Jews would contrive secret ways out, driven by necessity and knowing the ground. Again, if provisions were smuggled in the siege would be prolonged still further, and he was afraid the lustre of his triumph would be dimmed by its slowness in coming. Given time anything could be accomplished, but reputations were won by speed. If he was to combine speed with safety he must build a wall round the entire City. That was the only way to block all egress and force the Jews to abandon their last hope of survival and surrender the City. If they did not, hunger would make them easy victims. For he would not wait for things to happen, but would resume construction of the platforms when resistance had been weakened. If anyone thought the task too great to carry out, he must remember that little tasks were beneath the dignity of Rome, and that without hard work nothing great could be achieved, unless by a miracle.
Having thus convinced the generals Titus ordered them to divide up the work between their units. An inspired enthusiasm seized the soldiers, and when the circuit had been marked out there was competition not only between legions but even between cohorts. The private was eager to please his decurion, the decurion his centurion, the centurion his tribune; the tribunes were ambitious for the praise of the generals; and of the rivalry between the generals Caesar himself was judge. He personally went round several times every day to inspect the work. Starting at the Assyrians’ Camp, where his own quarters were, he took the wall to the New City below, and from there through the Kidron to the Mount of Olives. Then he bent the line towards the south, enclosing the Mount (as far as the rock called The Dovecot) and the next eminence, which overhangs the valley near Siloam. From there he went in a westerly direction down into Fountain Valley, then up by the tomb of Ananus the high priest, embracing the hill where Pompey’s camp had been. Then turning north he passed the village called The House of Peas, and rounding Herod’s Tomb went east till he finished up at his own camp, the starting-place. The wall measured 4½ miles, and outside were built on thirteen forts with a combined circumference of over a mile. Yet the whole task was completed in three days, though it might well have taken months — the speed passed belief. Having surrounded the City with this wall and garrisoned the forts, Titus himself took the first night watch and went the rounds; the second he entrusted to Alexander; the third was assigned to the legion commanders. The guards drew lots for periods of sleep, and all night long they patrolled the intervals between the forts.
The Jews, unable now to leave the City, were deprived of all hope of survival. The famine became more intense and devoured whole houses and families. The roofs were covered with women and babes, the streets full of old men already dead. Young men and boys, swollen with hunger, haunted the squares like ghosts and fell wherever faintness overcame them. To bury their kinsfolk was beyond the strength of the sick, and those who were fit shirked the task because of the number of the dead and uncertainty of their own fate; for many while burying others fell dead themselves, and many set out for their graves before their hour struck. In their misery no weeping or lamentation was heard; hunger stifled emotion; with dry eyes and grinning mouths those who were slow to die watched those whose end came sooner. Deep silence enfolded the City, and a darkness burdened with death. Worse still were the bandits, who broke like tomb-robbers into the houses of the dead and stripped the bodies, snatching off their wrappings, then came out laughing. They tried the points of their swords on the corpses, and even transfixed some of those who lay helpless but still alive, to test the steel. But if any begged for a sword-thrust to end their sufferings, they contemptuously left them to die of hunger. Everyone as he breathed his last fixed his eyes on the Temple, turning his back on the partisans he was leaving alive. The latter at first ordered the dead to be buried at public expense as they could not bear the stench; later, when this proved impossible, they threw them from the walls into the valleys. When in the course of his rounds Titus saw these choked with dead, and a putrid stream trickling from under the decomposing bodies, he groaned, and uplifting his hands called God to witness that this was not his doing.
While such were the conditions in the City the Romans were exuberant, for none of the partisans sallied out now that they too were despondent and hungry. There was an abundance of corn and other necessaries from Syria and the neighbouring provinces, and the soldiers delighted to stand near the wall and display their ample supplies of food, by their own abundance inflaming the hunger of the enemy. But when suffering made the partisans no more ready to submit, Titus took pity on the remnant of the people, and in his anxiety to rescue the survivors again began constructing platforms, though it was difficult to get timber. Round the City it had all been cut down for the previous works, and the soldiers had to collect new supplies from more than ten miles away. Concentrating on Antonia, from four directions they raised platforms much bigger than the earlier ones. Caesar made the round of the legions, speeding the work and showing the bandits they were in his hands. But they alone seemed to have lost all sense of remorse, and making a division between soul and body acted as if neither belonged to them. For their souls were as insensitive to suffering as their bodies to pain — they tore the carcase of the nation with their fangs, and filled the prisons with the defenceless.
Simon actually put Matthias, who had made him master of the City, to death by torture. The son of Boethus and the scion of the chief priests, he enjoyed the absolute trust and respect of the people. When the masses were being roughly handled by Zealots whom John had already joined, he persuaded the people to accept Simon’s aid, having made no pact with him but expecting no mischief from him. When, however, Simon arrived and got the City into his power, he treated Matthias as an enemy like the rest, and the furtherer of his cause as a mere simpleton. Matthias was brought before him and accused of favouring the Romans, and without being allowed to defend himself, was condemned to die with three of his sons. The fourth had already made his escape to Titus. When Matthias begged to be killed before his children, pleading for this as a favour because he had opened the gates to Simon, the monster ordered him to be killed last. So his sons were murdered before his eyes and then his dead body was thrown on to theirs, in full view of the Romans. Such were the instructions that Simon had given to Ananus, son of Bagadates, the most brutal of his henchmen; and he mockingly enquired whether Matthias hoped for assistance from his new friends. Burial of the bodies was forbidden. After their deaths an eminent priest named Ananias, son of Masbalus, and the clerk of the Sanhedrin [the Supreme Council of Jerusalem], Aristaeus, whose home was Emmaus, together with fifteen distinguished citizens, were put to death. Josephus’s father was kept under lock and key, and an edict forbade anyone in the City to associate with him through fear of betrayal. Any who condoled with him were executed without trial.
Seeing all this Judas, son of Judas, a subordinate whom Simon had entrusted with command of a tower, partly through disgust at these brutal murders but chiefly with an eye to his own safety, collected the ten most reliable of his men. ‘How long,’ he asked, ‘shall we endure these horrors? What hope of survival have we if we remain loyal to a scoundrel? We are starving already and the Romans have almost got in. Simon is betraying his best friends and is likely soon to jump on us; but the word of the Romans can be trusted. So come on! Let us surrender the wall and save ourselves and the City! Simon has lost hope already! It won’t hurt him if he gets his deserts a bit sooner.’ This argument convinced the ten, and at stand-to he sent off the rest in different directions to avoid discovery. Three hours later he shouted from his tower to the Romans, but some of them were scornful, others mistrustful, the majority uninterested: in any case the City would soon fall into their lap. Titus advanced with his heavy infantry towards the wall, but Simon stole a march on him, occupied the tower first, arrested the men, executed them before the eyes of the Romans, and threw their mutilated bodies over the wall.
At this time, as he went round making yet another appeal, Josephus was struck on the head by a stone and fell to the ground unconscious. Seeing him fall the Jews ran out, and would have dragged him into the City had not Caesar promptly sent men to protect him. While they fought Josephus was picked up, knowing little of what was going on. The partisans thought they had disposed of the man they hated most, and whooped for joy. When the report spread through the City the survivors of the populace were overcome with despair, believing that they had really lost the man with whose help they hoped to desert. When Josephus’s mother was told in prison that her son was dead, she said to the guards that she had foreseen this ever since Jotapata; while he was alive she might as well have had no son. Privately she lamented to her maids that this was the only result of bringing children into the world — she would not even bury the son whom she had expected to bury her. But the false report neither grieved her nor cheered the bandits for long. Josephus soon recovered from the blow, and went forward to shout that it would not be long before they paid the penalty for wounding him, and to implore the people to trust him. His reappearance brought new hope to the common folk, to the partisans’ consternation.
Some of the deserters, seeing no other way, promptly jumped from the wall. Others advanced as if to battle armed with stones, then fled to the Romans. Their fate was worse than if they had stayed in the City, and the hunger they had left behind was, as they discovered, less lethal than the plenty the Romans provided. They arrived blown up by starvation as if by dropsy, then stuffed their empty bellies non-stop till they burst — except for those who were wise enough to restrain their appetites and take the unaccustomed food a little at a time. Those who escaped this danger fell victims to another disaster. In the Syrian camp one deserter was caught picking gold coins out of his excreta. As I mentioned, they swallowed coins before leaving, because they were all searched by the partisans, and there was a great deal of gold in the City. In fact it fetched less than half the old price. But when the trick was discovered through one man, the rumour ran round the camps that the deserters were arriving stuffed with gold. The Arab unit and the Syrians cut open the refugees and ransacked their bellies. To me this seems the most terrible calamity that happened to the Jews: in a single night nearly two thousand were ripped up.
When Titus learnt of this atrocity he was on the point of surrounding the perpetrators with his cavalry and shooting them down. But far too many were involved; in fact those to be punished far outnumbered their victims. Instead he summoned both the auxiliary and the legionary commanders, some of whose men were accused of participating, and spoke angrily to both groups. Was it possible that some of his own soldiers did such things on the off chance of gain, and had no respect for their own weapons that were made of silver and gold? The Arabs and Syrians, serving in a war that was not the concern of fashion, ended by letting Romans take the blame for their blood-thirsty butchery and their hatred for the Jews; for some of his own soldiers shared their evil reputation. The foreigners therefore he threatened to punish with death if any man was caught after this committing such a crime. The legionary commanders he instructed to ferret out suspected offenders and bring them before him.
But avarice, it seems, scorns every penalty and an extraordinary love of gain is innate in man, nor is any emotion as strong as covetousness. At other times these passions are kept within bounds and overawed by fear. But it was God who condemned the whole nation and turned every means of escape to their destruction. So what Caesar forbade with threats was still done to the deserters in secret, and the refugees, before the rest noticed them, were met and murdered by the foreign soldiers, who looked round in case any Roman saw them, then ripped them up and pulled the filthy money out of their bowels. In few, however, was any found, the majority being victims of an empty hope. Fear of this fate caused many of the deserters to return.
John, when there was nothing left that he could extort from the people, turned to sacrilege and melted down many of the offerings in the Temple and many of the vessels required for services, basins, dishes, and tables, not even keeping his hands off the flagons presented by Augustus and his consort. For the Roman emperors honoured and adorned this shrine at all times. But now this Jew stole even the gifts of foreigners, telling his companions that they need not hesitate to use God’s property for God’s benefit, and that those who fought for the Sanctuary were entitled to live on it. Accordingly he emptied out the sacred corn and oil which the priests kept in the Inner Temple to pour on burnt offerings, and shared them out to the crowd, who without a qualm swallowed a pailful or smeared it on themselves. I cannot refrain from saying what my feelings dictate. I think that if the Romans had delayed their attack on these sacrilegious ruffians, either the ground would have overwhelmed it, or lightning would have destroyed it like Sodom. For it produced a generation far more godless than those who perished thus, a generation whose mad folly involved the nation in ruin.
But why should I describe these calamities one by one? While they were happening Mannaeus, the son of Lazarus, fled to Titus and told him that through a single gate which had been entrusted to him 115,880 corpses had been carried out between the day the Romans pitched their camp near the City — April 14th — and the first of July. All these were the bodies of paupers. Though he was not himself in charge he had to pay the expenses out of public funds, so was obliged to keep count. The rest were buried by their own kin, who merely brought them out and threw them clear of the City. After Mannaeus many distinguished citizens deserted, and these reported that in all 600,000 pauper bodies had been thrown out at the gates: of the others the number was unknown. When it was no longer possible to carry out the penniless, they said, the corpses had been heaped up in the biggest houses and the doors locked. The price of corn was fantastically high, and now the City was walled round and they could not even gather herbs, some were in such dire straits that they raked the sewers and old dunghills and swallowed the refuse they found there, so that what once they could not bear to look at now became their food.
When the Romans heard of all this misery they felt pity: the partisans, who saw it with their own eyes, showed no regrets but allowed these things to come upon them too; for they were blinded by the doom that was closing in on the City and on themselves.