On the Destruction of Jerusalem 2.9–2.11

“Although in very many grief, improvident in counsel and impatient of restraint, makes some boil over with grave complaints, yet when counsel is taken, the feeling of grief is set aside. For if I had found all of this people ready to avenge injuries and to bring war on the Roman empire, and not of the better and calmer opinion that prefers what belongs to peace and quiet, I would neither have dared to come to you nor to give counsel. For it is superfluous to urge what ought to be done when the assent of the hearers is for the worse. But since some have no experience of the evils of war; others have a superficial hope of freedom, very sweet to seek but usually heavy to obtain—for to many, while freedom is sought, servitude is heaped up, and often everything is snatched from those to whom at least the name of freedom had remained; others, displeased with present conditions for their own interest, are attracted by revolution and think it gain if affairs are thrown into confusion—therefore I thought I should take counsel with you, so that either the sobriety of the more prudent is not overridden by the daring of the more insolent, or those who do not know how to judge rightly may, warned at least by our speech, learn that they must yield to wiser counsels. So I ask that silence be granted, so that we may lay open what we think is to your advantage, and none of you be disturbed if he hears something against his wish. For no one can judge what is said unless he has first heard what he himself is to judge; whether he approves or rejects, it is vain to be agitated. Let him listen; for after counsel each may still think what he thinks, and, if dissent pleases, even after sober warning he may keep the opinion of an ill-advised will. But someone will say: why do they wish to be heard in vain, if those who hear do not agree? Because if they will not agree when they have heard, only part of the assembly, not all the people, will be endangered; but if they will not hear, even when a part is willing to hear, the disturbance takes from the whole people the profit of hearing. So my speech will arise among those who wish to hear, if silence is granted me even in part; for every speech is cut off and sinks as if into mud if it is weighed down by the hindrance of the crashing of the assembly and restless noise. There are, then, two things to which I think I must answer first, which carry the greatest weight among the complaints: that many cry out about the injuries done by the governors, and that many groan that their freedom has perished. These two propositions, it seems to me, must be separated. For if the governors are wicked, what need is there to exalt freedom? Lest you seem to accuse the governors not for their deserts but from disgust with servitude, as ministers of domination. Or if servitude is intolerable, then the complaint about the governors is superfluous; for even if it is milder in them, servitude is nonetheless shameful. Let us consider, then, whether in either of them there is no slight material for wars. For what is more foolish than to complain of injuries and to weave war upon them, and to exchange insults for dangers? While you flee a judge, you bring in an enemy, whereas an unjust judge is usually still the interpreter of law, but an enemy, even a just one, is always a seeker of your life. So it is fitting to soften a judge, not to exasperate him; to beware of an enemy, lest you embitter the one and summon the other, since the one becomes milder by soothing, and the other must be avoided so that he cannot harm. With judges, then, one must take care that the complaint is not greater than the injury, and the odium of accusations heavier than the penalties for what was committed. For often those who at first offended with some shame become more insolent when accused, and those who stole secretly before afterwards rob openly. Nothing so inflames the fever of a wound as impatience in bearing it. Indeed even on wild beasts the tightest bonds press harder if they struggle and loosen if they are still; and the heavy force of fevers is lessened by enduring and increased by restlessness. If wild creatures know how to provide for themselves so as to forget their nature to relieve their pain, how much more among men has frequent experience taught that the endurance of the injured has made the injurers ashamed, so that without an accuser they corrected what they would not have amended when accused! But granted that the insolence of the Roman judges has been intolerable: which is more tolerable, to endure all or one? And what justice is it, when one has done harm, to make war on all? Are all the Romans authors of the injury? Is Caesar himself? Or was a wicked man deliberately chosen to be sent to you? They cannot watch over things beyond the sea or turn their eyes east and west to see there what is done here; nor is it easy to hear, for even if concern demands it, distance makes proofs difficult. So the fault of one man will give birth to the breach of the Roman world, though even without your complaints correction is swift, with no odium of accusation and no labor of a journey. For the Roman magistrates are changed in yearly turns, so that the insolent does not remain long and a milder one soon succeeds. So it will do no harm to have kept quiet, since the remedy comes even to the quiet. But to weave causes of war is ruinous, because the condition of war is harsh against all and against the Romans the last. If you wish to flee them, since you cannot overcome them, you must leave the whole world. But you put forward the desire for freedom? That deliberation comes late. You should have fought earlier so as not to lose freedom, rather than to demand it back once lost. The practice of servitude is harsh, and therefore it should not have been accepted at the beginning, or, once accepted, borne with equanimity. Then you ought to have resisted, when you were called to servitude; that was the juster fight. But one who has once given himself into servitude, even if he wishes afterwards to withdraw, is not declared a lover of freedom but judged a contumacious slave. Where was this defense of freedom when Pompey burst into your regions and the master entered the city? Where were the arms for freedom then? Why were they laid down by our fathers? And surely they were stronger than we: they were vigorous in spirit, abounded in resources, and desired to resist; but they did not withstand a small portion of the Roman army. They were conquered, but, spared, they acknowledged the yoke of servitude so as not to endure the penalty of captivity. Why do you, their heirs, refuse what you owe by right of succession? The obligations of your fathers bind you. How can you shun obedience, you who are so inferior to those who obeyed? Or what will be left to you, who move against yourselves Caesar and all Roman might? How can you withstand those who have triumphed over all and are now helped by all who fight for them? The Athenians, for the freedom of all Greece, gave their country to the flames, exchanging their homes for exile, so that Xerxes would not rule them—Xerxes who sailed on land and walked on the waves, whom the seas could not hold nor the land sustain, since the spaces of all Europe could hardly contain the passage of his march, the lands being narrower than the supply train of his army; they so pursued him in flight that, fleeing with hardly a single ship and in need of help, he barely escaped captivity. Yet those very men who broke all Asia at little Salamis, and drove into flight Xerxes, who ruled the waves and subdued the seas, defeated most gloriously in the very element he thought subject to himself—now they serve the Romans, and the leaders of all Greece obey the commands of the Italians; and that Athens which gave laws to others now serves foreign laws. The Lacedaemonians too, after Thermopylae and the triumphs of the dead Leonidas, after Agesilaus, the searcher of Asia, now love their masters. Macedonia and Africa as well, which through their mightiest commanders had transferred the rule of the whole world into their own right and possession, do not resent the power transferred from them; content with so great a change of affairs, they wish for kindly masters, whom they once sought to enslave. Neither are the Macedonians roused by the riches of Philip nor by the triumphs of Alexander, whom they thought the most prudent of all commanders and, not undeservedly, unconquered—because the one kept himself against Greece, and the other, avoiding Roman arms, came as victor to the Caspian kingdoms and the farthest bounds of subdued Persia and the secret places of the Indians. He won the name of Great because he did not provoke the greatest of all. Though an early death withdrew him from a triumph of the Romans, yet he too serves in his descendants, for whom the spoils of the East were sought not as the support of dominion but as the price of servitude, so that the nobility of servants would come to the victor's wealth. Great was Alexander's valor. Yet what wonder? He extended victory as far as the ocean, the Romans beyond the ocean. Britain is witness, set outside the world but brought back into the world by Roman valor. Those whom an earlier age did not know, Roman victory came to know. Even they serve who did not know what servitude was—born only for themselves and always free for themselves, because, separated by the ocean between from the power of the stronger, they could not fear those they did not know. So it was more to have crossed to the Britons than to have triumphed over the Britons. For what were they to do, already subject to the merciful rule of the Romans? The ocean taught them the patience of servitude, after they too had come to know an unaccustomed servitude when the Romans crossed in their ships. And of Hannibal why should I tell again—the victor of so many regions, who himself served the Roman triumphs, for whom he opened the Alps, paved a road, and subdued cities that were to be acquired by the victors? He who was often the stronger, and yet never cut off from the vanquished the hope of victory, once beaten could not recover. He yielded of his own accord to the victors whom as victor he had not withstood, and, throwing away his victorious arms, betook himself to King Prusias—from a commander a mercenary, from a triumphant victor a fugitive. Let us come to the inhabitants of the Gauls, peoples fierce by nature and fiercer for their natural walls, guarded not by the masonry of walls but by the ridges of the Alps on the east, enclosed by the ocean on the west, on the south by the cliffs of the Pyrenees, on the north by the floods of the Rhine; and the savage Germans were thought to have made themselves unconquerable and inaccessible by the benefit of their barriers. Yet to the Romans, who traveled above the clouds and extended their rule beyond the Pillars of Hercules, nothing was pathless. With such good fortune the enemy who lay hidden was found, and he who resisted was conquered; at their unexpected coming Germany believed that the mountains had sunk and the Rhine dried up. They who were stronger than the rest in size of body and contempt of death, who once thought their Rhine a barrier, now think it a defense of their safety. So it is now filled not with the forces of the Germans but with the Liburnian galleys of the Romans, which, ranging over all the floods of the two-horned river as far as the sea, press with servitude once free nations, so that those which had once claimed the rule of the whole world for themselves now pay the price of their own servitude. What did the gold dug from the veins of their lands profit the Illyrians, which was not enough for the price of freedom? How much more precious is Roman iron, which the gold of the Pannonians serves! So Pannonia pays a tribute of gold, and willingly transfers its wealth to the Roman treasury, to be safer in servitude. Nor did the turbid wave of Pactolus lift its inhabitant into pride by its gold: he serves gladly those whom he sees empires serve. Nor does the Indian admire his gem or the Chinese his wool: these are worked for the use of their masters, not as the price of merchandise but as the duties of tribute. We hear of the proud empires of the Persians; but we have seen their hostages too, and though they rule many nations, they offer their children and their nobility. They rejoice to serve the Romans as a pledge of peace, and at the same time to learn by serving how to rule their own; they offer garments, necklaces, elephants too to the Romans, the one tribute kings impose on themselves. Let us add Egypt, abounding in its riches and needing no rain from heaven, which makes showers for itself and creates abundance of rains. In fact, though it is hotter than all regions, it alone does not complain of drought, and, what no other place has, it nourishes its harvests by irrigation. Ships sail over sands, sail through fields, where rain is unknown. Yet its new grace and natural fertility serve the Romans in war, so that it feeds its masters for four months. What shall I say of the city itself, named for a most valiant king, which, fenced by the wall of a river, knows no siege, because the greatest of all rivers, spreading its bed over wide lands, both removes the obstacles of a siege and supplies by transport what is necessary for use? What could more readily be roused to rebel than Egypt, which counts seven million five hundred thousand men, besides the inhabitants of Alexandria, enrolled as peoples under the Roman fasces? And though it has so great a multitude, it prefers to exercise itself in tributes to the Roman empire rather than fight at its own expense. I shall not pass over the people of Cyrene, a race of Lacedaemonians, who once contended with the Carthaginians over borders and rule, offering death as the end of the contest; conquered by that offer, but having avenged the injury, they conceded the victory to the brothers Philaeni. Nor do I pass over the Syrtes, terrible even to hear of, because they draw everything to themselves and whatever approaches sticks fast in the shallow sea—men expert in such things have asserted that the third part of the whole world is bounded from the Atlantic sea and the Pillars of Hercules as far as the Red Sea and the Ethiopians. Who could count the peoples of so many nations, supported by which Carthage did not withstand the right hand of Scipio, and preferred to feed Rome for two parts of the year against itself rather than rebel against the Romans relying on the resources of others? Crete too, famous for its hundred cities, displaying most fertile realms, surrounded on every side by the sea and accustomed to repel the enemy with the waves as with walls, fears one consular governor, and very many peoples bow in fear to the rods of six fasces. Asia, Pontus, the Heniochi, the Nomad Scythians, the Taurian Scythians, the kingdoms of Maeotis, and all the Bosporans are subject to the Roman empire; and that sea, once unnavigable, forty ships keep in peace. And what shall I say of Armenia, which not only keeps the quiet of its own frontier but, intent on guarding the gates, carefully watches lest anyone creep in to disturb the peace? So all eagerly serve the Romans: do you alone disdain to be subject to those to whom all are subject? Relying on what arms? Proud of what soldiers? Where is your fleet of ships to blockade the straits and scour the seas of the Romans? For even the elements have passed into the name of those to whom the whole world too has passed, which is enclosed and bounded by the Roman empire; indeed by very many it is called the Roman world. For if we seek the truth, as we said above, the earth itself is beneath the Roman empire, and Roman valor, advancing beyond it across the ocean, has sought another world for itself and found a new possession in Britain, remote from the edge of the lands. Indeed, those to whom not only the right of Roman citizenship but almost the right of human society is denied are sent there to live, like exiles from the world. The ocean has yielded its bounds; the Roman has learned to seek its inner secrets. You will have war with those against whom not even nature keeps her own right. That Euphrates, inaccessible before except to its own inhabitants, is now Roman on both banks, and shows that the whole East is under Roman rule. The Danube, flowing in the northern parts among savage and countless nations, receives hostages and restrains enemies. The southern region, as far as it can be inhabited, ploughs for the Romans and gathers its harvest for them; in the west the farthest shore of the lands, Gades, receives new guests to bring their tributes to the Roman empire; it too has somewhere to send its goods: where before it thought there was only shipwreck, there it now exchanges commerce. Since, then, all things belong to the Romans, where will you seek defenses against the Romans? From what uninhabitable part will you demand allies? For whoever are in the world are all Romans. Or will you send an embassy beyond the Euphrates to the Adiabenians? But they have no leisure to leave their own affairs, nor will the Parthian allow the peace he sought to be broken, lest he himself be charged with rebellion among his neighbors. Do not think this war is like one in which you must fight battles against Arabs and Egyptians: Roman arms are different, and their resources are sought from the whole world. Nor let the defenses of the walls of Jerusalem flatter you: the Romans broke through the stronger wall of the ocean. But do you presume on the help of religion, when the disciples of Jesus have already filled the Roman world? Or do we think that that religion grows without God's will, and that the city of Rome extends its rule above all religions? This religion of ours deserted us long ago, because we deserted faith and have repeatedly done what the heavenly commands forbade. From where did the Egyptian come upon us? How were we made captives of the Assyrians? Did not Scripture say these things would happen? Is it not written that all the sacred things of the temple were to be profaned? They have already been profaned so often that they no longer show their power and all the grace of the divine mysteries. The temple has been polluted with human blood, the sacred couches filled with corpses, the altars drenched with Roman gore; there has been fighting on the sabbath; transgression has been committed, while the temple was defended not by its own observance and the solemnity of the festivals but by bloody battle. And this will surely happen again. How then can we earn divine help as against enemies and adversaries of religion, when we ourselves bring transgression on our religion? What remedy is there, then, when neither human resources support us nor divine grace helps? One of these usually invites some to war; you lack both. What then remains but manifest destruction? Unless you avoid it while you may beware, you will do nothing else than burn your own country, set fire to the temple, and give over to death your wives and children, to whom you will be the authors of final loss; and the increase of all your offspring will be without consolation, since what we suffer must be ascribed to our own fault. Add this, that the wars of other cities are bounded by the destruction of their own inhabitants; your rebellion will be the destruction of the whole religion, which, spread through the whole world, has scattered its people everywhere, and in every city a portion of us lives. So all the Jews will be involved in your battle, and there will be no region without its share of our blood. Or if the Romans are such that they do not persecute the Jews even when provoked by war, how unjust it is to bring war here on those whose humanity you hope for! It is good, dearest friends, it is good, while the ship is still in harbor, to foresee the coming storm and not to throw oneself into threatening dangers, lest, when you have gone out into the deep, you can no longer avoid shipwreck. Often, indeed, a sudden storm rises and war is received even when it is not brought on; but it makes a difference whether one provokes the enemy or receives him. He spares more who has not been provoked, and necessity excuses insolence; but when anyone plunges himself into headlong danger, he is burdened also with reproach. This is not an enemy you can avoid by flight. Wherever you go, danger will follow; indeed you will find the enemy everywhere. For all are friends of the Romans, and whoever is outside the friendship of the Romans is the enemy of all. Let love of country come over you; let the thought of your children, of your wives, call you back; let the sight of the most holy temple call you back. Spare at least religion; spare the most holy priests, whom the Romans no longer spare, nor the temple itself, which they repent of having spared, since all nations have long wished to extinguish our religion—which Pompey nevertheless spared when he could have extinguished it. I have omitted nothing; I have warned you of everything that concerns your safety. I urge on you what you would choose for me; consider what is useful to you and to me. Wish for yourselves and for me peace with the Roman people. If you refuse, you yourselves take away my fellowship from you: either the favor will be common, or the danger will be without me.” Saying this, he wept, and Berenice his sister too, for she was in the upper part of the Xystus; and Agrippa had greatly moved them by his tears, so that the Jews said: “We are not making war on the Romans; we think war must be brought against Florus, who has done things deserving of war.” Agrippa answered: “But this is to bring war on the Romans: your deeds attack the Romans with injury. Tribute is being refused not to Florus but to the Romans, not to Florus but to Caesar. The soldier in the fortress called Antonia belongs not to Florus but to the Romans, and you have separated the temple from it by pulling down and dividing the porticoes, so as to cut off the guard. Restore what your predecessors established: let the tribute owed to Caesar be paid to Caesar, lest Florus report that not he but Caesar's rule has been repudiated by you.” The people had acquiesced in these words, so that, going up into the temple with Agrippa, they began to build the porticoes as they had been and to collect the tribute. In short, diligent collectors being sent out on such duties, forty talents were gathered, which were lacking for the payment of tribute. The whole tumult of war had been suppressed; but when Agrippa wished to add to this that they should obey Florus until a successor came to him from Caesar, he so exasperated the people that they did not refrain from insulting even him, but drove him from the city with some stones thrown—whether they hit him is uncertain. Moved by this injury, the king sent the authors, once arrested, to Florus, and himself withdrew to his kingdom.

When he had gone, the instigators of war, having laid a plot, seized the fortress of Masada, killed the Roman guards, and set their own men there. Eleazar too, son of the chief of the priests, a man of headlong daring, persuaded them that no gift or sacrifice of any foreigner should be received; this was the trumpet of war against the Romans and roused everyone into tumult. So all the most powerful men, seeing that this was the presumed cause of the dissension, argued with the people that not only was war being brought on Caesar but the institution of religion was being violated and the reverence of the temple diminished; the traditions of their fathers were being blamed and condemned, who had adorned the temple from the gifts of foreigners, to which much more wealth had come from the contributions of the nations and the gifts of diverse and countless peoples; the holy things of their forebears were being blotted out and the sacred rites altered. What would become of what had been contributed before, if the gifts of the nations were in the same way forbidden to be contributed in future? Or if what was allowed to all was forbidden to the Romans alone, what an incitement to war that would be! Finally, it was impious if among the Jews alone foreigners were permitted neither to sacrifice nor to bring gifts. They ought to consider how Caesar's peace would be broken; moved by such an offense, he would no doubt take away from the Jews all use of sacrifices; and since those who had rejected Caesar's sacrifice would not be able to sacrifice even for themselves, it must be forestalled in time. For if such decrees reached Florus, and from him no doubt Caesar, it would be a plague and loss to the Jewish nation. At the same time, wishing to support this with the testimony of the priests, they asked whether the sacrifices of gentiles had ever been renounced by their forebears. To keep this from being made clear, those ready for sedition raised an uproar; not even the ministers of the altar dared to involve themselves in so great a contention of quarreling men. One remedy seemed left: that Florus and King Agrippa should come with a military force, so that at least those whom counsel could not call back would desist from fear. But Florus, who wished the sedition to increase so that the Jews would have no room for pardon (for unless they were entangled in war, all opportunity of pressing his robberies and graver crimes would be extinguished), allowed the fury of war to grow and gave the envoys no reply. Agrippa, however, for the common good, especially as his relatives Saul, Antipas, and Costobar sought it in their embassy—to keep the Jews for the Romans, religion for the Jews, the temple for the fatherland, the city for the citizens, and for himself the honor of rule and the peace of the kingdom—sent three thousand horsemen under the squadron commanders Darius and Philip, so that, relying on this help, those who counseled the better side might strive more readily. From this confidence arose among the good and indignation among the wicked, and the war grew. Since the one side had the juster cause, yet no agreement of arms helped it, and fury and numbers inflamed the others, the lines of fighters were divided. The chiefs of the priests and the part of the people that desired peace occupied the upper part of the city with the king's horsemen; the others, placed in the lower part, claimed for themselves the temple and the places near the sacred precinct. First on both sides they provoked war with stones and rocks and the throwing of missiles, and fought it out with arrows. Afterwards, as the necessity of fighting chanced to arise, they came to close quarters; the king's men excelled in skill and experience, wishing to keep the instigators of war from access so that they would not defile the temple; on the other side Eleazar and his men were eager to attack also the upper city, which was called Zion. For seven days they fought without any break. The eighth day, the feast on which all used to bring wood to the altars so that the fire, which had to remain unquenched, would never fail, added fury, so that all ministers were shut out of the temple. As the sicarii burst out more boldly than usual, the king's men gave way and dared not hold even the upper parts. The houses of Agrippa and Berenice were burned, all the royal furniture plundered; fire was carried about so that the bonds of debtors, stored in the public archives, would be burned. So that the poor might rise up more insolently against their creditors, thinking themselves released from every obligation, they burned the city with their own hands; the sinews of the city were burned. The fortress called Antonia was stormed, all the guards found there were killed, and afterwards it was burned. Menahem too, son of Judas the Galilean, a fierce and skilled sophist, practiced in stirring up affairs, burst out to Masada, broke into the armories, and armed the unarmed. Returning to Jerusalem with guards attending him as if in royal fashion, he grew insolent to such a degree that, going beyond a private man's practice, he did not think he should refrain even from unlawful things that free peoples could not bear. When very many rose against him, charging that he, propped up by royal attire, had fallen upon the citizens' freedom as a tyrant and master, he paid a heavy penalty, dying after first being afflicted with tortures; yet the discord was not removed, for a much graver movement arose. In the end Metilius with the Roman soldiers asked to be allowed to depart; and when good faith had been given and oaths sworn, and they had laid down their arms according to the agreement, as they went away without fear, many were cut down by Eleazar and the partners of his faction—thinking they should not resist force but entreat, they only cried out against the violated faith and the perjury of the faithless. So all were killed. Metilius himself, commander of the soldiers, by asking and begging, and at the same time promising that he would become a Jew even to the point of circumcision, was alone spared.

All Judea was ablaze; the whole province of Syria too was roused to war. The people of Caesarea killed all the Jews they had; roused by grief at this, the Jews attacked and overthrew very many cities of Syria. Nowhere was there law, nowhere religion; he was nobler who had plundered more, as if heaping up the rewards of bravery. It was a pitiable spectacle, when unburied bodies lay everywhere in the cities, old men mixed with boys, women too, not even left the coverings to hide their nakedness out of shame for the onlookers; everything was foul and full of pitiable sights, which, though they exceeded the black horror of grave and wicked cruelty, still threatened each other with worse. There was monstrous brigandage between Jews and Syrians, since there was no hope of safety except to forestall each other. For what city was there that did not have Jews and Syrians mixed together? Days were spent in blood, nights in dread; there was no measure in hatred or in greed. For besides the difference of sects and worship, which had broken out into a public evil, so that each wished the other destroyed, greed of having and lust of seizing had so invaded their minds that they thought no one they had marked for death for the sake of plunder should be spared. Why should I speak of the smaller numbers of the slain? For apart from the people of Antioch, Sidon, and Apamea, hardly any people did not persecute the Jews living with them. The Gerasenes, however, escorted those who wished to leave as far as their own borders, so that they departed without any treachery. At Alexandria a contention arose between gentiles and Jews; while the Hebrews were demanding vengeance and, having seized torches, were threatening to burn the people of the gentiles gathered in the amphitheater, they turned against themselves Alexander Tiberius, the prefect of the place, who was busy with other things. At first he tried to restore public concord by peaceable words; but when he saw that they mocked what he earnestly urged, and that so great a sedition could be removed in no other way, he gave the soldiers power to attack them. They surrounded and attacked them and made a very great slaughter throughout the whole city, killing some who resisted, others who fled, others hiding in their houses; nor was there any pity for little children, reverence for old men, or modesty toward women. So about fifty thousand of the Jews were slaughtered: the streets swam with blood, everything was filled with corpses, the flames crackled through the city in a savage fire, which, carried into the houses of the Jews, devoured the neighboring ones too. At last Alexander relented and ordered the soldiers to stop and sound the retreat; but the anger of the mob, once advanced to the power of killing, was by no means appeased.