On the Destruction of Jerusalem 3.17–3.23

To this Josephus replied: “And who would wish to survive so great a death? Who would choose to be the heir of such grief? Who would not wish his soul, if it were allowed, to be released from this very body of death? But it is not allowed to loose except to him who has bound. The soul is joined to the body by the bond of nature. Who is the author of nature but almighty God? Who would dare to break off and dissolve this companionship of our soul and body, pleasing to God? If someone, without his master's judgment, takes off the chains put on his hands at his master's command, will he not be condemned for having assailed his master with a grave injury? We are God's possession; we owe God service. As servants let us await his commands, as prisoners let us keep our chains, as faithful men let us guard the good deposit. Let us not refuse the gift of this life that he has given us; let us not flee a heavenly gift. If you reject a man's gifts, you are insulting; how much more ought we to keep what we have received from our God? From him, then, we have received what we are; it ought also to be his decision how long we are. For both are marks of an ungrateful man—to depart sooner than he wishes, and to live longer than the giver of life himself has willed. Did Abraham hurry to depart beforehand? Did Moses go up Abarim before it was said to him, ‘Go up into the mountain Abarim’? But it was said, ‘Go up,’ and he went up and died: like a good servant, he awaited the Lord's command. Job himself, who said, ‘Let the day perish in which I was born,’ yet, set in wounds and pains, did not break the bonds of this life, but asked to be freed, saying: ‘Why is light given in bitterness, and life to the bitter in soul?’ He praised death, saying, ‘Death is rest for a man’; yet he did not seize it beforehand but asked for it, as it is written: ‘I am shaken in all my limbs; and since I am ungodly, why am I not dead? Why did I not fall from my mother's womb into the grave? Is not the time of my life short? Let me alone, that I may rest a little.’ Another holy man also says: ‘Bring my soul out of prison.’ He asks to escape; he asks to be freed from this body as from a prison; yet none of the saints takes death to himself, none seizes it beforehand. If it is gain to die, it is theft to take it before it is awaited; if it is good to live, it is sacrilege to reject it before it is demanded back. But do you think it glorious to die in war? Nor do I deny that it is good to die in war for one's country, good for one's fellow citizens. But by the law of war I offer my throat if the enemy seeks it, if the Romans plunge the sword—to whom God has given victory over us, to whom he has adjudged us because of our sins. Nor do I flatter myself because they promise to spare me. Would that they deceive me! Either I shall carry off this gain, that they so feared me that they deceived me; or I shall take this revenge, that they break faith. I prefer to perish by their robbery than by my own. It is my robbery if I lay hands on myself; if enemies do it, it is a kindness. So, since they could have done that kindness by killing me, they thought they should keep what they had in their power; so that I might kill a captive, they would have played the robber. But you promise me the service of your hand: truly we lacked an executioner, so that we may perish by our own crime! I do not wish to perish by my crime, nor by yours, which is more than mine, nor by a mutual one. For this is for each of us to lay hands on himself, to pay the price of a substitute death, so that now each owes the crime not only for his own blood but also for another's. But the example of King Saul is brought forward—of one, surely, who was asked for as king against the divine will and earned the offense of God; hence he received a successor even while he lived. A fine example of a man who lacked the grace of God, and yet wished to die because he could no longer live! Yet he too wished his comrade to kill him; but the other thought it a crime and refused the service. So it was not by his own counsel but, abandoned by any service, that he turned the sword on himself. If he did it from fear of being mocked, why do you praise what belongs to fear? If he was not afraid, why did he first choose something else? I fear neither the Romans mocking nor the Romans lying. Saul alone killed himself—not Jonathan, nor anyone else in our Scriptures. What wonder if he could kill himself, who could also kill his son? Aaron stood between the living and the dead; and this belongs to courage, not rashness. For he did not bring death on himself, but he did not fear death—he who drove it back with his own body and was every obstacle to the serpent. I am not Aaron, yet not unworthy of him: I offer my hands; let them strike as they will. If I can fear their hands, I deserve to perish by my own. If they die at the hand of an adversary, why should I not die at my own? If you ask why they wish to spare me, they admire courage even in an enemy. So great is the grace of courage that it often delights even an enemy. You yourselves know what ruin I have brought on the Romans, how I turned the conquerors of all nations aside from the destruction of the city of Jerusalem by the long siege of the obscure city of Jotapata. At small cost I have played the dice of the whole war. The rest have learned by my danger to wish for peace. Perhaps we are being kept for this, that the rest may not be deterred but provoked. But you assert that it is sweet to die for freedom. Who denies that too? But it is also sweet to live for freedom. For he who offers friendship promises freedom. If he imposes servitude, then indeed the will to die will be more timely, if one must die. But now they offer life; they do not wish to kill. He is a coward both who does not wish to die when he should, and who wishes to when he should not. For who does not know that it belongs to womanly timidity and to a woman's courage to wish to die so as not to die? Indeed frightened women, when they learn that some danger threatens them, usually throw themselves down a precipice; for narrow souls cannot bear the weight of fear and the dread of death. But a patient man, who does not fear the present and thinks of the future, does not know how to tremble where there is no fear. Indeed it is written that the souls of the effeminate will hunger, since, having no food of virtue, they hunger; and therefore they hurry to death before their time. For one filled with the food of spiritual grace does not lay hands on himself, since it is written: ‘The mouth of the imprudent calls for death.’ And again Scripture says: ‘He who does not take care of himself in his works is brother of him who destroys himself.’ So he is condemned who strikes himself. For what is so against the law of nature? What is so against the nature of all living things? To all beasts, even wild ones, it is implanted to love themselves. For the law of nature is strong: to wish to live and not to take death to oneself. Indeed, not all kinds of living things can arm themselves with steel against themselves, even if they wished. Men invented the shapeless noose of death; beasts do not know it. But the bites of beasts are their weapons, their teeth their swords. Yet when has anyone heard that any beast took off its own limb with its own bite? Against others they use the weapons of their jaws, toward themselves kisses. And for us, what is so sweet as life? What so hostile as death? Indeed whoever protects a life is a patron; whoever tries to attack it is a plotter. What then we curse in others, are we ourselves willing to bring on ourselves? And what we exact from others as punishment, do we inflict on ourselves as a favor? A pilot who dashes the ship entrusted to him on a rock we prosecute; shall we destroy with steel the helm of our body entrusted to us and give it over to a voluntary shipwreck? But you hold up to me a timely death, since I shall be brought into the power of the enemy. What then shall I gain if I inflict on myself what I fear from the enemy, when it may happen that what you urge me to do, the enemy will not do? This is as if a pilot, seeing a storm coming, should sink his ship in the waves to avoid the storm. Or do you think it must be forestalled because the adversary will exact heavier punishments? Or because you think it vigorous that we use the sword on ourselves? But that is a refuge of weakness, not a trophy of courage—to grasp at the gain of punishments. So we cling to something that has neither the marks of courage nor the advantage of usefulness. And what shall I add about the religion of a violated deposit? Almighty God has given us a most excellent treasure and, having enclosed and sealed it in this earthen vessel, has entrusted it to us to guard until it pleases him to demand it back. Is there not a crime either way, whether to throw back the deposit when the giver does not demand it, or to deny it when he does? If to violate a man's deposit is punished with infamy, how much more to violate God's deposit! God's deposit is the soul in this body, a soul which is not capable of this death; for it is not bound and tied by any bond of death, but seems to await death when it is loosed from the body and separated from the companionship entrusted to it. Why then do we inflict death before the deposit is demanded back, and send away the soul as useless to us, shut it out of our house, and dissolve the body into earth without its beauty and grace? Why do we not wait for the command to go out from here? The soldier waits for the watchword, the slave for the order. If either goes out without an order, the one is a deserter, the other a runaway. He who flees a man is almost liable, even if he fled a wicked master; can we, fleeing the best of all, not be bound by the crime of impiety? Has this too escaped our mind, that God has set an angel round about those who fear him? There is, then, one who forbids, unless he has received an order; if there is no order, there are no provisions for the journey. And how shall we arrive without provisions? Who will receive us into that pure and secret place? Who will admit us to that fellowship of holy souls? Adam hid because he transgressed God's command; he was shut out of paradise because he did not keep the commandment. It is said to him: ‘Adam, where are you?’—as to one who had fled, as to one who was not present before God. Will it not be said to me too, ‘Where are you, who came without command, whom I did not release from the bonds of nature? Take him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth and pain’? We have learned that these things are forbidden not only by the customs of men but also by laws: for some order those who have thrown themselves on the sword to be cast out unburied. For it is fitting that those who did not wait for the father's command should be deprived, as it were, of the mother's bosom, the grave of the earth. Others cut off the right hand of such dead, so that it is separated from the members of its body, because it fought against its own body with mad fury. But this end is suffered by the sacrilegious, or by traitors or murderers of parents, who did not acknowledge their true father and do not know themselves. Therefore they are either forbidden burial altogether or are not buried whole. Their souls too are received not by paradise but by the darkness of the underworld and savage torments. As I reflect on these things, though everything has been taken from me, these alone cause me terror and fear: let me not inflict on myself what not even the enemy will be able to inflict, nor snatch from myself those things of paradise which the Roman has not yet been able to snatch. He could hasten them, he will not be able to take away the only things I long for impatiently. For no desire for this life holds me, in which I have found nothing to delight me either among citizens or among enemies: the one denied me peace, the other snatched away my country. Among so many evils, what sweetness can remain in this life? Only you, almighty Father, author and judge of nature, grant an honorable end; you break this natural bond; give back my soul to its secret places. Let the people be destroyed, right taken away, freedom broken: yet I will not transgress your law so as to die without your command. I wait for you to command; I wait for you to free me, willing as I am. You have many executors of your rule: from you I await the command, from the executor the service. It is good to die; but let me die as a Hebrew, not as a brigand, not as an executioner, not as an enemy. Though I be defeated in war, I shall remain what I was born, so as not to desert the inheritance of father Abraham. I will not pass into the number of enemies so as to be my own murderer. I can offer myself to the enemy to be struck without loss of piety; I cannot turn my hands against myself as against an enemy without crime. Or is the fear that we may not be allowed to live according to the law? Truly there is now great freedom for those to whom it is now allowed to die according to the law.”

Josephus pleaded these things to them, to empty their attachment to a voluntary death. But those who had once devoted themselves to death, since they could not resist his words, surrounded the man with swords as if to strike at once unless he thought he should agree. He, surrounded, called back one by the authority of a commander and the constancy of his courage, met another with a stern look; this one's right hand he held back, that one's anger he bound, soothing them with the soundness of his counsel. In various ways he wrested from each his irrational fury. For although the last lot of the defeated had wrested away his dignity, it had not wholly abolished reverence for him. So little by little hands were lowered and swords put away, yet their intention persisted. When he saw that he alone was held besieged by many, whether by some chance or by design, he devised a plan to lessen the number of those opposing him. “Let us entrust the order of dying to the lot,” he said, “so that no one may withdraw himself, since the lot will meet all. Let the condition of the lot be this: that the one who comes out by lot be killed by the one who follows him. So it will be the lot, not his own will, that condemns each to death. Let each, then, stand under the lot as judge, free from the crime and free from captivity, so that he neither hastens by another's will nor avoids by his own the coming death. No one will be able to refuse an outcome which either chance has brought or God's will has marked.” The offer won their trust, and the assent of all agreed to the lot. Each one marked by the lot offered himself ready to death at the hand of the next. So it happened that, when the rest had been killed, Josephus was left with one other to survive death. It remained of necessity that either he be condemned by the lot, or, if he survived destruction, he be defiled with his comrade's blood. He persuaded the other to renounce the lot. So he escaped a battle among his own and was led by Nicanor to Vespasian. People ran together to see him as he came, almost all the Romans flocking: some longed to see him cast down whom a little before they had seen placed in the fullest honor and in command of the whole; others vied to mock the captive; others marveled at the changes of human affairs, so varied and pliant. Many, more thoughtfully, groaned, reflecting that the same could happen to them in others' misfortunes. Titus above the rest was moved, by the inborn gentleness of his mind: that man, lately a proud warrior, suddenly made over to the power of enemies, awaiting the lot of another's will, the shipwreck of his life, an exile from hope, uncertain of his safety. So great was the power of the moments of fortune that by a brief chance they make men unlike themselves, when the powerful are cast down or the afflicted raised up. So the better part, that is, those who held honor, gave milder counsel; but the greatest share of Josephus's safety with his father was Titus. Vespasian ordered him to be kept under guard, lest perhaps he escape.

A few days later he made again for Ptolemais and from there went to Caesarea, the greatest city of Judea but filled more with gentile inhabitants. They therefore received the Roman army with applause and joy, not only because the favor of the Roman alliance was desired by them but also because of their inbred hatred of the Jewish people; and they cried out with the loudest shouts that Josephus, its leader, ought to be punished. Vespasian dissolved this by silence, as the anger of the mob conceived without judgment. And because both the season and the city were suitable for wintering, he stationed two legions in Caesarea, and the tenth and fifth in the city of Scythopolis, so that Caesarea would not be worn out by the burden of the whole army. That city was consecrated to the Scythian Diana, as if founded by Scythians, and called the city of the Scythians, as Massilia is of the Greeks. The site of the place shows the inborn hardness of its founder, who chose open plains rather than what was useful for habitation. For, being open and rough in winter and hot in summer, they have more toil than delight, since in winter they lie more open to the cold, and the burning of summer is heavier in those places, which receive the whole sun without any pleasantness of green fields. So the level and coastal region of that city was steamed the more by the heat of the sea.

Yet Vespasian was not free of the business of war. For he learned that very many from various places had gathered at the city of Joppa and, having repaired the buildings destroyed by Cestius, had restored it as a convenient base for raids of piracy, since, the region being laid waste, the means of food were sought by sea; he explored everything carefully. They, having built ships of the kind suited to the use of pirates, watched the passage of travelers and plundered almost all the commerce of Phoenicia and Egypt, so that by the terror of frequent plundering they closed that whole sea, and the practice of sailing was cut off by fear of undoubted danger. Learning this, he ordered a force of infantry and many horsemen to go and enter Joppa by night. This was easily done, since no guard was set over the city: for, the city having been overthrown, its name was thought unlikely to stir any concern in the Roman commander. The inhabitants were present, but did not dare resist or deny entry to the Romans as they came; they boarded their ships, went out beyond an arrow's shot, and spent the night at sea. The matter seems to call for a brief description of the site of the shore that borders Joppa, so that it may be plainly shown how a second disaster befell that city without any battle. The city is by nature without a harbor; its shore, from the edge of the sea, is rough and straight, but bent slightly at both ends into horns, on which there are deep rocks and huge stones projecting into the sea; and though they rise from the depths of the sea, they still run out into it. Hence the very color of the places and the appearance of things seem to show that Andromeda was there when she was exposed to the sea monster, giving no small credit to the old fables. So, when the north winds blow against them, the waves are raised to an immense height; dashed against the rocks, they raise a huge crash, and, falling back into the waves, they make that bay of the sea restless, so that there is more danger in the harbor than in the open sea. While the boats we mentioned above, brought out of the city of Joppa, were tossing there, toward morning a violent wind rushed upon them, which those sailing in those parts call the Black North Wind; and at once, with the waves driving them, it dashed the boats together and rolled them over. Some, their anchor cables broken, it drove onto the rock; for others, as they were violently lifted up against the sea, there came the danger of the rocky shore, or disaster at the hands of the Romans who had spread along the shore as the sailors swam toward it; and the towering wave rising above in the usual way overwhelmed and sank them. There was no place of refuge, no hope of staying, since the wind drove them from the sea and the Romans shut them out of the city. Heavy was the sound of the ships as they struck each other; intolerable the groaning of men as they were broken. When they saw the sea bursting in through the reeling hulls, some threw themselves overboard, skilled at swimming; others, while they leapt into the approaching boats, fell into the sea and were crushed by the clash of the hulls; very many, whom confidence in swimming out had failed, sank to the bottom with the very galleys—yet with less torture those who lacked the skill, or whom death transfixed before any hope of trying. But those who set out to swim were battered by frequent blows from the torn fragments of ships, and, dashed against the sides, their wretched limbs were foully mutilated; or, driven onto the rocks amid their very prayers to embrace the shore, death followed them, though they had some comfort of a kind in having perished on land. It was a pitiable sight when the rocks were spattered with the dashed-out brains of the unfortunate and the shores were wet with blood. You could see the sea stained with gore and everything filled with corpses. And if any happened to escape, they were killed as they approached the shore, the Romans judging that the storm was raging not from the roughness of the places and the habit of the winds there, but that, by divine wrath, the sea was being rolled over by winds conspiring beyond the usual so that the Jews should not escape; and therefore they were afraid to spare those whom God had not spared. Some killed themselves with the sword, thinking it more bearable to perish by the sword than by shipwreck; others, wishing to push off with poles, holed the ships; some, if those who had fallen into the sea happened to beg to be lifted up by those sailing, drove them off with oars or struck them with a weapon. I have not passed over this so that it may be clear that there was greater danger to the people of the Jews from themselves than from the enemy, since they killed one another—as if it were too little for their destruction that everything at once was hostile: sky, enemy, sea, rocks. So four thousand five hundred bodies of the dead were counted, which the sea had cast up. The city was taken without war and destroyed from its foundations. So in a short time the Roman force overthrew Joppa a second time. Vespasian rightly thought this must be ordered, so that pirate dwellings would not be built there again. So, though he himself set out from there, he left horsemen in that place with a few foot soldiers, so that the foot might stay in the place lest the band of pirates, used to robbery, dare anything, while the horse ranged over the neighboring parts of the region and the villages and towns, so that everything might be thoroughly destroyed, lest they conspire in any daring venture.

While these things were being done at Joppa, the people of Jerusalem, though they lived far off, were not free even so from a share in the disaster. For when they heard what had been done by the Romans in Judea, and especially when they learned that Josephus had been killed, at first they did not believe it, because no informant had come to them from those places; then they thought so great a commander had not rashly fallen into the hands of the enemy. And in fact no messenger of so great a disaster had survived, and this very thing confirmed the report of final destruction: because no informant survived, it was asserted that everything had perished and nothing had remained even to report what had been done. An opinion persisted greater than any report, because, while silence held them uncertain, all that was feared was believed; and so far was it from anything being reported more truly that even things that had not been done were added. For rumor asserted that Josephus too had been killed, and this was the greatest grief to all. But when it was learned that he was living among the Romans, they pursued him with such hatred that the man whose death they at first lamented, they now cursed for his life, as evidence either of cowardice or of treachery. Hence greater agitation against the Romans, to avenge themselves for Josephus. And the more their affairs declined, the more they were inflamed to war. Where there ought to have been an end, from there the beginning of evils was taken. For to the wise, adverse outcomes are rather a lesson to take care, lest the same things that have already turned out badly happen again; but to the imprudent they are an incitement to miseries. So the danger of their allies ought to have been to the people of Jerusalem a reason for sobriety; but because they would not understand so as to act well, it turned to destruction.

Vespasian, however, so that he might use the delay itself to his advantage and the army might rest a little from its labor, yielded to Agrippa's request to spend about twenty days in Caesarea Philippi, a city of his kingdom, and at the same time so that the sick parts of his realm might come to their senses from the fury of agitation and discord, since they ought to recognize that they could be received through the king's intervention if they turned back, so earnest were the bonds of service between the king and the Romans. Indeed Tiberias, nearest to Caesarea, did not refuse the remedy and the soundness it offered; for it too was boiling with the grave disease of a people at odds with itself. So Vespasian decided to summon the three stronger legions and make for Scythopolis, sending his son on the business. This was the largest of the ten cities, a neighbor of Tiberias. From there he ordered Valerian to approach the walls with fifty horsemen, to urge peaceable counsels and call those shut in to the good faith of alliance, so that the terror of the assembled army would strike the hostile and the message of peace would invite the willing. Valerian leapt from his horse near the walls; those who had come closer with him did the same. Jesus, leader of a band of plunderers, thinking them contemptible for their number, dared to attack them with his men, drove them from the place by a sudden sally, and, cutting them down, seized the horses they had led. Madmen, who did not notice that Valerian had more wisely given way to their insolence than they had taken spoils from men offering peace! In the end the elders, offended by the bitterness of the deed, left the city and came to Vespasian to beg that the insolence of a few should not be ascribed to the whole people. Vespasian at once sent Trajan to the city to find out whether the people opposed the rashness of the plotters. He, reporting that the people's attitude agreed with the elders' prayers, confirmed the credibility of the embassy. So pardon was given to those who asked, especially because Vespasian saw the king anxious for the condition of the whole city; on his pledge that they would dare nothing of the kind afterwards, he willingly granted pardon for the offense.

From there he made for Taricheae with a watchful and well-ordered column, because a very great multitude had flowed into that city on account of the strength of the place; and because Josephus had fenced it with a wall, except where, impassable for infantry, it was washed by the waves of the lake of Gennesaret, and they had therefore gathered ships, a twofold war was rumbling: if the land battle turned against them, they would flee to the ships; if they gave way in a naval contest, they would go back to the city and defend themselves with the walls around them. The defenses were very similar in both places, the city of Tiberias and Taricheae; but at Taricheae the temper was more ruinous, while Tiberias was stronger in walls. And the fury of the people of Taricheae was readier, so that, if necessary, they would mix everything: naval battles with land, land battles with naval. In the end, surrounded, with the line set against them, though they dared more than their strength allowed, and their rashness achieved nothing against the management of Roman order and the courage of a veteran army, before suffering any loss they turned to flight and flew to the ships. Packed in these, they fought as if in close-ordered line, as though the matter were being fought hand to hand on land. On the plain, too, a countless multitude was waiting for the enemy. Learning this, Vespasian sent his son with picked horsemen. When he saw himself surrounded by huge forces, he reported to his father that the multitude of the enemy was greater than had been thought; but, calling together those he had brought with him, he poured into them an incitement to battle with an address of this kind.