On the Destruction of Jerusalem 3.24–4.3

“Men of Rome,” he said, “it befits you to fight remembering your name and race, from whose hands no one in the Roman world has escaped. For how did you give this name to all lands except by conquering? You ought also to remember the place where you now are, and against whom you are waging a Roman war. For we stand at the farthest part of the world. Crossing such spaces of land, you have seen nothing foreign. For what is foreign to you, in whose possession the world is? Whatever is anywhere is your right; whatever the habitation of all holds is your possession. He ran well who set your triumphs running through the whole world—triumphs which neither Hasdrubal the Carthaginian, nor Pyrrhus son of Aeacus, nor Brennus pressing on the entrance of the Capitol, nor the bands of the Persians, nor the phalanxes of Egypt could halt. Rebellious Judea has halted them, displaying an untaught rashness in war, fitter for a brawl than a battle. Not that there is anything I fear; but I think it full of shame that you are wearied by conquering. They, however, as often as they are conquered, have taken on daring: you are wearied by success, while they are hardened by adversity. Lift up your spirits, then, men of Rome, and, relying on your ancestral courage, rise against the bands of the enemy. Let not the number of the Jewish people move you, since so many marks of your courage, far stronger than numbers, do not deter them. For among the Hebrews there is no knowledge of military matters, no skill in fighting, no grace of command, no practice of discipline, no patience in endurance. They bring into battle only contempt of death; but no one ever conquered an enemy by dying, but by killing. They know arms only in war; we are exercised in arms in peace, so that in war we do not feel the doubtful chances of war. For the inexperienced, outcomes are doubtful; for veterans, triumph is customary. What else do we do every day but see to it that battles are never in vain for us? Each one is exercised at home as in battle, so that in battle there is a kind of rehearsal of combat. Indeed no one would be wrong to assert that our exercises are bloodless wars and our wars are exercises. We go out to war protected: the head is covered on all sides with the helmet, the breast with the breastplate, the whole body with the shield; the enemy cannot find where to strike the Roman soldier, whom he sees fenced with iron. To others such arms are a burden, to us a covering, because use makes them light. Our battle, then, is against the unarmed and naked. Or are we afraid of being surrounded by numbers? First, cavalry is free in battle; by giving way and pursuing it plays at war; and however great the lines, it rides around them and withdraws to whatever spaces it pleases. Then, in the infantry contest itself, it is not so much the number of the many that decides the fight as the courage of the few. A multitude unused to discipline is its own hindrance—in success to victory, in adversity to flight. But patient courage grows strong in success and does not slip all the way in adversity. Add to this that the habit of victories is an incitement for us to fight. For though they fight for their country and children, that is no reason they should be readier than we. For it is no less—indeed I do not know whether it is not even more—for us to contend for ourselves than for our own. We fight for ourselves, and when we fight we fight for glory, so as not to be less than what we are. Who then would doubt that it is more to contend for glory than for safety? For us this war is a danger to our reputation, lest a right that has been won be lost. We are in danger, too, conquerors of nations and leaders of the world, of seeming equal to the Jews, whom we have set up as adversaries on equal terms if we engage them only with equal numbers. Our ancestors often routed great forces of the enemy with a small band. And what do daily exercises give us, what long labor, if we come to battle as equals? We reported the numbers to my father, since nothing else was allowed; but let him note that we did not fear the danger but reserved the honor of the battle for the commander. We may taste the war first, hold the enemy, and seize victory while help is coming, so that those who come may not boast that the adversaries were overcome by common strength as much as that we were protected by their courage. With what face, then, shall we come into my father's sight if we are afraid to begin the battle? With what shame shall I, a degenerate son, come under the eyes of so great a man, who does not know how to see his soldier except as victor? How shall I prove myself his soldier and his son, when he is always a triumpher, and I am conquered even by my own judgment—what is worse—having given way to a Jewish enemy? What will be left to you with your commander condemned, whom my father has confidently entrusted to you? But I prefer that you plead about the courage of your commander rather than about cowardice. Let us rush on the adversaries, then; let us hurry; let us trample the enemy. I will run out first into the danger; you follow, so that you may guard my father's deposit and keep what my father has entrusted. But I do not demand companions in danger, but partners in victory. Take care, however, that you do not seem to have reserved for others the palm of triumph offered to you, and to have snatched it from yourselves. Surely, if things turn out otherwise, I prefer that my father should recognize his son in my wounds, if he does not recognize him in his soldiers. Let us suppose, however, that my father will be offended by our attacking. Which then is more tolerable, to have seized victory beforehand, or to have deserted it? In seizing beforehand there is the haste of bravery; in deserting, the guilt of cowardice. Let my father condemn the victors: I do not dread a charge of that kind; I prefer to be guilty while the state triumphs than innocent while it is harmed. Would that I might imitate the son of Manlius Torquatus, if only in his danger, whom his father ordered to be struck with the axe because he had led the army against the enemy contrary to his father's command. The young man stood, the enemy slain, clothed in triumphal honors, secure of death under the executioner, because he thought it most blessed to die in victory. For what is more illustrious than to close one's life with a triumph and not be kept for uncertain things after a certain victory? O crime of victory, to be sought by the wise! Would that this too might be charged against us, that we conquered! Surely, by that example, I alone shall be in danger; you will triumph. And yet my father did not forbid us to fight, but commanded it, since he sent us to the fight. So I think he will be more indignant that we gave way to the Jews when we could have conquered than that we fought.”

Saying this, he drove his horse first against the enemy, and the rest followed with a great shout; they were stretched out over the whole plain, so that they were thought to be more. Trajan too, sent by Vespasian with three hundred horsemen, arrived as Titus was already advancing. Nor could the Jews resist long, being thrown into confusion by the men's lances and the snorting of the horses. So, turning in different directions, some fled, most made for the city. Titus darted forward and overwhelmed some fleeing from behind, cut down others, drove back all the stragglers from the walls by getting ahead of them on the way, and, meeting those who ran back, cut off their flight. Again some were laid low and others slipped away, to whom the city was a refuge; but among them too there was a fiercer battle. For those who had flowed in from the neighboring places preferred peace from the beginning, but the people of the city, coming upon them, had wrung from the unwilling an eagerness for fighting. Hence within the city there was dissension and a grave tumult. Roused by the noise, Titus turned to his soldiers: “This,” he said, “most holy comrades, is the moment I was looking for. The enemy are sowing tumult among themselves within the city; outside they are cut down, inside they fight each other. Let us hurry, then, while they still disagree, lest perhaps from fear of danger they come back into accord.” So he mounted the horse from which he had leapt down, close to the walls; and, turning to the lake, he made for the city through the waves of the water, and was first to burst into the city, and afterwards the rest. At once all who were inside scattered in flight; some were laid low, others, boarding ships, were sunk in the lake; many people were slain inside. Those who were from the countryside, indeed, offered themselves to the Romans, asserting that they had no part in the guilt; Titus, with devoted moderation, thought they should be spared, pressing only the authors of the rebellion. So he sent a horseman to his father to report the outcome of the victory. Vespasian, delighted at this, and especially at the triumph of his son, who had accomplished the greatest part of the whole war being waged against Judea, hurried there and ordered the city to be watched more carefully, so that no one would slip away, since all were owed punishment. On another day, however, because of those who had betaken themselves to boats, he ordered rafts to be made; they were made without delay, since both the neighboring woods and many workmen gave the means of speeding the work.

For the lake itself, like a very broad gulf with a kind of seacoast around it, extends a hundred and forty stadia in length and spreads forty in breadth, raising a breeze for itself from its own rippling waters. Hence it is called Gennesar by a Greek word, as if “generating a breeze for itself.” Its water is sweet and fit for drinking, since it takes in nothing thick or turbid from marshy slime, being surrounded on every side by a sandy shore, and it is more temperate than the coldness of a river or spring. Yet it is colder than the surface of a placid marsh, because the water does not lie flat like a pond but, over the wider spaces of the lake, is more often stirred by breezes blowing; hence its draught is purer and softer for drinking; and if anyone wishes to add effort to nature's gift, as when, in the manner of the inhabitants, it is set out for drinking, hung up to the breezes on summer nights, he would think it in no way different from snow. The kinds of fish too are more excellent in taste and appearance than in any other lake. The matter seems to require that we disclose the source of the Jordan, which we promised elsewhere. For in an earlier age there was doubt whether the river called the Jordan rose from the lake of Gennesar; Philip, tetrarch of the region of Trachonitis, refuted the false opinion and resolved the error by throwing chaff into Phiala, which the stream cast up at Panium. From this it is clear that Panium is not the beginning of the Jordan but its flowing: its spring is not there, as though it began from that place in the manner of other rivers; rather, conducted from Phiala in Trachonitis by underground channels, it gushes out there again as if from a spring and emerges into view. Phiala is in the land of Trachonitis, with a hundred and twenty stadia lying between it and the city of Caesarea. Its shape gave Phiala its name, expressing the character of a wheel [or bowl], because it is so continually full of water that it neither overflows nor is seen to be lessened by any drawing off. So the water glides below by a certain measure and bubbles up again where Panium is, as was shown by the chaff rising again. So the Jordan was shown to have risen again where men of earlier times thought it was born. Nor was Panium from the beginning anything but natural charm; but we have learned that, adorned by the royal munificence of Agrippa, the place received a richer and more splendid approach, by which the cave through which the Jordan raises itself was built up and beautified with wonderful adornment. From there, no longer hidden or concealed in the hollow passages of the earth, but beginning visibly across the land and openly, it pours itself into the lake Semechonitis and cuts through its marshes. From there too, directing its course, it goes on a hundred and twenty stadia without any interruption to the city called Julias; afterwards it passes with its stream through the middle of this lake called Gennesar; from these places, having wandered through much desert, it is received by the Asphaltite lake and buried in it. So, having come out of two lakes as victor, it sticks fast in the third. The region of Gennesar borders the lake of the same name, from which it too takes its name, with wonderful grace of nature and beauty of appearance. For the richness of the soil supplies fruits of its own accord, and, fertile in groves, it raises itself spontaneously in every kind; and the skill of cultivation, imitating nature, has turned the grace of rich fruitfulness of fruit-bearing trees to whatever uses it wished, so that there is nothing there that nature has denied, nothing that cultivation has passed over—so suited is it to all fruits and so alien to none. Its climate is so temperate that it suits the diversity of all things that grow. There things nourished by cold pour themselves out abundantly, and things fostered by heat; there you would see summer things mixed with winter ones, northern nuts and dates, which do not know how to grow except in the hottest places. Why should I speak of figs or olives, which a milder tract of sky nourishes? Yet these are not equal to those just mentioned: those are the chief and native fruits of Palestine and therefore more abundant; these nearly equal, and though at a long interval, yet close behind—you might call it a pleasant contest of nature and seasons. The one, like a fruitful mother, produces everything; the other's temperate climate, like a good nurse, rears all with soft care. So not only are the varieties of fruits produced abundantly, they are also preserved, so that some kinds do not fail for most of the year, and all the rest last through the whole year to its end. For the grapes and figs among the grafted trees, of a kind of royal grace, abound ten months without any failing; and the other fruits of the branches, whether the fields have produced them of their own accord or human industry has grafted them, do not know how to give up their service, by a kind of habit of those who tend them, except when new ones succeed. To this fertility of nature and temperateness of air is added the grace of a spring, which waters that region with a kind of life-giving flow; its name is Capharnaum, and some have thought, not idly, that it is a vein of the river Nile—not only because the fields are rich with its waters, but also because it produces a fish such that you would think it the coracinus, which is found in the lake of Alexandria from the flow of the Nile. The place too is named from the lake. It extends thirty stadia in length and twenty in breadth. Since we have spoken of the nature of the place, let us return to the conclusion of the battle. The rafts being prepared according to his order, Vespasian put on board a military force to pursue those who had escaped the plague by fleeing in ships. They could not find what to do. There was no place of safety on land, everything being surrounded by the enemy; no power of flight on the water, since the lake was closed and surrounded on every side by Romans; no confidence of resisting in their small skiffs. For what could a few do against very many, as the rafts approached? The approach of the rafts was slower, indeed, and the sallies of the boats more effective, but without any wound to the Romans; only the clatter of the shields was heard as the darts rebounded. The Jews did not dare to approach; nor did anyone come closer in a boat with impunity, since at close range he was easily pierced by the blows of missiles or sunk by the rafts. And if anyone tried to swim out or surface, pierced by the shot of an arrow he laid down a wretched life in the waves. Nor could they resist long, being diminished in various ways. For gradually, with very many rafts converging, the Romans drove the greatest number of the boats toward the shore. Those hemmed in either leapt onto land and were killed there by the Romans, or were cut down by those pressing from the rafts, or were crushed by the clash of the rafts, or threw themselves into the lake when the enemy leapt into their skiffs. You could see the waters mixed with blood, the lake full of corpses. No one who came in their way was spared. Heavy was the smell, most foul the stench of the place. Six thousand seven hundred Jews (counting, however, the earlier ones) were killed in that battle. The victorious Vespasian returned to Taricheae; there he was preparing to separate the people of the region from those of the city, so that those who had not been authors of the sedition might be spared. But on the counsel of very many, who judged that so great a multitude survived as could revive renewed battles, hostile to peace and useless to the places (for where would they stay, driven from their country? With what food would they support themselves, without share in anything, unless they lived by plunder?), he changed his view, and, with pardon of death held out as a hope, he ordered them to go out by the part that faced Tiberias and to make for that city. They easily believed what they longed for. They began to go out; but the route being occupied beforehand, the columns closed off all the passage of the Jews and led them into the stadium of the city. So Vespasian entered, and, having looked over the age and strength of all whom he had ordered to be set before him, he chose six thousand of the stronger young men and sent them to Nero at the Isthmus; the old and the weak, twelve hundred, he ordered to be killed; of the rest he sold thirty thousand four hundred; and all who were found to be from the parts of Agrippa's kingdom he gave to the king, who likewise, having received a price, sent them into the service of slavery. Besides these, the other people of the region of Trachonitis and Gaulanitis, of Joppa and Gadara, as instigators of war and disturbers of concord, abandoning their own and attacking others' lands, who had taken up arms and violated the peace, paid the just and due penalties for the merits of their crimes.

When Tarichaeae had been for the most part destroyed, the Romans were masters of the cities and territory of Galilee, except that Gamala, a city of the region of Gaulanitis, still nourished the spirit of a stubborn people, relying on very rugged ground. For it is set on a mountain, cut off right and left by sheer cliffs; it narrows toward the top, is severed in front by a deep chasm, and spreads out somewhat toward the rear. On that side too the approach for those going to the city is narrow and difficult, so that you would judge the path like a tail. From the summit it stretches out a neck to a great length, so that it carries the citadel before it like a head and lifts it to a lofty height: slender at the start, the ground as it were winding in steep bends and sunk into the depth; then in the middle of the neck it raises something like a mountain; the rest is sheer and impassable. Hence many earlier writers think it was called Camala because it has the shape of a camel, and that through the corrupt usage of the inhabitants the name Gamala stuck to the city. If you look at its buildings packed together, you would think the city hung in the air, and you would suppose that its northern part above all was suspended, while the southern part bends back a little. Josephus had also added fortifications to this city; relying on them, and on the number of the multitude that had flocked there, they had made sport of King Agrippa's siege for seven months. For Sogane and Seleucia also were portions of his kingdom. Seleucia lies near that most pleasant and famous grove of Daphne in Syria, interwoven with cypress trees and teeming with springs, which pour nourishment, as from milky breasts, into the river that flows past, which the people of the place call the Lesser Jordan. And that city and Sogane belong to Upper Gaulanitis; Gamala to the lower part. Hence, with differing inclinations, those cities had chosen alliance with Rome. This one rebelled so obstinately that when the king came nearer the walls and wished to address them, he was wounded by a sling and a javelin. Angered by this injury, the Romans began to press the siege more vehemently, and the fighting was fierce on both sides, since the Jews too contended with all their strength, thinking that they would receive no pardon, if the enemy won, for having assaulted their own king when he urged them to what was in their interest. Agrippa, then, struck on the right elbow by a stone, withdrew from the battle; the Romans burst into the city. For the enemy gave way before the missiles and the wall before the rams. Those who were hindering the engines could hold out no longer, and the wall, shaken by three rams, opened a path for the besiegers into the besieged. But through impatient haste this success brought no small disaster on the victors. For when they poured into the houses, searching them or hurrying to seize the spoil before they were ordered, the narrow houses gave way under the weight, their foundations tottered, and they collapsed; and each, dashed against the next, brought it down to ruin. Many of the Romans, caught in these falls, met disaster in the midst of victory. Many were pinned as they lay under the fallen buildings; others, their bodies mangled, were saved barely half alive. Many were killed by the dust; hemmed in by the narrow ways, they were cut down; from above too women and feeble old men, and those of the young men who had fled, hurled stones on those below, or whatever kinds of weapons came to hand. Darkness had covered everything, had taken away their sight and confused their minds, and in their ignorance they could find no way out. So, withdrawing with difficulty, they got clear of the dangers of the city. Vespasian meanwhile, while pressing the enemy, had gone on into the inner parts of the city, and in the middle of the enemy ranks that surrounded him he kept the fight burning. For it was neither fitting for so great a man to turn his back on the enemy, nor did he think it safe. He had sent his son Titus to Syria. He roused his well-known steadfast courage and, gathering himself in his armor, with the few he had with him, their shields locked together, he stood undaunted, as though considering on whom to throw himself. Fearing his charge, the Jews began to press with less force, and each, fearing for himself, they loosened their line. So Vespasian, facing the enemy, gave ground step by step, looking more like a man fighting than one retreating. There Brutius fell with ten of the foremost men, a man proved in earlier wars and known among the Jews as a man of experience and stout courage. A centurion too, with ten other Syrians, did an outstanding and memorable deed. For in the very tumult, seeing the Romans hard pressed, he hid himself in the inner part of a certain house; and there, in the dead of night, while the Jews over their supper were talking of what they had plotted against the Romans, he killed them all, and with his soldiers presented himself to the Roman army.

But when Vespasian saw that the army was downcast at the loss of so many and above all at the shame of having deserted their general, because they had left him alone inside the enemy's city, he consoled them with the greatest kindness, saying: “If the lot of my danger shames you, I too had not gone into battle in order to avoid dangers but to overcome them. But if it is because many of our men have been killed, that is no cause for wonder: for when is any victory without blood? Battles have their own outcomes. Although proven valor is wont to stand out in war, still chance is wont to have some power too. But it is the mark of a wise man to correct a fall in adversity and to keep moderation in prosperity. On the other hand, it belongs to a raw and untrained mind always to take good success for granted, as though the contest were not against men; and to a weak mind, after some fall, to despair of the whole cause, when everything that is done in war can suddenly tilt at the slightest moments. He therefore is the most excellent who in adversity meets misfortune soberly and trips up the stronger, and seeks to restore himself and to correct his own slips. But the careless man often falls by his own movements, and as he rushes in unwarily he is laid low, overthrown by his own charge. And if this often happens where courage is bare, how much more in war, where battle lines of different kinds clash together, and there is neither one plan nor one shared mind? An unfavorable position, difficult rough ground, the unfair condition of fighting in a narrow place, many against a few: for the very multitude becomes a burden to itself, while the few among the many are less often foiled. But these things often creep in at a given moment; they do not come from courage but happen by chance. So there is nothing that ought to distress you, fellow soldiers: for things were not turned by any weakness of your hands, nor by the courage of the Jews; it was the difficulty of the ground that hindered our victory and gave them delay. Nor is there anything that could be blamed except a rash and ill-considered charge. For when you followed them up into the higher parts of the city and broke into their houses, you entangled yourselves in dangers. You entered their dwellings and you took on their perils. You held the city; who forced you to go farther in? The enemy ought to have come down to you, not you, unrestrained in the pursuit of victory, to press on forgetful of life and safety. So take heart again, and from your own valor look not only for consolation but, what is more, for vengeance: you will certainly have me at your head in the fight. Be ready in arms and in spirit: let dangers make you braver, not more fearful. It is easy to repay an injury if courage recognizes itself.”

With these words he kindled the courage of the soldiers. As they were repairing the rampart, many slipped away from the siege down the cliffs. For lack of food was already pressing them, and they thought the broken walls would yield to the engines. Then there was only one spring within the city, and that too was close to the wall; this put them in the greatest fear, so that very many slipped away. But those who thought they should remain fought stubbornly. Meanwhile the Romans undermined a very high tower and overthrew it with great force. Shaken by this fall, the city was thrown into confusion, everyone dreading the ruin of the whole city. Hence Chares too, who was sick in body, was so terrified by the noise that he lost his senses and died. Yet the Romans, though the city lay open, held back from entering until Titus came in; roused by grief at his father's danger, he burst into the city with a few men and inflicted a very great slaughter on the Jews. Only those who were in the upper parts kept the Romans from approaching by rolling down stones; they hurled spears and shot arrows. Stones pushed by the Jews rolled easily down the slope, their missiles reached their mark, the arrows descended not without danger to those they struck. For the Romans, throwing against the higher parts of the mountain was ineffective, their efforts vain and dangerous to themselves; when suddenly a storm of wind arose, turned back the arrows of the Jews and drove back their spears, while what the Roman army hurled it carried on against the enemy. So, overwhelmed by the barriers of the very elements and the whirlwinds of the winds, all who were found there perished in the final destruction of the captured city. Only four thousand, we are told, were killed by the Romans; five thousand perished by throwing themselves down the precipice. No age was spared.