On the Destruction of Jerusalem 5.43–5.52

Wearied with shouting, Caesar drew back, while the flame was still devouring the chambers of the temple. When these had been consumed, it carried itself raging into the very shrine. At that sight many lost heart; others, wretchedly, threw themselves into the very fires whose sight their eyes could not bear, so as not to be kept as survivors of the temple. Again Titus ran up, wishing to look around and see what kind of shrine it was. Moved by its grace, he confessed that it had surpassed all temples in its works. He admired the size of the stones, the gleam of the metal, the elegance of the work, the grace of its beauty. And not without reason, he declared, had the fame of the place been so great that people came together to it from all places, because it was believed to be the dwelling of none but the most high God. Honor added the faith of religion, through which even the nations of the barbarians revered that temple, and even robbers brought gifts of religion; yet these its own people were then plundering, and robbers were squandering them, breaking in on everything that had been deposited by widows or orphans, as if it were taken back from the victors if anything of the plunder was lessened for the Romans. Seeing the temple too burning, they themselves set fire to the rest, so that no building should survive the destruction of the temple, counting it as religion if everything perished with the temple. Yet not even so did the Jews lay aside their faithlessness, which was the cause of a greater destruction. For when the minds of many were inclined to form a body and hand themselves over to the Romans, a certain false prophet began to declare, in the ecstasy of his mind, that the divine protection would not fail the temple, and to call the people to himself as if by some oracle: that God still remained in his temple and would at once drive back the enemy's wedges and the burning of the flames. So the wretches, while they unhappily believed false deceptions, were butchered like cattle, disgraced and unavenged. Had they been willing to believe, they had clear signs of the impending destruction, by which they were warned with loud voices long beforehand that their end was at hand.

For for nearly a year a comet over the temple itself, displaying here and there a likeness of fire and sword, announced that the devastation of the nation and the kingdom and the city itself would come by iron and fire. For what did the likeness of a sword announce but war? What did fire announce but burning? It was seen before the people separated themselves from the Romans. And on the very days of Passover, on the eighth day of the month Xanthicus, and every night at about the ninth hour, the temple and its altar shone with such light as if it were day, remaining about half an hour each day. The common people interpreted this as a sign that the nation's fortunes would be heaped up, and they were driven on by it as though the time had come for recovering liberty. The more prudent, on the contrary, thought that that kind of star usually announces war. Nor let anyone think that we have spoken things foreign to our worship and discipline. First, because we do not assert what seems so to us, but what happened, and what opinions there were at that time, what the prudent thought and what the imprudent. Nor, when something is said about the sect of the Jews, should it seem written by us as though we were weaving it into the truth of their worship, and not into what was sent before in shadow and figure, so that they might follow what is more perfect. For about signs of the stars we are taught even in the Gospel, that “there will be signs in the sun, and the moon, and the stars.” They also asserted that a heifer, when it stood at the altars to be sacrificed, gave birth to a lamb in the middle of the temple, at those very celebrations of the rites which we mentioned above. And that the inner eastern gate, heavy with solid bronze, which used to be closed in the evening with great labor by twenty men, bolted with iron bars, opened of its own accord for several nights, and was afterward closed by the guards with difficulty. This too many thought a sign of good things to come, for whom, as they were about to enter, the gate was opened. But the wiser said that the guard of the temple seemed to be loosed, so that whatever was inside might be plundered by enemies: worship would go out, devastation come in, the celebration be emptied, the sacrifice destroyed. That this was clearly signified even before they crucified Christ Jesus, the reading teaches. After many days too a certain figure of inestimable size appeared, which very many saw, as the books of the Jews have made known; and before sunset there were suddenly seen in the clouds chariots and armed battle lines, by which the cities of all Judea and its region were overrun. At the very feast of Pentecost, the priests, entering the inner parts of the temple at night to celebrate the customary sacrifices, declared that they first felt a kind of movement and a sound, and afterward also heard a sudden voice crying: “Let us go hence.” Jesus too, the son of Ananias, a countryman, four years before the people of the Jews undertook the war, in the deepest peace and plenty of the city, when the Feast of Tabernacles was being celebrated with solemn sacrifices, went up to the temple and began to cry out: “A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and against the temple, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, a voice against all the people.” This he shouted night and day. Disturbed by this, the leading men of the place seized him, dreading the terrible sign of his voice, and inflicted very many punishments on him, so that, afflicted at least by pain, he might cease to announce terrible things full of portents. But he, frightened neither by any fear nor by beatings or heavier threats, did not change his manner or his voice; with the same persistence of announcement and the same sequence of words, with no interruption of entreaty, he remained in the same, heedless of injury, unmoved in feeling. Thinking this by no means a passing thing, but uttered in ecstasy of mind, as it was, they brought him to the judge of the place, who at that time was managing public affairs in those parts for the Romans. He, for the sake of searching out the truth, tore him with the most savage punishments, ordering the man to be scourged the more vehemently the more he persisted, so that if he had learned any more secret signs of the coming upheaval he would reveal them. But he neither wept nor begged, but at each stroke tearfully lamented not his own destruction but his homeland's, saying: “Woe to Jerusalem.” Nor, when asked who he was or where he was from or why he said these things, did he give any answer, but only continued that lament for his homeland with a pitiable complaint. So Albinus (for that was the man's name), wearied, let him go, as one who in a mad frenzy did not know what he was saying. But he had no conversation with anyone, nor was he known to say anything else for the rest of the time, but singing this as a mournful and funereal song, he kept sounding it continually day and night: “Woe to Jerusalem.” He did not curse the one who beat him, nor thank the one who gave him food. His answer to all was one and the same, full of funeral wailing, and above all at the celebrations of the sacrifices. So for seven years and five months the same series of words, the same sound of voice remained. Untiring for so long a time, when the siege began he stopped crying out those things, as though it were fitting that the announcement should cease when the things announced were present. But when the flame began to engulf city and temple together, going around the wall he began to cry again: “Woe to the city, to the people and to the temple.” And at last he added: “Woe to me too”; and struck by a sling, he breathed out his spirit with that very cry. It was also written in ancient writings that the city itself with the temple would perish when the temple had been made four-square. So, whether forgetful or stunned by the pressure of the evils bearing down on them, when the Antonia was taken they made the circuit of the temple four-square. Among these things that most outstanding one, which remained impressed in writings equally ancient which they call sacred: that about that time there would be a man from their region who would take rule over the whole world. This put them into such frenzy that they promised themselves not only liberty but kingship. Some thought this should be referred to Vespasian; the more prudent to the Lord Jesus, who, born of Mary according to the flesh in their land, spread his kingdom through all the spaces of the earth. So, though such great things were coming upon them, they could not grasp what was being decreed by God.

So, as the authors of the seditions fled while the temple was burning, the Romans set up their standards within the circuit of the temple itself and sacrificed opposite the eastern gate, proclaiming Titus emperor with loud voices. Meanwhile a certain boy, in the place where the priests also were, whom both lack of water and the heat of the nearby fire were wasting with thirst, asked one of the Roman guards to give him his right hand and offer him a drink. The guard at once held it out, pitying both his age and his need. The little boy drank; and because trust had been readily given to an innocent age, he snatched the water vessel and rushed off at a run, so as to supply the priests too with something to drink. The soldier wished to follow but could not catch him. The boy, at his own risk, relieved the priests' thirst. A good fraud, which harmed no one and relieved necessity. In fact the soldier himself admired the boy's affection more than he cursed his trick, because at that age, amid the destruction of the whole city and the common danger, he did not leave unperformed the service he could render of the reverence due to the priests. Not long after, the priests, worn out by hunger and thirst, begged for their lives. Titus ordered them to be killed, answering that it was the mark of a degenerate spirit to wish to survive the temple and their office.

When John and Simon and the other leaders of the seditions asked that he order the throwing of weapons and the uproar to cease for a little while, and give them the opportunity to speak, he did not refuse indulgence; and when silence was made he answered thus: “It is a late time for mercy, most wicked men, when nothing is left to be preserved. I offered it to you, and you despised it, and thought it distrust, not indulgence. But I groaned that innocent buildings were perishing by your crime; I grieved that the common crowd was being driven to death. I wished to spare; you did not allow it. I suspended battles; you rushed on. I offered peace; you did not accept it. I addressed you often, I met with you frequently. I am not ashamed to say it: I made you more insolent by asking. What did you think? That the Roman lines would yield to you, and that you would surround with your multitude the army that conquered all lands? What fraction of the world has fought, since neither your region could hold the whole of it, nor did necessity allow it? For we care more to guard the world than to extend it. Wherever we go nothing is new, nothing foreign to us, for whom every land is a possession. This robbery, like a mole on the body, we thought should be overlooked for a long time; at last we believed it should be removed for its cruelty, lest your disobedience, like some darkness, should mar the brightness of the Roman empire. You have felt Roman valor not by fighting but by dying. For we did not see your columns in the field, but on the wall, since not even your barriers were of any use to you for the protection of your safety. For what wall could resist those whom the ocean did not resist? Or what city, fenced with the protection of walls, would be impregnable to our siege, when Roman arms have penetrated even the Britains, walled round by a roaring element? That sheer mountain of water has been laid beneath us. Your fathers, as the Jewish tales relate, were walled round by the wave of the Red Sea as they crossed, in the appearance of a wall; Roman courage broke through the wall of Ocean. I do not grudge you others' favors. Let the sea have seen you and fled, so that you, shut in by the enemy, might flee, because you could neither break through the enemy nor withstand him. For us the Ocean's flight would have been a loss, if it had fled. We waged war with the waves before the war; we overcame the raging sea before we reached the enemy. Britain received us as conquerors of the elements. What they trusted in, we subdued, so that Ocean itself was added to the heap of our triumph. But perhaps you presumed on bodily strength. Are you stronger than the Germans, whom, fenced by the wall of the Alps, Roman courage brought into servitude? Nor are those Alps like the steep hills of Mount Taurus or the Canopic bands of the Egyptians, with whom you have been used to fight. We climbed above the clouds and, coming down from the cloud, conquered peoples; we opened a road through the air for all. We do not grudge you the road through the sea, provided that the one was the road of triumphers, the other of fugitives. So mountains have sat down before Roman courage; rivers have dried up, losing the course that nature had directed and taking the one the victors commanded. Let your Jordan have turned, as you say, and gone back to its source to open a way for you: Cloelia, a Roman maiden, needed no such thing, who broke her bonds, escaped the enemy, and, running down the river, came into the Roman camp. Nor do we wonder at your fires, from which you are wont to sing loudly that the Hebrew boys escaped. Our Mucius, with no one compelling him, put his hand to the fire and did not withdraw it until, victor over the burning, he struck into his enemies wonder at a courage that did not feel the flames. In the end those who hoped for a triumph asked for peace. Or did that heavenly food and the meal of rains lift you up against Roman courage? But you ought to have considered that Africa itself, the nurse of the world, is subject to Roman might. She who feeds all serves us; the hunger of all and the food of all are in our power. What nature gave to all, Roman courage has made its own right. It struck down Hannibal himself and drove him into exile, whom the world could not contain. Africa was too narrow for its citizens; the Spains seemed unfit for him to linger in; Gaul was cramped for him as he travelled; Italy unworthy of a treaty of friendship and a partnership of alliance. Let you boast that rivers fought for you and heavenly powers battled: we conquered Hannibal as he rode over rivers and thundered on the waves. The world was shaken by his storms; and he battered our walls with arms. Nor was it necessary that our enemies, like your Assyrians, be destroyed while sleeping, but while fighting. For victory is not sought in sleep but in battle; there is no glory of courage where there is chance favor. Our enemies were not deceived by the redness of the waters shining at the rising of the sun and did not fall rashly into our hands, thinking us destroyed by the appearance of shed blood; but knowing and ready for war, they covered the plains of the earth with their bodies and filled them with their own blood. What courage set you in such insolence? Did you not see that those who ruled over you serve us? Egypt, which used to afflict you, pays us an annual tribute and offers a way as far as the Indian regions, to go out beyond the world and seek another world, the secrets of the sea, the farthest bounds of the sun and the ocean, and to join the inhabitants of another world to our empire. What of the kingdom of Antiochus, who afflicted you with grievous punishments? The very right of your religion, which was taken from you, we ourselves restored to you, thinking it more glorious to rule over kings than to take away a kingdom. Antioch itself, the seat of your masters, did it not eagerly reject its own and choose us as masters? Did you yourselves not flee to us, so as to escape those masters? Did we not receive you and defend you against them? We served you, so that you might live by your own laws; we gave you the power to serve your own worship. We did not wish to know your rites, but we honored them. Afterward you thought you should rebel. Pompey took the temple, but did not destroy it; he occupied the city, but preserved all the offerings intact. For these things, O grateful allies, you have repaid us this return, that you rebelled a third time! Granted that Nero was to be despised; but Roman courage was not reckoned in one man: it had the soldier Vespasian, who had already brought the Gauls back to peace; so brave in battle that through him even Nero conquered, through him Nero was formidable to his enemies; so faithful to his lord the emperor that he alone did not seek the empire that he alone deserved. But Cestius had wronged you: a complaint should have been brought, not arms imposed. My father Vespasian was sent, who could have poured himself unexpectedly on the unprepared: he went around Galilee and burned the distant parts, so that you might lay aside your insolence and ask for pardon. He showed his courage, and when he held you all shut in, he made for Egypt, so as to give you a truce for coming to your senses. Our absence made you more insolent, because you thought us occupied. But we are never so occupied as to be absent from the world. For even when absent we are present, and to those far off we stand nearer. For as the soul in the body gives life to all its members, so Roman providence is present to all parts of its empire and governs the whole Roman world as if present. For if that divine force has given each soul the power of ruling the body, how much more has it supplied a kind of vital substance for guarding it to the Roman vigor, by which, as it were, the one body of our whole empire is animated! So you renewed the suspended war. My father, about to set out for the city of Rome to recover it from tyrants, separated me from his company, so that you would not lack an executor of his kindness. I came to the war with the appearance of one who terrifies, with the feeling of one who entreats. How often did I call the army back from your walls! How often afterward did I draw it back from the inner parts of the temple! How often did I put out the fires! How often did I warn you! But you never listened. Now at last you ask me, as though anything were left, as though what has already been consumed were still there; and yet I have kept the soldiers from slaughter, fire and plunder. What do you want? Why do you still stand armed, as though about to give laws and not receive them? If you seek surrender, lay down your arms, which are no longer to be feared by the victors but are proud for the vanquished and full of insolence, that you should beg in arms; as though you had to doubt our good faith, or do you still provoke our courage, threatening war? The people is destroyed, the temple burns, we hold the city. What do you hope is left, except that life be granted you? So lay down your arms as conquered men; I will grant you to live, even if you do not deserve it, because you were unwilling to preserve what was yours.” Then they began to ask that, since they were bound by an oath never to hand themselves over to the Romans, he would give them leave to go out through the wall, so that they might go with their families into the desert, yielding the city to the Romans. Titus, the more moved: “Do you even impose conditions on us?” he said. “Rather defend your homeland, stand by the temple, rise up with all your courage, keep your oath of death, since you have refused that of life.” And at the same time he ordered the Romans to rise up for the slaughter of the enemy. Very many began to be overthrown by the heavier indignation of the victors; yet the sons of King Izates and his brothers surrendered, and very many of the people with them. Nor did Titus, though roused to anger, abandon his purpose, out of regard for royal dignity, but received those who fled to him: from mercy alone (which is the greatest thing) did he make his profit. For all the plunder of the royal palace the authors of the sedition carried off, so that none of it reached the Romans.

At the same time, when they made an attack and broke into the palace, they killed one infantryman among the Roman soldiers who were attacking; but a horseman demanded to be led to Simon, claiming that he had things to make known to that leader of the seditions. But when he was brought to him and alleged some empty things, he was ordered to be killed. While the executioner delayed, with his eyes already bound with a cloth, he rushed off to the Romans. They, fighting at close quarters, received him as he fled; and when he was brought before him, Titus, as though one who could be taken alive by the enemy seemed unworthy of death, ordered him to be stripped of his arms and dismissed: leaving him what he had not lost through the enemy's cowardice, and taking from him the military oath, which he had betrayed by being captured and dishonored by being a fugitive. This was a greater punishment to him: for among men the disgraces of military service are heavier than the wounds of death. The Jews, at once driven back, betook themselves to the upper parts of the city, abandoning the defense of the temple and the city. A great slaughter was carried out on those who remained, and the streets were filled with half-dead corpses. Caesar ordered the engines to be brought up to the upper parts too. Seeing this, the Idumaeans chose men to send to Titus to ask for surrender. Learning this, Simon forestalled them and intercepted the men chosen to ask for surrender. But the Idumaeans not long after, though bereft of the help of their leaders, since they could no longer withstand the force, surrendered to the Roman army. So first famine and at last despair of resisting brought about the surrender. Nor did the Romans, now weary from much slaughter, refuse the indulgence of life; and out of eagerness to sell captive slaves they were readier to preserve safety. Very many were for sale, but buyers were few, because the Romans disdained to have Jews in servitude, and there were no Jews left to ransom their own, since each one congratulated himself on having escaped, even if destitute. So they surrendered everywhere, their fear removed, since the robbers were gone and the Romans were pardoning.

In the end Jesus too, one of the priests, the son of Thebuthi, surrendered, and, having received a pledge of safety, willingly handed over the vessels of the priestly ministries: two lamps, tables, mixing bowls, bowls, all vessels of gold, and also the curtains and the vestments of the chief priests, with the stones. Phineas too, the keeper of the treasury, when he was seized, pointed out much purple of the priests, and scarlet, and many other things that were kept for use; with them cinnamon and cassia and very many spices and incenses, and many vessels of the sacred rites: he also himself handed over the sacred vestment, but compelled by fear, whence his crime was pardonable among his own. Yet where the will was lacking, courage ought not to have been lacking. Although we often judge more severely than we could guard against ourselves if we found ourselves in such necessity, still we ought to shun the service of theft and the judgment of betrayal.

And now the earthworks had risen, and the rams had begun to strike the upper wall, on the seventh day of the month they call Gorpiaeus: the end had come. Confused and terrified, even the leaders of the factions, who had jeered at extreme dangers, threw themselves at the knees of individuals, begging for help. One could see how pitiable that change was, from that terrible and proud height to this humble and common abasement, to tears, weeping and dread. The wall of the upper city had not yet given way, yet they were already running to individuals, groaning that no protection remained; they thought the enemy had entered. Many, as if already fighting from the higher places, seemed to themselves to see the Romans: what they feared in mind they pictured to their eyes, and the dread of the mind became an image of sight. In the end, believing for certain that the enemy was already bearing down on their necks, though three towers still remained to them, Mariamne, Phasael and the Horseman, stronger than the rest, they abandoned the upper parts and fled to underground passages or hidden caves. John, however, not long after, wasted by hunger and worn out by fasting, surrendered to Caesar; he was kept for the triumph, but, bound in perpetual chains until his death, dragging out the breath of life rather than experiencing the pleasure of living, he escaped the axe. But Simon hid even within the ruins of the burned city, concealing himself in the underground passages with a few of the most faithful. Caesar had already departed, the city having been burned, thinking that Simon too had either been burned by the fire, or crushed by a collapse, or killed by someone. But as long as food lasted, Simon dug further inward in the excavated caves; but when the food failed and no way of escape opened, he suddenly crept up to the surface, dressed in a white garment with a purple cloak over it, so as to strike a kind of terror into those who saw him. At first, while the Roman soldiers were astonished, he ordered them to lead him to their commander. There was in that place Terentius Rufus, whom Titus had left in charge of the soldiers there. When he arrived and asked who he was, Simon at first said other things, then confessed that he was Simon. From there he was sent to Caesar, and he too was kept for the triumph; but because he had practiced cruelty against the citizens and had not surrendered himself to Caesar, after the procession of the triumph he was condemned to death. On the eighth day of the month Gorpiaeus the city was burned. Innumerable thousands were slain over the whole time of the siege: a million (eleven hundred thousand, as many assert), all of them Jews, but not all of the same region and place, since they had come together from everywhere at that time for the festival of Passover. Captives were led away to the number of ninety-seven thousand. The robbers were almost all killed at once; the stronger were led in the triumph, afterward thrown to beasts and given over to other punishments, in almost every city through which Titus travelled, so as to spread through all, by the punishment, fear of rebellions.

About the same time the Alans, a fierce people long unknown to us, because by the difficulty of the inner regions and the barrier of the iron gate which Alexander the Great set on the steep ridge of Mount Taurus they were shut in together with the other wild and untamed peoples of the interior. They inhabited the Scythian Tanais and its neighborhood and the Maeotic marshes, shut in as if in a kind of prison by the ingenuity of that king, so that they might work their own lands and not raid others'. But whether because of the barrenness of the places, since the hoped-for fruitfulness of cultivation did not answer the wishes of greedy farmers, or out of desire for plunder, they solicited the king of the Hyrcanians, who ruled those places, whether by a bribe or by a promise of defense is uncertain, to open the gate and give them the chance to break out. Having obtained this, they poured into the nation of the Medes; and having quickly procured swift horses, and others likewise tied on the right, onto which they leapt in turn when they pleased, they overran almost the whole region, so as first to throw everything into confusion and give the appearance of a greater multitude, against which no place of flight was free; then, having surrounded everyone and made as great a slaughter as they wished, they carried off plunder. For the region was populous and abounding in cattle, and with no one resisting it lay easily open to plunder. Indeed Pacorus himself, king of the Medes, betook himself to remote places, looking to his safety rather than his kingdom, so that his wife, children and concubines, captured by the Alans, were afterward ransomed for a hundred talents. Nor was Tiridates, king of Armenia, free from danger; but, made cautious by another's misfortune, he foresaw the plague and wished to meet it manfully, so as to turn the enemy from his borders. While fighting, however, he was caught in a noose and would have passed alive into the enemy's power had he not quickly cut the ugly knot with a sharp sword. For, out of a certain insolence in their own strength and proud contempt for others, and at the same time to cover by such a trick their habit of fighting at a distance and their means of flight, it is the art and the custom of war of the Alans to throw nooses and entangle the enemy.

So Tiridates fled, for whom it was enough to have escaped; but he left his kingdom to be plundered. For, as though they had received an injury because he had dared to engage them, they laid waste Armenia more vehemently than the kingdom of Media. So, rich with the spoils of both kingdoms, they went back to their own lands. On learning of their incursion, Titus hastened to Antioch, yet gradually, as befitted a triumphant general, and concealing the reason, celebrating the procession of victory through each city. Jews were killed in the arena wherever he went, and, torn by beasts, paid the price of rebellion. At Antioch too the Gentile people attacked them out of old hatreds, because the kings of Persia had given to the synagogues the offerings they had claimed from the city of Jerusalem by right of victory, and had also bestowed other gifts of their own on the Jews of Antioch. So the heaped-up wealth easily stirred up envy. For, to pass over now what the rivals for the priesthood did against the Maccabees, and how great a disaster ambition was to the citizens, as we recorded above: afterward one Antiochus, born of no mean family but abandoned in character, having invented the charge that the Jews had conspired to burn the city of Antioch, drove to death his own father, who was among the leading men of the Jews, and many others accused by the attack of the Gentile multitude. Nor was he sated with that parricide and the slaughter of many and at rest, but afterward too, finding the opportunity, because by an accidental fire the porticoes of the same city and the square marketplace and the greatest part of the buildings had happened to burn, he began again to press and attack the Jews on the pretext of the aforesaid conspiracy, and he would quickly have made a slaughter of them all, had not the inquiry been reserved for Titus on his arrival, out of fear that Caesar would be moved by the presumptuous punishment of so many. This was the safety of the Jews.

At Masada too very many of the Jews gathered, relying on the strength of the place. Titus thought the task of storming it unworthy of occupying an emperor and entrusted it to Silva, to whom he had committed the chief command of the Roman forces in those parts and the duty of guarding against any new rebellion arising. He himself hastened to Alexandria and from there crossed by ship to Rome. Silva, pressing vigorously on the task entrusted to him, broke down the wall of Masada with a ram. They built an inner one of timber, because material of that kind does not easily give way to the blows of engines. But the Romans, changing their manner of fighting, threw fire, which both easily took hold of the wood and grew without any delay. So, as the fire grew, a great roar of flame was carried along, which at first was driven back from the parts of the fortification by the blast of the north wind and rather burned the Romans' sheds. Then, when the south wind arose, it turned back upon the fortress, so that that whole wooden barrier of the wall blazed and its material was consumed. The Romans, since night had come on, withdrew to their camp, sure of victory, so as to subdue them the next day, now stripped and bereft of all protection. But so that no one should slip away, they surrounded the fortress with a ring of guards.