Jerusalem Taken by Storm

After the wedding was over, Sosius came through Phoenicia, having sent his army ahead of him through the interior. The army came as well, a great number of horsemen and foot soldiers. The king also came himself from Samaria, bringing no small army besides the one that was there before, so that they numbered about thirty thousand. They all met at the walls of Jerusalem and encamped against the north wall of the city, an army now of eleven legions of armed foot soldiers and six thousand horsemen, with other auxiliaries out of Syria. There were two generals: Sosius, sent by Antony to help Herod, and Herod on his own account, to take the government from Antigonus, who had been declared an enemy at Rome, and to be king himself according to the decree of the senate. [a]

The Jews shut up within the walls of the city fought against Herod with great eagerness and zeal, for the whole nation had gathered together. They also put out many prophecies about the temple, and many things to please the people, as though God would deliver them out of the dangers they were in. They had also carried off whatever was outside the city, so as to leave nothing that could feed either men or beasts, and by secret raids they made the shortage of necessities worse. When Herod understood this, he set ambushes in the best places against their raids, and he sent legions of armed men to bring in provisions, and that from distant places, so that in a short time they had great plenty of provisions. The three earthworks were easily raised, because so many hands were constantly at work on them; for it was summer, and nothing hindered them in raising their works, neither the weather nor the workmen. So they brought their engines to bear, shook the walls of the city, and tried every way to take it. Yet those inside showed no fear; they too devised not a few engines to oppose the enemy’s engines. They also sallied out and burned not only the engines not yet finished but those that were; and when they came hand to hand, their attempts were no less bold than those of the Romans, though they fell short of them in skill. They also built new works when the old ones were ruined, and digging mines underground they met each other and fought there. Using brute courage rather than prudent valor, they kept up this war to the very last; and this they did while a mighty army lay all around them, and while they were distressed by famine and the lack of necessities, for this happened to be a sabbatical year. The first to scale the walls were twenty picked men, and next came Sosius’s centurions. The first wall was taken in forty days, and the second in fifteen more, when some of the colonnades around the temple were burned, which Herod gave out had been burned by Antigonus, to expose him to the hatred of the Jews. When the outer court of the temple and the lower city had been taken, the Jews fled into the inner court of the temple and into the upper city. But now, fearing that the Romans would prevent them from offering their daily sacrifices to God, they sent envoys and asked only that they be allowed to bring in animals for sacrifice. Herod granted this, hoping they were about to surrender; but when he saw that they did nothing of what he expected, but bitterly opposed him in order to keep the kingdom for Antigonus, he made an assault on the city and took it by storm. And now every place was full of the slain, through the rage of the Romans at the length of the siege, and the zeal of the Jews on Herod’s side, who were unwilling to leave one of their adversaries alive. So people were butchered continually in crowds, in the narrow streets and in the houses, and as they fled to the temple for refuge; no pity was shown either to infants or to the aged, nor did they spare even the women. Although the king sent around and begged them to spare the people, no one held back his hand from slaughter; like madmen they fell on people of every age without distinction. Then Antigonus, with no regard either for his past or for his present circumstances, came down from the citadel and fell at the feet of Sosius. Sosius took no pity on him in his change of fortune, but mocked him beyond measure and called him Antigone. Yet he did not treat him as a woman by letting him go free, but put him in chains and kept him under close guard. [c]

Now that Herod had overcome his enemies, his concern was to control the foreigners who had been his allies; for the crowd of foreigners rushed to see the temple and the sacred things in it. The king, thinking a victory a heavier affliction than a defeat if any of the things it was not lawful to look on were seen by them, used pleas and threats, and sometimes even force, to restrain them. He also stopped the plundering in the city, and many times asked Sosius whether the Romans meant to empty the city of both money and men and leave him king of a desert. He told him that he considered rule over the whole inhabited world no adequate compensation for such a slaughter of his citizens. When Sosius said that this plunder was rightly allowed to the soldiers for the siege they had endured, Herod replied that he would give each of them their reward out of his own money. In this way he ransomed what remained of the city from destruction. And he kept his promise: he gave a handsome present to every soldier, a proportionate present to their commanders, and a truly royal present to Sosius himself, so that they all went away full of money.

This destruction befell the city of Jerusalem when Marcus Agrippa and Canidius Gallus were consuls at Rome, in the 185th Olympiad, in the third month, on the day of the fast, as if a recurring round of calamities had come back since the one that befell the Jews under Pompey; for the Jews were taken by him on the same day, and this was twenty-seven years later. When Sosius had dedicated a crown of gold to God, he marched away from Jerusalem and took Antigonus with him in chains to Antony. But Herod was afraid that Antony would keep Antigonus in prison, and that when he was taken to Rome by him he might get his case heard by the senate, and might show that he himself was of royal blood and Herod only a private man, and that therefore the kingdom belonged in any case to his sons, because of the family they came from, even if he himself had offended the Romans by what he had done. It was out of this fear that Herod, by giving Antony a great deal of money, tried to persuade him to have Antigonus put to death; once that was done, he would be free of that fear. And so the rule of the Hasmoneans came to an end, a hundred and twenty-six years after it was first established. This family was splendid and illustrious, both for the nobility of its stock and for the dignity of the high priesthood, and also for the glorious deeds its ancestors had done for our nation. But these men lost the government through their quarrels with one another, and it passed to Herod, the son of Antipater, who came of no more than a common family, of no distinguished descent, but one that was subject to other kings. And this is what history tells us of the end of the Hasmonean family. [f]