The Capture of Simon

While Titus Caesar sat besieging Jerusalem, Vespasian boarded a merchant ship and crossed from Alexandria to Rhodes. From there he sailed on in triremes, calling at every city along his route, and all of them welcomed him gladly, as they had longed to do. He crossed from Ionia to Greece, and from Corcyra to the Iapygian promontory, and from there he traveled by land. Titus marched from Caesarea on the coast to the city called Caesarea Philippi. He stayed there a long time and put on all kinds of shows, and many of the prisoners died there, some thrown to wild beasts, others forced in masses to fight one another as enemies. [a]

There Titus learned of the capture of Simon son of Gioras, which happened in this way. During the siege of Jerusalem this Simon was in the upper city. When the Roman army got inside the walls and was sacking the whole city, he took the most loyal of his friends, and with them stonecutters with the iron tools their work required, and enough food to last many days, and let himself down with them all into one of the hidden tunnels. As far as the old excavation went, they made their way along it; where they met solid earth, they tunneled on, hoping to get far enough to come up in a safe place and escape. But the work proved the hope false. The diggers made little headway, and that with great difficulty, and the food, though they rationed it, was about to give out.

So, thinking he could startle the Romans and so deceive them, Simon put on white tunics, pinned a purple cloak over them, and rose up out of the ground at the very place where the temple had stood. At first those who saw him were struck with amazement and stood where they were. Then they came closer and asked who he was. Simon would not tell them, but ordered them to call their commander. They ran quickly to fetch him, and Terentius Rufus, who had been left in command of the army, came. He learned the whole truth from Simon, kept him in chains, and sent word to Caesar that he had been taken.

So God, to punish Simon for his cruelty to his fellow citizens, over whom he had ruled as a bitter tyrant, put him into the hands of his most hated enemies. He was not subdued by force, but gave himself up of his own accord to punishment at their hands—he who had cruelly put many to death on the false charge of going over to the Romans. For wickedness does not escape the wrath of God, and justice is not weak. In time it pursues those who have transgressed against it, and it brings a heavier punishment on the wicked because they expected to be rid of it when they were not punished at once. Simon too learned this when he fell into the anger of the Romans. His coming up out of the ground led to the discovery of a great many other rebels in the tunnels in those days. When Caesar came back to Caesarea on the coast, Simon was brought to him in chains, and he ordered him to be kept for the triumph he was preparing to celebrate at Rome.