Bernice Pleads with Florus

At this time King Agrippa happened to have gone to Alexandria to congratulate Alexander, whom Nero had entrusted with Egypt and sent out to govern it. But his sister Bernice was in Jerusalem, and when she saw the lawlessness of the soldiers she was terribly distressed. Again and again she sent her cavalry commanders and her bodyguards to Florus, begging him to stop the slaughter. But he paid no attention, either to the number of those being killed or to the noble birth of the woman who pleaded with him, but looked only to the profit he was making from the plunder. The soldiers’ fury even turned, in its madness, against the queen. Not only did they torture and kill their captives before her eyes; they would have killed her too, if she had not got away first into the royal palace. She spent the night there under guard, afraid the soldiers would attack. She was staying in Jerusalem to fulfill a vow to God. It is the custom for those who are worn down by illness or any other distress to vow that for thirty days before they offer their sacrifices they will abstain from wine and shave their heads. Bernice was carrying this out at the time, and she stood barefoot before Florus’s tribunal and pleaded with him. Not only was she shown no respect; she even put her life in danger. [a]

This happened on the sixteenth of the month Artemisius. The next day the multitude, overwhelmed with grief, streamed into the Upper Market and mourned their dead with terrible cries, most of them cries of hatred against Florus. Alarmed at this, the powerful men, together with the high priests, tore their clothes, fell at the feet of each person, and begged them to stop, and not to provoke Florus to some irreparable act on top of what they had already suffered. The multitude quickly gave in, out of respect for those who asked it and in the hope that Florus would do them no further wrong. [c]

Florus was annoyed that the disturbance had died down, and set about kindling it again. He sent for the high priests and the notables and told them that the only proof that the people would not rebel again was for them to go out and meet the soldiers coming up from Caesarea; two cohorts were on their way. While the leaders were still calling the people together, he sent ahead to the centurions of the cohorts and told them to instruct their men not to return the Jews’ greeting, and, if the Jews said anything against him, to use their weapons. The high priests gathered the crowd in the temple and urged them to go out to meet the Romans and to welcome the cohorts before some irreparable disaster happened. The rebels would not listen, and because of those who had been killed, the multitude leaned toward the bolder party. [d]

Then every priest and every servant of God brought out the holy vessels and put on the vestments they wore for the service, and the lyre players and the singers of hymns came with their instruments. They fell down before the people and begged them to keep the sacred ornaments safe for them, and not provoke the Romans to plunder God’s treasures. You could see the high priests themselves with dust heaped on their heads, their chests bare where their clothes were torn. They begged each of the notables by name, and the multitude as a whole, not to betray their country, for so trifling a fault, to those who were eager to sack it. What good would a greeting from the Jews do the soldiers, they asked, or what would it put right for them not to go out now? But if they welcomed the arriving troops in the customary way, Florus would be robbed of his pretext for war, and they would gain their country and freedom from further suffering. Besides, it would show a dreadful lack of self-control to obey a few rebels, when so great a people ought rather to compel even those few to join them in being reasonable.

With these appeals they soothed the multitude, and they restrained the rebels, some with threats and some by the respect they commanded. Then they led the people out, and they met the soldiers quietly and in good order, and when they came near, greeted them. When the soldiers made no reply, the rebels shouted out against Florus. That was the signal agreed against them. At once the soldiers surrounded them and struck them with clubs, and as they fled the cavalry rode after them and trampled them down. Many fell under the blows of the Romans, and more were crushed by their own people. There was a terrible crush around the gates. As everyone hurried to get ahead, the flight became slower for all, and those who stumbled met a dreadful end: suffocated and broken under the mass of those climbing over them, they were destroyed so utterly that not one was left recognizable to his own family for burial. The soldiers fell on them as well, striking without restraint at everyone they caught, and they drove the crowd back through the place called Bezetha, trying to force their way through and seize the temple and the Antonia. Florus, who also wanted these places, led his men out of the royal palace and struggled to reach the fortress. But he failed in his attempt. The people turned straight round on him and checked his advance, and spreading out over the roofs they pelted the Romans. Overwhelmed by the missiles from above, and unable to cut through the crowd that blocked the narrow streets, the Romans withdrew to their camp by the palace. [e]

The rebels, afraid that Florus would come again and seize the temple by way of the Antonia, at once climbed up and cut through the colonnades that joined the temple to the Antonia. This cooled Florus’s greed. It was God’s treasures he was after, and that was why he wanted to get into the Antonia; once the colonnades were broken down, he gave up the attempt. He sent for the high priests and the council and told them that he was leaving the city himself, but would leave them as large a garrison as they wished. They promised complete security and that there would be no revolt, if he would leave them one cohort, but not the one that had fought them, since the people hated it for what they had suffered. So he changed the cohort as they asked, and returned to Caesarea with the rest of his force. [f]