Joppa Falls, Tiberias Yields

On the fourth day of the month Panemus, Vespasian marched back to Ptolemais, and from there he came to Caesarea on the coast, the largest city of Judea, most of whose inhabitants were Greeks. The people of the place welcomed both the army and its general with every kind of acclamation and goodwill, partly out of loyalty to the Romans, but much more out of hatred for the conquered. So they came in crowds shouting against Josephus and demanded that he be punished. Vespasian dismissed this petition with silence, as the demand of an undiscerning mob. He stationed two of the legions at Caesarea in winter quarters, seeing that the city was well suited for it, and sent the tenth and the fifth to Scythopolis, so as not to burden Caesarea with the whole army. That city too is warm in the winter season, as much as it is stifling with heat in summer, since it lies in a plain beside the sea. [a]

Meanwhile a large number of people gathered — men driven out of their cities by faction, together with survivors from the cities that had been destroyed — and rebuilt Joppa, which Cestius had laid waste earlier, as a base for themselves. Since the country around had been ravaged by the war and they were cut off from it, they decided to take to the sea. They built a great many pirate ships and preyed on the sea lanes along Syria and Phoenicia and toward Egypt, making those waters impossible for anyone to sail. As soon as Vespasian learned of their gathering, he sent infantry and cavalry to Joppa, and they entered the city by night, since it was unguarded. The people inside had seen the attack coming. In their fear they gave up any thought of keeping the Romans out, fled together to their ships, and spent the night at sea out of bowshot. [e]

Joppa has no natural harbor. It ends in a rugged shore that runs mostly straight, though its two ends curve slightly toward each other. These ends are steep cliffs and reefs jutting out into the sea, where the marks of Andromeda’s chains are still shown, vouching for the antiquity of that legend. The north wind beats straight onto the shore and hurls the waves high against the rocks that meet them, making the anchorage more dangerous than open, empty water. As the people from Joppa rode at anchor there, a violent wind fell on them toward dawn; those who sail that coast call it the “black north wind.” It dashed some of the ships against one another where they lay, and others against the rocks. Many tried to force their way out to sea against the waves, for they feared the rocky shore and the enemy on it; and the surge, towering over them, swamped them. There was no place to flee and no safety in staying: the force of the wind drove them from the sea, and the Romans from the city. There was loud wailing as the ships crashed together, and a great noise as they broke apart. Some of the crowd were swallowed by the waves and perished; many were tangled in the wreckage; and some, thinking the sword a lighter death than the sea, killed themselves before it could take them. Most were carried by the waves and torn to pieces on the broken rocks, so that the sea was bloody far out and the shore was full of corpses; for the Romans stood over those who were washed ashore and killed them. The number of bodies cast up was four thousand two hundred. The Romans took the city without a fight and razed it. [f]

So Joppa was captured by the Romans for the second time within a short while. To keep the pirates from gathering there again, Vespasian built a camp on the acropolis and left the cavalry in it with a few infantry. The infantry were to stay where they were and guard the camp, while the horsemen plundered the country round about and destroyed the villages and small towns around Joppa. Following their orders, they overran the country, and every day they cut down and laid waste the whole of it.

When news of the disaster at Jotapata reached Jerusalem, most people at first did not believe it, both because the calamity was so great and because no eyewitness was there to vouch for what was told. Not even a messenger had survived; rumor spread word of the capture of its own accord, as is the nature of bad news. Little by little the truth made its way through from the neighboring places, and soon everyone held it as beyond doubt. But things that had not happened were added to what had: it was reported that Josephus too had been killed when the city fell. This filled Jerusalem with the deepest grief. In each house and each family the dead who belonged to it were lamented, but the mourning for the general was public. Some mourned their guests, some their relatives, some their friends, but all mourned Josephus. For thirty days the lamentation did not stop in the city, and a great many people hired flute players to lead their dirges. [h]

But as time went on the truth came out. Everything at Jotapata was as reported, but the story of Josephus’s death proved a fiction. When they learned that he was alive, that he was with the Romans, and that the commanders were treating him better than a prisoner’s lot, their anger at him alive was as great as their goodwill had been when they thought him dead. Some reviled him as a coward, others as a traitor, and the city was full of indignation and abuse against him. Their defeats goaded them, and their misfortunes inflamed them further. Stumbling, which in sensible people produces caution and care against the same thing happening again, became for them a spur to new disasters, and the end of one evil was always the beginning of another. So they threw themselves at the Romans all the more, as if in taking vengeance on them they would take vengeance on Josephus too. Such were the troubles that gripped Jerusalem.

Vespasian, meanwhile, went to see the kingdom of Agrippa. The king had invited him, wishing both to entertain the general and his army with all the wealth of his household and, through them, to set right the disordered parts of his realm. Leaving Caesarea on the coast, Vespasian moved to the city called Caesarea Philippi. There he rested his army for twenty days, while he himself feasted and offered thank offerings to God for his successes. Then word reached him that Tiberias was restless for revolt and that Taricheae had already revolted, both of them part of Agrippa’s kingdom. He had resolved to subdue the Jews everywhere, and he thought a campaign against these cities well timed, and worth making for Agrippa’s sake as well, to bring the king’s cities to order in return for his hospitality. So he sent his son Titus to Caesarea to bring the army there to Scythopolis, the largest city of the Decapolis and a neighbor of Tiberias. He went there himself and waited for his son. Then he advanced with three legions and camped about three and a half miles from Tiberias, at a station in full view of the rebels, called Sennabris. He sent Valerian, a decurion, with fifty horsemen to speak peaceably with those in the city and to urge them to give pledges; for he had heard that the people wanted peace but were being dragged into revolt by some who were forcing them to war. Valerian rode up, and when he was near the wall he dismounted and had the horsemen with him do the same, so that they would not seem to have come to skirmish. But before any talk could begin, the most powerful of the rebels charged out at him in arms, led by a man named Jesus son of Tupha, the chief of the robber band. Valerian did not think it safe to engage against the general’s orders, even if victory were certain; it was dangerous, besides, for a few to fight many, the unprepared against the ready; and he was stunned, too, by the unexpected daring of the Jews. So he fled on foot, and five others likewise abandoned their horses. Jesus and his men led the horses away into the city, rejoicing as though they had taken them in battle and not by ambush. [i]

Alarmed at this, the elders of the people and those thought to be its leading men fled to the Roman camp. Taking the king with them, they threw themselves down before Vespasian as suppliants. They begged him not to abandon them, and not to count the madness of a few as the whole city’s; to spare a people that had always been friendly to the Romans, and to punish the authors of the revolt, by whom they themselves had been kept under guard until now, though they had long been eager for pledges of peace. The general yielded to their entreaties, angry as he was with the whole city over the seizure of the horses, because he saw that Agrippa was anxious for it. Once the elders had received pledges for the people, Jesus and his followers thought it no longer safe to stay in Tiberias, and they ran off to Taricheae. The next day Vespasian sent Trajan ahead with horsemen to the ridge above the city, to test the crowd and see whether they were all for peace. When he learned that the people were of one mind with the suppliants, he took his army and went to the city. They opened the gates to him and met him with acclamations, hailing him as savior and benefactor. Because the army was held up by the narrowness of the entrances, Vespasian ordered part of the south wall to be broken down, and so widened the way in for them. But to please the king he ordered them to refrain from plunder and violence, and for his sake he spared the walls, the king pledging that those within them would remain loyal in the future. So he restored the city, which had suffered much from the sedition. [o]