John Escapes from Gischala

Only Gischala, a small town of Galilee, was now left unsubdued. Its people were inclined to peace, for most of them were farmers whose hopes always hung on their crops. But a sizable band of robbers had slipped in among them and corrupted them, and some of the citizens shared the sickness. The man who drove them to revolt and organized them was John, the son of a certain Levi. He was an impostor and a man of most changeable character, quick to hope for great things and clever at getting what he hoped for, and everyone could see that he loved war as a road to power. The rebellious element in Gischala was under his command, and because of them the common people, who might otherwise have sent envoys to surrender, awaited the Roman attack in the posture of war. Vespasian sent Titus against them with a thousand horsemen and moved the tenth legion off to Scythopolis. He himself went back to Caesarea with the other two legions, to give them rest from their long, unbroken labor, and thinking that the plenty of the cities would build up their bodies and their spirits for the struggles ahead. For he saw that no small task remained for him at Jerusalem. It was the royal city and the head of the whole nation, and those who escaped from the war elsewhere were streaming into it. Its natural strength and the walls built around it caused him no ordinary concern, and he judged that the spirit and daring of its men would be hard to master even without walls. So he trained his soldiers beforehand, like athletes before the contest. [a]

Titus rode up to Gischala. He could easily have taken the city at the first assault, but he knew that if it were taken by force the soldiers would massacre the people without restraint. He had already had his fill of killing, and he pitied the majority, who would perish without distinction along with the guilty. So he preferred to bring the city over on terms. The wall was crowded with men, most of them from the corrupt band, and he told them he wondered what they were trusting in, that when every other city had been taken they alone stood to face the Roman arms. They had seen far stronger cities overthrown at a single assault, and all who had trusted the Romans’ pledges enjoying their own possessions in safety; and these pledges he now held out to them too, bearing no grudge for their insolence. A hope of freedom could be pardoned, he said, but not persistence in what was impossible. If they would not yield to humane words and pledges of good faith, they would feel arms that spared no one, and would soon learn what their wall was worth when the Roman engines bore down on it. In trusting it they were proving themselves the only Galileans who were nothing but insolent captives.

None of the common people was allowed to reply to this, or even to go up on the wall. The robbers had occupied all of it beforehand and were guarding the gates, so that no one could go out to treat or let any of the horsemen into the city. John answered for them. He himself, he said, welcomed the proposals and would either persuade or compel those who refused. But Titus must give that day, which was the seventh day, to the Jewish law: on it they were forbidden to make an agreement about peace, just as they were forbidden to take up arms. Even the Romans knew that the recurring seventh day was a rest from all work for the Jews, and that whoever forced them to break it was no less guilty of impiety than those he forced. The delay could do Titus no harm. What could anyone plan in the night but flight, and that he could prevent by encamping around the town? For themselves, it was a great gain not to break any of their ancestral customs. And it was fitting for one who granted peace beyond their expectation to preserve the laws of those he spared. With such arguments John tricked Titus. He was not so much concerned for the seventh day as for his own safety, for he was afraid of being caught at once if the city were taken, and his hopes of life lay in the night and in flight. It was surely the work of God, who was preserving John for the destruction of Jerusalem, that Titus not only accepted this pretext for delay but also pitched his camp farther from the city, at Kedesh. This is a strong inland village of the Tyrians, always at enmity and war with the Galileans, whose large population and strong walls gave it the means for its quarrel with the nation. [c]

In the night, when John saw no Roman guard around the city, he seized his chance. Taking with him not only the armed men around him but a good many of the idler sort along with their families, he fled toward Jerusalem. For the first two and a half miles a man driven on by fear of capture and of death could still bring a crowd of women and children along, but as he pushed on farther they were left behind, and terrible were the laments of those abandoned. The farther each one was from his own people, the nearer he imagined himself to the enemy. Thinking that those who would carry them off were already upon them, they were terrified, and at the sound of one another’s running they turned round as if the men they were fleeing were already there. Many strayed off the road, and on the highway many were crushed in the struggle of those trying to get ahead. Pitiful was the destruction of the women and children. Some of them took courage to call back their husbands and kinsmen, begging them with wailing to wait. But John’s urging won: he shouted to them to save themselves and flee to the place where they could take revenge on the Romans for those left behind, if these were seized. So the crowd of fugitives scattered, each as far as his strength or speed would carry him. [e]

The next day Titus came to the wall to make the agreement. The people opened the gates to him and came out with their families, hailing him as their benefactor who had freed the city from its garrison. They told him of John’s flight and begged him to spare them and to come in and punish the rebels who remained. Titus put the people’s petitions second and sent a detachment of horsemen after John. They did not catch him, for he reached Jerusalem first, but of those who had set out with him they killed some six thousand, and they rounded up nearly three thousand women and children and brought them back. Titus was vexed at not having punished John for his deceit at once, but in the number of captives and of the slain he had consolation enough for his thwarted anger. He entered the city amid acclamations and ordered the soldiers to pull down a small part of the wall, as the law for a captured city required. The men who were disturbing the city he restrained with threats rather than punishment. For many, he thought, would denounce innocent people out of private hatreds and quarrels if he tried to pick out those who deserved punishment; it was better to leave a guilty man in suspense and fear than to destroy with him anyone who did not deserve it. The guilty man might perhaps learn sense from fear of punishment, out of respect for the pardon he had been given for the past, but the punishment of those wrongly put to death could never be undone. He secured the city with a garrison, meaning by it to restrain the rebels and to leave those who wanted peace more confident. So all Galilee was taken, after giving the Romans much hard sweat in training for Jerusalem. [f]