The Murder of Ananus

The Idumeans agreed. They went up through the city to the temple, and the zealots, in high suspense, were eagerly waiting for them to arrive. As the Idumeans came in, the zealots too came boldly out of the inner temple, mingled with them, and fell upon the guards. Some of the outposts they slaughtered in their sleep; but at the shout of those who were awake the whole body rose, snatched up their arms in alarm, and went to defend themselves. As long as they thought only the zealots were attacking, they kept their courage, expecting to overcome them by numbers; but when they saw others pouring in from outside, they realized that the Idumeans had broken in. Then most of them threw down their arms and their spirit together and gave themselves up to lamentation. A few of the young men, however, closed ranks and met the Idumeans bravely, and for a long time they shielded the more helpless crowd. Others signaled their disaster to the people in the city by shouting; but when the people learned that the Idumeans had burst in, none of them dared to come to help. They only shouted back uselessly and wailed in answer, and a great lament rose from the women, each of whom had someone among the guards in danger. The zealots joined in the Idumeans’ war cry, and the storm made the clamor from every side more fearful still. The Idumeans spared no one. Savage by nature and given to slaughter, and battered by the storm, they turned their fury on those who had shut them out. They treated those who begged for mercy and those who fought back alike, and they ran through with their swords many who reminded them of their kinship and begged them to show some reverence for their common temple. There was no room to flee and no hope of safety. Crushed together, they were cut down; and most of them, driven on with no place left to retreat and the killers upon them, in their helplessness threw themselves headlong down into the city, suffering, in my opinion, a more pitiable death than the one they fled, since it was of their own choosing. The whole outer temple was flooded with blood, and daybreak found eight thousand five hundred dead there. [a]

But the Idumeans’ fury was not sated by this. They turned on the city, plundered every house, and killed whoever they met. The rest of the people they counted a waste of effort; it was the high priests they hunted for, and most of them went after these with a rush. They were quickly caught and killed, and standing over their bodies the Idumeans mocked Ananus for his goodwill toward the people and Jesus for the speech he had made from the wall. They went so far in impiety as to throw the bodies out unburied, although the Jews take such care over burial that even those crucified by sentence of law are taken down and buried before sunset. I would not be wrong to say that the capture of the city began with the death of Ananus, and that from that day the wall was overthrown and the cause of the Jews was ruined, the day they saw their high priest, the leader of their own deliverance, butchered in the middle of the city. He was in every respect a venerable man and most just. For all the dignity of his birth, his rank and the honor he held, he had loved to treat even the humblest as his equals. He was extraordinarily devoted to liberty and a lover of democracy; he always put the public good before his own advantage, and valued peace above everything, for he knew that the Romans could not be beaten. But he was forced to make provision for war as well, so that if the Jews did not come to terms, they might at least carry it on skillfully. In a word, had Ananus lived, they would surely have come to terms, for he was a powerful speaker, able to persuade the people, and he was already mastering those who stood in his way; or, if they had fought on, they would have given the Romans a long, hard struggle under such a general. Jesus was yoked with him, inferior to him when the two are compared, but superior to the rest. But I think it was because God had condemned the city to destruction as polluted, and wished the sanctuary to be purged by fire, that he cut away those who clung to it and loved it so dearly. Men who a little before had worn the sacred vestments, had led the worship that the whole world honors, and had been revered by visitors to the city from all the inhabited earth, were seen thrown out naked, food for dogs and wild beasts. I think that virtue herself groaned for these men, lamenting that she had been so utterly defeated by wickedness. Such, at any rate, was the end of Ananus and Jesus. [c]

After them, the zealots and the mass of the Idumeans fell upon the people and butchered them like a herd of unclean animals. The common folk were killed wherever each was caught. But the well-born and the young men they seized and shut up in prison in chains, putting off their execution in the hope that some would come over to their side. Not one paid heed; all chose death rather than to be ranked with the wicked against their own country. For their refusal they suffered terrible tortures, scourged and racked, and only when their bodies could no longer bear the torments were they granted, grudgingly, the sword. Those arrested by day were killed at night, and the bodies were carried out and thrown away to make room for other prisoners. So great was the terror of the people that no one dared either to weep openly for a dead kinsman or to bury him. Shut up in their houses, they shed their tears in secret, and groaned only after looking around to be sure no enemy could hear; for whoever mourned at once suffered the same as those he mourned. At night they would scoop up a little dust in their hands and throw it on the bodies, and some of the boldest did so by day. Twelve thousand of the well-born young men perished in this way. [f]

By now they were thoroughly sick of plain killing, and they began to make a mockery of courts and trials. They had resolved to kill one of the most distinguished men, Zacharias son of Baris. What provoked them was his intense hatred of wickedness and his love of liberty; he was also rich, so that they hoped not only to seize his property but also to rid themselves of a powerful man who could bring them down. They summoned by decree seventy of the leading men among the commoners to the temple, dressed them up, as on a stage, in the part of judges without any authority, and accused Zacharias of handing the state over to the Romans and of sending to Vespasian with an offer of betrayal. There was neither proof nor evidence of the charges, but they said that they themselves were fully persuaded, and demanded that this be accepted as proof of the truth. Zacharias saw that no hope of safety was left him, for he had been summoned by a trick to a prison, not to a court. But his despair of life did not rob him of free speech. He stood up, ridiculed the plausibility of the charges, and in a few words disposed of the accusations brought against him. Then, turning his speech on his accusers, he went through all their crimes against the law one after another and lamented at length the confusion of public affairs. The zealots grew noisy and could hardly keep their hands from their swords; but they meant to play out the show and mockery of a court to the end, and they wanted besides to test the judges, whether they would remember justice at their own peril. The seventy cast their votes, every one of them, for the accused, choosing to die with him rather than to have his death written against their names. At his acquittal a shout went up from the zealots, and all were furious with the judges for not understanding that the authority given them was a joke. Two of the boldest fell upon Zacharias in the middle of the temple and killed him, and as he fell they jeered: “Now you have our vote too, and a surer release.” Then they threw him straight down from the temple into the ravine below. The judges they struck with the flats of their swords, to insult them, and drove them out of the temple precinct, sparing their lives for one reason only: that scattered through the city they might carry to everyone the news of their slavery. [g]

The Idumeans by now regretted coming and were disgusted at what was being done. One of the zealots came to them privately, gathered them together, and showed them the crimes they had committed together with those who had called them in, and went through all that had been done against the mother city. They had taken the field, he said, on the ground that the mother city was being betrayed to the Romans by the high priests, but they had found no evidence of treason; instead they were protecting the men who had pretended it, men who dared the deeds of war and tyranny. It would have been their duty to stop them from the beginning; but since they had once fallen into partnership in the shedding of their countrymen’s blood, they should at least set a limit to their crimes and not stay on, lending strength to those who were overthrowing the ways of their fathers. Even if some of them were still angry that the gates had been shut and they had not been given a ready entry with their arms, those who had shut them out had been punished: Ananus was dead, and nearly the whole people had been destroyed in a single night. Many of their own men, he could see, regretted this, while those who had called them in showed boundless cruelty, without respect even for those who had saved them. Under the very eyes of their allies they dared the most shameful deeds, and their crimes would be laid at the Idumeans’ door for as long as no one stopped them or separated himself from what was being done. They ought therefore to go home, since the charge of treason had proved a slander, no Roman attack was expected, and a tyranny hard to overthrow had been fortified over the city; and by having no further fellowship with these wicked men, they should clear themselves of everything in which they had been deceived into taking part. [i]