John’s Tyranny and the Perean Rout

By now John was aiming at tyranny and thought it beneath him to share equal honor with his peers. Little by little he gathered around him the more wicked of them and broke away from the faction. Always defying the decisions of the others and giving his own orders like a despot, he was plainly reaching for sole rule. Some gave way to him out of fear, some out of goodwill, for he was clever at winning men over by deceit and by speech; and many thought it would be safer for themselves if the blame for their outrages should now fall on one man and not on many. His energy, both in action and in counsel, won him not a few bodyguards. But a large part of his opponents fell away. Envy weighed with them too, for they thought it hard to be subject to one who had formerly been their equal; but more than that, dread of a monarchy turned them away. They did not expect to overthrow him easily once he was in power, and they knew he would hold it against them that they had opposed him at the start. So each man preferred to suffer anything at all in war rather than to become a willing slave and die a slave’s death. In this way the faction split in two, and John reigned as a rival king against those who opposed him. The two sides kept watch on each other, and seldom or never skirmished with their arms; but they vied with one another against the people, competing over which would carry off more plunder. Since the city was tossed by the three greatest evils—war, tyranny and faction—the war, by comparison, was the mildest for the common people. They fled from their own to foreigners, and found among the Romans the safety they had despaired of among their own.

And now a fourth evil was set in motion toward the ruin of the nation. Not far from Jerusalem there was a very strong fortress, built by the ancient kings both as a place to store their possessions in the turns of war and for the safety of their persons. It was called Masada. The so-called sicarii had seized it, and until now they had raided the neighboring districts only to get their necessities, for fear held them back from further plunder. But when they learned that the Roman army was holding still and that the Jews in Jerusalem were divided by faction and by a tyranny of their own, they took on bolder ventures. At the feast of Unleavened Bread, which the Jews have kept as a festival of deliverance ever since they were freed from slavery in Egypt and came into the land of their fathers, the sicarii slipped by night past those who might have stopped them and raided a small town called En-gedi. Those able to resist they scattered and drove out of the town before they could take up arms and gather; those less able to flee, women and children, more than seven hundred, they killed. Then they stripped the houses, seized the ripest of the crops, and carried it all up to Masada. They plundered all the villages around the fortress and laid waste the whole region, and every day not a few men from every quarter joined them in their corruption. In the other districts of Judea too, the banditry that had been quiet until then began to stir. As in a body, when the chief organ is inflamed, all the limbs fall sick with it, so the faction and turmoil in the mother city gave the wicked men in the countryside free rein to plunder. Each band robbed its own villages and then withdrew into the desert. Gathering and swearing alliance in companies, too few to be an army but too many to be a gang of robbers, they fell on holy places and towns. Those they attacked suffered as if taken in war, while any reprisal came too late, since like robbers they made off with their plunder. There was no part of Judea that was not perishing along with the city that stood at its head. [a]

These things were reported to Vespasian by deserters. For although the rebels guarded all the exits and killed anyone who approached them for any reason, some still slipped through. Taking refuge with the Romans, they urged the general to come to the city’s help and save what was left of the people, for it was because of their goodwill toward the Romans, they said, that most had been killed and the survivors were in danger. Vespasian, already pitying their misfortunes, set out, to all appearance to besiege Jerusalem, but in truth to deliver it from a siege. First, however, he had to subdue what remained, and leave nothing outside to hinder the siege. So he went against Gadara, the strong capital of Perea, and entered the city on the fourth of the month Dystrus. The men of power had secretly sent envoys to him, without the rebels’ knowledge, to discuss surrender, out of a longing for peace and for the sake of their property, for many rich men lived in Gadara. The opposing party had known nothing of the embassy and learned of it only when Vespasian was already near. They gave up hope of holding the city themselves, being outnumbered by their enemies inside and seeing the Romans not far off; but when they decided to flee, they thought it dishonorable to go without bloodshed and without exacting any punishment from those responsible. So they seized Dolesus, who was not only the first man of the city in rank and family but was thought to be behind the embassy. They killed him, outraged his corpse in their excessive rage, and ran from the city. As the Roman force arrived, the people of Gadara welcomed Vespasian with acclamations, received pledges of good faith from him, and were given a garrison of horse and foot against the raids of the fugitives. For they had pulled down their wall themselves, before the Romans asked it, so that their very inability to make war, even if they wished, would prove their love of peace. [e]

Vespasian sent Placidus with five hundred horse and three thousand foot against those who had fled from Gadara, while he himself returned to Caesarea with the rest of the army. As soon as the fugitives caught sight of the cavalry suddenly upon them, before it came to blows, they crowded into a village called Bethennabris. There they found a large number of young men, armed them haphazardly, some willing and some by force, and dashed out against Placidus and his troops. At the first charge the horsemen gave way a little, contriving to draw them farther from the wall; then, having got them into a suitable place, they rode around them and shot them down with javelins. The cavalry cut off those who fled, and the infantry vigorously destroyed those who stood and fought. The Jews perished having shown nothing more than daring. They were throwing themselves on Romans packed close and walled in, as it were, by their full armor; they could find no opening for a missile and had not the strength to break the line, while they themselves were run through by the Romans’ missiles and, like the wildest beasts, hurled themselves on the steel. Some perished cut down by swords from the front, others scattered by the cavalry. [g]

For Placidus was intent on cutting off their dashes toward the village. Riding continually along that side and then wheeling about, he killed with well-aimed missiles those who came close and turned back by fear those farther off, until the bravest forced their way through and escaped to the wall. The guards there were at a loss. They could not bear to shut out the men from Gadara because of their own people among them, and if they let them in they expected to perish with them. And so it happened. As the fugitives crowded against the wall, the Roman cavalry nearly burst in along with them; the guards managed to shut the gates in time, but Placidus attacked and, fighting bravely until evening, took the wall and the people in the village. The helpless masses were slaughtered and the stronger fled; the soldiers plundered the houses and set the village on fire. Those who escaped from it roused the people of the countryside. Magnifying their own disasters and saying that the whole Roman army was coming, they shook everyone everywhere with fear, and in a vast throng they fled toward Jericho, the only place that still kept their hope of safety alive, strong as it was in the number of its inhabitants. Placidus, emboldened by his cavalry and his earlier successes, followed them, killing all he overtook as far as the Jordan. He drove the whole crowd to the river, where they were stopped by the current, for it was swollen by rain and could not be crossed, and drew up his line facing them. Necessity drove them to fight, having no place to flee. They stretched themselves out along the banks for a great distance and met the missiles and the charges of the cavalry, who struck many of them down into the stream. Fifteen thousand were killed hand to hand, and the number forced to leap of their own accord into the Jordan was past counting. About two thousand two hundred were captured, along with a vast plunder of donkeys, sheep, camels and oxen. [h]

This blow fell on the Jews as heavily as any before it, and it seemed even greater than it was. Not only was the whole country through which they fled filled with slaughter, and the Jordan made impassable by the dead, but Lake Asphaltitis too was filled with bodies, swept down into it in great numbers by the river. Placidus, following up his good fortune, pressed on against the small towns and villages around. He took Abila, Julias and Besimoth, and all the places as far as Lake Asphaltitis, and set in each of them those deserters he thought suitable. Then he put his soldiers on boats and caught those who had fled onto the lake. So everything in Perea, as far as Machaerus, either went over to the Romans or was taken. [j]