Jericho and the Dead Sea

Meanwhile news came of the uprising in Gaul: Vindex, together with the men of power in that country, had revolted from Nero. These events are recorded elsewhere in more detail. The report spurred Vespasian on with the war, for he already foresaw the civil wars that were coming and the danger to the whole empire, and he thought that if he first brought peace to the eastern provinces, he would lighten the fears for Italy. So while the winter held him back, he secured with garrisons the villages and small towns that had been brought under: decurions in the villages and centurions in the cities. He also resettled many of the places that had been laid waste. [a]

At the beginning of spring he took the greater part of his army and led it from Caesarea to Antipatris. He spent two days there settling the affairs of the city, and on the third day he marched on, laying waste and burning all the villages around. When he had subdued the district around the toparchy of Thamna, he moved on to Lydda and Jamnia. Both had already been subdued, and he settled in each enough inhabitants from among those who had surrendered to him. Then he came to Emmaus. There he seized the passes leading to their capital, fortified a camp, and left the Fifth Legion in it, while he went on with the rest of his force to the toparchy of Bethleptenphon. He destroyed it and the neighboring toparchy by fire, and built forts at strategic points all around Idumea. He seized two villages in the very heart of Idumea, Betabris and Caphartoba, killed more than ten thousand people, took more than a thousand captive, and drove out the rest of the population. In these he stationed no small part of his own forces, who overran and laid waste the whole hill country. He himself returned with the rest of his force to Emmaus. From there he went down through Samaria, past the city called Neapolis, which the local people call Mabartha, to Corea, where he pitched camp on the second day of the month Desius. On the next day he came to Jericho. That same day Trajan, one of his commanders, joined him with the force he had brought out of Perea, for all the country beyond the Jordan had already been subdued.

Most of the people of Jericho got away before the Romans arrived and fled into the hill country opposite Jerusalem, but not a few of those left behind were killed, and the Romans found the city deserted. Jericho lies in a plain, but above it rises a bare and barren mountain ridge of very great length. Northward it stretches to the territory of Scythopolis, and southward as far as the country of Sodom and the farthest end of Lake Asphaltitis. It is all rough and uninhabited because of its barrenness. Facing it, on the other side of the Jordan, lies another ridge. This one begins at Julias in the north and runs southward as far as Somora, which borders on Petra in Arabia. In this ridge is the mountain called the Iron Mountain, which stretches as far as Moab. The country between the two ridges is called the Great Plain. It reaches from the village of Ginnabris to Lake Asphaltitis. It is about 150 miles long and 15 miles wide, and the Jordan cuts it down the middle. It has two lakes, Asphaltitis and the lake of Tiberias, which are opposite in nature: the first is salty and lifeless, while the lake of Tiberias is sweet and full of life. In summer the plain is scorched, and the extreme drought makes the air unhealthy. It is all without water except the Jordan, and for this reason the palm groves on its banks flourish and bear far more fruit than those farther away. [f]

Near Jericho, however, there is a spring that flows abundantly and is very rich for watering the land. It wells up beside the old city that Joshua son of Nun, the general of the Hebrews, took first of all the land of the Canaanites by force of arms. The story is that at first this spring blighted not only the fruits of the earth and of the trees but also the offspring of women, and that it was harmful and destructive to everything. But it was tamed and made the very opposite, most wholesome and fruitful, by the prophet Elisha. Elisha had been the disciple and the successor of Elijah. He was once the guest of the people of Jericho, and they treated him with great kindness, and he repaid both them and their land with a lasting favor. He went out to this spring and threw into the stream an earthenware jar full of salt. Then he stretched his righteous right hand up to heaven and poured out soothing drink offerings on the ground. He asked the earth to soften the stream and to open sweeter veins of water, and he asked heaven to blend kindlier, more fruitful airs into the stream, and to give the people of the place an abundance of crops together with a succession of children, and never to let this life-giving water fail them as long as they remained righteous. To these prayers he added many skillful acts with his hands, and he changed the spring. The water that had before been a cause of childlessness and famine became from that time a source of many children and of plenty. Its power in watering is so great that if it merely touches the ground, it nourishes better than other waters that soak it to saturation. So those who use other waters lavishly get little benefit, while a little of this water gives a lavish yield. In fact it waters a larger area than any other, flowing over a plain about nine miles long and two and a half miles wide, and in it the spring nourishes the finest and most thickly planted gardens. There are many kinds of date palms watered by it, differing in taste and in their healing qualities. The richer kinds, when trodden, give off an abundant honey not much inferior to the other kind. The country also produces honey from bees. It bears balsam, the most precious of the fruits of the region, and henna and myrobalan, so that one would not be wrong to call a place divine where the rarest and finest plants grow in such abundance. As for its other fruits too, it would not be easy to find any region of the inhabited world to compare with it, so many times over does it return what is sown. The cause, it seems to me, is the warmth of the air and the vigor of the water: the warmth calls the plants out and spreads them, while the moisture roots each one firmly and supplies the strength it needs in summer. The district is so scorching then that hardly anyone ventures out. If the water is drawn before sunrise and then left out in the open air, it becomes very cold and takes on a nature opposite to the surrounding air, while in winter, on the contrary, it grows warm and is very pleasant to those who step into it. The air too is so mild that the people of the country wear linen while snow is falling in the rest of Judea. Jericho is about nineteen miles from Jerusalem and seven and a half miles from the Jordan. The country between it and Jerusalem is desert and rocky, while the country between it and the Jordan and Lake Asphaltitis is lower but just as desert and barren. But enough has been said about Jericho and its great good fortune. [i]

The nature of Lake Asphaltitis is also worth describing. It is, as I have said, bitter and lifeless, and it is so buoyant that it bears up even the heaviest things thrown into it; it is not easy to sink to the bottom even if one tries. When Vespasian went to see it for himself, he ordered some men who could not swim to be thrown into the deep water with their hands tied behind them, and all of them floated on the surface as if a wind were forcing them upward. Another wonder is the way its color changes: three times every day it alters its appearance, reflecting the rays of the sun in different ways. In many places it throws up black lumps of asphalt. These float on the surface, and in shape and size they look like headless bulls. The workers on the lake row out to them, take hold of the clinging mass, and haul it into their boats. But when the boats are full it is not easy to cut the rest loose: the stuff is so tough that the boat stays stuck fast to the mass until they break it up with the menstrual blood of women and with urine, the only things it yields to. It is useful not only for caulking ships but also for healing the body, and it is mixed into many medicines. The lake is about seventy-two miles long, reaching as far as Zoar in Arabia, and about nineteen miles wide. Next to it lies the land of Sodom. Once it was a prosperous land, both for its crops and for the wealth of its cities, but now it is all burnt up. They say that it was burned by lightning because of the impiety of its inhabitants. Remnants of that divine fire are still there, and the shadowy outlines of five cities can be seen. Ashes, too, form again within its fruits, which have the color of fruit fit to eat, but when you pick them they dissolve into smoke and ash. So the stories told about the land of Sodom are confirmed by what one can see. [n]