Simon Son of Gioras

Vespasian was now walling in the people of Jerusalem on every side. He built fortified camps at Jericho and at Adida and stationed garrisons in both, drawn from the Romans and from the allied troops. He also sent Lucius Annius to Gerasa with a body of cavalry and a good number of infantry. Annius took the city at the first assault and killed a thousand of the young men who had not managed to escape in time. He took their families captive and let his soldiers plunder their property. Then he set fire to their houses and went on against the villages around. The men of means fled, the weaker perished, and everything that was left was burned. Now that the war had spread through the whole hill country and all the plain, the people in Jerusalem were cut off from every way out. Those who wanted to desert were watched by the Zealots, and those who were not yet on the Romans’ side were hemmed in by the army that surrounded the city on every side. [a]

Vespasian had returned to Caesarea and was preparing to march with his whole army against Jerusalem itself, when news came that Nero had been killed, after reigning thirteen years and eight days. I might tell how he abused his power by entrusting affairs to the worst of men, Nymphidius and Tigellinus, and to the unworthy among his freedmen; how they plotted against him and he was deserted by all his guards; how he ran away with four of his faithful freedmen and killed himself in the suburbs; and how those who brought him down were punished not long afterward. I might tell how the war in Gaul ended; how Galba was proclaimed emperor and came back to Rome from Spain; how the soldiers accused him of meanness and he was treacherously murdered in the middle of the Roman forum, and Otho was made emperor; then Otho’s campaign against the generals of Vitellius and his fall; then the troubles under Vitellius and the fighting around the Capitol; and how Antonius Primus and Mucianus destroyed Vitellius and the German legions and so ended the civil war. I have declined to go through all this in detail, because it is familiar to everyone and has been written up by many Greeks and Romans. But for the sake of the connection of events, and so that my history may not be broken off, I have noted each point briefly. So at first Vespasian put off his campaign against Jerusalem, waiting to see where power would settle after Nero. Then, when he heard that Galba was emperor, he attempted nothing until Galba too should send him some instructions about the war. But he sent his son Titus to him, to greet him and to receive his orders concerning the Jews, and for the same reasons King Agrippa sailed with Titus to Galba. While they were sailing around Greece in warships, for it was winter, Galba was killed before they reached him, after reigning seven months and as many days. After him Otho took the government and laid claim to the state. Agrippa decided to go on to Rome, not at all alarmed by the change. But Titus, by some divine impulse, sailed back from Greece to Syria and hurried to his father at Caesarea. And both of them, held in suspense about the whole state while the Roman empire was tottering, set aside the campaign against the Jews; with fear for their own country upon them, they thought an attack on foreigners untimely. [b]

And now another war rose against Jerusalem. There was a certain Simon, the son of Gioras, a Gerasene by birth, a young man less cunning than John, who already held the city, but superior in strength of body and in daring. It was for this daring that Ananus the high priest drove him out of the toparchy of Acrabetene, which he held, and he went to the robbers who had seized Masada. At first they suspected him. They allowed him and the women he had brought with him into the lower part of the fortress only, while they lived in the upper part themselves. Later, because his ways were so like theirs and because he seemed trustworthy, he went out raiding with them and helped them lay waste the country around Masada. But when he urged them to greater things, he could not persuade them. They were used to the fortress and afraid to go far from it, as from a lair. He, on the other hand, was aiming at tyranny and reaching for great things. So when he heard of the death of Ananus, he withdrew into the hill country. He proclaimed freedom for slaves and rewards for the free, and gathered the wicked from every quarter. [d]

When his band had grown strong, he overran the villages of the hill country, and as more and more kept joining him, he grew bold enough to come down into the lower country. Now that he was a terror to the cities, many men of standing were corrupted by his strength and the unbroken run of his successes. His army was no longer made up only of slaves and robbers; not a few of the common people obeyed him as if he were their king. He overran the toparchy of Acrabetene and the country as far as Great Idumea. At a village called Ain he built a wall and used it as a fortress for his safety. In the ravine called Pheretae he widened many caves and found many others ready-made, and he used them as storehouses for his treasure and as places to hold his plunder. There he laid up the crops he seized, and most of his bands lived in them. It was plain that he was training his force in advance and making his preparations against Jerusalem. [e]

The Zealots, afraid of what he was plotting and wanting to strike first at a man growing strong against them, came out against him in arms, most of them. Simon met them, joined battle, killed a good many of them, and drove the rest into the city. But he did not yet trust his strength enough to attack the walls, so he turned aside and set out first to subdue Idumea. With twenty thousand armed men he marched to its borders. The rulers of Idumea quickly gathered the best fighting men of the country, about twenty-five thousand, and left the rest to guard their own property because of the raids of the Sicarii at Masada. They met Simon at the border. There he fought them all day long and came away neither victor nor vanquished. He went back to Nain, and the Idumeans dispersed to their homes. Not long afterward Simon invaded their country again with a larger force. He camped at a village called Tekoa and sent one of his companions, Eleazar, to the garrison at Herodium, which was near, to persuade them to surrender the fortress. The guards received him readily, not knowing why he had come. But as soon as he spoke of surrender, they drew their swords and chased him, until, having nowhere to run, he threw himself from the wall into the ravine below and died at once. The Idumeans, who already dreaded Simon’s strength, decided to look over the enemy’s army before they fought. [f]

Jacob, one of their commanders, readily offered himself for this service, though he had treachery in mind. He set out from Alurus, the village where the Idumean army was then gathered, and came to Simon. He agreed to hand over his own native place to him first, receiving oaths that he would always be held in honor, and he promised to help him subdue the whole of Idumea as well. Simon feasted him warmly, and Jacob was elated by his splendid promises. When he returned to his own men, he first lied that Simon’s army was many times larger than it was. Then, working on the commanders and, little by little, on the whole multitude, he urged them to receive Simon and hand over the whole government to him without a fight. While he was doing this, he sent messengers to call Simon, promising to scatter the Idumeans, and he did so. When the army was close, he was the first to leap on his horse and flee, with those he had corrupted. Panic fell on the whole multitude, and before it came to blows they broke ranks and went off, each man to his own home. [g]

So against all expectation Simon marched into Idumea without bloodshed. By a surprise attack he took first the small town of Hebron, where he seized a great deal of plunder and carried off a vast quantity of grain. The local people say that Hebron is older not only than the other cities of that country but even than Memphis in Egypt; they reckon its age at two thousand three hundred years. They tell that it was the home of Abraham, the ancestor of the Jews, after he left Mesopotamia, and that his descendants went down from there into Egypt. Their tombs are shown in that little town to this day, of very fine marble and handsomely worked. About three-quarters of a mile from the town is shown a huge terebinth tree, and they say that this tree has stood from the creation until now. From there Simon went through all Idumea, not only ravaging villages and towns but wasting the countryside. Besides his armed men, forty thousand followed him, so that there were not even provisions enough for such a crowd. Added to his needs were his own cruelty and his anger against that nation, and so Idumea was all the more depopulated. As one may see a whole wood stripped bare behind a swarm of locusts, so Simon’s army left a desert behind it. Some places they burned and others they razed. Everything that grew in the country they destroyed, either trampling it or eating it, and by their marching they made cultivated ground harder than barren land. In short, nothing was left to the places they ravaged to show that they had ever existed. [h]

This roused the Zealots again. They were afraid to meet him in open battle, but they laid ambushes in the passes and seized Simon’s wife and a good many of her attendants. Then they came back into the city rejoicing, as though they had taken Simon himself prisoner, and expected him at any moment to lay down his arms and beg them for his wife. But it was not pity that came over him, but rage for the woman who had been seized. He came to the wall of Jerusalem and, like a wounded beast that cannot catch the one who wounded it, he poured out his fury on whomever he found. All who had gone outside the gates to gather herbs or firewood, unarmed men and old men, he seized, tortured and killed; in the excess of his fury he all but fed on their dead bodies. He cut off the hands of many and sent them into the city, to terrify his enemies and to try to turn the people against those responsible. He ordered them to say that Simon swore by God, the overseer of all, that unless they gave him back his wife at once, he would break through the wall and treat everyone in the city in the same way, sparing no age and making no distinction between the guilty and the innocent. These threats terrified not only the people but the Zealots too, and they sent his wife back to him. Then, softened a little, he paused for a while from his continual bloodshed.

Sedition and civil war were not confined to Judea; they had spread to Italy as well. Galba had been killed in the middle of the Roman forum. Otho, who had been proclaimed emperor, was at war with Vitellius, who also laid claim to the throne, for the legions in Germany had chosen him. A battle was fought at Bedriacum in Gaul against Valens and Caecina, the generals of Vitellius. On the first day Otho had the upper hand, but on the second day Vitellius’s troops won. After great slaughter Otho killed himself at Brixellum when he heard of the defeat, having held power for three months and two days. His army went over to Vitellius’s generals, and Vitellius himself came down to Rome with his forces. Meanwhile Vespasian set out from Caesarea on the fifth of the month Desius and marched against the places in Judea that had not yet been subdued. He went up into the hill country and took two toparchies, the one called Gophna and the one called Acrabetene, and after them the small towns of Bethega and Ephraim. He placed garrisons in them and rode up as far as Jerusalem. Many of those caught on the way were killed, and he took a good many captive. Cerealis, one of his commanders, took a body of cavalry and infantry and laid waste what is called Upper Idumea. He took Caphethra, a so-called town, at the first assault and burned it, and attacked another place, called Charabis, and besieged it. Its wall was very strong, and he expected to spend a long time there, but suddenly the people inside opened the gates, came out carrying suppliants’ branches, and surrendered. When Cerealis had brought them under, he went on to Hebron, another very ancient city. It lies, as I have said, in the hill country not far from Jerusalem. He forced his way in, killed all the grown men he caught there, and burned the town. Everything had now been subdued except Herodium, Masada and Machaerus, which were held by the robbers, and Jerusalem was now the Romans’ target. [j]

As soon as Simon had rescued his wife from the Zealots, he turned back to what was left of Idumea. Harrying the nation from every side, he forced most of them to flee to Jerusalem. He followed them to the city himself and again surrounded the wall, and killed any laborers he caught going out into the countryside. To the people, Simon outside the walls was more frightening than the Romans, and the Zealots within were harder to bear than either. Among the Zealots the band of Galileans excelled in inventing evils and in daring. It was they who had raised John to power, and he repaid them out of the dominion he had won by letting each of them do whatever he wanted. Their lust for plunder was insatiable, and so was their searching of rich men’s houses. The murder of men and the rape of women were their sport. They gulped down their plunder with the blood still on it. Glutted, they gave themselves up without fear to playing the woman: they braided their hair, put on women’s clothes, drenched themselves in perfumes, and painted under their eyes to make themselves attractive. They imitated not only the finery of women but their passions too, and in the excess of their lewdness they invented unlawful loves. They wallowed in the city as in a brothel and polluted it all with their unclean deeds. Yet while their faces were made up like women’s, they murdered with their right hands. They would come mincing along, then suddenly turn warriors, draw swords from under their dyed cloaks, and run through anyone they met. Those who ran from John found Simon waiting for them, still more murderous, and whoever escaped the tyrant inside the wall was killed by the one before the gates. Every way of flight was cut off for those who wanted to desert to the Romans. [n]

But John’s force split into factions against him. All the Idumeans in it broke away and attacked the tyrant, out of envy of his power and hatred of his cruelty. They joined battle, killed many of the Zealots, and drove the rest into the palace built by Grapte, a relative of Izates, king of Adiabene. The Idumeans burst in with them, drove the Zealots out of there into the temple, and turned to plundering John’s money, for John lived in that palace and had stored there the spoils of his tyranny. Meanwhile the mass of the Zealots scattered through the city gathered at the temple with those who had fled there, and John prepared to lead them down against the people and the Idumeans. The Idumeans were better fighters and were not so much afraid of their attack as of their desperation: they feared the Zealots would slip out of the temple by night, kill them, and set the city on fire. So they met together with the chief priests and deliberated how to guard against the attack. But God, it seems, turned their judgment to evil, and they devised a remedy for their safety that was worse than destruction. To overthrow John they decided to admit Simon, and with petitions to bring in a second tyrant upon themselves. The plan was carried out. They sent Matthias the high priest and begged Simon, whom they had so often feared, to come in, and those from Jerusalem who were fleeing from the Zealots joined in the appeal, longing for their houses and possessions. He haughtily granted them his lordship and came in, as if to rid the city of the Zealots, and the people hailed him as their savior and protector. But once he was inside with his army, he looked only to his own power, and he counted those who had invited him no less his enemies than those he had been invited against. [p]

So Simon became master of Jerusalem in the third year of the war, in the month Xanthicus. John and the mass of the Zealots, shut off from every way out of the temple and having lost what they had in the city, for Simon’s men had plundered it at once, despaired of their safety. Simon attacked the temple, with the people helping him, and the Zealots took their stand on the porticoes and battlements and beat off the assaults. A good many of Simon’s men fell and many were carried off wounded, for the Zealots shot easily from above and seldom missed. Having the advantage of position, they also built four very large towers so that they could shoot from still higher up: one at the northeast corner, one above the Xystus, the third at another corner facing the lower city, and the last above the roof of the priests’ chambers. There one of the priests used to stand and give the signal with a trumpet in the late afternoon as each seventh day came in, and again in the evening when it was over, announcing to the people when to stop work and when to go back to it. On the towers they placed dart-throwing and stone-throwing engines, with archers and slingers. From then on Simon’s attacks grew more hesitant, for most of his men lost heart. Still, he held his ground by sheer weight of numbers, though the missiles from the engines carried a long way and killed many of his fighters. [r]