The Temple and the Antonia

The temple, as I have said, was set on a strong hill. At first the level ground on its summit was barely enough for the sanctuary and the altar, for all around it the ground fell away steeply. King Solomon, the one who built the sanctuary, walled up the eastern side, and a single colonnade was set on the embankment there; on its other sides the sanctuary stood exposed. In the ages that followed, as the people kept adding to the embankment, the hill was leveled off and grew broader. They broke through the northern wall as well and took in as much ground as the enclosure of the whole temple later covered. Then they walled the hill around on three sides from its very base, and finished a work greater than anyone could have hoped for. Long ages were spent on it, and all the sacred treasures too, which were kept full by the tribute sent to God from all over the world. They built both the upper enclosures and the lower temple court. Where the ground was lowest they built the wall up from a depth of four hundred and fifty feet, and in some places more. Yet the whole depth of the foundations could not be seen, for they filled in the ravines a great deal, wanting to bring them level with the narrow streets of the town. The stones used in the building measured sixty feet. The abundance of money and the people’s generosity made their undertakings greater than words can tell, and a work that no one had ever hoped to see finished was brought to completion by perseverance and time. [a]

The works on top of these foundations were worthy of them. All the colonnades were double, and their columns, each a single block of the whitest marble, stood thirty-seven and a half feet high, and the colonnades were roofed with panels of cedar. Their natural costliness, their polish and the fit of their joints made a remarkable sight, but they had no added ornament of painting or carving on the outside. The colonnades were forty-five feet wide, and the whole circuit of them measured about three-quarters of a mile, including the Antonia. The entire open court was paved with stones of every kind. [b]

As one went through this court toward the second temple court, there was a stone railing all around it, four and a half feet high and very gracefully made. On it, at equal distances, stood slabs giving warning of the law of purity, some in Greek letters and some in Latin, that no foreigner was to pass inside the holy place; for the second court of the temple was called holy. It was reached by fourteen steps from the first, and above it was square and enclosed by a wall of its own. The height of this wall on the outside, though it was sixty feet, was hidden by the steps; on the inside it was thirty-seven and a half feet, for since it was built against higher ground with steps, it was no longer all visible from inside, being covered by the hill. Beyond the fourteen steps there was a space of fifteen feet up to the wall, all of it level. From there other flights of five steps each led up to the gates. On the north and south there were eight gates, four on each side, and on the east there had to be two. For a separate space had been walled off on that side for the women to worship in, so a second gate was needed; it was cut opposite the first. On the other sides too there was one gate on the south and one on the north by which women were brought into the Court of the Women. Women were not allowed to pass through the other gates, nor to go beyond their own partition by their own gate. This place was open for worship to the women of the country and to women of the same race from abroad, equally. The western side had no gate, but the wall there was built unbroken. The colonnades between the gates faced inward from the wall, in front of the treasuries, and were carried on very fine and large columns. They were single, and apart from their size they were in no way inferior to those of the lower court.

Nine of the gates were covered all over with gold and silver, and so were their doorposts and lintels. But one, the one outside the sanctuary, was of Corinthian bronze, and it far surpassed in value those plated with silver and overlaid with gold. Each gateway had two doors, each forty-five feet high and twenty-two and a half feet wide. Inside the entrances the gateways widened out, and on each side they had rooms like towers, forty-five feet in breadth and length and more than sixty feet high, each supported by two columns eighteen feet around. The other gates were all of the same size, but the one beyond the Corinthian gate, opening from the Court of the Women on the east, opposite the gate of the sanctuary, was much larger. It was seventy-five feet high, its doors sixty feet, and its ornament was richer, with a heavy plating of silver and gold. It was Alexander, the father of Tiberius, who had poured this plating over the nine gates. Fifteen steps led up to the greater gate from the partition of the women’s court; they were shallower than the five steps at the other gates. [f]

The sanctuary itself, the holy temple, stood in the middle and was reached by twelve steps. In front its height and breadth were equal, a hundred and fifty feet each, but behind it was sixty feet narrower, for at the front it had what one might call shoulders, extending thirty feet on either side. Its first gate was a hundred and five feet high and thirty-seven and a half feet wide, and it had no doors, for it showed forth heaven, unseen and never shut. Its whole face was covered with gold, and through it the first chamber could be seen from outside in all its great size, and everything around the inner gate shone with gold before the eyes of those who looked. Since the sanctuary was of two stories inside, only the first chamber lay open to view, straight up to its full height: it rose a hundred and thirty-five feet, and was seventy-five feet long and thirty wide. The gate through this chamber was, as I said, covered all over with gold, as was the whole wall around it. Above it, too, were the golden vines, from which hung clusters of grapes as tall as a man. Because the sanctuary was of two stories, the inner part was lower than the outer face that one saw. It had golden doors eighty-two and a half feet high and twenty-four feet wide, and in front of them hung a curtain of the same length. It was a Babylonian tapestry, embroidered with blue, fine linen, scarlet and purple, wonderfully worked. Nor was the mixing of these materials without meaning: it was a kind of image of the universe. The scarlet seemed to hint at fire, the fine linen at the earth, the blue at the air, and the purple at the sea. Two of them were likened by their color; the fine linen and the purple by their origin, since the earth produces the one and the sea the other. Embroidered on the curtain was the whole panorama of the heavens, except for the signs of the zodiac. [i]

Those who went inside were received by the ground floor of the sanctuary. It was ninety feet high and as long, and thirty feet wide. These ninety feet were divided again. The first part, cut off at sixty feet, held three works most wonderful and famous among all mankind: the lampstand, the table and the altar of incense. The seven lamps stood for the planets, for that is how many branched out from the lampstand. The twelve loaves on the table stood for the circle of the zodiac and the year. The altar of incense, with its thirteen spices, gathered from the sea and from the land both uninhabited and inhabited, signified that all things belong to God and are for God. The innermost part was thirty feet long, and it too was separated from the outer by a curtain. Nothing at all was in it. No one might enter it, defile it or see it, and it was called the Holy of Holies. Around the sides of the lower sanctuary were many three-storied rooms opening into one another, with entrances to them from each side of the gate. The upper part had no such rooms, since it was narrower; it rose sixty feet and was plainer than the lower. So, with the ninety feet of the ground floor, the whole height came to a hundred and fifty feet. [l]

The outside face of the sanctuary lacked nothing that could astonish either mind or eye. It was covered all over with massive plates of gold, and at the first light of the rising sun it flashed back a fiery glare, so that those who forced themselves to look at it turned their eyes away as from the rays of the sun. To strangers approaching from a distance it looked like a mountain covered with snow, for wherever it was not gilded it was dazzling white. On its top it bristled with sharpened golden spikes, so that no bird could settle on it and foul it. Some of its stones were sixty-seven and a half feet long, seven and a half feet high and nine feet wide. In front of it stood the altar, twenty-two and a half feet high, and square, seventy-five feet in length and breadth alike, with horn-like corners projecting. From the south a gently sloping ramp led up to it. It was built without iron, and no iron ever touched it. Around both the sanctuary and the altar ran a low parapet of fine stone, gracefully made, about eighteen inches high, which kept the people outside apart from the priests. Men with a discharge and lepers were shut out of the city altogether, and women during their monthly periods were shut out of the temple; and even when they were clean, women might not go past the boundary I mentioned. Men who were not completely purified were kept out of the inner court, and priests too were kept out when they were not pure. [m]

Those of priestly descent who did not serve because of some physical defect were present inside the parapet together with the unblemished, and received the portions due to them by their descent, but they wore ordinary clothes; for only the priest on duty put on the sacred dress. The priests without blemish went up to the altar and the sanctuary dressed in fine linen, and above all they kept from undiluted wine, out of awe for the service, so as not to transgress in any way while they ministered. The high priest went up with them, though not always, but on the sabbaths and new moons, and whenever there was a national feast or a yearly festival of the whole people. When he served, he wore drawers covering his thighs up to his private parts, and a linen undertunic, and over it an ankle-length robe of blue, round, with tassels. From the tassels hung golden bells and pomegranates side by side, the bells a sign of thunder and the pomegranates of lightning. The sash that bound the robe to his breast was embroidered with five bands of colors: gold, purple and scarlet, and fine linen and blue, the same colors from which, as we said, the curtains of the sanctuary were woven. Over these he had an ephod of the same mingled colors, with more gold in it. Its shape was like a breastplate worn as a garment. Two golden brooches like small shields fastened it, and set in these were the largest and most beautiful sardonyxes, engraved with the names of the forefathers of the nation’s tribes. On the other part were fastened twelve more stones, in four rows of three: sardius, topaz, emerald; carbuncle, jasper, sapphire; agate, amethyst, ligure; onyx, beryl, chrysolite. On each of these again one of the names was engraved. A linen turban covered his head, wreathed with blue, and around it was another crown, of gold, bearing the sacred letters in relief; these are four vowels. He did not wear this dress at other times, but put on plainer clothing. When he went into the inmost sanctuary, he went in alone, once a year, on the day when it is our custom for all to fast to God. About the city and the temple, and the customs and laws concerning it, we will speak more precisely later, for there is much left to say about them. [n]

The Antonia stood at the corner where two colonnades of the first temple court met, the western and the northern. It was built on a rock seventy-five feet high, sheer on every side. It was the work of King Herod, and in it above all he showed his natural grandeur. First, from its base up, the rock was covered with smooth slabs of stone, both for beauty and so that anyone who tried to climb up or down it would slip off. Then, in front of the tower building itself, there was a wall four and a half feet high, and inside it the whole mass of the Antonia rose sixty feet. Inside it had the room and layout of a palace. It was divided into rooms of every kind and use, colonnaded courts, baths, and broad courtyards for soldiers’ quarters, so that in having everything needed it seemed a city, and in its splendor a palace. Its whole shape was like a tower, with four more towers at its corners. Three of these were seventy-five feet high, but the one at the southeast corner was a hundred and five feet, so that the whole temple could be overlooked from it. Where it joined the colonnades of the temple it had stairways down to both, by which the guards went down. For a Roman unit was always stationed there, and at the festivals they spread out in arms along the colonnades to watch the people and keep them from any revolt. The temple lay over the city like a fortress, and the Antonia over the temple, and in the Antonia were the guards of all three. The upper city had its own fortress, Herod’s palace. The hill Bezetha, as I said, was cut off from the Antonia. It was the highest of all, was built up as part of the New City, and alone blocked the view of the temple on the north. For now this is enough about the city and its walls, since I intend to describe each part more exactly later. [r]