Josephus Pleads at the Wall

Titus decided to relax the siege for a short while and give the rebels time to think, to see whether the demolition of the second wall would make them give way at all, or whether they would come to fear the famine, since their plunder would not last them long. He put the pause to good use. The appointed day had come on which the soldiers’ rations had to be issued, and he ordered the officers to parade the army in full view of the enemy and count out to each man his money. The soldiers, as their custom was, uncovered their armor, which until then had been kept in its cases, and marched out in full armor, and the cavalry led their horses decked out in their finery. [a]

Far and wide the ground before the city gleamed with silver and gold. Nothing was more delightful to the Romans than that sight, and nothing more terrifying to the enemy. The whole of the old wall and the north side of the temple were crowded with spectators; the houses could be seen full of people leaning out to look, and no part of the city was visible that was not covered with people. Even the boldest were struck with dread at the sight of the whole army gathered in one place, the beauty of their arms, and the good order of the men. I think the rebels would have changed their minds at that sight, had not the enormity of the wrongs they had done the people made them despair of pardon from the Romans. Since death with punishment awaited them if they stopped, they thought death in war much better. Fate, too, was prevailing: the innocent were to perish with the guilty, and the city with its faction.

For four days the Romans went on receiving their rations, legion by legion. On the fifth, when nothing peaceable came from the Jews, Titus divided his legions into two and began earthworks at the Antonia and at John’s tomb. His plan was to take the upper city by way of the tomb and the temple by way of the Antonia, for unless the temple was taken, it was not safe to hold even the town. At each of the two points two earthworks were raised, one by each legion. Those working by the tomb were checked by sallies of the Idumeans and of Simon’s troops; those before the Antonia, by John’s men and the mass of the zealots. The Jews had the advantage not only in hand-to-hand fighting, since they fought from higher ground, but also because they had now learned to use the engines; daily practice had little by little built up their skill. They had three hundred bolt-shooters and forty stone throwers, and with them they made the Romans’ earthworks hard going. [b]

Titus knew that whether the city was saved or destroyed, it would be saved or destroyed for himself. So while he pressed on with the siege, he did not neglect to urge the Jews to change their minds, and he mixed advice with his works. Knowing that words often achieve more than arms, he himself urged them to save themselves by surrendering a city already all but taken, and he sent Josephus to speak to them in their native tongue, thinking they might give way to one of their own race.

Josephus went round the wall, trying to keep out of range and yet within hearing, and earnestly begged them to spare themselves and the people, to spare their country and their temple, and not to be more unfeeling toward these things than foreigners were. The Romans, he said, who had no share in them, respected the holy things of their enemies and had kept their hands off them until now, while those who had been brought up with them, and who alone would enjoy them if they were saved, were rushing to destroy them. Surely they could see that their strongest walls had fallen, and that the one remaining was weaker than those already taken. They knew that the power of Rome was irresistible, and that slavery to the Romans was nothing new to them. If it was a fine thing to fight for liberty, they should have done it at the start; but to submit once and yield for so long, and then to try to shake off the yoke, was the act of men bent on dying miserably, not of lovers of liberty. [c]

One might well disdain humbler masters, he said, but not those who held the whole world in their hands. What had escaped the Romans, except what was useless because of heat or cold? Fortune had gone over to them from every side, and God, who carries dominion round from nation to nation, was now in Italy. There was a law firmly fixed among beasts and men alike: to yield to the stronger, and that mastery belongs to those who are superior in arms. That was why their ancestors, who were their betters in soul and body and in every other resource, had yielded to the Romans; they would never have endured it had they not known that God was on the Romans’ side. And what were they relying on to hold out, when most of the city was already taken, and those inside, though their walls still stood, were worse off than if they had been captured? The Romans were well aware of the famine in the city, which was already consuming the people and would soon consume the fighting men too. Even if the Romans gave up the siege and did not fall on the city sword in hand, a war no one could fight was sitting beside them inside, growing every hour, unless they could take up arms against famine itself and fight it, and alone of all men master the needs of nature.

He added that it was right to change course before disaster was past cure, and to turn to safety while they still could. The Romans would bear them no grudge for the past, unless they persisted in their arrogance to the end. They were by nature mild in victory and put their advantage before their anger, and their advantage was not to have the city empty of men or the country a desert. That was why Caesar even now wished to give them his pledge. If he took the city by force, he would save no one, especially if they had not listened to his appeal even in the depths of their misery. That the third wall would soon be taken, the walls already taken were proof enough; and even if the fortification proved unbreakable, the famine would fight against them on the Romans’ side.

As Josephus urged this, many jeered at him from the wall, many cursed him, and some shot at him. When he could not persuade them with plain advice, he turned to the history of their own nation and cried out: “Wretches! Have you forgotten your own allies, that you fight the Romans with weapons and hands? When did we ever conquer anyone else that way? When has God, who founded us, failed to avenge the Jews when they were wronged? Will you not turn around and see where you are fighting from, and how great an Ally you have defiled? Will you not remember the more than human deeds done for your fathers, and what great wars this holy place has overthrown for us in the past? I shudder myself to tell the works of God to ears unworthy of them. Yet listen, so that you may know that you are fighting not only the Romans but God. [d]

“The king of Egypt in those days, Neco, who was also called Pharaoh, came down with a vast army and carried off Queen Sarah, the mother of our race. What did her husband Abraham, our forefather, do? Did he punish the outrage with arms? Yet he had three hundred and eighteen officers, and under each of them a boundless force. Or did he count them as nothing without God’s help, and lift up pure hands toward this place that you have now defiled, and enlist the invincible One as his helper? Was not the queen sent back to her husband undefiled after a single evening, while the Egyptian fled, trembling at the visions he had seen in the night, worshiping the place you have soaked in your own countrymen’s blood, and gave silver and gold to the Hebrews as a people loved by God?

“Shall I speak of our fathers’ migration to Egypt? Ill-treated and subject to foreign kings for four hundred years, though they could have defended themselves with arms and hands, did they not commit themselves to God? Who does not know of Egypt overrun with every kind of wild beast and wasted by every disease, of the land that bore no crops, the Nile that failed, the ten plagues one after another, and how because of these our fathers were sent on their way under escort, without bloodshed and without danger, as God led them out to be the keepers of his own temple?

“Again, when the holy ark was carried off by the Syrians, did not Palestine groan, and the image of Dagon, and the whole nation of those who had seized it? Rotting in the hidden parts of their bodies, their bowels coming out with their food, they brought it back with the very hands that had stolen it, to the sound of cymbals and drums, appeasing the holy thing with every kind of offering. It was God who was our fathers’ general in all this, because they laid aside hands and weapons and left it to him to decide the matter.

“When Sennacherib king of Assyria, dragging all Asia behind him, encamped around this city, did he fall by human hands? Were not those hands at rest from arms and raised in prayer, while an angel of God destroyed his countless army in one night? When the Assyrian rose the next day, he found a hundred and eighty-five thousand dead, and with the rest he fled from Hebrews who were unarmed and did not pursue him. You know too of the slavery in Babylon, where the people lived in exile for seventy years and did not shake themselves free until Cyrus granted their freedom as a favor to God. So they were sent home by him, and once again served their Ally in his temple.

“In short, there is no instance in which our fathers succeeded by arms, or failed without them when they committed themselves to God. When they stayed where they were, they conquered as their Judge saw fit; when they fought, they always came to grief. For example, when the king of Babylon besieged this city, and our king Zedekiah fought him against the prophecies of Jeremiah, he was himself taken and saw the town and the temple razed. And yet how much more moderate that king was than your leaders, and the people under him than you! When Jeremiah cried out that they were hateful to God for their offenses against him, and would be taken unless they surrendered the city, neither the king nor the people put him to death. But you—to pass over what goes on inside, for I could not describe your lawless deeds as they deserve—you curse me and shoot at me for urging you to save yourselves, enraged at being reminded of your sins and unable to bear even the mention of the deeds you commit every day.

“Again, when Antiochus who was called Epiphanes lay before this city and had committed many outrages against the Deity, our forefathers went out under arms. They were slaughtered in the battle, the town was plundered by the enemy, and the sanctuary lay desolate for three years and six months. What need is there to tell the rest? Who enlisted the Romans against our nation? Was it not the impiety of its own people? Where did our slavery begin? Was it not with faction among our forefathers, when the madness of Aristobulus and Hyrcanus and their quarrel with each other brought Pompey against this city, and God made those unworthy of freedom subject to the Romans? After a siege of three months they surrendered, though they had not sinned against the holy things and the laws as you have, and had far greater means for war. Do we not know the end of Antigonus son of Aristobulus? In his reign God again drove the people into captivity for their offenses. Herod son of Antipater brought in Sosius, and Sosius a Roman army; the people were surrounded and besieged for six months, until they paid the penalty for their sins and were taken, and the city was plundered by the enemy.

“So arms have never been granted to our nation; for us, to go to war is to be taken. Those who dwell in a holy place must, I think, leave everything to God’s judgment, and disregard human hands only when they have won over the Judge above. But you—which of the things our lawgiver blessed have you done? Which of the things he cursed have you left undone? How much more impious you are than those who were taken more quickly! Secret sins—thefts, I mean, and ambushes and adulteries—are beneath you; you compete in robbery and murder and open strange new roads of vice. The temple has become a sink for everything, and the divine place is polluted by the hands of its own people, the place the Romans reverenced from afar, setting aside many of their own customs out of deference to your law. And after all this do you expect help from the Ally you have outraged? Righteous suppliants you are indeed, and pure are the hands you lift to your Helper!

“Was it with such hands that our king prayed against the Assyrian, when God laid that great army low in one night? Are the Romans acting like the Assyrian, that you may hope for a like vengeance? Did not he take money from our king on condition that he would not sack the city, and then come down, against his oaths, to burn the temple? The Romans ask only the customary tribute, which our fathers paid to theirs. When they get it, they neither sack the city nor touch the holy things. They grant you everything else: freedom for your families and the enjoyment of your own possessions, and they preserve your sacred laws. It is madness to expect God to show himself against the just as he did against the unjust. He knows how to strike at once when he must; he broke the Assyrians on the first night they camped by the city. So if he had judged our generation worthy of freedom, or the Romans of punishment, he would have struck them at once, as he struck the Assyrians—when Pompey laid hands on the nation, when Sosius came up after him, when Vespasian ravaged Galilee, and last of all now, as Titus drew near the city.

“Yet Pompey and Sosius not only suffered nothing but took the city by storm, and Vespasian went on from his war against us to the throne itself. As for Titus, even the springs that had dried up for you flow more richly for him. You know that before he came, Siloam was failing, and all the springs outside the town, so that water was bought by the jar; now they run so full for your enemies that they suffice not only for them and their animals but for their gardens as well. This portent has been seen before, at the city’s capture, when the king of Babylon I spoke of marched against it, took the city, and burned it and the temple; and yet I think none of that generation was as impious as you. So I believe the Deity has fled from the holy places and now stands on the side of those you are fighting.

“A good man will flee a house of debauchery and loathe those in it. Do you think God still stays among you in your household crimes, he who sees all secret things and hears what is kept silent? What is kept silent among you, what is hidden? What has not been made plain even to your enemies? You parade your lawlessness and compete every day to see who can be the worst, making a show of injustice as if it were virtue. Yet a way of rescue is still left, if you are willing, and the Deity is easily reconciled to those who confess and repent.

“You men of iron, throw down your armor! Have some shame for your country, already falling in ruins. Turn and look at the beauty of what you are betraying: what a city, what a temple, the gifts of how many nations! Will anyone lead the flames against these? Does anyone want them to be no more? And what is more worthy of being saved than these, you who are unbending and more unfeeling than stones? If you cannot look at these things with true eyes, at least pity your families. Let each of you set before his eyes his children, his wife and his parents, whom famine or war will soon consume. I know that my mother, my wife, a family of some note and a house illustrious from of old share this danger with me, and perhaps you think that is why I give you this advice. Kill them; take my blood as the price of your own safety. I too am ready to die, if after my death you will come to your senses.”