Crosses Before the Wall

Titus’s earthworks were making progress, though his soldiers suffered badly from the wall. He sent out a detachment of cavalry with orders to lie in ambush for those who went out into the ravines to gather food. Some of these were fighting men who could no longer live on what they plundered, but most were poor people of the town, who were kept from deserting by fear for their families. They had no hope of slipping past the rebels with their wives and children, and they could not bear to leave them behind to be butchered by the robbers on their account. Hunger made them bold to go out, and all that was left for them was to be caught as they tried to slip past the enemy. When they were seized they were forced to defend themselves, and after fighting, it seemed too late to plead for mercy. So they were whipped, tortured with every kind of outrage before they died, and then crucified opposite the wall. [a]

Titus found the sight pitiable, for five hundred were caught every day, and sometimes more. Yet he saw that it was not safe to let men taken by force go free, and that guarding so many would make prisoners of their guards. Above all, he did not stop it because he hoped the Jews might yield at the sight, for fear of suffering the same if they did not surrender. The soldiers, out of rage and hatred, nailed up those they caught in one posture after another, by way of mockery; and so great was their number that there was no room left for the crosses, and no crosses left for the bodies.

So far from changing their minds at this suffering, the rebels used it to deceive the rest of the people. They dragged the families of deserters onto the wall, together with those of the townspeople who were eager to go over under a pledge of safety, and showed them what happened to those who fled to the Romans, telling them that the men who had been seized had gone over as suppliants and had not been taken prisoner. This held back many who were eager to desert, until the truth became known. Some, however, fled at once, as if to certain punishment, thinking death at the enemy’s hands a rest compared with famine. [c]

Titus ordered the hands of many of the captives cut off, so that they would not be taken for deserters and their mutilation would make them believed, and sent them in to Simon and John. He urged them to stop now at last and not force him to destroy the city, but by repenting even at this last hour to save their own lives, their great country, and a temple that belonged to no other people. Then he went round the earthworks, urging on the workers, to show that his deeds would soon follow his words.

In reply the rebels reviled Caesar himself and his father from the wall. They shouted that they despised death, which they had rightly chosen before slavery; that they would do the Romans every harm they could while they had breath; that they cared nothing for their country, since, as he said, it was going to be destroyed; and that if the temple perished, the world was a better temple for God than this one. Yet this temple too, they said, would be saved by him who dwelt in it; with him as their ally they would laugh at every threat that was not followed by deeds, for the outcome rested with God. Such were the things they shouted, mixed with their abuse.

Meanwhile Antiochus Epiphanes also arrived. He brought a good many heavy infantry and, as his own guard, a band called the Macedonians, all of the same age, tall, just past boyhood, and armed and trained in the Macedonian manner, which is how they got the name, though most of them had no claim to that race. Of all the kings under Roman rule, the king of Commagene had been the most fortunate, until he tasted a reversal; and he too showed in his old age that no one should be called happy before he dies. But his son, who was there at the time while his father was still at the height of his fortune, said he wondered why the Romans were so slow to attack the wall. He was a warrior himself and reckless by nature, and so strong that his daring seldom failed. Titus smiled and answered that the labor was open to all, and Antiochus, just as he was, charged the wall with his Macedonians. He himself, thanks to his strength and skill, kept clear of the Jews’ missiles while shooting arrows at them; but his young men were badly mauled, all but a few, for out of shame at their promise they kept on fighting to outdo one another. At last many withdrew wounded, having learned that even real Macedonians, if they are to conquer, need Alexander’s luck. [d]

The Romans had begun their earthworks on the twelfth of the month Artemisius, and with difficulty finished them on the twenty-ninth, after seventeen days of unbroken labor. Four very large ones had been raised. The one against the Antonia was thrown up by the fifth legion opposite the middle of the pool called Struthius; the next by the twelfth legion, about thirty feet away. The tenth legion, a good way off from these, worked on the north side by the pool called Amygdalon, and the fifteenth some forty-five feet from it, by the high priest’s tomb. [h]

The engines were already being brought up when John, from inside, dug a mine from the area by the Antonia out under the earthworks, propping the tunnels with stakes so that the works above hung over the hollow. Then he brought in timber smeared with pitch and bitumen and set it alight. As the props burned away, the tunnel caved in all at once, and the earthworks collapsed into it with a tremendous crash. At first a thick smoke rose with the dust, as the fire was smothered by the fall; but as the crushed timber burned through, open flame burst out. The Romans were struck with alarm at the suddenness and with dismay at the cleverness of the scheme. The blow came just when they thought they had won, and it chilled their hopes for the future too. Fighting the fire seemed useless, since even if it were put out, the earthworks had been swallowed up.

Two days later Simon’s men attacked the other earthworks, for the Romans had brought their siege engines up there and were already shaking the wall. A certain Tephtheus from Garis, a town in Galilee, and Magassarus, one of the royal servants of Mariamne, together with a man from Adiabene, the son of Nabataeus, who because of his misfortune was also called Agiras, which means “lame,” snatched up torches and dashed out against the engines. No bolder or more terrifying men sallied out of the city in the whole war. They ran out as if to friends and not into a mass of enemies; they neither hesitated nor turned back, but burst through the middle of the enemy and set the engines alight. Pelted with missiles and beaten back with swords on every side, they did not stir from their danger until the fire had taken hold of the machines. [j]

When the flames rose, the Romans came running from their camps to help, but the Jews hindered them from the wall and grappled with those who tried to put the fire out, sparing their own bodies not at all. The Romans tried to drag the engines out of the fire while the wicker screens over them were burning, but the Jews seized them through the very flames, gripped the red-hot iron, and would not let the rams go. From the engines the fire spread to the earthworks and outran those trying to defend them. Then the Romans, surrounded by flames and despairing of saving their works, withdrew to their camps. The Jews pressed on, their numbers growing all the time as men came out from inside to help. Emboldened by success, they gave free rein to their fury, advanced as far as the camp’s defenses, and came to grips with the guards.

There is a company that stands guard in front of a Roman camp, relieved in turn, and a terrible Roman law hangs over it: whoever gives ground, for any reason at all, dies. These men, preferring death with honor to death as a punishment, stood firm, and at the sight of their plight many of those who had fled turned back out of shame. Posting their bolt-shooters along the wall, the Romans held off the crowd that kept pouring out of the city, men who gave no thought to their own safety or protection. For the Jews grappled with whoever they met, threw themselves unguarded onto the spear points, and struck the enemy with their very bodies. It was by daring more than by deeds that they prevailed, and the Romans gave way more to their boldness than to the damage done them.

By now Titus had arrived from the Antonia, where he had gone to look for a site for more earthworks. He sharply rebuked the soldiers: masters of the enemy’s walls, they were in danger of losing their own, and were themselves suffering the lot of besieged men, having let the Jews loose on themselves as if out of a prison. Then with his picked troops he went round and took the enemy in the flank himself. The Jews, though under attack in front, turned to face him too and held their ground. The lines became mixed together; the dust blinded their eyes and the shouting deafened their ears, and neither side could any longer tell friend from foe. The Jews stood fast, not so much from strength now as from despair of rescue; the Romans were braced by their regard for glory and for their arms, and by Caesar’s going into danger ahead of them. I think that in the end, in the excess of their fury, they would have seized the whole mass of the Jews, if the Jews had not anticipated the turn of the battle and withdrawn into the city. With their earthworks destroyed, the Romans were downcast at having lost their long labor in a single hour, and many despaired of taking the city with the usual engines of war.