The Fight for the Antonia

So the sufferings of Jerusalem grew worse every day. The rebels were provoked all the more by their disasters, and the famine, having consumed the people, now fed on them as well. The heaps of corpses throughout the city were a horrible sight and gave off a pestilent stench, and they hindered the fighting men in their sallies, for like men advancing across a battlefield after untold slaughter, they had to tread on the bodies. Yet as they trod on them they neither shuddered nor pitied, nor did they take this outrage against the dead as an ill omen for themselves. With their right hands stained with the blood of their own countrymen, they rushed out to war against foreigners, reproaching the Deity, it seems to me, for being slow to punish them; for the war was now made bold not by hope of victory but by despair of being saved. [a]

The Romans, though they had great trouble gathering timber, raised their earthworks in twenty-one days, having stripped all the country around the city, as I said before, for about eleven miles in every direction. The sight of the land, too, was pitiful. Places once beautiful with trees and pleasure gardens were now laid waste on every side and cut bare of their timber. No foreigner who had seen Judea as it was, and the lovely suburbs of the city, and now saw its desolation, could have kept from lamenting and groaning at how great the change was. The war had ruined every mark of beauty. Anyone who had known the place before and came upon it suddenly would not have recognized it; standing in it, he would still have asked where the city was.

For Romans and Jews alike, the finishing of the earthworks was the beginning of fear. The Jews expected the city to be taken unless they could burn these too; the Romans expected never to take it if these too were destroyed. There was no timber left, and the soldiers’ bodies were giving out under the labor and their spirits under one failure after another. Indeed, the disasters in the city disheartened the Romans more than those inside it. For all their terrible sufferings, the Romans found the fighters no softer, and their own hopes were always being dashed. Their earthworks were beaten by the enemy’s stratagems, their engines by the solidity of the wall, their hand-to-hand fighting by the daring of those they fought; and worst of all, they found the Jews’ strength of spirit rising above faction, famine, war and all their many evils. They began to think these men’s charges could not be withstood, and their cheerfulness in disaster could not be conquered. What would they not endure with good fortune on their side, men whom misfortune only turned to courage? For these reasons the Romans kept a stronger guard on the earthworks.

John’s party at the Antonia, meanwhile, took precautions for the future in case the wall should be thrown down, and before the rams were set up they attacked the works. But they did not succeed. They came out with torches, but before they reached the earthworks they turned back, their hopes cooled. In the first place, their plan did not seem to be agreed: they rushed out in separate parties, at intervals, hesitantly and in fear; in a word, not like Jews. They lacked what is distinctive of the nation: daring, dash, a charge all together, and refusing to turn back even when things go wrong. [d]

They came out with less than their usual vigor, and they found the Romans drawn up more strongly than usual. The Romans had fenced the earthworks on every side with their bodies and their full armor so closely that they left no gap anywhere for fire to slip in, and each man had steeled himself not to be moved from his place short of death. Besides the fact that all their hopes would be cut off if these works too were burned, the soldiers felt a terrible shame at the thought that cunning might beat valor in everything, recklessness beat arms, numbers beat skill, and Jews beat Romans. At the same time the artillery helped them, reaching the Jews as they ran forward. Each man who fell was in the way of the man behind him, and the danger of going further made them faint-hearted. Of those who got inside the range of the missiles, some were dismayed by the enemy’s good order and close ranks before they came to grips, and others turned back when the spears pricked them. In the end, blaming one another for cowardice, they withdrew having done nothing. The attempt was made on the first day of the month Panemus.

When the Jews had withdrawn, the Romans brought up the engines, while stones were hurled at them from the Antonia, along with fire, iron, and every missile that necessity supplied to the Jews. For though the Jews relied heavily on their wall and despised the engines, they still tried to keep the Romans from bringing them up. The Romans supposed that the Jews’ eagerness to keep the Antonia from being struck came from the weakness of its wall, and hoping that its foundations were rotten, they strove against them all the harder. The wall did not give under the blows. But the Romans, though continually pelted, yielded to none of the dangers from above and kept the engines at work. When they were getting the worst of it and being crushed by the stones, others roofed themselves over with their shields and undermined the foundations with their hands and crowbars, and by stubborn labor they worked four stones loose. Night stopped both sides. During that night the wall, shaken by the rams, suddenly collapsed at the place where John had dug his tunnel in his plot against the earlier earthworks, for the tunnel gave way.

This turn of events affected the minds of both sides in an unexpected way. The Jews, who might have been expected to lose heart, were confident that the Antonia would still hold, because the fall had not taken them by surprise and they had prepared for it beforehand. The Romans’ unexpected joy at the collapse was quickly quenched by the sight of another wall, which John’s party had built behind it. Still, the assault looked easier than before. It seemed easier to climb up over the fallen rubble, and they supposed that this wall was much weaker than the Antonia and, being makeshift, would soon be brought down. Yet no one dared to climb it, for certain death awaited those who led the way. [f]

Titus believed that soldiers’ eagerness is best roused by hope and by words, and that exhortations and promises often make men forget danger, and sometimes even despise death. So he gathered the bravest of his men together and put them to the test. “Fellow soldiers, to urge men on to what carries no danger is inglorious for those who are urged, and it convicts the one urging them of cowardice as well. Exhortation, I think, is needed only for dangerous undertakings; the others men ought to do of themselves. So I grant you myself that the climb up this wall is hard. But that those who aspire to valor should above all grapple with difficulties, that a glorious death is a fine thing, and that the courage of those who lead the way will not go unrewarded, this I will now set out. [g]

“Let your first spur be the very thing that might hold some of you back: the patience of the Jews and their endurance in their sufferings. It is shameful for you, who are Romans and my soldiers, who in peace are taught war and in war are used to winning, to be outdone by Jews in strength of hand or of spirit, and that at the very end of victory, with God working alongside us. Our setbacks come from the Jews’ madness, while their sufferings are increased by your valor and by God’s help. Faction, famine, siege, and walls falling without our engines: what can these be but God’s anger against them and his help for us? It would not be like us, then, not only to be bested by our inferiors but to betray the alliance God has given us.

“And is it not shameful that the Jews, for whom defeat carries no great disgrace, since they have learned to be slaves, despise death so as not to suffer that any longer, and often charge into our midst, not in hope of winning but simply to show their courage; while you, masters of almost all the land and sea, for whom not to conquer is itself a disgrace, do not once venture against the enemy, but sit idle with such weapons as these, waiting for famine and fortune to do the work against them, and this when at small risk you could achieve everything? Once we are up on the Antonia, we have the city. Even if there should still be some fighting against those inside, which I do not expect, to be on the summit and on top of the enemy before they can catch their breath guarantees us complete victory, and quickly.

“For my part, I will pass over for now any hymn to death in war, and to the immortality of those who fall in the fury of battle. But on those who think otherwise I would call down death in peacetime by disease, since their soul is condemned to the grave along with the body. What good man does not know that souls set free from the flesh by the sword in the line of battle are welcomed by the ether, the purest of the elements, and set among the stars; that they become good spirits and kindly heroes and show themselves to their own descendants? But souls that waste away together with diseased bodies, however clean they may be of stains and defilements, are blotted out by a night beneath the earth and swallowed up in deep forgetfulness, reaching at once the end of their life, of their bodies, and of their memory too. If death has been spun for every man as a necessity, and the sword is a gentler servant of it than any disease, how is it not ignoble to refuse to the public need what we must in any case pay to fate?

“I have said all this as though those who make the attempt could not come through alive. But brave men can be saved even out of the greatest dangers. In the first place, the part that has fallen is easy to climb, and all that has been built up is easy to pull down. Take heart, then, many of you together, set about the work, and be encouragement and help to one another; your boldness will quickly break the enemy’s spirit. Perhaps your success may even be bloodless, if only you make the start. They will try to stop you as you climb, as one would expect; but once you have slipped past them and forced your way in, they will not hold out any longer, even if only a few of you get there first. As for the man who leads the way, I would be ashamed not to make him envied for his rewards. If he lives, he will command those who are now his equals; and blessed honors will follow those who fall as well.”

At this speech of Titus, the rest of the crowd were frightened by the size of the danger. But there was a man named Sabinus, serving in the cohorts, a Syrian by birth, who proved himself outstanding both in deeds and in spirit. Anyone who had seen him beforehand would not have thought him even an ordinary soldier, from the look of his body: he was dark-skinned, thin and wiry. But a heroic soul lived in that slight body, a body much too narrow for its own strength. He was the first to stand up. “I give myself to you, Caesar, gladly. I will be the first up the wall. I pray that your good fortune may go with my strength and my resolve; but if fate should begrudge me success in this attempt, know that I will not have failed against my expectation, but will have chosen death for you deliberately.” [j]

With that, he held his shield up over his head with his left hand, drew his sword with his right, and advanced on the wall at about the sixth hour of the day. Eleven others followed him, and only eleven, moved to rival his courage; but he went far ahead of them all, driven by a superhuman impulse. The guards on the wall hurled javelins at them, shot countless missiles at them from every side, and rolled down huge rocks, which swept away some of the eleven. But Sabinus, meeting the missiles head on and buried under them, did not check his charge until he had reached the top and put the enemy to flight. The Jews, astonished at his strength and his courage of spirit, and imagining besides that more men had come up than had, turned and ran.

Here one might well complain of fortune, as jealous of valor and always blocking the most extraordinary feats. This man, at the very moment he had achieved his aim, lost his footing, stumbled against a rock and fell headlong over it with a great crash. The Jews turned back, and seeing him alone and down, pelted him from every side. He rose to one knee, covered himself with his shield, and at first defended himself and wounded many who came near him. But in time, under the number of his wounds, his right arm gave way, and at last, before he gave up his life, he was buried under the missiles: a man who for his bravery deserved better fortune, but who fell as his venture made likely. Of the others, the Jews crushed three with stones and killed them when they had already reached the top; the other eight were dragged down wounded and carried back to the camp. This happened on the third day of the month Panemus.

Two days later twenty of the guards posted in front on the earthworks got together, and took with them the standard-bearer of the Fifth Legion, two horsemen from the cavalry squadrons, and one trumpeter. At about the ninth hour of the night they advanced quietly through the ruins to the Antonia, cut the throats of the first sentries as they slept, took possession of the wall, and ordered the trumpeter to sound. At this the rest of the guards suddenly started up and fled before anyone could see how many had come up; fear and the trumpet made them imagine that a great number of the enemy had climbed. As soon as Caesar heard the signal, he quickly had the army arm itself, and with his commanders and his picked men he was the first to go up. As the Jews fled into the temple, the Romans themselves burst in after them through the tunnel John had dug toward the Roman earthworks. [k]

Then the rebels of both divisions, John’s and Simon’s, drew up on either side and held them back, falling short in nothing of the utmost strength and eagerness. They thought the Romans’ entering the sanctuary would be the end, the taking of the city; the Romans thought it the beginning of victory. A fierce battle broke out around the entrances, the Romans forcing their way in to seize the temple as well, the Jews driving them back toward the Antonia. Missiles and spears were useless to both sides. They drew their swords and closed with each other, and in the struggle it was impossible to tell on which side each man was fighting, for the men were tangled together and jumbled in the narrow space, and the shouting was so loud that it reached the ear as one meaningless roar.

There was great slaughter on both sides, and the fighters trampled and crushed the bodies and the armor of the fallen. Whichever way the battle surged and weighed down, there were shouts of encouragement from those gaining and wails from those giving way. There was no room for flight or for pursuit, only an evenly matched swaying back and forth, with the lines mixed together. Those in front had to kill or be killed, with no escape, for those behind on each side kept pushing their own men forward and left no gap between the lines.

At last the Jews’ fury began to get the better of the Romans’ skill, and the whole battle was already tilting their way; they had fought from the ninth hour of the night to the seventh hour of the day. The Jews were there in full force, with the danger of capture to spur their courage; the Romans had only part of their army, for the legions on which the men then fighting depended had not yet come up. So for the present it seemed enough to the Romans to hold the Antonia.

But there was a centurion named Julian, from Bithynia, a man of note, the finest of all I came to know in that war for skill at arms, strength of body and courage of spirit. He had been standing beside Titus at the Antonia, and when he saw the Romans already giving ground and defending themselves badly, he leaped forward and single-handed turned back the Jews, who were already winning, as far as the corner of the inner court of the temple. The whole crowd fled before him, thinking neither his strength nor his daring could be a man’s. He darted through the midst of them as they scattered, this way and that, killing those he caught. Nothing that Caesar saw seemed more wonderful to him, and nothing more terrifying to the others. [m]

But he too, it seems, was pursued by fate, which no mortal can escape. Like every other soldier, he wore shoes studded with thick, sharp nails, and as he ran over the stone pavement he slipped and fell on his back with a great clash of armor. This turned the fugitives back. A shout went up from the Romans on the Antonia, who feared for the man, while the Jews crowded round him and struck at him from every side with spears and swords. He took many blows of iron on his shield, and again and again he tried to get up but was thrown back by the number of those striking him; yet lying there he still stabbed many of them with his sword. Nor was he killed quickly, for his helmet and breastplate guarded every place where a blow could kill, and he drew his neck in; only when his other limbs had been hacked and no one dared come to his aid did he give in.

Caesar was deeply moved to see a man of such valor killed in the sight of so many. He wanted to go to his help himself, but the ground shut him off, and those who could have helped were too terrified. So Julian, after a long struggle with death, having left few of those who killed him unwounded, at last had his throat cut, though with difficulty. He left behind him the greatest renown, not only among the Romans and with Caesar but among his enemies too. The Jews seized his body, routed the Romans again and shut them up in the Antonia.

On the Jewish side, those who fought most notably in this battle were Alexas and Gyphtheus of John’s division; of Simon’s men, Malachias and Judas son of Merton, and Jacob son of Sosas, the commander of the Idumeans; and of the zealots, two brothers, Simon and Judas, the sons of Ari.