The Daily Sacrifice Ceases

Titus ordered the soldiers he had with him to dig up the foundations of Antonia and prepare an easy way up for his whole army. Then he had Josephus brought to him. For he had learned that on that very day, the seventeenth of Panemus, the sacrifice called the Continual Offering had failed for lack of men to offer it to God, and that the people were bitterly distressed over it. He ordered Josephus to say to John again what he had said before: that if some evil passion for fighting had hold of him, he was free to come out with as many men as he liked and fight, without bringing the city and the sanctuary down to ruin along with himself; but he must no longer defile the holy place or offend against God. He was free to have the sacrifices that had lapsed carried out by any Jews he chose. So Josephus took his stand where he could be heard not by John alone but by the multitude as well, and gave them Caesar’s message in Hebrew. He earnestly begged them to spare their native city, to beat back the fire that was already licking at the sanctuary, and to restore their offerings to God. At this the people fell into dejection and silence. But the tyrant heaped abuse and curses on Josephus, and at last added that he would never fear the city’s capture, since it was God’s city. [a]

To this Josephus cried out: “Yes, you have kept it wonderfully pure for God! The holy place remains undefiled! You have committed no impiety against the one whose help you hope for, and he still receives his customary sacrifices! You most impious man, if anyone took away your daily food you would count him your enemy; and yet you hope to have as your ally in this war the very God you have robbed of his everlasting worship? And you lay your sins at the door of the Romans, who to this day care for our laws and are pressing to have restored to God the sacrifices that you have cut off? Who would not groan and lament for the city at so strange a reversal, when foreigners and enemies set right your impiety, while you, a Jew, brought up in our laws, have become harsher toward them than they are? And yet, John, it is no disgrace to repent of evil even at the very last. If you want to save your country, you have a fine example before you in Jehoiachin, king of the Jews. When the king of Babylon made war on him, he left this city of his own accord before it was taken, and with his family accepted a captivity he chose for himself, rather than hand these holy places over to the enemy and look on while the house of God burned. For this a sacred story celebrates him among all the Jews, and his memory, flowing on through the ages and ever new, hands him down undying to every generation that follows. That, John, is a fine example, even though there is danger in it; and I guarantee you pardon from the Romans. Remember that it is one of your own people who urges this, a Jew who makes you this promise; and you ought to consider who is giving the advice, and where he comes from. May I never live to become so much a captive that I give up my own race or forget the laws of our fathers! You are angry again, and shout abuse at me. Well, I deserve even harsher treatment, for I am urging something against fate and trying to force salvation on those whom God has condemned. Who does not know what the writings of the ancient prophets record, and the oracle that hangs over this wretched city and is now on the point of coming true? For they foretold that it would be taken when someone began the slaughter of his own countrymen. And are not the city and the whole temple full of your dead? It is God, then, God himself, who with the Romans is bringing fire to purge it, and sweeping away a city so full of pollution.”

As Josephus said this, with lamentation and tears, sobs choked his voice. The Romans pitied his grief and admired his resolve; but John’s men were only the more exasperated against the Romans, and eager to get Josephus too into their power. Still, his words moved many of the nobility. Some of them, afraid of the rebels’ guards, stayed where they were, though they were convinced that both they and the city were doomed. Others watched for a chance to get away safely and fled to the Romans. Among these were the high priests Joseph and Jesus, and sons of high priests: three sons of Ishmael, who was beheaded in Cyrene; four sons of Matthias; and one son of the other Matthias. This last had slipped away after the death of his father, whom Simon son of Gioras had killed together with three of his sons, as I related earlier. Many others of the nobility went over along with the high priests. Caesar received these men kindly in every way. Knowing that they would find life among foreign customs disagreeable, he sent them to Gophna, advising them to stay there for the time being: when he was free of the war, he would give each of them back his property. So they withdrew gladly, in complete safety, to the small town assigned to them. But when they were no longer to be seen, the rebels again spread the story that the deserters had been butchered by the Romans, plainly to frighten the rest out of running away. For a time the trick worked, as it had before: fear kept the others from deserting. [g]

Afterward Titus recalled the men from Gophna and ordered them to go around the wall with Josephus and show themselves to the people; and at this a great many fled to the Romans. The returned men gathered in a body and, standing in front of the Romans, begged the rebels with groans and tears, first, to let the Romans into the whole city and save their country once more; or, if not, at least to withdraw from the temple altogether and save the sanctuary for their own sake, since the Romans would not dare to burn the holy places except under the most extreme necessity. But the rebels only resisted them the more. Shouting back many blasphemies at the deserters, they set up their bolt-shooters, catapults and stone-throwing engines at intervals over the sacred gates, so that the temple court all around, with its multitude of dead, looked like a mass grave, and the sanctuary itself like a fortress. Into those holy places, which no one might enter, they leaped in their armor, their hands still warm from the slaughter of their own countrymen. They went so far in lawlessness that the very indignation the Jews would naturally have felt if the Romans had committed such outrages against them, the Romans now felt against the Jews for their impiety toward their own religion. Indeed, there was not a soldier who did not look on the sanctuary with awe and bow down to it, and pray that the robbers would repent before their suffering was past cure. [h]

Titus was deeply moved, and once more reproached John’s party: “Was it not you, you most abominable men, who put up this barrier in front of your holy places? Was it not you who set up the slabs along it, engraved in Greek and in our own letters, forbidding anyone to cross the parapet? Did we not allow you to put to death anyone who crossed it, even if he were a Roman? Why then, you wretches, do you now trample corpses inside it? Why do you foul the sanctuary with the blood of foreigners and of your own people? I call to witness the gods of my fathers, and any god who once watched over this place, for I do not think any watches over it now. I call to witness my army, and the Jews who are with me, and you yourselves, that it is not I who force you to defile it. Change the place of your battle, and no Roman will come near your holy places or insult them. I will preserve the sanctuary for you, even against your will.” [j]

When Josephus delivered this message from Caesar, the robbers and the tyrant took these appeals as coming not from goodwill but from cowardice, and grew arrogant. Titus, seeing that these men had neither pity for themselves nor any thought of sparing the sanctuary, returned unwillingly to war. He could not bring his whole force against them, since the place would not hold it. So he picked the thirty best men from every company of a hundred, gave each tribune a thousand of them, put Cerealis in command over them, and ordered them to attack the guards about the ninth hour of the night. He himself was already armed and ready to go down with them, but his friends held him back because of the greatness of the danger, and so did the advice of his commanders. He would achieve more, they said, by sitting up on Antonia and presiding over the contest for his soldiers than by going down and taking the risk in the front line; with Caesar watching, every man would fight bravely. Caesar was persuaded. He told the soldiers that he was staying behind for this one reason: to judge their courage, so that no brave man should go unrewarded and no coward unpunished, but that he who had the power to punish and to honor should see everything with his own eyes and be witness of it all. Then he sent them off to the work at the hour already named, while he himself went out to a point on Antonia with a clear view, and waited anxiously for what would happen. [l]

The men he sent did not find the guards asleep, as they had hoped. The guards sprang up with a shout and closed with them at once, and at the cry of the sentries the rest of those within came running out in a mass. The Romans met the charge of the first; but those who came after them fell foul of their own troops, and many treated their own comrades as enemies. For the shouting on both sides, all confused together, kept them from knowing one another by voice, and the night kept them from knowing one another by sight; and besides, some were blinded by rage and others by fear. So men struck whoever they met, without telling friend from foe. This ignorance did less harm to the Romans, who were locked together under their shields and charged by units, and every man remembered the watchword. The Jews were forever scattering, attacking and retreating at random, and so often looked like enemies to one another: in the dark each man took a comrade falling back toward him for a Roman coming at him. So more of them were wounded by their own side than by the enemy, until day came and from then on the eye could follow the fight. Then they drew up in separate lines and used their missiles and their defenses in good order. Neither side gave ground or tired. The Romans, as under Caesar’s eye, vied with one another man against man and unit against unit, and each believed that this day would begin his promotion if he fought nobly. What spurred the Jews to daring was their fear for themselves and for the temple, and the tyrant standing over them, encouraging some, whipping others and rousing them with threats. For the most part it was a standing fight, in which the balance swung back and forth within a small space and quickly, since neither side had room to flee or to pursue. From Antonia came a constant roar answering every turn of the fight, as the onlookers shouted to their own men to take heart when they were winning and to stand firm when they were giving way. It was like a theater of war: nothing that happened in the battle escaped Titus or those around him. In the end, having begun at the ninth hour of the night, they broke off after the fifth hour of the day at the very spot where the fighting began, neither side having decisively driven the other back; they left the victory hanging evenly between them. Many Romans distinguished themselves. Among the Jews there were, of Simon’s men, Judas son of Mareotes and Simon son of Hosaias; of the Idumeans, Jacob and Simon, Simon being the son of Acatelas and Jacob the son of Sosas; of John’s men, Gephtheus and Alexas; and of the zealots, Simon son of Ari. [m]

Meanwhile the rest of the Roman army had, in seven days, overthrown the foundations of Antonia and prepared a broad road up to the temple. The legions now drew near the first enclosure and began their earthworks. One faced the north-west corner of the inner temple; another was at the northern hall between the two gates; of the other two, one was at the western colonnade of the outer temple, and the other outside, at the northern colonnade. The works went forward only with great labor and hardship, for the Romans had to bring their timber from about twelve miles away. At times they also suffered from ambushes, since their great superiority made them careless, while despair of safety had made the Jews bolder. Some of the cavalry, when they went out to gather wood or fodder, would take the bridles off their horses and let them graze while the foraging went on, and the Jews would dash out in a body and carry them off. As this kept happening, Caesar concluded, as was the truth, that the horses were being lost more through his own men’s carelessness than through Jewish courage, and he decided to use sterner measures to make the rest guard their horses. He ordered one of the soldiers who had lost his horse to be led off to execution, and through this fear he kept the horses of the rest safe: they no longer let them graze loose, but went out on their errands as if they had grown to them. So the Romans kept up the assault on the temple and pushed the earthworks higher. [n]

One day after the Romans had made their ascent, many of the rebels, whose plunder was now running out and whom famine was pressing hard, banded together and attacked the Roman guards on the Mount of Olives about the eleventh hour of the day. They supposed, first, that the Romans would not be expecting an attack, and second, that they would be busy caring for their bodies, so that they could easily break through. But the Romans saw them coming and, running together quickly from the nearby forts, stopped them as they tried to scale and break through the encircling wall. A hard fight followed, and many brave deeds were done on both sides, the Romans joining skill in war to their strength, the Jews fighting with reckless charges and uncontrollable fury. Shame commanded the one side and necessity the other: to the Romans it seemed the height of disgrace to let the Jews go when they were caught as in a net, while the Jews had only one hope of safety, to break through the wall by force. One of the horsemen from a cohort, named Pedanius, when the Jews were already routed and being driven down together into the ravine, rode his horse hard along their flank and snatched up one of the fleeing enemy by the ankle, a young man stoutly built and in full armor. So far did Pedanius lean down from his galloping horse, such strength did he show in his right arm and in the rest of his body, and such skill in horsemanship besides. He carried his captive off like a treasure and brought him to Caesar. Titus admired the strength of the captor and ordered the captive to be punished for his attempt on the wall; then he went back himself to the fighting around the temple and pressed on the earthworks. [q]

Meanwhile the Jews, worn down by these battles as the war climbed steadily higher and crept toward the sanctuary, began, as with a body that is mortifying, to cut off the limbs already infected, to get ahead of the spreading. They set fire to the part of the north-west colonnade that joined Antonia, and then broke away about thirty feet of it, so beginning with their own hands to burn the holy places. Two days later, on the twenty-fourth of the same month, the Romans set fire to the adjoining colonnade; and when the fire had advanced about twenty-two feet, the Jews in the same way cut away the roof. They did not give up the works altogether, but cut through whatever joined them to Antonia. So although they could have stopped the Romans from setting the fire, they kept still when it was thrown in, and measured out its spread to suit their own purpose. Around the temple the clashes never ceased, and the war went on continually, with parties sallying out against one another. [s]

In these days there was a Jew named Jonathan, a man short in stature, contemptible to look at, and of no distinction in family or in anything else. He came out near the tomb of John the high priest and, among many other insolent things he shouted at the Romans, challenged the best of them to single combat. Most of those drawn up there scorned him; some, naturally enough, were afraid of him; and some were moved by a sensible thought, that it was unwise to close with a man who wanted to die. For men who have given up hope of safety have impulses nothing can check, and the Deity is easily moved in their favor; and to risk oneself against men whom it is no great thing to defeat, and to whom it is dangerous and shameful to lose, was not courage but recklessness. For a long time no one came forward, and the Jew kept jeering at them as cowards, for he was a very arrogant man and full of contempt for the Romans. Then one Pudens, a horseman from one of the cavalry squadrons, disgusted by his words and his insolence, and perhaps rashly emboldened too by the man’s small stature, sprang out. He was getting the better of him in the fight when fortune betrayed him: he fell, and Jonathan ran up and cut his throat. Then, standing on the corpse, Jonathan brandished his bloody sword and shook his shield with his left hand, raising one war-cry after another at the army, boasting over the fallen man and mocking the Romans who watched; until, as he was leaping about and playing the fool, a centurion named Priscus shot an arrow that went right through him. At this a shout went up from Jews and Romans alike, though for opposite reasons. Jonathan, reeling with pain, fell on the body of his enemy, a proof of how swift in war is the retribution that overtakes undeserved success. [u]