Titus Answers the Tyrants

When the rebels had fled into the city, and the sanctuary itself and everything around it was burning, the Romans carried their standards into the temple court and set them up opposite the eastern gate. There they sacrificed to them, and there, with the loudest acclamations, they proclaimed Titus imperator. The soldiers were all so glutted with plunder that throughout Syria gold sold by weight at half its former price. [a]

Some priests were still holding out on the wall of the sanctuary. A boy among them, parched with thirst, begged the Roman guards to give him their right hand, and owned that he was thirsty. They pitied his age and his need, and gave him their right hands. He came down, drank, filled with water the jar he had brought with him, and ran off up to his own people. None of the guards could catch him, and they cursed him for his bad faith. He answered that he had broken no part of the agreement. He had taken their right hand, he said, not to stay with them, but only to come down and get water; he had done both, and so he had kept faith. The men he had tricked marveled at his cunning, most of all because of his age. On the fifth day the priests, starving, came down. The guards brought them up to Titus, and they begged for their lives. But he told them that the time for pardon had passed for them; the one thing for whose sake he might reasonably have spared them was gone; and it was fitting for priests to perish with the sanctuary. And he ordered the men to be put to death.

The tyrants and their men were beaten on every side and, walled in as they were, had no way of escape anywhere. So they called Titus to a parley. Out of the humanity of his nature he wished to save at least the city, and his friends urged him on, for he supposed the robbers had now come to their senses. So he took his stand on the western side of the outer temple court. There were gates there above the Xystus, and a bridge that joined the upper city to the temple, and this bridge now lay between the tyrants and Caesar. Crowds stood packed on either side: the Jews around Simon and John, in suspense with hope of pardon; the Romans around Caesar, waiting to hear what the Jews would ask. Titus ordered his soldiers to keep their anger and their missiles in check, and posted the interpreter beside him, which was itself a sign that he was the victor. Then he spoke first. [c]

“Well, men, have you had your fill now of your country’s miseries? You never took the measure either of our power or of your own weakness. With reckless impulse and madness you have destroyed your people, your city and your temple, and you will justly perish yourselves. Ever since Pompey took you by force, you have never stopped stirring up revolt, and in the end you made open war on the Romans.

“Was it numbers you trusted? Yet a tiny fraction of the Roman army has been a match for you. The loyalty of allies, then? And what nation outside our empire was going to choose the Jews over the Romans? Strength of body? Yet you know that the Germans are our slaves. Strong walls? What wall is a greater barrier than the ocean? The Britons have it all around them, and they bow down before the arms of Rome. Endurance of spirit and the cunning of your generals? Yet you knew that even the Carthaginians were conquered.

“No, it was the humanity of the Romans that roused you against the Romans. First we gave you this land to hold, and set kings of your own race over you. Then we upheld your ancestral laws, and let you live as you wished, not only among yourselves but among others too. Greatest of all, we allowed you to collect tribute for God and to gather offerings, and we neither rebuked nor hindered those who carried them—only for you to grow richer at our expense and to arm yourselves against us with our own money. Then, enjoying such great benefits, you turned your surfeit against those who provided it, and like untamable snakes you spat your venom at those who stroked you.

“Granted, you despised Nero’s idleness. Like a fracture or a sprain, you lay quiet all the rest of the time, but with malice, and then showed yourselves in a worse sickness, stretching your desires to shameless and boundless hopes. My father came into this country, not to punish you for what you had done under Cestius, but to warn you. If he had come to uproot the nation, he ought to have run straight to your root and sacked this city at once. Instead he ravaged Galilee and the parts around it, giving you time to think again. But you took our humanity for weakness, and fed your daring on our mildness.

“When Nero was gone, you did what only the most wicked would do. You took heart from our civil troubles, and when my father and I had gone away to Egypt, you used the time to prepare for war. You were not ashamed to make trouble for us once we had become emperors, though you had found us humane when we were only generals. When the empire had taken refuge with us, and all within it were at peace, and the nations outside it sent embassies to rejoice with us, once again the Jews were enemies. You sent embassies to your people beyond the Euphrates to stir up revolt. You built new circuits of walls. There were factions, tyrants quarreling with one another, and civil war—things fit only for men as wicked as you.

“I came to this city bearing grim orders from my father, which he gave unwillingly. When I heard that the people were inclined to peace, I was glad. I urged you to stop before the war began. Long after you began fighting, I still spared you. I gave my right hand to deserters, and I kept faith with those who fled to me. I pitied many prisoners, and I tortured and punished those who were pressing for war. It was against my will that I brought my engines up to your walls. I always restrained my soldiers when they were thirsting for your blood. After every victory I invited you to make peace, as though I were the one defeated.

“When I came near the temple, I again willingly forgot the laws of war. I begged you to spare your own holy places and to save the sanctuary for yourselves. I offered you a safe way out and a pledge of safety, or, if you wished, the chance to fight in another place. You scorned it all, and set fire to the sanctuary with your own hands.

“And now, you most abominable men, you call me to a parley? To save what—a thing that has already perished? What kind of safety do you think you deserve, now that the sanctuary is gone? Even now you stand there in your armor, and not even at the very end will you so much as pretend to be suppliants. Wretches, what are you trusting in? Is your people not dead, your sanctuary gone, your city in my power, and your very lives in my hands? Do you then think it a mark of courage to die hard?

“But I will not compete with your madness. Throw down your arms and give yourselves up, and I grant you your lives. Like a gentle master of a household, I will punish what cannot be cured, and keep the rest for myself.”

To this they replied that they could not accept his right hand, for they had sworn never to do so. But they asked to be allowed to pass out through the encircling wall with their wives and children; they would go off into the desert and leave the city to him. Titus was indignant that men in the position of captives should put terms to him as if they were the victors. He ordered a herald to proclaim to them that they were no longer to desert or to hope for a pledge, for he would spare no one. They were to fight with all their strength and save themselves as best they could, for from now on he would do everything by the law of war. And he gave the soldiers leave to burn and plunder the city. They held off that day. But on the next they set fire to the record office, the Acra, the council chamber and the place called Ophlas. The fire spread as far as the palace of Queen Helena, which stood in the middle of the Acra. The alleys burned, and so did the houses full of the bodies of those who had died of famine. [l]

That same day the sons and brothers of King Izates, together with many of the leading citizens, gathered there and begged Caesar to give them his right hand. Though he was furious with everyone who was left, he did not change his character, and he received the men. For the time he kept them all under guard; later he put the king’s sons and kinsmen in chains and took them to Rome, to serve as hostages for their country’s loyalty. [n]