09-CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 9

"The man who is refined and very delicate among you shall be hostile toward his brother and toward the wife he cherishes and toward the rest of his children who remain, so that he will not give even one of them any of the flesh of his children which he will eat, since he has nothing else left, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you in all your towns. The refined and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground for delicateness and refinement, shall be hostile toward the husband she cherishes and toward her son and daughter, and toward her afterbirth which issues from between her legs and toward her children whom she bears; for she will eat them secretly for lack of anything else, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you in your towns.” —Deuteronomy 28:54-57 The number of those who perished by the famine was incredible, and the miseries they endured unutterable.

“If so much as the shadow of any kind of food did anywhere appear, a war was commenced presently, and the dearest friends fell a fighting, one with another about it, snatching from each other the most miserable supports of life. Nor would men believe that those who were dying had no food, but the robbers would search them when they were expiring, lest any one should have concealed food in their bosoms, and counterfeit d dying: nay, these robbers gaped for want, and ran about stumbling and staggering along like mad dogs, and reeling against the doors of the houses like drunken men; they would also, in the great distress they were in, rush into the very same houses two or three times in one day.

“Moreover, their hunger was so intolerable, that it obliged them to chew every thing, while they gathered such things as the most sordid animals would not totich, and endured to eat them; nor did they, at length, abstain from girdles and shoes, and the very leather which belonged to their shields they pulled off and gnawed: the very wisps of old hay became food to some, and some gathered up fibres, and sold a very small weight of them for four Attic drachma (fifty-six cents).

“But why do I describe the shameless impudence that the famine brought on men in their eating inanimate things while I am going to relate a matter of fact, the like to which no history relates, either among the Greeks or Barbarians? It is horrible to speak of it, and incredible when heard. I had indeed willingly omitted this calamity of ours, that I might not seem to deliver what is so portentous to posterity, but that I have innumerable witnesses to it in my own age; and, besides, my country would have had little reason to thank me for suppressing the miseries that she underwent at this time.

“There was a certain woman that dwelt beyond Jordan; her name was Mary; her father was Eleazer, of the village of Bethezub, which is translated the House of Hyssop. She was eminent for her family and her wealth, and had fled away to Jerusalem with the rest of the multitude, and was with them besieged therein at this time. The other effects of this woman had already been seized upon, such, I mean, as she had brought with her out of Perea, and removed to the city. What she had treasured up besides, as also what food she had contrived to save, had been also carried off by the rapacious guards, who came every day running into her house for that purpose.

“This put the poor woman into a very great passion, and by the frequent reproaches and imprecations she cast at these rapacious villains she had provoked them to anger against her; but none of them, either out of the indignation she had raised against herself, or out of commiseration of her case, would take away her life: and if she found any food, she perceived her labors were for others and not for herself: and it was now become impossible for her any way to find any more food, while the famine pierced through her bowels and marrow, when also her passion was fired to a degree beyond the famine itself; nor did she consult with any thing but with her passion and the necessity she was in.

“She then attempted a most unnatural thing, and, snatching up her son, who was a child sucking at her breast, she said, ‘O miserable infant for whom shall I preserve you in this war, this famine, and this sedition? As to the war with the Romans, if they preserve our lives, we must be slaves. This famine also will destroy us even before that slavery comes upon us. Yet are these seditious rogues more terrible than both the other. Come on; be my food, and be a fury to these seditious varlets, and a byword to the world; which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of us Jews.’

“As soon as she had said this, she slew her son, and then roasted him, and ate the one half of him, and kept the other half by her, concealed. Upon this the seditious came in presently, and smelling the horrid scent of this food, they threatened her, that they would cut her throat immediately if she did not show them what food she had gotten ready. She replied, that she had saved a very fine portion of it for them; and withal uncovered what was left of her son. Hereupon, they were seized with a horror and amazement of mind, and stood astonished at the sight, when she said to them, ‘This is mine own son, and what hath been done was mine own doing. Come, eat of this food, for I have eaten of it myself. Do not you pretend to be either more tender than a woman, or more compassionate than a mother; but if you be so scrupulous, and do abominate this my sacrifice, as I have eaten the one half, let the rest be reserved for me also.’

“After this, these men went out trembling, being never so much affrighted at any thing as they were at this, and with some difficulty they left the rest of that meat to the mother. Upon which the whole city was full of this horrid action immediately; and while every body laid this miserable case before their own eyes, they trembled as if this unheard-of action had been done by themselves. So those that were thus distressed by the famine were very desirous to die, and those already dead were esteemed happy because they had not lived long enough either to hear or to see such miseries.

“This sad instance was quickly told to the Romans, some of whom could not believe it, and others pitied the distress which the Jews were under; but there were many of them who were hereby induced to a more bitter hatred than ordinary against our nation. But for Caesar, he excused himself before God as to this matter, and said, that ‘he had proposed peace and liberty to the Jews, as well as an oblivion of all their former insolent practices, but that they, instead of concord, had chosen sedition; instead of peace, war; and, before satiety and abundance, a famine. That they had begun, with their own hands, to burn down that temple which we have preserved hitherto; and that, therefore, they deserved to eat such food as this was. That however this horrid action of eating an own child ought to be covered with the overthrow of their very country itself and men ought not to leave such a city upon the habitable earth, to be seen by the sun, wherein mothers are thus fed, although such food be fitter for the fathers than for the mothers to eat of, since it is they that continue still in a state of war against us, after they have undergone such miseries as these.’

“And at the same time that he said this, he reflected on the desperate condition these men must be in; nor could he expect that such men could be recovered to sobriety of mind, after they had endured those very sufferings, for the avoiding whereof it only was probable they might have repented.”