04-CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4

"The LORD will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand, a nation of fierce countenance who will have no respect for the old, nor show favor to the young. Moreover, it shall eat the offspring of your herd and the produce of your ground until you are destroyed, who also leaves you no grain, new wine, or oil, nor the increase of your herd or the young of your flock until they have caused you to perish. It shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted come down throughout your land, and it shall besiege you in all your towns throughout your land which the LORD your God has given you. —Predictions of Moses,Deuteronomy 28:49-52; NASU

TITUS now led his army against Jerusalem, approaching it in the following order: The auxiliaries sent by the different kings composed the van of the advancing host. Next came the men who were to prepare the roads, and mark out the encampment. Then came the baggage of the officers. Titus himself followed with a select body: the pikemen were next in order, followed by the horsemen belonging to that legion. All these advanced before the engines, which were followed by the tribunes and leaders of cohorts, with their select bodies. Next in order were the ensigns with the eagle, preceded by the trumpeters belonging to them: these were followed by the main body of the army in ranks six deep. The servants, with their baggage, followed the main body, and were in turn succeeded by the mercenaries the guard of these last brought up the rear.

Now Titus, according to the Roman usage, went into the front of the army, and having advanced to a place called the Valley of Thorns, about thirty furlongs from Jerusalem, he pitched his camp. Here he chose out six hundred select horsemen, and went to take a view of the city, to observe its strength, and ascertain how the courage of the Jews held out. He wished to learn whether they would stand a battle, or whether they would submit; for he had learned that many, tired of their calamities, were desirous of peace; which was, indeed, true, but having fallen under the power of the robbers, and being too weak to rise up against them, they were forced to be quiet.

Now while he kept the direct road to the city, no one appeared out of the gates; but when he turned toward the tower Psephinus, and led his band of horsemen obliquely, an immense number of Jews suddenly leaped out of the tower called the Women’s Tower, and intercepted his horsemen. They intercepted Titus, also, with a few others. Now it was impossible for him to go forward, because the place had trenches dug in it from the wall to preserve the gardens, of which it was full, as well as of hedges. To return to his own men, from whom he had been separated, was equally impossible, because of the multitude of Jews who were between them. Titus’s own men, in the mean time, did not know that he had been separated from them, but in the affray supposed him in the midst of them. Titus, perceiving that his life depended wholly upon his own courage, turned his horse, and crying aloud to the few that were with him to follow him, pushed with violence into the midst of his enemies, forcing his way back toward his own men. Many darts were thrown at him, but, although he had on neither his head-piece nor breast-plate, not one of them touched him. So he parried off those that came by his side with his sword, and overthrew those that pressed him in front, riding over them. The enemy made a shout at the boldness of Caesar,³and exhorted one another to rush upon him. Two of Titus’s horsemen were slain on this occasion, and others wounded, but he came off unhurt. This slight success considerably elevated the hopes of the Jews.

Caesar now removed his camp to a place called Scopus, from which the city and the great temple might be plainly seen. This place, on the north quarter of the city, was a plain, and very properly called Scopus, which signifies a prospect. It was seven furlongs from Jerusalem. Here Titus ordered a camp to be fortified for two of his legions (a legion was five thousand men), and another for the fifth legion three furlongs in the rear of the first camp. The tenth legion, which came by the way of Jericho, now arrived at a place where a party of armed men had formerly lain to guard that pass into the city, which had before been taken by Vespasian. These had orders to encamp at the distance of six furlongs from Jerusalem, at the mount called the Mount of Olives, which lies over against the city on the east side, and is parted from it by a deep valley named Kidron.

Now when the seditious, who had been actively carrying forward their civil war, saw three camps pitched against them, and a foreign war bursting suddenly upon the city, they began to think of an awkward sort of concord. They said, therefore, one to another, “What do we here, and what do we mean, when we suffer three fortified walls to be built to coop us in, so that we shall not be able even to breathe freely, while the enemy is securely building a kind of city in opposition to us, and while we sit still within our walls and become spectators only of what they are doing, with our hands idle, and our armor laid by, as if they were about somewhat that is for our good and advantage? We are, it seems, courageous only against ourselves, while the Romans are likely to gain the city without bloodshed by our sedition.”

“Thus did they encourage one another when they were gotten together, and took their armor immediately, and ran out upon the tenth legion, and fell upon the Romans with great eagerness, and with a prodigious shout, as they were fortifying their camp. These Romans were caught in different parties, and this in order to perform their several works, and on that account had in a great measure laid aside their arms; for they thought the Jews would not have ventured to make a sally upon them; and, had they been disposed so to do, they supposed their sedition would have distracted them. So they were put into disorder unexpectedly; when some of them left their works, and immediately marched off, while many ran to their arms, but were smitten and slain before they could turn back upon the enemy.

“The Jews became still more and more in number, as encouraged by the good success of those that first made the attack; and while they had such good fortune, they seemed, both to themselves and to the enemy, to be many more than they really were. The disorderly way of their fighting at first put the Romans also to a stand, who had been constantly used to fight skillfully in good order, and with keeping their ranks, and obeying the orders that were given them: for which reason the Romans were caught unexpectedly, and were obliged to give way to the assaults that were made upon them.

“Now, when these Romans were overtaken, and turned back upon the Jews, they put a stop to their career, who, when they did not take care enough of themselves through the vehemence of their pursuit, were wounded by them; but as still more and more Jews sallied out of the city, the Romans were at length brought into confusion, and put to flight, and ran away from their camp. Nay, things looked as though the entire legion would have been in danger, unless Titus had been informed of their condition, and had sent them succors immediately. So he reproached them for their cowardice, and brought those back that were running away, and fell himself upon the Jews on their flank with those select troops that were with him, and slew a considerable number and wounded more of them, and put them all to flight, and made them run away hastily down the valley.

“Now as these Jews suffered greatly in the declivity of the valley, so, when they were gotten over it, they turned about, and stood over against the Romans, having the valley between them, and there fought with them. Thus did they continue the fight till noon; but when it was already a little after noon, Titus set those that came to the assistance of the Romans with him, and those that belonged to the cohorts, to prevent the Jews from making any more sallies, and then sent the rest of the legion to the upper parts of the mountain to fortify their camp.

“This march of the Romans seemed to the Jews to be a flight; and as the watchman who was placed upon the wall gave a signal by shaking his garment, there came out a fresh multitude of Jews, and that with such mighty violence that one might compare it to the running of the most terrible wild beasts. To say the truth, none of them that opposed them could sustain the fury with which they made their attacks; but, as if they had been cast from an engine, they broke the enemy’s ranks to pieces, who were put to flight, and ran away to the mountain—none but Titus himself, and a few others with him, being left in the midst of the acclivity. Now these others, who were his friends, despised the danger they were in, and were ashamed to leave their general, earnestly exhorting him ‘to give way to these Jews that are fond of dying, and not to run into such dangers before those that ought to stay before him; to consider what his fortune was, and not by supplying the place of a common soldier to venture to turn back upon the enemy so suddenly; and this because he was general in the war, and lord of the habitable earth, on whose preservation the public affairs do all depend.’

“These persuasions Titus seemed not so much as to hear, but opposed those that ran upon him, and smote them on the face; and when he had forced them to go back, he slew them: he also fell upon great numbers as they marched down the hill, and thrust them forward; while those men were so amazed at his courage and his strength that they could not fly directly to the city, but declined from him on both sides, and pressed after those that fled up the hill; yet did he still fall upon their flank, and put a stop to their fury. In the mean time, a disorder and a terror fell again upon those that were fortifying their camp at the top of the hill, upon their seeing those beneath them running away; insomuch that the whole legion was dispersed, while they thought that the sallies of the Jews upon them were plainly insupportable, and that Titus himself was put to flight; because they took it for granted, that if he had stayed, the rest would never have fled.

“Thus were they encompassed on every side by a kind of panic, and some dispersed themselves one way and some another, till certain of them saw their general in the very midst of an action, and, being under great concern for him, they loudly proclaimed the danger he was in to the entire legion: and now shame made them turn back; they reproached one another that they did worse than run away by deserting Caesar. So they used their utmost force against the Jews, and declining from the straight declivity, they drove them on heaps into the bottom of the valley. Then did the Jews turn about and fight them; but as they were themselves retiring, and now, because the Romans had the advantage of the ground, being above the Jews, they drove them all into the valley. Titus also pressed upon those that were near him, and sent the legion again to fortify their camp while he, and those that were with him before, opposed the enemy, and kept them from doing farther mischief; insomuch that if I may be allowed neither to add any thing out of flattery, nor to diminish any thing out of envy, but speak the plain truth, Caesar did twice deliver that entire legion when it was in jeopardy, and gave them a quiet opportunity of fortifying their camp.” As the war without now ceased for a while, it revived within; for on the feast of Unleavened Bread,⁴Eleazar and his party opened the gates of the inner court of the temple, and admitted such of the people as desired to worship in it. But John, making use of this festival as a cloak for his treachery, armed a part of his followers, who, with weapons under their garments, entered in order to seize the inner court; and throwing aside their garments, they appeared in their armor: upon which there was a great disturbance about the holy house. The people who had no concern in the sedition supposed the assault was made upon them, and Eleazar’s party thought it was made against them. The zealots, deserting the gates which they had been guarding, leaped down from their battlements, and fled away into the subterranean caverns, while the people that stood trembling at the altar and around the holy house were rolled together in heaps and trampled upon and beaten without mercy. Those who had private animosities took this opportunity of gratifying them, by killing those whom they disliked; and those who had formerly offended any of these wretches were now led away to the slaughter. When they had thus treated the innocent in the most merciless manner, they granted a truce to the guilty, and let those escape who came out of the caverns, while John and his party seized upon the inner court of the temple, and the engines of war which were in it, and then ventured to renew the war with Simon. Thus the sedition, which had been divided into three factions, was now reduced to two.

Titus, intending now to pitch his camp nearer to the city than Scopus, placed a body of his choice horsemen opposite the Jews, to prevent a sally, and gave orders to his whole army to level the distance as far as the walls of the city. So they threw down all the hedges and garden walls, and cut down the groves and fruit trees, and filled up the hollow places and chasms, and demolished the rocky precipices with iron instruments, and leveled the whole distance from Scopus to Herod’s monuments, adjoining the pool called the Serpent’s pool.

Now the Jews contrived a stratagem against the Romans. A party of the boldest went out at the towers called the Women’s Towers, as though they had been driven out by the party who were for peace. Those on the walls at the same time, seeming to be of the people’s side, cried aloud for peace, and threw stones at those without. They also called on the Romans to come to their assistance, promising to open the gates. A part of the Roman soldiers who were nearest the city, deceived by the stratagem, and without Titus’s orders, seized their weapons and ran to the gates; The party of Jews who had come out, at first retired, but when the Romans had got between the towers, they rushed upon them while those on the walls cast down a shower of stones and darts, slaying a number and wounding many more. The Jews were greatly elated with this success, while Caesar severely reprimanded and threatened those who had brought upon themselves this calamity by acting without orders.

“And now, when the space between the Romans and the wall had been leveled, which was done in four days, as he was desirous to bring the baggage of the army, with the rest of the multitude that followed him, safely to the camp, he set the strongest part of his army over against that wall which lay on the north quarter of the city, and over against the western part of it, and made his army seven deep, with the footmen placed before them, and the horsemen behind them, each of the last in three ranks, while the archers stood in the midst in seven ranks. And now, as the Jews were prohibited by so great a body of men, from making sallies upon the Romans, both the beasts that bore the burdens and belonged to the three legions, and the rest of the multitude, marched on without any fear. But as for Titus himself, he was but about two furlongs distant from the wall, at the corner, and over against that tower which was called Psephinus, at which tower the compass of the wall belonging to the north bended, and extended itself over against the west; but the other part of the army fortified itself at the tower called Hippicus, and was distant, in like manner, but two furlongs from the city. However, the tenth legion continued in its own place upon the Mount of Olives.”