Читать книгу Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin - Walter Besant - Страница 5

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It is our object to write a book which may serve as a historical account, complete so far as it goes, of the principal events with which Jerusalem is concerned, from the time when its history, as connected with the Bible, ceases, till the present; that is to say, from the year A.D. 33 downwards. But it is difficult to take up the thread of the story at this date, and we are forced either to go as far back as Herod the Great, or to begin our narrative with the events which preceded the siege of Jerusalem by Titus. No date seems to us more ready to our hand than that of the death of Herod Agrippa. Even then we may seem beginning to tell a thrice told tale. The revolt of the Jews, their defeat of Cestius, the siege of Titus, are surely, it may be objected, too well known to require telling again. They are not well known, though they have been told again and again, and told with ten times the force, the vigour, the originality which we can put into these pages. But they are told here again because our central figure is Jerusalem. We have to show her first, in all her pride, the joy of the Jews, the visible mark of their greatness; and then we have to follow her through two thousand years of varying fortune, always before the eyes of the world,—always the object of tender pity and reverence,—always the centre of some conflict, the scene of some religious contention. Frequent as were the sieges of the city in the olden days, they have been more frequent since. Titus took Jerusalem, Barcochebas took it, Julius Severus took it, Chosroes, Heraclius, Omar, the Charezmians, Godfrey, Saladin, Frederick, all took it by turns,—all after hard fighting, and with much slaughter.

There is not a stone in the city but has been reddened with human blood; not a spot but where some hand-to-hand conflict has taken place; not an old wall but has echoed back the shrieks of despairing women. Jew, Pagan, Christian, Mohammedan, each has had his turn of triumph, occupation, and defeat; and were all those ancient cemeteries outside the city emptied of their bones, it would be hard to tell whether Jew, or Pagan, or Christian, or Mohammedan would prevail. For Jerusalem has been the representative sacred place of the world; there has been none other like unto it, or equal to it, or shall be, while the world lasts; so long as men go on believing that one spot in the world is more sacred than another, because things of sacred interest have been done there, so long Jerusalem will continue the Holy City. That this belief has been one of the misfortunes of the human race, one of the foremost causes of superstition, some of the pages which follow may perhaps help to show. But, in our capacity as narrators only, let us agree to think and talk of the city apart, as much as may be, from its sacred associations, as well as from its ecclesiastical history.

The fatal revolt of the Jews, which ended in the fall of their city and the destruction of their Temple, was due, among many other causes, to the teaching of Judas the Galilæan acting on minds inflated with pride in the exaggerated glories of the past, looking to national independence as the one thing needful, and wholly ignorant of the power and resources of the mighty empire which held them in subjection. Judas, himself in spirit a worthy descendant of the Maccabæans, had taught that Jehovah was the only King of the Jews, who were his chosen people; that submission to a foreign yoke involved not only national degradation, but treason to the lawful powers; that tribute, the badge and sign of slavery, ought to be refused at any cost. “We have no Lord and master but God,” was the cry of his party. With that cry he and his followers assembled to do battle against the world: with that cry on their lips they died. But the cry and its idea did not die; for from that time a fourth sect was among the Jews, more powerful than all the rest put together, containing the great mass of the people, who had no education to give them common sense, and whose ignorance added fuel to the flames of a religious enthusiasm almost without parallel in the history of the world. The Pharisees and the Sadducees still continued for a time in the high places; the Essenes still lived and died apart from the world, the Shakers of their time, a small band with no power or influence; but all around them was rising a tide destined to whelm all beneath the waves of fanaticism. The followers of Judas became the Zealots and the Sicarii of later times: they were those who looked daily for the Messiah; whom false Christs led astray by thousands; who thought no act too daring to be attempted in this sacred cause, no life too valuable to be sacrificed: they were those who let their countrymen die of starvation by thousands while they maintained a hopeless struggle with Titus.

When Herod Agrippa died, his son, who was only seventeen years of age, was in Rome; and, as he was too young to be entrusted with the conduct of the turbulent province of Judæa, Cuspius Fadus was sent there as Governor. He found that Agrippa had allowed the robbers who always infested the country east of Jordan to gain head. He put them down with a strong arm, and turned his attention to things of domestic importance. By the permission of Vitellius, the custody of the sacred robes had been surrendered to the High Priest. Cuspius Fadus ordered that they should be restored to the fortress of Antonia. The Jews appealed to Cæsar, and, by the intercession of young Agrippa, they carried their point, and retained the possession of the robes. Under Fadus, one Theudas, whom Josephus calls a magician, persuaded multitudes of the Jews to go with him to the Jordan, which he pretended would open its waters to let him pass. Cuspius Fadus sent out a troop of cavalry, who took Theudas alive, cut off his head, and brought it to Jerusalem. Under Cuspius, too, occurred a great famine in Judæa, which was relieved by the generosity of Queen Helena of Adiabene, the proselyte.^[1]

1. The story of Queen Helena is told by Josephus, ‘Antiq.’ xx. 2, 3, 4, and in Milman, ‘Hist. of the Jews,’ ii. p. 200; and see also, for the whole of this period, Williams’s ‘Holy City,’ vol. i. p. 150 et seq.

When Fadus either died or was recalled, Tiberius Alexander, a renegade Jew, nephew of Philo, succeeded him for a short time. It is not stated how long he continued in power. His only recorded act is the crucifixion of two of the sons of Judas the Galilæan. In his turn Tiberius was replaced by Ventidius Cumanus, and the first symptoms of the approaching madness broke out. The fortress of Antonia commanded the Temple area, and communicated with the Temple itself by means of cloisters. On those days of public festivals when the fanaticism of the people was most likely to break out and cause mischief, a strong guard was always placed in Antonia, in full view of the people, to overawe them with good behaviour. Most unfortunately, on one occasion, immediately after the arrival of Cumanus, one of the soldiers of the guard expressed his contempt for the religious ceremonies by an indecent gesture. The rage of the people knew no bounds; they declared that Cumanus had himself ordered the affront to be committed. The governor bore their reproaches with patience, only urging them not to disturb their festival by riotous conduct. As, however, they still continued clamouring, he ordered his whole garrison to proceed to Antonia. Then a panic ensued. The mob, thinking they were about to be attacked by the soldiers, turned and fled, trampling on each other in the narrow passages. Many thousands perished in this way, without a blow being struck. And while they were still mourning over this disaster, another happened to them. Some of the very men who had raised the first tumult, probably countrymen on their way home, fell on and robbed Stephanus, a slave of the Emperor. Cumanus, obliged to punish this, sent soldiers to bring in the chief men of the village. One of the soldiers tore up a book of the Law with abuse and scurrility. The Jews came to Cumanus, and represented that they could not possibly endure such an insult to their God. Cumanus appeased them for the time by beheading the soldier who had been guilty of the offence.

The animosities of the Samaritans and the Jews were the cause of the next disturbances. The Galilæans always used the roads which passed through the Samaritan territory in their journeys to and from the Temple. Faction fights naturally often took place. In one of these, of greater magnitude than the generality, a good many Galilæans were killed: the Jews came to Cumanus and complained of what they were pleased to call murder. Cumanus took the part of the Samaritans, and actually went to their aid, after the Jews called in the assistance of a robber chieftain, and helped them to defeat the Galilæans. It is difficult to see what else they could do. Both parties appealed to Cæsar. Cumanus was recalled: his military tribune was beheaded, decision was given in favour of the Jews: all this, no doubt, was done with a full knowledge of the dangerous and the turbulent nature of the people, and with a view to preserving the peace.

Claudius Felix was sent in place of Cumanus, a freedman, brother of Pallas the favourite of the Emperor, magnificent, prodigal, luxurious, and unscrupulous. He found the country in the worst state possible, full of robbers, and impostors. These sprung up everyday, and were everyday caught and destroyed; no doubt most of them men whose wits were utterly gone in looking for the Messiah, until they ended in believing themselves to be the Messiah. These poor creatures, followed by a rabble more ignorant and more mad than themselves, went up and down the distracted country, raising hopes which were doomed to disappointment, and leading out the wild countrymen to meet death and torture when they looked for glory and victory. One of the impostors, an Egyptian, probably an Egyptian Jew, brought a multitude up to the Mount of Olives, promising that at his word the walls of the city should fall down, and they themselves march in triumphant. He came, but instead of seeing the walls fall down, he met the troops of Felix, who dispersed his people, slaying four hundred of them.

To Felix belongs the crime of introducing the Sicarii into the city of Jerusalem. Wearied with the importunities of the high priest, Jonathan, who exhorted him continually to govern better, or at all events to govern differently, and reproached him with the fact that it was through his own influence that Felix obtained his office, he resolved to rid himself of a friend so troublesome, by the speediest and surest method, that of assassination. The Sicarii were not, like the hired bravoes of the middle ages, men who would commit any murder for which they were paid. It appears, on the contrary, that they held it a cardinal point of faith to murder those, and only those, who seemed to stand in the way of their cause. Now their cause was that of the sect which had grown out of Judas’s teaching, the zealots. These Sicarii mingling with the crowd of those who went up to worship, carrying daggers concealed under their garments, fell upon Jonathan the High Priest, and murdered him.^[2] This done they went on slaying all those who were obnoxious to them, even in the Temple itself. “And this,” says the historian, “seems to me the reason why God, out of his hatred to the wickedness of these men, rejected our city: and as for the Temple, he no longer esteemed it sufficiently pure for him to inhabit therein, but brought the Romans upon us, and threw a fire upon the city to purge it: and brought upon us, our wives, and children, slavery,—as desirous to make us wiser by our calamities.” And now the voice of discord was heard even among the priests themselves, who had hitherto preserved a certain sobriety. Between the chief priests and “the principal men of the multitude of Jerusalem,” a feud broke out. Each side had its followers: they cast, we are told, not only reproachful words, but also stones at each other. And the chief priests, robbing the threshingfloors and appropriating all the tithes to themselves, caused many of the poorer priests to die of want.

2. Milman says, in the Temple itself, which does not appear from the account of Josephus, who expressly says that, after this, they had the boldness to murder men in the Temple itself.

Then occurred the first outbreak in Cæsarea. This town was about equally divided between the Syrians and the Jews, the former claimed the pre-eminence on the ground that Herod the founder, though himself a Jew, had built the splendid temples and statues by which the city was evidently intended to be a Grecian city, upon the site of Strato’s Tower; while the Jews argued that as the founder was a Jew, the city was evidently Jewish, and ought not to be ruled except by Jews. The dispute, as was always the case, came to the arbitrament of arms, in which the Jews got the best of it. Then Felix came himself, with a strong force, and brought them to their senses. But as the dispute still went on, he sent representatives on both sides to Nero the Emperor, who ruled in favour of the Greeks or Syrians. Here, the decision of the Emperor appears to have been just. Herod, the founder of Cæsarea, had clearly not intended to found a city for the further propagation of a sect to which he indeed belonged, regarding it, nevertheless, with the toleration of a cultivated Roman, as only one sect out of many. The Jews accepted the decision in their usual way: they only became more turbulent. Agrippa’s own dispute with his own countrymen was decided, however, in their favour, no doubt from politic considerations. He had built an upper room in his palace, where, lying on his couch, he could look over into the Temple and watch the sacrifices. Some of the priests discovering this, made out that it was an intrusion into the necessary privacy of their religious ceremonies, and hastily ran up a wall to prevent being overlooked. Festus, who had now succeeded Felix, ordered it to be pulled down; but, most probably at the instigation of Agrippa, whose popularity might be at stake, he gave permission to appeal to Nero. Ismael, the high priest, went, accompanied by the keeper of the Treasury. They carried their point: the wall was allowed to stand, but Ismael was detained in Rome, and Agrippa appointed and deprived three high priests in succession—Joseph, Annas, and Jesus son of Dammai. The firm, strong hand of Festus was meantime employed in putting down robbers, and regulating the disturbances of the country. Unhappily for the Jews, while he was so engaged, he was seized with some illness and died. Albinus succeeded him. As for Albinus, Josephus tells us that there was no sort of wickedness named but he had a hand in it. “Not only did he steal and plunder every one’s substance, not only did he burden the whole nation with taxes, but he permitted the relations of such as were in prison for robbery to redeem them for money; and nobody remained in the prisons as a malefactor but he who gave him nothing.... The principal men among the seditious purchased leave of Albinus to go on with their practices: and every one of these wretches was encompassed with his own band of robbers. Those who lost their goods were forced to hold their peace, when they had reason to show great indignation at what they had suffered; those who had escaped were forced to flatter him, that deserved to be punished out of the fear they were in of suffering equally with the others.”

This, however, is a vague accusation, and is found in the ‘Wars of the Jews,’ where Josephus is anxious to represent the revolt of the people as caused by the bad government of the Romans. From the ‘Antiquities’ we learn that it was Albinus’s wish to keep the country in peace, with which object he destroyed many of the Sicarii. Unfortunately for himself, he formed a great friendship with Ananias the high priest; and when Eleazar, son of Ananias, fell into the hands of the Sicarii, he consented to release ten of his own prisoners for his ransom. This was a fatal measure, because henceforth the Sicarii, if one of their number fell into trouble, and got taken by the Romans, caught a Jew and effected an exchange. Thus the prisons were emptied.

At this time the Temple was finished, and eighteen thousand workmen found themselves suddenly out of employment. Terrified at the prospect of this starving mob being added to their difficulties (for the streets of Jerusalem were already filled with bands of armed men, partisans of deposed high priests), the citizens asked Agrippa to rebuild the Eastern Cloisters, the splendid piece of work which had been built originally by Solomon along that east wall which still stands overlooking the valley of the Kedron. But Agrippa, whose interest in the turbulent city was very small, already meditated departure to some safer quarter, and was spending all the money he had to spare at Beyrout, where he built a theatre, and collected a gallery of sculptures. But he conceded something to his petitioners, and allowed them to pave the city with stone.

Albinus disappears from the history, and Gessius Florus, who exchanged a scourging with whips for a scourging with scorpions, ruled in his place. Cestius Gallus, a man of equal rapacity with himself, ruled in Syria. One cannot read Josephus without, in the first place, suspecting that he wilfully exaggerates the wickedness of the Roman rulers; that he does so in the case of Albinus is clear, as we have shown from comparing the account given in the ‘Antiquities’ with that given in the ‘Wars.’ But even if he only exaggerates, and making allowance for this, were men of special inhumanity and rapacity chosen for those very qualities to rule the country? And if not, if Gessius Florus and Albinus be fair specimens of the officers by whom Rome ruled her provinces and colonies, by what mysterious power was this vast empire kept from universal revolt?

“Upon what meat had this their Cæsar fed,

That he was grown so great?”

The Jews, however, were not the people to brook ill-treatment; and when they took arms against the Romans it was not as if their case seemed to themselves hopeless. They had, it is true, the western world against them; but they had the eastern world behind them, a possible place of refuge. And though they armed against the whole Roman Empire, it must be remembered that the forces at the command of the Emperor were not overwhelming; that they were spread over Africa, Egypt, Spain, Gaul, Britain, Greece, and Italy; that only a certain number could be spared; and that the number of the Jews in Syria amounted probably to several millions. When Cestius Gallus was in Jerusalem at the time of the Passover he ordered the lambs which were sacrificed to be counted. They came to two hundred and fifty-five thousand six hundred. It was reckoned that this represented a total of three millions present in Jerusalem and camped round about it, assisting at the festival. Probably not more than half, perhaps not more than a quarter of the whole number of the people came up. However this may be, it is certain that Palestine was very densely populated; that there were great numbers of Jews in Alexandria, Asia Minor, and Italy; that at any signal success those would have flocked to the standard of revolt; and that had the nation been unanimous and obedient to one general, instead of being divided into sects, parties, and factions, the armies of Vespasian and Titus would have been wholly unable to cope with the rebellion, and the independence of the Jews would have been prevented only by putting forth all the power of the Roman Empire. This was shown later on in the revolt of Barcochebas, a far more serious revolt than this of the zealots, though not so well known, because it was attended with no such signal result as the destruction of the Temple, and because there was no Josephus in the camp of the enemy taking notes of what went on.

The object of Florus, we are told, was to drive the people to revolt. This we do not believe. It could not have been the policy of Florus to drive into revolt a dangerous and stubborn people, whose character was well known at Rome, whom the Emperor had always been anxious to conciliate. His object may have been, undoubtedly was, to enrich himself as speedily as possible, knowing that revolt was impending and inevitable, and anxious to secure himself a provision in case of his own recall or banishment. Until that provision was secured it would have been fatal for Florus that the revolt should break out.

The first disturbances took place at Cæsarea, when the Greeks, exulting in Nero’s decision, were daily more and more insulting to the Jews. The latter had a synagogue, round which was an open space of ground which they wished to purchase. The owner refused to sell it, and built mean shops upon it, leaving only a narrow passage whereby the Jews could pass to their place of worship. One John, a publican, went to Florus, and begged him to interfere, offering at the same time a bribe of eight talents, an enormous sum, which shows that this was more than an ordinary squabble. Florus went away, leaving them to fight it out; and the Greeks added fresh matter of wrath to the Jews by ostentatiously sacrificing birds in an earthen vase as they passed to the synagogue. The significance of this act was that the Greeks loved to tell how the Jews had been all expelled from Egypt, on account of their being leprous. Arms were taken up, and the Jews got the worst of the fray. They withdrew to a place some miles from the town, and sent John to Florus to ask for assistance. John ventured on a reminder about the eight talents, and was rewarded by being thrown into prison. Then Florus went on to Jerusalem, where the wildest tumults raged in consequence of this affront to religion. Alarmed at the symptoms of revolt, he sent messengers beforehand to take seventeen talents out of the sacred treasury, on the ground that Cæsar wanted them. Then the people ran to the Temple, and called upon Cæsar by name, as if he could hear them, to rid them of this Florus. Some of them went about with baskets begging money for him as for a man in a destitute and miserable condition.

The next day news came that Florus was advancing to the city, and the people thought they had better go out and speak him fair. But he was not disposed to receive their salutation, and so sent on Capito, a centurion, with fifty soldiers, bidding them go back and not pretend to receive him as if they were delighted to see him among them again. And he rode into the city, the people being all expectation of what would happen the next day. And in the morning the tribunal of Florus was erected before the gates of his palace. The high priest was summoned to attend, and ordered to give up those who had led the tumult. He urged in extenuation that he did not know the ringleaders, that the act of a few hot-headed youths ought not to be visited on the whole city, and that, in short, he was very sorry for the whole business, and hoped Florus would overlook it. Florus gave orders to his soldiers to pillage the upper market; they did so, scourging, pillaging, and murdering. Berenice, the sister of Agrippa, came herself, barefoot, with shorn head and penitential dress, before Florus, urging him to have pity. But the inexorable Roman, bent on revenge, allowed the soldiers to go on.

Next day he sent again for the high priest, and told him that as a sign of the loyalty of the people, and their sorrow for the late tumults, he should expect them to go forth and meet the two cohorts who were advancing to Jerusalem with every sign of joy. The seditious part of the citizens refused. Then the chief priests, with dust upon their heads and rent garments, brought out the holy vessels and the sacerdotal robes, with their harpers and harps, and implored the people not to risk a collision with the Romans. They yielded, and went out to welcome the cohorts. But the soldiers preserved a gloomy silence. Then some of the more fiery Jews, turning on the Romans, began to abuse Florus. The horsemen rode at them and trampled them down, and a scene of the wildest uproar took place at the gates as they pressed and jostled each other to get in. Then the troops marched straight on Antonia, hoping to get both the fortress and the Temple into their hands. They got into Antonia, when the Jews cut down some part of the cloisters which connected the fort with the Temple. Florus tried to join them, but his men could not pass through the streets, which were crammed with Jews. And next day Florus retired to Cæsarea, leaving only one cohort behind, and the city boiling and seething with rage and madness. And now, indeed, there was little hope of any reconciliation. Both Florus and the Jews sent statements of their conduct to Cestius Gallus, and begged for an investigation. And it must have been now, if at all, that Florus became desirous of fanning the embers of discontent into a flame and making that a war which had only promised to be a disturbance. But nothing can be discovered to prove that Josephus’s assertions as to his motives are based on fact. It is easy, of course, to attribute motives, but hard to prove them. Nothing advanced by Josephus proves more than that Florus was rapacious and cruel, and the people discontented and turbulent. Cestius sent Neapolitanus, one of his officers, to report on the condition of the city. Agrippa joined him. The people came sixty furlongs out of the town to meet them, crying and lamenting, calling on Agrippa to help them in their miseries, and beseeching Neapolitanus to hear their complaints against Florus. The latter they took all round the city, showing him that it was perfectly quiet, and that the people had risen, not against the Romans, but against Florus. Then Neapolitanus went into the Temple to perform such sacrifices as were allowed to strangers, and commending the Jews for their fidelity, went back to Cestius. Agrippa came next. Placing his sister Berenice, doubtless a favourite with the people, in the gallery with him, he made a long harangue. He implored them to consider the vast power of the Romans, and not, for the sake of a quarrel with one governor, to bring upon themselves the ruin of themselves, their families, and their nation. He pointed out that if they would have patience the state of their country should be fairly placed before the emperor’s consideration, and he pledged himself that it would receive his best care. “Have pity,” he concluded, with a burst of tears,—“have pity on your children and your wives, have pity upon this your city and its holy walls, and spare the Temple; preserve the holy house for yourselves.”

The Jews, ever an impressionable race, yielded to the entreaties of Agrippa and the tears of Berenice, and making up the tribute money, paid it into the treasury. Then they began to repair the damage they had done to Antonia. All looked well; but there was one thing yet wanting to complete their submission, they were to obey Florus till he should be removed. This condition they refused to comply with, and when Agrippa urged it upon them, they threw stones at him and reproached him with the uttermost bitterness. Then Agrippa went away in despair, taking with him Berenice, and leaving the city to its fate.

The insurrection began, as it ended, with the taking of the stormy fortress of Masada near the Dead Sea. Here the Roman garrison were all slaughtered. Eleazar the son of Ananias the high priest began the insurrection in Jerusalem, by passing a law that the sacrifices of strangers were henceforth to be forbidden, and no imperial gifts to be offered. The moderate party used all their influence, but in vain, to prevent this. Agrippa sent a small army of three thousand men to help the moderates. The insurgents seized the Temple: the moderates, who included all the wealthy classes, occupied the upper city, and hostilities commenced. A great accession of strength to the insurgents was caused by the burning of the public archives, where all debts were incurred, and consequently the power of the rich was taken from them at one blow.

Then appeared on the scene another leader, for a very brief interval, Manahem, the youngest son of Judas the Galilæan. He came dressed in royal robes and surrounded with guards, no doubt eager to play the part of another Maccabæus. The insurgents took Antonia and the royal palace, and drove the Roman garrison to the three strong towns of Hippicus, Phasaelus, and Mariamne. Ananias, found hidden in an aqueduct, was killed at once; and Manahem became so puffed up with his success that he became intolerable. It was easy to get rid of this mushroom king, who was deposed without any trouble by Eleazar and tortured to death. And then the Roman garrison yielded, Metilius, their commander, stipulating only for the lives of his soldiers. This was granted; but no sooner had they laid down their arms than the Jews fell upon them, vainly calling on the faith of a treaty, and murdered them all except Metilius. Him they spared on condition of his becoming a proselyte.

On that very day and hour, while the Jews were plunging their daggers in the hearts of the Romans, a great and terrible slaughter of their own people was going on in Cæsarea, where the Syrians and Greeks had risen upon the Jews, and massacred twenty thousand of them in a single day. And in every Syrian city the same madness and hatred seized the people, and the Jews were ruthlessly slaughtered in all. No more provocation was needed; no more was possible. In spite of all their turbulence, their ungovernable obstinacy, their fanaticism and pride, which made the war inevitable, and in the then state of mankind these very massacres inevitable,—one feels a profound sympathy with the people who dared to fight and die, seeing that it was hopeless to look for better things. The heads of the people began the war with gloomy forebodings; the common masses with the wildest enthusiasm, which became the mere intoxication of success when they drove back Cestius from the walls of the city, on the very eve of his anticipated victory—for Cestius hastened southwards with an army of twenty thousand men, and besieged the city. The people, divided amongst themselves, were on the point of opening the gates to the Romans, when, to the surprise of everybody, Cestius suddenly broke up his camp and began to retreat. Why he did so, no one ever knew; possessed by a divine madness, Josephus thinks, because God would take no pity on the city and the Sanctuary. As the heavy armed Romans plodded on their way in serried ranks, they were followed by a countless multitude, gathering in numbers every hour, who assailed them with darts, with stones, and with insults. The retreat became a flight, and Cestius brought back his army with a quarter of its numbers killed, having allowed the Roman arms to receive the most terrible disgrace they had ever endured in the East.

Vespasian was sent hastily with a force of three legions, besides the cohorts of auxiliaries. A finer army had never been put into the field, nor did any army have ever harder work before them. Of the first campaign, that in Galilee, our limits will not allow us to write. In the graphic pages of Josephus, himself the hero of Jotapata, or in the still more graphic pages of Milman, may be read how the Jews fought, step by step, bringing to their defence not only the most dogged courage, but also the most ingenious devices; how the blue waves of the Lake of Galilee were reddened with the blood of those whom the Romans killed in their boats; how Vespasian broke his word and sold as slaves those he had promised to pardon; how Gamala fought and Gischala fell, and how for the sins of the people, John was permitted by Heaven to escape and become the tyrant of Jerusalem.

The months passed on, and yet the Romans appeared not before the walls of the city. This meantime was a prey to internal evils, which when read appear almost incredible. The bold rough country folk who followed John, who had fought in Galilee, and escaped the slaughter of Vespasian, came up to the city filled with one idea, that of resistance. In their eyes a Moderate, a Romanizer, was an enemy worse than a Roman, for he was a traitor to the country. They found themselves in a rich and luxurious town, filled with things of which in their distant homes they had had no idea. And these things all belonged to the Romanizers. They needed little permission to pillage, less, to murder the men who had everything to lose, and nothing to gain, by continuing the war. And then ensued a civil war, the scenes of which surpass in horror those of any other page in history. Through the streets ran the zealots dressed in fantastic garb, which they had pillaged, some of them attired as women, murdering all the rich and those who were obnoxious to their party. It is vain to follow their course of plunder, murder, and sedition. They invited the Idumæans to come to their assistance—a fierce and warlike race, who had been all Judaized since the time of Hyrcanus. These gladly came. By night, while a dreadful tempest raged overhead, a sign of God’s wrath, and amid the shrieks of wounded men and despairing women, the Idumæans attacked and gained possession of the Temple, and when the day dawned eight thousand bodies lay piled within the sacred area. Among them were those of Ananus, and Jesus the son of Gamala, the high priests. Stripped naked, their corpses were thrown out to the dogs, and it was forbidden even to bury them. Simon Ben Gioras, who had first signalized himself in the defeat of Cestius, came to the city to add one more to the factions. The moderate party were stamped out and exterminated, and the city divided between John and Simon, who fought incessantly till Titus’s legions appeared before the walls.

Note.—The materials for this chapter were chiefly found in Josephus and Milman’s ‘History of the Jews.’ In the chapters which follow, it has not been thought necessary to name the authorities for each chapter. References will be found occasionally, among other books, to Williams’s ‘Holy City,’ and Lewin’s ‘Siege of Jerusalem.’