This eloquent appeal had no effect. The citizens of Jotapata were determined that he should stay; children, old men, and women with babies fell down in front of him and clung to his feet, wailing. They all felt they would be saved if he remained in the city. Realizing that if he stayed they would think he was answering their prayers, but that if he tried to leave he would be lynched, he graciously agreed to remain. He even claims that what made up his mind was pity for them. “Now is the time to begin the struggle when hope of safety is there none!” he declaimed nobly. “What is really honorable is to prefer glory to life by doing heroic deeds that will be remembered from generation to generation.” Then, so he informs us, he immediately led a sally against the Romans, killing several of their sentries and demolishing some of the siege works. For the next few days and nights, “he never left off fighting.”6
The legionaries had withdrawn from the front line, waiting for the moment they could mount a full-scale assault. The scorpions and stone throwers kept up their fire, as did the Arab archers and Syrian slingers, inflicting many casualties. The only way the Jews could respond was by repeated sallies, exhausting their strength. By now, the assault platforms had almost reached the top of the walls, so Vespasian decided it was time to use a battering ram. This was a huge baulk of timber like the mast of a ship, its end fitted with a massive piece of iron in the shape of a ram’s head, which was slung by ropes from scaffolding on wheels. Repeatedly pulled back by a team of men, then hurled forward, the iron head could demolish most sorts of masonry. While the Roman artillery stepped up its bombardment, the enemy hauled the ram into position, protected by hides and hurdles. Its first blow made the whole wall shake. “As though it had already fallen down, an awful shriek rang out from those inside,” recalls Josephus.7
He tried to lessen the ram’s impact by letting down sacks filled with chaff, but the Romans pushed them aside with hooks on long poles. Recently built, the wall began to crumble. However, the Jews rushed out from three different sally ports and, taking the enemy by surprise, set fire to the ram’s protective superstructure with a mixture of bitumen, pitch, and brimstone, which destroyed it. “A Jew stepped forward whose name deserves to be remembered,” says The Jewish War.8 He was Eleazar ben Sameas, born at Saab in Galilee. Lifting an enormous stone, he threw it from the wall on to the ram, knocking off the head. Then, leaping down among the Romans, he seized the head, which he carried back to the wall, where he stood waving it until he collapsed, mortally wounded by five javelins, writhing in agony but still clutching his prize.
The besiegers rebuilt the ram and toward evening started to batter the same section of wall. Panic broke out among the Romans when Vespasian was wounded in the foot by a spent javelin (which shows he must have been standing dangerously close to the wall). As soon as they realized he had not been seriously hurt, they attacked with real fury. Josephus and his men fought throughout the night, sometimes sallying out to attack the team working the ram, although the fires they lit made them an easy mark for enemy artillery that was invisible in the dark. Clouds of the scorpions’ monster arrows cut swathes through their ranks, while rocks hurled by the ballistae demolished part of the ramparts and knocked corners off the towers. The lethal power of this weaponry is gruesomely described by Josephus; for example, he wrote that a man standing near him had his head torn off by a stone and flung over 600 yards and that when a pregnant woman was hit in the belly, the child in her womb was thrown 300 feet.
The siege machines made a terrifying clatter, and the endless whizzing of the arrows and stones fired by the Romans was no less frightening. The sinister thud of dead bodies hitting the ground as they fell down off the battlements was equally dispiriting. Women inside the city were shrieking incessantly, while many of the wounded were screaming with pain. The area in front of the wall flowed with blood, while the corpses were heaped as high as the ramparts. To cap everything, the noise was made even more dreadful by the echoes from the mountains that surrounded the city.
Toward morning the wall finally collapsed under the ram’s ceaseless battering. After letting his men have a brief rest, Vespasian got ready to launch his assault at daybreak. Dismounting the pick of his heavily armored cavalrymen, he stationed them three deep near the breaches, ready to go in as soon as the gangways were in position. Behind them, he placed his best foot soldiers. The rest of the horse remained mounted, in extended order farther back, to cut down anyone trying to escape from the city once it had fallen. Still farther back, he ranged the archers in a curved formation with bows at the ready, together with the slingers and the artillery. Other troops were ordered to take ladders and attack undamaged sectors of the wall, to draw off defenders from the breaches.
Realizing what was coming, Josephus placed the older men and walking wounded on the part of the wall that was still standing, where they were more protected and could deal with any attempts at escalade. The fitter men he positioned behind the breach, while groups of six—drawn by lot and including himself—stood at the front, ready to bear the brunt of the assault. He ordered them to plug their ears to avoid being frightened by the legionaries’ war cry and to fall back during the preliminary rain of missiles, kneeling under their shields until the archers had used up their arrows, and then to run forward as soon as the Romans pushed their gangways over the rubble.
“Don’t forget for one moment all the old men and all the children here, who are about to be horribly butchered, or how bestially your wives are going to be put to death by the enemy,” he exhorted them. “Then remember the fury that you feel at the idea of such atrocities and use it in killing the men who want to commit them.”9
When daylight came and the women and children saw the three ranks of Roman troops menacing the city, the great breaches in the walls, and all the hills around covered by enemy soldiers, they raised a last, dreadful, despairing scream. Josephus gave orders for them to be locked in their houses to stop them from unnerving their menfolk. Then he took up his post in the breach. Strangely, he had prophesied to some of those around him that the city would fall and that he would be taken prisoner—predictions that were plausible but scarcely good for morale.
Suddenly, the serpentine Roman trumpets sounded their booming summons to battle, the legionaries bellowed their war cry, and the sun was blotted out by missiles—javelins, arrows, scorpion bolts, slingshot, and a hail of stones from the onagers. Josephus’s men, remembering his instructions, had plugged their ears, and they sheltered under their shields. As soon as the gangways went down, they charged forward to meet the attackers. They had no reserves, however, while the enemy, who had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of fresh troops, formed a tortoise with their big, oblong shields and began to push forward over the main breach.
Josephus had expected this, however, and was prepared. He ordered boiling oil to be poured down from the sections of wall that flanked the breach onto the tortoise. Leaping and writhing in agony, the legionaries fell off the gangways, their close-fitting armor making it impossible to save them from an excruciating death. When the Jews ran out of oil, they threw a slippery substance—boiled fenugreek—on to the gangways, which made it hard for new waves of attackers to keep their balance, some falling over and being trodden to death. Early that evening Vespasian called off the assault.
He then ordered that the three assault platforms further along the wall should be raised much higher, equipping each one with a fireproof, iron-plated siege tower that was fifty feet tall. His archers, slingshot men, and javelin throwers were able to shoot down at the defenders in comparative safety, and at close range, from the tops of these towers, which also mounted the big repeating crossbows.
In the meantime, Vespasian did not confine himself to besieging Jotapata. He sent 3,000 troops under Ulpius Traianus, commander of the Tenth Legion—and father of the future Emperor Trajan—to sack the town of Japha seventeen kilometers away, whose people had joined the revolt, and he sent his son Titus to help him with additional troops. Together, Trajan
and Titus killed over 15,000 Jews, taking another 2,000 prisoner. At the same time, Sextus Cerealis, prefect of the Fifth Legion, marched into Samaria, which despite its traditional hostility to Jews looked as if it was on the verge of rebellion, and slaughtered more than 11,000 Samaritans who had gathered on Mount Gerizim
On the forty-seventh day of the siege of Jotapata, the assault platforms overtopped the walls. A deserter informed Vespasian that the defenders had become too exhausted to put up much of a fight and that sentries often dropped off to sleep in the early hours of the morning. Just before dawn the Romans crept to the platforms, Titus being one of the first to climb over the walls, accompanied by a tribune, Domitius Sabinus, with some men from the Fifteenth Legion. They cut the throats of the watch and then entered the city very quietly, followed by the tribune Sextus Calvarius, Placidus, and other troops. (Josephus must have obtained these details from Vespasian’s campaign notebooks.)
Within a short time the Romans had captured the citadel on the edge of the precipice and were sweeping down into the heart of Jotapata, yet even at daybreak the defenders had not realized that their city had fallen. Most were still fast asleep, having collapsed from fatigue, while a dense mist enveloped everything. The few who were awake were too tired to be alert. Only when the Jotapatans saw the whole Roman army running through the streets and killing everybody it met did they understand that it was all over.
The city quickly turned into a slaughterhouse. The legionaries had not forgotten what they had suffered during the siege, especially the boiling oil. The weapon they used was their principal sidearm, the “gladius” or short, doubled-edged Roman thrusting sword (more like a big knife than a sword), which was ideally suited for massacre. They drove the terrified crowds down from the citadel to the bottom of the hill through the narrow streets, so tightly jammed together that those who wanted to fight could not raise their arms. When they were able, some of Josephus’s best men cut their own throats in despair.
A few held out in one of the northern towers but were overwhelmed, seeming to welcome death. The legionaries suffered only a single casualty. A Jotapatan who had hidden in a cave shouted up to a centurion called Antonius that he wanted to surrender, asking him to reach down and help him out, but when Antonius did so he was stabbed in the groin from below with a spear. Having killed everybody they found in the streets or houses, the Romans spent the next few days hunting down defenders hiding underground. During the siege and the storm they killed at least 40,000 Jews. (This is the figure given by Josephus, who for once may not be exaggerating.) The only prisoners they took were about 1,200 women and children.
Even so, the little city of Jotapata had put up an astonishing resistance. It was a heroic achievement to hold out for nearly eight weeks against the most efficient and best-equipped army in the world. Once again, the Jews had shown that they knew how to fight as if by instinct and that despite their lack of any sort of military training and their pitifully inadequate weaponry, they could be formidable opponents.
Although Josephus may have been a disaster as governor of Galilee in peace time, during the siege of Jotapata he had shown himself to be a gallant and resourceful commander—even if at one point he had thought of running away and deserting his men. His leadership of the city’s defense was one of the great triumphs of his life.
But where was he now?
9
The Cave and the Prophecy
“And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare.”
ISAIAH, XXIV, 18
THE STORY OF HOW Josephus persuaded his fellow fugitives to kill themselves is the most equivocal of his entire career. Some historians find it sinister. Yet it is more likely than not that he was innocent of any wrongdoing. We only know about the episode from what he himself tells us in The Jewish War. Had he thought that it might harm his reputation, he could have chosen not to include it in the book. He does not mention it in the Vita, his apologia, which implies that he did not think it needed any explanation.
The Roman legionaries tried particularly hard to find Josephus, because they hated him as the rebel leader who had inflicted so much mischief on them during the siege and because—under the delusion that his capture would help to win the war within a matter of weeks—their general had given specific orders for him to be taken prisoner. Searching everywhere, they turned over all the dead bodies, ransacked the houses, and went down into the city’s cellars and caves, but without success.
At the moment when the city was stormed, aided by a providence that must have been supernatural, despite being hemmed in by the enemy he managed to escape by jumping down into a deep pit, out of which a large cave opened. The cave was completely invisible from above and inside it he found forty notables [of Jotapata] with supplies that would last for a long time. During the following day he remained hidden there, since the enemy was stationed all over the city, but when night fell he climbed up in order to look for some way of escape and see where they might have posted sentries. Everywhere was being so closely watched by the troops searching for him that he had to go back into the cave. For two days he outwitted his pursuers.1
On the third day a woman in the cave went up and was caught by the Romans. Questioned, she told them where the governor was hiding. Vespasian at once sent two tribunes to the pit, Paulinus and Gallicanus, with other officers. They shouted down, asking him, politely enough, to come up and telling him not to be afraid—his life would be safe. However, after killing and wounding so many of their comrades, he expected to be put to a spectacularly horrible death, and in any case he knew that Romans frequently broke their word. He declined the invitation.
Vespasian then sent a third tribune called Nicanor, an old friend of Josephus, who explained that his commander had no wish to punish him but only wanted to save the life of a brave soldier, adding that Vespasian would never use a friend to trick a man. Infuriated at the idea of the enemy general going unpunished, the legionaries began to yell that he ought to be burned in his cave. Nicanor stopped them. He wanted to take him alive. Then Josephus saw a possible means of escape.
“Suddenly he remembered the dreams he had sometimes dreamed at night, when God showed him the future calamities that were going to strike the Jews as well as what would happen to the Roman emperors,” The Jewish War tells us. “As an interpreter of dreams, he understood how to disentangle the real meaning of matters that were expressed by God in ambiguous terms, while he knew a good deal about the prophecies in the sacred books, since he was a priest himself and the descendant of priests.”2
He claims that he became divinely inspired and, bearing in mind the terrible things he had dreamed, prayed to God. “Since it has seemed good to you who created the Jewish nation to level it with the dust, and since all their prosperity has passed to the Romans, and since you have allowed my spirit to have knowledge of the things to come, I willingly give myself up to the Romans and am happy that I am allowed to stay alive. I am not going over to the Romans and I am certainly not a traitor. I do this because I am your servant.”3
This is a key passage, even if written years later. Skeptics question his foreknowledge of what lay ahead for Judea and Rome and his assertion that he had been an “interpreter of dreams.” Yet he is more than likely to have heard of the popular rumors about a new world ruler. Moreover, it is possible that Nicanor had insinuated that he might make himself useful to Vespasian by looking into the future, since Jews in Rome had a reputation for soothsaying. Whatever inspired him, that sharp, resourceful mind had stumbled on a way for its owner to talk himself out of a very unpleasant situation.
“There had spread over all the Orient an old-established belief that in those days [the end of Nero’s reign] men were destined to come out of Judea, who would rule the world,” so Suetonius informs us.4 This is what Josephus must have heard, while it was common knowledge that Nero’s regime was growing shak
y. Nor had he forgotten what he had learned of the Essene seers when a young man. Although any Jew knew that his priesthood did not give him special powers of seeing into the future, the idea might convince Romans.
He accepted Nicanor’s invitation, asking to talk to Vespasian as soon as possible. Unfortunately, his friends in the cave had no intention of letting him go. To have an old friend who was a Roman centurion with a Greek-sounding name—they had probably spoken in Greek—seemed bad enough in itself to these straightforward Galilean hill men. But from what they could gather, they suspected that their leader was thinking of entering the enemy’s service, which was downright treason. Josephus records his comrades’ efforts to dissuade him from surrendering:The laws God gave our ancestors make such a thing impossible, the laws of God who provided us Jews with a spirit that despises death. Josephus, do you love living so much that you’re ready to live like a slave? Have you lost all self-respect? How many men did you persuade to die fighting for liberty? You won’t deserve to be called a man and everybody will despise you for allowing yourself to be spared by the people you fought so fiercely, if you really are ready to accept it from them—provided they’re in earnest. Perhaps the Romans’ awful victory has made you forget who you are, but we are here to see that our forefathers’ honor is not insulted. We will give you our own right hands and a sword, and if you are ready to die properly, then you shall die as a Jewish general. But if you refuse them, you can die as a traitor.5
Jerusalem's Traitor: Josephus, Masada, and the Fall of Judea Page 12
