Jerusalem's Traitor: Josephus, Masada, and the Fall of Judea

by Seward, Desmond

  In the meantime, Titus’s assault ramps were nearly ready, although the defenders’ artillery—now that they had learned how to fire it—was inflicting heavy casualties on the legionaries who were building them. Irritated by this ferocious resistance, Titus sent a detachment of horse to lie in wait for Jews searching the ravines for food. The majority of these seem to have been poor citizens driven by acute starvation, men who did not dare to try and escape because of what might be done to their wives and children, since it was far from unknown for the families of deserters to be butchered in reprisal. They fought desperately to evade capture so that when finally overpowered there was little point in their begging for mercy. After being scourged and tortured, they were crucified in front of the Old Wall.

  Five hundred or more people like this were caught and crucified every day. Titus felt a twinge of pity—or at least Josephus claims that he did—but he was not going to risk freeing a large number of men who might turn out to be soldiers in disguise, and his army could not afford to waste time standing guard over several thousand prisoners. What really counted with Titus was the possibility that the sheer number of crucifixions might terrify the Jews into surrendering, out of fear that they themselves might die the same way. Angry at the high casualties they were suffering, the legionaries amused themselves by nailing up the captives in grotesque attitudes. So many were crucified that eventually there was no more wood left to make crosses.

  The daily spectacle of these atrocities had no perceptible effect on the defenders’ morale. They dragged deserters’ kindred onto the ramparts, with any other citizens who were under suspicion, and pretended that the men hanging from the crosses had tried to desert to the Romans. Titus’s response to this was to cut off the hands of several of his captives and send them back into the city with a message for Simon and John. “Stop [your madness] and don’t force me to destroy the city. However late in the day it may be, even now you can still change your minds at the last moment, and save your lives and your famous city and preserve its marvelous Temple.” 7 Then he visited his ramps, telling the legionaries to hurry up, to show the Jews that he was going to launch an assault if they did not respond to his appeal.

  After yelling insults at Titus and his father, the Jews on the Old Wall shouted back that they didn’t mind dying, as it was better than slavery, and that while they stayed alive they would do all the harm they could to the Romans. They added that since they were going to die so soon, they did not care what happened to their city. The world itself would make a better Temple than their own. Even so, they insisted that the Temple of Jerusalem was going to be saved by the God who inhabited it, and because they had him for their ally they could laugh at any threats from Titus.

  An interlude was provided by the arrival of Antiochus Epiphanes, the king of Commagene, who had brought his heavy infantry. They were fine-looking young men, armed and trained in the Macedonian way—carrying the long sarissa, or two-handed pike, and operating in a massive phalanx sixteen ranks deep. These were the troops with which Alexander the Great had overthrown the Persian Empire. Athletic and arrogant, the king asked Titus’s permission to attack at once. He agreed, commenting with a wry grin, “Well, you’ve got as much chance as anybody else.” Antiochus immediately led his men in an attack on the Old Wall, but his soldiers were Macedonians in name only, while the ponderous phalanx and the clumsy sarissa were things of the past. Alexander’s troops had never had to face scorpions or stone-projectors, and their would-be heirs soon had to withdraw after being shot to pieces by the Jews. Josephus observes sardonically that if Macedonians were expecting to win victories in the way that Alexander did, then they needed some of his good luck.8

  The legionaries made heroic efforts to make their ramps tall enough, laboring day and night. They had begun work on 12 May but only finished on 29 May, after seventeen days of exhausting toil that involved filling in the great ditch in front of the Antonia, which in places was fifty feet deep. All four ramps were huge. One of those at the Antonia had been constructed by the Fifth Legion in the middle of the reservoir known as the Quince Pool, while another, thrown up by the Twelfth Legion, was ten yards away from it. The Tenth Legion’s ramp, farther off, was near the reservoir called the Almond Pool, and the Fifteenth Legion had erected another, forty-five feet away, that stood next to the tomb of John the High Priest. Titus gave orders for the troops to bring up the battering rams and the siege towers, in preparation for an all-out assault on the Old Wall.

  In the meantime, however, the Jews had been taught how to mine by a contingent of Jewish soldiers from Adiabene who were skillful sappers.

  John’s men tunneled beneath the ground between the Old Wall and the siege lines, undermining the ramps to such an extent that—unknown to the Romans—they were resting only on pit props. The Jews filled the space with fagots covered in pitch and bitumen—obtainable in large quantities from the Red Sea. Then they set light to the props. Suddenly, the ramps in the Antonia area collapsed with a deafening roar into the chasms that opened up below, taking the siege towers with them. Dense clouds of smoke billowed from the debris as the fire below was smothered for a moment, until flames burst up from the bitumen and burned steadily.

  The Romans were aghast at this unexpected blow and their enemies’ ingenuity. Having thought that victory was within their grasp, they became badly discouraged. There was no point in trying to put out the flames after the destruction of the ramps.

  Two days later, a band of Simon’s followers made a sortie during the night to destroy the remaining ramps, from where the Roman battering rams had started to pound the Old Wall, which was beginning to shake alarmingly. The leaders were a Galilean called Tephthaeus and a former bodyguard of Queen Mariamne named Megassarus, along with a half-crippled Adiabenian nicknamed Ceagiras (“The Lame”). Running through the astonished Romans as if they were friends instead of foes, they snatched up flaming torches and hurled them at the siege machines. The Jewish War informs us that these three Jews were among the toughest and most feared rebels in Jerusalem, renowned as hard men who were frightened of nothing. (The fact that Josephus knew such a lot about them shows the extent of his intelligence network.) Somehow surviving the javelins and sword thrusts aimed at them from all sides, they stayed there until they had succeeded in setting the rams and the towers on fire while their comrades beat off the enemy.9

  Rushing out from their camps when they saw the flames roaring skyward in the dark, the legionaries tried desperately to save the rams, attempting to drag them out of the fire since the hurdles covering them were already ablaze. They were prevented by a host of Jews, who poured out from the postern gates in the Old Wall and started a pitched battle, pulling the rams back by their iron covering, although by now it was red-hot. The rams caught fire, and surrounded by a circle of flames, the demoralized legionaries gave up in despair, retreating to the safety of their camps.

  The Jews, more of whom now ran out from the city to join in the fighting, became so encouraged that they chased the Romans back to their camps, setting fire to the stockades and attacking the astonished sentries. The author of The Jewish War is of course too tactful to admit to his readers that such a humiliating possibility had ever existed, but for a few moments, it really must have seemed that the outcome of the siege of Jerusalem lay in the balance.

  Fortunately for the Romans, their strict military procedure came to their rescue. To deal with unexpected crises an armed guard was always stationed in front of every legionary camp, who was relieved at regular intervals. Any member of the guard who left his post was executed immediately, however good his excuse might be. Preferring to die with honor in battle rather than branded as cowards and hanged, these men stood firm. Soon, many of the troops who had run away rallied, mounting scorpions on the remnants of the Second Wall and firing at close range into the attackers. Even so, the Jews still came on, oblivious of the hail of bolts, and were soon on the point of driving the Romans back. “They gave ground more because of Jewish ga
llantry rather than from the casualties they were suffering,” comments Josephus, not without a hint of pride.10

  At last, Titus galloped over from the Antonia, where he had been choosing sites for the new ramps. He gave his soldiers a short but furious dressing-down. “After taking two of the enemy’s walls, you’ve managed to put your own defenses at risk and are now being besieged yourselves, all because you’ve let those Jews out of their cage!”11 Then he led his mounted bodyguard in a fierce charge against the attackers’ flank. Despite having to fight on two fronts, the Jews battled on, both sides cutting and thrusting at close quarters, so closely engaged that, blinded by the dust and deafened by the shouting, it was impossible amid the confusion to make out who was friend or foe. Even so, the Jews kept on fighting—not to win but to stay alive. Having regained their nerve, the humiliated legionaries fought to regain their self-respect. Finally, realizing that the battle was lost, the Jews retreated into the city.

  The Romans had won, but they saw very little reason for triumph. They prided themselves on being the best soldiers in the world, and yet they had nearly been routed by what they regarded as a bandit rabble. Not surprisingly, they were thoroughly dejected. The success of the enemy’s sorties must have intensified their suspicion of Josephus—had he told his former comrades where and when to attack?

  The destruction of the ramps meant that the legionaries had lost the product of weeks of back-breaking work. It was already midsummer, the hottest season of the Palestinian year, when the sun beat down mercilessly, a time (as Benjamin Disraeli described it long afterward) when Jerusalem becomes “a city of stone in a land of iron, with a sky of brass.”12 Water was in short supply, since it had to be fetched on muleback from many miles away, as did the other supplies. The besiegers’ morale began to show signs of collapse; some of them deserted and went over to the Jews. By now, an increasing number of Romans were beginning to lose hope in their ability to capture Jerusalem.

  19

  The Wooden Wall

  “A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land.”

  JEREMIAH, V, 30

  THE SITUATION WAS so discouraging for the Romans that Titus summoned a council of war. Some of his officers were in favor of an all-out assault on the Old Wall by every soldier who was available, backed by a massive bombardment, arguing that so far the Jews had only been engaged by a small part of the imperial army. Others proposed rebuilding the ramps. A third group at the council suggested blockading the city and letting starvation do its work; too many casualties were bound to result from fighting men who so obviously preferred death in battle to crucifixion.

  For the first time Titus showed that he was beginning to understand the value of caution. While he rejected the idea of a general assault as suicidal, and while for the moment he could see no point in rebuilding the ramps, he did not want to remain inactive. There was always a danger of the Jews launching further sorties, and they might bring in enough food for their soldiers through secret tunnels. In his view, the best solution was to build a wooden wall around the city, a circumvallatio, a method that had been used by Julius Caesar in Gaul a hundred years earlier, although never against such a big city. The idea, which may have come from Titus’s chief of staff, Tiberius Alexander, was applauded by his officers.

  According to The Jewish War, the entire Roman army, who by now hated Jews with an obsessive hatred, was no less delighted by the plan. All the troops showed extraordinary keenness, legion competing with legion, cohort with cohort. Titus personally inspected progress several times a day. When completed, the wall ran from his headquarters at the Camp of the Assyrians to the New City below and then through the Kedron to the Mount of Olives. Then it bent to the south, around the rock called the Dovecote and the nearby hill that overlooks the valley next to Siloam. To the west it went down into the valley of the fountain, after which it went up past the tomb of Ananus the High Priest, taking in the hill where Pompey had camped. Going north it reached the village known as the House of Peas and then went around Herod’s mausoleum until it reached Titus’s camp, the point from where it started. Nearly five miles long, the wall was strengthened by thirteen forts, each of which was 200 feet in circumference. Thanks to the legionaries’ unflagging enthusiasm, the whole structure was finished in three days, astounding even the Romans.

  Now that he had enclosed Jerusalem inside a wall and garrisoned the forts, Titus showed his appreciation of the army’s remarkable achievement by taking the first night’s watch himself, personally making the rounds of inspection. Tiberius Alexander took the second, and the third watch was shared out among the legates commanding the legions.

  Josephus’s frightful description of what went on inside the city at this period deserves quoting. It carries conviction and must be based on reports given to him by spies or by inhabitants who lived through it:All chance of leaving Jerusalem came to an abrupt end and the Jews inside suddenly found themselves deprived of any hope of survival. Famine was raging more terribly than ever, devouring entire houses and families. The upper rooms were full of dying women with their infants, and the lanes were filled by old men who had already died. Bloated with hunger, youths and children wandered like shadows around the market places, remaining on the ground wherever they dropped dead. Famished men were too weak to bury their kindred, while anyone who was still strong enough did not bother because there were so many corpses and because they themselves expected to die soon. The few people who made some sort of effort to inter the dead expired while doing so, while others got into their shrouds to await death.

  Amidst all this misery there was little weeping or wailing. Starvation had killed all sense of affection, so that the slowly dying gazed with dry eyes and open mouths at anyone who had passed away before them. A deep silence resembling darkness reigned throughout the city, as though to proclaim the presence of death. Still more dreadful were the robbers, who broke into houses that had become tombs, plundering the dead bodies, laughing as they stole the clothes off them. They tried out their swords on corpses, and to test their blades’ sharpness ran through dying men who were still breathing—but refused to kill anyone who begged them to finish him off. All these citizens [who died from the famine] drew their last breath with eyes firmly fixed on the Temple, trying to ignore the rebels. Finding the stench that arose from so many dead bodies all over the city almost unbearable, at first the rebel leaders gave orders for them to be buried at the public expense, but when the sheer number made it impossible they had them thrown over the walls into the ravines below.1

  The Jewish War contains a flattering vignette of the Roman general’s compassion, no doubt intended for imperial eyes. “Going the rounds [on his new wall], when Titus saw the ravines filled with corpses and the great stream of rotting matter that flowed from them, he groaned and called on God to bear witness that it was not his doing.”2 However, one may feel that Josephus goes a little too far in claiming that Titus’s wish to rescue the survivors was the reason why he issued orders to start building new ramps at four sites opposite the Antonia. This was difficult, since all the trees round the city had been cut down for the wall, and the legionaries had to fetch timber from ten miles away.

  Within Jerusalem, the rebels appeared to remain completely unshaken by the wall that cut them off so finally and completely from the world outside. Nor were they moved by the sufferings of the civilian population. They felt no pity for those who were starving and “continued like dogs to maul the very carcass of the people, packing the prisons with the feeble,” says Josephus.3 Yet to some extent his obvious anger may be due to his feelings of outrage at further attacks on rich magnates.

  Not even Matthias ben Boethus escaped, although it was he who had persuaded the citizens to ask Simon bar Giora to take over the city. Wealthy and a well-known member of a high priestly family, he was an obvious target. He was summoned before Simon, accused of being a supporter of the Romans, and condemned to death with three of his sons. A fourth had fled. Reminding Simon th
at it was he who had invited him into Jerusalem, Matthias begged to be executed before his sons, but his request was refused. He was killed on top of his sons’ corpses, on the Old Wall where they had been led out to die in view of the Romans and butchered in front of their father’s eyes. Nor would Simon allow any of them burial. Among others executed were Ananias ben Masambalus, who was a distinguished priest, and Aristeus, a former secretary of the Sanhedrin, with over a dozen equally eminent men.

  But has Josephus given us the whole story? All these unlucky nobles who perished, including Matthias and his sons, may conceivably have been supplying Titus with information or guilty of defeatist talk. They may even have been conspiring to let the Romans into the city.

  In contrast, Josephus’s father, Mattathias, and his mother were merely sent to prison by Simon, although it was proclaimed that on pain of death no one should speak to Mattathias or express regret at his arrest. It seems extraordinary that the couple escaped being executed out of hand, as parents of an arch-traitor. Again, we can only speculate on the possibility that Josephus might have retained some sort of influence within the city. It certainly looks as though he had some important contacts inside the walls. Did he negotiate a secret deal with Simon?