Source

by James A. Michener

  Down the road from the west came two troops of light-armed bowmen, soldiers with large muscles in their legs, ready to rush in the direction of any surprise attack that might endanger the following columns. These shock troops were composed of Gauls, Germans, Africans, Syrians, Egyptians, Carthaginians, Greeks and people from the Danube, the most disciplined conscript army the world had so far seen, and when these first units were satisfied that the road was free of ambushes, they did not rest before the town walls but started immediately to clear a large site for the Roman camp.

  Next came detachments of heavily armed Romans, mounted on German and Spanish horses, able to move with dreadful swiftness in support of the scouts, should they uncover stray units of the enemy. These were followed by experts bearing all the necessary instruments for marking out the camp site selected by the scouts, plus a huge detachment of engineers who would build any roads that the army might require. They were closely followed by foot soldiers protecting laborers who carried the luggage of the officers; to reach this essential gear an enemy would have to penetrate eighteen separate files of fighting men, surrounded by eight ranks of cavalry.

  Behind this concentration appeared some two hundred horsemen, in the middle of whom rode the generals, Vespasian, his handsome son Titus and his lieutenant Trajan. Close behind came the great units of cavalry whose mules dragged along the multitudinous engines of war, each valuable item being protected by a company of foot. Then came the commanders of divisions, the lesser officers, and some dozen tall men on specially fine horses, bearing aloft the standards of battle and the three golden eagles belonging to the Fifth Macedonia, Tenth Fretensis and Fifteenth Apollinaris Legions. Trumpeters, drummers, Waterboys and cooks followed in a compact nest, protected by many soldiers, and not until this stupendous preamble had passed did the actual fighting men appear, thousands of soldiers, six abreast, marching shoulder to shoulder down an empty road as if they were already in battle.

  At the rear came the servants, the mercenaries from Syria and Macedonia, mules, asses, camels, wagons, plus a rear guard of light infantry, an entire detachment of heavy infantry and four swift units of rear-guard cavalry. For more than two hundred years the Romans had been marching like this, and no opposing force had yet been found to stop them permanently. On this sunny day the first obstacle in their path was the frontier town of Makor, guarded by some eleven hundred Jewish troops. But they were not as insignificant as they might have seemed, for the Jews also had Yigal, the devout townsman, and General Josephus, one of the cleverest soldiers of the time.

  Stationed on the wall Josephus watched enthralled as the Romans appeared. “Which one is Vespasian?” he asked Yigal repeatedly, but when at last the elderly, hard-faced Roman veteran rode by on a chestnut stallion, there could be no doubt that he was the great general, conqueror of Germany, England and Africa. “So there he is,” Josephus whispered in fascination, and as long as the bull-necked Roman was visible the Jewish general stared at him—as if this were to be not a war of troops but a personal encounter between him and Vespasian.

  As soon as he was satisfied that the Roman army was in position, Vespasian, in accordance with tradition, spurred his stallion to the main gate, where, under a flag of truce, he demanded, “Who is your commander?”

  To Yigal’s astonishment, General Josephus stepped back into shadow and indicated that Yigal was to confront the Roman, and the little olive worker was shoved forward. With dismay he looked down at the Roman might and listened as the rough-voiced general cried, “Makor, I call upon you to surrender.”

  Yigal did not know how to reply to this formal greeting from an enemy, so he remained silent until Josephus prodded him and whispered, “Tell him you will never surrender.” It seemed inappropriate to Yigal that he should be delivering this message but he stared down at Vespasian and replied, “We will never surrender,”

  Vespasian wheeled his horse, turned his back on Yigal and called to his men, “Make camp,” and the siege of Makor was on.

  It was to be the kind of warfare that Yigal had foreseen during his all-night vigil with God. The Romans prepared each move with meticulous detail: even the troops chosen to make the first assault were selected so that tall men would be available to throw aloft light, agile warriors should a break appear at any point. Each man in the first wave was covered from neck to ankle in leather armor, and was protected from above by shields of iron and cowhide which deflected any rocks dropped from the wall. And when the Romans started forward they came with innumerable ranks, but on this day they had to scale the ancient glacis of Makor, now a very steep slope topped by the rugged wall, and at the end of the first day’s fighting the Romans had accomplished nothing but the loss of nearly a hundred men without having killed any Jews.

  That night General Josephus passed among the defenders with words of confidence. “The Romans learned today that Makor cannot be taken,” he told them. “If we remain ready at every point we shall soon discourage them. Tomorrow is the critical day. Sleep well.”

  His prediction was accurate. Shortly after dawn Vespasian hurled his most powerful units against the gate and lesser forces against the walls, but Josephus had his troops so cleverly balanced and armed with such cruel rocks, stones, sacks of broken crockery and iron-tipped spears that he repulsed the Romans on fourteen separate sorties. A truce was arranged so that Vespasian could drag away his wounded, several score being dead, and at dusk the gray-haired Roman sought a conference. Again Josephus moved Yigal to the fore, and from the wall he consulted with Titus and Trajan, listening as they reported that Vespasian was impressed by the fighting spirit of the Jews and wished to offer them an honorable surrender. “All lives will be spared and your best troops will be invited to join our legions,” young Titus announced, but Josephus whispered, “Reject the offer,” and Yigal did so. When the deputation was gone Josephus advised his troops as to what he thought the Romans would try on the morrow.

  Again he had anticipated their tactics, and again the Romans were repulsed with heavy losses. It was apparent that frontal assault was not going to subdue Makor, so on the third day there was no general attack, but the lumbering engines of war were drawn into position and a siege of serious proportions was launched. It was here that Josephus proved his skill, for he could judge how fast the Romans could move their engines to any given spot and what type of defense would best repel them. With each new Roman assault he varied his tactics, and when Vespasian finally succeeded in moving a tower against the southern portion of the wall, Josephus ordered his men to feign disorder until a maximum number of Romans were on the tower; then he let loose upon it a rain of rocks and spears and burning timbers which set the great structure ablaze, until it toppled back into the road, killing many.

  That evening Vespasian himself came to the walls, under a flag of truce, once more offering Makor honorable surrender, but again Josephus avoided confronting the Roman, sending Yigal instead, and for the second time these two elderly men faced each other—Vespasian with a baton amidst a dozen commanders, Yigal in a well-worn cotton robe atop the wall near the gate.

  “With whom do I speak?” the rocklike Roman called.

  “I am Yigal.”

  “With what authority do you represent this town?”

  Yigal did not know what to reply. He had no authority except that of an honest Jew whom his neighbors respected. He was neither general nor scholar, merchant nor dyer. He remained mute, and Vespasian cried, “Yigal, who are you?”

  “I work at the olive press,” the small Jew replied.

  From the Romans there was much laughter. Even Titus, the son of Vespasian, smiled at the picture of an olive worker negotiating with a general commanding three legions, but Vespasian himself did not laugh. All his life he had suffered ridicule because of the fact that he sprang not from any patrician family but from an ordinary farmer in the Sabine lands; and he knew from personal experience the single-minded moral force that such a man can generate. Respectfully he called, “Yigal, work
er at the olive press, Emperor Nero of Rome demands that you throw open your town.”

  “That we cannot do,” Yigal replied. “We will not accept Nero as a god.”

  “Yigal!” the stocky old warrior shouted. “Open your gates now and let us share this night in peace.”

  “That we cannot do,” the stubborn Jew repeated.

  “You have seen our might. You know that in time we must crush you. This is the last chance—will you surrender honorably?”

  “No. We will not worship your golden eagles.”

  “I will see you in death, Yigal,” the great general called from the lowering darkness, and unseen by the Romans, Josephus tugged at Yi-gal’s robe and whispered, “You answered him well.”

  In the darkness Vespasian, perplexed by the soldierly resistance of the Jews, assembled the Roman generals in his tent under the olive trees and asked, “Where do these Jews find their arrogance?”

  “They’ve always been stubborn,” Trajan said. “They want few things, but those few they insist upon.”

  “Have you fought them before?” Vespasian asked.

  “No, but I’ve known them in Alexandria. On little points they gave no trouble, but on big ones …” The leader of the Fifteenth Apollinaris made a wry face.

  “What big things?” Vespasian asked. “Like this matter of gods?”

  “On religion they’re most stubborn,” Trajan reported.

  “What is their religion?”

  Titus explained, “Before we left Rome I inquired. The Jews worship an ass, carved of gold, which they keep in their temple in Jerusalem. Once each year every loyal Jew kisses the hind end of this ass.” The generals laughed, and Titus continued, “Their major god is Baal, whom our ancestors met at Carthage. They mutilate each other through their rite of circumcision, but this doesn’t seem to damage their fertility, for they number about three and a half million.”

  Vespasian frowned, but Trajan reassured him: “The number sounds larger than it is. They’re a contentious lot and will submit to no regular military rule. At best they’re brave. At worst they’re a rabble easily disrupted.”

  “I see in Yigal of the olive grove few signs of panic,” Vespasian said. He left his tent and wandered among the olive trees which his adversary had tended for so many years, and his farmer’s eye noted that they were well tended. Returning to his tent he stuck his head through the flap and asked the younger men, “Do you suppose this is his grove?”

  “Whose?” Trajan asked.

  “Yigal’s. He’s the one we’re fighting.” But before Titus could remind his father that Yigal said he worked in the olive grove, not that he owned it, Vespasian closed the flap and returned to his solitary wandering in the dark olive grove, and he came upon an old tree which had been cleverly pruned to increase the yield. He recognized the work of a master farmer. Striking the bark with his fist he muttered, “Yigal has spoken the truth. He is an olive grower. He cannot possibly know the tricks the Jews used this day.”

  He stood by the tree, kicking angrily at the roots, then fell suddenly quiet. He gasped, clenched his fists and shouted into the night, “By the ghost of my father, the other one got here!”

  Rushing back to the tent he tore open the flap and jerked Titus from his cot. “In Ptolemais you were wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “Josephus is in that town,” Vespasian said as he moved about the tent, raising a dust in spite of the rugs that covered the ground. “Somehow he slipped in before we got here. Because no olive grower could know enough to repel our towers as those Jews did today.”

  “What are you going to do?” Trajan asked.

  “I am going to haul General Josephus of the Jews back to Rome for an imperial triumph. And when the drums cease, I shall have him strangled.”

  Vespasian went to bed, but an hour before dawn his servants wakened him, and he in turn went to his son Titus and his lieutenant Trajan, wakening them, for he was a peasant and was willing to humble himself before others. “We shall not leave this camp until we have crushed Makor. Today I want every available man thrown against it.”

  Inside the walls General Josephus warned his Jews, “This is the second test. He will try to terrify us, but if we get through this day we are saved.”

  It was twelve hours of horror, with a rain of spears and arrows and tremendous rocks being thrown at the town while the engines moved forward—huge towers from which spears could be thrown down upon the defenders, powerful ballistas which hurled rocks like small houses—and pressure was maintained throughout the day at all points. Frequently it seemed as if the numbing power of the Romans must prevail, but in these critical hours Josephus was superb. He ran from one exposed danger spot to the next, exhorting his men as if they were a hundred thousand, dodging Roman arrows and inviting death. Of this man’s personal bravery none could doubt, for he fought as if he alone were responsible for throwing the Romans out of Galilee, and without his valiant efforts that day Makor would have fallen.

  It held. By some miracle the handful of Jews inside the walls built in David’s time and repaired by Jeremoth in the age of Gomer repulsed all that Vespasian could mount against them. Rocks crashed into the Augusteana and carried away the roof, but the main gate, which was the important thing, held fast. From the towers rained down much armament which crumbled the glorious pillars of the ancient Greek temple, but the postern gate was not broken, and when night fell it was obvious that the maximum effort of the Romans had collapsed in exhaustion without accomplishing much.

  That night Yigal, as always, assembled his family of nineteen in his little home and gave thanks for what God had done for His Jews in that critical period when the death of the town hung in the balance. Placing his woolen shawl over his shoulders he rocked back and forth in the Jewish manner as he prayed prior to eating. Then he talked with his sons about the day’s warfare and played with his grandchildren, who were beginning to experience the hunger attendant upon any siege. They were also thirsty, because even though Makor had ample supplies of water from the hidden source, and although huge supplies had been stored in cisterns, General Josephus had prudently ordered rationing against the unlucky day when the well might somehow fall into the hands of the Romans. Other families cheated on this matter and drank what they wanted, but Yigal, as leader of the defense, understood what Josephus was trying to accomplish, and in Yigal’s house the rationing was observed.

  Beruriah came in with the night meal—a frugal offering of beans and bread and olives—and Yigal ceremoniously served the little children, then watched them severely in the dim light lest they begin to eat before their elders. This was a game he had always played with his children, and hungry though they were they enjoyed participating in it, watching his sharp eyes as they passed from child to child, half smiling, half stern, while his skilled hands continued serving the meager portions. But this evening he was not to finish, for a messenger came running with a summons to the wall. Fearing some catastrophe Yigal put down the crushed olives and left his home, his prayer shawl still about his shoulders.

  At the foot of the wall, illuminated by flares held by his Roman generals, stood Vespasian, a great solid man with a warrior’s stern insistence upon ending this siege. “Yigal, worker at the olive press, I have swallowed my pride and I ask you again: Will you throw open your gates?”

  “Never,” Yigal replied.

  “For the last time, will you accept an honorable peace?”

  “This is a town of God,” Yigal replied from the darkness of the wall, “and there can be no honorable peace with the gods you bring from Rome.”

  “Do you intend, then, to sacrifice the people of this town?”

  “We are with God, and He will save us,” Yigal answered, and for the last time the determined Roman veteran and the obdurate Jew faced each other at the wall of King David. They were of about the same age, each a dedicated man, each honorable and a man to trust—when the time came for Vespasian to die he would say quietly, “A Roman emp
eror should die standing on his feet, ready to face all enemies,” and in this defiant posture he would meet death, of ten successive emperors from Tiberius to Domitian the only one to escape assassination or forced suicide. But between him and Yigal there could be no conciliation.

  “When I next face you, Yigal of the olive press, the meeting will be terrible,” and Vespasian was gone.

  On the nineteenth day of the siege a fearful thing happened and on the nineteenth night began a sequence of events which, involving as they did Josephus and Rab Naaman, would be remembered in history. Both occurrences were protested by Yigal, but he was helpless to prevent either. On the morning of this critical day General Josephus ordered his professional soldiers to drag out the tuns of olive oil that Yigal had provided, and a large fire was started in the forum between the roofless Augusteana and the wrecked Greek temple. When Yigal saw the fire and realized what was intended he asked Josephus if this was necessary, and the young general nodded.

  “But this has been an honorable war,” Yigal protested.