Meanwhile, the banks were repaired, and were ready by the sixty-sixth day of the siege, when the summer sun was beating down mercilessly on besiegers and besieged. Four days later the Syrian soldier Sabinus attempted to lead a forlorn hope against Antonia. “His complexion was black, his flesh was lean and spare and well knit, but there was a certain heroic soul that dwelt in this small body.” He perished in the attempt, but two nights later, about 3 a.m., the standard-bearer of the 5th legion, with two cavalry-men and a trumpeter, surprised the citadel, clambered up the ruins of the breach, and slew the sentries. The Romans poured in, and the “top of the hill”—or scarp of Antonia—being occupied, the key of the Temple fortress was in their hands. Yet the inner Temple resisted still for thirty-five days, till the fatal ninth of Ab,[363] the day on which, according to the rabbis, the Holy House had been ruined by the Babylonians, and the day also on which Bêther fell sixty-five years later. The daily sacrifice had ceased three weeks before, also on a day of evil memory on which Antiochus Epiphanes had burned the scroll of the Law. The formal siege of the inner courts entailed the clearance of the Antonia courtyard, and the erection of four banks on the north side, one at the north-west corner of the Priests’ Court, a second at Moked, and two others outside the Court of the Women. The outer cloisters were set on fire, and burned fiercely in the dry season, especially because the gilding that adorned the roofs was spread over a wax covering of the timbers. The great gatehouse was battered, the golden gates were set on fire. The bodies of the defenders were piled round the altar, and the blood—not of bulls or goats, but of men—ran down the steps. Yet the survivors still fought from the roof of the Temple itself, hurling the leaden spikes which kept birds from nesting on the Holy House upon the Romans below, until the fire reached them, and a few submitted and were spared, except the priests, whom Titus ordered to be slain.
The capture of the Temple placed the lower city at the mercy of the victors, and the soldiers plundered the Akra, the Council House, and the Ophel, setting the whole on fire to Siloam. Yet the upper city still held out under Simon, son of Gioras, the last left of the rebel leaders. Eleven days after the Temple was fired, banks were begun against this last citadel, and the siege dragged on yet for eighteen days more,[364] till at length the rampart was breached on the west, and the upper city also fell, after a siege of 134 days, on Elul 8, in August. The few survivors fled to Siloam and hid in the tunnel. Simon concealed himself in a “certain subterranean cavern,” and John in another. The latter was forced by hunger to give himself up, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life. The whole city was burned and the walls entirely demolished, except the three “royal towers” and part of the wall on the west side of the upper city, where the 10th legion was left under Terentius Rufus. A little later, while Titus was still at Cæsarea, “Simon, thinking he might be able to astonish and delude the Romans—”after he had failed to mine his way out of the cavern—“put on a white dress and buttoned on him a purple robe, and appeared out of the ground in the place where the Temple had formerly been.” He thus seems to have been hidden in the cave under the Ṣakhrah. He was taken alive, and afterwards walked the Via Sacra at Rome, to meet his death in the triumph of Titus.
“LET US DEPART”
The captives were condemned to fight wild beasts at Cæsarea. The golden lamp, the golden table, the trumpets of Jubilee, and the Temple copy of the law[365] (afterwards given to Josephus), were borne in triumph on that day, as the arch of Titus still bears witness. Medals were struck recording the great victory,[366] with the head of Vespasian on one side and on the other Israel mourning under the palm, with the Latin legend “Judæa Capta.” Well might they remember the prophecies of Jesus, son of Ananus, who for eight years had walked the streets, crying, “Woe, woe, to Jerusalem!” till the stone from an engine slew him; and the prediction that the temple should perish when it became a quadrangle; and, above all, that awful night[367] of the last Pentecost ever celebrated in the sanctuary, to which Tacitus and Josephus alike refer. “As the priests were going by night to the inner Temple as their custom was, to perform their sacred ministrations, they said that first of all they felt a quaking and heard a great noise”—the sound of the great doors of Nicanor as they swung suddenly open—“and after that they heard a sound as of a great multitude saying, Let us depart hence.”
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER VIII
[321] “Wars,” V. xi. 1.
[322] “Ant.,” XVII. x. 1–10; “Wars,” II. iii. 1–4.
[323] The rulers of Jerusalem were procurators except Agrippa I., who was king. They were as follows: Coponius, from 10 A. D.; M. Ambivius, c. 12 A. D.; Annius Rufus, c. 13 A. D.; V. Gratus, 14 A. D.; P. Pilatus, 25 A. D.; Marcellus, 35 A. D.; Marullus, 37 A. D.; Agrippa I., 41 A. D.; Cuspius Fadus, 44 A. D.; Tib. Alexander, 47 A. D.; V. Cumanus, 49 A. D.; Felix, 52 A. D.; P. Festus, 60 A. D.; Albinus, 62 A. D.; Gessius Florus, 64 A. D. The final revolt began in 65 A. D.
[324] “Ant.,” XVIII. iii. 1, 2, 3, iv. 1–3.
[325] “Ord. Survey Notes,” pp. 80–3; “Mem. Survey West Pal.,” vol. iii. pp. 89–91; Bliss, “Excavat. at Jer.,” pp. 53–6, 332.