From either end of heaven the welkin burns.”
Those who witnessed the splendid comet of Donati (A.D. 1858) will at once be able to recognize the form of the flaming sword across the sky.
“The brazen gate of the Temple, which required twenty men to move it on its hinges, flew open of its own accord in the dead of night, as if to let in the advancing armies of the heathen.” (See Philip Smith.)
[50]—page 419.] The doom of the Holy City had been rendered inevitable by the conduct of the people in forsaking their covenant with Jehovah. The Evangelist Luke (xix. 41-44) represents Jesus as pausing as He approached the city, and shedding bitter tears over the remedilessness of the fate of the city and people. The passage is of interest on account, not only of this weeping, but also of the prophecy so remarkably fulfilled by Titus. The words of the Gospel are as follows:
“And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”
[51]—page 428.] It will be remembered that when Titus gathered his forces at Cæsarea for an advance upon Jerusalem, he drew from Alexandria, Egyptian and Ethiopian troops.
[52]—page 446.] The loss of life among the Jews during the siege of Jerusalem was almost incredible. Josephus reckoned it at 1,100,000, a number not difficult to credit if we remember that “nearly the whole male population of Judea had been gathered together for the Passover when the city was beleaguered. The prisoners taken in the whole war were 90,000.” Had it not been for the Jews of the dispersion, the nation would have perished with the city. It was due to the compassion of Titus that a movement that might have destroyed even this remnant was stopped almost at its inception. When persecution of the Jews began at Antioch, where several Jews were put to death for an alleged plot to set fire to the city, from which it would probably have spread over the empire, Titus put an end to it by his famous order and rebuke: “The country of the Jews is destroyed, thither they can not return; it would be hard to allow them no home to retreat to; leave them in peace.”
[53]—page 459.] By his Roman prenomen, Titus, is usually known Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus, the eleventh of the twelve Cæsars, Emperor from 79 to 81 A.D. He was in some respects one of the most remarkable of the Cæsars. “Educated in the imperial court, he was thoroughly trained in all elegant accomplishments: he could speak Greek fluently, and could compose verses; he was proficient in music; he could write short-hand, and could imitate handwriting so skilfully that he used to say that he might have been a most successful forger. He was very handsome, with a fine commanding expression and a vigorous frame, well trained in all the exercises of a soldier.” His long and varied military and executive experience, under the guidance of his father Vespasian and especially in the Jewish war, made him a consummate warrior and administrator. For a time, however, after he became formally associated with his father in the government, with the title of Cæsar, and practically controlled the administration during the last nine years of Vespasian’s reign, he developed “the character of being luxurious, self-indulgent, profligate, and cruel,” and seemed to have in himself the promise of being a second Nero. The scandal connecting his name with the shameless beauty Berenice, the sister of the Agrippa of the Acts of the Apostles, outraged public opinion at Rome, but ended in his sending her back to the East.
The death of Vespasian, in 79 A.D., wrought a transformation in Titus, and he became known as the “love and delight of mankind.” “He had the tact to make himself liked by all. He seems to have been thoroughly kindly and good-natured; he delighted in giving splendid presents, and his memorable saying, ‘I have lost a day,’ is said to have been uttered one evening at the dinner-table when he suddenly remembered that he had not bestowed a gift on any one that day.”
[54]—page 467.] The fine portrait here drawn of Titus Flavius Vespasianus, the tenth of the Twelve Cæsars, known in history as Vespasian, is in striking contrast with that previously sketched of his son Titus. The father had little of the princely and imposing personality of the son. He was a thoroughly able soldier, while simple and frugal in his habits; in short, Tacitus says that “but for his avarice he was equal to the generals of old days.” A better judgment, however, would probably attribute the avarice, with which both Tacitus and Suetonius stigmatize him, to “an enlightened economy, which, in the disordered state of the Roman finances, was an absolute necessity.” He could be abundantly “liberal to impoverished senators and knights, to cities and towns desolated by natural calamity, and especially to men of letters and of the professor class, several of whom he pensioned with salaries of as much as £800 a year.” He was a blunt, plain soldier, without distinguished bearing, and perhaps for that very reason a greater favorite with the army and the common people. “By his own example of simplicity of life he put to shame the luxury and extravagance of the Roman nobles, and initiated in many respects a marked improvement in the general tone of society,” while devoting much thought to the spread and promotion of those intellectual tastes with which he was not personally in sympathy.