[183] To the three legions there belonged five alae and eighteen cohorts, and the army of Palestine consisting of one ala and five cohorts. These auxilia numbered accordingly 3000 alarians and (since among the twenty-three cohorts ten were 1000 strong, thirteen 720, or probably rather only 420 strong; for instead of the startling ἑξακοσίους we expect rather τριακοσίους ἑξάκοντα) 16,240 (or, if 720 is retained, 19,360) cohortales. To these fell to be added 1000 horsemen from each of the four kings, and 5000 Arabian archers, with 2000 from each of the other three kings. This gives together—reckoning the legion at 6000 men—52,240 men, and so towards 60,000, as Josephus (Bell. Jud. iii. 4, 2) says. But as the divisions are thus all calculated at the utmost normal strength, the effective aggregate number can hardly be estimated at 50,000. These numbers of Josephus appear in the main trustworthy, just as the analogous ones for the army of Cestius (Bell. Jud. ii. 18, 9); whereas his figures, resting on the census, are throughout measured after the scale of the smallest village in Galilee numbering 15,000 inhabitants (Bell. Jud. iii. 3, 2), and are historically as useless as the figures of Falstaff. It is but seldom, e.g. at the siege of Jotapata, that we recognise reported numbers.
[184] This arch was erected to Titus after his death by the imperial senate. Another, dedicated to him during his short government by the same senate in the circus (C. I. L. vi. 944) specifies even with express words as the ground of erecting the monument, “because he, according to the precept and direction and under the superintendence of his father, subdued the people of the Jews and destroyed the town of Hierusolyma, which up to his time had either been besieged in vain by all generals, kings, and peoples, or not assailed at all.” The historic knowledge of this singular document, which ignores not merely Nebuchadnezzar and Antiochus Epiphanes, but their own Pompeius, stands on the same level with its extravagance in the praise of a very ordinary feat of arms.
[185] The account of Josephus, that Titus with his council of war resolved not to destroy the temple, excites suspicion by the manifest intention of it, and, as the use made of Tacitus in the chronicle of Sulpicius Severus is completely proved by Bernays, it may certainly well be a question whether his quite opposite account (Chron. ii. 30, 6), that the council of war had resolved to destroy the temple, does not proceed from Tacitus, and whether the preference is not to be given to it, although it bears traces of Christian revision. This view further commends itself through the fact that the dedication addressed to Vespasian of the Argonautica of the poet Valerius Flaccus celebrates the victor of Solyma, who hurls the fiery torches.
[186] That the emperor took this land for himself (ἰδίαν αὐτῷ τὴν χώραν φυλάττων) is stated by Josephus, Bell. Jud. vii. 6, 6; not in accord with this is his command πᾶσαν γῆν ἀποδόσθαι τῶν Ἰουδαίων (l. c.), in which doubtless there lurks an error or a copyist’s mistake. It is in keeping with the expropriation that land was by way of grace assigned elsewhere to individual Jewish landowners (Josephus, vit. 16). We may add that the territory was probably employed as an endowment for the legion stationed there (Eph. epigr. ii. n. 696; Tacitus, Ann. xiii. 54).
[187] Eusebius, H. E. iv. 2, puts the outbreak on the 18th, and so, according to his reckoning (in the Chronicle), the penultimate year of Trajan; and therewith Dio, lxviii. 32, agrees.
[188] Eusebius himself (in Syncellus) says only: Ἀδριανὸς Ἰουδαίους κατὰ Ἀλεξανδρέων στασιάζοντας ἐκόλασεν. The Armenian and Latin translations appear to have erroneously made out of this a restoration of Alexandria destroyed by the Jews, of which Eusebius, H. E. iv. 2, and Dio, lxviii. 32, know nothing.
[189] This is shown by the expressions of Dio, lxix. 13: οἱ ἁπανταχοῦ γῆς Ἰουδαῖοι and πάσης ὡς εἰπεῖν κινουμένης ἐπὶ τούτῳ τῆς οἰκουμένης.
[190] If, according to the contemporary Appian (Syr. 50), Hadrian once more destroyed (κατέσκαψε) the town, this proves as well that it was preceded by an at least in some measure complete formation of the colony, as that it was captured by the insurgents. Only thereby is explained the great loss which the Romans suffered (Fronto, de bello Parth. p. 218 Nab.: Hadriano imperium obtinente quantum militum a Iudaeis ... caesum; Dio, lxix. 14); and it accords at least well with this, that the governor of Syria, Publicius Marcellus, left his province to bring help to his colleague Tineius Rufus (Eusebius, H. E. iv. 6; Borghesi, Opp. iii. 64), in Palestine (C. I. Gr. 4033, 4034).
[191] That the coins with this name belong to the Hadrianic insurrection is now proved (v. Sallet, Zeitschr. für Numism. v. 110); this is consequently the Rabbi Eleazar from Modein of the Jewish accounts (Ewald, Gesch. Isr. vii.2, 418; Schürer, Lehrbuch, p. 357). That the Simon whom these coins name partly with Eleazar, partly alone, is the Bar-Kokheba of Justin Martyr and Eusebius is at least very probable.
[192] Dio (lxix. 12) calls the war protracted (οὔτ' ὀλιγοχρόνιος); Eusebius in his Chronicle puts its beginning in the sixteenth, its end in the eighteenth or nineteenth year of Hadrian; the coins of the insurgents are dated from the first or from the second year of the deliverance of Israel. We have not trustworthy dates; the Rabbinic tradition (Schürer, Lehrbuch, p. 361) is not available in this respect.