Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin

by Walter Besant; Edward Henry Palmer

On the fifteenth day of the siege the biggest battering ram, “Nikon,” the Conqueror, effected a breach in the outer wall. The Jews, panic-stricken, forgot their wonted courage and took refuge within the second wall. Titus became therefore master of Bezetha, in the New Town; forming about a third of the city.

As nothing is said about the population of this, which was probably only a suburb and never actually filled with people till the siege began, we may suppose that very early in the assault they hastened out of reach of the ballistæ and arrows by fleeing to the inner city. And by this time a fortnight of the siege had passed away and already their numbers were grievously thinned by starvation.

Between the palace of Herod and the Temple area there stretched the second wall across the Tyropœon valley, which was filled, before the faction fights of Simon and John, with houses of the lower sort of people. This was the most densely populated part of the city. The wall which defended it was not so strong as the rest of the fortifications, and in five days, including an unsuccessful attempt to storm the palace of Herod, a breach was effected and the Romans poured into the town, Titus at their head.

In hopes of detaching the people from the soldiers, Titus ordered that no houses should be destroyed, no property pillaged, and the lives of the people spared. It was an act of mercy which the fierce passions of the Jews interpreted as a sign of weakness, and renewing their contest, fighting hand to hand in the streets, from the houses, from the walls, they beat the Romans back, and recaptured their wall, filling the breach with their own bodies. The battle lasted for four days more when Titus, entering again, threw down the whole northern part of the wall and became master of the whole Lower Town.

Partly to give his troops rest, partly to exhibit his power before the Jews, Titus gave orders that the paying of the troops should be made the opportunity for a review of the whole army almost under the walls of the city, and in full view of the besieged. The pageant lasted four days, during which there was a grand march-past of the splendid Roman troops, with burnished armour and weapons, and in full uniform.

“So the soldiers, according to custom, opened the cases where their arms before lay covered, and marched with their breastplates on; as did the horsemen lead the horses in their fine trappings.... The whole of the old wall and the north side of the Temple were full of spectators, and one might see the houses full of such as looked at them; nor was there any part of the city which was not covered over with their multitudes; nay, a great consternation seized upon the hardiest of the Jews themselves, when they saw all the army in the same place, together with the success of their arms and the good order of the men.”[^[12]]

[12]. Joseph. ‘Bell. Jud.’ v. ix. 1.

The Jews saw and trembled. But they did not submit. There could be no longer any hope. The multitude, pent up in limits too narrow for one-tenth of their number, daily obtained more room by death, for they died by thousands. The bodies were thrown out into the valleys, where they lay rotting, a loathsome mass. Roaming bands of soldiers went up and down the city looking for food. When they came upon a man who looked fat and well-fed they tortured him till he told the secret of his store: to be starving or to appear to be starving was the only safety: and “now,” says Josephus, “all hope of escaping was cut off from the Jews, together with their liberty of going out of the city. Then did the famine widen its progress, and devoured the people by whole houses and families; the upper rooms were full of women and children that were dying by famine; and the lanes of the city were full of the dead bodies of the aged; the children also and the young men wandered about the market-places like shadows, all swelled with the famine, and fell down dead wheresoever their misery seized them. As for burying them, those that were sick themselves were not able to do it; and those that were hearty and well, were deterred from doing it by the great multitude of those dead bodies, and by the uncertainty there was how soon they should die themselves; for many died as they were burying others, and many went to their coffins before that fatal hour was come! Nor was there any lamentation made under these calamities, nor were heard any mournful complaints; but the famine confounded all natural passions; for those who were just going to die, looked upon those that were gone to their rest before them with dry eyes and open mouths. A deep silence also, and a kind of deadly night, had seized upon the city; while yet the robbers were still more terrible than these miseries were themselves; for they brake open those houses which were no other than graves of dead bodies, and plundered them of what they had; and carrying off the coverings of their bodies, went out laughing, and tried the points of their swords on their dead bodies; and, in order to prove what mettle they were made of, they thrust some of those through that still lay alive upon the ground; but for those that entreated them to lend them their right hand, and their sword to despatch them, they were too proud to grant their requests, and left them to be consumed by the famine. Now every one of these died with their eyes fixed upon the Temple. Children pulled the very morsels that their fathers were eating out of their very mouths, and what was still more to be pitied, so did the mothers do as to their infants; and when those that were most dear were perishing under their hands, they were not ashamed to take from them the very last drops that might preserve their lives; and while they ate after this manner, yet were they not concealed in so doing; but the seditious everywhere came upon them immediately, and snatched away from them what they had gotten from others; for when they saw any house shut up, this was to them a signal that the people within had gotten some food; whereupon they broke open the doors, and ran in, and took pieces of what they were eating, almost up out of their very throats, and this by force: the old men, who held their food fast, were beaten; and if the women hid what they had within their hands, their hair was torn for so doing; nor was there any commiseration shown either to the aged or to infants, but they lifted up children from the ground as they hung upon the morsels they had gotten, and shook them down upon the floor; but still were they more barbarously cruel to those that had prevented their coming in, and had actually swallowed down what they were going to seize upon, as if they had been unjustly defrauded of their right. They also invented terrible methods of torment to discover where any food was, and a man was forced to bear what it is terrible even to hear, in order to make him confess that he had but one loaf of bread, or that he might discover a handful of barley-meal that was concealed; this was done when these tormentors were not themselves hungry; for the thing had been less barbarous had necessity forced them to it; but it was done to keep their madness in exercise, and as making preparation of provisions for themselves for the following days.”

At night the miserable wretches would steal into the ravines, those valleys where the dead bodies of their children, their wives, and kin, were lying in putrefying masses, to gather roots which might serve for food. The lot of these was pitiable indeed. If they remained outside they were captured by the Romans, and crucified, sometimes five hundred in a morning, in full view of the battlements: if they went back laden with a few poor roots of the earth, they were robbed by the soldiers at the gate, and sent home again to their starving children, starving themselves, and unable to help them.

The cruelty of Titus, designed to terrify the Jews, only stimulated them to fresh courage. Why, indeed, should they surrender? Death was certain for all; it was better to die fighting, to kill one of the enemy at least, than to die amid the jeers of the triumphant soldiers. Besides, we must remember that they were defending their sacred mountain, their Temple, the place to which every Jew’s heart looked with pride and fondness, whither turned the eyes of those who died with a sort of sad reproach. Simon and John were united in this feeling alone—that it was the highest duty of a Jew to fight for his country. The portraits of these two commanders have been drawn by an enemy’s hand. We must remember that the prolonged resistance of the Jews was a standing reproof to Josephus, who had been defeated, captured, and taken into favour. No epithets, on his part, can be too strong to hurl at John and Simon. It is impossible now to know what were the real characters of these men, whether they were religious patriots, or whether they were filled with the basest and most selfish motives. One thing is quite certain and may be said of both: if John hated Simon much, he loved the city more. Neither, at the worst moment, hinted at a surrender of the town; neither tried to curry favour for himself by compassing the fall of his adversary.