A handful of men, they offered war to the mistress of the world. True, the insurgents were rude and unlettered, who knew nothing of Rome and her power. Even if they had known all that Rome could do, it would have mattered nothing, for they were fighting for the defence of all that made life sweet to them; and they were sustained by false prophets, poor brainstruck visionaries, who saw the things they wished to see, and foretold what they wished to happen. God might interfere; the mighty arm which had protected them of old might protect them again. The camp of the Romans might be destroyed like the camp of the Assyrians; and because these things might happen, it was a natural step, to an excited and imaginative people, to prophesy that they would happen. But when the time passed by, when none of these things came to pass, and the deluded multitude hoped that submission would bring safety at least, the tenacity of their leaders held them chained to a hopeless defence. Whether Simon and John fought on with a stronger faith, and still in hope that the arm of the Lord would be stretched out, or whether they fought on with the desperate courage of soldiers who preferred death by battle to death by execution, it is impossible now to say.
It has been suggested by Josephus, as well as by modern writers, that the courage of the Jews was shaken by predictions, omens, and rumours; but if there were predictions of disaster, there were also predictions of triumph. If Jesus, whom a few called Christ, had prophesied the coming fall of the city, there were others who had announced the fall of the enemy. Omens could be read either way. If a sword-shaped comet hung in the sky, who could deny that the sword impended over the heads of the Romans? And when the gate of the Temple flew open, did it not announce the opening of the gates for the triumph of the faithful? In that wild, unsettled time, when there was nothing certain, nothing stable, the very faith of the people would be intensified by these prophecies of disaster; their courage would be strengthened by the gloomy foretellers of defeat; and, as the Trojans fought none the worse because Cassandra was with them, so the Jews fought none the worse because voices were whispering among them about the prophecies of him whom some recognised as the Messiah.
Let us, at least, award them the meed of praise for a courage which has never been equalled. Let us acknowledge that, in all the history of the world, if there has been no siege more bloody and tragic, so there has been no city more fiercely contested, more obstinately defended; and though we may believe that the fall of Jerusalem had been distinctly prophesied by our Lord, we must not therefore look on the Jews as the blind and fated victims of prophecy. The city fell, not in order to fulfil prophecy, but because the Jews were, as they ever had been, a turbulent, self-willed race; because they were undisciplined, because they loved freedom above everything else in the world except their religion; and their religion was the ritual and the Temple.
CHAPTER III.
FROM TITUS TO OMAR.
“Wild Hours, that fly with hope and fear,
If all your office had to do
With old results that look like new,
If this were all your mission here,
“To draw, to sheathe a useless sword,
To fool the crowd with glorious lies,