Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin

by Walter Besant; Edward Henry Palmer

Claudius Felix was sent in place of Cumanus, a freedman, brother of Pallas the favourite of the Emperor, magnificent, prodigal, luxurious, and unscrupulous. He found the country in the worst state possible, full of robbers, and impostors. These sprung up everyday, and were everyday caught and destroyed; no doubt most of them men whose wits were utterly gone in looking for the Messiah, until they ended in believing themselves to be the Messiah. These poor creatures, followed by a rabble more ignorant and more mad than themselves, went up and down the distracted country, raising hopes which were doomed to disappointment, and leading out the wild countrymen to meet death and torture when they looked for glory and victory. One of the impostors, an Egyptian, probably an Egyptian Jew, brought a multitude up to the Mount of Olives, promising that at his word the walls of the city should fall down, and they themselves march in triumphant. He came, but instead of seeing the walls fall down, he met the troops of Felix, who dispersed his people, slaying four hundred of them.

To Felix belongs the crime of introducing the Sicarii into the city of Jerusalem. Wearied with the importunities of the high priest, Jonathan, who exhorted him continually to govern better, or at all events to govern differently, and reproached him with the fact that it was through his own influence that Felix obtained his office, he resolved to rid himself of a friend so troublesome, by the speediest and surest method, that of assassination. The Sicarii were not, like the hired bravoes of the middle ages, men who would commit any murder for which they were paid. It appears, on the contrary, that they held it a cardinal point of faith to murder those, and only those, who seemed to stand in the way of their cause. Now their cause was that of the sect which had grown out of Judas’s teaching, the zealots. These Sicarii mingling with the crowd of those who went up to worship, carrying daggers concealed under their garments, fell upon Jonathan the High Priest, and murdered him.[^[2]] This done they went on slaying all those who were obnoxious to them, even in the Temple itself. “And this,” says the historian, “seems to me the reason why God, out of his hatred to the wickedness of these men, rejected our city: and as for the Temple, he no longer esteemed it sufficiently pure for him to inhabit therein, but brought the Romans upon us, and threw a fire upon the city to purge it: and brought upon us, our wives, and children, slavery,—as desirous to make us wiser by our calamities.” And now the voice of discord was heard even among the priests themselves, who had hitherto preserved a certain sobriety. Between the chief priests and “the principal men of the multitude of Jerusalem,” a feud broke out. Each side had its followers: they cast, we are told, not only reproachful words, but also stones at each other. And the chief priests, robbing the threshingfloors and appropriating all the tithes to themselves, caused many of the poorer priests to die of want.

[2]. Milman says, in the Temple itself, which does not appear from the account of Josephus, who expressly says that, after this, they had the boldness to murder men in the Temple itself.

Then occurred the first outbreak in Cæsarea. This town was about equally divided between the Syrians and the Jews, the former claimed the pre-eminence on the ground that Herod the founder, though himself a Jew, had built the splendid temples and statues by which the city was evidently intended to be a Grecian city, upon the site of Strato’s Tower; while the Jews argued that as the founder was a Jew, the city was evidently Jewish, and ought not to be ruled except by Jews. The dispute, as was always the case, came to the arbitrament of arms, in which the Jews got the best of it. Then Felix came himself, with a strong force, and brought them to their senses. But as the dispute still went on, he sent representatives on both sides to Nero the Emperor, who ruled in favour of the Greeks or Syrians. Here, the decision of the Emperor appears to have been just. Herod, the founder of Cæsarea, had clearly not intended to found a city for the further propagation of a sect to which he indeed belonged, regarding it, nevertheless, with the toleration of a cultivated Roman, as only one sect out of many. The Jews accepted the decision in their usual way: they only became more turbulent. Agrippa’s own dispute with his own countrymen was decided, however, in their favour, no doubt from politic considerations. He had built an upper room in his palace, where, lying on his couch, he could look over into the Temple and watch the sacrifices. Some of the priests discovering this, made out that it was an intrusion into the necessary privacy of their religious ceremonies, and hastily ran up a wall to prevent being overlooked. Festus, who had now succeeded Felix, ordered it to be pulled down; but, most probably at the instigation of Agrippa, whose popularity might be at stake, he gave permission to appeal to Nero. Ismael, the high priest, went, accompanied by the keeper of the Treasury. They carried their point: the wall was allowed to stand, but Ismael was detained in Rome, and Agrippa appointed and deprived three high priests in succession—Joseph, Annas, and Jesus son of Dammai. The firm, strong hand of Festus was meantime employed in putting down robbers, and regulating the disturbances of the country. Unhappily for the Jews, while he was so engaged, he was seized with some illness and died. Albinus succeeded him. As for Albinus, Josephus tells us that there was no sort of wickedness named but he had a hand in it. “Not only did he steal and plunder every one’s substance, not only did he burden the whole nation with taxes, but he permitted the relations of such as were in prison for robbery to redeem them for money; and nobody remained in the prisons as a malefactor but he who gave him nothing.... The principal men among the seditious purchased leave of Albinus to go on with their practices: and every one of these wretches was encompassed with his own band of robbers. Those who lost their goods were forced to hold their peace, when they had reason to show great indignation at what they had suffered; those who had escaped were forced to flatter him, that deserved to be punished out of the fear they were in of suffering equally with the others.”

This, however, is a vague accusation, and is found in the ‘Wars of the Jews,’ where Josephus is anxious to represent the revolt of the people as caused by the bad government of the Romans. From the ‘Antiquities’ we learn that it was Albinus’s wish to keep the country in peace, with which object he destroyed many of the Sicarii. Unfortunately for himself, he formed a great friendship with Ananias the high priest; and when Eleazar, son of Ananias, fell into the hands of the Sicarii, he consented to release ten of his own prisoners for his ransom. This was a fatal measure, because henceforth the Sicarii, if one of their number fell into trouble, and got taken by the Romans, caught a Jew and effected an exchange. Thus the prisons were emptied.

At this time the Temple was finished, and eighteen thousand workmen found themselves suddenly out of employment. Terrified at the prospect of this starving mob being added to their difficulties (for the streets of Jerusalem were already filled with bands of armed men, partisans of deposed high priests), the citizens asked Agrippa to rebuild the Eastern Cloisters, the splendid piece of work which had been built originally by Solomon along that east wall which still stands overlooking the valley of the Kedron. But Agrippa, whose interest in the turbulent city was very small, already meditated departure to some safer quarter, and was spending all the money he had to spare at Beyrout, where he built a theatre, and collected a gallery of sculptures. But he conceded something to his petitioners, and allowed them to pave the city with stone.

Albinus disappears from the history, and Gessius Florus, who exchanged a scourging with whips for a scourging with scorpions, ruled in his place. Cestius Gallus, a man of equal rapacity with himself, ruled in Syria. One cannot read Josephus without, in the first place, suspecting that he wilfully exaggerates the wickedness of the Roman rulers; that he does so in the case of Albinus is clear, as we have shown from comparing the account given in the ‘Antiquities’ with that given in the ‘Wars.’ But even if he only exaggerates, and making allowance for this, were men of special inhumanity and rapacity chosen for those very qualities to rule the country? And if not, if Gessius Florus and Albinus be fair specimens of the officers by whom Rome ruled her provinces and colonies, by what mysterious power was this vast empire kept from universal revolt?

“Upon what meat had this their Cæsar fed,

That he was grown so great?”

The Jews, however, were not the people to brook ill-treatment; and when they took arms against the Romans it was not as if their case seemed to themselves hopeless. They had, it is true, the western world against them; but they had the eastern world behind them, a possible place of refuge. And though they armed against the whole Roman Empire, it must be remembered that the forces at the command of the Emperor were not overwhelming; that they were spread over Africa, Egypt, Spain, Gaul, Britain, Greece, and Italy; that only a certain number could be spared; and that the number of the Jews in Syria amounted probably to several millions. When Cestius Gallus was in Jerusalem at the time of the Passover he ordered the lambs which were sacrificed to be counted. They came to two hundred and fifty-five thousand six hundred. It was reckoned that this represented a total of three millions present in Jerusalem and camped round about it, assisting at the festival. Probably not more than half, perhaps not more than a quarter of the whole number of the people came up. However this may be, it is certain that Palestine was very densely populated; that there were great numbers of Jews in Alexandria, Asia Minor, and Italy; that at any signal success those would have flocked to the standard of revolt; and that had the nation been unanimous and obedient to one general, instead of being divided into sects, parties, and factions, the armies of Vespasian and Titus would have been wholly unable to cope with the rebellion, and the independence of the Jews would have been prevented only by putting forth all the power of the Roman Empire. This was shown later on in the revolt of Barcochebas, a far more serious revolt than this of the zealots, though not so well known, because it was attended with no such signal result as the destruction of the Temple, and because there was no Josephus in the camp of the enemy taking notes of what went on.