Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin

by Walter Besant; Edward Henry Palmer

The object of Florus, we are told, was to drive the people to revolt. This we do not believe. It could not have been the policy of Florus to drive into revolt a dangerous and stubborn people, whose character was well known at Rome, whom the Emperor had always been anxious to conciliate. His object may have been, undoubtedly was, to enrich himself as speedily as possible, knowing that revolt was impending and inevitable, and anxious to secure himself a provision in case of his own recall or banishment. Until that provision was secured it would have been fatal for Florus that the revolt should break out.

The first disturbances took place at Cæsarea, when the Greeks, exulting in Nero’s decision, were daily more and more insulting to the Jews. The latter had a synagogue, round which was an open space of ground which they wished to purchase. The owner refused to sell it, and built mean shops upon it, leaving only a narrow passage whereby the Jews could pass to their place of worship. One John, a publican, went to Florus, and begged him to interfere, offering at the same time a bribe of eight talents, an enormous sum, which shows that this was more than an ordinary squabble. Florus went away, leaving them to fight it out; and the Greeks added fresh matter of wrath to the Jews by ostentatiously sacrificing birds in an earthen vase as they passed to the synagogue. The significance of this act was that the Greeks loved to tell how the Jews had been all expelled from Egypt, on account of their being leprous. Arms were taken up, and the Jews got the worst of the fray. They withdrew to a place some miles from the town, and sent John to Florus to ask for assistance. John ventured on a reminder about the eight talents, and was rewarded by being thrown into prison. Then Florus went on to Jerusalem, where the wildest tumults raged in consequence of this affront to religion. Alarmed at the symptoms of revolt, he sent messengers beforehand to take seventeen talents out of the sacred treasury, on the ground that Cæsar wanted them. Then the people ran to the Temple, and called upon Cæsar by name, as if he could hear them, to rid them of this Florus. Some of them went about with baskets begging money for him as for a man in a destitute and miserable condition.

The next day news came that Florus was advancing to the city, and the people thought they had better go out and speak him fair. But he was not disposed to receive their salutation, and so sent on Capito, a centurion, with fifty soldiers, bidding them go back and not pretend to receive him as if they were delighted to see him among them again. And he rode into the city, the people being all expectation of what would happen the next day. And in the morning the tribunal of Florus was erected before the gates of his palace. The high priest was summoned to attend, and ordered to give up those who had led the tumult. He urged in extenuation that he did not know the ringleaders, that the act of a few hot-headed youths ought not to be visited on the whole city, and that, in short, he was very sorry for the whole business, and hoped Florus would overlook it. Florus gave orders to his soldiers to pillage the upper market; they did so, scourging, pillaging, and murdering. Berenice, the sister of Agrippa, came herself, barefoot, with shorn head and penitential dress, before Florus, urging him to have pity. But the inexorable Roman, bent on revenge, allowed the soldiers to go on.

Next day he sent again for the high priest, and told him that as a sign of the loyalty of the people, and their sorrow for the late tumults, he should expect them to go forth and meet the two cohorts who were advancing to Jerusalem with every sign of joy. The seditious part of the citizens refused. Then the chief priests, with dust upon their heads and rent garments, brought out the holy vessels and the sacerdotal robes, with their harpers and harps, and implored the people not to risk a collision with the Romans. They yielded, and went out to welcome the cohorts. But the soldiers preserved a gloomy silence. Then some of the more fiery Jews, turning on the Romans, began to abuse Florus. The horsemen rode at them and trampled them down, and a scene of the wildest uproar took place at the gates as they pressed and jostled each other to get in. Then the troops marched straight on Antonia, hoping to get both the fortress and the Temple into their hands. They got into Antonia, when the Jews cut down some part of the cloisters which connected the fort with the Temple. Florus tried to join them, but his men could not pass through the streets, which were crammed with Jews. And next day Florus retired to Cæsarea, leaving only one cohort behind, and the city boiling and seething with rage and madness. And now, indeed, there was little hope of any reconciliation. Both Florus and the Jews sent statements of their conduct to Cestius Gallus, and begged for an investigation. And it must have been now, if at all, that Florus became desirous of fanning the embers of discontent into a flame and making that a war which had only promised to be a disturbance. But nothing can be discovered to prove that Josephus’s assertions as to his motives are based on fact. It is easy, of course, to attribute motives, but hard to prove them. Nothing advanced by Josephus proves more than that Florus was rapacious and cruel, and the people discontented and turbulent. Cestius sent Neapolitanus, one of his officers, to report on the condition of the city. Agrippa joined him. The people came sixty furlongs out of the town to meet them, crying and lamenting, calling on Agrippa to help them in their miseries, and beseeching Neapolitanus to hear their complaints against Florus. The latter they took all round the city, showing him that it was perfectly quiet, and that the people had risen, not against the Romans, but against Florus. Then Neapolitanus went into the Temple to perform such sacrifices as were allowed to strangers, and commending the Jews for their fidelity, went back to Cestius. Agrippa came next. Placing his sister Berenice, doubtless a favourite with the people, in the gallery with him, he made a long harangue. He implored them to consider the vast power of the Romans, and not, for the sake of a quarrel with one governor, to bring upon themselves the ruin of themselves, their families, and their nation. He pointed out that if they would have patience the state of their country should be fairly placed before the emperor’s consideration, and he pledged himself that it would receive his best care. “Have pity,” he concluded, with a burst of tears,—“have pity on your children and your wives, have pity upon this your city and its holy walls, and spare the Temple; preserve the holy house for yourselves.”

The Jews, ever an impressionable race, yielded to the entreaties of Agrippa and the tears of Berenice, and making up the tribute money, paid it into the treasury. Then they began to repair the damage they had done to Antonia. All looked well; but there was one thing yet wanting to complete their submission, they were to obey Florus till he should be removed. This condition they refused to comply with, and when Agrippa urged it upon them, they threw stones at him and reproached him with the uttermost bitterness. Then Agrippa went away in despair, taking with him Berenice, and leaving the city to its fate.

The insurrection began, as it ended, with the taking of the stormy fortress of Masada near the Dead Sea. Here the Roman garrison were all slaughtered. Eleazar the son of Ananias the high priest began the insurrection in Jerusalem, by passing a law that the sacrifices of strangers were henceforth to be forbidden, and no imperial gifts to be offered. The moderate party used all their influence, but in vain, to prevent this. Agrippa sent a small army of three thousand men to help the moderates. The insurgents seized the Temple: the moderates, who included all the wealthy classes, occupied the upper city, and hostilities commenced. A great accession of strength to the insurgents was caused by the burning of the public archives, where all debts were incurred, and consequently the power of the rich was taken from them at one blow.

Then appeared on the scene another leader, for a very brief interval, Manahem, the youngest son of Judas the Galilæan. He came dressed in royal robes and surrounded with guards, no doubt eager to play the part of another Maccabæus. The insurgents took Antonia and the royal palace, and drove the Roman garrison to the three strong towns of Hippicus, Phasaelus, and Mariamne. Ananias, found hidden in an aqueduct, was killed at once; and Manahem became so puffed up with his success that he became intolerable. It was easy to get rid of this mushroom king, who was deposed without any trouble by Eleazar and tortured to death. And then the Roman garrison yielded, Metilius, their commander, stipulating only for the lives of his soldiers. This was granted; but no sooner had they laid down their arms than the Jews fell upon them, vainly calling on the faith of a treaty, and murdered them all except Metilius. Him they spared on condition of his becoming a proselyte.

On that very day and hour, while the Jews were plunging their daggers in the hearts of the Romans, a great and terrible slaughter of their own people was going on in Cæsarea, where the Syrians and Greeks had risen upon the Jews, and massacred twenty thousand of them in a single day. And in every Syrian city the same madness and hatred seized the people, and the Jews were ruthlessly slaughtered in all. No more provocation was needed; no more was possible. In spite of all their turbulence, their ungovernable obstinacy, their fanaticism and pride, which made the war inevitable, and in the then state of mankind these very massacres inevitable,—one feels a profound sympathy with the people who dared to fight and die, seeing that it was hopeless to look for better things. The heads of the people began the war with gloomy forebodings; the common masses with the wildest enthusiasm, which became the mere intoxication of success when they drove back Cestius from the walls of the city, on the very eve of his anticipated victory—for Cestius hastened southwards with an army of twenty thousand men, and besieged the city. The people, divided amongst themselves, were on the point of opening the gates to the Romans, when, to the surprise of everybody, Cestius suddenly broke up his camp and began to retreat. Why he did so, no one ever knew; possessed by a divine madness, Josephus thinks, because God would take no pity on the city and the Sanctuary. As the heavy armed Romans plodded on their way in serried ranks, they were followed by a countless multitude, gathering in numbers every hour, who assailed them with darts, with stones, and with insults. The retreat became a flight, and Cestius brought back his army with a quarter of its numbers killed, having allowed the Roman arms to receive the most terrible disgrace they had ever endured in the East.

Vespasian was sent hastily with a force of three legions, besides the cohorts of auxiliaries. A finer army had never been put into the field, nor did any army have ever harder work before them. Of the first campaign, that in Galilee, our limits will not allow us to write. In the graphic pages of Josephus, himself the hero of Jotapata, or in the still more graphic pages of Milman, may be read how the Jews fought, step by step, bringing to their defence not only the most dogged courage, but also the most ingenious devices; how the blue waves of the Lake of Galilee were reddened with the blood of those whom the Romans killed in their boats; how Vespasian broke his word and sold as slaves those he had promised to pardon; how Gamala fought and Gischala fell, and how for the sins of the people, John was permitted by Heaven to escape and become the tyrant of Jerusalem.

The months passed on, and yet the Romans appeared not before the walls of the city. This meantime was a prey to internal evils, which when read appear almost incredible. The bold rough country folk who followed John, who had fought in Galilee, and escaped the slaughter of Vespasian, came up to the city filled with one idea, that of resistance. In their eyes a Moderate, a Romanizer, was an enemy worse than a Roman, for he was a traitor to the country. They found themselves in a rich and luxurious town, filled with things of which in their distant homes they had had no idea. And these things all belonged to the Romanizers. They needed little permission to pillage, less, to murder the men who had everything to lose, and nothing to gain, by continuing the war. And then ensued a civil war, the scenes of which surpass in horror those of any other page in history. Through the streets ran the zealots dressed in fantastic garb, which they had pillaged, some of them attired as women, murdering all the rich and those who were obnoxious to their party. It is vain to follow their course of plunder, murder, and sedition. They invited the Idumæans to come to their assistance—a fierce and warlike race, who had been all Judaized since the time of Hyrcanus. These gladly came. By night, while a dreadful tempest raged overhead, a sign of God’s wrath, and amid the shrieks of wounded men and despairing women, the Idumæans attacked and gained possession of the Temple, and when the day dawned eight thousand bodies lay piled within the sacred area. Among them were those of Ananus, and Jesus the son of Gamala, the high priests. Stripped naked, their corpses were thrown out to the dogs, and it was forbidden even to bury them. Simon Ben Gioras, who had first signalized himself in the defeat of Cestius, came to the city to add one more to the factions. The moderate party were stamped out and exterminated, and the city divided between John and Simon, who fought incessantly till Titus’s legions appeared before the walls.