[5]. No argument ought to be founded on the supposed numbers of the legions. The number generally composing a legion in the time of the Empire was 6000, and before the Empire, was 4000. But at Pharsalia Cæsar’s legions were only 2000 each, while Pompey’s were 7000.
[6]. It is very curious that these “servants” are not mentioned either by Mr. Lewin or Mr. Fergusson. Mr. Williams puts down the number of the legions at 10,000 each, perhaps including the servants.
It is not easy to make any kind of estimate of the number of these servants. Perhaps, however, we shall be within the mark if we put down the whole number of forces under Titus’s command at something like eighty thousand—an army which was greatly superior in numbers to that of the besieged. It was also fully provided and equipped with military engines, provisions and material of all kinds. It marched, without meeting any enemy, from Cæsarea to Jerusalem, where it arrived on the 11th of April.[[7]]
The city, meanwhile, had been continuing those civil dissensions which hastened its ruin. John, Simon Bar Gioras, and Eleazar, each at the head of his own faction, made the streets run with blood. John, whose followers numbered six thousand, held the Lower, New, and Middle City; Simon, at the head of ten thousand Jews and five thousand Idumeans, had the strong post of the Upper City, with a portion of the third wall; Eleazar, with two thousand zealots, more fanatic than the rest, had barricaded himself within the Temple itself. There they admitted, it is true, unarmed worshippers, but kept out the rest. The stores of the Temple provided them with abundance of provisions, and while the rest of the soldiers were starving, those who were within the Temple walls[[8]] were well fed and in good case. This was, however, the only advantage which Eleazar possessed over the rest. Their position, cooped up in a narrow fortress—for such the Temple was—and exposed to a constant shower of darts, stones, and missiles of all sorts, from John’s men, was miserable enough. John and Simon fought with each other in the lower ground, the valley of the Tyropœon, which lay between the Temple and Mount Zion. Here were stored up supplies of corn sufficient, it is said, for many years’ supply. But in the sallies which John and Simon made upon each other all the buildings in this part of the town were destroyed or set on fire, and all their corn burned; so that famine had actually begun before the commencement of the siege.
[7]. The dates of the siege are all taken from Professor Willis’s ‘Journal,’ given in Williams’s ‘Holy City,’ vol. i. p. 478.
[8]. After Eleazar had succumbed to John.
“And now,” to quote the words of the historian, “the people of the city were like a great body torn in pieces. The aged men and the women were in such distress by their internal calamities that they wished for the Romans, and earnestly hoped for an external war, in order to deliver them from their domestic miseries. The citizens themselves were under a terrible consternation and fear; nor had they any opportunity of taking counsel and of changing their conduct; nor were there any hopes of coming to an agreement with their enemies; nor could such as wished to do so flee away, for guards were set at all places, and the chiefs of the robbers agreed in killing those who were for peace with the Romans.”
Day and night, he goes on to tell us, the wretched inhabitants were harassed with the shouts of those who fought, and the lamentation of those who mourned, until through the overwhelming fear, every one for himself, relations ceased to care for each other, the living ceased to mourn for the dead, and those who were not among the defenders of the walls ceased to care for anything or to look for anything except for speedy destruction; and this even before the siege began.
And yet, with the city in this miserable and wretched condition, with the certain knowledge that the Romans were coming, the usual crowds of Jews and Idumeans flocked to the city to keep the feast of the Passover. Their profound faith was proof against every disaster. That the Temple should actually fall, actually be destroyed, seems never even to have entered into their heads; and there can be little doubt that the rude, rough, country people, coming to keep the Passover with their wives and children, were filled with a wild hope that the God of Joshua was about to work some signal deliverance for them. The population thus crowded into the city is estimated by Tacitus at six hundred thousand; by Josephus at more than double that number. There are reasons for believing the number at least as great as that stated by Tacitus. A register of the buried had been kept in the city, and the registrar of one gate, out of which the dead were thrown, gave Josephus a note of his numbers. The historian conversed with those who escaped. A list of the captives would be, no doubt, made—the Romans were not in the habit of doing things carelessly, even after a great victory—and they would be accessible to Josephus. So far as these go we ought to allow Josephus’s right to the consideration due to an eye-witness; and it seems to us absolutely unwarranted by any historical or other arguments, to put down, as has been done, the population of this city during the siege at sixty or seventy thousand.[[9]] This was doubtless something like the ordinary population; but it was swelled tenfold and twentyfold by the crowds of those who came yearly to keep the feast. Again, the argument based by Mr. Fergusson on the area of the city fails for the simple reason that it is founded on wrong calculations[[10]] as to the number of square yards. Moreover, it seems to assume the besieged to have been all comfortably lodged; it ignores altogether the estimate taken by Cestius; while, if the numbers adopted by Mr. Fergusson be correct, the horrors of the siege must have been grossly exaggerated, and the stories told by Josephus cannot be accepted; and, for a last objection, it appears to be assumed, what is manifestly incorrect, that every able-bodied man fought. For this vast mass of poor helpless people were like a brutum pecus; they took no part whatever in the fighting. Nothing is clearer than the statement made by Josephus of the fighting men. They were twenty-three thousand in all at the beginning: they did not invite help, and probably would not allow it, from the population within the walls. These, who very speedily found relief, in the thinning of death, for their first lack of accommodation, sat crouching and cowering in the houses, desperately hoping against hope, starving from the very commencement, beginning to die in heaps almost before the camp of the 10th Legion was pitched upon the Mount of Olives. The numbers given by Josephus may not be correct within a great many thousands; there is reason enough, however, to believe that, within limits very much narrower than some of his readers are disposed to believe, his numbers may be fairly depended on. After all, it matters little enough what the numbers really were; and even if we let them be what any one chooses to call them, there yet remains no doubt that the sufferings of the people were very cruel, and that, of all wretched and bloody sieges in the world’s history, few, if any, have been more wretched or more bloody than the siege of Jerusalem by Titus.
[9]. Fergusson’s Art. ‘Jerusalem,’ Biblical Dictionary.