Josephus tells us that even now he did not stop begging the Zealots to surrender and save what was left of Jerusalem. While he could not stop himself from reminding them of how savage and impious he thought they had been, he suggested that they might save their lives, but his advice was greeted with contempt. Although they could no longer fight the Romans on equal terms, they kept their oath never to surrender. Some of them were no less active than the enemy in setting buildings alight. Others hid among the ruins on the edge of the city, killing any deserters they could catch, for people were still trying to go over to the Romans, regardless of Titus’s announcement that they would no longer be welcome. Fugitives too weak from hunger to run were butchered on the spot, their bodies thrown to the dogs.
One reason why Zealots in the Upper City went on fighting for so long was a belief that they would be able to escape through the labyrinth of caves beneath them. Anybody not a Zealot who fled into the sewers was killed and robbed; if he had food, they snatched it from him and devoured it, although covered with blood. They were on the point of eating dead bodies, says Josephus who takes a horrid pleasure in recording these last minute agonies. As he saw it, such uncleanliness meant that they could not possibly be true Jews.
On its hilltop, behind massive walls that were reinforced by a very steep ascent, the Upper City was a formidable fortress in itself. The place could only be captured by a full-scale siege operation, for which Titus gave orders on 20 August. Once again, the troops had to build ramps equipped with assault platforms. The legionaries built mounds on the western side opposite the Royal Palace, while auxiliaries and allied troops erected other ramps on the eastern side near the gymnasium and where Simon had built his tower.
The Idumeans realized that the situation was beyond hope and sent five men through the lines to Titus to see if he would give them terms. After some hesitation, knowing that they were among the toughest elements in the Zealot army and hoping that their defection might force Simon and John to surrender, he sent the five back to say he was ready to guarantee their lives and their freedom. As they were preparing to go over, Simon learned what was happening and executed the messengers, placing the Idumean leaders under arrest. Deprived of their officers, their men did not know what to do and stayed put. Simon watched them closely, placing guards on the ramparts; at this desperate moment he could not afford to lose such good troops.
But Zealot efforts to prevent further desertion proved unavailing. Although many people were killed when trying to escape, an even larger number got away. Ignoring his own proclamation, Titus spared their lives. Male citizens were kept as captives, while their women and children were sold as slaves, although they fetched a very low price since there was a glut of slaves from the city. The Jewish War says that during the siege an “incalculable” number of deserters had been packed off to the slave markets, yet it also tells us that even at this late stage 40,000 citizens were given their lives and allowed to go wherever they liked in Judea.10 This was after they had been examined by specially appointed officers to make sure they were not Zealots, an operation perhaps organized by Josephus.
During the last phase of the siege a priest named Jesus ben Thebuthi obtained a pardon from Titus on the condition that he hand over the Temple’s treasures. From a hiding place in a wall of the Sanctuary, he produced two seven-branch gold candlesticks similar to those that had lit the shrine, as well as golden tables, basins, and cups, and the high priest’s jewel-studded vestments. The keeper of the Temple treasury, whose name was Phineas, also cooperated, leading his captors to where the priests’ tunics and girdles were concealed, together with a stock of priceless purple and scarlet cloth for repairing the Veil of the Temple, a huge quantity of cinnamon and cassia and other spices intended for use as incense, and various sacred ornaments. In reward, he was granted the pardon given to genuine fugitives, although he had been taken prisoner.
After eighteen days the ramps against the Upper City were at last ready for use, and by 8 September the Romans had all their siege engines in place. As soon as they went into action, some of the defenders fled from the walls to hide in the citadel, while others dived into the sewers. There was a general mood of despair inside the Upper City yet there were still enough Zealots to man the ramparts, and they did their best to shoot down the troops bringing up the siege towers. This time the defenders proved no match for the Romans, who knew that they were dealing with beaten men. When the rams brought down part of the wall with several of its towers, panic set in, and there was no attempt to defend the breach. During this final attack, Titus shot at the Jews himself with a bow, killing twelve. The entire Roman army knew that it was the day of his daughter’s birthday, which delighted the troops.11
Even Simon and John lost their nerve as the legionaries climbed toward them over the rubble. “Watching these two men, who had once been so arrogant and boastful about their crimes, suddenly become so abject, trembling with fear, would have made you pity them, vile as they were,” we are told by a gloating Josephus. “For a moment they thought of charging the enemy, with some idea of breaking through the guards, smashing down the wooden wall and escaping. But there was no sign of their supposedly faithful followers, who had all fled, while messengers came rushing up to say that the entire western wall had collapsed and the Romans were everywhere, and with their own eyes they must have realized that the enemy were looking for them. When somebody, bewildered by terror, said he could see legionaries on top of one of the three great towers, they fell on their faces and cursed their folly. Paralyzed with fear, they could not even run away.”12
When they recovered their wits, they made the disastrous mistake of abandoning the impregnable towers that were their headquarters, against which the most powerful siege engines would have been useless. Rushing into the ravine below the Pool of Siloam, they tried to break out of the city but were driven back by the Romans. Having failed to escape, they hid in the sewers.
When they discovered they were masters of the Upper City—and therefore of all Jerusalem—the Romans could scarcely believe their final success. After planting the eagles of all the legions on the towers, they began cheering, clapping, and singing. As The Jewish War says, they were finding the end of the war much easier than the way in which it started. Their last assault through the breach had not cost them a single casualty, and after so much savage hand-to-hand combat with the Zealots, they were astonished at finding no further resistance inside the walls.
After a few minutes of rejoicing, the Romans began to celebrate victory in their own special way. Pouring into the streets, sword in hand, they butchered anyone they saw so that the thoroughfares became blocked by bodies, and they burned down buildings in which fugitives had taken refuge with everybody inside. When they broke into houses in search of plunder, they often found whole families dead from hunger and recoiled in horror empty-handed. Despite their pity for the dead, they had no mercy on the living, Josephus tells us, but killed every living soul they met, so that the whole city ran with blood that in some places even put out the fire. For on all sides there were flames, which during the night engulfed the entire city.
When Titus made his entry into the Upper City, he was astonished to find that it was so strong. In particular he was impressed by the three great towers that Simon and John had so insanely abandoned. Noticing their height, the massive solidity of their construction throughout, the size of the stone blocks with which they were built and how neatly these fitted, he exclaimed, “We must have had the gods on our side when we were fighting for it can only have been the gods who overcame the Jews, since how could human hands or human machines be of any possible use against such [mighty] towers?”13 He set free all the people who had been imprisoned in them by the two leaders, and when he later destroyed the remainder of the city, he left the towers standing as a monument to the good fortune that had enabled him to triumph over what had at first seemed to be impregnable defenses.
As his troops were finally beginning to growing tir
ed of such unending slaughter, and as there was a surprisingly large number of survivors, Titus ordered that only men with weapons in their hands were to be killed; the rest were to be made prisoners. The troops interpreted the order as they pleased, massacring all who were old or feeble. Those in the prime of life and fit for work were herded into the Temple and penned in the Court of Women, where officers interrogated them, a task that was made easier by the prisoners’ readiness to inform against each other. Anybody identified as a committed Zealot was executed on the spot.
The Romans searched the sewers and caves beneath the city, digging up the ground and killing everyone they found. Over 2,000 dead Zealots were discovered; some had killed themselves or been killed by a comrade, but most had died from hunger. The revolting stench from dead bodies that met those who entered the tunnels caused many of the pursuers to turn back in disgust, although a few of the greedier soldiers climbed over the corpses to look for loot.
The tunnels underground proved to be not such a refuge after all. Rather than die of starvation John of Gischala, who had been hiding in a sewer with his brothers, crawled out and gave himself up. It took a little longer for Simon bar Giora to surrender. Taking a few friends and some miners, bringing picks, stonecutters, and food for several weeks, they had gone down into a secret cave, hoping to dig their way out of the city. Although the miners did their best, the food ran out. Simon went up to look for further supplies, dressing himself in white to look like a ghost and emerging where the Temple had stood. Arrested, he demanded to be taken to a general, who put him in chains.
“Thus was Jerusalem captured in the second year of the reign of Vespasian, on the eighth day of the month Gorpiaeus [8 September],” says Josephus with a fine rhetorical flourish.14 Although their defense of Jerusalem had ended in horror, the Zealots nonetheless deserve credit for a heroic feat of arms, however passionately The Jewish War may insist that the city fell because it was a “victim of revolutionary frenzy.”15 The siege was one of the great sieges of history. What had begun as a rabble transformed itself into a formidable army that for nearly five months kept at bay the best troops in the world. Despite their leaders’ rivalry having deprived them of proper leadership and a unified central command, they had to a large extent made up for it by sheer bravery. Josephus tactfully omits to give a figure, but they must have inflicted tens of thousands of casualties on the Romans. Under another Judas Maccabeus, the Zealots might well have beaten off the besiegers, humbled the Flavians, and brought the Roman Empire crashing down. Their modern fellow countrymen should take pride in their fighting qualities.
Now that the capital had fallen, the Romans had almost wrested back control of Judea. They had already recovered every other Jewish city. Only the isolated fortresses of Herodium, Machaerus, and Masada remained in Zealot hands.
Citizens of Jerusalem who perished during the siege were lucky. While the Romans were deciding what to do with their captives, 11,000 of those penned inside the Temple ruins died from hunger—some because the guards deliberately starved them, others because they refused to eat. In any case, as Josephus tells us, there was not enough food to feed so many prisoners.16
The conquerors kept 700 of the tallest and best-looking young men for Titus’s triumph at Rome. Of the remaining men, those over seventeen were sent in chains to a living death as forced labor in Egypt or to arenas all over the Roman Empire where they would die in gladiatorial combats or be fed to wild animals. Women and children were packed off to the slave markets.
Josephus says that only 97,000 prisoners of war had been taken in the entire Judean campaign, while 1,100,000 people had died during the siege. 17 As he is so prone to exaggeration, the estimate of 600,000 dead given by Tacitus seems more plausible, even if still enormous. On the other hand, Josephus justifies his figure by explaining that a large number of the casualties were pilgrims who had been trapped in the city while visiting it for the feast of Passover. In addition, there were all those who had come in from the countryside for miles around in order to take refuge.
He tells us that on Titus’s instructions, all Jerusalem, including the Temple and the Sanctuary, was razed to the foundations. Only the three great towers—Phasaelus, Hippicus, and Mariamne—were left standing, with a small stretch of the fortifications at the western side, which was turned into a barracks. The rest of the walls were leveled to the ground so that according to Josephus there was nothing to suggest the place had once been a city. This is an exaggeration; although the city walls and the Temple were demolished, much of Jerusalem survived until the Bar Kokhba revolt. Moreover, the “wailing wall” of the Temple Mount still exists. The statement may be due to faulty information, suggesting that he never again saw his birthplace with his own eyes.
A victory parade was held at the headquarters’ camp, Titus and his staff standing on a dais. After a speech in which he congratulated his legionaries on their skill and courage during “a war that had lasted so long,” he announced that he was more interested in rewarding gallantry than in punishing cowardice. He then decorated all those men who had performed an outstanding act of bravery. When their names had been read out, they marched up to the dais where golden crowns where placed on their heads and gold chains around their necks, while long gold lances and silver standards were put in their hands, and they were promoted. In addition, they were each given large amounts of the booty—gold and silver, valuable clothing. Finally, Titus sacrificed a large number of oxen to the gods in thanksgiving, the meat being distributed to the troops to be eaten at a banquet. He himself joined in the party, which went on for three days.
Just before the final assault, Titus had told Josephus to take anything that he liked “from the wreck of my country.”18 He also presented him with some “sacred books,” which seem to have included an especially fine copy of the Torah, presumably found in the Temple. Josephus was more interested in saving Jewish lives than in loot, however, and begged Titus to free some of his fellow countrymen who had been taken prisoner, in particular his brother and fifty friends. (His father seems to have died.) The request was granted. Still hoping to rebuild a pliant ruling class, who would cooperate in rebuilding Judea, his amiability was due to more than a wish to please his protégé. In addition, Josephus tells us in the Vita that he went into the prison camp in the Temple and got possession of every acquaintance he saw there, about a hundred and ninety people. They were handed over to him as slaves, but he refused to let them buy their freedom and set them at liberty.
Shortly after, he was sent by Titus with Sextus Cerealis, the legate of Syria, and a thousand cavalry to a village called Tekoa, twelve miles south of Jerusalem. The purpose of their journey was to see whether the place would be suitable for a legionary camp, yet another of the jobs he was called on to do as an unofficial staff officer. At Tekoa he found a large number of prisoners who had been crucified, including three old friends. Galloping back to headquarters in tears, he told Titus, who immediately gave orders for them to be taken down and given the best medical treatment. One survived, but the others died in the surgeons’ hands.19
The autumn storms had set in by now, making the Mediterranean too dangerous for Titus to risk shipping his prisoners and wagon loads of plunder back to Italy. He spent the winter in Judea. When he was at Caesarea, Simon bar Giora was brought to him, and he gave orders for the Jewish leader to be taken to Rome to feature in his triumph—just as the Gallic leader Vercingetorix had featured in Julius Caesar’s. The Fifth Legion and the Fifteenth Legion guarded the loot and the prisoners, who were confined outside the city. The Tenth Legion was left to garrison ruined Jerusalem and was entrusted with keeping the peace in Judea. The emblem on its eagle was a wild boar—a pig.
Many of the captives died in a succession of “games” at the city’s amphitheater, where they were thrown to starving animals to be eaten alive or made to fight each other to the death in large numbers. On 24 October there was a particularly splendid entertainment to celebrate Titus’s brother Domitian�
�s birthday. On that day, “the number of those [Jews] who were killed in fights with wild beasts, burned alive or slain in combats with each other was more than 2,500,” Josephus informs us. He adds, in what is probably an attempt to excuse Titus’s abominable cruelty, “Although the prisoners were dying in countless [cruel] ways, all the Romans thought it was far too mild a punishment [for Jews].”20 On 17 November Titus celebrated his father the Emperor Vespasian’s birthday at Beirut in the same way, a further 2,500 dying a terrible death in the arena.
More Jews died in the entertainments that he gave at various Syrian cities, including Antioch. Only recently that city had witnessed a pogrom, in which its Jewish inhabitants became scapegoats for a fire that devastated the city center and were persecuted for refusing to sacrifice to the pagan gods. However, when the Antiochenes asked Titus to expel all Jews from the city, he refused, saying they could only be sent back to their own country, which had been destroyed, and no other place was prepared to take them. Nor would he agree to withdraw their privileges. When he left Antioch, the city’s Jews were in a better position than ever before, since the Antiochenes dared not disobey him. Titus became famous throughout the East. King Vologaeses, the one man who might have saved the Zealots, sent him a golden crown as a sign of respect.
Jerusalem's Traitor: Josephus, Masada, and the Fall of Judea Page 29