country indicates that some terrible catastrophe has at some distant period passed over the land.[1]
The sternest measures effectually to stamp out all traces of revolt on the part of the Jewish nation were adopted by the Roman government after the close of the campaign. Numbers of the fugitives were ruthlessly put to death. Many were sold into slavery. No Jew was ever allowed to approach the ruins of the Holy City. Once in the year, on "the day of weeping," such of the hapless race who chose were suffered to come and mourn for a brief hour over the shapeless pile of stones which once had been a portion of their sacred Temple.
For a time a bitter persecution throughout the Empire punished this last formidable uprising; but these rigorous measures were very soon relaxed when all fear of another outbreak had passed away, and the Jews, or what remained of the people, were suffered to live as they pleased, to worship after their own fashion, and to pursue the study of their loved Law unmolested.
M. de Champagny (Les Antonins, livre iii. chap, iii.) estimates the number of Jews who perished in the three great wars of A.D. 70, of A.D. 116-7, and of A.D. 132-3-4 roughly as follows: Under Titus, about two millions; under Trajan, about two hundred thousand; under Hadrian, about one million.[2]
The third war was termed in the Babylonian Talmud "the War of Extermination."
II
(a) RABBINISM
We have described the three fatal wars at some length, because the wonderful history of the Jewish race entered upon
