Tacitus (Donne)/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
'HISTORY.'
VESPASIAN.
The cool and wary veteran was in no haste to take possession of the capital of the Roman world. He had accepted, with seeming reluctance, the title of emperor. He might fairly be perplexed by the conduct of Mucianus, since, although when success was doubtful he had urged Vespasian to comply with the desire of the soldiers, yet, now that the prize was won, might he not claim it for himself? Assured of the loyalty of his elder son Titus, he might view with just suspicion the designs of his younger son Domitian—not because this vain and profligate boy was in himself formidable, but because it was impossible to foresee what might happen in a city where a venal soldiery, a servile senate, and a brutal mob might, at any moment, start a new competitor for the throne. Were the rich, the eloquent, the magnificent Mucianus, to greet him on his arrival with such words as—
what answer could the plain, uneloquent, and lowborn townsmen of Reatè have returned?
Vespasian, by delaying his entrance into the capital, obtained two advantages. Firstly, he incurred no immediate unpopularity, as the unfortunate Galba had done, through the cruelties and misconduct of his soldiers.
"When Vitellius was dead," writes the historian, "the war indeed had come to an end; but peace had yet to begin. Sword in hand, throughout the capital, the conquerors hunted down the conquered with merciless hatred. The streets were choked with carnage, the squares and temples reeked with blood; for men were massacred everywhere as chance threw them in the way. Soon, as their licence increased, they began to search for and drag forth hidden foes. Whenever they saw a man tall and young they cut him down, making no distinction between soldiers and civilians. But the ferocity which, in the first impulse of hatred, could be gratified only by blood, soon passed into the greed of gain. They let nothing be kept secret, nothing be closed. Vitellianists, they pretended, might thus be concealed. Here was the first step to breaking open private houses—here, if resistance were made, a pretext for slaughter. The most needy of the populace and the most worthless of the slaves did not fail to come forward and betray their wealthy masters; others were denounced by their friends. Everywhere were lamentations and wailings, and all the miseries of a captured city, till the licence of the troops of Otho and Vitellius, once so odious, was remembered with regret. The leaders of the party, so energetic in kindling strife, were incapable of checking the abuse of victory."
Secondly, by remaining for some time at Alexandria, he was in a position to lay an embargo on the corn-supply from Egypt, one of the principal granaries of Rome. And besides that, he was within a few days' sail of the province of Africa, whence she derived also a large portion of her daily bread. Nothing was so likely to excite the Roman mob as even the apprehension of a dearth. Even if Mucianus had coveted the purple, he was comparatively feeble so long as the Flavian Cæsar could retard or withhold the staple food of the capital.
Adverse winds favored Vespasian's purpose of not arriving prematurely at Rome. He found that confidence might be placed in the governor of Syria; he wished, perhaps, that the first necessary severities should be over before he presented himself at the gates. Meanwhile his sojourn at Alexandria was not without favorable results for him. "Vespasian," observes Dean Merivale, "was already assuming in the eyes of the Romans something of the divine character; the Flavian race was beginning to supplant the Julian in their imagination, or rather, what was wanting to the imagination was supplied by the spirit of flattery which represented the hero himself and all that concerned him in factitious colours. It began to he affirmed that the marvellous rise of the Sabine veteran had been signified long before by no doubtful omens at home; a Jewish captive, the historian Josephus, had prophetically saluted him as emperor; the "common" and "constant belief" of the Jews, that from the midst of them should spring a ruler of the world, was declared to have received in this event its glorious consummation."[2]
That a prediction which for many generations had fed the hopes and soothed the sorrows of the children of Israel should find its fulfilment in the person of an obscure Gentile, was certainly not intended by prophet or seer. But the faith of believers in it was singularly confirmed by two events that happened to Vespasian in Egypt. It is not by any means easy to discover what were the religious feelings of Tacitus; at times he appears to have been a fatalist, at times an orthodox believer in the religion of the State; in the following narrative he has evidently no doubt as to the truth of the cure, if not of the miracle wrought by the emperor.
"In the months during which Vespasian was waiting at Alexandria for the periodical return of the summer gales and settled weather at sea, many wonders occurred which seemed to point him out as the object of the favor of heaven and the partiality of the gods. One of the common people of Alexandria, whom all men there knew to be blind, threw himself at the emperor's knees, and implored him with groans to heal his infirmity. He begged Vespasian that he would deign to moisten his cheeks and eyeballs with his spittle. Another with a diseased hand prayed that the limb might feel the print of a Cæsar's foot. At first Vespasian ridiculed and repulsed them. They persisted, and he, though on the one hand he feared the scandal of a fruitless attempt, yet, on the other, was induced by the entreaties of the men and by the language of his flatterers to hope for success. At last he ordered that the opinion of physicians should be taken, as to whether such blindness and infirmity were within the reach of human skill. They discussed the matter from different points of view. 'In the one case,' they said, 'the faculty of sight was not wholly destroyed, and might return if the obstacles were removed; in the other case, the limb, which had fallen into a diseased condition, might be restored if a healing influence were applied;' such, perhaps, might be the pleasure of the gods, and the emperor might be chosen to be the minister of the divine will; at any rate, all the glory of a successful remedy would be Cæsar's, while the ridicule of failure would fall on the sufferers. And so Vespasian, supposing that all things were possible to his good fortune, and that nothing was any longer past belief, with a joyful countenance, amid the intense expectation of the multitude of bystanders, accomplished what was required. The hand was instantly restored to its use, and the light of day again shone upon the blind. Persons actually present attest both facts, even now, when nothing is to be gained by falsehood."
Voltaire joyfully proclaimed the authenticity of this miracle; Hume applauds the cautious and penetrating genius of the historian. Paley dissects the particulars of the narrative, and points out a flaw in it. The blind man applied to the emperor for his aid "by the advice of the god Serapis, whom the Egyptians, devoted as they are to many superstitions, worship more than any other divinity." Tacitus, Paley infers, put in these words as a saving clause, in order that his readers might not suspect him of a weak credulity. It will hardly be denied that this pagan miracle was well attested.
His success in the healing of the lame and blind inspired Vespasian with a keen desire to visit the sanctuary of the god who had afforded him this opportunity for displaying a power, till then quite unsuspected by himself, and again a wonder was vouchsafed to a Cæsar in whom imagination was not a prevailing element, and who probably was content with the religion of the State and his Sabine forefathers. A deity so wise as Serapis must be able to give him sound advice about his own interests. He gave orders that, during his visit, all persons should be excluded from the temple. He had entered and was absorbed in worship,—
"When he saw behind him one of the chief men of Egypt, named Basilides, whom he knew at the time to be detained by sickness at a considerable distance, as much as several days' journey from Alexandria. He inquired of the priests, whether Basilides had on this day entered the temple. He inquired of others whom he met whether he had been seen in the city. At length, sending some horsemen, he ascertained that at that very instant the man had been eighty miles distant. He then concluded that it was a divine apparition, and discovered an oracular force in the name of Basilides [son of a king]."
The unfavourable winds that detained him at Alexandria deprived Vespasian of the opportunity for presiding at the solemn and important ceremony of laying the foundation of the new Capitol. Its restoration was the first care of the senate as soon as peace was established in the city; for while the temple was a charred and shapeless ruin, the fortunes of the empire seemed to suffer an eclipse. For an account of the ceremonial observed we borrow—and English readers will be grateful to us for doing so—the words of Dean Merivale:—
"This pious work was intrusted, according to ancient precedent, to one of the most respected of the citizens, by name Lucius Vestinus, who, though only of knightly family, was equal in personal repute to any of the senators. The Haruspices, whom he consulted, demanded that the ruins of the fallen building should be conveyed away and cast into the lowest places of the city, and the new temple erected precisely on the old foundations; for the gods, they declared, would have no change made in the form of their familiar dwelling. On the 20th of June, 70 A.D., being a fair and cloudless day, the area of the temple-precincts was surrounded with a string of fillets and chaplets. Soldiers chosen for their auspicious names were marched into it, bearing boughs of the most auspicious trees; and the Vestals, attended by a troop of boys and girls, both whose parents were living, sprinkled it with water drawn from bubbling founts or running streamlets. Then preceded by the pontiffs, the prætor Helvidius, stalking round, sanctified the space with the mystical washing of sow's, sheep's, and bull's blood, and placed their entrails on a grassy altar. This done, he invoked Jove, Juno, and Minerva, and all the patrons of the empire, to prosper the undertaking, and raise by divine assistance their temple, founded by the piety of men. Then he touched with his hand the connected fillets, and the magistrates, the priests, the senators, the knights, with a number of the people, lent their strength to draw a great stone to the spot where the building was to commence. Beneath it they laid pieces of gold and silver money, minted for the occasion, as well as of unwrought metal; for the Haruspices forbade either stone or metal to be used which had been employed before for profane purposes. The temple rose from the deep substructions of Tarquinius exactly, as was required, on the plan of its predecessor. Formerly, when this fane was restored under Catulus, it was wished to give greater effect to the cell by placing it on a flight of steps; and it was proposed not to heighten the building itself, which the Haruspices forbade, but to lower the platform before it. But this platform wag itself the roof of a labyrinth of vaults and galleries, used for offices and storerooms, and this expedient was pronounced impracticable. Vespasian, more fortunate than his predecessor, obtained permission to raise the elevation of the edifice, which now, perhaps for the first time, was allowed to overtop the colonnades around it, and to fling its broad bulk athwart the region of the southern sky, in which the auspices were taken from the neighbouring summit of the citadel."[3]
When Vespasian at last entered his capital, he found awaiting him a very onerous task. The evil that Nero did lived after him. There was yet a remnant of his profligate companions: there were the informers who had furnished him with noble or wealthy victims; there were criminals to punish, and wrongs and sufferings, if possible, to heal; there were greedy soldiers to fee, and there was an empty treasury. Avarice is the only grave fault with which Tacitus upbraids his early patron. Perhaps a more appropriate term would be rigid and necessary economy. To replenish the treasury from the north-western provinces or Italy was next to impossible. The Othonians, Vitellians, and the legions of Antonius Primus had not merely carried off the money, but also burnt the dwellings and wasted the crops of the inhabitants.
By the mutilation of the 'History,' we lose Tacitus for our guide during a most important reign, and beyond his footsteps we cannot go. It will suffice to say that Mucianus, after restoring peace and order to Rome, preferred the ease of a private station and the enjoyment of an ample fortune to the cares and perils of a throne: that Antonius Primus was coolly thanked for his services, and dismissed into obscurity, the only trace of him thenceforward being some complimentary verses of Martial's: that the extravagance of the Julian dynasty was succeeded by the sobriety of the Flavian, and that if Rome did not regain a freedom she would have abused, she enjoyed a respite from tyranny and war, under which she flourished for a season. Had the books that recorded Domitian's reign been preserved, there can be little doubt that the historian would have written them with the pen that was afterwards to describe the gloomy period of Tiberius, and the hideous excesses of Nero.
The reign, indeed, of the first Flavian Cæsar, extending over a period of ten years, passed away in uneventful tranquillity. Its more remarkable features were the simple life and moderation of the imperial household: the deference of the emperor to the senate: the re-plantation of colonies: peace on the frontiers, after the revolts in Judæa and Germany had been suppressed: the revival and encouragement of learning and literature, and even care for the people.
To English readers the most interesting portion of the 'History' will probably be that in which Tacitus treats of the Jewish people and the commencement of the siege of Jerusalem,—and to that we now turn.
Bearing in mind the historian's relation to Vespasian and Titus, the conquerors of Judæa, to whom he owed his first advancement in public life, his account of the origin, the religion, the manners and customs of the Jewish people, is inexplicable, and, indeed, considering his opportunities for informing himself on the subject, without any apparent excuse. It cannot have been for want of means of inquiry or materials for truth that he thus misrepresents this "peculiar people." Their annals were not like those of Egypt, carved on stone, or written in symbols or an unknown tongue, both of which a century ago were unintelligible to the learned of modern Europe; nor were they stamped on bricks, like the archives of Nineveh and Babylon, which we are now only learning to read. Every educated Roman, and most Roman officials, from governors of provinces to farmers of the taxes, read and spoke Greek as easily as they did their native Latin; and the annals, the ritual, the theology of the Jews were communicated to strangers in the pages of the Septuagint more than three centuries before the time of Tacitus. The capital as well as the provinces swarmed with Jews or proselytes to Judaism, and in any one of the fourteen "regions" of Rome there were Rabbins, learned in the laws of Moses, and in the chronicles of the judges, kings, and high priests of Israel and Judah. With such resources at hand, the most inquisitive and sceptical of ancient historians contented himself with hearsay and idle traditions, and denied to an ancient race possessing a written story—to say nothing of sublime poetry, of moral and even metaphysical philosophy of a high order—the care and pains he bestowed on the idle rumours or political satires of Rome.
Still more extraordinary is the apathy of Tacitus in this portion of the 'History,' when it is certain that he had before him one at least of the works of Flavius Josephus. Whether or no he consulted the 'Antiquities of the Jews,' or the autobiography of Josephus, or his tract against Apion, cannot be told; but there can be no doubt that he studied and borrowed from his 'Wars of the Jews' many facts relating to Vespasian's campaigns in Galilee, and to the siege of Jerusalem. Perhaps if the 'History' were complete as he wrote if, we should find that Josephus had been to Tacitus, for that portion of his narrative, what Polybius was to Livy while composing his Decades on the Punic and Maecedonian wars.
We now afford our English readers a specimen or two of the unaccountable ignorance of Tacitus when treating of the origin and rites of the Jewish nation. "As I am about to relate," he writes, at the opening of the fifth book of the 'History,' "the last days of a famous city, it seems appropriate to throw some light on its origin. Some say that the Jews were fugitives from the island of Crete, who settled on the nearest coast of Africa about the time when Saturn was driven from his throne by the power of Jupiter." "Evidence of this is sought in the name. There is a famous mountain in Crete called Ida; the neighbouring tribe, the Idæi, came to be called Judæi by a barbarous lengthening of the national name. Others assert that in the reign of Isis the overflowing population of Egypt, led by Hierosolymus and Judas, discharged itself into the neighbouring countries. Many, again, say that they were a race of Ethiopian origin, who in the time of King Cepheus were driven by fear and hatred of their neighbours to seek a new dwelling-place. Others describe them as an Assyrian horde, who, not having sufficient territory, took possession of part of Egypt, and founded cities of their own in what is called the Hebrew country, lying on the borders of Syria." In the last sentences there is a glimpse of some research. Had Tacitus peeped into the books of Genesis and Exodus, and then into Herodotus?[4] For there is here an apparent allusion to the migration of Jacob and his sons into Egypt, to the departure from the land of Goshen, and to the shepherd kings.
Then we come to the boils and blains that so grievously afflicted the Egyptians, but which Tacitus saddles on the Hebrews. King Boccharis, warned by the oracle of Hammon, cleanses his realm and expels from his land this impure race "detested by the gods." It is a calumny of this kind that kindled the wrath of Josephus against Apion. Tacitus proceeds: "The people, who had been collected after diligent search, finding themselves left in a desert, sat for the most part in a stupor of grief, till one of the exiles, Moyses by name, warned them not to look for any relief from God or man, but to trust to themselves, taking for a heaven-sent leader that man who should first help them to be quit of their present misery. They agreed, and in utter ignorance began to advance at random. Nothing, however, distressed them so much as the scarcity of water, and they had sunk ready to perish in all directions over the plain"—here it would seem that Tacitus had the book of Exodus or Josephus before him—"when a herd of wild asses was seen to retire from their pasture to a rock shaded by trees. Moyses followed them, and, guided by the appearance of a grassy spot, discovered an abundant supply of water. This furnished relief. After a continuous journey for six days, on the seventh they possessed themselves of a country from which they expelled the inhabitants, and in which they founded a city and a temple." This is, indeed, an abridgment of history!—the forty years spent in the wilderness and the conquest of Palestine compressed into a period of seven days!
Now for the rites and ceremonies observed by the Jews, according to Tacitus. Mindful of the services done them by the wild asses, they, in their holy place, consecrated an image of the animal who delivered them from death by thirst in the wilderness. Peculiar and perverse in all they do, the worship, invented by Moyses, is utterly unlike that of other nations. "Things sacred with us, with them have no sanctity, while they allow what with us is forbidden. Apis, in the form of an ox, was one of the greatest of Egyptian deities; therefore the Jews sacrifice that animal." As Tacitus in his day must have seen many hundreds of oxen sacrificed on Roman altars, it is not easy to understand why the Jews were perverse in doing the like. They abhor and abstain from swine's flesh, in remembrance of what they suffered when infected by the leprosy to which this animal is liable. They rest on the seventh day, because it brought with it an end of their toils; and "after a while the charm of indolence beguiled them into giving up the seventh year also to inaction."
And yet this eccentric people, who feared not the gods and despised or hated all uncircumcised mankind—who had not an idol in their temple, nor permitted a picture to enter their dwellings—whose "customs, at once perverse and disgusting, owed their strength to their very badness,"—were not without their virtues, and these puzzled Tacitus far more than their vices. To their own countrymen, and to converts to their religion, they are singularly charitable; and be it remarked that charity, in the Jewish and Christian import of the word, was unknown either to Greeks or Romans. Nay, Tacitus even cannot help admiring their conception of the Deity, or some of their social practices. "It is a crime with them to kill a newly-born infant." It was not a crime at Rome. The Jews held "that the souls of all who perish in battle, or by the hands of the executioner, are immortal;" and in this faith they fought valiantly; they contemned death; they rejoiced in the number of their children. Of "the Deity, as one in essence, they have purely mental conceptions. They call those profane who make representations of God in human shape out of perishable materials. They believe that Being to be supreme and eternal, capable neither of representation nor of decay. They therefore do not allow any images to stand in their cities, much less in their temples. This flattery is not paid to their kings, nor this honor to our emperors." So far so good; but then follows a most unfortunate conjecture. "From the fact that the Jewish priests used to chant to the music of flutes and cymbals, and to wear garlands of ivy, and that a golden vine was found in the temple, some have thought that they worshipped Father Liber (Bacchus), the conqueror of the East, though their institutions do not by any means harmonise with the theory; for Liber established a festive and cheerful worship, while the Jewish religion is tasteless and mean."
Tacitus's credulity, or negligence in inquiry, as regards the religion of the Jews, did not extend to the creeds or ceremonies of other nations; on the contrary, he occasionally indulges himself and his readers also with digressions on the subject. The vision beheld by Vespasian in the temple of Serapis leads him to describe the nature of that popular deity, and the cause and manner of his introduction into Alexandria. He mentions with evident interest the visit of Germanicus to the oracle of the Clarian Apollo, and he acquainted himself with the process used in consultation. "No Pythoness," he says, with a glance at Delphi and other shrines, "represents the god at Claros, but a priest, chosen from certain families, especially a Milesian. This hierophant, after taking down the names and numbers of the inquirers, descends into an oracular cavern in which there is a sacred spring. He drinks of its water; and then, though often ignorant of letters and ungifted with poetic talent, he gives the Clarian divinity's answers in verse, of which the subject is the secret or imparted wishes of the consultors of the oracle." In a similar manner he records the visit of Titus, then travelling from Corinth to Syria, to the temple of the Paphian Venus in the island of Cyprus; and he thinks it not tedious to bestow a few words on the origin of the worship, the antiquity of the building, and the form of the goddess,—since nowhere else is she thus represented. The Venus of Paphos. did not require a sculptor; an ordinary stone-mason sufficed. "Her image does not bear a human shape; it is a rounded mass, rising like a cone from a broad base to a small circumference." Hers was a primitive and humane worship. It was "forbidden to pour blood on the altar. The place of sacrifice was served only with prayers and pure flame; and though it stands in the open air it is never wet with rain." Animals, indeed, were offered, according to the whim of the worshippers; but they were always of "the male sex—and the surest prognostics were seen in the entrails of kids." These bloody rites were evidently of more recent date than the original sacrifices, just as the sanguinary oblations of the Aztecs supplanted the fruit and flower offerings of the original Mexicans.
Two causes for the ignorance or the indolence of Tacitus in this account of the Jews may be surmised. One, a general repugnance to the Hebrew race, that pervaded the Gentile world, and which is manifested by Roman satirists as well as by a sarcastic historian. The other is the arrogance displayed by Romans generally towards their Asiatic subjects, especially to the Syrians and Egyptians, with whom they were wont to confound the followers of Moses. Of each of these races the religious observances were often, though in vain, proscribed by the Roman Government, whether republican or imperial; and the worshippers of Isis, Astartè, and Jehovah were driven from the capital and Italy. In the 'Annals' Tacitus never mentions the Jews without some expression of contempt; and when some thousands of them were sent, in the reign of Tiberius, to pine or perish in the unwholesome climate of Sardinia—the Cayenne of Rome,—he coolly remarks, it was a cheap riddance (vile damnum)—a loss of lives not worth consideration.
But when the historian gets clear of the rocks and shallows of rumour and remote events, his strength returns to him; and the poor remnant of his narrative that we have of the Jewish war enables us to measure as well as mourn for the portions we have lost. After a brief sketch of former invasions of Judæa by the Romans, he comes to that final rebellion which ended with the last dispersion of the Jewish people, and the demolition of Jerusalem itself. Cneius Pompeius in 63 A.D. had dismantled the walls of the city, but had left the temple standing. Judæa under its Maccabæan pontiffs had regained much of her early rank among nations, and under Herod, and afterwards under Agrippa, been dignified with the title of a kingdom. On the death of the latter it had become an appanage of the vast province of Syria; still it had not ceased to be a recognised portion of the empire. But the hour was at hand for the complete fulfilment of prophecies delivered long before there was an augur in Rome—of prophecies which seemed to have been accomplished when the Assyrian carried off Israel and Judah to the banks of the Euphrates, and made a heap of ruins the temple of Jehovah and the city of David. But the end was not to be under the first of the four great monarchies, but under the last.
"Peace," says Tacitus, "having been established in Italy, foreign affairs were once more remembered. Our indignation was heightened by the 'circumstance that the Jews alone had not submitted.'" Vespasian in 66 had been sent by Nero to put down the Jewish mutineers, and within the space of two summers had succeeded in making himself master of the entire level country and of all the cities, except Jerusalem. Vespasian was summoned from the camp to a throne, and his son Titus took his place in Judea.
We conclude this chapter with extracts from the 'History.' The English readers who may have looked into the 'Wars of the Jews' by Josephus, will perceive that Tacitus had before him the narrative of a conspicuous actor in the great catastrophe of the Hebrew nation.
"Prodigies had occurred, which this nation, prone to superstition, but hating all religious rites, did not deem it lawful to expiate by offering and sacrifice. There had been seen hosts joining battles in the skies, the fiery gleam of arms, the temple illuminated by a sudden radiance from the clouds. The doors of the inner shrine were suddenly thrown open, and a voice of more than mortal tone was heard to cry that the gods were departing. At the same instant there was a mighty stir as of departure. Some few put a fearful meaning on these events, but in most there was a firm persuasion that in the ancient records of their priests was contained a prediction of how at this very time the East was to grow powerful, and rulers coming from Judæa were to acquire universal empire. These mysterious prophecies had pointed to Vespasian and Titus; but the common people, with the usual blindness of ambition, had interpreted these mighty destinies of themselves, and could not be brought even by disasters to believe the truth. T have heard that the total number of the besieged, of every age and both sexes, amounted to six hundred thousand. All who were able bore arms, and a number more than proportionate to the population had the courage to do so. Men and women showed equal resolution, and life seemed more terrible than death, if they were to be forced to leave their country."
"The commanding situation of the city had been strengthened by enormous works, which would have been a thorough defence even for level ground. Two hills of great height were fenced in by walls which had been skilfully obliqued or bent inwards, in such a manner that the flank of an assailant was exposed to missiles. The rock terminated in a precipice; the towers were raised to a height of sixty feet, where the hill lent its aid to the fortifications—where the ground fell, to a height of one hundred and twenty. They had a marvellous appearance, and to a distant spectator seemed to be of uniform elevation. Within were other walls surrounding the palace, and, rising to a conspicuous height, the tower Antonia, so called by Herod, in honour of Marcus Antonius.
"The temple resembled a citadel, and had its own walls, which were more laboriously constructed than the others. Even the colonnades with which it was surrounded formed an admirable outwork. It contained an inexhaustible spring: there were subterranean excavations in the hill, and tanks and cisterns for holding rain-water. The founders of the State had foreseen that frequent wars would result from the singularity of its customs, and so had made every provision against the most protracted siege. After the capture of their city by Pompeius, experience and apprehension had taught them much. Availing themselves of the sordid policy of the Claudian era to purchase the right of fortification, they raised in time of peace such walls as were suited for war. Their numbers were increased by a vast rabble collected from the overthrow of the other cities [by Vespasian]. All the most obstinate rebels had escaped into the place, and perpetual seditions were the consequence. There were three generals and as many armies. Simon held the outer and larger circuit of walls. John, also called Bargioras, occupied the middle city; Eleazer had fortified the temple. John and Simon were strong in numbers and equipment, Eleazar in position. There were continual skirmishes, surprises, and incendiary fires, and a vast quantity of corn was burnt. Before long, John sent some emissaries, who, under pretence of sacrificing, slaughtered Eleazar and his partisans, and gained possession of the temple. The city was thus divided between two factions, till, as the Romans approached, war with the foreigner brought about a reconciliation."
"Such was this city and nation; and Titus Cæsar, seeing that the position forbade an assault or any of the more rapid operations of war, determined to proceed by earthworks and covered approaches. The legions had their respective duties assigned to them, and there was a cessation from fighting, till all the inventions used in ancient warfare, or devised by modern ingenuity, for the reduction of cities, were constructed."
We have seen what the pen of Tacitus could do when relating the storming and conflagration of the Capitol in the civil war, and so may imagine how he described the total demolition of a far older and holier temple. While watching in Rome the builders at their work at restoration of the one, and hearing the proclamation in the Forum of the destruction of the other shrine, he may have said to himself: 'the pride of a barbarous and superstitious people is humbled for ever; but the glory of Jupiter, best and greatest, will always endure. From the fane of the Jews, the gods have departed, but the pontifex and the silent virgin will never cease to climb the Capitoline Hill.' "The destruction," says Dean Merivale, "never to be repaired, of the material temple of the Hebrews, cut the cords which bound the Christian faith to its local habitation, and launched it, under the hand of Providence, on its career of spiritual conquest; while the boasted reputation of the Capitol was a vain attempt to retain hold of the past, to revive the lost or perishing, to reattach to new conditions of thought an outworn creed of antiquity."[5]