CHAPTER XX

CIRCUMVALLATION

On the fourteenth day of the siege the repaired ram Nico, or the Conqueror, justified its name by effecting a breach in the northern wall; and Simon, seeing his position no longer tenable, fell back upon his second line of defense.

This was the first great step in the siege.

The Romans, entering Bezetha on the fifteenth day, proceeded to demolish the greater part of this suburb, the demolition being necessary in order to clear the way for the advance of the battering-train.

Nine days more, and the Romans had penetrated the second wall, and were now masters of the suburb of Acra, which they proceeded to treat in like fashion with that of Bezetha.

This was the second great step in the siege.

“Bezetha taken in fifteen days, Acra in nine,” exulted Titus. “We are getting on.”

Tiberius Alexander, to whom the remark was addressed, shrugged his shoulders.

“Mere outworks, Cæsar. What we have done is child’s play compared with what remains to be done.”

Titus began to be of the same opinion as he stood amid the fast dismantling Acra, and surveyed a long chain of defiant fortresses.

Before him as he looked southwards rose the rugged escarpment of Mount Zion, forty feet high, its edge surmounted by a lofty wall, whose circuit included those magnificent towers, Hippicus, Phasaelus, and Mariamne, each a citadel in itself. Above him, on his left hand, soared the temple-fortress, and adjacent to it the Turris Antonia, this last standing on a rock, which rock was not only seventy-five feet high, but had its perpendicular sides cased with smooth marble!

After deliberating with his staff Titus resolved to make a simultaneous attack on Mount Zion and on Antonia.

But how to reach these strongholds elevated in mid-air?

There was but one way, by the raising of banks--a stupendous operation! But the Romans were familiarized with such tasks, and, animated by the same resolute spirit as their general, they set to work with a fiery energy that nothing could daunt. Owing to the scarcity of earth, timber and fascines were largely used in the erection of these works, to such an extent indeed, that not a tree remained within sight of Jerusalem. The sylvan beauty of the landscape vanished; the Jewish people, looking far and wide from the city walls, could see around them nothing but a treeless and desolate waste. On the seventeenth day a huge embankment faced the northern side of Antonia, but just when the engines planted upon it were beginning to play, the Romans, to their consternation and dismay, found the whole mound slowly beginning to sink. As the rate of subsidence varied in different parts, chasms began to yawn, the rams and towers rolled this way and that, crashing into each other with destructive effect; men found themselves entangled among the machines, overwhelmed with earth, suffocated with dust; a prodigious quantity of smoke burst forth from the embankment, followed by darting tongues of flame. It was death to remain longer upon it, and the amazed and affrighted Romans, running in all directions, leaped from the mound.

The cause of it all soon became clear. John of Giscala and his Zealot crew, toiling underground with an energy almost superhuman, had driven a vast mine beneath the Roman agger, a mine whose roof and supports were formed of timber, daubed with bitumen, sulphur, and other combustibles. The ignition of these supports caused the engulfing of the bank, and the complete destruction of the engines.

“Seest thou what John hath wrought?” cried Simon to his followers. “Shall we be outdone by him?”

Now a similar bank was facing Zion, and two days later, at eventide, just when the Romans had retired to their camp, leaving the customary force to guard this bank, the gates of Zion opened, and from each issued a crowd of Zealots, every one carrying either a lighted torch or a vessel flaming with combustibles, and every one under a _cherem_ or curse, not to return till he had seen the Roman engines and the Roman bank in a blaze.

Coming forth, not by hundreds, but by thousands, they poured down the craggy descent like a flood, wave upon wave, and swept up to the embankment; some, fighting like fiends, impaled themselves upon the points of the Roman spears, and so died; others, equally brave but more fortunate, broke through the guard, scaled the embankment, and, running hither and thither, set the engines alight, and finished the work of destruction by firing the embankment itself, so that by the time Titus and the rest of the army came up, the huge platform of earth and timber was a roaring sea of unquenchable flame!

Now, for the first time during the siege, the spirit of despair fell upon Titus. He began to think with the murmuring and superstitious legionaries that the fiery comet which, in the shape of a sword, shed a red gleam nightly over Jerusalem, was directing its malignant influence not against the Jews but against the Romans.

His mood was shown by the letter directed jointly to his father Vespasian and the Roman Senate; the dispatch omitted the customary formula: “I rejoice if all is well with you and your children; with myself and the army all is well.”

All was _not_ well with him and the army. The tactics of Simon and John had caused the entire disappearance of his battering-train.

Was there no other course left him than to order the Greek engineers of Cæsarea to construct a new set of military machines, an order that would require several weeks for its fulfillment?

Many and various were the suggestions put forth at the council held in the tent of Titus.

The plan of massing the whole strength of the legions against a selected part of the wall, and of continuing the assault night and day with testudo and scaling-ladder, regardless of the loss of life, till the place should be finally stormed, was rejected as impracticable, as was also the proposition to tunnel a way through the rock into the heart of the city.

Tiberius Alexander rose to speak.

“By all means send to Cæsarea for new engines,” said he. “In the meantime we’ll turn the siege into a blockade, and make famine our chief weapon. Food within the city is already running short, even among the Zealots themselves, so much so that, if the stories of deserters be true, these same Zealots are robbing the people of their bread, and torturing those whom they suspect of concealing it.

“But if the city is to be effectually starved, we must close up every avenue of access. Now, hitherto, we have kept but an ill watch upon the western and southern sides of the city, with the result that certain merchants, despising the Roman power, and eager to coin wealth out of Jewish necessities, are in the habit of stealing nightly to the city to supply its wants. Tyrians bring fish, and Egyptians corn; Arabs purvey dates, and the Nabatæans supplies of bitumen from the Dead Sea, that fiery bitumen whose effects we know so well. Unless these doings be stopped, the siege will be prolonged indefinitely. Now, my counsel is that we encircle the city with a wall to be patrolled night and day; so shall we cut off the enemy from all outside help.

“And since the more mouths there are in the city the more quickly will food vanish, do you, O Cæsar, who have hitherto dealt kindly with deserters, make it known that henceforth crucifixion shall be the lot of those who come to us for pity.

“In six weeks’ time they will be eating each other, and victory will be ours; for we shall be contending, not with strong men, but with gaunt and famished weaklings, scarce able to lift spear or shield.

“Fasting is a part of their religion,” this renegade Hebrew concluded, with a sneer. “Let them be made to keep such a fast as they never before kept in all their history.”

The counsel of Tiberius Alexander prevailed, as Crispus knew that it would prevail, even before the prefect had made an end of speaking. Vain was it for others to propose a different plan, when, forty years previously, a Divine voice had said: “_Thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee around, and keep thee in on every side._”

The next day witnessed the beginning of the fatal circuit.

Around the doomed city was drawn, over high hill and down deep ravine, a double wall; one, the contravallation, designed to repel sorties from the city; the other, the circumvallation, to repel attacks coming from without.

Each of these investing lines was defended on its outer side by a deep trench, and at every third furlong rose a castellum or fort, the station of a garrison.

The whole of the army, 50,000 strong, was employed upon the work, which was completed at the end of three days; a marvelously quick feat, even for Romans, accustomed, as they were, to trenching and embanking.

The Zealots affected to view these operations with unconcern, casting gibes at Titus, whenever he came within earshot.

Some of these gibes had reference to Berenice, who was known to be the object of his adoration.

“The fair one at Cæsarea is lonely,” they cried. “The daughter of Agrippa looketh out at a window, and crieth through the lattice, ‘Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariot?’”

Other gibes were directed at Titus’ plebeian origin.

“Thy father was once a horse-doctor,” cried one. “Why not return to the old trade, Titus? for plainly thou art no warrior. Depart, seeing that thou canst not take this city.”

At this, Terentius Rufus, growing fierce for the honor of Cæsar, lifted up a plow that by chance was lying near, and swore a memorable oath.

“Hear now the vow I make, O ye rebels! With this will I plow Zion as one ploweth a field!”

A flight of arrows caused him to retreat, but he kept to his plow.

“Take this to my tent,” said he to a soldier, “and there let it be till the day when I call for it. Terentius Rufus will keep his word.”

On the first night after the completion of the investing lines Titus himself, accompanied by Crispus, went the round of the watch. Often did the eyes of Crispus turn towards the city, now sleeping peacefully beneath the light of the stars. The reduction of the place by famine was doubtless justifiable from a military point of view, but he could not help thinking of the fearful anguish that would fill ten thousand homes; above all, he thought of Vashti. He pictured her, tormented by all the agonies of slow starvation, dying by inches, her sweet and graceful beauty all gone, a hollow-eyed thing of skin and bone, with brain crazed for the lack of food, and he scarcely a mile distant with bread and to spare, yet unable to pass her so little as a crust.

When the city should be taken, would she be living or dead? It was a point which, strangely enough, had not occurred to him before that, if living, she would be, according to the rights of war as practiced in a brutal age, a captive doomed to slavery. He resolved there and then to claim her freedom from the only man capable of granting it.

“When you take the city, Cæsar, there is one whose life and freedom I would fain crave.”

“’Tis granted, provided that the object of your request be not a descendant of David.”

“Why that exception?” asked Crispus in great surprise.

“The orders of my sire Vespasian are that I am to make search for all that are of David’s line with a view to their extirpation.[27] The Jew is convinced that a descendant of this ancient royal house is destined to attain universal empire, a belief which has given rise to this present revolt; therefore, destroy all that are of David’s line, and you extinguish this vain Jewish dream.”

How Crispus rejoiced in the thought that the saintly bishop Simeon, and the remaining Desposyni--relatives of the Master--were at that moment in distant Pella!

“She for whom I would make request,” said he, “is one Vashti, daughter of Hyrcanus.”

Titus gave a start of surprise.

“She to whom you gave the golden zone at Cæsarea?”

“The same,” replied Crispus, conjecturing that Titus’ knowledge of this incident was derived from Berenice.

“What is this maiden to you?” asked Titus with a keen glance.

“Much, seeing that but for her I should no longer be living,” replied Crispus, relating the circumstances of his recovery from Eleazar’s sword-thrust.

Titus seemed genuinely troubled. Crispus had distinguished himself so well in the siege that it was hard to refuse him this favor.

“Gladly would I grant your request, but that it comes too late. The Princess Berenice is desirous of obtaining possession of that damsel.”

Crispus at that moment looked more dazed than when he fell from the drawbridge.

“Berenice!” he murmured. “What would _she_ with Vashti?”

“The princess likes to have pretty and graceful maidens about her. She made me promise that out of the spoils of the city I would give her this Vashti.”

“And you will?”

Titus shrugged his shoulders.

“She was not content with an oral promise. She holds a parchment signed by my hand empowering her to claim Vashti as her slave.”

In Crispus’ opinion it would be better, far better, for Vashti to die of slow starvation than to fall into the hands of the jealous Berenice, whose only object in this enslavement was to gratify her spirit of revenge.

He said no more, knowing the uselessness of interceding, but he had quite made up his mind what he would do; and he could do it, too, in all good conscience.

“Let Cæsar’s parchment bond say what it will,” said he within himself. “I will save Vashti from the doom intended for her, though it cost me my life.”