CHAPTER XXIII

CLOSING IN

The long blockade had failed to bring about the surrender of the city; and Titus was beginning to grow weary of the delay; in fancy he could hear the patricians of Rome laughing at the plebeian-born general, and declaring that a city taken by famine was not a very brilliant way of inaugurating the new dynasty of Flavian emperors.

So it came to pass that on the day following Vashti’s departure for Pella, the mighty Roman host at a word from Titus roused itself to toil again like a giant refreshed by a long sleep.

As the fortress Antonia was the key to the temple, Titus began by raising opposite this fortress four huge aggeres.

The construction of the former banks had cleared all the timber from the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem, so that the Romans were compelled to go farther afield, and at the end of twenty-one days--the time taken in raising these new aggeres--there was not a tree left within ten miles of the city!

Meanwhile, long teams of oxen, bellowing under the lash, were toiling up the rugged pass of Beth-horon, drawing endless files of wagons roped to each other, upon which were mounted the new military machines, huge and terrible, constructed by the Greek engineers of Cæsarea.

On the twenty-second day, the artillery (this word is long anterior to the use of firearms) was placed in position, and the legions, massing all their strength, directed a fierce attack upon the northern wall of Antonia, the stronghold of John of Giscala.

Now this wall happened to stand upon that part which had been undermined by John at the time when the Romans made their former attack; and the hollow ground, weakened by the shaking caused by the battering-rams, gave way during the first night, hurling down a portion of the wall with all the sentinels upon it.

The Romans, startled from their sleep by the appalling crash and by the thrilling shrieks of the doomed victims, knew not at first what had happened, but when the morning light revealed the nature of the disaster, they grasped their weapons, clambered over the ruins, and poured through the breach.

But Antonia was not yet taken. John, exercising a military foresight that moved his enemies to surprise, if not to admiration, had previously raised a second wall within.

As it was impossible to advance the engines through the breach, the Romans, in order to overcome this new barrier, were compelled to resort to other means.

Having failed to surmount it by boldly climbing up in the very face of the enemy, they lay down at last at the foot of the wall, and, forming a testudo, or roof of shields, they sought to loosen with iron crows the lower courses of the masonry, a process attended with little hurt to the wall, but with considerable loss of life to the Romans.

Now Crispus, having taken due note that a certain part of this wall declined backwards, and that the stones at this said part projected in such a manner as to afford some slight foothold, resolved to attempt a nocturnal surprise on his own account. At the dead of night he assembled fifteen of his bravest troops, including a trumpeter and an eagle-bearer.

Creeping forward with soundless tread, the little band, favored by the gloom, gained the foot of the wall unseen by the Jewish sentinels above. Then Crispus silently and cautiously began the ascent; his men followed like a file of grim specters. One javelin hurled from above would have sufficed to send the whole party thundering down. No such disaster occurred, however. Whether the sentinels were sleeping, or whether they were keeping careless watch, is a matter that will never be known: certain it is that the heroic sixteen safely gained the top of the wall.

A whispered word from Crispus, and then on the still night air the trumpet rang out the call to arms; long, shrill, and piercing, the summons startled the Romans from sleep; it startled still more the Jewish sentinels close at hand. Even now it would have been a comparatively easy matter to repel the attack; but, as Crispus and his party, their lifted blades glinting through the gloom, dashed forward with a mighty shout, the Zealot sentinels, without waiting to ascertain the number of their assailants, turned tail and fled, fully convinced that the whole of the Roman army was pouring over the battlements.

Their shouts awoke their fellows. Roused thus in the dead of night the entire garrison became the victims of one of those panics which have been known to fall sometimes upon even the hardiest veterans. From above, from below, from every hall and chamber, there came running wild-eyed Zealots, whose only object was to save their lives; in mad confusion they made for the south side of the fortress, where lay the only available exit--a narrow causeway over the deep ravine that separated Antonia from the temple.

Meantime, Titus and the rest of the Romans in the camp, guided by the continuous pealing of the trumpet, hurried forward, scaled the wall, and found to their surprise and delight that the enemy had vacated the fortress without striking a blow.

Now the surrender of Antonia had opened the way to the temple, and Crispus, thinking in one night and by the same stroke, to capture both places was pursuing the retreating Zealots across the connecting causeway.

But now the Zealots, cursing themselves for their cowardly folly, turned and made a stand upon this same causeway.

Then began a battle, perhaps the fiercest and bloodiest in the whole course of the siege. Spears and javelins being useless, both sides drew their swords and fought it out hand to hand. In the gloom of night the troops of both parties were so intermingled that no man knew where he was; more often than not Roman slew Roman, and Jew slew Jew. Crispus, stunned by a blow on the head, was dragged forth from the fray by a faithful legionary.

With the dawn Simon came to the aid of his Zealot rival; and then indeed the fighting, and the shouting, and the clangor, grew fiercer and louder than ever. On that narrow viaduct there was no room either to advance or retreat; scores of the combatants were forced over the parapet, and shrieking, fell, to be dashed to pieces in the rocky ravine below. The passage became so crowded with dead that the living to get at each other were obliged to mount upon piles of bodies and of armor.

At last, when it became clear that the Romans could make no headway, Titus, after ten hours of this fighting, gave the signal for recall.

Thanks to Crispus, however, the great fortress of Antonia was now in Roman hands, and as Simon beheld the standard inscribed S.P.Q.R. floating proudly again from its lofty battlements, he wept tears of grief and rage, and cursed John to his face saying--somewhat unjustly--that none but a fool or a coward or a traitor could have lost such a stronghold.

Later that same day Rufus and Crispus stood on the battlements of Antonia; and of all the Romans, who more pleased than Rufus at finding himself once more in his old familiar fortress?

The two, looking down from their lofty position, watched the preparations that were being made for the defense of the temple. The marble courts and gilded pinnacles were assuming the appearance of a warlike citadel. Thousands of Zealots, under the direction of Simon and John, were hauling their huge military engines over the tesselated pavement, till the northern porticoes facing Antonia fairly bristled with balistæ and catapults. The clang of arms and the creaking of the machines, the shouting of men and the ceaseless hurrying hither and thither, made a scene difficult to reconcile with the belief that the place was the house of God.

“What is the day of the month?” asked Rufus, suddenly.

“The seventeenth of July,” replied Crispus.

“I venture to prophesy that in the years to come the Jews--if there be any of them left after this war--will keep this day as a day of mourning.”

“Why so?”

“The answer is to be found _there!_” remarked Rufus, pointing to the court of the priests. “It is the hour of the evening sacrifice,” he continued, glancing at a sun-dial near by, “but where is the smoke ascending from the altar? ’Twas absent, too, this morning, so I am told. _The daily sacrifice hath ceased_ for lack of victims. If I rightly foresee the fate of the temple, they made their last sacrifice yester even.”

To the mind of the pagan Rufus the matter was one of little moment, but to Crispus, with his Christian way of thinking, this cessation of a sacrifice that had taken place twice a day for a space of thirteen hundred years was full of a profound significance; he knew that to the pious Hebrew, if not to the fighting Zealot, it must appear an event as grave almost as a stoppage in the progress of the universe, for had not the scribes said, “The world was made for the sake of the temple,” and what was the temple without its sacrifices?

Titus, made aware of the event, sought to conciliate the religious sentiment of the foe by a very remarkable offer.

Josephus, covered by the shield of a legionary, walked along the causeway; and, halting in the middle, lifted up his voice, and addressed the Jewish people in the Hebrew tongue.

“Simon Bar-gioras and John of Giscala, hear now the words of Titus Cæsar. He hath a reverence for your temple, and would fain save it from the destruction which ye, by converting it into a citadel, are bringing upon it. If ye will remove your men of war, he will meet you in battle at Mount Zion or in whatever place you choose; he, too, will withdraw his arms from the temple, leaving it sacred and inviolate. And as a token of his good will towards you, he offers you this day a gift of threescore rams that ye may continue the daily sacrifice as heretofore.”

“Ha! mark you that?” said Rufus to Crispus. “There speaks not Titus but Berenice.”

There were among the Jewish people thousands that would gladly have seen the war removed from the temple and its precincts, but they were overawed by the Zealots, who, by the mouth of Simon, thus made answer:

“Titus, knowing that he cannot take the temple by force of arms, whereof the fight of this morning is a witness, speaks thus, hoping to lure us from our stronghold, that he may the more easily enter it. But in vain is the net spread in the sight of the bird. His threescore rams we will not take, for never shall it be said that the sacrifices to the Eternal One have become dependent upon the polluted offerings of an uncircumcized heathen. And to him and to the whole Roman empire do we offer an everlasting defiance. Now, renegade, carry back in thy detestable Greek or Latin the answer of Simon Bar-gioras.”

This haughty reply, and especially its boastful note as to the fight on the causeway, so provoked Titus that he determined to make a second attempt that very night. As the whole army were unable to join in the assault owing to the narrowness of the approach, there were picked out from each century the thirty bravest and strongest men; tribunes were appointed over each thousand, and one Cerealis, an officer of rare valor, was chosen to command the whole. In the great hall of Antonia the storming party consecrated themselves, as it were, to the work by offering, under the presidency of Theomantes, a solemn sacrifice to Mars.

An hour before dawn Cerealis at the head of his men, advanced over the causeway with swift silent tread, but failed to effect a surprise. Simon, if not John, was on the alert. Then began a battle similar in all respects to that of the preceding night. After eight hours of desperate fighting the Romans had not gained a foot of ground, and the battle ceased, as it were, by mutual consent.

Now no more could the Romans boast that, man for man, they were superior to the Jews, when the picked soldiers of their army, the very flower of the legions, had suffered repulse at the hands of the Zealots.

The iron warriors, who had carried their eagles triumphantly over all nations from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, leaned moodily upon their spears, and stared up with dark and sullen faces at the laughing Zealots, who, clustering upon the roof of the northern cloisters, pointed with their swords at the causeway and mockingly asked the foe why they did not come into the temple.

“Give counsel what we shall do,” said Titus to Tiberius Alexander.

“Raze Antonia to the ground, and with the materials fill up this intervening glen so as to make a broad level way, over which we may haul our engines to batter the northern cloisters.”

Titus without delay adopted this suggestion.

The Roman soldiers, burning to retrieve their tarnished honor, had no sooner received the new command than they flew with ardor to its execution. All along the sky-line, on every tower, turret and battlement, were seen groups of men furnished with lever and crow, by whose means blocks of masonry were lifted up to be sent whirling and crashing into the valley below; far into the night the soldiers toiled by the ruddy glare of a thousand torches, and as the mighty fortress sank lower and lower so did the débris accumulated in the valley rise higher and higher.

The Zealots no longer mocked, but looked on in silent wonder at this display of almost superhuman energy. There was something sublime in this demolition of a magnificent citadel merely for the purpose of filling up a trench.

At last a broad and level way was successfully carried across the ravine right up to the very foot of the northern cloisters.

On the evening of the day that saw its completion Crispus, walking meditatively upon the crest of Olivet, came suddenly upon a figure standing solitary, silent, motionless. It was the woman who was steadfastly refusing to acknowledge herself as his wife, the Princess Berenice. Not far off, in the background, stood two attendants with a chariot. Evidently she had come to take a look, perhaps her last look, at her native city.

Crispus had leisure to observe her, for she was so wrapped in contemplation that she did not hear his tread.

Her face was pale, and anguish looked from her eyes as she surveyed the ruin wrought by man against his fellow-man.

The country, swept of all its timber to supply materials for the Roman banks and for camp fires, had lost all its sylvan charm and beauty.

To this denudation must be added the ravages of the Arabian and Syrian allies, who, haters of the Jews, had diffused their devastating frenzy so far around that, from the summit of Olivet, neither village nor house, neither tower nor wall, could be seen to break the dreary monotony of the landscape. So mournful a change had passed over the country that in the striking language of Josephus, “_Anyone that had previously known the place, coming on a sudden to it now, would have failed to recognize it!_”

It was a scene of utter desolation, a howling wilderness, made more awful by the light of the setting sun, which, half sunk below the horizon, shot a sinister red glare athwart the melancholy waste.

In all the wide extent of landscape there was no vestige of life or movement, save at one spot only, where the grim and ever-narrowing circle of fire and steel was slowly extinguishing the life of a once great nation.

Berenice set her eyes upon the city, or rather upon what was left of it. Was this the place that the Psalmist had called, “The joy of the whole earth”?

Gone was the suburb of Bezetha! Gone was the suburb of Acra! Gone was the citadel of Antonia! Zion and Ophel remained, but woefully wrecked and dilapidated; and the temple--shorn, alas! of its divine sacrifies--still rose as fair as ever, its marble porticoes and golden pinnacles dyed in the blood-red hues of sunset. But how long would it stand? Ah! there was her fear, and she pressed her hand to her throbbing heart.

Turning suddenly she caught sight of Crispus, and started. There was a proud trembling of her lip as if she were trying to subdue some emotion--anger probably--that was rising to the surface.

“So it was _you_,” said she, taking no notice of his greeting, “who prevented my weekly gift of rams from reaching the temple?”

“Nay, it was Tiberius Alexander, though I freely admit that his deed has my approval.”

“Why so?”

“The Law, princess, was but a shadow of things to come. There is now no need for typical sacrifices when the True Sacrifice has been offered, once and for all. And since the Jew refuses to acknowledge the temporal character of the Law, there is but one way of teaching him the lesson--a stern and terrible way!”

It is doubtful whether Berenice, not being versed in Pauline theology, quite comprehended the import of these words; at any rate, she did not reply to them.

“They tell me you are great at slaughter,” she said, with a sort of sneer, “and that, as being the first to mount the battlements of Antonia, you have gained a Mural Crown. And now, grown more bold, you seek to take God himself captive.”

“Princess, you talk as do the heathen. The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands.”

“Yet your master Paul was wont to worship in yon edifice.”

“I doubt whether he would do so to-day, were he living, seeing that there is now no holiness in yon temple. The spirit of true religion has fled from the place. The high priest Phannias is a village rustic, unlawfully chosen by lot, so ignorant that he knows not how to perform the duties of his office. The temple has become a slaughter-house, reeking with innocent blood shed by the wicked Zealots, who have held therein mock trials of the rich, condemning them to death that they may seize upon their wealth. The place is no longer a temple but a citadel. The holy vessels have been melted down to form instruments of war. Assassins pile their arms around the altar, and revelers make themselves drunk in the Sanctuary. It were a shame to speak of the things that have been done there. John’s men, tricked out in feminine garb, have imitated the infamies of the guilty Cities of the Plain. And you would bid us deal tenderly with this place, forsooth! Nay, verily, its stones cry out for the avenging, purifying fire of heaven.”

“Or the flaming torch of Crispus,” sneered Berenice. “You think to see the temple destroyed, but it shall not be so. Titus has pledged me his solemn word to preserve it.”

“Titus may promise what he will; he cannot overturn the counsels of the Most High.”

“Whose instrument you deem yourself to be,” returned Berenice, disdainfully. “I know the secret thought of your heart. A vision sent, not as you vainly think by God, but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils, is luring you on to a wicked deed. You have desired to take part in the siege for this end only, that when the attack on the temple shall begin you may be able in the confusion to apply an incendiary torch. Do so, and the act shall bring death upon her whom you hold most dear.”

“And who is that?” asked Crispus quickly.

“Vashti, who, instead of being safe at Pella, as you intended her to be, is a captive at my mercy--my slave to do with as I list. Your act in bringing her forth from Jerusalem has had this result only--to deliver her into my hands the sooner.”

Though Crispus tried to receive this startling news with outward calmness, something of the fear felt by him looked from his eyes, and drew a triumphant smile from Berenice.

Mistress of Vashti, she was mistress of his action, so she thought, and his action must be the sparing of the temple.

“It was by accident I discovered that your Vashti was at Pella. Armed with the written authority granted me by Titus I immediately arrested my slave, and conveyed her to--to----”--No! she would keep the name of the place a secret--“to where you will not find her. Now, mark my words, Crispus Cestius Gallus. If by your hand yon temple burns, so too shall Vashti burn; she shall die, shrieking in a flaming vesture of pitch, even as the Christians died in the gardens of Nero.”

“Princess, if yours be the heart of a woman, I am glad to possess the heart of a man.”

Berenice laughed, a cold, hard laugh.

“I care not how vile I be in your sight so long as I can but save the temple. Retire this night from the army--Titus will permit it--have no more to do with the siege, and I will set Vashti at liberty. What is your answer?”

“This. Your threat supplies an additional argument for the destruction of the temple, since it is clear that its dead ritual and external formalities have no power to purify the heart or quicken the conscience. As to your menace against Vashti, forget not that it is written, ‘Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’”

Berenice laughed scornfully.

“Who will venture to punish a princess and the friend of Titus merely for putting her own slave to death?”

“The Christians.”

“The Christians!” repeated Berenice, disdainfully.

“I have said it, princess. If Vashti dies, you die also. Trust not to the power of Titus to save you. There are in yon army Christians who, in the execution of what they deem to be right, fear neither kings nor Cæsars. You shall be secretly seized and carried off to a conclave of Christians there to be judged of the deed by your own Law, which has said: ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, burning for burning’; Berenice’s death for Vashti’s death. If you are found guilty, be sure of this, princess, _they’ll not lack an executioner_!”

As Berenice beheld the set, stern look on his face, she had no need to ask who that executioner would be.

Without another word he turned and left her.

She had sought to frighten him, but it was _she_ who was the frightened one. She stood in fear and trembling, knowing that her threat instead of acting as a deterrent had but made him the more resolved to carry out his purpose.

Next day the toiling legions pushing forward their military engines directed a fierce attack along the line of cloisters--more than a thousand feet in length--that formed the northern side of the great temple-platform.

Now that the battle had reached the very seat of their religion the Jews fought with a fury they had never before shown; the priests themselves were under arms, rivaling the Zealots in deeds of valor; Simon, with bare arm and flashing scimitar, was seen at every point along the line, urging on to fresh exertions men who required but little urging.

Let Jewish valor do what it would, however, it could not prevail; each day marked an advance on the part of the Romans, who at last became masters of the whole northern gallery, which they proceeded at once to destroy by fire, ax, and crow, in order to facilitate the advance of the battering-train.

The victors had now gained the summit of the lofty temple-platform, a vast square open to the sky save at the sides which were adorned with cloisters. In the midst of this square towered the Sanctuary or temple proper, a structure 360 feet in length and 270 in breadth. Its exterior wall, formed of gigantic blocks of marble, and nearly 40 feet in height, was pierced by nine gateways, there being three upon each side save the western, that side being without gates.

It was within this fortress--for such it was--that the defeated Jews had taken refuge, and here they prepared to make their final, and, as they believed, triumphal stand.

Strange and incredible fact!

In spite of their numerous defeats, hope was stronger than ever in the breast of the Jews, who still dreamed of seeing the scepter of empire transferred from the Capitol to Zion. They were fully convinced that the temple which God Himself had ordered to be built could never be trodden by the foot of pagan conqueror. The deity would be certain to work a miracle in their favor; at the least, something would happen to astonish and disperse the enemy. And they talked of Sennacherib and the burning simoon, but forgot Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldeans.

And now the sacred precincts of the temple echoed with the clang of horse-hoofs. Roman cavalry clattered on the marble pavement of the Court of the Gentiles, and with leveled spears swept round and round the Sanctuary, driving in every sortie made from the gates, and acting as a cover to the Roman infantry, who, with tremendous toil and difficulty, were hauling along a train of battering-rams.

The Sanctuary was surrounded by a low balustrade, bearing tablets--one has survived to the present time--inscribed in Greek and Latin letters with notices prohibiting the Gentiles on pain of death from entering the edifice--notices that evoked the mocking laughter of the Roman soldiery as they set their engines in array against the building.

The “middle wall of partition,” which the Law had set up betwixt Jew and Gentile, was now breaking down in no figurative sense!

The temple-platform had a circuit so ample as to contain within it a synagogue, and it was from the roof of this structure, as from a throne, that Titus directed the military operations against the Sanctuary.

It was not without an expectant thrill that the Jews awaited Titus’ signal for the assault, there being a half belief among them that fire from heaven would descend upon the impious band that first ventured to swing a beam against the sacred wall of God’s house; and therefore something like a sigh of disappointment went up when nothing marvelous followed upon the first stroke of the ram.

Relying upon the strength of the masonry the Jews did little fighting, content to watch amid laughter and gibes the futile labors of the enemy.

For six days the battering-rams swung, and thundered, and pounded against the walls of the Sanctuary; yet not a stone was pushed from its place, so marvelously compacted was the masonry.

“Bring scaling-ladders and storm the walls!” cried Titus on the seventh day.

The legionaries, relinquishing the battering-rams, flew to execute this new order.

The Jews made no resistance to the Romans while mounting, but as soon as each man had reached the top, they either hurled him down headlong or slew him before he had time to cover himself with his shield.

Now here, and now there, a ladder crowded with ascending legionaries, would be toppled backwards and the men dashed to pieces upon the marble pavement.

The fierce shouts of the active combatants intermingled with the cries and groans of the wounded and the dying.

After two hours of this deadly game there came a lull. Despairing of taking the place by escalade the Romans withdrew to a distance, and stared up in moody silence at the Zealots, who, brandishing their weapons, shouted, “Ye cannot take this place; it is the abode of God.”

The superstitious legionaries were beginning to think the same. They no longer laughed at the words, “Let no Gentile enter here on pain of death.” The dead and dying strewn around on the pavement were a significant commentary on that interdict.

Vainly did the trumpets peal out a call to renew the charge. Not a man would move.

Titus sought to stimulate their courage by a new expedient. Pointing to that part of the wall where stood the Zealot chief, he shouted:

“Ten thousand gold pieces to the man who brings me Simon’s head.”

No one seemed willing to earn this rich reward.

Simon laughed.

“Titus knows my value. Now to him who brings me the head of Titus I shall give ten shekels only, it not being worth more.”

Suddenly a standard-bearer, darting forward, mounted a ladder, and when three-fourths of the way up, he deliberately flung the eagle into the midst of the foe, crying as he waved his sword, “Romans, will you see your standard taken by the enemy? Follow me.”

Lose an eagle? Never!

Amid a wild, shrill clangor of trumpets, the legionaries, with the flame of battle in their blood, swept forward, wave upon wave, determined this time to carry the fortress. But, alas! for them, this attack fared no better than the others. The bold standard-bearer was struck down; those following him were either slain or repulsed; and the eagle remained in the hands of the foe.

Simon viewed the idolatrous image with loathing.

“An abomination brought into the place where it ought not to be,” said he. “Bring ax and hammer.”

And with his own strong arm he hewed the golden eagle to pieces, and cast them down at the feet of the Romans contemptuously, crying: “Behold your god!”

If a yell could have brought down the walls of the Sanctuary they would most assuredly have fallen at that moment before the terrific yell of concentrated hatred and fury that burst from the Romans, when they beheld the destruction of what was to them not merely a patriotic emblem but a darling object of worship, a worship far more real and fervent than they ever paid to Jove or Mars!

Simon’s studied affront goaded Titus to a course from which he had hitherto refrained.

“_Fire the gates!_” he cried.

To this command the legionaries responded with a huge roar of delight. Vast quantities of timber were quickly brought and piled high against the metal-plated doors of the nine gateways.

Of these, the most splendid was the one facing the east, and known as the Corinthian Gate, for, whereas, the other doors were crusted all over with gold and silver, the eastern door was a marvel of richly chased Corinthian bronze.

It was Alexander, the wealthy Alabarch of Alexandria, who had adorned the gate in this fashion; and, by a singular turn of destiny, it was his apostate son Tiberius who wrought its destruction--a deed surprising to the Romans themselves, who could not but regard it as an act of filial impiety. With buckler held over his head to protect himself from the arrows that came whizzing obliquely from above, the ex-procurator of Judæa ascended the stately flight of fifteen stairs, and, with his own hand, applied a lighted torch to the pile of timber.

Nine huge fires were now smoking, and crackling, and flaming, and roaring, at the nine gates of the temple. As the metallic platings became red-hot the fire, carried to the woodwork behind, began to consume the entire gate.

The sight produced a strange and stupefying effect upon the Jews, who had never thought such an event to be possible; at one stroke their courage seemed to vanish; they made no attempt to quench the flames, but stood mute spectators of the scene.

It was Titus himself, who, not wishing the conflagration to extend too far, gave orders to fling water upon the burning gates; and when this had been done, the besieged realized that their defense was all but at an end; the charred timber of the doors would yield at the first stroke of the battering-ram, and the enemy would enter by nine different ways.

“The day is far spent and the soldiers are faint,” said Titus. “We will defer our final attack till the morrow.”

With a view of cutting off the retreat of Simon and John, who might seek during the night to make their escape to Mount Zion, Titus caused a great part of his army to camp round about in the cloisters of the Court of the Gentiles.

Leaving Crispus and Rufus in charge of these forces Titus retired to Antonia, or rather to a corner of it that had been spared in the general demolition in order to furnish a lodging for himself and his chief officers.

And here, that same night, there sat that memorable council, assembled to decide the great question (as if it were in _their_ power to decide!) whether the Jewish temple should be preserved or destroyed.

Tiberius Alexander was the first to speak; more pagan than the pagans themselves he brought forward several reasons, all tending to show that the existence of the temple was a menace to the safety of the empire. He ended with a religious argument:

“If you spare this edifice, O Cæsar, the Jews will boast that their God has put His fear in your heart and that you dare not destroy it. They will see in your leniency both a proof of the divine origin of their temple and an augury of its eternal existence; its preservation will more than ever convince them that they are the favorites of heaven, and are therefore under no obligation to obey an earthly power.

“It must be ours to show that Jupiter of the Capitol is supreme over Jehovah of Jerusalem.

“Two superstitions, equally fatal to the empire, depend for their existence upon yon temple, that of the Jews and that of the Christians![32] These two superstitions, although contrary to each other, have the same origin: the Christians come from the Jews; destroy the root, and the shoot will quickly perish. Wherefore,” concluded he, with reminiscences of the psalms, “my counsel is, ‘Down with it; down with it, even to the ground!’”

But Titus, secretly moved by his infatuation for Berenice, was, of course, disposed to take a milder view.

“We ought not,” said he, “from hatred of our enemies to take revenge upon inanimate things. To burn so vast and splendid a fabric is to do hurt to ourselves, seeing that it is an ornament to our empire.”[33]

And, perceiving on which side of the question the mind of their general lay a certain minority, who had been disposed to favor the views of Alexander, dropped their opposition.

“This, then, is our decree,” said Titus solemnly, “and let the whole army know it--the temple shall be preserved.”

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision!

For scarcely had Titus made an end of speaking when from without there came a cry, distant and faint; it was repeated in a louder key; caught up by a thousand tongues, alike by the startled Romans in the camp and by the terrified Jews in the city, the wild tidings came rolling louder, and ever louder, upon the night air, to the mockery and confusion of the military council:

=“THE TEMPLE IS ON FIRE!”=