CHAPTER XXV

“JUDÆA CAPTA!”

Thus was the temple burnt, and when Titus learned--for the matter was secretly reported to him--whose was the hand that had kindled the first flame, he swore by all his gods that Crispus should suffer death; and, in so resolving, he tried to think that he was actuated by a spirit of justice, and not by the wish of removing one who was a hindrance to his union with Berenice. That princess had often spoken of Crispus’ purpose as touching the temple, but at her fears Titus had laughed, never thinking that Crispus would so far transcend all rules of military discipline as to dare to fire a magnificent edifice without due orders from his commander-in-chief. But Crispus _had_ dared so to act, and fiercely did Titus express his wrath to those of his officers with whom he breakfasted next morning.

Tiberius Alexander tried to placate his angry chief.

“What command did Crispus disobey? He fired the building ere he learned of your decree.”

“Is Crispus, forsooth, commander-in-chief? By whose orders did he act?”

“By those of the immortal gods, I verily believe,” replied Alexander. “Josephus, whom you regard so highly, will tell you that it is the Divine will that the temple should perish. Crispus could not resist his destiny. It was fated that he should so act.”

“Very like. And ’twas fated, too, that I should behead him.”

Alexander’s face darkened.

“By so treating the bravest soldier in your army you will incense the legions to the verge of mutiny.”

“Be that as it may,” retorted Titus, frowning, for he well knew that there was truth in what the other had said.

“And you will lose my services, for I shall immediately return to Alexandria.”

“And I shall resign my tribuneship,” said Rufus.

“And I!”--“And I!” came from many others.

As he beheld the stern faces of his staff Titus saw the imperative necessity of revoking his too hasty judgment upon Crispus. He could not afford to lose his bravest officers with that terrible stronghold of Zion--the goal of all his labors--still untaken. Moreover, there was Vespasian to think of; he would not be pleased at the execution of one for whom he had always entertained a fatherly affection.

“Summon Crispus to our presence,” said he moodily, addressing a centurion.

The messenger departed, and presently returned with a grave face. Crispus, it seemed, had been carried forth from the previous night’s battle so slashed with wounds that his recovery was a matter of doubt.

“He was endeavoring,” stated the centurion, “to save from slaughter an aged widow, named Miriam, who had taken refuge at the altar--an action on his part that so incensed some of those Syrian allies who, if Cæsar will pardon me for saying it, are the curse of our army, that they dared to turn their arms against him--a Roman tribune!”

“By Castor, if he can point them out, they shall be crucified!” exclaimed Titus. “Well, since he cannot come to me, I must go to him. O, fear not, brave captains,” he added, observing their dubious looks, “my resentment is over. You have my word for it that Crispus shall come to no hurt through me.”

So saying, he followed the centurion, and came to the castellum, or fort, where upon a pallet lay Crispus, swathed in bandages, and looking more dead than alive.

The sight of the pallid figure disarmed all Titus’ anger, and in sympathetic tones he expressed his sorrow at seeing Crispus in such state.

“It is better thus,” said Crispus, believing his end to be at hand. “Berenice will be free.”

“Now by the gods!” exclaimed Titus, his better nature flashing out, “a plague on these women who set friend and friend at variance. If Berenice is to be won only at the cost of your life, may she never be won, say I. But as to this matter, do you know that Berenice denies that she was the veiled lady of Beth-tamar?”

“But you do not believe her?”

Titus’ silence would seem to show that he was of the same opinion as Crispus.

He spoke a few more cheering words, and then took his departure. Making his way to the ruins of the temple, he was hailed with loud cries of “_Ave, Imperator!_” by the soldiery, who, assembled before the blackened eastern gate, were offering incense and prayers to the eagles, the gods that, in their superstitious fancy, had given them the victory.

“‘Imperator!’” said Titus scornfully, recalling their disobedience of the previous night. “Very much imperator, when ye let the temple burn contrary to my will.”

It was customary among the Roman troops to honor the victorious general with a new title drawn from the name of the people subdued by him--Scipio _Africanus_ and Metellus _Creticus_ are cases in point--but when some of the soldiery proceeded further to salute Titus with the epithet “_Judaicus_,” he sternly forbade them to use an appellation that he knew would be a perpetual reminder to Berenice of the fall of her nation.

Though the ordinary soldier was left to cure his wounds as best he might, with the aid of his sympathizing comrades, Titus himself was attended in this campaign by a Greek physician, whom he now sent to watch over Crispus, and great was the satisfaction throughout the camp when it became known that the state of the patient was such as to afford good ground for hope.

A week later Titus, when paying a second visit to Crispus, dwelt again on the subject of Berenice.

“No man,” said he, “would risk his life, as you did, in rescuing a damsel from a beleaguered city--you see I know the story--unless he were madly enamored of her. Since your heart is set, not upon Berenice but upon this Vashti, what is to prevent you from repudiating the one and taking the other?”

“Firstly, I have not said that my heart _is_ set upon Vashti; secondly, even if it were so, my Christian creed forbids me acting in the way your prescribe. With Christians marriage is a perpetual obligation.”

“Crispus, don’t deny it; you love this Vashti, and yet you are going to allow your foolish religion--for such must I call it--to stand in the way of your desires. But I doubt whether you fully understand your own creed. I have been conversing with some of your faith, for it appears that you are not the only Christian in our army, and their saying is that if a wife takes a lover, her husband is justified in obtaining a divorce. It is Berenice’s intention,” added Titus significantly, “to supply you with the grounds for one.”

In his pagan days Crispus would have readily availed himself of this way of escaping from a union that was hateful to him, but being no longer a pagan, he would not consent to Berenice’s doing evil that thereby good might come to him.

“Cæsar,” said he, “I will be no party to this scheme, which I look upon as an infamous one. Nay, more; if you so act, I will have justice upon you. Forget not the oath of your sire, Vespasian, that he would hang the man who takes my wife from me, though that man were his own son. Do this thing, and I will accuse you at the foot of the imperial throne, and demand that he keep his word.”

Titus laughed pleasantly.

“I’ll take the risk,” said he.

And with that he withdrew, bent on fulfilling his purpose, as Crispus was equally bent on fulfilling his.

Among others that visited Crispus during his illness was Josephus, who, as intending to write a history of the war, was naturally desirous of obtaining all the information he could respecting the burning of the temple.

Crispus complied with this request, but as he had no particular desire for worldly fame, he added:

“Keep my name out of the history.”

“Is it possible,” smiled Josephus, “in view of your great deeds?”

“Quite possible. You can allude to me as ‘a certain captain tribune,’ or ‘one of the soldiers.’” And then, turning to a matter of far more interest to him than future fame, he said, “Do you know that your ward Vashti is a slave in the household of the Princess Berenice?”

“Yea, I know it,” said Josephus with a queer smile, the meaning of which was not at all apparent to Crispus, “and I am this day setting off for Cæsarea, carrying to the princess a letter from Titus enjoining her to deal tenderly with my ward.”

“That is good, but it would be better were he sending an order that she must be set at liberty. However, that will perhaps come in time,” he continued, resolving to petition Vespasian on behalf of Vashti. “But let me not delay you. Go, and heaven prosper your mission.”

Crispus had ordered that his bed should be placed by a window from which he could watch the preparations that were being made to storm Mount Zion, where the implacable Zealots were making their last stand. With the capture of that stronghold, the long siege would be brought to an end.

Titus had offered, by the mouth of Josephus, to spare the lives of all the insurgents on the condition of instant surrender. But Simon and John still talked big. They demanded a free passage for themselves and their followers, together with their wives and children, promising to depart to some far-off spot in the wilderness. Titus rejected these terms, and in his anger vowed to slay every man, woman, and child, and to level the city to the ground.

Then did Crispus rejoice that Vashti was delivered from the possibility of such doom.

The Roman banks were completed in eighteen days, and on the nineteenth morning Titus began his attack upon the northern wall of Zion.

Even now it was within the power of the Zealots to prolong the siege for many weeks in virtue of their almost impregnable position in those three magnificent fortresses, Hippicus, Phasaelus, and Mariamne. But the steady and triumphant progress of the Roman arms through the suburb of Bezetha and the suburb of Acra, over the ruins of Antonia and the ruins of the temple, had put a secret fear into the heart of the Zealots, so that as soon as they heard the terrible rams swinging and pounding against the walls of Zion they quitted their fortifications, and fled. Some sought the catacombs with which the sub-soil of Jerusalem is everywhere honeycombed; others, opening the southern gates, made a wild and futile attempt to force the Roman line of circumvallation.

With a fierce shouting that seemed to shake the very towers, the triumphant legionaries poured over the walls, and proceeded to carry fire and sword through the length and breadth of the city. Enraged by the long opposition of the Zealots, the Romans made no distinction between the innocent and the guilty, but wreaked upon all alike, man, woman, and child, the accumulated vengeance of a long term of weeks.

The flames of night lit up wild scenes of carnage, lust, and rapine, scenes that have scarcely any parallel in history. One significant fact attests the extent of the slaughter--the fires on the lower parts of Zion were extinguished by the rivers of blood that poured down from the higher!

The Romans only ceased from slaying when their arms had become weary of striking; the surviving Jews--still to be counted by myriads--were driven like sheep across the Tyropæon bridge to the ruined cloisters of the temple, where they were put under guard. Scores of them, sullen and defiant to the last, refused to taste food prepared by Gentile hands, and so died.

When Titus entered the city and beheld the massy towers which the Zealots had so cravenly relinquished, he was filled with wonder.

“Truly,” he murmured, “unless the gods had put it into the hearts of these men to flee, we should never by our own strength have taken these towers.”

But however much Titus may have thought himself indebted to Divine power, he showed little of the Divine in his treatment of the captive multitude, who, if the figures of Josephus are to be trusted, amounted to ninety-seven thousand!

For many days a sorting process went on in the temple-courts. Those who were convicted of having borne arms against the Romans were executed at once. Seven hundred others, the tallest and most handsome, were set aside to grace the triumph of Titus. Of the rest, those under seventeen years of age were sold into slavery; all who had passed that age were either sent in fetters to Egypt, there to work in the mines, or were distributed among the provinces, to die in the amphitheater by the sword of the gladiator or by the fangs of wild beasts. As for the aged and infirm, these, as being useless and unsaleable, were simply put to death in cold blood. Thus were weeping families parted to meet no more on earth; never were such heartrending scenes as those that took place in the temple-courts upon the closing days of September in the year A.D. 70, and all under the sanction of the Cæsar who was called by his sycophantic contemporaries, “_Amor et deliciæ generis humani_--the love and darling of mankind!”

As Crispus heard the nightly wailings of the captive multitude he longed for the day when the progress of Christianity should temper warfare with a spirit more humane and merciful.

Josephus received the privilege of setting free from among the prisoners all his former friends, of whom he must have possessed a remarkable number, seeing that, after setting aside his father and mother, he contrived to liberate nearly two hundred more of the throng.

There were two faces, however, he looked for in vain.

“What hath become of Simeon ben Gamaliel?” he asked.

“Slain at the taking of Zion,” was the reply.

“And Johanan ben Zacchai?”

That rabbi, it appeared, was now at Jamnia in southern Judæa, having escaped from the holy city in a very singular manner.[35] Feigning to be dead, he was placed in a coffin, which the Zealot sentinels at the gate permitted to be carried forth for burial within his father’s sepulcher in the glen of Cedron. When once outside the city Johanan made his way to the Roman lines; and being permitted to pass by the good will of Crispus before whom he happened to be brought, he retired to Jamnia. And here, in subsequent years, he established the celebrated rabbinical school whose teaching was destined ultimately to develop into that strange system of Jewish scholasticism known as the Talmud.

Titus ordered the city to be razed to the ground with the exception of the three great towers--Hippicus, Phasaelus, and Mariamne. These were spared partly for the accommodation of a garrison to be stationed there with a view of preventing any attempt at rebuilding by the Jews, but mainly to demonstrate to posterity what kind of a city it was that Roman valor had subdued.

Terentius Rufus was appointed to superintend this work of demolition, and his first care was to remove Crispus to the splendid apartments in the tower Hippicus, as being more conducive to the patient’s recovery than the close and squalid quarters of the castellum, in which he had hitherto lain.

It was a matter of vexation to Titus that Simon the Black and John of Giscala were not to be found among the captive multitude. It turned out that the two Zealot chiefs had taken refuge in the catacombs beneath the city, and though the dauntless Simon contrived for a while to elude pursuit, John, reduced by stress of famine, came forth from his hiding-place to meet, by a singular leniency on the part of the conqueror, with the sentence of perpetual imprisonment.

And now, the Roman troops, having done the work they had set out to do, broke up their camp and commenced a slow and stately march to Cæsarea-by-the-sea, leading with them a long train of melancholy captives, the remnants of a once great nation, together with the spoils of the temple.

Terentius Rufus was left behind with the Legio Fretensis--bricks stamped with the name of this legion are still found in the sub-soil of Zion--and he proceeded to execute the work of demolition with a thoroughness that has made his memory forever hated by the Jews. The Talmud has no more fearful curses than those laid upon the head of him whom, with the Oriental peculiarity for disfiguring Western names, it miscalls _Turnus_ Rufus.

Over the site of what had once been a splendid and populous city he drew a plow in accordance with the oath which he had sworn to the Jews.

“Where is now their God?” he laughed, in scornful ignorance that his own action was a striking confirmation to the truth of the Hebrew religion, for had not the prophet written, “_Zion shall be plowed as a field_”?

For the accommodation of the garrison, however, a few houses were left standing upon the western side of the city, and among them the celebrated _Cænaculum_,[36] or House of the Last Supper, destined in the age of Constantine to be transformed into a Christian church.

For more than a month that fugitive of the catacombs, Simon, continued to evade arrest. Attended by a small but faithful band of miners and hewers of stone, well provided with cutting tools, he had been essaying the gigantic feat of boring his way through the solid rock to a point that should be beyond the ken of the Roman garrison, but the difficulty of the work and the failure of provisions compelled him to relinquish the enterprise.

He then took a singular step.

Assuming a white robe and a mantle of purple he emerged unexpectedly from the ground in the very place where the temple had stood, thinking perhaps by this act to impress the Romans with the belief that he was a new Messiah resuscitated from the dead.[37] As a matter of fact, the soldiers in the vicinity were not a little awe-struck at sight of this strange apparition rising from the ground. Their first amazement over, they drew near, formed a circle round him, and demanded who he was.

But Simon declared that his name was not for vulgar ears.

“Call your commandant,” said he with a mysterious air.

But when that commandant proved to be one well acquainted with the features and figure of Simon, the Zealot chief saw that deception was at an end.

Rufus received him with a pitying smile.

“Simon, if thou art attempting to imitate the God of my friend Crispus, thou art playing the part to no purpose. I know thee to be mortal man. Thou art my prisoner. This is a sorry ending for thee. Why didst not thou, Roman fashion, fall on thy blade, and so round off thy wild life?”

“’Tis forbidden by our law to slay one’s self,” returned Simon. “Now tell me what will be my doom?”

“Titus hath already decreed it. With a rope round thy neck thou wilt march through Rome in Cæsar’s great triumphal procession that all the citizens may see what manner of man it was that kept their soldiers at bay so long. As thou walkest, attendant lictors will beat thee with rods, for such is the custom. If it will give thee any pleasure thou wilt see borne aloft before thee the holy vessels of thy temple. But while these will be carried on to the journey’s end to be laid up in the temple of Peace, thou, at a certain point in the procession, wilt be led aside to the Tarpeian Rock, precipitated therefrom and slain. And a mighty shout of joy will go up from the multitude, for it is not till thy death has been announced that the sacrifices and the feasting will begin. Now, I might pity thee, but that the memory of the massacred Roman garrisons hardens my heart.”

“Better to fall with Israel than to triumph with Rome,” retorted the Zealot.

Rufus had no further parley with his prisoner, but dispatched him at once to Titus, who was then at Cæsarea. What must have been the feelings of Simon, when he found himself journeying along the same road as that on which he had gained his memorable victory over Cestius? Verily, the fortune of war had indeed changed!

It was not till three months after the burning of the temple that Crispus was strong enough to leave his chamber in Hippicus, and walk with halting step among the shapeless heaps of stones which represented all that was left of the once proud city.

Accompanied by Rufus he ascended the temple-hill. Its columns and cloisters, chambers and courts, had vanished, but the Legio Fretensis with all their toil had been unable to pull apart the masonry of the vast basement on which the temple structures had rested.

It remained, and remains to this day, a part of it forming the celebrated “Wailing-place” of the Jews.

Now as Crispus and Rufus stood there, they were surprised to see a band of men and women, quiet and orderly, ascending Mount Moriah from the Vale of Cedron.

As they drew near, Crispus recognized in them his friends of Pella. There was the saintly bishop Simeon, who had baptized both him and Vashti; and there, too, were the two youthful grandsons of the apostle Jude, destined on account of their Davidic descent to be haled one day before the jealous tyrant Domitian, and by him to be dismissed again as innocent and foolish visionaries.

“Now, who be ye?” asked Rufus, casting a suspicious glance at the throng.

“We are natives of Jerusalem, who, four years ago, quitted the city, rather than take up arms against the Romans.”

“That’s a point in your favor.”

“These,” explained Crispus, “are the Christians who befriended me during the time of my proscription by Nero.”

“And what would ye here?” asked Rufus, addressing them.

“We seek to inhabit this place again, and to carry on our worship as heretofore.”

“What! Think ye that Titus has destroyed this city merely to see it built again?”

“Titus destroyed the city as being a center of Jewish sedition,” remarked Crispus. “But these persons repudiate the Jewish religion. They are Christians with no wish for an independent kingdom. Acknowledging the authority of Rome, they will be a hindrance to rebellion, and a source of strength to us.”

“Humph! I doubt whether Titus will agree to their settling here.”

“His cousin, Flavius Clemens, would. Thou knowest that he is a Christian.”

“Flavius Clemens is not Cæsar.”

“But his two sons may become Cæsars, seeing that Vespasian has nominated them as his heirs next after Titus and Domitian, who, as you know, are both childless. You and I may yet live, Rufus, to see a Christian Cæsar on the throne, and a Cæsar who will know how to reward any favor shown to this little community here.”[38]

There was something in this argument, and Rufus thought he might as well have an eye to the future. To him, personally, it was a matter of indifference whether the Christians remained or withdrew; his only wish was not to be embroiled with Titus.

“Christians,” said Rufus meditatively. “Humph! well,” he added, turning to Crispus, “since you warrant them to be orderly, and innocent of any innovation against Rome, let them, if they will, remain and build. Titus hath not actually said aught to the contrary.”

Thus had the saints returning from Pella good cause to bless the day when they received among them the heathen and proscribed fugitive Crispus; for, thanks to his good offices, they were permitted to remain, and by their daily worship in the Cænaculum to carry on the historic continuity of the Church of Jerusalem.