Jerusalem Explored Part 60

[Sidenote: t.i.tus attacks the upper city.]

"The works of the four legions were raised on the western side of the city, opposite to the royal palace, while the auxiliaries and the rest of the force laboured in the region of the Xystus, the bridge, and the tower which Simon, during his contest with John, had built as a fortress for himself." VI. VIII. 1.

[Sidenote: Destruction of the city.]

"And when, at a later period, he destroyed the remainder of the city, and razed the walls, he allowed these towers to stand as a memorial of the favour of fortune, by whose cooperation he had become master of those strongholds, which could never have been reduced by force of arms." VI. IX. 1.

[Sidenote: Number of Jews killed and taken prisoners.]

"The whole number of prisoners taken during the entire course of the war was calculated at ninety-seven thousand; while those who perished in the siege, from its commencement to its close, amounted to one million one hundred thousand. Of these the greater part were of Jewish blood, though not natives of the place. Having a.s.sembled from the whole country for the feast of unleavened bread, they were suddenly hemmed in by the war; so that their confined situation caused at first a pestilential disease, and afterwards famine also, still more rapid in its effects." VI. IX. 3.

[Sidenote: Final destruction of Jerusalem.]

"Caesar ordered the whole of the city and the sanctuary to be razed to the foundations, leaving the three loftiest towers, Phasaelus, Hippicus, and Mariamne, and that portion of the wall which enclosed the town on the west; the latter as an encampment for those who should remain there in garrison; the towers, to indicate to future times how splendid and how strong a city had yielded to Roman valour. All the rest of the wall that encompa.s.sed the city was so completely levelled with the ground that there was no longer anything to lead those who visited the spot to believe that it had ever been inhabited. So fell Jerusalem, a victim of revolutionary frenzy: a magnificent city, and celebrated throughout the world." VII. I. 1.

[Sidenote: Population of Jerusalem indicated by Hecataeus of Abdera.]

"There are many strong places and villages in the country of Judaea, but one strong city there is, about fifty furlongs in circ.u.mference, which is inhabited by a hundred and twenty thousand men or thereabout."

(Against Apion, I. 22.)