Jerusalem. The Biography

tyrant, invited in a second – Simon ben Giora – who soon occupied much of the city. But John still held the Temple. Now the Zealots rebelled against him, seizing the Inner Temple so that, in the words of Tacitus, ‘there were three generals, three armies’ fighting each other for one city – even though the Romans were getting closer. When nearby Jericho fell to Vespasian, all three Jewish factions ceased fighting each other and worked to fortify Jerusalem, digging trenches andstrengthening Herod Agrippa I’s Third Wall in the north. Vespasian prepared to besiege Jerusalem. But then all at once he stopped.
    Rome had lost its head. On 9 June 68, Nero, beset by rebellions, committed suicide with the words: ‘What an artist the world is losing in me!’ In quick succession, Rome acclaimed and destroyed three emperors while three False Neros arose and foundered in the provinces – as if one real one had not been enough. Finally, the legions of Judaea and Egypt hailed Vespasian as their own emperor. The Muleteer remembered Josephus’ prophecy and freed him, granting him citizenship and appointing him as his adviser, almost his mascot, as he conquered first Judaea – and then the world. Berenice pawned her jewels to help fund Vespasian’s bid for the throne of Rome: the Muleteer was grateful. The new emperor headed via Alexandria to Rome and his son Titus, commanding 60,000 troops, advanced on the Holy City, knowing that his dynasty would be made or broken by the fate of Jerusalem. 55

PAGANISM
     
    How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her.
    Lamentations, 1.1–2
    Even while Jerusalem was still standing and the Jews at peace with us, the practice of their sacred rites was at variance with the glory of our empire and the customs of our ancestors.
    Cicero,
Pro L. Flacco
    It is better for a person to live in the Land of Israel in a city entirely of non-Jews than to live outside the Land in a city entirely Jewish. He who is buried there it is as if he were born in Jerusalem and he who is buried in Jerusalem, it is as though he were born under the throne of glory.
    Judah ha Nasi,
Talmud
    Ten measures of beauty descended upon the world, nine were given to Jerusalem and one to the rest of the world.
    Midrash Tanhuma,
Kedoshim 10
    For the freedom of Jerusalem.
    Simon bar Kochba, coins
    Thus was Jerusalem destroyed on the very day of Saturn, the day which even now the Jews reverence most.
    Dio Cassius,
Roman History

AD 70–312
     
    TITUS’ TRIUMPH: JERUSALEM IN ROME
     
    A few weeks later, once the city had been destroyed and he had completed his round of bloody spectacles, Titus again passed through Jerusalem, comparing her melancholy ruins with her vanished glory. He then sailed for Rome, taking with him the captured Jewish leaders, his royal mistress Berenice, his favourite renegade Josephus, and the treasures of the Temple – to celebrate the conquest of Jerusalem. Vespasian and Titus, crowned with laurel and clothed in purple, emerged from the Temple of Isis, were greeted by the Senate and took their places in the Forum to review one of the most extravagant Triumphs in the history of Rome.
    The pageant of divine statues and gilded floats, three or even four storeys high, heaped with treasure, afforded the spectators both ‘pleasure and surprise’, noted Josephus drily, ‘for there was to be seen a happy country laid waste’. The fall of Jerusalem was acted out in
tableaux vivants
– legionaries charging, Jews massacred, Temple in flames – and on top of each float stood the Roman commanders of every town taken. There followed what was for Josephus the cruellest cut of all, the splendours of the Holy of Holies: the golden table, the candelabra and the Law of the Jews. The star prisoner, Simon ben Giora, was paraded with a rope around his neck.
    When the procession stopped at the Temple of Jupiter, Simon and the rebel chieftains were executed; the crowds cheered; sacrifices were consecrated. There died Jerusalem, mused Josephus: ‘Neither its antiquity, nor its deep wealth, nor its people spread over the whole habitable world nor yet the great glory of its religious rites, were sufficient to prevent its ruin.’
    The Triumph was commemorated by the