In another quarter Herod strengthened the city very much. The reader
will have noticed that while it was a usual thing with assailants to
attack the north wall, and take the Lower City as a preliminary to
assaulting the Upper City, yet there was one spot where the Upper
City might be approached at once from the outside. This was by the
Valley Gate, and was owing to the fact that the second wall started
from the Gennath Gate to go northward, whereas the wall of the Upper
City was prolonged westward. Herod determined to strengthen this part
of the city all the more because his own palace was in this part; so
he built three strong towers, which he named Hippicus, Phasaelus, and
Mariamne. Hippicus was at the outer angle; the base of it remains, and
is the foundation of the north-west tower of the present citadel, which
measures 45 feet square. Phasaelus remains, and is the one conspicuous
object on the right hand as the traveller enters the Jaffa Gate. It is
70 feet by 56 feet, and is solid to the height of 60 feet; the stones
are bevelled, like those round the Haram, and do not appear ever to
have been disturbed. The site of Mariamne is less certain, but it
probably corresponded with the third tower which we see marked in
almost every plan of the so-called Castle of David.
The Jerusalem of Herod’s day was the Jerusalem which Jesus Christ would
be familiar with.
In the year 43 A.D., Agrippa built a third wall, to enclose
the suburban dwellings which had sprung up on the north. This third
wall began at the tower Hippicus, went northward, and had a tower
called Psephinus at its north-west angle, then passed eastward “over
against” the monuments of Helena, queen of Adiabene (the so-called
“Tombs of the Kings,” half a mile out, on the great north road), then
passed by the caverns of the kings, bent southward at the tower of the
north-eastern corner, and finally joined the old wall at the valley
“called the Valley of Kedron” (Josephus, Wars, v. 4, 2). “The city
could no way have been taken if that wall had been finished in the
manner it was begun.” But Agrippa “left off building it when he had
only laid the foundation, out of the fear he was in of Claudius Cæsar.”
The wall was 10 cubits wide, and was afterwards raised as high as 20
cubits, above which it had battlements and turrets. In the course of
the third wall, according to Josephus, there were ninety towers, as
compared with sixty in the first; and the whole compass of the city
was 33 furlongs. He also says that the ninety towers were 200 cubits
apart; but this would make the third wall alone more than 5 miles in
length, and so we judge that some mistake has crept into the text.
Therefore we shall venture to take the present north wall of the
city as representing Agrippa’s wall, notwithstanding that the entire
circumference would then be less than 33 furlongs. There seems to be
no sufficient evidence for going beyond the present wall. It is a wall
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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