Dio's Rome, Volume 5: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During The Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English FormCassius Dio Cocceianus
History
Dio's Rome, Volume 5: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During The Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form
Cassius Dio Cocceianus
Rome -- History
[Sidenote: A.D. 133 (a.u. 886)] [Sidenote:--12--] In Jerusalem he founded
a city in place of the one razed to the ground, naming it Aelia
Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the god he raised a new
temple to Jupiter. This brought on a war that was not slight nor of brief
duration, for the Jews deemed it intolerable that foreign races should be
settled in their city and foreign religious rites be planted there. While
Hadrian was close by in Egypt and again in Syria, they remained quiet,
save in so far as they purposely made the weapons they were called upon to
furnish of poorer quality, to the end that the Romans might reject them
and they have the use of them. But when he went farther away, they openly
revolted. To be sure, they did not dare try conclusions with the Romans in
the open field, but they occupied advantageous positions in the country
and strengthened them with mines and walls, in order that they might have
places of refuge whenever they should be hard pressed, and meet together
unobserved under ground; and in these subterranean passages they sunk
shafts from above to let in air and light. [Sidenote:--13--] At first the
Romans made no account of them. Soon, however, all Judaea had been
up-heaved, and the Jews all over the world were showing signs of
disturbance, were gathering together, and giving evidence of great
hostility to the Romans, partly by secret and partly by open acts; many
other outside nations, too, were joining them through eagerness for gain,
and the whole earth, almost, was becoming convulsed over the matter. Then,
indeed, did Hadrian send against them his best generals, of who Julius
Severus was the first to be despatched, from Britain, of which he was
governor, against the Jews. He did not venture to attack his opponents at
any one point, seeing their numbers and their desperation, but by taking
them in separate groups by means of the number of his soldiers and his
under-officers and by depriving them of food and shutting them up he was
able, rather slowly, to be sure, but with comparatively little danger, to
crush and exhaust and exterminate them. Very few of them survived.
[Sidenote:--14--] Fifty of their most important garrisons and nine hundred
and eighty-five of their most renowned towns were blotted out. Fifty-eight
myriads of men were slaughtered in the course of the invasions and
battles, and the number of those that perished by famine and disease and
fire was past all investigating. Thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made
desolate, an event of which the people had had indications even before the
war. The tomb of Solomon, which these men regarded as one of their sacred
objects, fell to pieces of itself and collapsed and many wolves and hyenas
rushed howling into their cities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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