Jerusalem, the City of Herod and SaladinBesant, Walter
History
Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin
Besant, Walter
Jerusalem -- Description and travel; Jerusalem -- History
Milman gives a list of the losses of the Jews in this war compiled
from the numbers given by Josephus. It amounts to more than three
millions. Deductions must, of course, be made.
Footnote 5:
No argument ought to be founded on the supposed numbers of the
legions. The number _generally_ composing a legion in the time of
the Empire was 6000, and before the Empire, was 4000. But at
Pharsalia Cæsar’s legions were only 2000 each, while Pompey’s were
7000.
Footnote 6:
It is very curious that these “servants” are not mentioned either
by Mr. Lewin or Mr. Fergusson. Mr. Williams puts down the number
of the legions at 10,000 each, perhaps including the servants.
It is not easy to make any kind of estimate of the number of these
servants. Perhaps, however, we shall be within the mark if we put
down the whole number of forces under Titus’s command at something
like eighty thousand—an army which was greatly superior in numbers
to that of the besieged. It was also fully provided and equipped
with military engines, provisions and material of all kinds. It
marched, without meeting any enemy, from Cæsarea to Jerusalem, where
it arrived on the 11th of April.[7]
The city, meanwhile, had been continuing those civil dissensions
which hastened its ruin. John, Simon Bar Gioras, and Eleazar, each
at the head of his own faction, made the streets run with blood.
John, whose followers numbered six thousand, held the Lower, New,
and Middle City; Simon, at the head of ten thousand Jews and five
thousand Idumeans, had the strong post of the Upper City, with a
portion of the third wall; Eleazar, with two thousand zealots, more
fanatic than the rest, had barricaded himself within the Temple
itself. There they admitted, it is true, unarmed worshippers, but
kept out the rest. The stores of the Temple provided them with
abundance of provisions, and while the rest of the soldiers were
starving, those who were within the Temple walls[8] were well fed
and in good case. This was, however, the only advantage which
Eleazar possessed over the rest. Their position, cooped up in a
narrow fortress—for such the Temple was—and exposed to a constant
shower of darts, stones, and missiles of all sorts, from John’s men,
was miserable enough. John and Simon fought with each other in the
lower ground, the valley of the Tyropœon, which lay between the
Temple and Mount Zion. Here were stored up supplies of corn
sufficient, it is said, for many years’ supply. But in the sallies
which John and Simon made upon each other all the buildings in this
part of the town were destroyed or set on fire, and all their corn
burned; so that famine had actually begun before the commencement of
the siege.
Footnote 7:
The dates of the siege are all taken from Professor Willis’s
‘Journal,’ given in Williams’s ‘Holy City,’ vol. i. p. 478.
Footnote 8:
After Eleazar had succumbed to John.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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