[Illustration: FROM THE ARCH OF TITUS (SHOWING THE SPOILS OF JERUSALEM CARRIED IN TRIUMPH).] A good deal of what we know of the story comes from Josephus, the great Jewish historian, and an enemy of the Romans. He would be likely to say hard things of the procurators. But, even allowing {217} for that, it does seem as if the later procurators, after the death of King Herod Agrippa, were very oppressive. It was in the time of Florus, who was procurator from A.D. 64 to 66, that the trouble which had been growing came to a head. The state of things in Jerusalem and Judæa generally was terrible. Bands of assassins called Sicarii, or daggermen (from _sica_, a dagger), went about almost unmolested by authority. They were supposed to be very zealous for the old faith, and no doubt it was to escape them that St. Paul was taken, as we are told in the Bible, secretly and by night, from Jerusalem to Cæsarea. He lay in prison there, awaiting trial, for two years, while the procurator Felix, who had been a very oppressive governor, was succeeded by Festus--"most noble Festus," as Paul calls him--a more just and lenient ruler. Albinus followed Festus as procurator, from A.D. 62 to 64, and then came Florus, the most exacting of them all. What finally caused the Jews to rise up in fury against the Roman power was that Florus stripped the Temple, which was just completed in its building, of some of its sacred treasures. At first the rebellion met with a surprising success. Florus had called in the aid of the governor of Syria, with a force of 20,000 regular troops and 13,000 auxiliaries, but this was defeated and broken up by the Jews in a battle at Beth-horon. Probably the fate of Jerusalem was hastened by this victory, for its effect was that Rome took so serious a view of the revolt that she sent her ablest general, Vespasian, with ample forces to subdue it. The result was certain; yet again the Jews showed their extraordinary toughness in resisting so long as they did. The other cities soon fell to the Roman arms, but Jerusalem itself held out for three {218} years after the beginning of Vespasian's campaign. It fell in the year A.D. 70, and the fate that had befallen Carthage was now suffered by Jerusalem. The newly built Temple was destroyed--"not one stone left upon another," as had been foretold; the walls of the city were thrown down; the houses were burnt to the ground; most of the inhabitants were killed, and the rest taken away into slavery or otherwise dispersed over the earth. Jerusalem ceased to exist. The Jewish nation no longer had a capital city or a home. {219} CHAPTER XVII HOW THE THREADS DRAW TOGETHER