Meanwhile Jerusalem was in the fury of barbarous warfare. At this
ravine and that debouching upon Golgotha, the Vale of Hinnom and the
Valley of Tophet, whole legions of besiegers were stationed. Along the
walls the men of Simon and the men of John tramped in armor. From the
various gates furious sorties were made by swarms of unorganized Jews
who fell upon the Romans unused to frantic warfare, and slaughtered,
set fire to engines, destroyed banks and threw down fortifications and
retreated within the gates before the demoralized Romans could rally.
Catapult and ballista upon the eminences outside the walls kept up an
unceasing rain of enormous stones which whistled and screamed in the
air and shook Jerusalem to its foundations. The reverberating boom and
the tremor of earth were varied from time to time by the splintering
crash of houses crushing and the increase of uproar, as scores of
luckless inhabitants went down under the falling rock. Giant cranes
with huge, ludicrous awkward arms, heaved up pots of burning pitch and
oil and flung them ponderously into the city to do whatever horror of
fire and torture had not been done by the engines. Hourly the rattle
of small stones increased, merely to attract the attention of the
citizens to an activity to which they were so accustomed that it was
almost unnoticed. At times citizens and soldiers rushed upon a
threatened gate or segment of the wall and lent strength to keep the
Romans out; at other times the defenses were forsaken while the
besieged fell upon one another. Back from the broad summit of Olivet,
which was the mountain of peace, the echoes gave all day long the
shudder of the struggling city.
The sun daily grew more heated; the cisterns and pools within the city
began to shrink so rapidly that the inhabitants feared that the enemy
had come at the source of the waters of Jerusalem and had cut them
off. Hundreds of the wounded were allowed to die, simply as a defense
of the wells and store-houses. Burial became too gigantic a labor, and
John and Simon ordered the bodies thrown over the walls to prevent
pestilence.
Titus riding around the city on a day came upon a heap of this outcast
dead and turned suddenly white. He rode back to his camp and within
the hour there approached the walls under a flag of truce an imposing
Jew of middle-age, with a superb beard and a veritable mantle of rich
black hair escaping from his turban and falling heavy with life and
strength upon a pair of great shoulders. He was simply dressed, but
his stately carriage and splendid presence made a kingly garment out
of his white gown.
Those upon the wall knew him and though they were obliged to respect
the banner under which he approached, they gnashed their teeth and
greeted him with epithets, poisonous with hate. He was Flavius
Josephus, one time patriot and enemy of Rome, but now secure under
Titus' patronage, abettor of his patron against his fellow-countrymen.