For the Temple: A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem by G. A. Henty (best short books to read txt) 📗

learned, for the first time, the fate which had befallen Japha and the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim--events which filled him with consternation.

The folly of the tactics which had been pursued--of cooping all the fighting men up in the walled cities, to be destroyed one after the other by the Romans--was more than ever apparent. He had never, from the first, been very hopeful of the result of the struggle; but it seemed, now, as if it could end in nothing but the total destruction of the Jewish race of Palestine.

John stayed for two days in the little mountain village and then, with a store of provisions sufficient to last him for some days, pursued his way; following the lines of the Anti-Libanus, until that range of hills joined the range of Mount Hermon, north of the sources of the Jordan.

He had stopped for a day at Dan, high up among the hills. Here the people had no fear of Roman vengeance; for the insurrection had not extended so far north, and the Roman garrison of Caesarea Philippi overawed the plains near the upper waters of the Jordan. Determined, however, to run no unnecessary risks, John and his companion pursued their way on the lower slopes of the hills until, after six days' walking, they arrived at Neve.

Here they learned where the farm of John's kinsman was situated, and made their way thither. As they came up to the house a woman came out, gazed intently at John and, with a scream of terror, ran back into the house. It was one of Martha's maids. John stood irresolute, fearing that his sudden appearance might startle the other inmates when, suddenly, Mary appeared at the door, looking pale but resolute. She, too, gazed fixedly at John; and her lips moved, but no sound came from them.

"Don't you know me, Mary?" John said.

The girl gave a scream of joy, and threw herself into his arms. A moment later Martha, followed by Miriam and the other servants, came out.

"It is no spirit, mother, it is John, himself," Mary exclaimed and, the next moment, John was clasped in his mother's arms.

It was not surprising that the first who saw John had thought that he was a spirit. The news had already been received that the whole of the garrison of Jotapata had been put to the sword; and John's appearance was changed so greatly, within the last three months, that he would scarce have been known. Fatigue, anxiety, and the loss of blood--from several wounds which he had received, in the course of the siege--had so pulled him down that he was but a shadow of his former self. His clothes were in rags. He had washed them at the village where he had first stopped for, before that, they had been stiffened with blood; and even now, stained and ragged as they were, they gave him the appearance of a mendicant.

Jonas had held back a little, while the first joyful greeting was going on, but John soon turned to him.

"Mother," he said, "this must be as another son to you for, next to the protection of God, it is to him I owe my life."

Martha welcomed the young stranger affectionately.

"Before you tell us aught that has befallen you, John, go and change your garments, and wash, while we prepare a meal for you. The clothes of your uncle's son Silas, who is about your age, will fit you; and those of his younger brother will do for your friend."

"Was the last news of my father good?" John asked.

"Yes, the Lord be praised, he was well when we heard of him, a week since!"

The travelers were at once conducted to a room, and supplied with water and clean garments. By the time they had changed, and returned to the general room, John's uncle and cousin had been fetched in from the farm, and he received another hearty welcome.

It almost seemed to him, as he sat down to a comfortable meal, with Mary and his mother waiting upon him, that the events of the past two months had been a hideous dream; and that he had never left his comfortable home on the shore of the Lake of Galilee. As to Jonas, unaccustomed to kind treatment, or to luxury of any kind, he was too confused to utter a word. When the meal was over, John was asked to tell his news; and he related all the stirring incidents of the siege, and the manner in which he and his companion had effected his escape.

"We are, no doubt," he concluded, "the sole male survivors of the siege."

"Not so, my son," Martha said. "There is a report that Josephus has survived the siege; and that he is a prisoner, in the hands of the Romans."

"It may be that they have spared him, to grace Vespasian's triumph, at Rome," John said. "It is their custom, I believe, to carry the generals they may take in war to Rome, to be slain there."

It was not until some time afterwards that John learned the particulars of the capture of Josephus. When he saw that all was lost, Josephus had leaped down the shaft of a dry well, from the bottom of which a long cavern led off, entirely concealed from the sight of those above. Here he found forty of the leading citizens, who had laid in a store of food sufficient to last for many days. Josephus, at least, who gives his account of all these circumstances, says that he quite unexpectedly found these forty citizens in hiding there; but this is improbable in the extreme, and there can be little doubt that he had, long before, prepared this refuge with them, when he found that the people would not allow them to attempt to make their escape from the city.

At night Josephus came up from the well and tried to make his escape but, finding the Romans everywhere vigilant, he returned to the place of concealment. On the third day a woman, who was aware of the hiding place, informed the Romans of it--probably in return for a promise of freedom, for the Romans were searching high and low for Josephus; who could not, they were convinced, have escaped through their lines. Vespasian immediately sent two tribunes, Paulinus and Gallicanus, to induce him to surrender by promise of his life.

Josephus refused to come out, and Vespasian sent another tribune, Nicanor, a personal friend of Josephus, to assure him of his safety, if he would surrender. In the account Josephus gives of the transaction, he says that at this moment he suddenly remembered a dream--in which it was revealed to him that all these calamities should fall upon the Jews, that he himself should be saved, and that Vespasian should become emperor--and that, therefore, if he passed over to the Romans he would do so not as a renegade, but in obedience to the voice of God.

It was certainly a happy coincidence that the dream should have occurred to him, at this moment. He at once announced his readiness to surrender; but his forty companions did not see the matter in the same light. The moment Josephus left them, the Roman soldiers would throw combustibles down the well, and suffocate them, if they did not come out and submit to slaughter.

They urged upon Josephus that he was their leader; that they had all followed his orders, and cast in their lot with his; and that it would be treacherous and base, in the extreme, for him now to save his life by going over to the Romans, when all the inferior people had slain themselves, or had submitted to slaughter, rather than beg their lives of the Romans. Josephus argued with them, at length, but they were not convinced and, drawing their swords, threatened to kill him, if he tried to leave them. They would all die together, they said.

Josephus then proposed that, in order to avoid the sin of suicide, they should draw lots which should kill each other. To this they assented; and they continued to draw lots as to which should slay the other, until only Josephus and one other remained alive.

This is the story that Josephus tells. He was, of course, endeavoring to put his own case in the best light, and to endeavor to prove that he was not--as the Jews universally regarded him--a traitor to his country. It need hardly be said that the story is improbable, in the extreme; and that, had any one of the forty men survived and written the history, he would probably have told a very different tale.

The conduct of Josephus, from the first outbreak of the trouble, showed that he was entirely adverse to the rising against the Romans. He himself, having been to Rome, had seen her power and might; and had been received with great favor by Poppaea, the wife of Nero, and had made many friends there. He had, therefore, at the outset, opposed as far as he was able, without going so far as to throw suspicion on his patriotism, the rebellion against the Romans. During the events in Galilee, he had shown himself anxious to keep in favor with the Romans. He had rebuked those who had attacked the soldiers traveling as an escort, with a large amount of treasure belonging to King Agrippa; and would have sent back the spoils taken, had not the people risen against it. He affected great indignation at the plunder of Agrippa's palace at Tiberias and, gathering all he could of the spoils, had handed them over to the care of the chief of Agrippa's friends there. He had protected the two officers of Agrippa, whom the Jews would have killed--had released and sent them back to the king; and when John of Gischala wished to carry off large quantities of grain, stored by the Romans in Upper Galilee, Josephus refused to allow him to do so, saying that it should be kept for its owners.

It is almost certain that Josephus must, in some way, have entered into communication with the Romans; for how otherwise could he, with the principal inhabitants, have proposed to make their escape, when every avenue was closed? Josephus was a man of great talent and energy, full of resources, and of great personal bravery--at least, if his own account of his conduct during the siege is to be believed. But no one can read his labored excuses for his own conduct without feeling sure that he had, all along, been in correspondence with the Romans; and that he had, beforehand, been assured that his life should be spared.

He had, from the first, despaired of successful resistance to the Romans; and his conduct in throwing himself, at the last moment, into a town about to be besieged and, as he must have known, captured--for the want of water, alone, rendered its fall a mere question of time--when his presence and leadership was so urgently required among the people to whose command he had been appointed, seems to prove that he wished to fall into their hands.

It would not be just to brand Josephus as a traitor. He had done his best to induce the Galileans to form themselves into an army, and to defend the province; and it was only when that army dispersed, at the approach of the Romans, that he went to Jotapata. It was his leadership that enabled that city to continue its heroic defense It cannot, therefore, be said that Josephus in any way betrayed the trust confided to him by the council at Jerusalem. But the conclusion can hardly be avoided that, from the first, foreseeing that utter ruin and destruction would fall upon the Jews, he had set himself to work to prepare a way of pardon and escape, for himself; and that he thought a position of honor, among the Romans, vastly preferable to an unknown grave among the mountains of Galilee.

Upon being taken out of the well, Josephus was taken to Vespasian and, in the presence only of the general, his son Titus, and two other officers, announced that he was endowed with prophetic powers, and that he was commissioned by God to tell Vespasian that he would become emperor, and that he would be succeeded by his son Titus. The prophecy was one that required no more penetration than for any person, in the present day, to predict that the most rising man in a great political party would one day become prime minister. The emperor was hated, and it was morally certain that his fall would not long be delayed; and in that case the most popular general in the Roman army would, almost certainly, be chosen to succeed him.

Vespasian, himself, was not greatly affected by the prophecy. But Josephus declared that he had, all along, predicted the success of the Romans, the fall of the town after forty-six days' siege, and his own safety; and as some of the female captives were brought up and, on