War was now openly declared, and Cestius marched on Jerusalem with 10,000 Roman soldiers, and a still larger force of allies, to put down the rebellion and avenge the murder of his countrymen. The result was the most terrible disaster to the Roman arms which they had sustained since the defeat of Varus. Unsuccessful in some preliminary skirmishing, Gallus assaulted the city, and after five days of indecisive fighting, forced his way on the sixth to the wall on the north side of the Temple. Every effort to scale this having failed, he ordered the legionaries to lock their shields together and form the testudo, their usual mode of obtaining a cover, under which they undermined fortifications which they could not surmount. The manœuvre was successful. The wall was all but pierced through, and the garrison on the point of flight, when Gallus suddenly, without any apparent reason, ordered a retreat,[17] withdrew in haste, first to his camp, and afterwards to Antipatris, losing in his retreat his whole battering train and 6,000 soldiers.

The Jews had now offended beyond hope of forgiveness, and both parties braced themselves for the fierce and deadly struggle which had become inevitable. The rebels recruited their comparatively scanty numbers by securing the support of the inhabitants of Idumæa (of whom 20,000 were enlisted), Peræa, and Galilee. On the other side, Rome summoned into the field a formidable force, which was placed under the command of T. Flavius Vespasian, the greatest soldier of his day. In the hope, apparently, that the Jews, when they learned the strength of the force sent against them, would submit without further resistance, Vespasian delayed the attack on Jerusalem for more than two years, choosing first to reduce the cities of Galilee—Gadara, Jotapata, Gischala, and others; which, indeed, no prudent general could leave unsubdued in his rear. The whole of this province, which had been placed under the government of the celebrated historian, Josephus,[18] remained throughout this period in a state of internal dissension, fomented in a great measure by the notorious John of Gischala, giving but little hope of a successful resistance to Rome when the actual struggle should begin. Yet some of these cities, notably Gamala Tarichæa, above all Jotapata, where Josephus commanded in person, offered a protracted and desperate resistance.[19]

When the road to Jerusalem had been laid fully open, the civil strife, by which the empire had been distracted, had come to an end. Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, one after another, had succeeded to the Imperial sceptre, only to have it snatched from their grasp; and, finally, Vespasian had been advanced to the throne of the Cæsars. Leaving to his son Titus the task of reducing to obedience the rebellious city, Vespasian set sail for Italy; and the Roman army, 60,000 strong,[20] advanced under its new leader to the final encounter in the spring of A.D. 70.

Jerusalem was at that time one of the strongest, as well as one of the most picturesque, cities in the world. It stands upon a rocky plateau about 2,600 feet above the level of the sea. On all sides except one it is surrounded by mountains; which do not, however, rise to a much greater altitude than the city itself. The plateau consists of two principal eminences, Zion and Acra, on the former of which stood the Upper City, or the City of David, and on the latter what was called the Lower City. A third—a smaller and somewhat lower hill, called Moriah—was anciently divided from Mount Acra by the Tyropœon, or Valley of the Cheesemongers, which was filled up by the Maccabees, who raised Moriah to the same level as the neighbouring hill. It was on the summit of Moriah that the Temple stood. In later times the suburb called Bezetha was added to the city, and the whole environed by walls.

Of these there were three—one inside another. The first began on the north side at the tower called Hippicus, terminating at the western cloister of the Temple. The second wall began at the gate called Gennath, enclosing the northern quarter of the city only, and ending at the Tower of Antonia. The third, which was designed to protect Bezetha, was incomplete at the time of the outbreak of the Jewish war, but was then completed, in anticipation of the approaching siege. These walls were strengthened by towers of solid masonry—some of the stones being of enormous size—and rose to a great height above the level of the walls. The Tower of Antonia stood on a rock ninety feet high, the fortress itself being fully seventy feet higher; and at the portions not defended by these walls, the platform of rock itself, sinking down, as it did almost with a sheer descent, into the ravines below, formed an impregnable defence. In times when the use of gunpowder was unknown, it could be captured only by blockade, or after the most frightful waste of human life.

Meanwhile the city was distracted by factions, which appeared to be more likely to destroy one another than to maintain a successful defence against an enemy. After the massacre of the Roman troops, Ananus the High Priest, a wise and good man, gained some authority in the city, and endeavoured to counteract the influence of the Zealots. He might have succeeded in averting the war. But Eleazar, the leader of the Zealots, and John of Gischala,[21] the chief of the Galilæans, conspired against him, and by night introduced the Idumæans, in overwhelming force, into the city. By them Ananus and his friends were murdered, and Jerusalem thenceforth was given up to hopeless anarchy.

Such authority as there was, rested with the chiefs of the three factions, Eleazar, John, and Simon;[22] but between these there was not only no accord, but the most bitter and persistent animosity. Of the Zealots there were about 2,500, of the Galilæans 6,000, and of the Assassins (as Simon’s followers were called) 10,000 Jews and 5000 Idumæans. Few of these, comparatively speaking, had undergone any military training. But their desperate and fanatical courage, stimulated by their total disregard of all laws, human and Divine, rendered them the most formidable enemies that Rome herself ever encountered. Not only between the three leaders, but their followers also, there subsisted the bitterest hate, which they gratified by continual quarrels and murders; and had it been in their power, they would gladly have exterminated one another. Yet in the field they combined against the common foe with the most perfect unanimity.

The great bulk of the inhabitants awaited the approach of the Romans with uneasiness and alarm. The city was densely crowded, multitudes having come in from the country to celebrate the Passover. Josephus’s numbers are doubtless an exaggeration.[23] But, on the other hand, there has been a tendency among modern writers to err in the opposite direction. It may safely be affirmed that the total of inhabitants, when the Roman standards came in sight, could not have been less than a million, and probably exceeded that amount. There was much, independently of the terror of the Roman name, to awaken their apprehensions. There had been signs in heaven and on earth of approaching disaster. A fiery sword is said to have hung over Jerusalem, day and night, for many months. The whole sky on one occasion was full of what seemed to be chariots and horses of fire, environing Jerusalem. It was whispered that the great gate of the Temple had opened of itself at midnight, and a voice had been heard to exclaim, ‘Let us depart hence.’ A simple herdsman, Jesus, the son of Hanani, was suddenly seized with the spirit of prophecy, and for several years went up and down the city exclaiming, ‘Woe, woe, to Jerusalem!’ He was carried before the Roman governor, and scourged till his bones were laid bare. But he never desisted from his mournful chaunt, until one day during the siege he was struck by a stone from a catapult, and slain.

But nothing daunted the determined spirits of the garrison. At the very outset of the siege, Titus had a signal proof of the character of the enemies with whom he had to deal. He had approached the city for the purpose of surveying it, accompanied by 600 horsemen, never dreaming that they would be rash enough to assail him, and rather anticipating that his presence would strike terror into them, and induce them to capitulate. But the moment he approached the walls the Jews sallied out, surrounding his troop, and cutting him off from his supports; and it was only by the most desperate exercise of personal valour that he escaped being slain. On the following day they twice attacked the tenth legion, while engaged in fortifying the camp, and threw it into confusion; and it was Titus’s promptitude alone which averted a great disaster. Soon afterwards they contrived to allure a body of Roman soldiers under the walls, by a pretended offer of surrender, and almost entirely cut it off. It became at once evident that if these men were to be conquered, or even kept in check, the utmost vigilance and promptitude would be required.

Two fortified camps were accordingly formed, too strong to be attacked even by desperate men; and then the siege proper commenced. After careful survey, Titus resolved to assault the triple wall on the north side of the city; which was, after all, less difficult to surmount than the mighty ramparts, reared by nature and aided by art, which the other parts of the defences presented. He accordingly constructed three great walls, cutting down for the purpose all the timber which was to be found near the city. On these he set up his military engines, which hurled huge stones and darts against the defenders of the wall, and then set the rams at work to batter it down. Towers were also erected, sheeted with iron, so as to be proof against fire, and overtopping the defences, thus rendering it impossible for the defenders to man the ramparts. After a desperate attempt to set the works of the besiegers on fire, the Jews were obliged to abandon the outer wall, and fall back on the second.

This was captured and thrown down in a much shorter space of time than had been spent on the reduction of the former. But the success was not obtained without more than one repulse, and heavy loss; and the defences still to be surmounted appeared so formidable, garrisoned as they were by men whom nothing could daunt or weary out, that Titus resolved to make a display under their eyes of his whole military array, in the hope that by showing the impossibility of ultimate resistance, he might induce them to surrender. He caused all his troops to pass in review before him, in sight of the city, all arrayed in their complete accoutrements and observing the strictest form of military discipline—a splendid but terrible sight to men who knew that it was impossible for them to offer effectual resistance. But Simon, and John, and their fierce followers knew also that they had offended too deeply for forgiveness; they looked sternly and gloomily on, but made no sign; nor would they reply to Josephus, when soon afterwards he offered his intercession. Titus saw that all efforts at conciliation were vain, and the last scene of the fearful tragedy began.

So unconquerable was the ferocity of the Jewish soldiery,[24] that it may be doubted whether even the stern discipline, the high military spirit, and the overwhelming numbers of the Romans would not have been compelled ultimately to give way before them, if it had not been that Rome now acquired two new allies, more terrible than any they had yet brought into the field. Jerusalem, at all times a populous city, was now crowded to excess by strangers, who had come over to keep the Jewish Passover, and had been unable to withdraw. The supplies of food soon began to fail, and the famine which ensued grew every hour more pressing. The soldiers had to supply their own wants by making the round of the houses, and tearing their daily meals from the mouths of their starving fellow-citizens. Numbers of these were driven by hunger to steal out of the city by night, to gather herbs and roots, which might afford temporary relief. Titus, hoping to terrify the besieged by a display of severity which would save in the end more lives than he sacrificed, ordered these unhappy wretches to be crucified in the sight of their countrymen; and the city in which the Lord of Life had undergone the same form of death was surrounded by a multitude of crosses, on which the agonized sufferers slowly yielded up their lives in torment. Others, who implored the protection of the Romans, were ruthlessly ripped open in vast numbers by the barbarous soldiery, who believed that the fugitives had swallowed gold, which they would find in their entrails. The fate of these, dreadful as it was, was less terrible than that of the wretches who remained to perish of famine. Scenes almost too shocking for belief have yet been recorded on authority which cannot be disputed. Husbands saw their wives perishing before their eyes, and were unable to save them; parents snatched the food from the mouths of their starving children; hungry wretches crawled to the walls, and entreated the soldiers to slay them, and failing to obtain this last mercy, lay down by hundreds in the streets, and died. Nay, the last horror of all but too surely was accomplished, and mothers slew and ate their own nursing children! The numbers of the dead lying unburied soon bred pestilence, and added to the horrors of the time. An attempt was made to bury the corpses at the public expense; but the accumulating numbers rendered this impossible, and they were thrown by thousands over the walls in the sight of the horror-stricken Romans.

Through all these frightful scenes the siege of the inner wall went on. The frantic followers of Simon and John continued to fight with unabated ferocity against their enemies without and their countrymen within the wall, undeterred by the sufferings of their fellow-citizens or the near approach of the avenging swords of the besiegers. It was at this time that the judicial murder of the High Priest, Matthias, took place. He was an inoffensive old man, who had introduced Simon into the city, hoping that he would restrain the violence of John. Simon now accused him of a treacherous correspondence with the enemy.[25] He was put to death along with his sons and several of the Sanhedrin.

Titus now built fresh walls on which to plant his engines; but they were undermined or destroyed by fire, and he was compelled to surround the whole city by a vast circumvallation, and then to erect fresh platforms and towers, from which the inner wall, with Antonia and the Temple, might be assailed. After several repulses and severe fighting, this was accomplished. The heights were scaled, Antonia levelled with the ground, and the Temple itself laid open to attack. Struck with horror at the profanation of a place dedicated to the service of God, which must ensue if the strife was continued, Titus offered to permit the Jews to come forth and meet him on any other battle ground, promising in that case himself to keep the Temple inviolate from the step of any enemy. He represented that the daily services had already ceased, and the holy ground had been polluted by human blood. He wished to have no share in such impieties, and would prevent them, if he could. His overtures were contemptuously rejected. The Jews themselves set fire to the western cloister, and so laid bare the space between the remains of the Antonia and the Temple.

Another assault was now ordered, and a close and murderous strife, which raged for eight hours, ensued without material gain to either party. It was the 10th of August—the anniversary, always dreaded by the Jews, of the destruction of Solomon’s Temple. Both parties seemed to have entertained the idea that the day would prove fatal to the second Temple, as it had to the first. But this apparently had proved fallacious. The Romans had retired, and the guard for the night had been set, when suddenly a cry was raised that the Temple was on fire. Some of the Jews had again provoked a skirmish. The Romans had not only driven them back, but had forced their way into the innermost court, and one of them had hurled a firebrand into the sanctuary itself, which had instantly caught fire. This was contrary to the express order of Titus; and he instantly hurried down, accompanied by his officers, to extinguish the flames. The courts were full of armed men engaged in desperate strife, and his commands were unheard or unheeded. The devouring fire wreathed round the stately pillars and surged within the cedar roofs. Before the resistance of the few survivors had ceased, the Temple was one vast pagoda of roaring flame; and when the morning dawned, the Holy House and the chosen nation had passed away forever.