The City of Delight

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.