Plundering was not confined to the Temple alone. In part of the outer court colonnade stood the treasury where the Jews had brought all their gold and precious possessions for safekeeping during the siege. The Romans now stripped that too before setting it on fire. Coincidentally, a huge crowd of 6000 civilian men, women and children had gathered there in the belief that they would find signs of deliverance from God. According to Josephus, the false prophets who had spread the word were the hired hands of John and Simon; the rebel leaders had told them to issue this prophecy because they wanted to prevent further desertions and thus shore up morale during the battle for the Temple. All the civilians were now helplessly caught up in the flames and met their deaths.
The rebellion of the Jews had been crushed. The insurgents who had fought on in the inner court now burst through the ring of assault surrounding them, and fled into the upper city. The killing squads of Roman soldiers clambered awkwardly over the layer of dead bodies covering the floor of the outer court and gave chase in a blind bid to hunt them down. John and Simon, however, managed to escape. As a mark of Roman supremacy, pagan standards were brought into the Temple complex and erected opposite the east gate. Sacrifices were offered to the emperor and a single cry hailed the victor, Titus. As the city blazed, raucous shouts of ‘Commander! Commander!’ rose up. Each soldier was so laden with loot that when they later sold their gold for cash, they flooded the market and the value of gold in Syria was halved.41
Inside the upper city John, Simon and the Jewish survivors were themselves trapped by the Roman circumvallation. Unable to escape from Jerusalem, they had no option but to ask Titus to talks. Many of their followers, their spirits at last broken, hoped for a pardon. The hardline leaders, however, wanted to leave the city to the Romans and live peacefully in the desert with their fellow survivors. The Roman general was furious. The enemy had been defeated, yet here they were brazenly asking for terms as if they were victors. Taking his stand on a wall that linked the Temple with the upper city, Titus kept his composure as he spoke to John and Simon. He berated the Jews for their ingratitude to Rome, to the power that ruled Judaea.
You were incited against the Romans by Roman kindness. First we gave you the land to occupy and set over you kings of your own race; then we upheld the laws of your fathers, and allowed you complete control of your internal and external affairs; above all, we permitted you to raise taxes for God and to collect offerings, and we neither discouraged nor interfered with those who brought them – so that you could grow richer to our detriment and prepare at our expense to make war on us! Then, enjoying such advantages, you flung your abundance at the heads of those who furnished it, and like beasts you bit the hand that fed you! . . .[When my father came into the country] he ravaged Galilee and the outlying districts, giving you time to come to your senses. But you took generosity for weakness, and our gentleness only served to increase your audacity. . . Most unwillingly I brought engines to bear on your walls. My soldiers, ever thirsting for your blood, I held in leash. After every victory, as if it was a defeat, I appealed to you for an armistice. . . After all that, you disgusting people, do you now invite me to a conference?42
The Jews had broken the pax Romana. Nonetheless, Titus made a final offer: if the surviving rebels now surrendered, they would at least be spared their lives. When John and Simon defiantly reasserted their wishes, Titus gave the rest of the city over to his soldiers. The command was to sack, burn and raze.
EPILOGUE
Over the next few days, the principal buildings of Jerusalem, including the Council Chamber, were all destroyed, the remaining treasures were handed over, and the survivors of the Roman terror were rounded up in a part of the Temple complex known as the Court of the Women. The old and sick were killed, and thousands of insurgents were executed, taking the total of those killed in the siege to 1,100,000, according to Josephus. The rest, numbering 97,000, were sold into slavery. The young were sent to hard labour in Egypt, or to become fodder for the gladiators and beasts of Roman arenas throughout the empire. The tallest and most handsome of the rebels, however, were saved for the triumph back in Rome. After hiding in the sewers for weeks, John and Simon eventually surrendered and joined them.
Back in the capital city, the emperor Vespasian was reunited with Titus to the rapturous joy of the Roman crowds. They streamed into the streets to get a view of the victorious general. In the imperial entourage entering the city was Josephus. He would soon be rewarded with Roman citizenship, a handsome pension and lodging in the house in which Vespasian had lived before he became emperor. Here he would sit down to write his history of the Jewish Revolt. A few days after Titus’s return, father and son enjoyed their reward too: a magnificent triumph.
Wreathed in crowns of bay leaves and dressed in the traditional purple robes flecked with silver stars of the triumphal general, they rode at the centre of a spectacular procession. They stopped first at the portico of Augustus’s sister Octavia, where the senators and knights awaited them and a stage had been set up. Vespasian mounted it and brought the booming shouts of the soldiers and crowds all dressed in their best clothes to a complete hush. With his toga covering his head in the manner of priests, he offered up prayers to the gods.
Then the procession continued. In addition to the thousands of captive slaves, there were also grand floats wrought with gold and ivory, some of them three or four storeys high. On them were borne aloft large tableaux dramatizing scenes from the war in Judaea so that all Rome bore witness to them, as if the people had been there themselves and could rightly share in the celebration of the Roman victory. The crowds gasped too at the spoils. It was as if an exquisite river of gold and silver flowed through Rome. Most prominently displayed were the treasures from the Temple and a scroll of Jewish law known as the Torah.
The parade now approached the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. It was still presumably in a state of ruin following the violence before Vespasian’s forces had entered Rome and concluded the civil war a year earlier. The procession halted and waited for news from the Forum. Here, according to Roman custom, Simon ben Gioras was dragged out of the Mamertine prison in the northwest corner, beaten up and executed. The sentence on John of Gischala had been more lenient. He faced a regime of hard labour and captivity for the rest of his life. The news of Simon’s death was now brought to Vespasian on the Capitol, sacrifices were offered and a rich public feast was devoured.
The imperial public relations machine did not stop there, however. The new dynasty of the Flavians was being founded and legitimized in stone too. Profits from the war in Judaea were ploughed into building the Colosseum. Constructed in part from money raised by the sale of Jewish slaves, it was completed after Vespasian’s death by Titus in AD 80, and remains one of the most enduring symbols of Roman power. Vespasian also reconstructed the area around the Capitoline Hill with a glorious temple complex and forum. The message to the Jews – indeed, to any rebels throughout the length and breadth of the empire – could not have been clearer: we destroyed your most holy places, it said, now you can pay for the rebuilding of ours. The emperor dedicated his new temple to peace. Finally, when Titus too passed away after a brief and popular reign of two years, his brother, the emperor Domitian, built the Arch of Titus in his honour. The memory of Rome’s insult to Jewish independence was thus kept alive to this day.