The Tiffin tribune. (Tiffin, Ohio) 1868-1887, 1871-02-23
Prom All the Year ROuud. ]
Tne sieyp CT JeFuseIPHi.


5 Tacitus' six hundred thousand inhab
: itants. JOsephus has well narrated tn
e sufferings of his cOuntrymen, no
f merely from the Romans, but ais
D from the savage factions Of the tW
q rival chiefs, Simon and JOhn-th
e former Of whom held the upper cit,
: and the latter the Temple. Their fol
] lowers tore each other TO pieces up t
D the very moment that the Roman
r broke through the walls. The mod
5 in which Titus conducted this mem
2 Orable siege furnishes a good exampl
E Of the manner in which the Roman
? conducted such operations. His leg
! iOnaries having established thei
2 camps on ScOpas and the Mount o
: Olives, began to burn the suburbs o
= Jerusalem, cut down the trees, anC
! raise banks of earth and timber
{ against the walls. On these work.
[ were placed archers and hUrlers o
, javelins, and before them the cata,
= pulls and balistas that threw darts anC
= huge stones.
The Jews replied from the engine:
which they had taken from Roman
> detachments, but they used them
+ awkwardly and Intellectually. They
however, were very daring in theiI
sOrties, endeavOring to burn the RO-
man military engines and the hurdles
with which the Roman pioneers COW
cred themselves when at work. The
Romans also built towers fifty eubits
high, plated with iron, in which they
placed arehers and singers, to drive
the Jews from the walls. At last,
about the fifteenth day of the siege,
the greatest of the Roman battering-
rams began to shake the outer wall,
AMI the Jews yielded up the first line
of defense. Five days after, Titus
broke through the second wall, into
a place full Of narrow streets crowded
with braZieTs, and clOthiers' and wool
merchants shops; but the Jews rally
ing drove out the Romans, who not
having made the breach sufficiently
large, were with difficulty rescued by
their archers. -Four days later, how
ever, Titus retOok the second wall,
and then waited for famine to do its
work within the city. The Jews be-
gan now to desert to the enemy in
| great numbers, and all these wretehes
the Romans tortured and crucified be-
fore the walls lat one time five hun
dred day., so that, as JOsephus says,
/ "rOOm was wanting for the crosses.
and crosses wanting for the bodies -
! At this crisis of the siege, the Jews,
undermining one of the Roman tow
! ers, set it on fire, and did their best to
I destroy all tine besiegers' works. IT.
| tus now determined to slowly starve
out his stubborn enemies, and began
/ to build a wall round the whole city.
This wall, with thirteen forts, the RO-
man soldiers completed in three days.
Famine, in the meantime was Tavag-
ing the unhappy city. Whole fami-
lies persisted daily, and the streets
were strewn with dead bodies that no
one cared to bury. Thieves plunder-
ed the half-deserted homes, and mur-
dered any who showed signs of resist
ence, or who still fingered in the last
agOnies of starvation. The dead the
Jews threw down in the valley below.
In the meantime, the Roman soldiers,
abundantly supplied with corn from
Syria, mOcked the starving men on
the walls, by showing them food.
The palm-trees and Olive-trees around
jerusalem had all been destroyed, but
Titus, sending to the Jordan for tim
Der, again raised banks around the
castle of Antonia. Inside the city the
seditiOn grew more violent, the parti-
zans of John and Simon numbering
each other daily, and plundering the
Temple of the sacred vessels. A ru-
NOR, spreading in the Roman camp,
that the Jewish deserters swallowed
their money before they left Jerusa-
lem, led to the murder in one night,
Josephus says, of nearly two thou
sand of these unhappy creatures.
Again, part of the wall fell before
the battering-rams, but only to dis
cover to the Romans fresh rampant
built behind it,
In one attack, a brave Syrian sol
dier of the cohorts, with eleven other
men, succeeded in reaching the top of
the wall, but they were oYerpowered
by the Jews. A few days after, twelve
Roman soldiers scrambled up by night
through a breach in the tower AntO-
MIA, killed the guards, and, sounding
trumpets, summoned the rest of the
army to their aid. The tower once
carried, the Romans tried to force
their way into the temple, and hand
to hand fight ensued, which termi- I
mated in the Romans being driven |
back to the tower of AntOnia. The
Jews, now seeing the Temple in dan
ger, and the assault recommending,
set fire to the clOister that Joined the /
temple and the castle of AntOnia, and |
prepared for a desperate resistance in |
their last stronghold. In this cOnfia- |
grafton many Of the Romans, advane- !
ing too eagerly, perished.
nurinur oil Of fhf1 GnrhNipor fha 70
inc within the city grew worse and /
worse, the wretched people ate their /
shoes and belts, and even the leather 1
thongs Oftheir shields. Friends fought |
for food, and robbers broke into every /
house where it was known that corn 4
was hidden. JOsephus even mentioned 4
a well known case of q woman of /
wealth from beyond JOrdOn who ate
her own child. The walls Ofthe Tenn
pie were so massive as to resist the
battering rams for six days, so Titus
at last gave orders to burn down the
gates. At last, after a desperate re-
the Jews were driven into
the inner court and the Temple was
set on fire and destroyed, in spite Of
all of the efforts of Titus to save it.
When the Jews first saw the flames
spring up they raised a great shout of
despair, and sixteen thousand of the
defenders perished in the flames. The
Romans, in the fury Of the assault,
burnt down the treasury chambers,
flied with gold and other riches, and
all the clOisters, into which multitudes
of Jews had fled, expecting something
as their false prophet had
predicted. Titus now attacked the
upper city, and raised banks against
il, at which about forty thousand of
the inhabitants deserted to the RO-
man camp. The final resistance was
very feeble, for the Jews were now
utterly disheartened. The Romans,
once master of the walls, spread like
a deluge over the city, slew all the
Jews they met in the narrow lanes,
and set fire to the houses. In many
Of these they found entire families
dead Of hunger, and these places in
their horror the soldiers left unplun-
dered. The Romans weary at last of
Staying, Titus gave orders that no
Jew, unless found with arms in his
hands, should be killed.
But some soldiers still went on
the old and infirm, and
driYlng the youth and women into
the court of the Temple. The males
were sent to the Egyp-
tian mines, several thousand were
given to provincial ampitheaters to
fight with the gladiatOrs and wild
beasts; but before all of them could be
sent away, eleven thousand Of them
pe-ished from famine. Altogether, in
this cruel siege, there perished eleven
hundred thousand Jews. This enor-
nous multitude is accounted for by
the fact, that when Titus sat down be-
fore Jerusalem, the city was full Of
people from all parts Of Judsa who had
come uptO celebrate the Feast Of I'm
leayened Bread.
It is related Of an estimable and pi-
Gus lady, whose exertiOns in every
work Of charity and benevOlence en-
deared her TO the community,
that on her way to Sunday
School one morning she saw sew
eral boys seated on a doorway /
playing cards, one of whom was a
School spho1ar Of hers Cha