fell in battle; while the number of those who perished through sickness, fire, or famine was never reckoned.] Jewish legend describes in extravagant terms the horrors of the massacre after the fall of Bethar.1 Thus tradition has it, that the horses waded in blood up to the bridles, and that the bed of the river became filled with gore, which was carried in a stream to the sea. Again, the atrocities of the soldiers were not confined to those who had borne arms against them. Young and old were indiscriminately slaughtered. Of all the young men in Bethar, only Simon, the son of Rabban Gamaliel, the former Nasi, escaped. Under one stone alone, it is said, the brains of 300 children were dashed out. An immense vineyard was completely covered with dead bodies. According to tradition, a burial was not even conceded to the Jewish slain, and the cruelty of the victors manifested itself in piling up the dead bodies like a hedge. Altogether, such was the number of persons who had fallen in this sanguinary war, that it was observed the widows of the slain found it almost impossible afterwards to procure, according to the custom of the synagogue, the necessary witnesses to depone to the death of their husbands. The chief actor in the terrible drama, Bar Cochba, fell in this last engagement. We are told that his head was brought in triumph into the Roman camp-round his body a serpent had twisted itself. When Hadrian saw the corpse, he exclaimed, "If God had not smitten him, what man could have smitten him?" According to Rabbinic calculation, it was again the fatal 9th of the month Ab on which Bethar was completely destroyed by the Romans.2 With the fall of the headquarters of the insurrection, and the death of the false Messiah, the war was virtually at an end. But the victory had not been achieved without considerable loss to the Roman army. [Hadrian had returned to Palestine, and was probably with the army during the most critical part of the war.3] When now sending to the Senate a report of the 1 Comp. jer. Taan. iv. 69a; Mid. Lam. ii. 1; Gitt. 57a-58a. 3 Comp. Schiller, Gesch. der Römischen Kaiserzeit, i. 613 f. close of the campaign, he somewhat altered the usual phraseology of such documents, and instead of informing the assembled fathers of his own welfare and of that of the army, he omitted the customary clause.1 In truth, the army had been terribly shattered. The Senate acknowledged their services by the usual rewards to officers and men, and decreed to Severus the triumphal decorations. Thus closed the second Jewish war of liberation; and so perished the false Messiah, and the unhappy victims of this rebellion. 1 Dio Cassius, lxix. 14. CHAPTER VIII STATE OF THE SYNAGOGUE AFTER THE LAST JEWISH WAR Ir appears that, after the fall of Bethar, as formerly after the destruction of Jerusalem, the contest did not immediately terminate. Armed bands of Jews still occupied some posts in the mountain fastnesses, which they prepared to defend. Especially in the mountainous district around the neighbourhood of the lake of Galilee, we hear of two brothers who held command, and for some time successfully resisted or eluded the Romans. It was comparatively easy for resolute leaders, in these inaccessible retreats, to escape the vigilance of a hostile force. It is said that they had gathered adherents, and even proposed to proclaim themselves successors of Bar Cochba, when they fell into the hands of the Romans.1 The latter are said to have established a threefold line of posts, by which they surrounded the fugitives in the mountains, and thus either forced them to surrender, or at least prevented their escape across the Jordan. A military station at Bethel commanded the approach to the mountains of Ephraim and the neighbourhood of Jerusalem; another post at Chamoth, or Emmaus, near Tiberias, watched the mountains of Upper Galilee; while an intermediate station was established at Kephar Lekitaja.2 Our authorities tell many stories of the dangers and sufferings of the unfortunate people, and of the cruelties practised upon them by the enraged Romans. In continual apprehension of being surprised by the enemy, they hid themselves in caves and among rocks, and even there scarcely felt secure. Thus it is related that on a certain Sabbath, a large 1 Jer. Taan. iv. 69a. 2 Mid. Lam. on i. 16. 1 party had assembled in the interior of a cave. Of a sudden they heard heavy footsteps as of their approaching enemies. In terror they fled further into the cave, the intruders following them. From overcrowding, from being trampled under foot in the precipitate flight, and from terror, many of the wretched fugitives perished. It afterwards appeared that those from whom they had fled as Romans were only companions of their misery, whose sandals happened to be armed with heavy nails. The unfortunate mistake was commemorated by the Synagogue in an ordinance, which forbade the use of such sandals on Sabbath days." But it was not chiefly from vague apprehensions that these homeless wanderers suffered. To all their other calamities that of pinching want was added. At last, we are told, such were their necessities that they fed upon the dead bodies of their friends and comrades. The horrors of this state of matters are represented in the account which is given of one of these parties. It is said that, in turn, a young man had been sent to provide the unnatural aliment for his friends. Unable to discover any other corpse than that of his own father, he had returned empty-handed. Another less scrupulous messenger was despatched, and the youth had, with his companions, completed the unnatural meal before he learned that he had feasted on the remains of his parent. But, besides recounting the privations and sufferings of the fugitives, tradition loved also to dwell on the cruelty of the Romans, which was only equalled by their faithlessness. Thus, on one occasion, so the story runs, when a body of Roman troops were wearied with waiting for their prey, they promised a free pardon to all who would lay down their weapons and surrender; but those who, trusting their word, had come down, were speedily undeceived. They were marched into the fatal valley of Rimmon, and surrounded by the soldiery. In cruel sport the Roman emperor insisted that they should be slaughtered during the time that he took to regale himself with part of a fowl.3 2 Such of the captives in this war as escaped death were to 1 Shab. 60a; jer. Shab. vi. 8a. 3 Ut supra; comp. Derenbourg, p. 436, n. 2 Mid. Lam. on i. 16. be sold into slavery. Two great bazaars were held for this purpose, the one at Gaza, the other in Hebron, the place where Abraham of old had pitched his tent.1 Such was the number of the wretched human chattels, that a great part of them remained unsold, and were afterwards conveyed into Egypt. On the passage many of them were mercifully released from their sufferings by death. However, a large number of Jews contrived to escape to Babylon and Arabia, where their sympathising countrymen gave them a ready welcome. The tragical termination of this war was another added to the monuments of national judgments. To preserve it in the minds of the faithful, the Synagogue abolished another of the tokens of joy formerly customary at marriages. In future, when the bride was conducted to her husband's house, she was no more, as in happier days, to be carried through the streets in a splendidly ornamented chair.2 Such demonstrations no longer befitted their circumstances, or the descendants of those who had thus suffered. It is, indeed, almost impossible to realise the desolation of the land. To the Roman legions it had from the first probably been a war of extermination against the Jews of Palestine, and all subsequent measures taken by the government were in accordance with this view. Everywhere the country had been laid waste, and with a ruthlessness for which no plea can be assigned but that of exasperation; not only were cities razed, and hamlets burned down, but even the fruit trees and vines were destroyed. Galilee, once so renowned for its production of oil, had at the termination of the war scarcely an olive tree left." It was now possible to proceed with the project which had led to the immediate outbreak of the war, the erection of a Roman colony on the site of Jerusalem. [To symbolise the foundation of a new city, a plough was driven across the temple mount, according to the Mishna, on the 9th of Ab.4] The buildings erected before the 1 Comp. Hieron. in Jer. xxxi. 15, and specially also in Zech. xi. 5. Taan. iv. 6; comp. Grätz, iv. 167; somewhat differently Schürer, I. ii. |