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(49) Conflagration of the Temple

“There shall not be left here one stone upon another which shall not be thrown down.”

Titus, to protect his forces, had ordered the gates of the outer court to be set on fire, and from the gates the fire extended to the porticoes. But, after a council of war, it was decided that the main fabric—the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies—must be saved; Titus urging that “if it were burnt, the Romans would be the losers; if preserved, it would be an ornament of his Empire.” His attempts to check the spread of the conflagration proved, however, unavailing.

August A.D. 70

Throughout that day fatigue and consternation checked the Jews from attacking; but, on the following day, about the second hour, with recruited strength and renewed courage, they sallied out through the eastern gate and charged the guards of the outer court of the Temple.

The Romans stubbornly met their charge and, forming a screen in front with their shields, closed up their ranks like a wall. It was evident, however, that they would not long be able to hold together, overpowered as they were by the number and élan of their assailants. Cæsar, who from the (tower of) Antonia was watching the scene, anticipating the breaking of the line, came to their rescue with his picked cavalry. The Jews could not withstand their onset; the foremost fell and the main body retreated. Yet whenever the Romans retired the Jews returned to the attack, only to fall back once more when the Romans wheeled round; until, about the fifth hour of the day, the Jews were overpowered and shut up in the inner court of the Temple.

Titus then withdrew to Antonia, with the determination on the following day, about dawn, to attack with his whole force and invest the Temple. But God, it seems, had long since sentenced that building to the flames; and now in the revolution of the years had come round the fated day, the tenth of the month Lous, |August| on which it had once before been burnt by the king of Babylon. Those flames, however, owed their origin and cause to God’s own people.^[309] For, on the withdrawal of Titus, the insurgents, after a brief respite, again attacked the Romans, and an engagement ensued between the (Jewish) guards of the sanctuary and the (Romans) who were endeavouring to extinguish the fire in the inner court. The latter routed the Jews and pursued them right up to^[310] the sanctuary.

At this moment, one of the soldiers, without waiting for orders and with no horror of so dread a deed, but moved by some supernatural impulse, snatched a brand from the burning timber^[311] and, hoisted up by one of his comrades, flung the fiery missile through a golden window,^[312] which gave access on the north side to the chambers surrounding the sanctuary. As the flame shot up, a cry, such as the calamity demanded, arose from the Jews, who rushed to the rescue, lost to all thought of self-preservation, all husbanding of strength, now that the object of all their past vigilance was gone.

Titus was resting in his tent after the engagement, when a messenger rushed in with the tidings. Starting up just as he was, he ran to the Temple to arrest the conflagration, followed by all his generals, while in their train came the excited legionaries, with the clamour and confused noise arising from the movement in irregular order of so large an army. Cæsar, both by word of mouth and by a wave of his hand, signalled to the combatants to extinguish the fire; but they neither heard his shouts, drowned in the louder din which filled their ears, nor, distracted as they were by the fever of battle or rage, did they heed his beckoning hand. The impetuosity of the legionaries, when they joined the fray, neither exhortation nor threat could restrain; passion was for all the one officer in command. Crushed together about the entrances, many were trampled down by their companions; while many, stumbling on the still hot and smouldering ruins of the porticoes, suffered the same fate as the vanquished.^[313] As they came nearer the sanctuary they pretended not even to hear Cæsar’s orders and shouted to those in front of them to throw in the firebrands.

The (Jewish) insurgents were now powerless to rescue (the Temple). On all sides was carnage and flight. Most of the slain were civilians, a weak and unarmed mob, each butchered where he was caught. Around the altar a pile of corpses was accumulating; down the sanctuary steps flowed a stream of blood; and down the same decline slid the bodies of the victims killed above.

Cæsar, finding himself unable to restrain the impetuosity of his frenzied soldiers and that the fire was gaining the mastery, passed with his generals within the building and beheld the holy place of the sanctuary and all that it contained—things far exceeding the reports current among foreigners and not inferior to their proud reputation among our own nation. As the flames had nowhere yet penetrated to the interior, but were consuming the outbuildings of the sanctuary, Titus, rightly supposing that the structure might still be preserved, rushed out and endeavoured by personal appeals to induce the soldiers to quench the fire; at the same time directing Liberalius, a centurion of his bodyguard of lancers, to restrain, by resort to clubs, any who disobeyed orders. But their respect for Cæsar and their fear of the officer who was endeavouring to check them were overpowered by their rage, their hatred of the Jews and the lust of battle, an even mightier master. Most of them were further stimulated by the hope of plunder, believing that the interior was full of money and actually seeing that all the surroundings were made of gold.

Moreover, when Cæsar rushed out to restrain the soldiers, even one of those who had entered with him baulked his purpose by thrusting a firebrand, in the darkness,^[314] into the sockets of the gate. At once a flame shot up from the interior, whereupon Cæsar and his generals withdrew, and there was none left to prevent those on the outside from kindling a blaze. Thus, then, against Cæsar’s wishes, was the sanctuary set on fire.

Deeply as one must mourn for the most marvellous edifice which we have ever seen or heard of, whether we consider its structure, its magnitude, the richness of every detail or the reputation of its Holy Places,^[315] yet may we draw very great consolation from the thought that there is no escape from Fate, for works of art and places any more than for living beings. And one may well marvel at the exactness of the cycle of Destiny; for, as I said, she waited until the very month and the very day on which in bygone times the Temple had been burnt by the Babylonians.—B.J. VI. 4. 4-8 (244-268).