70 CEJerusalem
1,956 years ago
A place in this history (Pleiades 687928). 5 posts and events, oldest first.
, Jerusalem
After a five-month siege, Vespasian's son Titus storms Jerusalem. The Temple burns, and the city is pulled down.
Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and temple
Background: Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE), Wikipedia (opens en.wikipedia.org)
On the famine in besieged Jerusalem
What was going on: Jerusalem, 70 CE, during the Roman siege that ended with Titus taking the city. Josephus writes that all hope of escape was gone and famine was killing whole families. The dead lay in the lanes, and the living were too weak or too afraid to bury them.
Why it matters: The city's fall effectively ended the revolt and marked a turning point in Jewish history: with sacrifice no longer possible, Judaism gradually reoriented around Torah study and prayer.
No one mourned or complained. Hunger numbed every feeling: the dying stared dry-eyed at the dead. A deep silence, like a deadly night, lay over the city.
Nor was there any lamentations made under these calamities, nor were heard any mournful complaints; but the famine confounded all natural passions; for those who were just going to die looked upon those that were gone to rest before them with dry eyes and open mouths. A deep silence also, and a kind of deadly night, had seized upon the city;
Titus orders the Temple fire out, per Josephus
What was going on: Jerusalem, 70 CE, at the end of a five-month siege. As Josephus tells it, fire has reached the Temple, and Titus, Vespasian's son, runs from his tent to stop it, his commanders and legions behind him. Josephus calls him Caesar.
Why it matters: Painting the scene in 1638, Nicolas Poussin drew on Josephus and showed Titus not as a triumphant conqueror but as a conflicted figure, distressed by the ruin of the Temple.
Caesar shouted and signalled with his hand for the soldiers to put out the fire. But louder noise drowned him out and they did not hear.
Then did Caesar, both by calling to the soldiers that were fighting, with a loud voice, and by giving a signal to them with his right hand, order them to quench the fire. But they did not hear what he said, though he spake so loud, having their ears already dimmed by a greater noise another way;
On the burning of the Temple
What was going on: Jerusalem, 70 CE. After a five-month siege, Titus' army has stormed the city and the Temple is burning. Josephus describes the plundering and the killing of people of every age while it burned.
Why it matters: The city's fall effectively ended the revolt and marked a turning point in Jewish history: with sacrifice no longer possible, Judaism gradually reoriented around Torah study and prayer.
The flames reached far and echoed with the groans of the dying. The hill was high and the buildings huge, so it looked like the whole city was burning.
The flame was also carried a long way, and made an echo, together with the groans of those that were slain; and because this hill was high, and the works at the temple were very great, one would have thought the whole city had been on fire.
Mourns the Temple
What was going on: Jerusalem, 70 CE. Titus' army has stormed the city, and in Josephus' telling a soldier sets fire to the Temple although Titus had rushed out to stop his men. Josephus mourns the building.
Why it matters: In Judaism the destruction of the Second Temple is commemorated on Tisha B'Av, a major fast day.
Anyone would be right to mourn it, the most wonderful building we ever saw or heard of, rich and holy. Yet one can take comfort that fate decreed it, and fate cannot be escaped.
Now although any one would justly lament the destruction of such a work as this was, since it was the most admirable of all the works that we have seen or heard of, both for its curious structure and its magnitude, and also for the vast wealth bestowed upon it, as well as for the glorious reputation it had for its holiness; yet might such a one comfort himself with this thought, that it was fate that decreed it so to be, which is inevitable,
