The Works of Tacitus
tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
[1864-1877]
Tacitus: History Book 5 [1]
1. EARLY in this year Titus Caesar, who had been selected by his father to complete
the subjugation of Judaea, and who had gained distinction as a soldier while
both were still subjects, began to rise in power and reputation, as armies and
provinces emulated each other in their attachment to him. The young man himself,
anxious to be thought superior to his station, was ever displaying his gracefulness
and his energy in war. By his courtesy and affability he called forth a willing
obedience, and he often mixed with the common soldiers, while working or marching,
without impairing his dignity as general. He found in Judaea three legions,
the 5th, the 10th, and the 15th, all old troops of Vespasian’s. To these he
added the 12th from Syria, and some men belonging to the 18th and 3rd, whom
he had withdrawn from Alexandria. This force was accompanied by twenty cohorts
of allied troops and eight squadrons of cavalry, by the two kings Agrippa and
Sohemus, by the auxiliary forces of king Antiochus, by a strong contingent of
Arabs, who hated the Jews with the usual hatred of neighbours, and, lastly,
by many persons brought from the capital and from Italy by private hopes of
securing the yet unengaged affections of the Prince. With this force Titus entered
the enemy’s territory, preserving strict order on his march, reconnoitring every
spot, and always ready to give battle. At last he encamped near Jerusalem.
2. As I am about to relate the last days of a famous city, it seems appropriate
to throw some light on its origin. Some say that the Jews were fugitives from
the island of Crete, who settled on the nearest coast of Africa about the time
when Saturn was driven from his throne by the power of Jupiter. Evidence of
this is sought in the name. There is a famous mountain in Crete called Ida;
the neighbouring tribe, the Idaei, came to be called Judaei by a barbarous lengthening
of the national name. Others assert that in the reign of Isis the overflowing
population of Egypt, led by Hierosolymus and Judas, discharged itself into the
neighbouring countries. Many, again, say that they were a race of Ethiopian
origin, who in the time of king Cepheus were driven by fear and hatred of their
neighbours to seek a new dwelling-place. Others describe them as an Assyrian
horde who, not having sufficient territory, took possession of part of Egypt,
and founded cities of their own in what is called the Hebrew country, lying
on the borders of Syria. Others, again, assign a very distinguished origin to
the Jews, alleging that they were the Solymi, a nation celebrated in the poems
of Homer, who called the city which they founded Hierosolyma after their own
name.
3. Most writers, however, agree in stating that once a disease, which horribly
disfigured the body, broke out over Egypt; that king Bocchoris, seeking a remedy,
consulted the oracle of Hammon, and was bidden to cleanse his realm, and to
convey into some foreign land this race detested by the gods. The people, who
had been collected after diligent search, finding themselves left in a desert,
sat for the most part in a stupor of grief, till one of the exiles, Moyses by
name, warned them not to look for any relief from God or man, forsaken as they
were of both, but to trust to themselves, taking for their heaven-sent leader
that man who should first help them to be quit of their present misery. They
agreed, and in utter ignorance began to advance at random. Nothing, however,
distressed them so much as the scarcity of water, and they had sunk ready to
perish in all directions over the plain, when a herd of wild asses was seen
to retire from their pasture to a rock shaded by trees. Moyses followed them,
and, guided by the appearance of a grassy spot, discovered an abundant spring
of water. This furnished relief. After a continuous journey for six days, on
the seventh they possessed themselves of a country, from which they expelled
the inhabitants, and in which they founded a city and a temple.
4. Moyses, wishing to secure for the future his authority over the nation,
gave them a novel form of worship, opposed to all that is practised by other
men. Things sacred with us, with them have no sanctity, while they allow what
with us is forbidden. In their holy place they have consecrated an image of
the animal by whose guidance they found deliverance from their long and thirsty
wanderings. They slay the ram, seemingly in derision of Hammon, and they sacrifice
the ox, because the Egyptians worship it as Apis. They abstain from swine’s
flesh, in consideration of what they suffered when they were infected by the
leprosy to which this animal is liable. By their frequent fasts they still bear
witness to the long hunger of former days, and the Jewish bread, made without
leaven, is retained as a memorial of their hurried seizure of corn. We are told
that the rest of the seventh day was adopted, because this day brought with
it a termination of their toils; after a while the charm of indolence beguilded
them into giving up the seventh year also to inaction. But others say that it
is an observance in honour of Saturn, either from the primitive elements of
their faith having been transmitted from the Idaei, who are said to have shared
the flight of that God, and to have founded the race, or from the circumstance
that of the seven stars which rule the destinies of men Saturn moves in the
highest orbit and with the mightiest power, and that many of the heavenly bodies
complete their revolutions and courses in multiples of seven.
5. This worship, however introduced, is upheld by its antiquity; all their
other customs, which are at once perverse and disgusting, owe their strength
to their very badness. The most degraded out of other races, scorning their
national beliefs, brought to them their contributions and presents. This augmented
the wealth of the Jews, as also did the fact, that among themselves they are
inflexibly honest and ever ready to shew compassion, though they regard the
rest of mankind with all the hatred of enemies. They sit apart at meals, they
sleep apart, and though, as a nation, they are singularly prone to lust, they
abstain from intercourse with foreign women; among themselves nothing is unlawful.
Circumcision was adopted by them as a mark of difference from other men. Those
who come over to their religion adopt the practice, and have this lesson first
instilled into them, to despise all gods, to disown their country, and set at
nought parents, children, and brethren. Still they provide for the increase
of their numbers. It is a crime among them to kill any newly-born infant. They
hold that the souls of all who perish in battle or by the hands of the executioner
are immortal. Hence a passion for propagating their race and a contempt for
death. They are wont to bury rather than to burn their dead, following in this
the Egyptian custom; they bestow the same care on the dead, and they hold the
same belief about the lower world. Quite different is their faith about things
divine. The Egyptians worship many animals and images of monstrous form; the
Jews have purely mental conceptions of Deity, as one in essence. They call those
profane who make representations of God in human shape out of perishable materials.
They believe that Being to be supreme and eternal, neither capable of representation,
nor of decay. They therefore do not allow any images to stand in their cities,
much less in their temples. This flattery is not paid to their kings, nor this
honour to our Emperors. From the fact, however, that their priests used to chant
to the music of flutes and cymbals, and to wear garlands of ivy, and that a
golden vine was found in the temple, some have thought that they worshipped
father Liber, the conqueror of the East, though their institutions do not by
any means harmonize with the theory; for Liber established a festive and cheerful
worship, while the Jewish religion is tasteless and mean.
6. Eastward the country is bounded by Arabia; to the south lies Egypt; on
the west are Phoenicia and the Mediterranean. Northward it commands an extensive
prospect over Syria. The inhabitants are healthy and able to bear fatigue. Rain
is uncommon, but the soil is fertile. Its products resemble our own. They have,
besides, the balsam-tree and the palm. The palm-groves are tall and graceful.
The balsam is a shrub; each branch, as it fills with sap, may be pierced with
a fragment of stone or pottery. If steel is employed, the veins shrink up. The
sap is used by physicians. Libanus is the principal mountain, and has, strange
to say, amidst these burning heats, a summit shaded with trees and never deserted
by its snows. The same range supplies and sends forth the stream of the Jordan.
This river does not discharge itself into the sea, but flows entire through
two lakes, and is lost in the third. This is a lake of vast circumference; it
resembles the sea, but is more nauseous in taste; it breeds pestilence among
those who live near by its noisome odour; it cannot be moved by the wind, and
it affords no home either to fish or water-birds. These strange waters support
what is thrown upon them, as on a solid surface, and all persons, whether they
can swim or no, are equally buoyed up by the waves. At a certain season of the
year the lake throws up bitumen, and the method of collecting it has been taught
by that experience which teaches all other arts. It is naturally a fluid of
dark colour; when vinegar is sprinkled upon it, it coagulates and floats upon
the surface. Those whose business it is take it with the hand, and draw it on
to the deck of the boat; it then continues of itself to flow in and lade the
vessel till the stream is cut off. Nor can this be done by any instrument of
brass or iron. It shrinks from blood or any cloth stained by the menstrua of
women. Such is the account of old authors; but those who know the country say
that the bitumen moves in heaving masses on the water, that it is drawn by hand
to the shore, and that there, when dried by the evaporation of the earth and
the power of the sun, it is cut into pieces with axes and wedges just as timber
or stone would be.
7. Not far from this lake lies a plain, once fertile, they say, and the site
of great cities, but afterwards struck by lightning and consumed. Of this event,
they declare, traces still remain, for the soil, which is scorched in appearance,
has lost its productive power. Everything that grows spontaneously, as well
as what is planted by hand, either when the leaf or flower have been developed,
or after maturing in the usual form, becomes black and rotten, and crumbles
into a kind of dust. I am ready to allow, on the one hand, that cities, once
famous, may have been consumed by fire from heaven, while, on the other, I imagine
that the earth is infected by the exhalations of the lake, that the surrounding
air is tainted, and that thus the growth of harvest and the fruits of autumn
decay under the equally noxious influences of soil and climate. The river Belus
also flows into the Jewish sea. About its mouth is a kind of sand which is collected,
mixed with nitre, and fused into glass. This shore is of limited extent, but
furnishes an inexhaustible supply to the exporter.
8. A great part of Judaea consists of scattered villages. They have also
towns. Jersualem is the capital. There stood a temple of immense wealth. First
came the city with its fortifications, then the royal palace, then, within the
innermost defences, the temple itself. Only the Jew might approach the gates;
all but priests were forbidden to pass the threshold. While the East was under
the sway of the Assyrians, the Medes, and the Persians, Jews were the most contemptible
of the subject tribes. When the Macedonians became supreme, King Antiochus strove
to destroy the national superstition, and to introduce Greek civilization, but
was prevented by his war with the Parthians from at all improving this vilest
of nations; for at this time the revolt of Arsaces had taken place. The Macedonian
power was now weak, while the Parthian had not yet reached its full strength,
and, as the Romans were still far off, the Jews chose kings for themselves.
Expelled by the fickle populace, and regaining their throne by force of arms,
these princes, while they ventured on the wholesale banishment of their subjects,
on the destruction of cities, on the murder of brothers, wives, and parents,
and the other usual atrocities of despots, fostered the national superstition
by appropriating the dignity of the priesthood as the support of their political
power.
9. Cneius Pompeius was the first of our countrymen to subdue the Jews. Availing
himself of the right of conquest, he entered the temple. Thus it became commonly
known that the place stood empty with no similitude of gods within, and that
the shrine had nothing to reveal. The walls of Jerusalem were destroyed, the
temple was left standing. After these provinces had fallen, in the course of
our civil wars, into the hands of Marcus Antonius, Pacorus, king of the Parthians,
seized Judaea. He was slain by Publius Ventidius, and the Parthians were driven
back over the Euphrates. Caius Sosius reduced the Jews to subjection. The royal
power, which had been bestowed by Antony on Herod, was augmented by the victorious
Augustus. On Herod’s death, one Simon, without waiting for the approbation of
the Emperor, usurped the title of king. He was punished by Quintilius Varus
then governor of Syria, and the nation, with its liberties curtailed, was divided
into three provinces under the sons of Herod. Under Tiberius all was quiet.
But when the Jews were ordered by Caligula to set up his statue in the temple,
they preferred the alternative of war. The death of the Emperor put an end to
the disturbance. The kings were either dead, or reduced to insignificance, when
Claudius entrusted the province of Judaea to the Roman Knights or to his own
freedmen, one of whom, Antonius Felix, indulging in every kind of barbarity
and lust, exercised the power of a king in the spirit of a slave. He had married
Drusilla, the granddaughter of Antony and Cleopatra, and so was the grandson-in-law,
as Claudius was the grandson, of Antony.
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