Category Archives: Mass Suicide

NOVALIS
(1772–1801)

from The Novices of Sais


Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg was a lyric poet of German Romanticism and a prose writer of encyclopedic talent; he wrote under the nom de plume Novalis. He was born into a family descended from the low German nobility; his father, a deeply pietistic man, managed a salt mine, as well as the family estate in the Harz mountains. Novalis was educated in law at Jena, Leipzig, and Wittenberg. At age 22, he fell in love with the 12-year-old Sophie von Kühn and became engaged to be married, but was devastated when she died, at the age of 15. During this time, he was first introduced to the philosophy of Johann Fichte [q.v], who would be a main influence on his later work.

His prose lyrics Hymnen an die Nacht (Hymns to the Night, 1800), written after Sophie’s death in 1797, show his mediated, universal religiosity, the view that there must be an intermediary between man and God, not necessarily a cleric or divine figure, but in this case, the beloved—now dead. Novalis later studied geology, chemistry, biology, history, mathematics, mining, and philosophy; these contributed to his anticipated encyclopedia project. He died of tuberculosis at age 29.

The novel fragment The Novices of Sais (1802) reflects Novalis’s fascination with universal science; in particular, this short work explores the possibility of using poetry to describe a universal world harmony. In this context, Novalis alludes to the notion of universal suicide, imagining nature as hostile and man able to free himself from this threat only if all of humankind were to bring their lives to an end.

SOURCE
Novalis, The Novices of Sais, tr. Ralph Manheim. New York: Curt Valentin, 1949; New York: Archipelago Books, 2005, pp. 19-45.

from THE NOVICES OF SAIS

It must have been a long time before men thought of giving a common name to the manifold objects of their senses, and of placing themselves in opposition to them. Through practice developments were furthered, and in all developments occur separations and divisions that may well be compared with the splitting of a ray of light. It was only gradually that our inwardness split into such various forces, and with continued practice this splitting will increase. Perhaps it is only the sickly predisposition of later men that makes them lose the power to mix again the scattered colors of their spirit and at will restore the old, simple, natural state, or bring about new and varied relations between the colors. The more united they are, the more united, complete and personal will every natural object, every phenomenon enter into them; for to the nature of the sense corresponds the nature of the impression, and therefore to those earlier men, everything seemed human, familiar, and companionable, there was freshness and originality in all their perceptions, each one of their utterances was a true product of nature, their ideas could not help but accord with the world around them and express it faithfully. We can therefore regard the ideas of our forefathers concerning the things of this world as a necessary product, a self-portrait of the state of earthly nature at that time, and from these ideas, considered as the most fitting instruments for observing the universe, we can assuredly take the main relation, the relation between the world and its inhabitants. We find that the noblest questions of all first occupied their attention and that they sought the key to the wondrous edifice, sometimes in a common measure of real things, and sometimes in the fancied object of an unknown sense. This key, it is known, was generally divined in the liquid, the vaporous, the shapeless. The inertia and helplessness of solid bodies gave rise, no doubt, to a not unmeaningful belief in their baseness and dependence. But soon a pondering mind encountered the difficulty of deriving forms from forces and oceans without form. He attempted to loose the knot by a kind of combination; making the first beginnings into solid particles definitely shaped but minute beyond conception, and from this sea of dust, he believed that he could complete the immense edifice, though not without the help of ideal fictions of attracting and repellent forces. Earlier still we find, instead of scientific explanations, myths and poems full of marvelous imagery, of men, gods and beasts all building together, and it is here that the genesis of the world is most naturally described. Here at least we find certainty as to an accidental, handicraft origin, and even for those who despise the uncontrolled outpourings of the imagination, this conception is full of meaning.  To treat the history of the universe as a history of mankind, to find only human happenings and relations everywhere, is a continuous idea, reappearing at the most widely separate epochs, always in a new form, and this conception seems to have excelled all others in miraculous effect and persuasiveness. Moreover, the capriciousness of nature seems of itself to fall in with the idea of human personality, which is apparently best grasped in the form of a human creature. That is why poetry has been the favorite instrument of true friends of nature, and the spirit of nature has shone most radiantly in poems. When we read and hear true poems, we feel the movement of nature’s inner reason and, like its celestial embodiment, we dwell in it and hover over it at once. Scientists and poets have, by speaking one language, always shown themselves to be one people. What the scientists have gathered and arranged in huge, well-ordered stores, has been made by the poets into the daily food and consolation of human hearts; the ports have broken up the one, great, immeasurable nature and molded it into various small, amenable natures. Poets have lightheartedly pursued the liquid and fugitive, while scientists have cut into the inner structure and sought after the relations between its members.  Under their hands friendly nature died, leaving behind only dead, quivering remnants, while the poet inspired her like a heady wine till she uttered the blithest, most godlike fancies, till, lifted out of her everyday life, she soared to heaven, danced and prophesied, bade everyone welcome, and squandered her treasures with a happy heart. Thus she enjoyed heavenly hours with the poet and called the scientist only when she was sick and bowed down with conscience. On these occasions she answered each one of his questions and treated the stern man with reverence. Those who would know her spirit truly must therefore seek it in the company of poets, where she is free and pours forth her wondrous heart.  But those who do not love her from the bottom of their hearts, who only admire this and that in her and wish to learn this and that about her, must visit her sickroom, her charnel-house.

Our relations with nature are as inscrutably various as with men; to the child she shows herself childlike, pressing fondly to his childlike heart, and to the god she discloses herself divine, in accord with his exalted spirit. It is bombast to speak of one nature, and all striving after truth in discourse about nature only removes us farther from the natural. Great is the gain when the striving to understand nature completely, is ennobled to yearning, a tender, diffident yearning that gladly accepts the strange, cold creature, in the hope that she will some day become more familiar. Within us there lies a mysterious force that tends in all directions, spreading from a center hidden in infinite depths. If wondrous nature, the nature of the senses and the nature that is not of the senses, surrounds us, we believe this force to be an attraction of nature, an effect of our sympathy with her; but behind these blue, distant shapes one man will seek a home that they withhold, a beloved of his youth, mother and father, brothers and sisters, old friends, cherished times past; to another it seems that out there unknown glories await him, a radiant future is hidden, and he stretches forth his hand in quest of a new world. A few stand calmly in this glorious abode, seeking only to embrace it in its plenitude and enchainment; no detail makes them forget the glittering thread that joins the links in rows to form the holy candelabrum, and they find beatitude in the contemplation of this living ornament hovering over the depths of night. The ways of contemplating nature are innumerable; at one extreme the sentiment of nature becomes a jocose fancy, a banquet, while at the other it develops into the most devout religion, giving to a whole life direction, principle, meaning. Even among the childlike peoples there were grave men, for whom nature was the face of a godhead, while other, merry hearts only prayed to her at table; the air was to them a soothing drink, the stars were a light to dance by, plants and beasts were merely delectable fare, nature to them was not a wondrous, silent temple, but a jolly kitchen and pantry.  In between, there were other, more contemplative souls, who found in the nature before them only large but neglected gardens, and busied themselves creating prototypes of a nobler nature.—For this great work they broke into companionable groups, some sought to awaken the spent and lost tones in the air and in the forests, others fixed their presentiments and images of more beautiful races in bronze and stone, fashioned more beautiful rocks and made them into dwellings, brought back to light the treasures hidden in the crypts of the earth; tamed unruly streams, populated the inhospitable sea, restored noble plants and beasts to desert regions, damned the forest floods and cultivated the nobler flowers and herbs, opened the earth to the touch of the fructifying air and the kindling light, taught the colors to mingle and order themselves into charming shapes, taught wood and meadow, springs and crags to join again in pleasant gardens, breathed tones into living things, that they might unfold and move in joyous rhythms, took under their protection those poor forsaken beasts amenable to human ways, and cleansed the woods of savage monsters, the misbegotten creatures of a degenerate fantasy.  Soon nature learned friendlier ways again, she became gentler and more amiable, more prone to favor the desires of man.  Little by little her heart learned human emotions, her fantasies became more joyful, she became companionable, responding gladly to the friendly questioner, and thus little by little she seems to have brought back the old golden age, in which she was man’s friend, consoler, priestess and enchantress, when she lived among men and divine association made men immortal.  Then once more the constellations will visit the earth that they looked upon so angrily in those days of darkness; then the sun will lay down her harsh scepter, becoming again a star among stars, and all the races of the world will come together after long separation.  Families orphaned of old will be reunited, and each day will see new greetings, new embraces; then the former inhabitants of the earth will return, on every hill embers will be rekindled; everywhere the flames of life will blaze up, old dwelling places will be rebuilt, old times renewed, and history will become the dream of an infinite, everlasting present.

He who belongs to this race and this faith and wishes to contribute his part towards the taming of nature, frequents the workshops of artists, gives ear to the poetry that bursts forth unawares in every walk of life, never wearies of contemplating nature and conversing with her, follows all her beckonings, finds no journey too arduous if it is she who calls, even should it take him into the dank bowels of the earth: surely he will find ineffable treasures, in the end his candle will come to rest, and then who knows into what heavenly mysteries a charming subterranean sprite may initiate him. Surely no one strays farther from the goal than he who imagines that he already knows the strange realm, that he can explain its structure in few words and everywhere find the right path. No one who tears himself loose and makes himself an island arrives at understanding without pains. Only to children or childlike people, ignorant of what they are doing, can this happen. Attentiveness to subtle signs and traits, an inward poetic life, practiced senses, a simple, God-fearing heart—these are the basic requisites for a true friend of nature, and without them his striving will not prosper. Without full, flowering humanity, the striving to understand a human world does not seem wise. Not one of the senses must slumber, and even if not all are equally awake, all must be stimulated and not repressed or neglected. As we see the future painter in the boy who covers every wall and every level stretch of sand with his drawings, who combines bright colors into figures, we see the future philosopher in him who untiringly pursues and inquires into all things in nature, who turns his mind to everything, gathers whatever is noteworthy and is happy if he has made himself the master and possessor of a new phenomenon, a new force and knowledge.

Now to some it seems not worth the trouble to pursue the infinite divisions of nature, and moreover, they find it a dangerous undertaking without fruit or issue.  Never can we find the smallest grain or the simplest fiber of a solid body, since all magnitude loses itself forwards and backwards in infinity, and the same applies to the varieties of bodies and forces; we encounter forever new species, new combinations, new phenomena, and so on to infinity.  They seem to stand still only when our fervor wanes; we waste the precious time in vain study and tedious enumeration, and this in the end becomes a true madness, a fatal vertigo over the horrid abyss.  And nature, they say, remains wherever we turn a terrible mill of death: everywhere monstrous change, indissoluble endless chain, realm of voracity and mad luxuriance, incommensurable and fraught with disaster; the few bright points, they say, only serve to illumine a night that is all the more terrifying, filled with all manner of specters that frighten the beholder into insensibility. Death stands like a savior by the side of unfortunate mankind, for without death the madman would be the happiest among creatures. The effort to fathom the giant mechanism is in itself a move towards the abyss, a beginning of madness: for every lure seems an expanding vortex, which soon takes full possession of the unfortunate and carries him away through a night of terrors. Here, they say, is the insidious pitfall of human reason, which nature looks upon as her worst enemy and everywhere seeks to destroy. Praised be the childlike ignorance and innocence of men, which leaves them unaware of the terrible dangers, which everywhere like awesome storm clouds surround their peaceful dwelling places, threatening at every instant to break over them.  Only the inner disunity of nature’s forces has preserved man up to now, but inexorably the great moment will come when all mankind by common resolve will save itself from this intolerable lot, will wrench itself free from this hideous prison, when through voluntary renunciation of their earthly possessions men will redeem their race forever from this misery, and escape to a happier world, to the home of their ancient father. Thus men would end in a manner worthy of them, thus they would anticipate their inevitable extermination or even more terrible degeneration into beasts through gradual destruction of the mind, through madness. Association with the forces of nature, with beasts, plants, rocks, storms and waves, must inevitably make men resemble these things, and this adaptation, transformation, dissolution of the divine and human into uncontrolled forces is, they say, the spirit of the awful, devouring power that is nature: and is not indeed everything we see a rape of heaven, a desolation of former glories, the remnant of a hideous feast?

“Very well,” say some who are more courageous, “let our race carry on a slow, well-conceived war of annihilation with nature! We must seek to lay her low with insidious poisons. The scientist is a noble hero, who leaps into the open abyss in order to save his fellow citizens. Artists have dealt her many covert blows: continue along this road, possess yourselves of the secret threads, and make her lust after herself. Exploit her strife to bend her to your will, like the fire-spewing bull. She must be made to serve you. Patience and faith befit the children of mankind.  Distant brothers are united with us for one purpose, the starry wheel will become the spinning wheel of our life, and then with the help of our slaves we shall build ourselves a new Djinnistan. With inward triumph let us behold her devastations, her tumults, she shall sell herself to us, and bitterly atone for every violent deed.  With a rapturous sentiment of our freedom let us live and die; here rises the stream that will some day submerge and quell her, let us bathe in it and gather courage for new heroic deeds. The monster’s rage cannot reach us, a drop of freedom is enough to lame it forever, and put an end to its devastation,”

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Filed under Europe, Mass Suicide, Novalis, Selections, The Early Modern Period

ABU’L FAZL IBN MUBARAK
(1551–1602)

from Biography of the Emperor Akbar: On Jauhar and Saka


 

Abu’l Fazl was born in Agra, the second son to the Indian scholar and teacher Shaikh Mubarak, who educated Abu’l Fazl from an early age in the Islamic sciences, Greek philosophy, and mysticism. At age 23, Abu’l Fazl was introduced to the court of emperor Akbar by his older brother Abu’l Faizi, the future poet laureate. A liberal thinker like his father, Abu’l Fazl quickly gained favor with the emperor and supported him in extending the religious tolerance of his empire. In 1579, together with his father, Abu’l Fazl helped to compose the decree known as the “Infallibility Decree,” which endowed the emperor Akbar with religious superiority over the orthodox authority of the ulama. In 1599, Abu’l Fazl was given his first office, at Deccan, where he was recognized for his ability as a military commander. Three years later in 1602, he was assassinated under secret orders from emperor Akbar’s eldest son, the future emperor Jahangir, whose ascendancy and 1600 rebellion against his father Abu’l Fazl had opposed.

Abu’l Fazl is best known today for his Akbarnama, a three-volume history of the life and empire of its commissioner, the emperor Akbar. It was composed in Persian between 1590 and 1596 while more than 49 different artists worked on the illustrations. The first volume details the history of Akbar’s family back to Timur, and the second volume describes Akbar’s own reign as far as 1602. The third volume of the Akbarnama, the Ain-i-Akbari, or the “Institutes of Akbar,” is the most famous. As well as containing a detailed report of Akbar’s system of government and administration, the fourth book of this volume gives a more general history of India in addition to an account of Hindu philosophy, literature, religion, and custom.

In the second volume of the Akbarnama, Abu’l Fazl describes the third siege and consequent third Jauhar [Johar] at the fort of Chittor [Chaitúr] in 1567. Jauhar and Saka, often referred to together simply as Jauhar, are the names for the two parts of a mass suicide ritual carried out by the Rájpút clans in the face of immediate and inescapable military defeat. Jauhar specifically refers to the self-immolation of the women and children in anticipation of capture and abuse. Saka is the subsequent or simultaneous march of the men to certain death at the hands of their enemies. Not an immediate witness of the Jauhar, Abu’l Fazl reports that several fires became visible in Chittor less than an hour after the governor of the fort was killed. He describes the women as unwilling participants in the Jauhar, victims of the Rájpút men, who, the next day, came out of the house of Ráná, the temple of Mahádeo, and the gate of Rámpúrah in “twos and threes” to “[throw] away” their own lives.

Source

Abu’l Fazl Ibn Mubarak, “An Account of the Siege and Reduction of Chaitur by the Emperor Akbar,” from the Akbar-namah of Shaikh Abul-Fazl, tr. Major David Price. Miscellaneous Translations from Oriental Languages, Vol. II (London: Samuel Bentley, 1834, pp. 14-15, 31-34, 38, 40).

 

from BIOGRAPHY OF THE EMPEROR AKBAR: ON JAUHAR AND SAKA     

In the meantime, entertaining a notion that the imperial army was but inadequately provided with the means of carrying on the arduous operations of a siege, the infatuated Ráná devoted his attention to strengthen the fortifications of Chaitúr, and to furnish it with stores and provisions for many years to come. And yet, to the limited scope of human vision, the ramparts of this celebrated place seemed already beyond the reach of anything like a successful attack. He lodged in it, moreover, a garrison of five thousand Rájpúts of acknowledged bravery, and already renowned for their devotion to the paths of glory. After which, having laid waste the surrounding districts in every direction, so that there was not left a blade of grass remaining, he finally withdrew himself beyond the inaccessible passes of his mountain lands.

On due consideration, Akbar was early convinced that the success of the enterprise in which he was engaged would be but little advanced by pursuing the man whose doom was already sealed, in the heart of his mountains; and it was surely by the inspiration of his superior fortune, that he now determined to devote the whole of his energies to the sole object of making himself master of this fortress of Chaitúr, universally considered as the very foundation and resting-place of the Ráná’s power and renown. On Thursday, the 19th of the latter Rabía, accordingly, he appeared in the neighbourhood of the place, and encamped.

***

A. H. 975. A. D. 1568, 23d February.–The circumstances of this auspicious and splendid event may be distinctly collected from the following statement. On the night previous to the day of its capture, the place was attacked at once on every side, and the rampart having been breached in several parts, all things indicated that the conquest of Chaitúr was now at hand. Near the head of the principal sap, the imperial troops pushing forward on anticipation, succeeded in effecting a considerable breach in the strongest part of the wall, where they proceeded to exhibit the noblest proofs of devoted courage. Some time after midnight, however, the besieged brought a competent force to bear upon this breach; and on the one hand, giving themselves up to the winds of destiny, proceeded on the other to load this breach with bales of cloth and cotton, and faggots smeared with oil, for the purpose of setting on fire the moment the besiegers advanced to the assault, so that it would be impossible to effect a passage through.

At a period so critical, a person came in view of the emperor, clad in that species of armour denominated Hazár míkhí, or mail of a thousand studs, and exhibiting proofs of the highest authority, stood upon the breach, where he appeared to exert himself with signal bravery and activity. The identity of this personage who thus conspicuously distinguished himself could not however be made out by any one. Immediately seizing a favourite fusil, on which he had bestowed the name of Singrám, Akbar instantly discharged it at this person, expressing at the same time to Shujáat Khán and Rájáh Bahgwántdás, that feeling on this occasion the same exhilarating sensation as he experienced when killing game, he entertained but little doubt that his shot had taken effect on the man; on which Khán Jahán, another of the chiefs in attendance, took occasion to mention, that during the night the same personage had repeatedly appeared in the breach, exerting himself with singular diligence and activity, and that if he appeared no more, it was sufficiently evident that he must have fallen.

Not an hour afterwards, Jubbár Kulí Dívánah came and reported that not a man of the enemy was to be seen at the breach, and almost at the same instant the interior of the fort appeared on fire in several places. The attendants on the emperor were indulging in a variety of conjectures as to the meaning of this conflagration, when Rájah Bahgwántdás set the matter at rest by explaining that this was the Johar fire; adding, that in Hindustán, on the occurrence of a catastrophe such as was likely to happen on this memorable night, it was the custom to prepare a pile of sandalwood and odiferous drugs, together with dry fuel and other combustibles smothered with oil, and placing those in whom they could confide in charge of their women, with instructions to set fire to the pile and consume these unoffending and hapless females to ashes, the instant it was ascertained that the conflict had terminated fatally, and that the men were slain.

In fact, on the morning which dawned in victory to the imperial arms, it was ascertained that the shot discharged by the royal Akbar had actually taken effect on the person of Jaimal Pátá, the governor of the fort, and at once decided the fate of Chaitúr and his own. The Johar conflagration was found to ascend from the mansions of Pátá of the Seisúdíah tribe, and one of the Ráná’s most confidential ministers, of the Rahtúrs, of whom a certain Sáhib was the chief, and of Aisúrdas the leader of the Cháhúns, in which there were consumed to the number altogether of three hundred helpless females.

During the remainder of the night, although the breach had been entirely abandoned by the garrison, which had fled in dismay on the death of Jaimul, and withdrawn to various recesses of the places, the imperial troops, nevertheless, cautiously abstained from attack, with that prudent forbearance always necessary to avert unseen and sudden danger. They were at the same time held in perfect readiness to enter the place at the first dawn of daylight. Accordingly, at break of day, the troops issued at once from their trenches, and rushing into the fort at all points, proceeded immediately to the work of bondage and slaughter; while the unfortunate Rájpúts, having lost all order, were put to the sword, fighting and resisting to the very last man.

***

The number of Rájpúts inured to war collected on this occasion for the defence of Chaitúr, is stated at nearly eight thousand; but the inhabitants, who bore a part also in the defence of the place, amounted to more than forty thousand men. When the banners of the empire were displayed upon the works, the besieged retired partly into the pagodas; and trusting to the sanctity of those places, and the protection of their idols, awaited with fortitude the moment to lay down their lives. Others obstinately awaited their fate in their own houses; while others, with sword in hand and shortened lance, bravely faced their assailants, from whom they found the death they sought. Those who had madly taken post in the temples and dwelling-houses, when they beheld the imperial troops advancing upon them, fiercely sallied out, but were destroyed before they could come within sword-length, by the fire of their adversaries.

Thus, between early dawn and the hour of noon was the period in which these unfortunates were doomed to perish – to be consumed both body and soul by the wrath of Omnipotence; the slain on this occasion being stated at nearly thirty thousand men.

***

On this memorable day, although there was not in the place a house or street or passage of any kind that did not exhibit heaps of slaughtered bodies, there were three points in particular at which the number of the slain was surprisingly great; one of these was the palace of the Ráná, into which the Rájpúts had thrown themselves in considerable numbers; from whence they successively sallied upon the imperialists in small parties, of two and three together, until the whole had nobly perished sword in hand. The other was the temple of Mahádeo, their principal place of worship, where another considerable body of the besieged gave themselves up to the sword. Thirdly, was the gate of Rámpúrah, where these devoted men gave their bodies to the winds in appalling numbers.

This important conquest, which may well be considered the crowning triumph of imperial fortune, had the immediate effect of dispelling those fumes of ambition and self-importance which had distempered the brains of the haughtiest powers in Hindústán, and disposed them to assume in exchange the bonds of sincere allegiance.

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Filed under Abu'l Fazl ibn Mubarak, Asia, Hinduism, Islam, Mass Suicide, Military Defeat, Success, Strategy, Selections, The Early Modern Period

JOSEPHUS
(37-c. 100)

from The Jewish War
   The Defeat at Jotapata
   The Fall of Masada


 

Originally born Joseph ben Matthias in Jerusalem, Titus Flavius Josephus was a Jewish military commander and then historian. He was of priestly and royal descent, educated in both Hebrew and Greek literature. At age 16, he went into the desert, staying with the hermit Bannus; after this, he joined the Pharisees, and in 66 A.D., he reluctantly (or so he claims) took part in the Jewish revolt against Rome. After the Roman siege of Jotapata, Josephus, who as governor of Galilee led its defense, was captured and imprisoned in a Roman camp. He was later freed by the emperor Vespasian and became a Roman citizen. Adopting the Vespasian family name of Flavius, Josephus endeavored to act as a mediator between the Romans and the Jews during the assault on Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70. His attempts at mediation were unsuccessful, as he was distrusted by both the Jews as a traitor and the Romans for being a Jew. Jerusalem was besieged and destroyed by the Roman legions. Josephus returned to Rome where, with imperial patronage, he dedicated himself to writing until his death, sometime between 93 and 100 A.D..

Josephus wrote several works including the Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94; a history of the Jewish people from the Creation to 66 A.D., in 20 books), an Autobiography (c. 99), and Against Apion (c. 97; a defense of the Jewish people and their religion), but he is perhaps best known for his historical account of the Jewish revolt against Rome, The Jewish War (75–79). Much of the account of the revolt is taken from Josephus’ firsthand experiences. The influence of his Hebrew and Greek education, and of his Greek assistants, is also evident in its pages. Perhaps in an effort to defend himself against charges of treason, Josephus paints the Jews as their own worst enemies for being unwilling to bow to Roman might. While Josephus’ historical writings suffer from inaccuracy and frequent exaggeration, and while the details of matters affecting himself, as in the accounts of suicide presented here, may be particularly unreliable—probably at least in part a fabrication designed to please his Roman masters—they nevertheless provide a direct look at the relationship between the Jews and the secular Roman world.

The first of the two selections from The Jewish War is an account of the siege of the fortress of Jotapata. Josephus, the military leader at the fortress, successfully held off a Roman assault for 47 days, but the city fell to Vespasian on July 20, 67. Josephus hid for safety in a cave with 40 other Jews. When discovered by the Romans three days later, Josephus was on the point of surrendering, but his companions urged him to die rather than do so: “we will lend you a right hand and a sword.” Josephus tried to persuade them of the wrongness of suicide; his discourse is presented here, replete with Greek arguments against suicide. He alludes to the Athenian law that the hand of a suicide was to be cut off and buried separately and to a variation of the Pythagorean argument used by Plato that man is the property of God and should not “fly from the best of masters.” He also anticipates a natural-law argument later used by Thomas Aquinas that everything seeks to keep itself in being. Nevertheless, Josephus’ companions insisted on death. Josephus quickly devised a plan whereby each surrendered his throat to one before him, and Josephus, one of the last two in line, escaped.

The second selection is Josephus’ account of the siege of the fortress of Masada. After the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., the fortress—built in a seemingly impregnable position at the top of a massive rock promontory on the western shore of the Dead Sea—became one of the last outposts for the Jewish nationalists known as the Zealots. On May 2, 73, during a major offensive by the Roman army, 960 Zealot revolutionaries under the command of Eleazar chose to commit mass suicide rather than to yield to the Roman attack. Eleazar’s arguments favoring suicide are counterparts to those Josephus had used against it: voluntary death gives liberty to the soul; it preserves honor and protects the pride of the Jewish nation; it spares one’s family and oneself from slavery and torture if captured. Incited by Eleazar, each husband killed his wife and children and was then killed by the next man in line; the last man willingly killed himself. Only two women and five children, hiding in the underground aqueducts, survived to tell the tale.

Source

Josephus, The Jewish War, tr. H. St. J. Thackeray, London: William Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927,  Vol. 2 (I-III), 1927;  Vol. 3 (IV-V), 1928, odd-numbered pp. Vol. 2, 665-689, Vol. 3, 591-619. Book III: The Defeat at Jotapata; Book VII: The Fall of Masada.

from THE JEWISH WAR

The Defeat at Jotapata

Meanwhile the defenders of Jotapata were still holding out and beyond all expectation bearing up under their miseries, when on the forty-seventh day of the siege the earthworks of the Romans overtopped the wall. That same day a deserter reported to Vespasian the reduced numbers and strength of the defence, and that, worn out with perpetual watching and continuous fighting, they would be unable longer to resist a vigorous assault and might be taken by stratagem, if the attempt were made. He stated that about the last watch of the night-• an hour when they expected some respite from their sufferings and when jaded men easily succumb to morning slumber -the sentinels used to drop asleep; and that was the hour when he advised the Romans to attack. Vespasian, knowing the Jews’ loyalty to each other and their indifference to chastisement, regarded the deserter with suspicion. For on a former occasion a man of Jotapata who .had been taken prisoner had held out under every variety of torture, and, without betraying to the enemy a word about the state of the town, even under the ordeal of fire, was finally crucified, meeting death with a smile. However, the probability of his account lent credit to the traitor; and so, thinking that the man might be speaking the truth, and that, even if his story were a trap, no serious risk would be run by acting upon it, Vespasian ordered him into custody and made ready his army for the capture of the city.

At the hour named they advanced in silence to the walls. The first to mount them was Titus, with one of the tribunes, Domitius Sabinus, followed by a few men of the fifteenth legion. They cut down the sentries and entered the city.  Behind them came Sextus Calvarius, a tribune and Placidus, with the troops under their command. The citadel had actually been taken, the enemy was ranging through the heart of the town, and it was now broad daylight, before the vanquished ‘inhabitants were aware of the capture. Most of them were worn out with fatigue and asleep, and if any awoke, a thick mist, which happened at the time to envelop the city, obscured their vision. At length, when the whole army had poured in, they started up, but only to realize their calamity; the blade at their throat brought home to them that Jotapata was taken.

The Romans, remembering what they had borne during the siege, showed no quarter or pity for any, but thrust the people down the steep slope from the citadel in a general massacre. Even those still able to fight here found themselves deprived of the means of defence by the difficulties of the ground: crushed in the narrow alleys and slipping down the declivity, they were engulfed in ‘ the wave of carnage that streamed from the citadel. The situation even drove many of Josephus’s picked’ men to suicide; seeing themselves powerless to kill a single Roman, they could at least forestall death at Roman hands, and, retiring in a body to the outskirts of the town, they there put an end to themselves .

Those soldiers of the guard who, the moment it was known that the town was taken, had succeeded in escaping, took refuge in one of the northern towers, where for some time they held their own; but, being surrounded by large numbers of the enemy, they at length surrendered and cheerfully extended their throats to their assailants. The Romans might have boasted that this last phase of the siege had cost them no loss of life, had not one of them, the centurion Antonius, fallen when the town was captured. He was killed by treachery. One of the many fugitives who had taken refuge in the caverns besought Antonius to extend his hand to him, as a pledge of protection and to assist him to rise; the centurion incautiously complied, whereupon the Jew from below instantly stabbed him with his spear beneath the groin, and killed him on the spot.

On that day the Romans massacred all who showed themselves; on the ensuing days they searched the hiding-places and wreaked their vengeance on those who had sought refuge in subterranean vaults and caverns, sparing none, whatever their age, save infants and women. The prisoners thus collected were twelve hundred; the total number of the dead, whether killed in the final assault or in the previous combats, was computed at forty thousand. Vespasian ordered the city to be razed and had all its forts burnt to the ground. Thus was Jotapata taken in the thirteenth year of the principate of Nero, on the new moon of Panemus.

A search for Josephus was then instituted by the Romans, to satisfy both their own resentment and the keen desire of their general, who considered that the issue of the war depended largely on his capture. So the bodies of the slain and the men in hiding were closely examined. But Josephus, when the city was on the point of being taken, aided by some divine providence, had succeeded in stealing away from the midst of the enemy and plunged into a deep pit, giving access on one side to a broad cavern, invisible to those above. There he found forty persons of distinction in hiding, with a supply of provisions sufficient to last for a considerable time. During the day he lay hid, as the enemy were in occupation of every quarter of the town, but at night he would come up and look for some loophole for escape and reconnoitre the sentries; but, finding every spot guarded on his account and no means of eluding detection, he descended again into the cave. So for two days he continued in hiding. On the third, his secret was betrayed by a woman of the party, who was captured; whereupon Vespasian at once eagerly sent two tribunes, Paulinus and Gallicanus, with orders to offer Josephus security and to urge him to come up.

On reaching the spot they pressed him to do so and pledged themselves for his safety, but failed to persuade him. His suspicions were based not on the humane character of the envoys, but on the consciousness of all he had done and the feeling that he must suffer proportionately. The presentiment that he was being summoned to punishment persisted, until Vespasian sent a third messenger, the tribune Nicanor, an old acquaintance .and friend of Josephus. He, on his arrival, dwelt on the innate generosity of the Romans to those whom they had once subdued; assuring him that his valour made him an object rather of admiration, than of hatred, to the commanding officers, and that the general was anxious to bring him up from his retreat, not for punishment – that he could inflict though he refused to come forth – but from a desire to save a brave man. He added that Vespasian, had he intended to entrap him, would never have sent him one of his friends, thus using the fairest of virtues, friendship, as a cloak for the foulest of crimes, perfidy; nor would he himself have consented to come in order to deceive a friend.

While Josephus was still hesitating, even after Nicanor’s assurances, the soldiers in their rage attempted to set fire to the cave, but were restrained by their commander, who was anxious to take the Jewish general alive. But as Nicanor was urgently pressing his proposals and Josephus overheard the threats of the hostile crowd, suddenly there came back into his mind those nightly dreams, in which God had foretold to him the impending fate of the Jews and the destinies of the Roman sovereigns. He was an interpreter of dreams and skilled in divining the meaning of ambiguous utterances of the Deity; a priest himself arid of priestly descent, he was not ignorant of the prophecies in the sacred books. At that hour he was inspired to read their meaning, and recalling the .dreadful images of his recent dreams, he offered up a silent prayer to God. “Since it pleases thee,” so it ran, “who didst create the Jewish nation, to break thy work, since fortune has wholly passed to the Romans, and since thou hast made choice of my spirit to announce the things that are to come, I willingly surrender to the Romans and consent to live; but I take thee to witness that I go, not as a traitor, but as thy minister.”

With these words he was about to surrender to Nicanor. But when the Jews who shared his retreat understood that Josephus was yielding to entreaty, they came round him in a body, crying out, “Ah ! well might the laws of our fathers groan aloud and God Himself hide His face for grief – God who implanted in Jewish breasts souls that scorn death! Is life so dear to you, Josephus, that you can endure to see the light in slavery? How soon have you forgotten yourself! How many have you persuaded to die for liberty! False, then, was that reputation for bravery, false that fame for sagacity, if you can hope for pardon from those whom you have fought so bitterly, or, supposing that they grant it, can deign to accept your life at their hands. Nay, if the fortune of the Romans has cast over you some strange forgetfulness of yourself, the care of our country’s honour devolves on us. We will lend you a right hand and a sword. If you meet death willingly, you will have died as general of the Jews; if unwillingly, as a traitor.” With these words they pointed their swords at him and threatened to kill him if he surrendered to the Romans.

Josephus, fearing an assault, and holding that it would be a betrayal of God’s commands, should he die before delivering his message, proceeded, in this emergency, to reason philosophically with them. “Why, comrades,” said he, “this thirst for our own blood? Why set asunder such fond companions as soul and body? One says that I am changed: well, the Romans know the truth about that. Another says, “It is honourable to die in war’: yes, but according to the law of war, that is to say by the hand of the conqueror. “Were I now flinching from the sword of the Romans, I should assuredly deserve to perish by my own sword and my own hand; but if they are moved to spare an enemy, how much stronger reason have we to spare ourselves? It would surely be folly to inflict on ourselves treatment which we seek to avoid by our quarrel with them. “It is honourable to die for liberty,’ says another: I concur, but on condition that one dies fighting, by the hands of those who would rob us of it. But now they are neither coming to fight us nor to take our lives. It is equally cowardly not to wish to die when one ought to do so, and to wish to die when one ought not.. What is it we fear that prevents us from surrendering to the Romans? Is it not death? And shall we then inflict up an ourselves certain death, to avoid an uncertain death, which we fear, at the hands of our foes?  “No, it is slavery we fear,” I shall be told. Much liberty we enjoy at present! “It is noble to destroy oneself,” another will say. Not so, I retort, but most ignoble; in my opinion there could be no more arrant coward than the pilot who, for fear of a tempest, deliberately sinks his ship before the storm. “No; suicide is alike repugnant to that nature which all creatures share, and an act of impiety towards God who created us. Among the animals there is not one that deliberately seeks death or kills itself; so firmly rooted in all is nature’s law – the will to live. That is why we account as enemies those who would openly take our lives and punish as assassins those who clandestinely attempt to do so. And God – think you not that He is indignant when man treats His gift with scorn? For it is from Him that we have received our being, and it is to Him that we should leave the decision to take it away. All of us, it is true, have mortal bodies, composed of perishable matter, but the soul lives forever, immortal: it is a portion of the Deity housed in our bodies. If, then, one who makes away with or misapplies a deposit entrusted to him by a fellow-man is reckoned a perjured villain, how can he who casts out from his own body the deposit which God has placed there, hope to elude Him whom he has thus wronged? It is considered right to punish a fugitive slave, even though the master he leaves be a scoundrel; and shall we fly from the best of masters, from God Himself, and not be deemed impious? Know you not that they who depart this life in accordance with the law of nature and repay the loan which they received from God, when He who lent is pleased to reclaim it, win eternal renown; that their houses and families are secure; that their souls, remaining spotless and obedient, are allotted the most holy place in heaven, whence, in the revolution of the ages, they return to find in chaste bodies a new habitation? But as for those who have laid mad hands upon themselves, the darker regions of the nether world receive their souls, and God, their father, visits upon their posterity the outrageous acts of the parents. That is why this crime, so hateful to God, is punished also by the sagest of legislators. With us it is ordained that the body of a suicide should be exposed unburied until sunset, although it is thought right to bury even our enemies slain in war. In other nations the law requires that a suicide’s right hand, with which he made war on himself, should be cut off, holding that, as the body was unnaturally severed from the soul, so the hand should be severed from the body.

“We shall do well then, comrades, to listen to reason and not to add to our human calamities the crime of impiety towards our creator. If our lives are offered us, let us live: there is nothing dishonourable in accepting this offer from those who have had so many proofs of our valour; if they think fit to kill us, death at the hands of our conquerors is honourable. But, for my part, I shall never pass over to the enemy’s ranks, to prove a traitor to myself; I should indeed then be far more senseless than deserters who go over to the enemy for safety, whereas I should be going to destruction – my own destruction. I pray, however, that the Romans may prove faithless; if, after pledging their word, they put me to death, I shall die content, for I shall carry with me the consolation, better than a victory, that their triumph has been sullied by perjury.”

By these and many similar arguments Josephus sought to deter his companions from suicide. But desperation stopped their ears, for they had long since devoted themselves to death; they were, therefore, infuriated at him, and ran at him from this side and that, sword in hand, upbraiding him as a coward, each one seeming on the point of striking him. But he, addressing one by name, fixing his general’s eye of command upon another, clasping the hand of a third, shaming a fourth by entreaty, and torn by all manner of emotions at this critical moment, succeeded in warding off from his throat the blades of all, turning like a wild beast surrounded by the hunters to face his successive assailants . Even in his extremity, they still held their general in reverence; their hands were powerless, their swords glanced aside, and many, in the act of thrusting at him, spontaneously dropped their weapons. But, in his straits, his resource did not forsake him. Trusting to God’s protection, he put his life to the hazard, and said: “Since we are resolved to die, come, let us leave the lot to decide the order in which we are to kill ourselves; let him who draws the first lot fall by the hand of him who comes next; fortune will thus take her course through the whole number, and we shall be spared from taking our lives with our own hands. For it would be unjust that, when the rest were gone, any should repent and escape.” This proposal inspired confidence; his advice was taken, and he drew lots with the rest. Each man thus selected presented his throat to his neighbor in the assurance that his general was forthwith to share his fate; for sweeter to them than life was the thought of death with Josephus. He, however (should one say by fortune or by the providence of God?), was left alone with one other; and, anxious neither to be condemned by the lot nor, should he be left to the last, to stain his hand with the blood of a fellow-countryman, he persuaded this man also, under a pledge, to remain alive.

Having thus survived both the war with the Romans and that with his own friends, Josephus was brought by Nicanor into Vespasian’s presence. The Romans all flocked to see him, and from the multitude crowding around the general arose a hubbub of discordant voices: some exulting at his capture, some threatening, some pushing forward to obtain a nearer view. The more distant spectators clamoured for the punishment of their enemy, but those close beside him recalled his exploits and marvelled at such a reversal of fortune. Of the officers there was not one who, whatever his past resentment, did not then relent at the sight of him. Titus in particular was specially touched by the fortitude of Josephus under misfortunes and by pity for his youth. As he recalled the combatant of yesterday and saw him now a prisoner in his enemy’s hands, he was led to reflect on the power of fortune, the quick vicissitudes of war, and the general instability of human affairs. So he brought over many Romans at the time to share his compassion for Josephus, and his pleading with his father was the main influence in saving the prisoner’s life.

 

The Fall of Masada

The Roman general [Silva] having now completed his wall surrounding the whole exterior of the place [Masada] and taken the strictest precautions that none should escape, applied himself to the siege. He had discovered only one spot capable of supporting earthworks. For in rear of the tower which barred the road leading from the west to the palace and the ridge, was a projection of rock, of considerable breadth and jutting far out, but still three hundred cubits below the elevation of Masada; it was called Leuce. Silva, having accordingly ascended and occupied this eminence, ordered his troops to throw up an embankment. Working with a will and a multitude of hands, they raised a solid bank to the height of two hundred cubits, This, however, being still considered of insufficient stability and extent as an emplacement for the engines, on top of it was constructed a platform of great stones fitted closely together, fifty cubits broad and as many high. The engines in general were similarly constructed to those first devised by Vespasian and afterwards by Titus for their siege operations; in addition a sixty-cubit tower was constructed entirely cased in iron, from which the Romans by volleys of missiles from numerous quick-firers and ballistae quickly beat off the defenders on the ramparts and prevented them from showing themselves. Simultaneously, Silva, having further provided himself with a great battering-ram, ordered it to be directed without intermission against the wall, and having, though with difficulty, succeeded in effecting a breach, brought it down in ruins. The Sicarii, however, had already hastily built up another wall inside, which was not likely to meet with a similar fate from the engines; for it was pliable and calculated to break the force of the impact, having been constructed as follows. Great beams were laid lengthwise and contiguous and joined at the extremities; of these there were two parallel rows a wall’s breadth apart, and the intermediate space was filled with earth. Further, to prevent the soil from dispersing as the mound rose, they clamped, by other transverse beams, those laid longitudinally. The work thus presented to the enemy the appearance of masonry, but the blows of the engines were weakened, battering upon a yielding material which, as it settled down under the concussion, they merely served to solidify. Observing this, Silva, thinking it easier to destroy this wall by fire, ordered his soldiers to hurl at it showers of burning torches. Being mainly made of wood, it quickly caught fire, and, from its hollow nature becoming ignited right through blazed up in a volume of flame. At the first outbreak of the fire, a north wind which blew in the faces of the Romans caused them an alarm; for, diverting the flame from above, it drove it against them, and the fear that all their engines would be burnt up had almost reduced them to despair. Then suddenly the wind veering, as if by divine providence, to the south and blowing with full force in the opposite direction, wafted and flung the flames against the wall, which now through and through was all ablaze. The Romans, thus blessed by God’s aid, returned rejoicing to their camp, with the determination of attacking the enemy on the morrow; and throughout that night they kept stricter watch lest any of them should secretly escape.

However, neither did Eleazar himself contemplate flight, nor did he intend to permit any other to do so. Seeing the wall consuming in the flames, unable to devise any further means of deliverance or gallant endeavour, and setting before his eyes what the Romans, if victorious, would inflict on them, their children and their wives, he deliberated on the death of all. And, judging, as matters stood, this course the best, he assembled the most doughty of his comrades and incited them to the deed by such words as these:

“Long since, my brave men, we determined , neither to serve the Romans nor any other – save God, for He alone is man’s true and righteous Lord; and now the time has come which bids us verify that  resolution by our actions. At this crisis let us not disgrace ourselves; we who in the past refused to submit even to a slavery involving no peril, let us not now, along with slavery, deliberately accept the irreparable penalties awaiting us if we are to fall alive into Roman hands. For as we were the first of all to revolt, so are we the last in arms against them.  Moreover, I believe that it is God who has granted us this favour, that we have it in our power to die nobly and in freedom  – a privilege denied to others who have met with unexpected defeat. Our fate at break of day is certain capture, but there is still the free choice of a noble death with those we hold most dear. For our enemies, fervently though they pray to take us alive, can no more prevent this than we can now hope to defeat them in battle. Maybe, indeed, we ought from the very first – when, having chosen to assert our liberty, we invariably experienced such hard treatment from one another, and still harder from our foes – we ought, I say, to have read God’s purpose and to have recognized that the Jewish race, once beloved of Him, had been doomed to perdition. For had he continued to be gracious, or but lightly incensed, he would never have overlooked such wholesale destruction or have abandoned His most holy city to be burnt and razed to the ground by our enemies. But did we forsooth hope that we alone of all the Jewish nation would survive and preserve our freedom, as persons guiltless towards God and without a hand in crime – we who had even been the instructors of the rest? Mark, now, how He exposes the vanity of our expectations, by visiting us with such dire distress as exceeds all that we could anticipate. For not even the impregnable nature of this fortress has availed to save us; nay, though ample provisions are ours, piles of arms, and a superabundance of every other requisite, yet we have been deprived manifestly by God Himself, of all hope of deliverance, For it was not of their own accord that those flames which were driving against the enemy turned back upon the wall constructed by us; no, all this betokens wrath at the many wrongs which we madly dared to inflict upon our countrymen. The penalty for those crimes let us pay not to our bitterest foes, the Romans, but to God through the act of our own hands. It will be more tolerable than the other. Let our wives thus die undishonoured, our children unacquainted with slavery; and, when they are gone, let us render a generous service to each other; preserving our liberty as a noble winding-sheet. But first let us destroy our chattels and the fortress by fire; for the Romans, well I know, will be grieved to lose at once our persons and the lucre. Our provisions only let us spare; for they will testify, when we are dead, that it was not want which subdued us, but that in keeping with our initial resolve, we preferred death to slavery,”

Thus spoke Eleazar; but his words did not touch the hearts of all hearers alike. Some, indeed, were eager to respond and all but filled with delight at the thought of a death so noble; but others, softer-hearted, were moved with compassion for their wives and families, and doubtless also by the vivid prospect of their own end, and their tears as they looked upon one another revealed their unwillingness of heart. Eleazar, seeing them flinching and their courage breaking down in face of so vast a scheme, feared that their whimpers and tears might unman even those who had listened to his speech with fortitude. Far, therefore, from slackening in his exhortation, he roused himself and, fired with mighty fervour, essayed a higher flight of oratory on the immortality of the soul. Indignantly protesting and with eyes intently fixed on those in tears, he exclaimed:

“Deeply, indeed, was I deceived in thinking that I should have brave men as associates in our struggles for freedom – men determined to live with honour or to die. But you, it seems, were no better than the common herd in valour or in courage, you who are afraid even of that death that will deliver you from the direst ills, when in such a cause you ought neither to hesitate an instant nor wait for a counselor.  For from of old, since the first dawn of intelligence, we have been continually taught by those precepts, ancestral and divine – confirmed by the deeds and noble spirit of our forefathers – that life, not death, is man’s misfortune. For it is death which gives liberty to the soul and permits it to depart to its own pure abode, there to be free from all calamity; but so long as it is imprisoned in a mortal body and tainted with all its miseries, it is, in sober truth, dead, for association with what is mortal ill befits that which is divine. True, the soul possesses great capacity, even while incarcerated in the body; for it makes the latter its organ of perception, invisibly swaying it and directing it onward in its actions beyond the range of mortal nature. But it is not until, freed from the weight that drags it down to earth and clings about it, the soul is restored to its proper sphere, that it enjoys a blessed energy and a power untrammelled  on every side, remaining, like God Himself, invisible to human eyes. For even while in the body it is withdrawn from view: unperceived it comes and unseen it again departs, itself of a nature one and incorruptible, but a cause of change to the body. For whatever the soul has touched lives and flourishes, whatever it abandons withers and dies; so abundant is her wealth of immortality.

“Let sleep furnish you with a most convincing proof of what I say – sleep, in which the soul, undistracted  by the body, while enjoying in perfect independence the most delightful repose, holds converse with God by right of kinship, ranges the universe and foretells many things that are to come. Why then should we fear death who welcome the repose of sleep? And is it not surely foolish, while pursuing liberty in this life, to grudge ourselves that which is eternal?

“We ought, indeed, blest with our home training, to afford others an example of readiness to die; if however, we really need an assurance in this matter from alien nations, let us look at those Indians who profess the practice of philosophy. They, brave men that they are, reluctantly endure the period of life, as some necessary service due to nature, but hasten to release their souls from their bodies; and though no calamity impels nor drives them from the scene, from sheer longing for the immortal state, they announce to their comrades that they are about to depart. Nor is there any who would hinder them: no, all felicitate them and each gives them commissions to his loved ones; so certain and absolutely sincere is their belief in the intercourse which souls hold with one another. Then, after listening to these behests, they commit their bodies to the fire, that so the soul may be parted from the body in the utmost purity, and expire amidst hymns of praise. Indeed, their dearest ones escort them to their death more readily than do the rest of mankind their fellow-citizens when starting on a very long journey; for themselves they weep, but them they count happy as now regaining immortal rank. Are we not, then, ashamed of being more mean-spirited than Indians, and of bringing, by our faint-heartedness, shameful reproach upon our country’s laws, which are the envy of all mankind?

“Yet, even had we from the first been schooled in the opposite doctrine and taught that man’s highest blessing is life and that death is a calamity, still the crisis is one that calls upon us to bear it with a stout heart, since it is by God’s will and of necessity that we are to die. For long since, so it seems, God passed this decree against the whole Jewish race in common, that we must quit this life if we would not use it aright. Do not attach the blame to yourselves, nor the credit to the Romans, that this war with them has been the ruin of us all; for it was not their might that brought these things to pass, but the intervention of some more powerful cause has afforded them the semblance of victory.

“What Roman weapons, I ask, slew the Jews of Caesarea? Nay, they had not even contemplated revolt from Rome, but were engaged in keeping their Sabbath festival when the Caesarean rabble rushed upon them and massacred them, unresisting, with their wives and children, without even the slightest respect for the Romans, who regarded as enemies only us who had revolted. But I sha1l be told that the Caesareans had a standing quarrel with their Jewish residents and seized that opportunity to satisfy their ancient hate. What then shall we say of the Jews in Scythopolis, who had the audacity to wage war on us in the cause of the Greeks, but refused to unite with us, their kinsmen, in resisting the Romans? Much benefit, to be sure, did they reap from their goodwill and loyalty to the men of Scythopolis!  Ruthlessly butchered by them, they and all their families – that was the recompense that they received for their alliance; the fate from which they had saved their neighbours at our hands, that they endured, as though they had themselves desired to inflict it. Time would fail me now to name each instance severally; for, as you know, there is not a city in Syria which has not slain its Jewish inhabitants, though more hosti1e to us than to the Romans. Thus, the people of Damascus, though unable even to invent a plausible pretext, deluged their city with the foulest slaughter, butchering eighteen thousand Jews, with their wives and families. As for Egypt, we were told that the number of those who there perished in tortures perhaps exceeded sixty thousand.

Those Jews, maybe, perished as they did, because they were on alien soil, where they found themselves no match for their enemies. But consider all those who in their own territory embarked on war with Rome: what did they lack of all that could inspire them with hopes of assured success? Arms, ramparts, fortresses well nigh impregnable, a spirit undaunted by risks to be run in the cause of liberty –  these encouraged all to revolt. Yet these availed but for a brief season, and after buoying us up with hopes proved the beginning of greater disasters. For all were taken, all succumbed to the enemy, as though furnished for his more glorious triumph, and not for the protection of those who provided them. Those men who fell in battle may fitly be felicitated, for they died defending, not betraying, liberty; but the multitudes in Roman hands who would not pity? Who would not rush to his death ere he shared their fate? Of them some have perished on the rack or tortured by fire and scourge; others, half-devoured by wild beasts have been preserved alive to provide them with a second repast, after affording merriment and sport for their foes. But most miserable of all must be reckoned those still alive, who have often prayed for death and are denied the boon.

“And where now is that great city, the mother-city of the whole Jewish race, intrenched behind all those lines of ramparts, screened by all those forts and massive towers, that could scarce contain her munitions of war, and held all those myriads of defenders? What has become of her that was believed to have God for her founder? Uprooted from her base she has been swept away, and the sole memorial of her remaining is that of the slain sti1l quartered in her ruins! Hapless old men sit beside the ashes of the shrine and a few women, reserved by the enemy for basest outrage.

“Which of us, taking these things to heart, could bear to behold the sun, even could he live secure from peril? Who such a foe to his country, so unmanly, so fond of life, as not to regret that he is still alive to-day? Nay, I would that we had all been dead ere ever we saw that holy city razed by an enemy’s hands, that sacred sanctuary so profanely uprooted! But seeing that we have been beguiled by a not ignoble hope, that we might perchance find means of avenging her of her foes, and  now that hope has vanished and left us alone in our distress, let us hasten to die honourably; let us have pity on ourselves, our children and our wives, while it is still in our power to find pity from ourselves. For we were born for death, we and those whom we have begotten; and this even the fortunate cannot escape. But outrage and servitude and the sight of our lives being led to shame with their children – these are no necessary evils imposed by nature on mankind, but befall, through their own cowardice, those who, having the chance of forestalling them by death, refuse to take it. But we, priding ourselves on our courage, revolted from the Romans, and now at the last, when they offered us our lives, we refused the offer. Who then can fail to foresee their wrath if they take us alive? Wretched will be the young whose vigorous frames can sustain many tortures, wretched the more advanced in years whose age is incapable of bearing such calamities. Is a man to see his wife led off to violation, to hear the voice of his child crying “Father!” when his own hands are bound? No, while those hands are free and grasp the sword, let them render an honourable service. Unenslaved by the foe let us die, as free men with our children and wives let us quit this life together! This our laws  enjoin, this our wives and children implore of us. The need for this is of God’s sending, the reverse of this is the Romans’ desire, and their fear is lest a single one of us should die before capture. Haste we then to leave them, instead of their hoped-for enjoyment at securing us, amazement at our death and admiration of our fortitude.”

He would have pursued his exhortation but was cut short by his hearers, who, overpowered by some uncontrollable impulse, were all in haste to do the deed. Like men possessed they went their way, each eager to outstrip his neighbour and deeming it a signal proof of courage and sound judgement not to be seen among the last: so ardent the passion that had seized them to slaughter their wives, their little ones and themselves. Nor, as might have been expected, did their ardour cool when they approached the task: inflexibly they held to the resolution, which they had formed while listening to the address, and though personal emotion and affection were alive in all, reason which they knew had consulted best for their loved ones, was paramount. For, while they caressed and embraced their wives and took their children in their arms, clinging in tears to those parting kisses, at that same instant, as though served by hands other than their own, they accomplished their purpose, having the thought of the ills they would endure under the enemy’s hands to console them for their constraint in killing them. And in the end not one was found a truant in so daring a deed: all carried through their task with their dearest ones. Wretched victims of necessity, to whom to slay with their own hands their own wives and children seemed the lightest of evils! Unable, indeed, any longer to endure their anguish at what they had done, and feeling that they wronged the slain by surviving them if it ere but for a moment, they quickly piled together all the stores and set them on fire; then, having chosen by lot ten of their number to dispatch the rest, they laid themselves down each beside his prostrate wife and children, and, flinging their arms around them, offered their throats in readiness for the executants of the melancholy office. These, having unswervingly slaughtered all, ordained the same rule of the lot for one another, that he on whom it fell should slay first the nine and then himself last of all; such mutual confidence had they all that neither in acting nor in suffering would one differ from another. Finally, then, the nine bared their throats, and the last solitary survivor, after surveying the prostrate multitude, to see whether haply amid the shambles there were yet one left who needed his hand, and finding that all were slain, set the palace ablaze, and then collecting his strength drove his sword clean through his body and fell beside his family. They had died in the belief that they had left not a soul of them alive to fall into Roman hands; but an old woman and another, a relative of Eleazar, superior in sagacity and training to most of her sex, with five children, escaped by concealing themselves in the subterranean aqueducts, while the rest were absorbed in the slaughter. The victims numbered nine hundred and sixty, including women and children; and the tragedy occurred on the fifteenth of the month Xanthicus.

The Romans, expecting further opposition, were by daybreak under arms and, having with gangways formed bridges of approach from the earthworks, advanced to the assault. Seeing none of the enemy but on all sides an awful solitude, and flames within and silence, they were at a loss to conjecture what had happened. At length, as if for a signal to shoot, they shouted, to call forth haply any of those within. The shout was heard by the women-folk, who, emerging from the caverns, informed the Romans how matters stood, one of the two lucidly reporting both the speech and how the deed was done. But it was with difficulty that they listened to her, incredulous of such amazing fortitude; meanwhile they endeavoured to extinguish the flames and soon cutting a passage through them entered the palace. Here encountering the mass of slain, instead of exulting as over enemies, they admired the nobility of their resolve and the contempt of death displayed by so many in carrying it, unwavering, into execution.

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Filed under Ancient History, Cowardice, Courage, Bravery, Fear, Josephus, Judaism, Martyrdom, Mass Suicide, Middle East, Military Defeat, Success, Strategy, Selections