Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (9 page)

“Hiding” circumcision may have been essential, but it was painfully difficult. A Jew whose foreskin had been cut off in the first days of life had somehow to re-create it. This could be done by surgery. What was left of the prepuce was cut round with a scalpel; then the skin of the penis was pulled down as far as its base and then stretched back to cover the glans. The probability of inflammation and infection was high, and there was a nonsurgical alternative, albeit an equally unappealing procedure: weights could be attached to the skin of the penis to extend it over the glans.

True believers remained fiercely opposed to any reform or compromise. It was said: “Cursed be the man that rears a pig and cursed be those who instruct their sons in Greek wisdom.” Paul Johnson sums up the position:

No record exists of Hadrian’s attitude to Judaism, but we can be certain that, as a fully committed Hellenist, he felt nothing but scorn for this unruly community, the only one in the empire whose ideologues openly resented Roman rule and resisted the universal appeal of the Hellenic idea.

Jerusalem was a marvelous sight. It was larger than today’s Old Jerusalem, with a population perhaps of 100,000. From a distance travelers were known to mistake the city for a snowcapped mountain peak, for it perched on two hilltops above which towered the Temple to the one true God with its walls of gleaming white marble. Gold and silver decorations flashed in the sunlight and on a bright day forced onlookers to avert their gaze.

Built on an eminence extended by massive vaults, the Temple occupied a rectangular courtyard, thirty-five acres in area and a mile in circumference, and was lined with long, double-pillared colonnades in the Greek manner. In the center stood a tall building with turreted walls, which only Jews were allowed to enter. Here was a courtyard for women from which a flight of steps led through an arch into an area reserved for men, where they could witness sacrifices on a great altar. Beyond rose the Temple itself, a magnificent keeplike structure, one hundred feet high. Its façade was pierced by a great entranceway. Golden doors were shielded by a veil made from Babylonian tapestry of linen embroidered in blue, scarlet, and purple.

Inside was the Holy Place. This large room contained three fine works of art—a seven-branched lampstand, a table, and an altar for burning incense. The seven lamps represented the planets; twelve loaves on the table the circle of the zodiac and of the year; thirteen fragrant spices for the altar signified that all things were of God and for God. A small, lightless inner recess, measuring fifteen feet square, was
screened in the same way as the outer entrance by a veil. According to Josephus,

The original Temple had been destroyed in the sixth century
B.C
. when the Jews were exiled to Babylon, but was rebuilt on their return. Augustus appointed to the throne of Judaea a Hellenizing client king, Herod the Great, who commissioned a wholesale reconstruction on a much enlarged scale. This was one of the great construction projects of antiquity, and only now in the 60s
A
.
D
. was the new Temple finally approaching completion.

Judaea was an unhappy place at this time. The economy was weak and there were tensions between rich and poor. Political opinion was sharply divided and religious sects were at one another’s throats—among them the Sadducees, who monopolized the Temple management; the Pharisees, who were willing to render unto Caesar what was Caesar’s; and the ascetic Essenes, who believed that the end of the world was at hand and that Israel would be rescued from tyranny by a militant savior, or messiah.

The province was small, and Rome sent out only the incompetent or (at best) the third-rate as junior governors, or
procuratores
. A dispute about the civic status of the town of Caesarea led to disturbances. Heavy-handed measures in an attempt to restore order only made the situation worse. In May or June the young captain of the Temple (a post junior only to that of the high priest) persuaded the authorities to halt the then regular sacrifices for the emperor’s well-being. Gang warfare between opposing factions broke out. Leaders of those wanting to avoid war with Rome were killed. The rebels seized city and Temple and a small Roman garrison was massacred.

When the governor of the neighboring province of Syria heard the news of the revolt, he decided on a show of strength and marched down to Jerusalem with a sizable army. But after some indecisive skirmishing he saw that he did not have the resources to take the high-walled, well-defended
city, and withdrew. The rebels harried his columns and a retreat became something approaching a rout.

For the first time since the Babylonian captivity, Judaea was a free state.

In Rome, Nero was nervous. The Jewish revolt had to be put down firmly, but whom should he appoint to accomplish this? He was fearful of his generals and provincial governors: the larger the number of legions they commanded and the greater the luster of their victories, the more he suspected them of designs on the throne.

Nero found just the man he needed to recapture Judaea in Titus Flavius Vespasianus, or Vespasian. He had a number of useful qualifications. Most important of all, at fifty-eight he was approaching the end of a successful but not brilliant career. His family background was reassuringly humble and he would pose no political threat if victorious.

By June 67 Vespasian was in Ptolemais (today’s Acre or Akko) at the head of three legions. One of them was commanded by his son Titus, a dashing and handsome twenty-eight-year-old. Another was led by Marcus Ulpius Traianus, the father of the man who was to become Hadrian’s guardian in twenty years’ time. Young Trajan was around fourteen at the time, and probably accompanied his father on the campaign.

Vespasian proceeded south without undue speed toward Jerusalem, methodically capturing and securing every town and strongpoint in his way. A military incident from this time throws light on why the Spanish clan of the Ulpii were doing so well in the slippery world of Roman politics. Traianus was dispatched with a thousand horse and two thousand foot to reduce the large fortified village of Japha. This was not only in a naturally strong position, but was protected by a recently erected double ring of walls.

Luckily for Traianus, some of the inhabitants came out to offer battle, and the Romans charged and routed them. The rebels fled back into the first enclosure, closely pursued by Traianus’ legionaries, who followed them inside. In order to prevent a further break-in, the defenders in the inner enclosure closed the gates, but had to shut out not only the
Romans but also their own people. A swarming, desperate crowd banged on the gates and begged the sentinels by name to let them back in. Cooped up and huddled together, they were butchered to the last man. Josephus reports that, abandoned by their friends, they did not even have the heart to resist.

Traianus saw that Japha would soon fall, but instead of proceeding to an easy victory, he paused. He sent a message to Vespasian asking him to send his son to complete the siege. Titus arrived with reinforcements, and the place was captured in short order. Little wonder that father and son valued the services of a man who combined military expertise with the tact of a courtier.

The course of the campaign in Judaea was halted by the second great event that shaped Hadrian’s age. It was an upheaval that shook every part of the empire. A new civil war broke out, imperiling the stability of the entire grand enterprise.

Nero’s worst fears were eventually realized in 68. When some provincial governors rose against him, it was not merely he that was destroyed, but the dynasty too. If he had put up a fight, he might have won the day, but, too soon fearing the worst, he brought on the worst. Anathematized by the Senate and abandoned by all but a few followers, he fled. Suicide was his best option, but, although his pursuers were almost in sight, he could not bear to kill himself. He kept saying, “What an artist the world is losing!” Someone had to help Nero drive a dagger into his throat.

The four emperors after Augustus had all been his familial descendants and so, in a sense, had an entitlement to the purple. Now, with the fall of the
domus Caesarum
, there was no obvious candidate for the succession, simply claimants with soldiers to back them. The next eighteen months saw three men successively seize the purple—only to lose it and their lives. Roman legions fought each other in murderous battles. In Judaea, Vespasian watched the situation develop, and eventually decided to bid for the purple himself. Troops loyal to him captured Rome, and the latest imperial incumbent was put to death.

No one stood forward to challenge Vespasian, the fourth and final
pretender, and, to universal relief, peace returned. The Roman world had had a bad shock. However, it would be wrong to exaggerate. The storm was mercifully brief; peasant farmers in the Apennines, boatmen on the Nile, and fishermen in Attica were not greatly disturbed. Life went on. But much treasure had been wasted and many lives lost; the capital of the empire had been ablaze and blood let in its holy places.

With the elimination of the imperial system’s founding family, it was evident that some means had to be devised not only of ensuring a reliable succession from one emperor to another, but also of identifying a competent man for the job. Rome had had enough of unbalanced despots. When the next crisis came, when in due course another dynasty crashed, Hadrian would be a young man. He and his contemporaries were to look to the decision makers of the day to avoid the errors of the past.

Meanwhile, there was the Jewish revolt to crush. Before Vespasian set sail for Rome in 70 to establish the Flavian regime, he handed over command of four legions to Titus, to which were added auxiliaries and contingents contributed by client kings—all in all between thirty thousand and forty thousand men. He also appointed a
consilium
, or advisory committee, of tried-and-tested generals and politicians, probably including Traianus, who was relieved of his day-to-day duties as a legionary commander. This was wise, for Titus was dashing and brave, but sometimes careless.

Four years had passed since the insurgency had begun and an independent state had proudly come into being. The Jewish authorities struck their own fine silver coins and bronze small change, some of which have been unearthed by archaeologists: one of these, a silver shekel, bears the image of three pomegranates and the words
Jerusalem the holy
, and the obverse shows a chalice and the inscription
Shekel of Israel Year Two
. Other signs of a stable state include the minutiae of public administration, such as the continuation of the law courts and municipal arrangements for pauper burials.

However, the fighting among radicals continued and opposing factions controlled different parts of Jerusalem. With the return of the Romans they joined in mutually distrustful alliance and, whatever their
disagreements, resisted their besiegers with ferocity and ingenuity. When Titus rode out to reconnoiter the city’s defenses, he strayed a little too close to the walls and was nearly captured by a sudden sortie of enemy fighters.

He returned to his camp, shaken and now fully seized by the daunting challenge that awaited him. At first sight, Jerusalem appeared impregnable. The walls of the old city (what were called the Upper Town and the Lower Town) stood on the top of sheer cliffs and on the east side overlooked a valley: the Temple itself rose up like a citadel and was defended by a huge four-turreted fort, built by Herod the Great and named the Antonia in honor of his friend Mark Antony.

The weakest part of the city’s defenses was the third wall, around suburbs, and this was where Titus planned the first attack. Battering rams, protected by an artillery barrage from stone-throwing
ballistae
designed to clear defenders from the walls, took two weeks to create a breach. The rebels rallied and counterattacked, but gradually the Romans overturned every obstacle placed in their way.

At last Titus faced the culminating test—how to take the Antonia. The rebels tunneled out from the fort beneath Titus’ siege towers, set alight the pit props and other combustible material, and withdrew. The towers collapsed in a blaze of flames.

A quite unexpected occurrence followed. The Antonia itself suddenly collapsed, destabilized by the tunneling. For all the rebels’ efforts, the Romans slowly advanced, fighting every inch of the way through the Temple, both sides setting parts of it alight. Finally, a legionary flung a piece of burning timber through a gold-plated window into the central Temple complex. Its sacred contents were looted, and then the Holy Place and the innermost recess, the empty Holy of Holy, burned to the ground.

Titus razed what was left of the Temple and gave his soldiers leave to burn and sack the city. Tacitus estimated the Jewish body count at 600,000, which seems high; but clearly casualties were very numerous. Titus took the veil from the entrance to the Holy of Holy and hung it in his palace.

To underline the fact that the Temple no longer existed and would not be rebuilt, the tax levied on Jews everywhere for its upkeep was replaced
by a poll tax payable to a new
fiscus Judaicus
, or Jewish Treasury, in Rome.

Awards and honors were distributed. Traianus’s services as a legionary commander and later on the general’s
consilium
had been exemplary, for about the time of, or shortly after, the fall of Jerusalem he was made a patrician. This was a glittering prize indeed for a provincial from Spain: patricians were Rome’s oldest nobility—descended, legend had it, from the original members of the Senate as first established in the time of the kings. Promotion to patrician status indicated very high favor with the emperor.