The Atlas

THE HILL OF GOLD

Now Eleazar went down to the Elders, for all Rome, as it seemed, had come against them to take Masada.²And the Elders were glad of his coming, and the Rabbis also resorted to him, for upon their hearts were shadows darker than the Dead Sea. ³And the fighters lifted their eyes and watched his passing. ⁴Then they turned their heads to study once again how the Roman armies did draw slowly closer. ⁵And the Elders awaited Eleazar on the middle terrace of Herod's northern palace where it was cold and shady and sandy. ⁶(But the women waited with the little ones where the pale rock had been hollowed out into ritual baths.)

7 And Eleazar said: Have you heard the news from Jerusalem?

8 And the Elders said: We saw a spy come to you, and the spy was weeping.

9 Eleazar said: Jerusalem is perished, and we alone are left of the Jewish nation.¹⁰The Temple is no more.

11 Then the Elders burst into lamentation and rent their clothes in pieces, and their hearts were overthrown with sorrow. ¹²And the women listened, but could not hear the cause, so they crouched in silence, waiting to learn whether they should scream.

13 And Eleazar said: 'Tis well that we've repaired this old stronghold, and increased our walls towards Heaven, and bolted our gates with the strongest bolts. ¹⁴Because now the conquerors of Jerusalem turn to us. ¹⁵And belike they are saying to one another: This Masada is but a tomb that the Jews have built for themselves.

16 And the eyes of Eleazar were as sinister cavities. ¹⁷And a craven man who'd drunk of fear went rushing toward the women's place, and no one said him nay. ¹⁸The others sat on, and waited until they heard the women begin to scream.

19 Then Eleazar said: Now the worst is told. ²⁰But even if Jerusalem is finished, still we have our Laws. ²¹And Masada is our rock of honor. ²²In Herodium and Machaerus a few brave comrades hold out. ²³Remain of good heart. ²⁴I shall lead you until the end. ²⁵And perhaps we can prevail even now, for who knows what the Lord has written?

26 Then the Elders raised their voices to reply, and said: Fight our battles, and all that you command we promise to accomplish.

27 And the Rabbis likewise became glad, saying: Now God will show His power to these Gentiles. ²⁸God can defend one against a thousand. ²⁹So we have no fear.

30 And in the Dry Hours, when they spied the Romans sleeping, they prayed among the pillars of the synagogue, requesting the Lord to send them relief; yea, they prayed beneath the harsh dark sky.

2 But it was as Eleazar said: Who knows the ways of God? — ²In the Book of Chronicles 'tis written that King David and all Israel assembled to bring the sacred Ark from Kiriathjearim, and one whose name was Uzzah pressed his palms against the Ark, because the oxen had stumbled and he feared the Ark would fall. ³What else should he have done? ⁴But God raged, and Uzzah died. ⁵This is why the proverb goes: The mind of the righteous ponders how to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things. ⁶Such are the ways of God.

3 In the first year the Romans could not take Masada, there being but one way up that Hill of Gold, and that was the Serpentine Path, above which Eleazar's soldiers waited with their boulders and cauldrons of pitch. ²And their cavalry and picked troops did not yet assault that place, because Flavius Silva, the Procurator of that province, had set them to harrying the land far and wide, robbing, raping and killing, so that the Jews would never dare to rebel again. ³And Eleazar came down from Masada many times with his Zealots, and whenever his spies found Romans he came upon them by night, sparing none whom God had delivered into his power. ⁴So the Romans were discontented. ⁵And that first year passed. ⁶At the dawn of the second year, Eleazar went to the Elders and the Rabbis who awaited him on the middle terrace. ⁷And Eleazar said: Have you heard the news from Herodium and Machaerus?

8 And the Elders said: We saw a spy come to you, and the spy was shaking with fear.

9 Eleazar said: Herodium is perished, and Machaerus overrun. ¹⁰The defenders are dead or given to the torture of chains. ¹¹Their wives have become Roman concubines, and their children beg for bread.

12 Then the Elders groaned. ¹³And the Rabbis called upon the Lord to witness their sorrow, and the Lord gazed down upon them.

14 Then Eleazar said: But still we have our Laws. ¹⁵Our oil continues sweet, and our wine is not yet vinegar. ¹⁶The locusts have not found our grain.

17 Then the Elders said: You who are the son of a Rabbi, according to your wisdom do we continue our rebellion?

18 He answered: Purify yourselves, and celebrate our resolution with joy. ¹⁹Tomorrow I shall order that the gate be opened, and I shall lead a hundred men down the Serpentine Path to kill Romans in the night. ²⁰Blessed be the Lord, whose goodness never fails the people of Israel. ²¹We can prevail even now. ²²He will give us courage to live without dishonor on our hill of gold, high above the pollutions of the land.

23 And in the Dry Hours, while the Romans slept, the defenders prayed together, humbling themselves in sackcloth and strewing ashes upon their heads.

24 So the Jews yet defended Masada. ²⁵And they worshiped before the Lord, fearing only Him; but that could not save them, for it was already the will of the Lord that they be slain. ²⁶And still they withstood all the Romans' force and might and treachery.

4 Now at the dawn of the third year Flavius Silva received instructions from Vespasian Emperor of Rome to carry out the destruction of Masada, so he brought together his captains according to the knowledge that was in his heart; ²and he picked men of the Tenth Legion along with many Jewish slaves and prisoners of war, and he assembled them and formed them in ranks, and he put them under oath and armed them, ³and they set out across the desert, with the Jewish captives bearing water. ⁴And on the march many Jews died. ⁵But Flavius said: If thirst slays them now, we need not slay them later. ⁶And he led under his command fifteen thousand cavalrymen, legionnaires, infantrymen and engineers. ⁷And the number of slaves and prisoners who carried water for them was ten thousand.

8 Now Flavius Silva acted according to the Emperor's command. ⁹And he walked around the Golden Hill with his engineers, stalking victory like a lion. ¹⁰Then he built eight camps and fortified them well, for he gave orders wisely, so that none of his words fell to the ground. ¹¹And his engineers set the slaves to building a siege wall whose thickness was as the height of a tall man, and many of the slaves died, but Flavius Silva only laughed, for although he did not know Him, the Lord guarded his feet. ¹²This wall entirely encircled Masada, and its length was more than seven thousand cubits, and it bore twelve towers.

5Eleazar went to the Elders and the Rabbis who awaited him on the middle terrace. ²And Eleazar said: There is no news. ³The Romans have killed our spy. ⁴Or, if news there be, I think your eyes can tell it to you. — ⁵And he pointed to the west, where the Romans had brought in engineers to build a ramp, in order to bypass the Serpentine Path. ⁶And at the summit of the ramp the Romans were building a siege tower sixty cubits high, reinforced with iron. ⁷And from this tower they launched stones and arrows against the Jews, and from underneath it the Jewish prisoners were commanded by Flavius Silva to charge against the walls of Masada with a battering ram; and those who refused were crucified until they died with swollen faces. ⁸And this time the craven man did not run, and the women did not scream, because it was as Eleazar said. ⁹This was not news. ¹⁰And the Elders were silent.

11 Then Eleazar said: But still we have our Laws. ¹²And who knows what the Lord has written?

13 But the Elders did not take heart. ¹⁴Then the Rabbis assembled them in the synagogue. ¹⁵They prayed that their dear ones not become carrion and whores and slaves. ¹⁶They prayed that their altar not be profaned. ¹⁷They fasted one and all until the soldiers could scarcely lift their spears. ¹⁸And the Lord looked down upon their affliction.

6Now the battering ram of the Romans breached the wall with a hideous clash, and the children started weeping, and the Rabbis called upon the Lord God while the women drew wine and water from the cisterns and poured it out before the Lord; but Eleazar with all the men built two walls of stout timber at the breach, and they packed earth in between. ²And after this the Roman missiles only compressed the earth to a superior hardness, so that the enemy could make no shift against Masada. ³Then the people praised Eleazar. ⁴But the sound of the battle was like thunder; and the craven man howled. ⁵And the soldiers lay day and night in their trenches, and the women and children carried water to them and brought them stones to launch against the Romans. ⁶So the Romans grew weary and filled with fear, because they could not conquer that last stronghold of the Jews. ⁷And they began to whisper against their governor, Flavius Silva. ⁸But came the close of the third year, in the month called Xanthicus, when the wide gray siege ramp stretched like one of those tendons between neck and shoulder, ⁹Eleazar son of Ananias went to the Elders and Rabbis who awaited him on the middle terrace. ¹⁰And Eleazar said: The Romans are preparing fire. — ¹¹And from below they heard Flavius Silva shout in a terrifying voice: Launch the burning arrows! — ¹²And the arrows came with a noise like hornets, and there were many of them, and their heads were smeared with burning pitch. ¹³And they lodged in the outermost of the two wooden walls which Eleazar had built, and it caught fire. ¹⁴When the defenders sought to save their wall, the Romans launched great stones which smashed the skulls of many brave men. ¹⁵And the craven man screamed until the people covered their ears, and then Eleazar slew him with a sword. ¹⁶And the fire destroyed the wall, and the earth tumbled out like entrails from the belly of a pregnant woman who is disembowelled by conquerors; ¹⁷and the Romans exulted, ¹⁸but then the wind changed and blew the flames back toward the siege tower, which began to smoke. ¹⁹Now the Romans shouted in fear, and the Rabbis praised God; and then the wind changed again. ²⁰Then the Romans took heart, and compelled their Jewish slaves to quell the fire in the siege tower; and afterwards launched another volley of arrows to set afire the second wall. ²¹And the Jews cried out. ²²Then the Romans called upon them to surrender, and the Jews were silent. ²³After this they heard the Romans laughing, and then the Romans went down to their camps to sleep. ²⁴And Eleazar said: Tomorrow they will conquer this place and bring us into shame.

25 And the Elders said: We must go to the temple to pray.

7Now Eleazar mustered all the people together, to see how many had survived. ²And he counted nine hundred and sixty souls at Masada, but many were wounded and defiled with blood. ³And some were fearful and others remained as steadfast as stone; and they all prostrated themselves through the Dry Hours of that last evening. ⁴And they became very faint. ⁵And they abased themselves in the inner chamber, and the Rabbis led them in entreaties for God's mercy upon themselves and their inheritance. ⁶Their hearts were as deep and dank as the Western Wall's great cistern, whose stairs went interminably down into a slit of darkness; and in the slit one saw other stairs descending into an immense bubble of golden dirt bearing black and white stain-continents.⁷The pigeons which nested in the ceiling cooed, and their echoings seemed demonic and far away. ⁸In their prison of fear the people were shut away from the stars. ⁹Their sorrow scorched them with darkness, and their prayers were appalled. ¹⁰Then at last Eleazar stood up, and put his hand upon the shoulder of the Chief Rabbi. ¹¹And most wearily he spoke to the people the words of Judith the daughter of Merari the son of Ox: Do not try to bind the purposes of the Lord our God, for God is not like man, to be threatened, nor like a human being, to be won over by pleading.

12 Then the people were silent, but the Elders said: What would you have us do?

13 And Eleazar prayed to the Lord. ¹⁴Then he rose and said: We must kill ourselves, so that the Romans cannot work their will upon us. ¹⁵And we must do it quickly, for at dawn they come.

16 The Elders had grown accustomed to walk in his ways, and so they said: You speak from a true heart.

17 But the people cried out then, because they saw the approach

of their deaths.* ¹⁸Yet the other way, of awaiting the Roman legions in their terrifying armor, that they likewise dared not take. ¹⁹So they bowed down and were pale. ²⁰But at last they said: Behold, we are your flesh, and the bones of your flesh. ²¹We do as you will.

8 Then said Eleazar: I am glad. ²The Lord called my death from the womb; behold, it is born; it is here. ³He pulled your deaths from His quiver, my brothers and sisters; behold, they come speeding hither. ⁴We are rebels to the Romans, but we cannot rebel against the grave. ⁵We shall not be confounded; and this night we'll find respite from our sighs.

6 Now they kindled tall flames to burn their houses and treasures, and the women made their hearts as pale blue as the Dead Sea. ⁷But the children said: Mother, why do you throw my pretty things in the fire? ⁸Father, why do you set our house alight? ⁹But their parents would not answer. ¹⁰Thus they destroyed the toil of their hands, and all that had been handed down to them, in order to baffle the Romans' greed. ¹¹But their stores of food, oil and wine they piled in the middle of the square, so that the Romans would see that their siege had failed to starve them. ¹²Then they went into the night to slay themselves.

13 Weeping, the men of Masada embraced their wives and children, stabbing them one by one; and thus they made of their dear ones offerings to the Lord. ¹⁴Then these self-made widowers formed themselves in squads often, as was their wont when they went down to fight with the Romans. ¹⁵And they cast lots, thereby choosing one man out of each ten to slay the others. ¹⁶Thus they died, all on the same night together. ¹⁷And at last there was but one man left upon Masada the Hill of Gold. ¹⁸And he passed through the smoking houses, and he searched the rooms of the ruined palace to make certain that all were dead. ¹⁹Then he set the palace on fire and leaped onto his sword. ²⁰And when the Romans breached the charred walls at dawn and came upon the Jews, and when they saw that they were dead by their own hand, all expressed admiration for their defiance, even their governor, Flavius Silva.

9 But it must be told that two women and five children were still alive. .

[The Hebrew text breaks off here.]

* Some modem commentators have suggested that they specifically feared the intentions of Eleazar, who was known to have killed so many persons, Romans and Jews alike, including even Menachem ben Judah, the hero who'd slaughtered the Roman garrison at Masada seven years past, at the very beginning of the Rebellion. The tale goes that shortly before Jerusalem fell, Menachem ben Judah found Eleazar's father, Ananias the High Priest, in a state of terror at the impending Roman victory, for which he killed him — an act which Eleazar avenged.

And all this I entombed in my heart, burying it deep in my heart's four chambers. And the chambers of my heart are called Courage, Fortitude, Righteousness and Sacrifice. But although I have applied my mind to have these things, although they are engraved in the doorways of my heart, I do not possess them. In defiance of God I seek most vainly to prolong my life. And when righteousness calls me to ascend the Serpentine Path, my fear whispers that I shall never come down living from the Hill of Gold. And when courage bids me rise up against tyrants, my fear speaks in a soft low voice, bidding me bow down to wickedness, that I might accept the bribe of my life. And when fortitude commands me to offer my throat to the blade of pain, my fear shows me the way of hiding, there in the manmade wells and bubbles in the rock of the tanner's shop. And when sacrifice summons me away from the sweetness of the light, then my fear pains me like the stinging salts of the Dead Sea.

I am a woman with child, and I do not want to die.

God listened, and said to her: Go, and eat the bread of your life, my sad young maid. Lift up your heart, and await the coming of the enemy. They will be easy with you, on account of the others who have died. They will weep tears of pity, and your slavery will be light.

And I myself, neither man nor woman, but only scribe long dead, my flesh long turned to crackly old leaves, imagine how if this woman could have chosen her own Hill of Gold there would have been no Eleazar whom she feared (although the Hebrew sources report that she was his kinswoman), no Serpentine Path, just an empty white walk studded with light, and trees at regular intervals, then a road roofed with branches, a giant palm, then lights set into the steep coast of night, the sound of a girl singing eerily to herself, silence, and then people calling far away, a barking dog, the smell of the cold sea. The girl sang again, two notes; perhaps she was only calling to the other woman, who it is written was old, or to one of the five children who hid and feared. Her echo rose into the black heavens.

Let the Hill of Gold become some sunny rock of trees and white houses.

Two girls (let them both be that; nobody likes to be old), one in a sweater, one in a jacket, arms linked at the elbow, promenaded back and forth along the terraced way until a school of other shouting girls swept them up. They all ran down to the sea, where the cacti had legs like crossbreeds of spiders and artichokes. There was a shimmering wall of pines between cliff-stairs and the sea. They had never seen death and wanted to go dancing. That night their lovers would come on the ferry. They'd go with them hand in hand between tree-swellings and turquoise water and white cliffs to the tree-haired Arco Naturel, which has several shining sea-holes where some of them would make love; others would descend as far as the Grotta Matrimonia, that gigantic hollow in the earth like a drained boil; and as the boys they'd chosen gripped their breasts, they'd lie looking upward at the chalky ceiling studded with pale stones like jewels of baseness; perhaps for a moment they'd feel uneasy, almost remembering the cisterns of Masada where they'd hid while above them the ones they loved died praying and bleeding; they'd gasp in the boys' arms, then afterwards grow shy and run ahead up the trail into a steep thicket from which the narrow white crags burst up. All the girls met here every morning to dream of boys together amidst the leafy reaches of golden buds and lilies. The boys came running after them, pounding up the old Roman road. A gull rose and fell in the shade of the steep bay. The boys were searching, but they couldn't find them; the girls knew this secret place so well. They watched the boys coming from far down the treepacked cliff where grottos spat out ocean from their crusted lips; and they giggled. It was almost dawn. They almost didn't want the boys to find them. It was their last night together. Tomorrow morning they would leave this thicket of rosemary, emerging from their wall of white boulders bulging with cacti in whose crotches were birds' nests and balls of pine needles; and they would go down to the sea to get married. After that they would never meet again. Some would go with their husbands to live in Rome. Others would set up house in Napoli or Firenze or even far Catania. They'd never again gaze together at those rocks like icebergs in the dark sea, those ocean-stones whirl-kissed by eddies and fan-shaped waves. That is why, succumbing to the promptings of history, I now introduce to these pages the apostate Josephus Flavius, who was not a Zealot, and held out in a cave with many other men when the Romans came. The Jews in that cave had proposed to stab themselves, but Josephus convinced them it would be less of a sin if they killed each other. Better yet, he contrived to be at the end of the line. Ah, Josephus, how I love you, for you loved life! You were good to yourself; you despised that monstrosity called High Principle. When all but he and one other man were dead, he persuaded his companion to surrender at his side. What happened to Josephus's friend I don't know, but Josephus (who wrote our best extant account of the Jewish War, always glorifying himself and the Romans) was dragged before Vespasian in heavy chains. Because he prophesied with a sycophant's urgency that Vespasian would soon be Emperor, he kept his life and in due time even became rich and free. His first two wives had abandoned him. He married a nice girl in Rome and later left her for a Cretan belle… So I wonder: Would the two young women who hid from their fate have played the same game that Josephus did (excluding from their hearts, of course, his own reptilian selfishness)? I can almost hear them laughingly urging their sisters down the hill, gently coaxing and swaying them ahead, until they were the only two left; and then they slipped away to be virgins together forever. — No, I don't think so. — Now the heads of the boys rose above the heads of pine trees, gazing down from the crags. From the shade of a white crag, boys came running, bearing their sweethearts a glorious hellfire of blue flowers. They pulled their true loves away from the other girls, took them swimming in green water with reddish stones underneath, white gulls overhead like whitecaps. The girls whispered: I love you so. . — Why did they weep when they said it? Did they truly long to flee the empty sea-horizon, running back up the tree-frizzed slopes their bare feet knew so well, meeting other girls above the white cliffs? Now it was dawn, the low white wall of windows and arches at the water's edge cliffs not white yet, but purplish-gray, the other ferries white, whitest of all the hydrofoil's wake. The boys took them by the hand. The girls kissed their mothers and fathers goodbye forever. Their husbands had already bought them ferry tickets. And the island quickly became a lump of rocky cloud in the sky, stretching its coast off long and low until it fell off the edge of the world.