Scourge of Rome

XLI

As a courtesy of war, Titus ordered Josephus to circle the city and give the Judaean defenders one final opportunity to surrender. The offer surprised Valerius as much as any of the commander’s officers. Their enemies were rebels who had defied the rule of Rome and there was an argument that the normal rules of war didn’t apply.

The next day Josephus had his white horse saddled, and, dressed in his finest robes, rode from point to point shouting his exhortations. As Valerius later heard it, his call was less a plea to give up and save the thousands of innocents trapped in Jerusalem than a reminder of the terrible fate awaiting them when it fell. Since no guarantees accompanied the offer, it seemed likely to make them fight all the harder. Even his suggestion that the defenders execute his family – his mother, father and brother remained in the city – if it made them more amenable to the right decision, was more ritual than a genuine proposal.

Whatever the truth of it, the response from the Zealots and their allies came in rocks, one of which knocked him from his horse, a barrage of jeers and several anatomically impossible recommendations. There would be no surrender.

In the days before the assault a mixture of grim determination, fatalism and excitement grew in the legionary camps on the broken ground once occupied by the New City. Every man knew the day of reckoning was close. Valerius, disguised in his general’s armour, rode ceaselessly across the Mount of Olives and across the ridge adjoining the Cedron valley supervising the preparations.

Lepidus had overcome his doubts about the attack. This would be no feint. ‘Titus may think everything will go his way,’ he told Valerius, ‘but circumstances change in war. If I’m going to ask these men to die, it will be in an attack that means something. If we fail, and against these walls that’s not unlikely, we fail because the Judaean defences were too strong, not because we made a half-hearted attempt.’

Two ramps had been built to take a pair of siege towers up to the walls of the Antonia fortress. To these, Lepidus added a third which would threaten the north-east corner of the temple. He hoped this would minimize the threat to the left flank of his attack on the Antonia, exposed as it was to missiles from the temple’s north wall.

From his viewpoint on the Mount of Olives, Valerius could see how difficult it would be to take the fortress by direct attack. The rectangular fortification, with a massive tower at each of its four corners, stood on a rock perhaps fifty cubits high. Its south wall abutted the temple, and the city’s second wall abutted the fort’s north-east tower, making it impossible to outflank. To offset this, Lepidus had added his own feint: what would appear to be a direct attack on the temple itself.

A covered battering ram backed up by the four cohorts of the Twelfth legion would attack the city’s East Gate. Of all Jerusalem’s numerous gates this appeared to offer the most direct access, but all was not as it seemed. Zacharias had revealed that Jerusalem’s finest masons had walled it up to a depth of eight feet and it was actually stronger than the wall itself.

All the preparations were carried out in full view of the Judaeans. The original purpose remained to draw men away from Titus’s attack, but Lepidus still had some hopes of success.

‘See how the ramps allow the siege towers to top not only the walls, but the two towers of the Antonia fortress. They are strong and the Judaeans will fight to the last, but there is space for only a limited number of defenders. If we can get enough men on to the fighting platforms and bridge the gap we could take one tower or possibly both. Once we have the towers, the fortress will follow.’

Valerius wasn’t so certain, but this wasn’t his fight and he wouldn’t say anything to contradict Lepidus. He spent the night before the assault wide awake, more concerned for the men who would do the attacking at dawn than he’d ever been for himself. Lepidus’s force consisted of five thousand of his own legionaries, plus two thousand from the Twelfth and ten cohorts of auxiliaries. The auxiliary infantry would only be used to exploit any success, but the archers would be more useful. Lepidus decided to position them in one of the few remaining areas of the New City still standing, to the north of the temple. From there, the Emesan marksmen would be able to pick off any defender who showed himself on the temple walls or the Antonia. The legate had already sent them out into the night so they’d be in position to cover the attack at first light.

In the hour before dawn, Valerius could hear the rustling of hundreds of legionaries moving into their pre-planned positions. It was accompanied by the faint chink of metal on metal, the rattle of a shield falling and the mumbled apology as one man ran into another, the hoarse, whispered curse of a centurion for one of the irredeemably clumsy fools under his command. Then, what passed for silence: the hushed, almost imperceptible hiss that might have been a light breeze passing over the leaves of a beech wood, but was actually the sound of a thousand men breathing; the shuffle of a nervous horse’s hooves in the dust; the distant rumble of thunder that was the sound of his own pounding blood; and the buzz of a million bees that marked the precise moment less than a mile away when a city came awake in fear of what the new day would bring.

In truth, there was little need for silence. When the legionaries marched down the treacherous incline of the Cedron slope they’d appear as moving shadows in the first sullen, lead-grey light of the dawn. A few minutes later the rising sun would pick out the eagle, and the cohort standards of the individual units. No blasts of the trumpet to herald the advance of the Tenth. Lepidus had ordered that they march in silence until the enemy responded, the better to convey the uncompromising menace that was a legion’s indelible stamp. When it rose, the sun would also light upon the glittering magnificence of the army’s commander, twinkling on the ornate breastplate and the golden lions on his helmet. Valerius gentled Lunaris and tried to suppress the frustration he felt. What was he but an ornament, with no authority and no purpose other than to gull the enemy.

But he was a soldier. This was the position Titus had assigned him, and he would obey.

When he judged it was light enough for him to be seen, Lepidus raised a hand and every eye within sight turned to him. The hand dropped, and with a crunch of hobnailed sandals four of Lepidus’s fourteen cohorts moved steadily down the slope, their pace set by the gradient of the uneven ground ahead.

Four hundred and eighty men to a cohort, marching in compact formations twelve men wide and forty deep. Each man took up a little more than three feet, so the cohort covered an area of fourteen paces by forty. From the hill they appeared as a shadow flowing smoothly across the earth, but Valerius knew they would be jostling, shoving, tripping and cursing as they stumbled into each other down the hillside.

A horn sounded from the city; a mighty blast as if the Judaean god had woken from his slumber and placed his own lips to the mouthpiece. The sound was accompanied by a sullen roar as the defenders of Jerusalem moved into their positions.

From the valley below came an enormous animal grunt as the men tasked with moving the three siege towers put their weights on the ropes and timbers. The rebels had attacked the towers three times over the past two days, but the big siege engines had survived and now they were less than fifty paces from their objectives. Valerius heard Lepidus muttering to himself close by, but it was impossible to tell whether it was a prayer or a curse.

A rush of disturbed air announced the arrival of the first Judaean missile, a boulder from an onager on the north tower of the Antonia fortress. It landed between two cohorts with an ear-splitting crack that spread a ray of jagged rock splinters. The projectile did no material damage but every man in the attacking cohorts hunched his shoulders behind his shield as if that would make him a smaller target. In seconds the air was filled with flying death and Valerius flinched as a shield-splitter bolt dissected the space between himself and Lepidus. Fortunately, the Judaean aim was usually more inaccurate. Though he saw one boulder strike carve a lane through the Third cohort in a spray of scarlet, most projectiles flew high or wide. He’d heard rumours of Roman deserters manning the Judaean catapults, but the gods be thanked none of them appeared to be on the east wall.

The four attacking cohorts reached the valley bottom and their big curved shields rose as they came within spear and slingshot range of the temple walls. Lepidus rapped out an order and his signaller blew a long blast on his cornu to send in the next six cohorts. Three would reinforce the assault on the Antonia fortress while the others moved against the north-east angle of the temple.

By now Valerius could see the legionaries marching across the shattered foundations of the outer wall and into the New City. Hundreds of Judaean warriors stood on the temple rampart hurling spears, rocks and darts; anything that would kill or maim an enemy.

‘Now,’ Lepidus whispered.

The Emesan archers rose from their hides among the abandoned buildings to sweep the rampart clear with arrows. The respite allowed the attackers to pour forward into the massive siege towers as their comrades hauled the giant structures the final few paces up the ramps to their target.

As the first legionaries reached the top of the tower it seemed Lepidus had been right and they must prevail. Moments later Valerius saw the familiar bright flare of yellow as the Judaeans hurled flaming oil to incinerate the first men who appeared on the fighting platform. A burning man plunged a hundred feet like an obscene shooting star to disappear among his comrades massed at the base of the towers.

Valerius had almost forgotten Titus was due to begin his assault on the second wall. Now he heard a subdued murmur and cries of alarm from within the city and understood it had already begun. For a moment his thoughts were with Titus and Serpentius, but his attention quickly returned closer to home.

Diagonally to his left the third siege tower had reached the point where the soaring temple wall turned towards the Antonia tower. Here, it was clear there had been some kind of miscalculation. The fighting platform of the tower should have overlooked the enemy parapet, so the attackers could fire down on to the Judaeans. Instead, the defenders had the height advantage by a few feet and they took advantage by hurling wave after wave of missiles into the men below. Valerius winced as he imagined the butchery on that blood-slick platform as the centurions propelled man after man into the slaughter when his predecessors fell.

He heard Lepidus curse and turned to him. ‘At least they’re dying for something,’ he consoled the legate. ‘They’ll draw defenders away from the main attack.’

But Lepidus’s attention was on the base of the tower.

The siege ramp to the temple walls had been completed during the night and should have been well guarded in the hours before dawn. But the Judaeans had either slipped through or tunnelled their way beneath the foundations. Almost wearily at first, the enormous tower the ramp supported began to tilt, picking up speed as men plunged helpless from its upper works. Too late, those at the base dived for safety in fear of being crushed. Valerius would swear he felt the ground shake as the massive siege engine crashed from the ramp on to the rocks below. Inside the shattered compartments, hundreds of men would be dead, dying, maimed and trapped, while their comrades fought their way towards the nearest escape route. But their ordeal had only begun.

On the walls above great vats of oil had been bubbling away ready to be ignited and thrown on to the attackers. Now the rebels rushed the vats to the parapet and men ignored terrible burns to manhandle them over the edge. Cascades of flame streamed down the walls with a terrible apocalyptic beauty, but the horror they caused among the wreckage was unimaginable. Liquid fire poured through great rents in the protective animal hide to incinerate the men inside and set the timbers alight. For the rest of his days Valerius would never forget the screams of men being roasted alive.

‘Send a message that the second and third cohorts should join the attack on the Antonia.’ Lepidus’s voice shook with emotion as he gave the order. ‘The others can concentrate on rescuing anything that’s left alive. Have the artillery concentrate their efforts on the north wall.’

Lepidus continued the attack all morning, rotating his formations in and out of the siege towers as they tired or became depleted. He’d long since given up any idea of capturing the Antonia, but he was determined to give Titus every ounce of support. Just before the sun reached its zenith he alerted Valerius to a curious ceremony on the parapet above the smouldering ruin of the siege tower.

‘What do you make of that?’

One after the other the Judaeans brought ten men to the wall and cast their bodies over the edge. Valerius winced as ropes knotted around their necks jerked tight a few feet below the parapet leaving them twitching and clawing at their throats for a few agonizing moments. Only the last appeared to be already dead before they pushed his body into the void. A square of white stood out sharply on each victim’s chest, but the final man’s was a stark contrast to the red stain where it appeared his captors had cut his throat.

‘Deserters,’ Valerius ventured. ‘Or prisoners they can no longer afford to feed?’ Still, the sight stirred a feeling in him he couldn’t quite identify. It wasn’t pity. More a sense of unease.

He cast an occasional troubled glance towards the grisly decoration hanging on the temple wall until Lepidus wearily announced that his men had done enough for now. The decision coincided with an enormous muffled roar that made the two men exchange a tired smile. Valerius reached out to clap the legate on the shoulder.

‘They’ve done more than enough, Aulus,’ he said. ‘Unless I’m mistaken that is the sound of victory. Titus must have broken through.’

‘Then they must fight on,’ Lepidus sighed, ‘because if Titus is right they’ll be investing the fortress from inside the city within the hour.’

In the general euphoria it went almost unnoticed that the Judaeans had cut the hanging bodies free to plunge into the Cedron gorge. Valerius frowned when he saw the empty wall. Very gradually the significance of the timing dawned upon him.

‘I need those bodies, Lepidus, and quickly.’

Lepidus rapped out an order to send a century to recover the dead men. Thirty minutes later a procession of legionaries returned carrying their lifeless burdens. One by one they set the bodies in front of the legate. ‘This man’s sign says he is “Judas, a traitor to his people”,’ a man who could read Hebrew pointed out. ‘They mutilated him before they hanged him. I would guess the others will be the same.’

But Valerius only had eyes for the man whose stained chest turned out to be a flaming red beard. Zacharias’s killers had cut out his tongue, and Valerius hoped it had happened after he died. A thrill of fear ran through him.

‘We have to get a message to Titus. On no account is he to enter the city.’

But even as he voiced the thought, he knew it was too late.