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[325]
By these persuasions, which they used to the multitude and to the
seditious, they restrained some by threatenings, and others by the reverence
that was paid them. After this they led them out, and they met the soldiers
quietly, and after a composed manner, and when they were come up with them,
they saluted them; but when they made no answer, the seditious exclaimed
against Florus, which was the signal given for falling upon them. The soldiers
therefore encompassed them presently, and struck them with their clubs;
and as they fled away, the horsemen trampled them down, so that a great
many fell down dead by the strokes of the Romans, and more by their own
violence in crushing one another. Now there was a terrible crowding about
the gates, and while every body was making haste to get before another,
the flight of them all was retarded, and a terrible destruction there was
among those that fell down, for they were suffocated, an broken to pieces
by the multitude of those that were uppermost; nor could any of them be
distinguished by his relations in order to the care of his funeral; the
soldiers also who beat them, fell upon those whom they overtook, without
showing them any mercy, and thrust the multitude through the place called
Bezetha, 1
as they forced their way, in order to get in and seize upon the temple,
and the tower Antonia. Florus also being desirous to get those places into
his possession, brought such as were with him out of the king's palace,
and would have compelled them to get as far as the citadel [Antonia;] but
his attempt failed, for the people immediately turned back upon him, and
stopped the violence of his attempt; and as they stood upon the tops of
their houses, they threw their darts at the Romans, who, as they were sorely
galled thereby, because those weapons came from above, and they were not
able to make a passage through the multitude, which stopped up the narrow
passages, they retired to the camp which was at the palace.
1 I take this Bezetha to be that small hill adjoining to the north side of the temple, whereon was the hospital with five porticoes or cloisters, and beneath which was the sheep pool of Bethesda; into which an angel or messenger, at a certain season, descended, and where he or they who were the "first put into the pool" were cured, John 5:1 etc. This situation of Bezetha, in Josephus, on the north side of the temple, and not far off the tower Antonia, exactly agrees to the place of the same pool at this day; only the remaining cloisters are but three. See Maundrel, p. 106. The entire buildings seem to have been called the New City, and this part, where was the hospital, peculiarly Bezetha or Bethesda. See ch. 19. sect. 4.
Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
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