ss of the world. With
little military organization or training, divided by factions and torn
asunder by internal dissensions, they yet dared to defy the mighty power
of Rome. They defeated the ill-starred expedition of Cestius Gallus, and
inflicted upon the Roman arms the most terrible disgrace they had ever
endured in the East. But the triumph was short-lived; a terrible revenge
was at hand. It was in this year, A.D. 70, that Titus laid siege to the
city. At the time, its population was swollen ten or twenty-fold by the
pilgrims attending the Passover. The reserves of food were destroyed in
faction fights even before the Romans arrived outside the city walls.
"Of all wretched and bloody sieges in the world's history, few, if any,
have been more wretched or more bloody than the siege of Jerusalem by
Titus. Fierce and bloody as was the fighting, the deaths from sickness
and famine were yet more terrible. Dead bodies were thrown out into the
valleys, where they lay rotting, a loathsome mass. The number of those
who died in the siege were estimated at 600,000. At night, miserable,
starving wretches would steal into the ravines to gather roots for food;
here they were pounced upon by ambushed Romans and crucified by hundreds
next morning in full view of the battlements."[5] Gradually the
assaulting Romans got possession of portions of the city, yet the
portions still uncaptured refused to surrender, their defenders still
hoping against hope for a divine intervention, as in the days of
Sennacherib. At length the city fell. The Romans, pouring in, began by
slaying indiscriminately. Tiring of butchery, they turned their thoughts
to plunder, but stood aghast at the houses filled with dead and
putrefying corpses. The Temple of Herod was burnt, the city was
desolate, while those whose miseries had not been relieved by death,
were carried away into yet more miserable slavery or to a death more
ignominious at Rome. As a Jewish city, Jerusalem had perished for ever.

Sixty years later, Jerusalem was rebuilt by the Emperor Hadrian. He
resolved to suppress altogether the troublesome and turbulent Judaism.
The measures which he took caused the Jews to rise against him under
Barcochebas. This was the wildest and the most bloodthirsty of all the
Jewish revolts; but it was the last. Jerusalem having been recaptured,
Hadrian converted it into a Roman colony, forbade Jews to approach, and
built a temple of Jupiter on the site of the Temple.