The Fateful Day
MEDAL STRUCK BY VESPASIAN TO RECORD THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM
FROM A PAPYRUS FROM SIMON BEN ELEAZAR HACOHEN IN GALILEE TO JUDAH BEN JOSE IN ALEXANDRIA
IN THE FIRST YEAR OF EXILE.
MAY the Lord in His mercy send comfort unto all those whe mourn for Zion; may He speedily restore us to our land; and may He rebuild the Temple even in our days:
HONORED AND BELOVED FRIEND: In hope and fear I write concerning matters whereof you know the general particulars, and the results of which grievous evil you write me—in a papyrus that has reached me by the hand of a friend, who has traveled forward to Jabne—you have witnessed with your eyes. In peace, but heavily laden with sorrows, I proceed to relate to you all those things that have grieved our hearts and spread woe and lamentation throughout the nation.
I write thee of the last days of glorious Jerusalem, of which I was an inhabitant, living even in the Courts of the Priests according to my duty, until the end of the siege.
We were ahungered and athirst. God knows when we last ate bread and we could not stomach the offal and garbage that fell sometimes to our lot. But hunger and thirst were naught; the stench of decomposing corpses filled the summer air, the rivulets were black-red with blood and the wind blew about our faces pieces of charred garments. We were no longer able to cleanse ourselves and the ritual was performed with impure hands. The sullen boom of the great rams butting against the stones of the city wall resounded everywhere, and when the cloud of dust lifted, the sun gleamed on the even lines of the Roman breast plates. And when we saw this burnished line the frenzy of our race possessed us and we rushed like mad upon the foe.
The walls by the east and north were gone; the lower city had been sacked and burned and the Romans held the streets checked by our arrows, spears and the Greek fire flung at them from the housetops. From Passover until the eighth of Ab we had bled and bled in the struggle to retain Judea for ourselves, to preserve our Temple and faith. Sally after sally had crushed legions of our Rome, but the solid phalanx remained a nightmare, enmaddening our vision whether we looked east or west, north or south.