it was called, three miles broad and eight miles long, interspersed with gardens of balsam, traditionally sprung from the balsam-root that the Queen of Sheba brought to Solomon- so fragrant that the whole forest was scented with them, so valuable that a few years later no richer present could be made by Antony to Cleopatra. In this green oasis, beside the "diamonds "of the desert," which still pour forth their clear streams in that sultry valley, but which then were used to feed the spacious reservoirs in which the youths of those days delighted to plunge and frolic in the long days of summer and autumn, the Roman army halted for one night.

It was a day eventful not only for Palestine. The shades of evening were falling over the encampment. Pompey was taking his usual ride after the marchcareering round the soldiers as they were pitching their tents, when couriers were seen advancing from the north at full speed, waving on the top of their lances branches of laurel, to indicate some joyful news. The troops gathered round their general, and entreated to hear the tidings. At their eager wishes he sprang down from his horse; they extemporized a tribune, hastily constructed of piles of earth and of the packsaddles which lay on the ground, and he read aloud the dispatch, which announced the crowning mercy of his Oriental victories the death of his great enemy Mithridates.

Wild was the shout of joy which went up from the army. It was as though ten thousand ene- To Jerusa mies had fallen. Throughout the camp went

1 Plutarch (Pompey, 41) places this scene on his way to Petra. But, besides the positive statement of Josephus, which fixes it at Jeri

cho, it is clear that the attack on

lem.

Petra was left to Scaurus. And the localities of Jericho are far more suitable for it than the reighborhood of Petra.

up the smoke of thankful sacrifice, and the festivity of banquets rang in every tent. tent. Filled with this sense of triumphant success the army started at break of day for the interior of Judæa, after first occupying the fortresses which commanded that corner of the Jordan valley - those which were known by the name, perhaps, of the foreign mercenaries who manned them—as well as those which guarded the Dead Sea. Thus Pompey advanced in perfect security towards the mysterious and sacred city which possessed, no doubt, a special attraction for the curiosity of the inquiring Roman. From the north, from the south, from the west, the situation of Jerusalem produces but little effect on the spectator. But, seen from the east seen from that ridge of Olivet, whence Pompey, alone of its conquerors, first beheld it, rising like a magnificent portent out of the depth and seclusion of its mountain valleys — it must have struck him with all its awe, and, had his generous heart forecast all the miseries of which his coming was the prelude, might have well inspired something of that compassion which the very same view, seen from the same spot ninety years later, awakened in One who burst into tears at the sight of Jerusalem, and mourned over her fatal blindness to the grandeur of her mission. From this point Pompey descended, and swept round the city, to encamp on the level ground on its western side.1

B. C. 63.

Once more Aristobulus ventured into the conqueror's presence; but this time he was seized and loaded with chains. Then broke out within the walls that bitter internal conflict of which Jerusalem henceforth

1 Josephus, B. J., v. 12, 2. But accounts as to the time of this capsee Josephus, Ant., xiv. 4, 2. ture are not essential.

2 The variations in the different

has been so often the scene. The Temple was occupied by the patriots, who, even in this extremity, would not abandon their king and country. The Palace and the walls were seized by those who, in passionate devotion to their party, were willing to admit the foreigner. The bridge between the Palace and the Temple was broken down; the houses round the Temple mount were occupied. Thus for three months the siege was continued. As if to bring out in the strongest relief the Jewish character in this singular crisis, the Sabbath, which, during the last two centuries had played so conspicuous a part in the history of the nation, was turned to account by the Romans in preparing their military engines and approaches, which, even in spite of the example of the first Asmonean, were held by the besieged not to be sufficient cause for a breach of the sacred rest. It may be that it was one of the instances in which the strict inherence of the Sadducees of the letter of the Law outran the zeal of their Pharisaic opponents. However occasioned, the Jewish and the Gentile historians concur in representing this enforced abstention as the cause of the capture of the city. It was the greatest sacrifice that the Sabbatarian principle ever exacted or received. At last the assault was made.1 So big with fate did The capture the event appear that the names of the officers B. c. 63. who stormed the breach were all remembered.

1 It is doubtful whether "the "Fast" spoken of in all the accounts was the Great Fast of the Day of Atonement, in autumn, or the smaller fast on the 20th of the winter month. On the one hand, "the Fast" was the usual name for the vigil of the Tabernacles. Com

of the city.

The

pare Plutarch, Quæst. Conviv., vi. 12; Acts xxvii. 9. On the other hand, the mention of the third month by Josephus, unless it means the third month of the siege, points to the month Chisleu (see Ussher's Annals, 545). Reimar, on Dio Cass., xxxvii. 16.

first was Cornelius Faustus, son of the dictator Sylla; and, immediately following, the centurions Furius and Fabius. A general massacre ensued, in which it is said that 12,000 perished. So deep was the horror and despair that many sprang over the precipitous cliffs. Others died in the flames of the houses, which, like the Russians at Moscow, they themselves set on fire. But the most memorable scene was that which the Temple itself presented. On that solemn festival, which the enemy had chosen for their attack, the Priests were all engaged in their sacred duties. With a dignity as unshaken as that which the Roman senators showed when they confronted in their curule chairs the Gaulish invaders, two centuries before, did the sacerdotal order of Jerusalem await their doom. They were robed in black sackcloth, which on days of lamentation superseded their white garments, and sat immovable in their seats round the Temple court, "as if they were "caught in a net," till they fell under the hands of their assailants. And now came the final outrage. That which in Nebuchadnezzar's siege had been prevented by the general conflagration -that which Alexander forbore-that from which Ptolemy the Fourth had been, as it was supposed, deterred by a preternatural visitation - that on which even Antiochus Epiphanes had only partially ventured I was now to be accomplished by the gentlest and the most virtuous soldier of the Western world. He was irresistibly drawn on by the same grand curiosity which had always mingled with his love of fame and conquest, which inspired him with the passion for seeing with his own eyes the shores of the most dis

Entrance into the

Holy of
Halies.

2

1

tant seas, the Atlantic, the Caspian, and the 1 Plutarch, De Superst., c. 8. 2 Plutarch, Pompey, c. 38.

Indian Ocean, which Lucan has in part placed in the mouth of his rival in ascribing to him for his last great ambition the discovery of the sources of the Nile. He passed into the nave (so to speak) of the Temple, where none but Priests might enter. There he saw the golden table, the sacred candlestick, which Judas Maccabæus had restored, the censers, and the piles of incense, the accumulated offerings of gold from all the Jewish settlements; but with a moderation so rare in those times that Cicero at the time, and Josephus in the next century, alike commended it as an act of almost superhuman virtue, he touched and took nothing. He arrived at the vast curtain which hung across the Holy of Holies, into which none but the High Priest could enter but on one day in the year, that one day, if so be, that very day on which Pompey found himself there. He had, doubtless, often wondered what that dark cavernous recess could contain. Who or what was the God of the Jews was a question commonly discussed at philosophical entertainments both before and afterwards. When the quarrel between the two Jewish rivals came to the ears of the Greeks and Romans, the question immediately arose as to the Divinity that these Princes both worshipped.3 Sometimes a rumor reached them that it was an ass's head; sometimes the venerable lawgiver wrapped in his long beard and wild hair; sometimes, perhaps, the sacred emblems which once were there, but lost in the Babylonian invasion; sometimes of some god or goddess in human form like those who sat enthroned behind the altars of the Parthenon or the Capitol. He drew the veil aside. Nothing more forcibly shows the

1 Cicero, Pro Flacco, c. 28. 2 Plutarch, Quæst., v. 6, 1.

8 Dio Cass., xxxvii. 15.