The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 - Various
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Upon this Lysias chose Ptolemy the son of Dorymenes, and Nicanor, and
Gorgias, very potent men among the King's friends, and delivered to them
forty thousand foot-soldiers and seven thousand horsemen, and sent them
against Judea, who came as far as the city Emmaus and pitched their camp
in the plain country. There came also to them auxiliaries out of Syria
and the country round about, as also many of the renegade Jews; and
besides these came some merchants to buy those that should be carried
captives--having bonds with them to bind those that should be made
prisoners--with that silver and gold which they were to pay for their
price; and when Judas saw their camp and how numerous their enemies
were, he persuaded his own soldiers to be of good courage, and exhorted
them to place their hopes of victory in God and to make supplication to
him, according to the custom of their country, clothed in sackcloth, and
to show what was their usual habit of supplication in the greatest
dangers, and thereby to prevail with God to grant them the victory over
their enemies. So he set them in their ancient order of battle used by
their forefathers, under their captains of thousands, and other
officers, and dismissed such as were newly married, as well as those
that had newly gained possessions, that they might not fight in a
cowardly manner out of an inordinate love of life, in order to enjoy
those blessings.
When he had thus disposed his soldiers he encouraged them to fight by
the following speech, which he made to them: "O my fellow-soldiers, no
other time remains more opportune than the present for courage and
contempt of dangers; for if you now fight manfully you may recover your
liberty, which, as it is a thing of itself agreeable to all men, so it
proves to be to us much more desirable, by its affording us the liberty
of worshipping God. Since, therefore, you are in such circumstances at
present, you must either recover that liberty and so regain a happy and
blessed way of living, which is that according to our laws and the
customs of our country, or to submit to the most opprobrious sufferings;
nor will any seed of your nation remain if you be beat in this battle.
Fight therefore manfully, and suppose that you must die though you do
not fight; but believe that besides such glorious rewards as those of
the liberty of your country, of your laws, of your religion, you shall
then obtain everlasting glory. Prepare yourselves, therefore, and put
yourselves into such an agreeable posture that you may be ready to fight
with the enemy as soon as it is day to-morrow morning."
And this was the speech which Judas made to encourage them. But when the
enemy sent Gorgias with five thousand foot and one thousand horse, that
he might fall upon Judas by night, and had for that purpose certain of
the renegade Jews as guides, the son of Mattathias perceived it and
resolved to fall upon those enemies that were in their camp, now their
forces were divided. When they had therefore supped in good time and had
left many fires in their camp he marched all night to those enemies that
were at Emmaus; so that when Gorgias found no enemy in their camp, but
suspected that they were retired and had hidden themselves among the
mountains, he resolved to go and seek them wheresoever they were.
But about break of day Judas appeared to those enemies that were at
Emmaus, with only three thousand men, and those ill-armed by reason of
their poverty; and when he saw the enemy very well and skilfully
fortified in their camp he encouraged the Jews and told them that they
ought to fight, though it were with their naked bodies, for that God had
sometimes of old given such men strength, and that against such as were
more in number, and were armed also, out of regard to their great
courage. So he commanded the trumpeters to sound for the battle, and by
thus falling upon the enemy when they did not expect it, and thereby
astonishing and disturbing their minds, he slew many of those that
resisted him and went on pursuing the rest as far as Gadara and the
plains of Idumea, and Ashdod, and Jamnia; and of these there fell about
three thousand. Yet did Judas exhort his soldiers not to be too desirous
of the spoils, for that still they must have a contest and battle with
Gorgias and the forces that were with him, but that when they had once
overcome them then they might securely plunder the camp because they
were the only enemies remaining, and they expected no others.
And just as he was speaking to his soldiers, Gorigas' men looked down
into that army which they left in their camp and saw that it was
overthrown and the camp burned; for the smoke that arose from it showed
them, even when they were a great way off, what had happened. When,
therefore, those that were with Gorgias understood that things were in
this posture, and perceived that those that were with Judas were ready
to fight them, they also were affrighted and put to flight; but then
Judas, as though he had already beaten Gorgias' soldiers without
fighting, returned and seized on the spoils. He took a great quantity of
gold and silver and purple and blue, and then returned home with joy,
and singing hymns to God for their good success; for this victory
greatly contributed to the recovery of their liberty.
Hereupon Lysias was confounded at the defeat of the army which he had
sent, and the next year he got together sixty thousand chosen men. He
also took five thousand horsemen and fell upon Judea, and he went up to
the hill country of Bethsur, a village of Judea, and pitched his camp
there, where Judas met him with ten thousand men; and when he saw the
great number of his enemies, he prayed to God that he would assist him,
and joined battle with the first of the enemy that appeared and beat
them and slew about five thousand of them, and thereby became terrible
to the rest of them. Nay, indeed, Lysias observing the great spirit of
the Jews, how they were prepared to die rather than lose their liberty,
and being afraid of their desperate way of fighting, as if it were real
strength, he took the rest of the army back with him and returned to
Antioch.
When, therefore, the generals of Antiochus' armies had been beaten so
often, Judas assembled the people together, and told them that after
these many victories which God had given them, they ought to go up to
Jerusalem and purify the Temple and offer the appointed sacrifices. But
as soon as he with the whole multitude was come to Jerusalem and found
the Temple deserted and its gates burned down and plants growing in the
Temple of their own accord on account of its desertion, he and those
that were with him began to lament and were quite confounded at the
sight of the Temple; so he chose out some of his soldiers and gave them
orders to fight against those guards that were in the citadel until he
should have purified the Temple. When therefore he had carefully purged
it and had brought in new vessels, the candlestick, the table [of
shewbread], and the altar [of incense], which were made of gold, he hung
up the veils at the gates and added doors to them.
He also took down the altar [of burnt-offering], and built a new one of
stones that he gathered together and not of such as were hewn with iron
tools. So on the five-and-twentieth day of the month of Casleu, which
the Macedonians call Apelleus, they lighted the lamps that were on the
candlestick and offered incense upon the altar [of incense], and laid
the loaves upon the table [of shew-bread], and offered burnt-offerings
upon the new altar [of burnt-offering]. Now it so fell out that these
things were done on the very same day on which their divine worship had
fallen off and was reduced to a profane and common use after three
years' time; for so it was, that the Temple was made desolate by
Antiochus, and so continued for three years. This desolation happened to
the Temple in the hundred forty and fifth year, on the twenty-fifth day
of the month Apelleus, and on the hundred and fifty-third Olympiad; but
it was dedicated anew, on the same day, the twenty-fifth of the month
Apelleus, in the hundred and forty-eighth year, and on the hundred and
fifty-fourth Olympiad. And this desolation came to pass according to the
prophecy of Daniel, which was given four hundred and eight years before,
for he declared that the Macedonians would dissolve that worship [for
some time].
Now Judas celebrated the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices
of the Temple for eight days, and omitted no sort of pleasures thereon;
but he feasted them upon very rich and splendid sacrifices, and he
honored God and delighted them by hymns and psalms. Nay, they were so
very glad at the revival of their customs, when after a long time of
intermission they unexpectedly had regained the freedom of their
worship, that they made it a law for their posterity that they should
keep a festival, on account of the restoration of their Temple worship,
for eight days. And from that time to this we celebrate this festival
and call it Lights. I suppose the reason was, because this liberty
beyond our hopes appeared to us, and that thence was the name given to
that festival. Judas also rebuilt the walls round about the city, and
reared towers of great height against the incursions of enemies, and set
guards therein. He also fortified the city Bethsura that it might serve
as a citadel against any distresses that might come from our enemies.
When these things were over, the nations round about the Jews were very
uneasy at the revival of their power and rose up together and destroyed
many of them, as gaining advantage over them by laying snares for them
and making secret conspiracies against them. Judas made perpetual
expeditions against these men, and endeavored to restrain them from
those incursions and to prevent the mischiefs they did to the Jews. So
he fell upon the Idumeans, the posterity of Esau, at Acra-battene, and
slew a great many of them and took their spoils. He also shut up the
sons of Bean, that laid wait for the Jews; and he sat down about them,
and besieged them, and burned their towers and destroyed the men [that
were in them]. After this he went thence in haste against the Ammonites
who had a great and a numerous army, of which Timotheus was the
commander. And when he had subdued them he seized on the city of Jazer,
and took their wives and their children captives and burned the city and
then returned into Judea. But when the neighboring nations understood
that he was returned they got together in great numbers in the land of
Gilead and came against those Jews that were at their borders, who then
fled to the garrison of Dathema, and sent to Judas to inform him that
Timotheus was endeavoring to take the place whither they were fled. And
as these epistles were reading, there came other messengers out of
Galilee who informed him that the inhabitants of Ptolemais, and of Tyre
and Sidon, and strangers of Galilee, were gotten together.
Accordingly Judas, upon considering what was fit to be done with
relation to the necessity both these cases required, gave order that
Simon his brother should take three thousand chosen men and go to the
assistance of the Jews in Galilee, while he and another of his brothers,
Jonathan, made haste into the land of Gilead with eight thousand
soldiers. And he left Joseph, the son of Zacharias, and Azarias, to be
over the rest of the forces, and charged them to keep Judea very
carefully and to fight no battles with any persons whomsoever until his
return. Accordingly Simon went into Galilee and fought the enemy and put
them to flight, and pursued them to the very gates of Ptolemais, and
slew about three thousand of them, and took the spoils of those that
were slain and those Jews whom they had made captives, with their
baggage, and then returned home.
Now as for Judas Maccabaeus and his brother Jonathan, they passed over
the river Jordan, and when they had gone three days' journey they
lighted upon the Nabateans, who came to meet them peaceably and who told
them how the affairs of those in the land of Galilee stood and how many
of them were in distress and driven into garrisons and into the cities
of Galilee, and exhorted him to make haste to go against the foreigners,
and to endeavor to save his own countrymen out of their hands. To this
exhortation Judas hearkened and returned into the wilderness, and in the
first place fell upon the inhabitants of Bosor, and took the city, and
beat the inhabitants, and destroyed all the males, and all that were
able to fight, and burned the city. Nor did he stop even when night came
on, but he journeyed in it to the garrison where the Jews happened to be
then shut up, and where Timotheus lay round the place with his army; and
Judas came upon the city in the morning, and when he found that the
enemy were making an assault upon the walls, and that some of them
brought ladders on which they might get upon those walls, and that
others brought engines [to batter them], he bid the trumpeter to sound
his trumpet, and he encouraged his soldiers cheerfully to undergo
dangers for the sake of their brethren and kindred; he also parted his
army into three bodies and fell upon the backs of their enemies. But
when Timotheus' men perceived that it was Maccabaeus that was upon them,
of both whose courage and good success in war they had formerly had
sufficient experience, they were put to flight; but Judas followed them
with his army and slew about eight thousand of them. He then turned
aside to a city of the foreigners called Malle, and took it, and slew
all the males and burned the city itself. He then removed from thence,
and overthrew Casphom and Bosor, and many other cities of the land of
Gilead.
But not long after this Timotheus prepared a great army, and took many
others as auxiliaries, and induced some of the Arabians by the promise
of rewards to go with him in this expedition, and came with his army
beyond the brook over against the city Raphon; and he encouraged his
soldiers, if it came to a battle with the Jews, to fight courageously,
and to hinder their passing over the brook; for he said to them
beforehand that "if they come over it we shall be beaten." And when
Judas heard that Timotheus prepared himself to fight he took all his own
army and went in haste against Timotheus, his enemy; and when he had
passed over the brook he fell upon his enemies, and some of them met
him, whom he slew, and others of them he so terrified that he compelled
them to throw down their arms and fly, and some of them escaped; but
some of them fled to what was called the temple of Carnaim, and hoped
thereby to preserve themselves, but Judas took the city and slew them
and burned the temple, and so used several ways of destroying his
enemies.
When he had done this he gathered the Jews together with their children
and wives and the substance that belonged to them, and was going to
bring them back into Judea. But as soon as he was come to a certain city
the name of which was Ephron, that lay upon the road--and as it was not
possible for him to go any other way, so he was not willing to go back
again--he then sent to the inhabitants, and desired that they would open
their gates and permit them to go on their way through the city; for
they had stopped up the gates with stones and cut off their passage
through it. And when the inhabitants of Ephron would not agree to this
proposal, he encouraged those that were with him, and encompassed the
city round and besieged it, and lying round it by day and night took the
city and slew every male in it and burned it all down, and so obtained a
way through it; and the multitude of those that were slain was so great
that they went over the dead bodies. So they came over Jordan and
arrived at the great plain over against which is situate the city
Bethshan, which is called by the Greeks Scythopolis.[67] And going away
hastily from thence, they came into Judea, singing psalms and hymns as
they went, and indulging such tokens of mirth as are usual in triumphs
upon victory. They also offered thank-offerings both for their good
success and for the preservation of their army, for not one of the Jews
was slain in these battles.
[Footnote 67: The reason why Bethshan was called Scythopolis is well
known from Herodotus, b. i., p. 105, and Syncellus, p. 214, that the
Scythians, where they overran Asia, in the days of Josiah, seized on
this city, and kept it as long as they continued in Asia; from which
time it retained the name of Scythopolis, or the City of the Scythians.]
But as to Joseph, the son of Zacharias, and Azarias, whom Judas left
generals [of the rest of his forces] at the same time when Simon was in
Galilee fighting against the people of Ptolemais, and Judas himself and
his brother Jonathan were in the land of Gilead, did these men also
affect the glory of being courageous generals in war, in order whereto
they took the army that was under their command and came to Jamnia.
There Gorgias, the general of the forces of Jamnia, met them, and upon
joining battle with him they lost two thousand of their army and fled
away, and were pursued to the very borders of Judea. And this misfortune
befell them by their disobedience to what injunctions Judas had given
them not to fight with anyone before his return. For besides the rest of
Judas' sagacious counsels, one may well wonder at this concerning the
misfortune that befell the forces commanded by Joseph and Azarias, which
he understood would happen if they broke any of the injunctions he had
given them. But Judas and his brethren did not leave off fighting with
the Idumeans, but pressed upon them on all sides, and took from them the
city of Hebron, and demolished all its fortifications and set all its
towers on fire, and burned the country of the foreigners and the city
Marissa. They came also to Ashdod, and took it, and laid it waste, and
took away a great deal of the spoils and prey that were in it and
returned to Judea.
THE GRACCHI AND THEIR REFORMS
B.C. 133
THEODOR MOMMSEN
(Cornelia, whose father was Scipio Africanus, preferred to be called
"Mother of the Gracchi" rather than daughter of the conqueror of
Numantia. Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, her sons, were born at a time
when the social condition of Rome was rank with corruption. The small
farmer class were deprived of holdings, the soil was being worked by
slaves, and its products wasted on pleasure and debauchery by the rich;
the law courts were controlled by the wealthy and powerful, while
oppression, bribery, and fraud were generally rampant in the city.
On December 10, B.C. 133, Tiberius Gracchus entered upon the office of
tribune, to which he had been elected, and pledged himself to the
abolition of crying abuses. His first movement was in the direction of
agrarian legislation. He proposed to vest all public lands in the hands
of three commissioners [triumviri], who were to distribute the public
lands, at that time largely monopolized by the wealthy, to all citizens
in needy circumstances. The bill met with bitter opposition from the
rich landholders, but was eventually passed, and Gracchus rose to the
summit of popular power. He also brought forward a measure limiting the
necessary period of military service; a second bill was drawn up by him
for the reformation of the law courts, and a third established a right
of appeal from the law courts to the popular assembly. These measures
were afterward carried by his brother Caius. Tiberius Gracchus was
killed in a tumult which was raised in the Forum by the nobles and their
partisans, and three hundred of his followers lost their lives in the
fray.
Caius Gracchus, his brother, returned to Rome B.C. 124 from Sardinia,
where he had been engaged in subduing the mountaineers. For ten years he
had kept aloof from public life, but was at once elected tribune, in the
discharge of which office he showed distinguished powers as an orator.
He brought forth the important measures known as the Sempronian Laws,
the provisions of which were quite revolutionary in character. The first
of these laws renewed and extended the agrarian laws of his brother and
instituted new colonies in Italy and the provinces. By the second
Sempronian law the State undertook to furnish corn at a low price to all
Roman citizens.
Other measures aimed at diminishing the great administrative power of
the senate, which had so far monopolized all judicial offices. By the
law of Gracchus the administration of justice was entirely transferred
to a body of three hundred persons who possessed the equestrian rate of
property. The Sempronian law for the assignment of consular provinces,
which hitherto had been left to the senate, made the allotment of two
designated provinces to be decided by the newly elected consuls
themselves. The power of the senate was also crippled by the law of
Gracchus in which he transferred to the tribunes the burden of improving
the roads of Italy, contracts for which had hitherto been awarded by the
censor under the approval of the senate. These movements were all in the
direction of increasing popular and democratic power, and the work of
the Gracchi tended to the extension of political freedom. In the history
of politics these social struggles are among the most important events
illustrative of the gradual dawn of civil liberty among a people which
had been dominated and oppressed by a selfish aristocracy.)
The power of Gracchus rested on the mercantile class and the
proletariat; primarily on the latter, which in this conflict--wherein
neither side had any military reserve--acted, as it were, the part of an
army. It was clear that the senate was not powerful enough to wrest
either from the merchants or from the proletariat their new privileges;
any attempt to assail the corn laws or the new jury arrangement would
have led under a somewhat grosser or somewhat more civilized form to a
street riot, in presence of which the senate was utterly defenceless.
But it was no less clear that Gracchus himself and these merchants and
proletarians were only kept together by mutual advantage, and that the
men of material interests were ready to accept their posts, and the
populace, strictly so called, its bread, quite as well from any other as
from Caius Gracchus.
The institutions of Gracchus stood, for the moment at least, immovably
firm, with the exception of a single one--his own supremacy. The
weakness of the latter lay in the fact that in the constitution of
Gracchus there was no relation of allegiance subsisting at all between
the chief and the army; and, while the new constitution possessed all
other elements of vitality, it lacked one--the moral tie between ruler
and ruled, without which every state rests on a pedestal of clay. In the
rejection of the proposal to admit the Latins to the franchise it had
been demonstrated with decisive clearness that the multitude in fact
never voted for Gracchus, but always simply for itself. The aristocracy
conceived the plan of offering battle to the author of the corn
largesses and land assignations on his own ground.
As a matter of course the senate offered to the proletariat not merely
the same advantages as Gracchus had already assured to it in corn and
otherwise, but advantages still greater. Commissioned by the senate, the
tribune of the people, Marcus Livius Drusus, proposed to relieve those
who received land under the laws of Gracchus from the rent imposed on
them, and to declare their allotments to be free and alienable property;
and, further, to provide for the proletariat not in transmarine, but in
twelve Italian, colonies, each of three thousand colonists, for the
planting of which the people might nominate suitable men; only Drusus
himself declined--in contrast with the family complexion of the Gracchan
commission--to take part in this honorable duty. Presumably the Latins
were named as those who would have to bear the costs of the plan, for
there does not appear to have existed then in Italy other occupied
domain land of any extent save that which was enjoyed by them.
We find isolated enactments of Drusus--such as the regulation that the
punishment of scourging might only be inflicted on the Latin soldier by
the Latin officer set over him, and not by the Roman officer--which were
to all appearance intended to indemnify the Latins for other losses. The
plan was not the most refined. The attempt at rivalry was too clear; the
endeavor to draw the fair bond between the nobles and the proletariat
still closer by their exercising jointly a tyranny over the Latins was
too transparent; the inquiry suggested itself too readily.
In what part of the peninsula, now that the Italian domains had been
mainly given away already--even granting that the whole domains assigned
to the Latins were confiscated--was the occupied domain land requisite
for the formation of twelve new, numerous, and compact burgess
communities to be discovered? Lastly, the declaration of Drusus that he
would have nothing to do with the execution of his law was so dreadfully
prudent as to border on sheer folly. But the clumsy snare was quite
suited to the stupid game which they wished to catch. There was the
additional and perhaps decisive consideration that Gracchus, on whose
personal influence everything depended, was just then establishing the
Carthaginian colony in Africa, and that his lieutenant in the capital,
Marcus Flaccus, played into the hands of his opponents by his vehement
and maladroit acts. The "people" accordingly ratified the Livian laws as
readily as it had before ratified the Sempronian. It then as usual
repaid its latest by inflicting a gentle blow on its earlier benefactor,
declining to reelect him when he stood for the third time as a candidate
for the tribunate for the year B.C. 120. On this occasion, however,
there are alleged to have been unjust proceedings on the part of the
tribune presiding at the election, who had been offended by Gracchus.