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 Division 
 Section 
 
 
THE ARCH OV TITUS VESPASIANUS. 
 
I^S'latis of ISitJle itnoblctige 
 
 XXII 
 
 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 AND 
 
 THE SPOILS OF THE TEMPLE 
 
 BY Tiy. LATE 
 
 WILLIAM KNIGHT, M.A. 
 
 RECTOR OF ST. MICHAEL'S BRISTOL, AND CHAPLAIN OF THE BLIND ASYLUM 
 HONORARY CANON OF BRISTOL CATHEDRAL 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE LORD BISHOP 
 OF DURHAM 
 
 IVITH AUTHENTIC ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY 
 56 Paternoster Row, and 65 St. Paul's Churchyard 
 
 1896 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The beautiful and scholarly work on the Arch 
 of Titus, published by my honoured Father in i ^Gy, 
 has long been out of print. It is now again given 
 to the public, in an attractive but much cheaper 
 form, through the agency of the Religious Tract 
 Society ; and it will take its place as one of a 
 series of valuable manuals dealing with Subjects 
 of Bible Criticism. It is published in this form in 
 the hope that it may be useful to a large circle of 
 readers, whom it did not reach in its elegant, but 
 much more costly style. The wishes of the writer 
 will be carried out by the publication of this 
 Edition, for he valued his learning and literary 
 ability mainly because he was allowed to use them 
 for the highest welfare of his brethren. 
 
 R. J. Knight. 
 
 Throwlty Vicarage, Kent 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Preface 
 
 Introduction by the Bishop of Durham 
 I. The Destruction of Jerusalem . 
 II. The Triumph of Titus 54 
 
 III. The Arch of Titus 64 
 
 IV. The Jewish Sacred Vessels .... 88 
 List of Scripture References . . .127 
 Index 128 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Arch of Titus (from a Photograph) 
 
 Coin of Titus (Gesner's Thesatiriis) 
 
 Titus' Apotheosis (Bartoh's Admiramia) 
 
 Keystone (Desgodetz' Edijices Antiques) 
 
 Part of the Frieze (BartoH's Admirandd) 
 
 Vespasian Coins (British Museum) 
 
 First Tablet, Titus Triumphant (Bartoh, Ibid.) 
 
 Second Tablet, the Temple Spoils (Bartoli, Ibid.) 
 
 Shewbread Table and Trumpets (Reland, De Spoliis) 
 
 Seven-branched Candlestick (Reland, Ibid.) . 
 
 69 
 72 
 75 
 11 
 79 
 83 
 93 
 10^ 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 It is no exaggeration to say that the Fall of 
 Jerusalem is the most significant national event in 
 the history of the world. The fact that the Lord 
 Himself connected it with His own Passion is 
 sufficient to establish its supreme importance (John 
 ii. 19). The destruction of the Temple was indeed 
 involved in His death. That which had been in 
 the past the shrine of the Presence of God among 
 His people was necessarily doomed to final deso- 
 lation when ' the more perfect Tabernacle ' had 
 been faithlessly and fatally violated. 
 
 There is a still further connexion between the 
 two events. The Passion was the condition of the 
 Resurrection : the destruction of the Temple was 
 the condition of the establishment of the Catholic 
 Church. As long as the Temple remained, a 
 Catholic Church was impossible. The venerable 
 traditions of the Divine life of Israel would, in 
 
lo THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 other words, have checked the free development of 
 the Hfe of Christendom. We have only to remem- 
 ber what has been the disastrous effect of the 
 imperial traditions of Rome upon the Christian 
 Society in order to estimate what it would have 
 suffered from the continuance of the Temple. But, 
 in apostolic language, the Lord ' came ' ; and the 
 Spirit found His home among the first-fruits of the 
 nations. 
 
 We do not, however, as I think, commonly 
 realize the momentous consequences of the cata- 
 strophe, or study with adequate care the details of 
 a history which the Romans themselves wished to 
 bring to a different end. In this respect the im- 
 pressive and scholarly narrative of Canon Knight 
 will open many fruitful lines of thought to the 
 student. He will find as he follows the tragic 
 incidents that God fought against Israel, as Titus 
 himself confessed, and fulfilled His will through 
 Roman armies. The overthrow of ' the holy city ' 
 will then gain its true spiritual significance, and it 
 will not seem strange that the priests believed they 
 heard ' on entering the Temple on the night of the 
 Pentecost, a few weeks before its fall, the voice as 
 of a multitude, We are departing hence.' 
 
 The noble Arch of Titus, erected after his death, 
 itself continues the lessons of Divine government. 
 
INTRO D UCTION 1 1 
 
 It is more than a memorial of a Roman victory. 
 It constrains us to reflect how, in the words of a 
 heathen poet of the fifth century, the conquered, in 
 one sense, trampled on the conquerors ; and yet 
 more, how a vigorous remnant of the vanquished 
 still remains, when Rome has perished, and awaits 
 a fulfilment of Divine promises after age-long 
 chastisements. 
 
 It is needless to dwell on the unique interest of 
 •the sculptures of the Arch, which contain the only 
 contemporary witness to the ritual of the Herodian 
 Temple. It is easy to exaggerate the importance 
 of independent testimonies to the contents of the 
 Bible. But, a coin, a relief, an inscription — like 
 that lately discovered by Prot. Flinders Petrie, in 
 which Merenptab, speaking of his successes, says, 
 the people of Yisrael is spoiled, it hath 710 seed (Ex. 
 i.) — naturally afifect us. Facts which we have been 
 accustomed to regard as isolated in a sacred en- 
 closure, are placed in the open course of history ; 
 and we find that the Divine record belongs to 
 common life. The lesson illustrates the character 
 of revelation. And even if partial and impatient 
 endeavours to place the history and records of 
 *the people' of God in line with the history and 
 records of ' the nations ' cause some present dis- 
 tress, I cannot doubt that the final issue of such 
 
12 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 inquiries will be to give us a larger and truer con- 
 ception of the whole Divine development of man- 
 kind, and a clearer conviction as to the unique 
 character of the discipline and office of Israel. 
 And nowhere is it more easy to recognize how the 
 Divine and human, as we speak, work together 
 than in the last scenes of Jewish national life w^hich 
 Canon Knight has portrayed. The prophecies of 
 the Lord and the narrative of Josephus combine to 
 form one picture, complete spiritually and ex- 
 ternally. The thoughts which the picture suggests 
 are of wide and fruitful application. I cannot 
 therefore but hope that the republication of Canon 
 Knight's Essay will attract the attention of many 
 who are unfamiliar with the circumstances of the 
 close of the Old Dispensation. 
 
 B. F. DUNELM. 
 
 A tick land Castle, 
 July 1896. 
 
THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 AND 
 
 THE SPOILS OF THE TEMPLE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 
 
 In our Lord's last public address to the Jews, 
 when about to take His final departure from the 
 Temple, He tells them that the heaviest woes are 
 hanging over them, — their rulers, their teachers, 
 themselves and their metropolis, — and that their 
 House would be left unto them desolate ; that 
 House in which they so much gloried, which He 
 no longer calls His Father's House, but theirs ; for 
 the Lord was about to withdraw from it and to 
 give it up to ruin. 
 
 * Behold,' said He, ' I send unto you prophets, 
 and wise men, and scribes ; and some of them ye 
 shall kill and crucify ; and some of them ye shall 
 
14 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them 
 from city to city ; that upon you may come all the 
 righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the 
 blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias 
 son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the sanc- 
 tuary and the altar. Verily, I say unto you, All 
 these things shall come upon this generation.' ^ 
 
 And yet this denunciation was mingled with 
 compassion, which broke forth in those farewell 
 words : ' O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest 
 the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto 
 thee, how often would I have gathered thy children 
 together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens 
 under her wings, and ye would not ! Behold, your 
 House is left unto you desolate. For I say unto 
 you, Ye shall not see Me henceforth, till ye shall 
 say. Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the 
 Lord.' 
 
 With these words our Lord closed His mission 
 to the Jewish rulers and people : all His subsequent 
 addresses were delivered to His disciples. 
 
 And as He was about to quit the Temple some 
 of them, astonished at His words, exclaimed, 'See 
 what stones, and what buildings are here ! ' For 
 we are told that many of the marble blocks which 
 were used in the construction of that magnificent 
 ^ Matt, xxiii. 34 — 36. 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 15 
 
 edifice were more than forty cubits long.^ What, 
 is all this doomed to destruction ; this House, 
 in which we and our fathers have w^orshipped, 
 reverenced by prophets and adorned by kings ? 
 Yes, even so ; as He had already told them, when 
 He wept over the impenitent city. ' For the days 
 are coming, that thine enemies shall cast a trench 
 about thee, and shall compass thee round, and 
 keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even 
 with the ground, and thy children within thee ; 
 and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon 
 another, because thou knewest not the time of thy 
 visitation.' "' 
 
 They had called Him to look at the Temple's 
 grandeur and stability ; He calls them to take a 
 very different view of it. 'See ye not all these 
 things ? Verily, I say unto you, that there shall 
 not be left one stone upon another that shall not be 
 cast down : ' and then, on their reaching the Mount 
 of Olives, whence they had the city full in view, in 
 answer to the question, When shall these things 
 be, and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and 
 of the end of the world ? our Lord delivered that 
 great prophecy of His final advent in power and 
 glory, to judge the quick and dead, at His appear- 
 ing and His kingdom, and of His previous coming 
 1 Josephus, Bell.Jud. v. v. 6. - Luke xix. 43, 44. 
 
1 6 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 in judgment on Jerusalem, with the signs of her 
 approaching day of doom. 
 
 In the first place He charges them — for these 
 prophecies assume the form of warnings, when 
 addressed to His disciples — to beware of being 
 deceived by false Christs and false prophets ; many 
 of whom would come in His name. He then tells 
 them, that they would hear of wars and tumults, 
 nation against nation, and kingdom against king- 
 dom, but that the end would not be yet : then that 
 there would be famines and pestilences, and earth- 
 quakes, with fearful signs and sights from heaven ; 
 yet these would be but the beginnings of sorrow : 
 then that His disciples would be delivered up to 
 councils, and be beaten in synagogues, and brought 
 before rulers ; but that the Lord would be with 
 them in their hour of peril. In the meantime, He 
 adds, that the Gospel of the Kingdom would be 
 preached for a witness throughout the Roman 
 world : and that, in coincidence with that event, 
 Jerusalem would be encompassed with armies, — the 
 abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel, 
 standing where it ought not on holy ground : that 
 this must be taken by His disciples as a warning 
 to flee from the scene of approaching tribulation ; 
 for these would be the days of vengeance, of which 
 the Old Testament prophets had written, — such days 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM ly 
 
 as the world had never witnessed, nor ever will aeain 
 in all time : that Jerusalem would be trodden down 
 by the Gentiles ; that her people would fall by the 
 edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all 
 nations : and He concludes by predicting that the 
 eagles of the conquerors would seize upon the 
 carcase of their fallen commonwealth.^ 
 
 Such is the sum of those great prophecies, of 
 which we have in the Arch of Titus an important 
 witness and expositor ; that is, of the event in 
 which they all converge : and in Josephus' History 
 of the Jewish War we have a testimony no less 
 unexceptionable ; for not only was he present, as a 
 leader or as a captive, throughout the whole of the 
 great conflict, but he could have had no wish to 
 subserve that cause to which his History had so 
 largely contributed. 
 
 When our Lord uttered these predictions - 
 Judaea had become a part of a Roman province, 
 and till the third year after the Ascension was 
 under the government of Pilate. He was suc- 
 ceeded by seven other procurators in the course 
 of the next thirty years ; under whom the Jews 
 had much to endure in struggling to regain 
 their national independence. Two of these rulers, 
 Felix and Florus, have been deeply branded by 
 
 1 Matt. xxiv. Mark xiii. Luke xxi. '^ A.D. 33 — 64. 
 
1 8 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 their own historian for malversation in their high 
 office ; ^ though they were not the only ones, 
 according to Josephus, who abused their authority 
 to the basest purposes. In fact, the whole history 
 of this procuratorship, with the exception chiefly 
 of the early part of it, is but a record of oppression 
 and extortion, which rose at length to so intolerable 
 a height, as to drive the Jews into a desperate 
 resistance to the overwhelming power of Rome. 
 
 The flames of the revolt broke out at Csesarea, 
 the head-quarters of the Roman Government, on 
 Nero's conferring its municipal privileges on the 
 Syrian Gentiles to the exclusion of the Jews."^ 
 This was a great and grievous wrong. A contest 
 then arose there about a synagogue and an inter- 
 ference with the Jewish worship, which was quickly 
 followed, in that and other places, by tumults and 
 conflicts of various kinds ; sometimes traceable to 
 Roman violence, in others to the blind and reckless 
 fury of the Zealots, often to the state of the Jewish 
 mind in general, maddened by the falling fortunes 
 of their country. I can but glance at these events, 
 so far as the subject of my Lecture may require. 
 
 Florus, instead of vindicating the Jews, in the 
 case just mentioned at Csesarea, took a bribe to 
 protect them, and left the city. Then, under 
 1 Tacitus, Hist. v. x. ii. - A.D. 66. Bell. Jud. Ii. xiv. 4. 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 19 
 
 pretext of the emperor's service, he plundered 
 the Temple treasury at Jerusalem, and on this 
 exciting a violent disturbance, he broke into 
 houses, massacred their inmates, scourged and even 
 crucified some of the chief citizens ; and, after 
 having slaughtered, in a collision with his soldiers, 
 a large number of the irritated populace, he 
 returned to his residence at Ca^sarea.^ 
 
 After this an effort was made by Agrippa to 
 induce the people to submit to Florus, till the 
 emperor should send them a better ruler; but they 
 rejected his advice Avith scorn and violence : nay, 
 more, the priests were persuaded by the Zealots to 
 refuse the admission of any gift or sacrifice that 
 might be offered to the Temple by a foreigner. 
 This was denounced by the peace-party as nothing 
 less than a declaration of war against the emperor, 
 for whom they had been used to offer daily sacri- 
 fice, and as branding also their city with impiety;-' 
 for the practice of receiving offerings from foreign 
 princes was of long standing in the Jewish Temple, 
 and was expressly sanctioned by the law of 
 Moses.^ But it was vain to reason with the men 
 of this party. Florus was informed of the state of 
 the city ; but so little did he care for its distractions 
 
 ^ Bell.Jud. II. xlv. - Ibid. Ii. xvii. 
 
 ^ Numb. XV. 14 — 16. 
 
20 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 that the intelligence was welcome news to him. 
 These tumults served to screen his atrocities, and 
 to prevent complaints against him being sent 
 to Rome.^ Agrippa, from a wish to serve both 
 nations, sent a large body of cavalry to keep the 
 peace ; but they could not stand against the 
 Zealots, who did not scruple to increase their 
 power by the introduction of many of the sicars or 
 brigands, who then infested the country in great 
 numbers. With these they proceeded to various 
 acts of violence. They destroyed Agrippa's palace 
 and the high priest's house. They burnt the public 
 records and the debtors' contracts. They mas- 
 sacred the garrison of the great fortress of the 
 Antonia, at the north-west angle of the Temple 
 platform ; and, after putting down the rival band 
 of Manahem, they slaughtered, under a pledge of 
 protection, the guards that had fled to the Royal 
 Towers, with the single exception of Metilius, their 
 commander, who was spared on his engaging to 
 become a Jew.'^ 
 
 On the same day the Gentiles in Caesarea 
 slaughtered all its Jewish population, to the num- 
 ber of more than twenty thousand ; an atrocity 
 which so roused the Jews in those quarters, that, 
 forming separate bands for the purpose, they 
 1 BdLJud. II. xiv. 3. " Ibid. II. xvii. 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 21 
 
 fiercely attacked the Gentile population, while the 
 Gentiles as fiercely retorted upon them ; nation 
 against nation, as our Lord had predicted amongst 
 the signs of the coming judgments on Jerusalem ; 
 till every town, according to Josephus, had be- 
 come, as it were, two hostile camps. At length 
 the Syrian president, Cestius Gallus, deeming it 
 imprudent to be longer inactive, while the Jews in 
 his province were everywhere in arms, advanced 
 from Antioch with the twelfth legion and a large 
 amount of other troops ; and sending detachments 
 to Zabulon and Joppa, and into Lower Galilee and 
 Narbatene, he checked the insurrection in all those 
 places, and re-assembled his forces at Caesarea.^ 
 
 Thence he advanced to Bethhoron and Gibeon. 
 There he was met by a large body of Jews, under 
 Simon, son of Gioras, who fell upon the Romans 
 with great fury, and drove them back with con- 
 siderable loss. Cestius, however, soon rallied and 
 advanced, and pitched his camp upon Scopus, 
 about a mile to the north of Jerusalem; and, 
 attacking the Jews with all his force, pursued 
 them even to the gates of the city, and established 
 himself within the outer wall. And now, at least 
 in the judgment of Josephus, Cestius might have 
 taken the city, and have brought the war at once 
 
 1 BcU.Jnd. II. xviii. 
 
22 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 to a close, had he not been prevented by Florus, 
 who had no wish to see the war at an end. After 
 waiting, however, for a few days, without effecting 
 anything decisive, he drew off his troops, and 
 retired to Scopus, whilst the Jews sallied forth 
 and harassed his retreat.^ 
 
 The next day Cestius, with the Jews in pursuit 
 of him, reached his former encampment at Gibeon. 
 Thence he was compelled to retreat to Bethhoron ; 
 and there his army must have utterly perished, 
 driven with slaughter down the deep ravine, but 
 that, under cover of the night, he succeeded in 
 effecting his escape to Antipatris, with the loss of 
 more than five thousand men, and of all his mili- 
 tary engines ; which were taken to Jerusalem and 
 turned against the Romans in the course of the 
 ensuing siege.^ 
 
 It is remarkable that this Bethhoron is the spot 
 where the Jews obtained their first great victory 
 over the five confederate kings of Canaan, which 
 led to their conquest of the whole country. This 
 victory over Cestius was their last, at an interval 
 of nearly fifteen hundred years, and on the eve of 
 their expulsion from the land of their fathers. 
 
 Josephus remarks upon these events, that if 
 Cestius had then taken the city, the Temple would 
 
 1 Bell.Jiid. II. xix. 1—5. " Ibid. 11. xix. 7—9. 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OE JERUSALEM 23 
 
 probably have survived; but that, owing as he 
 thinks to the people's wickedness, the Lord was 
 even then so estranged from His sanctuary, that 
 He hindered the war from coming to a close. May 
 we not suppose, without presumption, that He had 
 also, in His gracious providence, other objects in 
 view? For after this defeat of Cestius many of 
 the more respectable Jews abandoned the city, as 
 a sinking ship ; and many Christians did the 
 same, acting on the warning which the Lord had 
 given them, and in apprehension of the coming 
 storm.i 
 
 For now, encouraged by this victory over Cestius, 
 the revolt began to assume a more important 
 character, under leaders of great ability ; especially 
 Josephus, who had under his command the strong 
 town of Gamala, on the east of the Lake, and 
 who was also president of both Galilees : 2 and, 
 in short, so important did the revolt appear at 
 Rome, that Vespasian, who had just returned from 
 
 ^ Mera fie rr]v Keariov a-vixtpopciv TroXXot twv enicpavcbv 'lovSaiwi', 
 oycmep (BanTiCoiJLevrjs veo)s, a7rei'/;xoi^« t^? 7ri')Xea>s. — Bell. Jud. II. 
 xix. 6. These Jews, who ' swam,' as it were, out of the city, 
 are supposed to be the 'strangers' whom St. John speaks of 
 in his Third Epistle; who had migrated with him at this 
 crisis into Asia Minor ; for whom he pleads so earnestly with 
 Gaius,and who were probably soon received into the Christian 
 Church.— Lampe's Comment. injoan.\o\. i. Proleg. i. vil. xvi. 
 
 2 Bell.Jud. III. iii. 
 
24 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 Germany and Britain, was sent by Nero to put it 
 down ; and in a few months was joined by Titus, 
 with the fifteenth legion and other reinforcements ; 
 forming altogether an army of sixty thousand 
 men.^ 
 
 As soon as the troops were organized at Ptole- 
 mais, they advanced into the interior, and burnt 
 the town of Gadara, in revenge of outrages com- 
 mitted against Cestius ; and, after a siege of forty 
 days, they succeeded in taking Jotapata, with 
 enormous slaughter and a multitude of prisoners ; 
 amongst whom was their leader, Josephus ; who 
 afterwards became a great favourite of Vespasian, 
 and even adopted the Flavian name.- 
 
 Then other towns surrendered to the Romans. 
 Joppa, now again in revolt, was destroyed.^ Tibe- 
 rias, on the Lake, submitted to Vespasian, and 
 Tarichsea, at its south-west corner, was taken by 
 Titus after a very hard contest, and its vast popu- 
 lation slaughtered or sold : a conquest which was 
 considered of so much importance as to call for 
 special notice amongst the sculptures on the Arch. 
 After this and other bloody conflicts and cap- 
 tures, all Galilee, with Gischala, its last survivor, 
 surrendered to the Roman arms.'^ 
 
 1 Bell.Jiid. III. iv. - Ibid. III. vii. viii. 
 
 3 A.D. 67. * Ibid, III. ix. X. 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 25 
 
 In the meantime, Jerusalem had fallen into the 
 hands of three fierce rival factions, and was suffer- 
 ing especially from the fury of the Zealots ; who, 
 whilst denouncing all others as enemies of their 
 country, were themselves chief agents of its ruin.^ 
 
 Vespasian now began to turn his attention to 
 the Trans-jordanic towns and to the south, and 
 had indeed subdued, with the exception of Jeru- 
 salem, all the most important places in those 
 quarters, when tidings reached him of the death 
 of Nero, and of Galba's accession to the throne. 
 This induced him to defer all further active 
 measures, whilst he sent Titus to congratulate 
 the new emperor, and to receive his commands 
 in reference to the war.- 
 
 Again, in the course of a few months, he began 
 to put the army in motion, when the news arrived 
 of the deposition of Vitellius, who had succeeded 
 Galba and Otho.^^ Upon this the legions in Judii^a 
 and Egypt declared for Vespasian's elevation to 
 the empire ; and accordingly, sending Titus to 
 reduce the Jewish capital, he himself set out for 
 Rome.^ 
 
 In consequence of these imperial changes, the 
 war was suspended for nearly a year ; but this 
 
 1 BclLJiid. IV. vi. - Ibid. IV. viii. ix. 
 
 ^ A.D. 69. * Ibid. I\^ xi. 
 
26 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 was no relief to the distracted city, where faction 
 raged more than ever under Simon, John, and 
 Eleazar ; the Assassin, the Tyrant, and the Zealot, 
 as they have been called. Simon had possession 
 of the Upper Town, John of the Lower Town or 
 Acra, and Eleazar of the Temple platform ; and 
 thence they were carrying on their mutual assaults, 
 when Titus appeared upon the heights near 
 Jerusalem, with four legions and a large body 
 of auxiliaries.^ 
 
 Now it was time, if not before, for all that would 
 escape from the great impending tribulation to 
 flee to the mountains, as the Lord had charged 
 them. ; when they should see Jerusalem encom- 
 passed with armies; 'the abomination of desolation 
 on holy ground.' ^ 
 
 This portentous phrase, or at least its equivalent, 
 was first applied to the desecration of the Temple, 
 when Antiochus set up in it the statue of Jupiter." 
 Here it probably refers to the Roman standards, 
 with their tutelary images of gods and emperors, 
 surmounted by an eagle grasping the thunderbolt, 
 which were afterwards brought into the Temple by 
 Titus ; and which some writers on the prophecy 
 
 1 A.D. 70. — BeU.Jud. V. i. — ill. 
 
 2 Matt. xxiv. 15, 16. Mark xiii. 14 ; with Luke xxi. 20, 21. 
 2 2 Maccab. i. 54. 3 Maccab. vi. 2. Dan. xi. 31. 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 27 
 
 have regarded as the main event referred to in 
 our Lord's words. True it is, that act of Titus, 
 which we shall presently have to notice, was ' the 
 consummation of that desolation ' which he was 
 permitted to bring upon God's House ; but it was 
 rather to the appearing of the Roman eagles at 
 the head of their legions, near the city, rivalling 
 the Temple of the God of Israel, that our Lord 
 applied the language of the prophet ; 1 for the 
 whole territory, and especially Mount Olivet, on 
 which He was standing when He uttered the 
 prophecy, and on which the tenth legion was 
 afterwards encamped, was considered by the Jews 
 as holy ground.^ As objects which the Romans were 
 in the practice of worshipping, these eagles were 
 an abomination to the Jews ; as standards round 
 which the soldiers rallied, they might be called 
 * the abomination that maketh desolate : ' the 
 Romans called them their gods of battle.' Their 
 
 ^ ' Talia signa Titus conspicua in castris suis posiiit, quasi 
 templum Templo Hierosolymitano contrarium. Nam et 
 Tacitus alibi ita loquitur ; Fulgentibus aquilis signisquc ct 
 simulacris Dcum, in modum templi.' — Grotius, Annotat. ad 
 Matt. xxiv. 15. 
 
 2 Bengel, on Matt. xxiv. 15. i Maccab. x. 31. BcU.Jiid. 
 V. ii. iii. 
 
 ^ ' Religio Romanorum,' says Tcrtullian, ' tota Castrcnsis 
 signa veneratur, signa jurat, signa omnibus Deis pra^ponit.' 
 — ApoL adv. Genfcs^ x\ii. Thus Antony is represented by 
 Tacitus as imploring their help : ' Conversus ad signa ct 
 
28 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 appearance with ' the legions encompassing Jeru- 
 salem,' was to be a sign to our Lord's disciples 
 to make good their flight from the devoted city. 
 Many had fled on the invasion of Cestius, though 
 it did not reach the terms of our Lord's prophecy. 
 Now the disciples could not doubt that the days of 
 vengeance were near at hand ; and in following 
 this and other monitions,— especially the brief 
 interval then afforded them, and which was one of 
 the most remarkable circumstances of the crisis, — 
 they fled to Pella, on the mountain slopes of 
 Gilead ; which, as under Agrippa, and in alliance 
 with the emperor, became their chief asylum in the 
 great catastrophe.^ 
 
 bellorum Deos orabat.' — Hist. iv. x. And Germanicus is 
 said to have exhorted his soldiers : ' Irent, sequerenturque 
 Romanas aves, propria legionum numina.' — Aiiiial. II. x^■ii. 
 
 1 This well-known interpretation, which is adopted by 
 Grotius, Wetstein, Bengel, Newcome, Lange, and others, 
 results from comparing Matt. xxiv. 15, 16, with Luke xxi. 
 20, 21. It has, however, been cjuestioned in two of the most 
 important recent commentaries ; but not, as it appears to 
 me, with success, (i) It is objected that to jBdeXvyfia must 
 mean a profanation by the Jews themselves. But the word 
 is applied, as we have seen, i Maccab. i. 54, to a statue 
 which was set up by heathen hands ; and Josephus applies 
 Dan. ix. 27 to the desolation by the Romans, Antiq. X. xi. 
 BSe'Xtiy/Lia is defined by Cyril Alex, in Schleusner, Lex. Vet. 
 Test.: Trpa^Ls napa top 7rpoa7]KnvTa \6yov TrpaTTopevr], Ka\ irav 
 eidcoXov, Kai ttcw eKTinrcopa dvdpcoTTOV ovtco e/caXeiro napa 'lovdaiois. 
 (2) It is objected that the Roman eagles could be no sign to 
 the Jews, having been seen by them on holy ground for many 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 29 
 
 Titus' first object, on arriving at Jerusalem, was 
 to ascertain the inclinations of the Jews ; for he 
 had been told that they were desirous of peace ; 
 but on his attempting to take a survey of the city, 
 he was surrounded by a body of Jewish soldiers, 
 and escaped with difficulty out of their hands.^ 
 At length he began to bring his legions nearer, 
 which induced the Jewish factions for a while to 
 unite, and to join in frequent sallies against the 
 common enemy ; but they were soon again involved 
 
 years, and even at the time when the prophecy was uttered. 
 On the contrary, we are told by Josephus that, when at peace 
 with the Jews, the Romans never used to take their idol 
 standards into Jerusalem, Antiq. xvill. iii. ; that when Pilate 
 did so he was obliged immediately to remand them to 
 Caesarea, Ibid, and Bell. Jiid. 11. ix. ; and that when Vitellius 
 was about to march through Juda?a, soon after our Lord 
 delivered this prophecy, he sent his forces by another route, 
 in deference to the representations of the Jews, who said 
 that the laws of their country would not tolerate the presence 
 of these idols. , Autiq. XVIII. v. (3) It is objected that to'tto? 
 ayto? can mean only the Temple. But is there not here an 
 obvious distinction between roTroy oyioy and to Upov? Our 
 Lord's citation is from Dan. LXJi. Cod. Alex. ix. 27 : 'Ett! t6 
 lepov /3SeXuy/xa tcov epr^/Ltcoo-ewi/ ea-rai. Instead, however, of eVi 
 TO Upov, we have the indefinite eV tottco dyt'w. The disciples 
 were not to wait till the (BdeXvyna was eVi to Up6v ; then it 
 would be too late to fly; but as soon as it appeared eV totto) 
 ayt'o), they were to depart. (4) No other fulfilment of the 
 prophecy has been suggested which appears to be satisfactory 
 to the judgment even of the objectors. (5) As to the 
 disciples' flight to Pella, see Eusebius, //»/. Eu/. III. v.; 
 Epiphanius, Bd Mensuris xv., and Dean Stanley's Palestine^ 
 C. viii. ^ BclLJud. V. ii. 
 
30 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 in bloody strife, which ended in the overthrow of 
 Eleazar's party, and in John's obtaining possession 
 of the Temple platform : conduct so prevalent 
 throughout the siege, as to give some colour to 
 the remark of Josephus : ' That sedition subdued 
 the city, and the Romans the sedition ; a sedition 
 much stronger than her walls.' ^ 
 
 The siege meanwhile was earnestly prosecuted. 
 Titus pitched his camp on Scopus, where Cestius 
 had encamped three years before : the tenth legion 
 occupied Mount Olivet, and other forces were 
 stationed on the west. And as this was now the 
 paschal season the city was unusually full. Jo- 
 sephus reckons that there might have been in it 
 more than two millions seven hundred thousand 
 souls, because more than that number are said 
 to have been there at a paschal census a few 
 years previous.^' Simon had still possession of 
 
 1 Bell. J Hit v. vi. 
 
 2 A rough, and it may be an exaggerated estimate, founded 
 on the number of lambs which are said to have been offered 
 at the passover, A.D. 63, of which an account was taken by 
 order of Cestius. According to one manuscript they amounted 
 to 256,000; according to another, to 255,600. There were 
 probably at least ten partakers of each lamb, and, in addition 
 to these, there were a great many other persons who were 
 ceremonially unfit. Bell. Jiid. vi. ix. It should also be borne 
 in mind that, at this great festival, the suburbs of the city 
 were generally covered with tents and other temporary struc- 
 tures, for the reception of the multitudes who frequented it. 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 31 
 
 the Upper Town, with about fifteen thousand 
 soldiers ; John held the Temple with about seven 
 thousand ; and on Ophel, the southern ridge of 
 Mount Moriah, and in the Valley of the Tyro- 
 poson, they waged their bloody conflicts from day 
 to day.^ 
 
 Titus, having completed his arrangements, at- 
 tacked the outer wall of the city, which soon gave 
 way before his engine, the Conqueror ; and he 
 advanced his camp into the New Town, or Bezetha, 
 and took up his position at the north-west corner, 
 where the Assyrians under Sennacherib had for- 
 merly encamped. From that point he extended 
 his forces even to the ridge of the Valley of the 
 Kedron ; the district which has since been the 
 ground of attack by the Saracen, the Crusader, 
 and the Turk. On the fifth day from the reduc- 
 tion of the first wall, Titus assailed the second ; 
 which formed the outward boundary of the Lower 
 City, from the Gate of Gennath to the tower of the 
 Antonia ; and he entered through the breach with 
 a thousand men, the band which he usually 
 retained about his person. From this position he 
 was soon driven, but he recovered his ground in 
 a few days, and, after demolishing the second wall, 
 began to think of attacking the inner one ; the 
 1 BcU.Jud. \. ii.— vi. 
 
32 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 Jews still retaining the Upper City, the Temple, 
 and the Antonia.^ 
 
 Well aware of the strength of their position, 
 Titus sent Josephus to confer with his country- 
 men, and to propose terms of surrender. But his 
 proposal met with no response but curses, jeers, 
 and missiles from their engines, though their intes- 
 tine difficulties were rapidly increasing, from the 
 failure of their stores and the prospect of a famine, 
 which was gaining upon them every day; a 
 calamity which the factions had hastened on by 
 their reckless destruction of each other's granaries.-^ 
 
 At length, with a view to force them to sur- 
 render, Titus began to scourge and crucify those 
 who, in order to escape the famine, came over 
 to the Roman camp. Thus hundreds perished 
 every day ; Titus continuing to warn their leaders 
 not to compel him to destroy their town and 
 Temple; suggestions which were answered only by 
 declaring, — That they preferred death to slavery, 
 and that their Temple would be saved by Him 
 who dwelt in it ; in whose hands was the issue of 
 the war.^ 
 
 So indeed they persisted in declaring to the 
 last; sustained moreover by a firm belief in what 
 Josephus calls an ambiguous prophecy : That 
 1 Bell. J ltd. V. vii. viii. -^ Ibid. V. iv. ^ Ibid. V. xi. 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 33 
 
 about this time, One from their country would 
 obtain the dominion of the world.^ This, says he, 
 they applied to themselves ; and many of their 
 wise men were deceived in their judgment of it ; 
 for, in his opinion, it plainly indicated the supre- 
 macy of Vespasian, who had been proclaimed 
 emperor in Judaea.^ 
 
 The prophecy is that in the Book of Micah, 
 which the Sanhedrin adduced when Herod de- 
 manded of them where the promised Christ would 
 be born.^ It seems, in a vague and mutilated 
 form, to have been widely known amongst the 
 heathen, and to have given rise to those well- 
 known expectations which Roman writers, as well 
 as Josephus, referred to Vespasian's elevation to 
 the throne. Had it not been shorn of its com- 
 mencement and its close, — the rise of this great 
 Ruler in Bethlehem and His goings forth from the 
 days of old, those manifestations of His divine 
 character, — the prophecy could never have been 
 made to minister to the pride and folly of a 
 Roman emperor.* 
 
 ^ To 5e endpav avTovs fxaXiara npos tov iroXep-ov, iju XPWI^^^ 
 dfX(f)i^oXos ofjioicos eu Tols Upois €Vp7]p.evos ypdp.paaLu, o)S Kara tov 
 Kaipov iKclvov diTO tt^s x<^P"S' Tis avrav (ip^ei rrjs olKovp.evT}s. — 
 Bell.Jud. VI. V. 
 
 ^ Bell.Jud. VI. V. 4. 3 Matt. ii. 1—6. 
 
 4 Micah V. 2. This prophecy, thus stript of its beginning 
 
 C 
 
34 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 Titus, on the rejection of his proposal to sur- 
 render, set his men again to work, raising mounds 
 and planting engines against the Antonia, and in 
 several other quarters ; but their work was under- 
 mined and burnt by the besieged.^ Accordingly, 
 when all these efforts failed, he proposed to raise 
 a wall all round the city, that thus, by increasing 
 the pressure of the famine, he might effect an 
 easier, perhaps an earlier conquest.^ 
 
 No sooner was the project formed than it was 
 done. The work was distributed to the whole army 
 in shares ; and, impelled by a sort of preternatural 
 enthusiasm, the Wall was accomplished in three 
 days. Legion vied with legion, and cohort with 
 cohort ; nay, every soldier in the army, says Jo- 
 sephus, private, decurion, centurion, tribune, strove 
 to please those immediately above him ; whilst the 
 rivalry of the tribunes extended to the general 
 officers, and Titus fostered the rivalry of these, 
 going round in person often every day, and seeing 
 how the work was going on.^ 
 
 The Wall commenced at the tent of Titus. It 
 thence went eastward to the lower part of the New 
 
 and its end, seems to be the prediction referred to by Tacitus, 
 Hist. V. xiii, ' Eo ipso tempore fore, ut valesceret oriens 
 profectique Judaea rerum potirentur.' 
 
 1 Bell.Jtid. V. vi. ^ Ibid. V, xi. xii. ^ Ibid. v. xii. 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 35 
 
 Town, and across the Kedron to the Mount of 
 Olives ; thence towards the south to the rock 
 called Peristereon, which is probably the site of 
 the Tombs of the Prophets. It thence went over 
 the adjoining hill, which overhangs the ravine near 
 Siloam ; thence, towards the west, to the Valley of 
 the Fountain ; from whence it ascended to the 
 Tomb of Ananus ; and then, taking in the mount 
 where Pompey had encamped, it turned to the 
 north, as far as the hamlet or House of Erebinths ; 
 and then enclosing Herod's monument, it rejoined 
 the camp of Titus, whence it had started.^ 
 
 This record of the Wall is one of great interest, 
 especially in its connexion with our Lord's prophecy. 
 Though so ancient a topographical document, its 
 line may be traced with tolerable certainty through 
 all the places above-mentioned, except the site of 
 Pompey's camp and that of the hamlet on the 
 north of it. This encampment was evidently on 
 the west of the city ; where Pompey may probably 
 have halted for a time, as he advanced from Jericho 
 up the Valley of Hinnom, till he finally took up his 
 position on the north, at the only point from which 
 the city was assailable : or, as it has been suggested,^ 
 
 1 Bell.Jud. v. xii. 2. 
 
 2 Smith's Diet, of the Bible., s. v. Jerusalem, vol. i. p. 
 1003. Strabo, Tacitus, and Dion Cassius also mention 
 
36 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 after he had taken up that position, he may have 
 stationed a portion of his forces on the west, as 
 Titus did under similar circumstances. With, 
 however, no other account of this encampment than 
 the passing notice in this record of the Wall, we 
 cannot determine its exact site. Nor can we settle 
 that of the hamlet beyond it : Reland merely 
 mentions its existence without attempting to give 
 its locality. It was probably a group of two or 
 three granaries, as the name indeed implies.^ 
 
 The Wall itself was probably similar to those 
 which the Romans generally constructed in their 
 sieges. The word in Josephus may be any kind of 
 wall ; that in the Evangelist, which is rendered a 
 Trench, signifies more than a mere excavation. It 
 signifies, as Raphel has fully shown, a rampart of 
 wooden piles or stakes, which were fixed in and 
 wattled on a mound of earth, to which the earth 
 from the trench of course contributed.- And it is 
 remarkable that our Lord, in this instance, as well 
 as in His prediction of ' the abomination of desola- 
 
 Pompey's siege, but they say nothing of any encampment 
 except that on the north of the city. 
 
 1 Me'xpi Kafxrjs tivos, ^EpelBivdcov oUos Kakclrai. Domiis 
 cicerum. PalcBstina^ vol. ii. p. 766. 
 
 2 See Raphel's elaborate note on x«i"«?5 ''^nd on our Lord's 
 words, Trepi^akovoLv ol ix^po'i crov xdpaKci aoi. A777Wfaf. ill Luc. 
 xix. 43. Josephus uses Teix^s, and Tr^pireixiC^i-v. 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OE JERUSALEM 37 
 
 tion,' cites the words of an Old Testament prophecy, 
 which had probably received a partial fulfilment in 
 the invasion of Jerusalem by the Assyrians; leaving, 
 however, many details to be realized in the still 
 more comprehensive Roman siege. ^ 
 
 And now the Wall being carried round the city, 
 with towers for garrisons at frequent intervals, and 
 with guards in them on duty by day and by night, 
 so as to prevent all possibility of escape, the misery 
 of the captives soon reached its height. Famine 
 raged there, and death in all its horrors. The dead, 
 too numerous to be buried within the walls, were 
 cast over into the ravines ; and we are told, that as 
 Titus went round the city, and saw them full of 
 dead bodies, in a state that excited horror and 
 disgust, he groaned aloud, and called God to 
 witness that it was not his doing.^ 
 
 ^ Isaiah xxix. 3, 4. K(«t ku/cAcoo-qj eVi o-e, Kai [iakfji rrcpl (re 
 XiipcKci, KOI 6r](T0i nepi ere nvpyovs' koL Ta7Teiva)di](T0VTai ds ttjv yrjp 
 01 Xoyoi crov, Kai els Tr]vyr]v ol Xoyoi crov hvaovraC ku\ eaovTcu as 
 nl (pcovovvres eK TrjS yrjs t] (jicovi] (tov, KoiTrpoSTo edacfios »; ([xovt] crov 
 aa6evi](xet. Many early writers ha\e noticed our Lord's 
 adoption of this LXX. version of the prophecy ; which, 
 compared with Josephus' account of the capture of Simon 
 and his companions {BclLJiid. Vll. ii.), affords a curious and 
 interesting illustration of what Bacon calls, ' The germinant 
 accomplishment of prophecies, extending throughout many 
 ages, though their height and fulness may refer to one.' 
 Adv. of Learnings Book ii. Vitringa takes the same view 
 of it. 
 
 2 Bcll.Jud. v. xii. 
 
38 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 Yet what was this but the ' tyrant's plea,' how- 
 ever it might satisfy himself or others ? Why, if 
 he really pitied their sufferings, did he drive to 
 this extremity a brave people, whose only crime, 
 so far as he was cognizant, was that of standing up 
 for their national liberty ? This ' Darling and de- 
 light of all the world,' though such was the current 
 phrase of his admirers, was but a strange phenome- 
 non, as Niebuhr remarks.^ Whatever claim he 
 may have had to the title, as compared with 
 persons of his own age and order, we look in vain 
 for any just ground for it, even in the partial pages 
 of Josephus. 
 
 Still we are told that he wished to save the city: 
 and having heard that the daily sacrifice had 
 ceased, and that the people were in consequence 
 greatly disheartened, he proposed to John of 
 Gischala, who held the Antonia, to come down and 
 terminate the war, without involving the Temple 
 in ruin. 'If,' said he, 'you will but change the 
 scene of conflict, no Roman shall approach or 
 profane the holy places : nay, I will save them 
 even against your will.' ^ 
 
 This, like all his previous proposals, was re- 
 
 1 Suetonius, Tit. Flav. Vcsp. i. ; Niebulir's Rome, by 
 Schmitz, vol. ii. p. 242. 
 
 2 Bell.Jud. VI. ii. 
 
THE DESrrWCTION OF JERUSALEM 39 
 
 jected. Upon which, as he could not bring up all 
 his forces, owing to the confined nature of the 
 ground, Titus selected the best men of each 
 century, and ordered them, under command of 
 Cerealius, to attack the Jewish garrison the night 
 following. All the night he watched the conflict, 
 as did also the Jewish chief; and the struggle 
 continued, neither party yielding, till near the 
 middle of the next day.^ 
 
 In the meantime another division of Romans, 
 having broken through the foundations of the 
 Antonia, had forced a wide ascent as far as the 
 Temple ; '' though they suffered severely from the 
 resistance of the Jews, who fought with all the 
 vigour and daring of despair. At length the 
 Jews were driven into the Temple ; from which 
 they then cut off all connexion with the Antonia, 
 breaking and burning the colonnades that had 
 connected them ; severing, as it were, the infected 
 limbs. 
 
 The sequel is but a tale of misery and horror. 
 The ficrhtins: still continued in the outer courts 
 of the Temple, while the people of all classes 
 throughout the city were reduced to the most 
 dreadful and disgusting expedients to lengthen 
 out a miserable life. They fiercely contended for 
 1 Bdl.Jud. VI. ii. - July 17, A.D. 70. 
 
40 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 everything like food. They seized on what even 
 brutes would refuse ; and an event occurred, at 
 this crisis, which has been justly deemed the climax 
 of this terrific siege ; an event which had been pre- 
 dicted fifteen hundred years before, as one that 
 would befall them in the sequel of their history ; 
 when, having forsaken the God of their fathers, 
 and the 'fear of His glorious and fearful Name/ 
 He would bring against them from afar ' a nation 
 of fierce countenance/ ^ which would besiege them 
 in all their gates. I refer to the story of the Jewish 
 mother who, having been stript of all her property 
 and food, was discovered by the soldiers to have 
 killed her own infant, and to have even devoured 
 part of it. The monstrous deed was told through- 
 out the city, and told also in the Roman camp. 
 Some pitied her ; some would not believe it ; in 
 some it only added to their hatred of the Jews : 
 Titus declaring, as he had done before, that he 
 forsooth was innocent in this matter.^ 
 
 Well might our Lord, on His way to Calvary, 
 
 * Deut. xxvlii. 49 — 59. Thus, according to Livy, the Sam- 
 nites described the early Romans : ' Oculos sibi Romanorum 
 ardere visos, aiebant, vesanosque vultus et furentia ora ; inde 
 plus, quam ex alia ulla re, terroris ortum. Quem terrorem 
 non pugn?e solum eventu, sed nocturna profectione, confess! 
 sunt.' — Hist, VIL xxxiii. 
 
 - BelLJud. VI. iii. 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 41 
 
 say to the weeping women of Jerusalem, * Weep 
 not for Me, but for yourselves, and for your 
 children.' Well may we suppose Him, with His 
 knowledge of all prophecy, and His prescience of 
 this unparalleled siege, to have had this deed of 
 horror in view, when He spoke of the woe that 
 was hanging over the mother and the suckling in 
 those days.i 
 
 Titus was now more than ever anxious to 
 bring this hateful war to an end. To stand 
 thus baulked, with his baffled legions, before this 
 'hemmed and famishing Jerusalem ' was no glory 
 to himself, or to the Roman arms,- and after six 
 days' fruitless efforts to force his way through the 
 western wing of the Temple, he ordered the gates 
 to be set on fire. The next day he had it extin- 
 guished, and held a council of war to determine 
 whether the Temple should be saved or not. Many 
 in the council were against saving it, as they 
 thought it would be always a rallying-place for the 
 
 ^ Luke xxiii. 28, 29. 
 
 ^ So Tacitus describes the feelings of Titus and his army 
 at this juncture : ' Romani ad oppugnanduni vers!, nequc 
 enim dignum videbatur, famem hostium opperiri. Posce- 
 bantque pericula, pars virtute, multi ferocia et cupidine pras- 
 miorum. Ipsi Tito Roma et opes voluptatesque ante oculos ; 
 ac, ni statim Hierosolyma conciderent, morari videbantur.^ — 
 Hist. V. xi. 
 
42 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 Jews, who would never cease to be disaffected/ 
 Still Titus persisted in his wish to save the Temple, 
 as a trophy which the Romans might well be 
 proud of, and which seems to have moved even 
 his ' Stoic pride.' 
 
 Nor can we be surprised at his reluctance. 
 Nothing, says Josephus, was wanting in the 
 structure of the Temple likely to captivate the 
 mind and eye : and though we cannot but regret 
 that he has not given us some information as to the 
 style of its architecture,^ he has told us much of 
 this magnificent edifice, which we should seek 
 
 1 Bell. Jud. VI. iv. 
 
 ^ There are two passages in Josephus which are supposed 
 to refer to this subject, (i) He says that the outer gate, which 
 led to the sanctuary, was of Corinthian brass, and much sur- 
 passed in worth the gold and silver-gilt ones. Mm be r) e^codev 
 Tov vea> Kopiv6iov )(aXKov, noXv rfj rififj ras Kcirapyvpovs /cat 
 TV€pixpy(Tov9 VTvepdyovrra. — Bell. Jud. V. v. 3. This, however, 
 refers only to the material of which this gate was made ; that 
 costly compound of silver, gold, and brass, called Aes Corin- 
 thiacum ; or of gold and brass, called Aurichalcum. See 
 Hoffman, Lex. s. vv. (2) In his Antiquities., Josephus says 
 that the heads of the columns in the south colonnade of the 
 Temple were finished off with sculptures, after the Corinthian 
 manner. KiavoKpdvasv avrois Kara tov Kopiv3iov Tponov iire^eip- 
 yaapevoiv yXv(f)a7s. — Aiitiq. XV. xi. He says nothing of the 
 three other sides of the Temple ; and it is doubtful whether 
 KaTo. TOV KopLv6tov TpoTTov amouuts to what we should call 
 ' of the Corinthian order.' In another place he applies the 
 word Kopivdlcos to the roofing of Solomon's palace. — Antiq. 
 
 VIII. V. 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 43 
 
 in vain in any other writer. He speaks of its 
 imposing position on the platform of the lofty- 
 eastern hill, hanging over the valley of the Ke- 
 dron ; of its double colonnade of thirty cubits' 
 breadth, and, including the Antonia, six furlongs 
 long ; its gates and doors of vast dimensions, over- 
 laid with gold and silver ; its pavements of various 
 kinds of marble ; its cedar roofs and ceilings of 
 exquisite workmanship ; its sacred enclosures, court 
 within court, each ascending higher than the outer 
 one, each increasing in local sanctity, according to 
 the theory of the Temple ritual, till they reached 
 the Holy Place, with its symbolical services,^ and the 
 Holy of the Holy within its veils ; never intruded 
 on by footstep, touch, or sight.- As to its exterior, 
 as seen from Mount Olivet, it must, from the pecu- 
 liar construction of its courts, have been visible 
 
 ^ Bell. Jud. V. V. 5. 'Eve(paivov^ k.t.X. But when Josephus 
 tells us that the Candlestick symbolized the seven planets, 
 and the Shewbread loaves the circle of the zodiac, we can- 
 not but recognize a vicious system of Typology ; which, how- 
 ever it may have been advocated by Philo, and by greater 
 names than his, has been very justly condemned by Bahr; as 
 placing the symbols of the Mosaic religion substantially on a 
 footing with those of heathenism, and employing both alike 
 in the service of a mere Nature-worship. See Fairbairn's 
 Typology of Scripture., vol. ii. p. 242. 
 
 2 Bell. Jud. V. V. 5. Of course this statement must be 
 understood in a general sense, and subject to the well-known 
 exceptions referred to in Hebrews ix. 7, 25. 
 
44 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 far above its walls and cloisters ; and its upper 
 front was covered with plates of gold, which shone 
 with fiery radiance in the morning sun. Milton 
 notices this view of the Temple, and had evidently 
 in his mind the striking image with which Josephus 
 closes his description.^ 
 
 ' The holy City hfted high her towers, 
 And higher yet the glorious Temple reared 
 Her pile, far off appearing like a mount 
 Of alabaster, topped with golden spires.'^ 
 
 But all in vain was the desire to save it. The 
 priests had heard, a few weeks before, on entering 
 the Temple on the night of the Pentecost, the voice, 
 as of a multitude, — 'We are departing hence." ^ 
 Nay, our Lord, as we have seen, had declared to 
 the people, when about to take His final leave of 
 
 1 Bcll.Jud. V. V. 6. 
 
 2 Paradise Regained^ iv. 545 — 548. 
 
 ^ Kara Se Triv eoprrjv, rj IlevTr]KO(TTrj KaXelrai, vvKTcop ol lepels 
 TTapiKduvTc^ ety to €vhov hpuv, cocnr^p avTOis edos j)v irpos ras 
 XcLTovpyias, TvpodTov /xeV KLvrjaecos diiTiKa^eadai 'icpacrav Kal 
 KTVTTOV, pcTci Se TavTa (fxovrjs ddpuas, Meraf^aivopev ivrevdev. 
 — Bell. Jud. VI. V. 3. I have adopted Cardwell's reading, 
 which was probably that of Tacitus : ' Expassa^ repente de- 
 lubri fores et audita major humana vox, Excederc Dcos : 
 simul ingens motus excedentium.'— 7//^-/. v. xiii. Different 
 opinions will, of course, be formed of such an incident as this : 
 when, however, I consider what this Temple was — its ante- 
 cedents, historical, prophetical, typical — I can hardly, with 
 Lardner, regard this story as nothing more than an imitation 
 of a heathen legend. 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OE JERUSALEM 45 
 
 the Temple, — That their House would be left unto 
 them desolate. And desolate it was thenceforward, 
 in the truest and most pathetic sense of His words. 
 For, though the Jews retained it for many years, 
 and continued also to enrich and adorn it, up to the 
 very eve of its destruction, its doom was sealed, its 
 desolation had begun with the departure of that 
 Divine Pres.ence, which had shed upon it a greater 
 glory than the glory of the former Temple of 
 Solomon, even in its brightest day. And now too 
 was the anniversary of that day of mourning, so 
 darkly marked for ages in the Hebrew calendar, 
 on which that former Temple had been burnt. ^ 
 
 Titus had withdrawn into the Antonia, deter- 
 mined the next morning,^ at break of day, to assault 
 the Temple with his whole force. The Jews, after 
 a short breathing-time, once more attacked the 
 besiegers ; but the Romans turned them, and drove 
 them in ; and, after a conflict with the Temple- 
 guards, penetrated even into the sanctuary: when a 
 soldier snatched a brand from the blazing timber, 
 and, lifted up by one of his companions, threw it 
 into one of the surrounding apartments; which 
 immediately took fire. The Jew^s, on seeing the 
 flames ascending, rushed to the rescue with a 
 piteous outcry. Titus, as soon as he knew what 
 1 Bell. J lid. VI. iv. 5. - Aug. 5, A.D. 70. 
 
46 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 had happened, ran to the spot to arrest the fire, 
 with his officers and soldiers, all amazed ; and 
 called upon the men to extinguish the flames. But 
 neither threats nor persuasion could avail. They 
 pretended not to hear his orders, and called upon 
 each other to extend the conflagration. Many, in 
 their impetuous rush into the Temple, were crushed 
 to death by their own comrades ; many perished 
 with their opponents in the ruins. The Jews, within 
 the Temple, were most of them unarmed, and were 
 instantly butchered wherever they were caught. 
 The steps of the altar flowed with blood, and the 
 dead were crowded round it in heaps. The fire, 
 in the meantime, was spreading everywhere ; but 
 as it had not reached the Holy Place as yet, Titus, 
 with the help of the captain of his body-guard, 
 made a last and vigorous effort to save it. But 
 nothing could stop the furious onset of the soldiers, 
 sharpened, as it was, by their hatred of the Jews, 
 and by the hopes of plunder, which they expected 
 would be gratified by the far-famed treasures 
 of the inner Temple ; which all they saw around 
 them tended to confirm. At length, when after 
 the slaughter of all whom the soldiers encountered 
 on the Temple platform, without respect of person, 
 age, or office, all the Jews that could escape having 
 fled into the city, and while the sanctuary and all 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 47 
 
 around them was in flames, the Romans brought 
 their eagles within the walls ; and having set them 
 up at the eastern gate, they there offered up 
 to them their sacrifices, and there saluted Titus 
 as Imperator, with acclamations of great joy.^ 
 Thus the ' abomination of desolation,' the symbol 
 of the highest power in heathendom, was set up 
 in God's Most Holy Place ; in what was deemed 
 the Holiest in Israel. 
 
 We need not pursue this saddest of all histories 
 through the burning of the city and the slaughter 
 of its inhabitants, whilst the shouts and shrieks of 
 the slayers and of the slain were echoed from the 
 mountains round Jerusalem, till their last refuge, 
 the Upper Town, was taken, and the Romans be- 
 came masters of the whole city.^ 
 
 So astonished was Titus, on entering within 
 its walls, at the height, and breadth, and solidity of 
 its defences, that it drew from him a striking tes- 
 timony to our Lord's prediction of the days of 
 vengeance, which He had declared would overtake 
 that guilty generation. ' God,' said Titus, * must 
 certainly have fought upon our side : it was God 
 that cast down the Jews from these bulwarks ; for 
 as for human hands and engines, what could they 
 avail against these towers ? ' ^ 
 
 1 Bell. Jiui. VI. iv. — v. - Ibid. vi. v. — viii. ^ Ibid. VI. ix. I. 
 
48 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 And now, when, according to the words of the 
 historian, there were none to be seen to plunder or 
 to slay, Titus ordered the city and the Temple to 
 be razed to their foundations ; leaving only the 
 three Royal Towers, and the Wall with its barracks, 
 which enclosed the town on the west : the latter, 
 for the reception of the garrison that was to be left 
 there ; the Towers, to indicate to future times what 
 a strong and splendid city Roman valour had sub- 
 dued. * All the rest of the wall, that encompassed 
 the city, they so reduced,' says Josephus, 'and 
 levelled with the ground, that there was nothing 
 to lead those that visited the spot to believe that it 
 had ever been inhabited.' ^ 
 
 So precise was the fulfilment of those words, 
 ' The days shall come upon thee, that thine ene- 
 mies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass 
 thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with 
 the ground, and thy children with thee ; and 
 they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another ; 
 because thou knewest not the time of thy visita- 
 tion.' 2 
 
 Thus too was fulfilled another word of judgment 
 
 in one of our Lord's last parables, which obviously 
 
 belongs to this period, that of the Marriage of the 
 
 King's Son : who having provided his royal ban- 
 
 1 Bell. Jud. VII. i. I. ^ Luke xix. 43, 44. 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 49 
 
 quet, sent forth his servants to invite the guests. 
 The thoughtless multitude made light of it ; their 
 proud and angry rulers killed the messengers ; 
 whereupon the King sent forth his armies and de- 
 stroyed those murderers, and burnt up their city. 
 Our Lord says their city : for as the Temple had 
 ceased to be God's House, and was now reduced 
 to utter desolation, so Jerusalem had lost its 
 honoured name and guardian, and was no longer 
 ' the City of the Great King.' ^ 
 
 Nor is it only in this work of desolation that we 
 see this fulfilment of our Lord's words, notwith- 
 standing the counter-efforts of Titus and of the Jews; 
 we see it also in ' the great tribulation,' which our 
 Lord declared would fall upon that generation ; 
 such as had not been since the beginning of the 
 world, nor ever will again be in the tide of time.- 
 
 Of this we have had sad proof enough in the 
 general outlines which have been given of the 
 siege. Josephus says, in nearly our Lord's own 
 words, — That the troubles of all people, from the 
 beginning of the world, appeared to him to sink 
 in comparison with those of the Jews in this war." 
 And in another place he remarks, — That, as no 
 other city ever suffered such miseries as Jerusalem, 
 
 ^ MaU. V. 35; xxii. 1—7. - Matt. x.\iv. 21, 22, 
 
 ^ Bell. J lid. Proccni. § 4- 
 
 D 
 
50 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 so no generation had ever existed more fruitful in 
 wickedness than that.^ Yet he himself failed, with 
 his unhappy countrymen, to recognize the head 
 and front of their offence, in that they desired a 
 murderer to be granted unto them, and killed the 
 Prince of Life.^ 
 
 The people that survived the fall of the city 
 were variously disposed of at the will of their con- 
 queror* Those that resisted were put at once to 
 the sword ; the factious brigands were also exe- 
 cuted ; the tall and handsome youths were reserved 
 for the triumph ; others were condemned to servile 
 works in Egypt ; many were sold, and many were 
 distributed for gladiatorial victims throughout the 
 provinces. ^ 
 
 According to the generally received estimate, 
 eleven hundred thousand perished during the 
 siege ; ninety-seven thousand were made prisoners, 
 exclusive of nearly four hundred thousand who 
 perished in the war in various places, from the 
 time when our Lord delivered His prophecy, till 
 the fifth year after the capture of the city.^ 
 
 And yet, as a Roman historian remarks, though 
 the conquest of the Jews was thus important and 
 
 1 Bell.Jiid. v. X. 5. ^ Acts iii. 14, 15. 
 
 2 Bell.Jiid. VI. ix. 
 
 4 Ussher, A?i?iales Nov. Test. Works, vol. xi. pp. 112, 113. 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 5I 
 
 complete, and though the conquerors had each the 
 rank of Imperator, neither of them took the title 
 of Jitdaiciis} as, from the greatness of their 
 victories, and from the practice of eminent men 
 who had preceded them, they might have been 
 expected to do. Was it that Vespasian would not 
 assume a title which he may have felt belonged 
 especially to his son ? Or was it that Titus declined 
 a distinction that might seem to dim the splendour 
 of his father's fame ? Dion Cassius, who has called 
 attention to the circumstance, has given us no solu- 
 tion of it. Was it, as his learned editor suggests,- 
 on the ground of a sarcastic word of Cicero's, 
 
 1 Kai eV airots (says Dion Cassias, i. c. in consequence of 
 these successes, the capture of the city and the imposition of 
 tribute), to ^ev rod avTOKpciropos ovofjia a/i^orepot eXajBov, to fie 
 Sf) Tov 'lovSatKou ovS' erepos eV^f Ka'iToi tu re a'AAa avToh^ oaa 
 inl Tr]\tKavT7] vtKT} ehos tjv, koI dylrldes TponaLocfivpot €\l^r)(pL(r6r)aav. 
 —Hist. Rom. vol. ii. LXVi. 7. 
 
 2 Reimar refers to an expression in Cicero's Episf. ad 
 Atticum, II. ix. ' Ut sciat hie noster Hierosolymarius, tra- 
 ductor ad plebem, quam bonam meis putissimis orationibus 
 gratiam retulerit : quarum exspecta divinam naXivwdUiv.' 
 Cicero had lauded Pompey in the senate for not plundering 
 the sacred treasury when the Jews abandoned the Temple to 
 his soldiers, not choosing to fight on the Sabbath day. But 
 when Cicero wrote this letter to Atticus, he was smarting 
 under Pompey's treacherous conduct, in ad\ancing the 
 schemes of his enemy Clodius ; and he threatens ' this 
 Jerusalemite of ours,' as he calls him, with a recantation of 
 those commendations which had met with so ungrateful a 
 return. 
 
52 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 touching Pompey's capture of Jerusalem, that the 
 Romans did not care to take a title from a people 
 whom they held in such contempt as the Jews ? 
 True it is, the Romans did despise them for what 
 they deemed their unsocial system ; and Pompey's 
 capture of the city may have been an easy feat. 
 But Vespasian and Titus had no easy work in their 
 subjugation of Judaea and its metropolis. Their 
 five years' war, and their five months' siege, to- 
 gether with their arduous conquest of Galilee, must 
 have taught them to hold the Jewish nation in any 
 other light than that of contempt : and the great 
 preparations which they made for their triumph 
 indicated anything but such a feeling. Was it 
 then that Titus shrank from the title, from feeling, 
 as we have seen, on entering the city, that God 
 had broken down its walls and bulwarks, and had 
 delivered it as a prey into his hands 1 We can 
 hardly be justified in this inference, when viewed 
 in connexion with his subsequent career. Yet so it 
 was, that neither of the generals took any title from 
 the scene of his victories, nor called himself the 
 conqueror of Jerusalem. Jerusalem fell indeed by 
 the Hand that had exalted her, and had made her 
 once 'the joy of the whole earth.' She fell, a 
 terrible and memorable example of perverted 
 privileges and of a broken covenant. She fell 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM 53 
 
 before the armies of Rome ; but our Lord, in the 
 parable just cited, calls them emphatically His 
 Father's armies, sent forth to vindicate His injured 
 Son. Her rulers rejected their King, their Christ ; 
 lest, as they avowed, the Romans should come and 
 take away their place and nation ; ^ and this very 
 rejection brought upon them those Romans, who 
 took away their nation and their place. 
 
 1 John xi. 48. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE TRIUMPH OF TITUS 
 
 Shortly after the fall of the city Titus went to 
 
 Caesarea and Berytus, where he celebrated his 
 
 father's and his brother's birthdays with great 
 
 magnificence and with barbarous shows ; in which 
 
 several thousand Jewish captives were put to death 
 
 in wanton sport ; * butchered to make a Roman 
 
 holiday.' Thence, after visiting Antioch and 
 
 Zeugma, Titus proceeded to Alexandria, having 
 
 taken, on his way, a pitying glance at the striking 
 
 contrast then presented to all its former greatness 
 
 and splendour, in the wretched and solitary ruins 
 
 of Jerusalem.^ There he left the tenth legion in 
 
 charge of the relics of the people and of the city : 
 
 the twelfth legion " he banished to Armenia, in 
 
 remembrance of their ignominious retreat and the 
 
 loss of their eagle at Bethhoron. From Egypt he 
 
 ^ BelL fud. VII. V. 
 
 - Ibid. VII. i. 3. Afterwards the noted Legio Fulminatrix. 
 
THE TRIUMPH OF TITUS 55 
 
 sent Simon Bargioras, and John of Gischala, with 
 seven hundred Jews, selected for their stature and 
 personal appearance, together with an enormous 
 amount of spoils, to grace his approaching triumph 
 at Rome.i 
 
 Some of these spoils, Josephus tells us, were 
 brought to Titus by one of the priests, under a 
 solemn promise of protection, before the Upper 
 City had fallen ; others were surrendered by the 
 Treasurer of the Temple ; and he mentions in 
 particular, golden candlesticks and tables, bowls 
 and cups, and other articles which had been used 
 in the sacred service.^ In a subsequent account 
 of what he saw in the triumph, though he does not 
 profess to describe all the spoils, he says that those 
 that were taken from the Temple made the 
 greatest figure on that occasion ; ^ those in fact 
 which appeared most worthy of being recorded 
 amongst the sculptures on the Arch ; which are 
 indeed truthful records of the triumph, though 
 there is some artistic fiction mixed up with them. 
 
 The Arch then may be regarded as an exponent 
 of the Triumph ; which took place on the return 
 of Titus to Italy, probably in the year following 
 the fall of Jerusalem;^ but when exactly we cannot 
 
 1 Bell. Jud. VII. V. 2, 3. - Ibid. VI. viii. 3. 
 
 =* Ibid. VII. V. 5. ^ A.D. 71. 
 
56 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 say, as the Triumphal Annals terminate many 
 years earlier. 
 
 In consequence of the different victories of the 
 two conquerors the Senate decreed a separate 
 triumph to each. They, however, determined that 
 their conquests should be celebrated by only one 
 common triumph. i The Senate voted also 'two 
 trophied arches ' ; so at least we are told by Dion 
 Cassius ; ^ but there does not seem to have been 
 more than one erected, and that not till after the 
 death of Vespasian. But their Triumph appears 
 to have been conducted on a scale of more than 
 ordinary magnificence. Orosius says it was the 
 three hundred and twentieth of those pageants, for 
 which the Romans were so much celebrated ; and 
 that it was distinguished by the splendour of its 
 spectacle far beyond all that had preceded it.^ 
 Josephus, who was present, is exuberant in its 
 praise ; and seems to have been so lost in 
 admiration of its novelties as to have forgotten, 
 not onl}' his country's degradation, but the wrongs 
 and sorrows also of his captive countrymen ; who 
 so largely contributed to swell its pomp and pride. 
 
 All the troops which were then in Rome as- 
 sembled in the morning of the day appointed, near 
 
 * BcU. Jiid. VII. V. 3. - D. Cassius, Hist. LXVI. 7. 
 
 ■' Orosius, Hist. VII. ix. 
 
THE ' TRIUMPH OF TITUS 57 
 
 the temple of Isis, in the Campus Martius, where 
 they were met by Vespasian and Titus, crowned 
 with laurel and in ancestral purple.^ Thence they 
 proceeded to the Octavian Walks, or Porticus, 
 where the Senate, magistrates, and many of the 
 knights were waiting to receive them.- There, in 
 front of the colonnades, and seated in their ivory 
 chairs of state, they received and returned the 
 congratulations of the people ; and distributed to 
 the soldiers who had been with them in the war 
 the customary crowns and branches of laurel, 
 together with those headless spears or staves," which 
 were special marks of military distinction, and 
 which appear, as we shall see, in the hands of the 
 soldiers who are carrying the spoils of the Temple. 
 Having offered their usual form of prayer, — That 
 the gods, by whom Rome had been founded and 
 
 ^ Hopcfivpns Se iadrjTa^ naTpinvs aixTve-)(6p.evoi. — Bell. Jiid. 
 VII. V. 4. Not paternal or ancestral, as belongini^- to Ves- 
 pasian's family; for ancestry he had none, and would have 
 been the last to claim it ; but, according to the old estab- 
 lished rites, which, on these occasions, required the Imperator 
 to be in purple, and all the rest in white. 
 
 2 Bell. /ltd. VII. V. 4. 
 
 3 Aopara do-ldrjpa, as Zonaras calls them, in his account of 
 the triumph of Camillus, Annalcs, Vll. xxi. The Romans 
 called them HastcE punr, and they seem to have been usual 
 appendages of a triumph. 'Sed tua sic, domitis Parth?e 
 telluris alumnis, Pura triumphantcs hasta sequatur equos.' — 
 Propertius, IV. iii. 67. 
 
58 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 advanced, would still continue their favour and pro- 
 tection, — they went with their attendants to the 
 Triumphal Gate through which they had to pass 
 into the city. There, having put on their appro- 
 priate robes, and having offered frankincense to 
 the gods whose statues stood there, they mounted 
 their chariots, and ordered the procession to move 
 on ; driving through the tiers of crowded seats 
 which flanked their line of progress to the Capitol. 
 
 The route of the procession is not given in 
 Josephus, nor can we indeed determine with cer- 
 tainty the site of the gate ^ from which it started ; 
 but he has mentioned the chief component parts of 
 the pomp ; and we can readily supply such as are 
 wanting. 
 
 The Senate and other chief persons took the 
 lead. They were followed by the greater portion 
 of the spoils, with persons carrying title-boards 
 or placards ; from which the spectators might 
 ascertain the history of all the objects that passed 
 before them.'^ Josephus does not enter much into 
 
 1 Donati places this gate in the city wall, on the south of 
 the Campus Martins ; but he candidly says, ' Equidem potius 
 ubi non fuerit, quam ubi ponenda sit, possum ostendere.' — 
 De Urbe Ronia^ i. xxii. 
 
 2 Ovid, from remembrance of similar pageants (for he was 
 at Pontus when he wrote the verses), speaks of these tituli 
 or placards, in a triumph of Tiberius. ' Ergo omnis potent 
 
THE TRIUMPH OF TITUS 59 
 
 these details : he says it was impossible to recount 
 them all ; but that such was the number and such 
 the magnificence of the spoils, of things most rich 
 and rare in nature and in art, that it seemed as if 
 the products of different nations had been brought 
 there together, on that day, and had passed before 
 him like a flowing river.i There was silver, gold, 
 and ivory in all manner of forms ; gems, in crowns 
 and in other fashions ; tapestries of the rarest 
 Babylonian embroidery. There were also in the 
 pomp, in appropriate trappings, foreign animals of 
 various kinds ; and other productions of the con- 
 quered country which would be likely to interest 
 the citizens of Rome.'- But the objects which, 
 according to Josephus, excited the greatest admir- 
 ation in the whole procession, were the large and 
 lofty platforms on which were exhibited various 
 sections of the late campaign ; consisting of models 
 
 popukis spectare triumphos, Cumquc duciim titulis oppida 
 capta leget : Vinclaqiie captiva regcs cervice gcrcntes, Ante 
 coronatos ire videbit cquos.' — Trist. iv. ii. 19 — 22. 
 
 1 BclLJud. VII. V. 
 
 2 According to a curious list which Hoftman has given of 
 these triumphal novelties (s. v. Triumphus), it appears that 
 the balsam-tree of Jericho was the most remarkable exotic 
 in Vespasian's triumph. Pliny mentions it : 'Omnibus 
 odoribus priefertur Balsamum, uni terrarum Juda^ai conces- 
 sum. Ostendere arbusculam hanc imperatores Vespasiani.' 
 — Hist. Nat. XII. liv. 
 
6o THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 of cities, temples, fortresses, assaulted, captured, in 
 ruins or in flames ; with dramatic representations 
 of the hostile armies in all the varying forms and 
 circumstance of war.^ Then there followed many 
 captured ships, that had probably been taken at 
 Tarichaea, and after the conflicts and the storm at 
 Joppa ; which are mentioned amongst the earlier 
 events of the history. After these things came 
 the priests with the bulls for sacrifice,^ adorned 
 with fillets, garlands, and dorsal cloths ; with corn 
 and wine, and meal, and frankincense. Then came 
 the seven hundred Hebrew youths, with Simon 
 Bargioras and John of Gischala ; all splendidly 
 attired, and all in chains : and after them, as in 
 
 ^ These nT^y/Mara, or platforms, were of various kinds and 
 uses ; for the theatre, for the circus, and for the triumph. 
 Ovid, in the poem just cited, speaks of them as common 
 parts of the pageant. ' Hie lacus, hi montes, hsec tot cas- 
 tella, tot amnes, Plena ferae c^dis, plena cruoris erant.' — 
 Trist. IV. ii. 37, and again, Ex Ponto^ iv. ii. 39. It seems, 
 from the language of Josephus, that these platforms con- 
 sisted not of mere pictures, but of models of battle-fields in 
 Jerusalem and in other places ; but whether these repre- 
 sentations Avere effected by such automatic machinery as 
 Seneca describes in his account of the Pegmata, is doubtful ; 
 Lipsius thinks they were not. De Aniphithcatro^ XXII. 
 Grasvius, torn. IX. 
 
 2 ' Hinc albi, Clitumne, greges, et maxuma taurus, Victima, 
 scepe tuo perfusi flumine sacro, Romanos ad templa Deum 
 duxere triumphos.' — Geoi'g. il. 146. Virgil says Dnxei'e ; 
 for the victims preceded the Imperator's car ; and they 
 appear upon the frieze, though not mentioned by Josephus. 
 
THE TRIUMPH OF TITUS 6i 
 
 the most distinguished place, the spoils that had 
 been taken from the Temple of Jerusalem ; the 
 golden Table, the golden Candlestick, and last of 
 all, the Book of the Law.^ After these things 
 there followed a numerous company with gold and 
 ivory images of Victory. Then came the Emperor 
 Vespasian in his chariot, followed by Titus in 
 another chariot,'-^ and by his younger son, Domi- 
 tian, who was consul, on horseback. After them, 
 as on all such occasions, came the soldiers that 
 had been engaged in the war, crowned with laurel, 
 and shouting songs of victory, together with such 
 effusions of praise, abuse, and raillery, as they 
 chose to bestow upon their military leaders. Thus 
 they went along the Via Sacra ; the conquerors to 
 the Capitol, there to present their votive crowns 
 upon the knees of Jupiter ; the captives to the 
 Forum, and thence to prison, where on most occa- 
 sions the captured kings and leaders were put to 
 death. Nor do we find that the termination of 
 this Triumph was any exception to this atrocious 
 practice, though it occurred in what was deemed 
 a civilized age, and under the most humane of 
 emperors. 
 
 1 Bell. J lid. VII. V. 5. 
 
 2 Ibid. VII. V. Orosius, Hist. VI I. ix., says that the father 
 and the son were in the same chariot ; but Josephus was an 
 eye-witness of the Triumph. 
 
62 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 When arrived at the Capitol the procession 
 halted ; for it had been the custom, says Josephus, 
 there to wait till some one announced the death of 
 the general of the enemy. This was Simon, son of 
 Gioras. Bound by a halter, and scourged by those 
 that led him, he was dragged to the place of 
 execution ;^ and as soon as it was announced that 
 'there was an end of him,' the multitude acknow- 
 ledged it with a joyful shout. They then proceeded 
 to sacrifice the victims ; and having offered their 
 usual form of thanks to the gods, they departed 
 to the banquets that had been prepared for them.^ 
 
 Such was the revolting termination of the 
 Triumph. Yet such was Rome in her highest glory ; 
 such too in her hour of greatest joy ; so much 
 she still retained of her foster-mother's nature, and 
 carried it with her to the brink of her grave. 
 
 For Simon there was probably but little sym- 
 pathy by those that knew him, as well as those 
 that did not : for, though a man of remarkable 
 
 ^ Ets Tov CTTi Trjs dyopas iavpero tottov, ac.t.A. ^tV/. _///^/. 
 VII. V. 6. This agrees Avith the site of the Mamertine 
 prison : ' Career media urbe imminens Foro.' — Livii, H/s/. i. 
 xxiii. : and with Cicero's account of the place and the prac- 
 tice. ' Cum de Foro in Capitolium flectere incipiunt, illos 
 (z. e. duces hostium) duci in carcerem : idemque dies et 
 victoribus imperii, et victis vitas finem facit.' — In Verrem, 
 V. 30. 
 
 2 Bcll.Jud. VII. V. 
 
THE TRIUMPH OF TITUS 63 
 
 courage and ability, he seems to have been gener- 
 ally feared and hated. But, on n^ost of these 
 triumphal occasions, we cannot but suppose that 
 many must have felt with one of our poets, who, 
 on visiting this entrance to the Capitol, exclaims : 
 
 ' And what are they, 
 Who at the foot withdraw, a mournful train, 
 
 In fetters ? They are the fallen ; 
 
 Those who were spared to grace the chariot wheels ; 
 
 And there they parted, where the road divides, 
 
 The victor and the vanquished — there withdrew ; 
 
 He to the festal board, and they to die. 
 
 Well might the great, the mighty of the world. 
 
 They who were wont to fare deliciously, 
 
 And war but for a kingdom, more or less. 
 
 Shrink back, nor from their thrones endure to look, 
 
 To think that way ! Well might they in their state 
 
 Humble themsehes, and kneel and supplicate 
 
 To be delivered from a dream like this.' ^ 
 
 And there, upon the summit of the Sacred Way, 
 that consecrated path, — over whose broad flints 
 
 ' Such crowds have rolled, so many storms of war, 
 So many pomps, so many wondering realms,'- — 
 
 this Arch of Titus was built. 
 
 1 Italy, p. 142. '^ Dyer, Ruins of Rome, p. 32, 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 As to the precise date of the erection of the 
 Arch of Titus we have no information. But if not 
 the first it was one of the earhest of those twenty- 
 one arches with which Rome was once adorned. 
 And if not the first, it is one of the earhest 
 specimens of that elaborate order in which they 
 were executed : though that order is said to have 
 been found upon the Arch of Drusus, and even 
 upon a portico in Caria.^ Not indeed that tri- 
 umphal arches, of some kind or other, were of so 
 late a date as this ; for it was the practice of the 
 Romans in very early times, to erect arches to 
 commemorate their victories ; but at first they 
 were of very rude construction, and of no better 
 material than stone or brick; as the arch that 
 was built in honour of Camillus, after the conquest 
 of Veii.^ 
 
 ^ Burton, Antiquities of Rome ^ vol. i. p. 230. 
 ^ Pitiscus, Lex. Antiq. Rom. s. v. Arcus. 
 
THE ARCH OF TITUS 65 
 
 This Arch of Titus is said to have had originally 
 two inscriptions ; one on each side of the Attic 
 story with which it is surmounted even now. One 
 of these inscriptions is still legible, as it appears 
 upon the reduced copy of the photograph which 
 was executed in Rome a few years since. The 
 other inscription had disappeared from its place 
 as long since as the time of Donati, that is, more 
 than two hundred years ago. But it has been 
 preserved by Gruter ; who professes, however, his 
 ignorance of its origin, and says that Scaliger con- 
 sidered it to be a forgery of Onuphrius.^ 
 
 On the storey fronting the Colosseum, that is, 
 the side which is given in this print, we have 
 the following simple inscription : 
 
 SENATVS 
 
 POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS 
 
 DIVO TITO DIVI VESPASIANI F. 
 
 VESPASIANO AVGVSTO. 
 
 From this inscription it appears, not only that the 
 arch was erected to Titus by the Senate and the 
 people, but that it was not erected till after he 
 became emperor, as is indicated by the title 
 Augustus. Nor was it erected till after his death. 
 At all events, if begun before, it must have been 
 
 ' Gruter, Corpus I iiscripf. vol. i. p. ccxliv, b. 
 
 E 
 
66 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 finished after his decease; as he is here called 
 Divus, the Deified. For though the Roman poets 
 often speak of their emperors as gods upon earth, 
 the Divus, here solemnly assigned by the Senate, 
 and placed upon the tablet, cannot be mistaken. 
 
 And there is a curious confirmation of this in 
 Tacitus. He states that Anicius, when consul 
 elect, instead of voting thanks and offerings to the 
 gods, for Nero's escape from assassination, pro- 
 posed that a temple, at the public charge, should 
 be built, as soon as possible, to the Divine Nero. 
 ' A motion,' says Tacitus, ' by which he meant to 
 intimate that Nero soared above the pinnacle of 
 mortality, and deserved the worship given to the 
 gods, but which was slily interpreted by some 
 persons as ominous of Nero's approaching death : 
 for divine worship is not paid to a prince till he 
 has ceased to sojourn upon earth.' i 
 
 That the Arch is indeed a posthumous tribute is 
 
 attested also by the circumstance, that on the 
 
 ceiling of the vault there is the symbol of Titus' 
 
 apotheosis, or his enrolment among the gods. 
 
 ^ 'Reperio in commentariis Senatus, Cerealem Anicium, 
 Consulem designatum, pro sententia dixisse, Ut templum D. 
 Neroni quam maturrime publica pecunia poneretur. Quod 
 quidem ille decernebat, tamquam mortale fastigium egresso 
 et venerationem hominum merito, quorumdam dolo ad omnia 
 sui exitus vertebatur. Nam Deum honor Principi non ante 
 habetur, quam agere inter homines desierit.' — Annul. XV. 74. 
 
THE ARCH OF TITUS 67 
 
 Titus is represented as sitting astride upon an 
 eagle ; and there are also, at the corners of the 
 tablet, eagles grasping in their claws the thunder- 
 bolt ; the acknowledged symbol of consecration. 
 For it was the Roman custom, at the obsequies of 
 an emperor, to have an eagle concealed at the top 
 of the pile, and, as soon as the funeral fire was 
 kindled, to let the eagle fly ; who, as he mounted 
 up into the sky, was thought by the people to 
 carry the emperor's spirit along with him ; and 
 thenceforth, as Herodian remarks, he was wor- 
 shipped in common with the other gods.^ 
 
 The other inscription, before referred to, which 
 
 is said to have been discovered in the Circus," is 
 
 much longer, and in a very different style. It 
 
 professes that the Arch was erected to Titus ; and 
 
 after recounting his high offices and the number of 
 
 his victories, it adds, that, acting under his father's 
 
 counsels and auspices, he had subdued the Jews, 
 
 and destroyed Jerusalem ; which had either not 
 
 1 So Herodian concludes his account of the obsequies of 
 Septimius Severus.— ///j/. iv. ii. 2. Dryden rather oddly 
 refers to this practice at the commencement of his Stanzas 
 Oil tJic Death of Cromwell — 
 
 ' And now 'tis time ; for their officious haste, 
 Who would before have borne him to the sky, 
 Like eager Romans, ere all rites were past, 
 Did let too soon the sacred eagle fly.' 
 - Marlianus, Urhis Rouue Topog. III. viii. Grievius, tom. III. 
 
68 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 been attempted by any previous generals, kings, or 
 people, or had been attempted in vain. 
 
 IMP. TITO CAESARI DIVI 
 
 VESPASIANI R VESPASIANO 
 
 AVG. PONTIFICI MAXIMO 
 
 TRIE. POT. X. 
 IMP. XVII. COS. VIII. P.P. 
 
 PRINCIPI SVO S.P.Q.R. 
 
 QVOD PRAECEPTIS PATRIS 
 
 CONSILIISQVE ET AVSPICIIS 
 
 GENTEM IVDAEORVM DOMVIT 
 
 ET VRBEM HIEROSOLYMAM 
 
 OMNIBVS ANTE SE DVCIBVS 
 
 REGIBVS GENTIBVSQVE 
 
 AVT FRVSTRA PETITAM 
 
 AVT OMNINO INTENTATAM 
 
 DELEVIT. 
 
 Whether this inscription was ever attached to 
 either side of the Arch is uncertain : nor is it 
 a matter of much importance. It gives no in- 
 formation as to Titus, as acting under his father's 
 counsels, which we have not learnt more fully from 
 Josephus : and what it adds, with regard to his 
 assault upon Jerusalem, is matter of such am- 
 bitious blundering that it is surprising how any 
 one could have ventured on a statement, at variance 
 not only with Jewish history, but even with recent 
 
THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 69 
 
 Roman affairs. That the Romans may have been 
 ignorant of the assaults that had been made upon 
 Judasa and Jerusalem by neighbouring nations 
 may well be supposed, when we see the strange 
 stories which Tacitus has retailed of the origin of 
 the Jews and of their early history.^ But how 
 
 aiit.iai 
 
 CON SEC RAT 10 SIVR APOTHEOSIS T I T I. 
 REDUCED FROM BARTOLl'S ADMIRANDA. 
 
 could they be ignorant of Pompey's conquest, who 
 had not only taken Jerusalem, but had also made 
 her tributary to Rome, not a century and a half 
 before the time of Titus ? ' Such fictions, says 
 
 1 Tacitus, Hist. v. 2—5. 
 
 2 Josephus, Antiq. xiv. iv. Tacitus, Hist. v. ix. 
 
70 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 Orelli, they are apt to form, who aim at something 
 grand or extraordinary.^ 
 
 Nor is this the only instance in which the name 
 of Titus seems to have been thus unduly magnified. 
 Pope alludes to a learned strife which had been 
 kindled in behalf of the two Vespasians, by some 
 old inscription, that had suffered in common with 
 the arches and temples of ancient Rome. 
 
 ' Some felt the silent stroke of mouldering age, 
 Some hostile fury, some religious rage ; 
 Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire, 
 And Papal piety, and Gothic fire. 
 Perhaps, by its own ruins saved from flame, 
 Some buried marble half preserves a name ; 
 That name the learned with fierce disputes pursue, 
 And give to Titus old Vespasian's due.' ^ 
 
 The names, however, in this instance are sufifi- 
 ciently discriminated to prevent the risk of any 
 such disastrous misunderstanding : nor shall we 
 take anything from the old Vespasian by rejecting 
 this inscription as spurious. That Titus acted 
 under his father's auspices, and received from him 
 the conduct of the war, we have heard already 
 
 ^ Inscript. Latin, vol. i. p. 184 : and yet this inscription is 
 given in a Fasciculus Roinanaruui Inscriptionum., printed at 
 Padua 1774, 'In usum juventutis,' and dedicated 'Tironibus 
 Rei Lapidari^ studiosis.' 
 
 2 Verses occasioned by M?: Addison'' s Ti'eatisc of Medals ; 
 prefixed to the Dialogues. 
 
THE ARCH OF TITUS 71 
 
 from other sources : it is only from Titus wc must 
 pluck the laurel, here assigned him by some foolish 
 lapidary, of having been the first that conquered 
 the Jewish metropolis. 
 
 We may now turn to other details of the Arch, 
 its style, and its historical reminiscences. 
 
 It is built of large blocks of Parian marble ; and 
 as a work of art it has been much admired. 
 Whether or not it be the first example of that 
 combination called the Roman, or the Composite, 
 or, as some have called it, the Triumphal order, 
 from its being used especially in these arches, it is 
 admitted to be a graceful exhibition of it : and 
 has been treated as a model in its kind ; the 
 most celebrated revivers of Roman architecture 
 having taken the proportions of the order from 
 this Arch.i 
 
 The print to which we have already referred 
 shows the side towards the Colosseum, and cor- 
 rectly represents its present state. The other side, 
 or western, towards the Forum, retains but little 
 of its original form, having suffered much from 
 various causes ; especially when the Arch was used 
 as a fortress, in the civil war, in the twelfth century. 
 And so largely had the soil accumulated round it, 
 
 ^ Desgodetz, Edifices Antiques^ vol. 11. xvii. Lumisden, 
 Remarks on Antiquities of Rome ^ p. 341. 
 
72 
 
 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 in the course of that and the two next centuries, 
 that the two chief tablets were not visible, till 
 Sixtus the Fourth made a way beneath the vault 
 down to the level of the ancient pavement ; which 
 now forms the pathway through it.^ 
 
 KEYSTONE OF THE EASTERN SIDE OF THE ARCH. 
 REDUCED FROM DESGODETZ' EDIFICES ANTIQUES. 
 
 The Columns gradually diminish from the pedes- 
 tals, and are surmounted by the usual acanthus- 
 capital, subdivided into parsley-leaves ; and they 
 were doubtless all originally alike, as they are given 
 by Donati and Montfaucon ; though the outer 
 columns have been restored in a manner most 
 unworthy of their old companions. The Volutes, 
 and, in short, all parts of the capitals, as well as 
 
 ^ Taylor and Cresy, Architectural Afitiqmttes, p. 4. Burton, 
 Desc7'iptio7i of Rovie^ vol. i. p. 237. 
 
THE ARCH OF TITUS 73 
 
 the details of the entablature, are in a style of 
 profuse ornament, and are given with fine effect 
 by Desgodetz. The Spandrclls are filled by two 
 figures of Fame ; one holding in her hand a 
 standard, the other apparently a laurel crown. 
 The Brackets underneath the cornice are formed 
 of dolphins resting upon shells, and are supposed 
 to symbolize the shore of Gennesareth.^ On the 
 Keystone, which is now much decayed, but which 
 was once considered the finest in Rome, there are 
 the relics of a helmeted female figure, probably 
 designed for Rome herself. She is standing in 
 front of some military weapons : her left hand 
 rests upon a shield ; with the right she seems to 
 be in the act of welcoming her victorious sons on 
 their way to the Capitol.^ 
 
 We may now notice those more important parts, 
 to which the whole structure may be considered 
 as subservient. Under the vault, and on each side 
 of its chamber, arc the two noted bas-reliefs : the 
 one on the north side representing the emperor, 
 passing through the city in his chariot to the 
 Capitol ; the other, the spoils which were carried 
 before him : and on the Frieze, that runs across 
 the whole upper structure, or did, at least, when 
 
 ^ Taylor and Cresy, Architectural Antiquities^ vol. i., plates 
 IV. — VIII. pp. 9 — 12. - See p. 72. 
 
74 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 it was entire, we have a representation of another 
 part of the pomp, consisting of such living objects 
 as were deemed legitimate subjects for the Frieze, 
 and from which, indeed, it took its earlier name. 
 
 Here we have, first, two Roman soldiers, one 
 with a shield, the next with a title-board or 
 placard ; then a sacrificer in a lictor's apron, 
 leading two bulls about to be offered, in their 
 ornamented cloths and fillets ; followed by an 
 attendant with a pitcher of wine and a basket of 
 perfumes for the sacrifices. Then we have another 
 priest, leading another decorated bull ; soldiers 
 in tunics, crowned with laurel, and bearing the 
 Roman oblong shield ; a person in a toga and 
 another with a placard. Then comes another 
 sacrificer with a bull, and an attendant with an 
 incense-basket, as before ; followed by senators, 
 and by another sacrificer and a bull. Then we have 
 another incense-bearer, another votive bull, and 
 two more senators. And, lastly, we have several 
 persons carrying on a stage the recumbent figure 
 of a bearded old man, whose left arm rests upon 
 an urn. He is supposed to represent the River 
 Jordan, or, according to Bellori, the Lake of Gen- 
 nesareth ; ^ at whose south-west corner, where the 
 
 ^ 'Tarichasis, ad Lacum Gennesar,' says Bellori, 'navali 
 proslio devictisj simulacrum Lacus ipsius in Triumpho duci- 
 
IMPERATORIS TIT I TRIUMPHALIS POM PA. 
 
 IN ARCUS TITI ZOPHORO VERSUS A M PH I THE ATK U M. 
 
 REDUCED FROM BARTOU'S ADMIRANDA. 
 
76 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 Jordan resumes its course, Titus took, as we have 
 heard, the town of Tarichaea, which made him 
 master of nearly all Galilee. Thus Statius repre- 
 sents the River Inachus, as sculptured on the palace 
 walls of Argos : * Pater ipse bicornis In laevam 
 prona nixus sedet Inachus urna.' ^ And it is to 
 such figures as this that we are indebted for the 
 symbols of our old Father Thames. 
 
 It should also be mentioned, before we quit the 
 Frieze, that at each extremity, where it was con- 
 tinued over the capitals of the outer columns, — 
 as appears from the prints of Donati and Mont- 
 faucon, — there was a female figure, seated on 
 the ground, similar to those on the Vespasian 
 coins ; and with which indeed we have been long 
 familiar in the lines which form the sequel of 
 those just cited from Pope's Verses on Medals. 
 He is contending for the advantages of the medal 
 and the coin, — and in this instance with obvious 
 truth, — over the records of the sculptor and the 
 architect. 
 
 tur.' Venuti rather refers the figure to the River Jordan. 
 ' Vi si vede nel principio del fregio scolpita la figura d' un 
 Vecchio portata da due Uomini, che rappresenta il Fiume 
 Giordano, per mostrare, che da Tito venne soggiogata la 
 Giudea, seguitandovi per il sagrificio il Bove, e altre piccole 
 figure.' — Antichita di Roina^ p. 14. 
 ^ Thebaid. II. 217. 
 
THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 77 
 
 Ambition sighed : she found it vain to trust 
 The faithless cokimn and the crumbHng bust, 
 Huge moles, whose shadows stretched from shore to 
 
 shore, 
 Their ruins perished, and their place no more. 
 
 VESPASIANUS. 
 A.U.C. DCCCXXIV. A.D. LXXI. 
 
 TITUS VESPASIANUS. 
 A.U.C, DCCCXXXIil. A.I). I, XXX. 
 
 Convinced, she now contracts her \ast design, 
 And all her triumphs shrink into a Coin. 
 A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps, 
 Beneath her palm here sad Judeea weeps.' 
 
 And thus has she continued, for nearly eighteen 
 centuries, to affirm the fact of her subjection to 
 
78 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 Rome, and to illustrate also the symbolism of her 
 prophets; who, under this and other kindred 
 images, foretold the very captivity recorded on 
 these coins.^ 
 
 On the right-hand side of the inner walls of the 
 Arch, we have the conqueror in his triumphal 
 car, with many of the friends and attendants who 
 formed his personal staff on the occasion. 
 
 The chariot, commonly used in triumphs, differed 
 
 from the military and from the circus chariot.'^ It 
 
 was like a short circular tower, as we see it on the 
 
 Arch and on coins and medals. It was usually 
 
 made of ivory and gold ; a work of great artistic 
 
 skill ; and it was generally drawn by four white 
 
 horses abreast. Pompey, on his return from Africa, 
 
 appeared with elephants harnessed to his car ; ^ 
 
 but the white horses, which were introduced by 
 
 Camillus, at no small sacrifice of popularity, 
 
 was the style affected by most of the imperators : 
 
 and all the more, no doubt, from its having 
 
 been deemed a sort of assumption of divine 
 
 honours. 
 
 Titus, as was usual, is standing in his chariot, 
 
 and has in his hand a military baton : the reins are 
 
 ^ See Addison's notice of these coincidences, Dialogues on 
 Medals, p. 134. 
 
 ^ Zonaras, Afuiales^ vil. xxi. Corpus Byzant. torn. x. p. i. 
 •^ Pliny, Hist. Natural, VIII. § ii. 
 

 u 
 
 Q P 
 
 ^ 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
 u 
 
 H 
 
 G 
 
 < 
 
 t: 
 
 
 
 
 
 I— » 
 
 
 Ld 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 % 
 
 
8o THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 hung across the antux. A winged figure of Victory, 
 from behind him, holds a large crown or chaplet 
 over his head. Nor was this altogether an inven- 
 tion of the sculptor ; for there seems to have been 
 a person appointed for the purpose of carrying the 
 crown on these occasions : and, in earlier times, a 
 slave was deputed to stand behind the conqueror 
 as he rode along in triumph, to remind him, — that 
 he too was but a man, and should not be too much 
 elated by his victory.^ Juvenal alludes to this 
 singular custom, and fancies how Democritus would 
 have been amused to see the noble Roman in such 
 circumstances. 
 
 ' In tunica Jovis et pictae SaiTana ferentem 
 Ex humeris aulaea togse, magnasque coronse 
 Tantum orbem, quanto cervix non sufficit ulla. 
 Ouippe tenet sudans banc publicus, et, sibi consul 
 Ne placeat, curru servus portatur eodem.' ^ 
 
 1 Tertullian appeals to this practice, in defining and defend- 
 ing the kind of reverence and obedience which were due 
 from Christians to the reigning emperor. ' Non enim Deum 
 imperatorem dicam, vel quia mentiri nescio, vel quia ihum 
 deridere non audeo, vel quia nee ipse se Deum volet dici. 
 Si homo sit, interest homini Deo cedere ; satis habet appel- 
 lari imperator. Grande et hoc nomen est, quod a Deo tra- 
 ditur. Negat ilium imperatorem, qui Deum dicit : nisi homo 
 sit, non est imperator. Homincm se esse etiam triumphans 
 in illo sublimissimo curru admonetur. Suggeritur enim ei a 
 tergo, Respice post te, hominem memento te.' Apologeticics 
 adv. Gentcs^ cap. xxxiii. ; Semler, vol. v. 
 
 ■^ Juvenal, Sat. x. 38 — 42. Some writers say that this 
 
THE ARCH OF TITU::^ 8i 
 
 ' In Jove's gay tunic, and embroidered vest 
 Of Tyrian tapestry, superbly drest ; 
 While at his side the sweating menial bore 
 A monstrous crown, no mortal ever wore ; 
 The menial destined in his car to ride, 
 And cool the swelling consul's feverish pride.' 
 
 And there was something in this monitory office 
 of the slave characteristic of severe old Rome, and 
 of her just jealousy of these triumphal honours. 
 Some indeed of her distinguished men declined 
 them ; and many must have felt, as one acknow- 
 ledges, that it was but a childish sort of gratifica- 
 tion, and could give the conqueror no substantial 
 pleasure.^ Milton, from a higher point of view 
 
 officer was the Roman Carnifex ; but his contact even with 
 the crown would have been deemed a pollution. Pitiscus, 
 Lex. Antiq. Rom.., s. v. Carnifex. Nor is it probable that he 
 actually uttered the admonitions suggested by Tertullian. 
 'Nam vel silente servo,' as Pitiscus remarks, 'id ille (Im- 
 perator) intelligebat.' S. v. Triumphantes. His presence in 
 the chariot was enough. 
 
 ^ ' Disseres de triumpho,' says Cicero : ' Quid tandem 
 habet iste currus ? quid vincti ante currum duces ? c[uid 
 simulacra oppidorum ? quid aurum ? quid argentum ? quid 
 legati in equis, et tribuni ? quid clamor militum ? quid tota 
 ilia pompa? Inania sunt ista, mihi crede, delectamenta 
 paene puerorum, captare plausus, vehi per urbem, conspici 
 velle. Ouibus ex rebus nihil est, quod solidum tenere, 
 nihil, quod referre ad voluptatem corporis possit.' Orat. in 
 Pisonem., § 25, Must not Cicero have felt that there was 
 truth in this disparagement of triumphal honours, though he 
 puts it into the mouth of one who decried only what he could 
 not obtain ? 
 
 F 
 
82 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 than Roman magnanimity seems to have reached, 
 sympathizes more with the conquered than the 
 conqueror, and calls his triumph ' an insulting 
 vanity.' Such are the terms in which he represents 
 our Lord as rejecting the Tempter's offer of these 
 dignities of ' great and glorious Rome.' ^ 
 
 Nor is the tablet wanting in any of its essential 
 details ; though Vespasian, who preceded Titus, is 
 not there, nor Domitian, who followed him on 
 horseback. He is supported, in the background, 
 by twelve lictors ; whose rods of office are without 
 their axes :^ and, in front and round about the 
 chariot, by senators and others in their festival 
 costume, — 'an ample train of nobles all in white,'^ 
 — crowned with laurel and with branches in their 
 hands : and some mythical personage, by the side 
 of the chariot, seems to be marshalling the proces- 
 sion. The horses are decorated with the sacred 
 crescents which were worn in the Circus and on all 
 
 1 Paradise Regained^ iv. 45, 138. 
 
 2 One might perhaps expect this omission on such an 
 occasion as a triumph : but it may be otherwise accounted 
 for. By a regulation, introduced by Valerius, in the first 
 consulate, it was enacted that the axes should never be 
 carried through the city ; a restriction which Dionysius Hali- 
 carnassus tells us {Antiq. Rom. v. xix.) continued up to his 
 time. 
 
 3 ' Preecedentia longi Agminis officia, et niveos ad frnena 
 Ouirites,' — Juvenal, Sat. X. 44, 
 
84 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 great occasions ; and Rome herself, distinguished 
 by her spear and helmet, conducts them by a little 
 leading rein.^ 
 
 The sculptures on the other side of the Arch 
 represent the spoils which were taken from the 
 Temple. They are borne aloft by Roman soldiers, 
 not by Jewish captives, as some writers represent 
 them ; for they are crowned with laurel, and they 
 have in their hands the short and pointless spears 
 that had been given them when they started.^ 
 They are also accompanied by persons of higher 
 rank, with laurel crowns and branches, as before, 
 and one of them carries some trappings on his 
 breast.^ 
 
 These, as the most important part of the Spoils, 
 
 1 Bellori's Comment, in Bartoli, p. 8. Montfaucon, HAutiq. 
 Expl. torn. V. VII. v. 2 See Note 3, p. 57. 
 
 3 Bellori says, in reference to this figure, which comes 
 immediately after the candlestick, — ' Eques phaleris ornatus 
 habet cingulum in pectore cum claviculis aureis.' But he 
 does not tell us what these phalei'O' are, which this Roman 
 knight is carrying. Of course they must be Jewish spoils. 
 They are strapped across the breast of the bearer, and they 
 remind us of the high-priest's ephod and breastplate. We 
 have, indeed, no account in Josephus of these pontifical ap- 
 pendages having been exhibited in the procession ; but he 
 tells us, in a passage already referred to, that, together with 
 the candlestick and other implements, one of the priests 
 delivered to Titus 'the vestments also of the high-priests, 
 with the precious stones ; and many other articles belonging 
 to the sacred service.' Ta eVSi'/xara rwy dpxiepeoiv, avv tchs 
 
THE ARCH OF TITUS 85 
 
 seem to have closed this section of the pomp, and at 
 a short distance before the conqueror's car. There 
 are also three Title-boards above them, similar 
 to those which we have seen upon the Frieze ; 
 which had probably inscriptions, for the informa- 
 tion of the multitude, stating what these objects 
 were, and whence they had been taken. There is 
 one above the Table, another near the Candlestick, 
 and a third, which must have indicated the Book 
 of the Law ; which, however, is no longer visible. 
 Villalpanda thinks that the Book was omitted, 
 as a less imposing object^ than the other spoils. 
 Prideaux suggests that it was not inserted for 
 want of sufficient space to introduce it, together 
 with the coffer in which it was kept.- Dr. Card- 
 well seems to think that this Book was nothing 
 more than a tablet of gold, or of some other 
 metal, inscribed with some portions of the Divine 
 Law ; of which, he says, there were many in 
 the Temple, and one more important than the rest, 
 which had the Ten Commandments engraved 
 upon it.^ 
 
 Algols', Kai TToXKa roav npos ras Upovpyias crKevcov ciXXa. Bell. 
 Jud. VI. viii. 3. 
 
 1 ' Minus spcciosLim.' Villalpanda. Explanat. in Ezcch. 
 torn. II. V. 4. 
 
 ^ Prideaux, Cofincction^ vol. i. i. 3, p. 166. 
 
 ^ Q'OiXdi\\€i\ Adiwtat. ad Bell. fiid. vii. v. § 53. 
 
86 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 None of these conjectures are satisfactory. Yet 
 here it seemed as if our inquiry must end, till, on 
 turning to the pages of an early modern writer, 
 who must have been familiar with the Arch, for 
 the first half of the fifteenth century, it appeared 
 that the Book, — which Josephus describes as the 
 last or crowning object of the spoils,^ — had not 
 been forgotten by the Roman sculptor, nor had 
 anything else been substituted for it. Biondo, or 
 Blondus, as he is commonly called, one of the 
 earliest of the Italian antiquaries, and for many 
 years the pope's secretary, tells us in his work, 
 De Roma Triumphante, that the Book of the 
 Jewish Law was extant in his time, amongst the 
 marble sculptures on the Arch, together with the 
 golden Table and the Candlestick : and it is a 
 curious circumstance, which may account in some 
 measure for the doubts and conjectures above- 
 mentioned, that In later editions of Biondo's work 
 this notice of the sculptured spoils is wanting. 
 While the marble record was yielding to decay 
 the written one was also becoming obsolete. 
 
 Such then are the Spoils which, according to 
 Josephus, made the greatest figure in the Triumph. 
 
 ^ "O re v6]xo^ 6 twv 'lovBalav cttI tovtols (z. e. the golden 
 Table and the Candlestick) ((pepero rav \a(f)vp(ov tcXcvtoios. 
 Bell. J 21 d. VII. V. 5. 
 
THE ARCH OF TITUS Z7 
 
 Nothing is said of the Ark of the Covenant, 
 which Pitiscus and others say was carried in the 
 procession ; probably mistaking this Table for the 
 Ark, as has been done by many writers. For 
 Jewish authorities are generally agreed that there 
 was no Ark in the second Temple. Josephus says 
 there was nothing at all in the Holy of Holies 
 in his time.^ Pompey, on entering, found it utterly 
 empty :^ a circumstance which Lucan is supposed 
 to refer to, when, in speaking of Judaea's subjection 
 to his hero, he calls her the worshipper of an unknown 
 God.3 
 
 And as from respect for their sacred character 
 these Spoils had the highest place of honour in the 
 Triumph, a like distinction was also assigned them 
 amongst the sculptured records of the Arch ; where 
 they still affirm their high and ancient origin, not- 
 withstanding all the changes to which they had 
 been subject, from the time of the erection of the 
 Tabernacle in the wilderness till their appearance 
 on the shoulders of their Roman conquerors. And 
 it may be well to take a glance at their eventful 
 history, as far as we can trace them through this 
 long and chequered interval. 
 
 ^ "ExeiTo ovbev oXco? iv avTco. Bell. Jlld. V. v. 5* 
 - Tacitus, Hist. v. 9. 
 •^ Civ. Bell. II. 592. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 
 
 What became of the Tabernacle vessels we 
 know not : but we are told that, when Nebuchad- 
 nezzar took the Temple, he carried out the treasures 
 of the Lord's House, and cut in pieces all the 
 vessels of gold which Solomon had made for the 
 Temple-service ;^ that is, the larger and more im- 
 portant implements. Many of the smaller ones 
 were taken to Babylon, and, after having been 
 exhibited at Belshazzar's feast, were brought back 
 on the return from the Captivity. Those that had 
 been destroyed were restored by Ezra, in pursuance 
 of the orders of the Persian kings.- 
 
 These again became the prey of the spoiler. 
 For though the Jews, under their Persian rulers, 
 had much rest for many years, a great change 
 again came over them, and they fell away from 
 
 1 2 Kinus xxiv. '^ Ezra vi. vii. 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 89 
 
 the Divine favour. They began to affect the vain- 
 glory of the Greeks, and to adopt much of their 
 Hfe and manners. Their high-priesthood, having 
 also become a rich and an important temporal 
 sovereignty, involved the pontifical families in 
 strife ; and, in the midst of their feuds about the 
 succession, Antiochus Epiphanes entered the city, 
 and carried off from the Temple the golden altar, 
 and the candlestick, and the shewbread table, and 
 other costly things ; and went away with them 
 into his own land.^ So that, when Judas Macca- 
 baeus succeeded, about three years after this second 
 spoliation, in regaining possession of the plundered 
 Temple, he too had to enter on the work of restor- 
 ation, as Ezra and his companions had done 
 before. 
 
 * Then/ as we read in the First J3ook of the 
 Maccabees, 'they took whole stones, according 
 to the Law, and built up a new altar according to 
 the former ; and made up the sanctuary and the 
 things that were within the Temple, and hallowed 
 the courts. They made also new holy vessels ; 
 and into the Temple they brought the Candlestick,- 
 
 ^ I Maccab. i. 
 
 - In our common version there is here an interpolation. 
 ' And into the Temple they brought the candlestick and the 
 altar of burnt-offering and of incense.' But the burnt-offering 
 altar had no place in the vaoi; or sanctuary, and its restoration 
 
90 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 and the Altar of incense and the Table. And upon 
 the Altar they burnt incense ; and the lamps that 
 were upon the Candlestick they lighted, that they 
 might give light in the Temple. Furthermore, 
 they set the loaves upon the Table, and spread out 
 the veils, and finished all the works which they had 
 begun to make/^ And, in devout commemoration 
 of these events, they instituted the Feast of the 
 Dedication ; at which, about two centuries after, 
 our Lord, as the Evangelist relates, was present 
 and walked in the Temple in Solomon's porch.- 
 
 Thus the Hebrew Ritual was once more re- 
 stored ; and, by the superintending care of its 
 Divine Author, it continued till those vessels of 
 the worldly sanctuary, with the sanctuary itself, 
 were superseded by the manifestation of the new 
 and living Way into the Holiest of all by the 
 blood of Jesus ; according to the order of the 
 true Tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not 
 man.^ 
 
 These vessels then, which were carried in the 
 Triumph, date their construction from this cleans- 
 
 by Judas is mentioned just before, v. 47. Our translators 
 seem to have followed the Alexandrian text instead of the 
 Vatican ; in which oXoKavToofiarav koL are wanting. 
 
 ^ I Maccab. iv. 47 — 51. - John x. 22, 23. 
 
 ^ Hebrews ix. 8 ; x. 19 ; viii. 2. 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 91 
 
 ing of the Temple, two hundred and thirty-four 
 years before its pillage and destruction by the 
 Romans. And though nothing is said of any 
 models or directions which Judas Maccabaeus had 
 recourse to in his work, we may conclude that 
 he would look to the Old Testament ritual, — to 
 the pattern originally given to Moses : and it will 
 be interesting to the Biblical student to see how 
 these reconstructions, in their chief features, appear 
 to justify their venerable paternity. 
 
 The rules for the construction of the Shewbread 
 Table are given at large in the Book of Exodus. 
 
 * Thou shalt also make a Table of Shittim 
 wood,' that is, of the wild Acacia of the desert : ^ 
 *two cubits shall be the length thereof, and a 
 cubit the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half 
 the height thereof. And thou shalt overlay it 
 with pure gold, and make thereto a crown of gold 
 round about. And thou shalt make unto it a 
 border of a handbreadth round about, and thou 
 shalt make a golden crown to the border thereof 
 round about.' ^ 
 
 As to the relative proportions of these Tables, — 
 
 ^ Gesenius, s. v. Shittah. It was the chief growth of the 
 desert, though rare in Palestine. An incidental confirmation 
 of the text. Dean Stanley's Sinai and Palestine^ p. 20. 
 
 ^ Exodus XXV. 23 — 25. 
 
92 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 the draft in Scripture and the sculptured figure, — 
 there is a general agreement in length and height. 
 The breadth of course is lost in a bas-relief; though 
 the sculptor has rather unartistically given us three 
 sides in one view. We must make, however, 
 the most of what the hand of Time has left us ; 
 and must direct our attention almost exclusively 
 to Reland's authentic copy of the Table. For we 
 learn from one of the artists em.ployed by him,^ 
 that, on close inspection of the Sculptures from a 
 scaffold, which he had erected to facilitate his 
 work, he found them to be different in some par- 
 ticulars from what he had supposed them to be 
 from below. Bartoli's representation of the Table, 
 in the print of the spoils which has just come 
 before us, though a few years earlier than that of 
 Reland, is not an exact copy of the Table at that 
 time. Nor was it his object to give these sculp- 
 tures in the state of decay in which he found them ; 
 but, as we learn from the title of his work, to 
 represent them as restored to their original beauty : 
 a work which, with the exception of a few arbitrary 
 details, he has executed with great effect. 
 
 ^ See Letter to Reland by Antony Twyman, June 20, 17 10, 
 He is speaking especially of the Candlestick ; but the remark 
 applies to the other sculptures, which were copied at the 
 same time by another artist. — Dc Spoliis Toiipli Hierosol. in 
 Arcu Titiano^ cap. i. p. 5- 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 
 
 93 
 
 One of the first things that strike us in this 
 sculptured Table is the circumstance that its sur- 
 face is not surmounted by that serrated sort of 
 border which is attached to all the ordinary prints 
 
 THE SHEW BREAD TABLE, WITH ITS MEMORIAL CUPS AND 
 
 THETRUMPETS, 
 
 AS THEY APPEARED A.D. MDCCX. 
 
 FROM RELAND, DE SPOLIIS TEMPLI HIEROSOLYMITANI IN ARCU TITIANO. 
 
 of it ; but for which there appears to be no 
 authority.^ 
 
 We read indeed that the Table was to have 
 what is called, in our version, a crown of gold ; 
 
 ^ Reland, De Spoliis^ cap. vii. pp. 70, 71. 
 
94 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 that is, a golden wreath or border,^ all round the 
 framework, which still forms part of the sculptured 
 work ; the upper frame remaining, though much 
 decayed, the lower one reduced to two mere frag- 
 ments. We may also trace upon the frames 
 themselves this ' border of a handbreadth round 
 about,' or rather the marks of the place where it 
 had been ; a sort of narrow groove or indentation, 
 as Josephus describes it in his Antiquities?' 
 
 The Ritual also directs that the Table shall have 
 four golden rings in the corners of the feet, for 
 receiving the staves by which it was to be carried ; ^ 
 and Villalpanda suggests that the fragments of the 
 frame, which once connected the legs of the Table, 
 — two of which have long since disappeared, — indi- 
 cate the places of two of these rings.* But it is 
 doubtful whether there were any such appliances 
 in the Table which was made for Solomon's 
 Temple, when the service was limited to one 
 locality : ^ and it is not probable that they would 
 be restored in any subsequent reconstructions. 
 
 ^ Avenarius, Lex. Hebr. s. v. "it, p. 213. 
 
 ^ Y>.oikaiv^T ai . . . Kara •nakaicrTr]v to edacpos eXiKos TrepiOeovcrrjs 
 TO re lihco koi to Karco fxepos tov crco/xaros. — Alltiq. Jlld. III. vi. 6. 
 
 ^ Exodus XXV. 26, 27. 
 
 * Explanat. Ezech. V. iv. 70. 
 
 ^ Jahn, A7-chccologia Diblica^ hZ'h'^ '• ^ contra, Reland, De 
 Spoliis^ cap.[_x. 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 95 
 
 We may also observe that, though in Bartoli's 
 Table ^ he has restored some parts of the original 
 design, he is not correct in the plinth which he has 
 added, as the base on which the Tabic rests. In 
 Reland's print,^ which may be regarded as authentic, 
 and which exactly agrees with the present state of 
 the sculpture, except that now it is still more 
 decayed, instead of this plinth there is nothing 
 more than the stage on which the Spoils were 
 carried in the procession ; as is indicated also by 
 the peculiar formation of the only foot which is 
 visible. 
 
 Josephus compares the Shewbread Table with 
 what were then called Delphic tables, a costly kind 
 of furniture then common in Rome.^ The upper 
 parts of the feet, he says, were square, the lower 
 parts were perfectly finished, like those attached to 
 Doric couches ; * which probably means that they 
 
 ^ See print, p. 83. ^ vSee p. 93. 
 
 -^ 'El' 8e TO) va^ rpdne^av Idpverai {MoiV(rrjs) AeXcpiKois napa- 
 irK-qcriav. A?itiq. Ji(d. u\. \\. 6. Bishop Patrick understands 
 Josephus as saying that the Shewbread Table ' was Hke the 
 famous Table at Delphi.' Comment. o?i Exod. xxv. 23. 
 But, if such had been his meaning, would he not have said 
 T^ Iv A€X(po'is TrapaTrXrjo-iau, not AeXcpLKois ? These Delp/i/c'S^ 
 as they were called, were a sort of abacus or sideboard, 
 overlaid with gold or silver ; the chief matter of comparison 
 with the Shewbread Table : for in some things they could 
 not ha\-e been much alike. 
 
 ^ 'Haav S' avTrj nodes, tu pev i^ ijixlcrovs ewy T(op kutu) reXe'cuy 
 
96 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 terminated in the finished foot of an animal, as 
 appears in Reland's copy of the sculptured work. 
 So that in this respect the Table in the Spoils, 
 though it agreed with the one with which Josephus 
 was familiar, must have differed from the draft in 
 the sacred ritual : a difference which was probably 
 owing to the fancy of the last restorers of the 
 Temple-service, or of some Grecian artist employed 
 by them. That this figure, however, is the Shew- 
 bread Table, we have other and not uninteresting 
 proof. 
 
 There were four sets of vessels belonging to this 
 Table ; and Reland has expended much curious 
 learning in endeavouring to distinguish their several 
 forms and uses.^ There was also, as we learn from 
 a Rabbinical writer, a large staff of officers who 
 had to attend upon it : ^ for it was evidently served 
 with great ceremony ; according to the character 
 of that Dispensation, which might well be called 
 the ' Mother of Form and Fear,' but which was 
 wisely designed to instruct her children in the 
 ways best adapted to their age and circumstances. 
 
 We learn from the ritual order in Leviticus, that 
 
 cmTjpTKTfxevoi, ois Awptfts npoaTidelcn tols K\ivats e/xipepe^s, to 
 de TTpos avTrjv dvarelvov Terpdyoivoi rrj epyaaia. Antiq. Jud. 
 III. vi. 6. The quadrangular edges, if indeed they were 
 copied by the sculptor, appear to be worn away. 
 1 De Spoliis^ cap. xi. ^ Ibid. p. 117. 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 97 
 
 twelve Cakes of fine flour, according to the number 
 of the tribes of the people, were to be set upon the 
 Table continually, in two piles of six cakes each ; 
 and that a Cup of pure Frankincense, for a 
 memorial to the Lord, was to be placed upon each 
 pile. The Cakes were to be changed every sabbath 
 day, and to be distributed amongst the priests ; and 
 the Frankincense, that had been placed upon them, 
 was to be burnt ; in token that the Bread, though 
 not to be destroyed, had been given to the Lord 
 as a burnt offering.^ 
 
 As to the mystic purport of this ordinance, 
 though it does not necessarily belong to our 
 inquiry, it may tend to throw some light upon it. 
 This Holy Place of the Lord's House, what was 
 it but a figure of that Church or community into 
 which His covenant people were admitted by the 
 Sacrifice and the Laver in the outer court ? What 
 the priests, who ministered therein, but the repre- 
 sentatives of the chosen people, thus brought into 
 near and privileged communion with Him who 
 dwelt especially within the inner veils ? And what 
 the Bread, which they placed there before Him, — 
 thence called the Bread of His presence, — but the 
 common symbols of those elements of Life, — it 
 may be of Life both bodily and spiritual, — which 
 ' Lev. xxi\-. 5 — 9. 
 
98 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 His people were always receiving at His hands, and 
 were always again devoting to His service, and of 
 which this Incense was the well-known figure; a 
 sort of embodied act of praise, continually ascend- 
 ing to the gracious Giver ? And we learn from 
 Josephus's account of the Table, that there were 
 two small golden Cups belonging to it, for holding 
 the Frankincense in these services. 
 
 These are undoubtedly the two Cups which we 
 still see upon the sculptured table, and which 
 were probably brought to Titus by one of the 
 priests, who is said to have rescued many of the 
 spoils. In Bartoli's engraving ^ — why, we cannot 
 say, — there appears to be only one Cup : in 
 Reland's - one of them is much decayed, in conse- 
 quence of an extensive fissure in the marble ; and, 
 judging from recent photographic prints, this Cup 
 will probably ere long be hardly visible. There 
 can, however, be no doubt that these Cups represent 
 those appendages of the Table which served to 
 mark the rites of the conquered. Nor can their 
 small dimensions lessen their importance. For, as 
 we learn from a Rabbinical commentary on Levi- 
 ticus,^ that the priests used only two handfuls of 
 
 ^ See p. 83. 2 Sgg p ^2. 
 
 ^ ' Illud te, lector, esse admonitum volo,' says Reland, 'ut 
 ad harum acerrarum attendas magnitiidinem, quce satis bene 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 99 
 
 Frankincense, one for each pile of Bread, these 
 Cups would be large enough to hold it : and as a 
 part therefore of the Table's furniture, for holding 
 what the Hebrews called the Azcarah^ the fire- 
 portion, or sacred memorial, they had good reason 
 to be there. 
 
 But what shall we say of the Trumpets ? Jose- 
 phus, in his enumeration of the spoils, makes no 
 mention of the Trumpets as having formed part 
 of them, though he says expressly, as we have 
 heard already, that he does not profess to give 
 an account of all the spoils. Yet, as he appears 
 to have been present at the procession, we cannot 
 but conclude that, if the Trumpets were borne in 
 it, they could not have had so conspicuous a place 
 as they have upon the sculptured tablet. 
 
 He describes in his Antiquities the kind of 
 Trumpet which was used in his time in the 
 Temple-service ; and it agrees with the figures 
 here given. Moses, he says, was its inventor ; it 
 
 convenit cum lis quse Judsei de ilia tradunt. Woluntpugittum 
 thuris^ nJuS yD1p-» singulis fuisse impositum. Disertis 
 verbis id R. Simeon tradit, cujus sententia refertur in Siphra^ 
 fol. 262. I. Requiruntur duo pugilli thuris, unus pugillus 
 plenus pro uno ordine panum, alter pro altero.' — De Spotiis, 
 cap. xi. 
 
 1 Kurtz on Sacrificial Wo7-ship, III. 11. § 148. In the LXX. 
 it is rendered ij-vrjixoo-wov ; in the Vulgate^ Ivlemoriale ; by 
 Bunsen, Fire-portion. 
 
loo THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 was made of silver, a little shorter than a cubit ; 
 its mouth was a little larger than that of a flute, 
 just wide enough to admit the breath ; it ended, 
 like common trumpets, in the shape of a bell ; 
 it was called in the Hebrew tongue Asosra. 
 
 This word is obviously one of that class which 
 are designed to be an echo of the sense, though 
 Asosra but feebly represents the force of the 
 Hebrew original, Chatzotzerah ; in which the effect, 
 as Ewald remarks,^ of the position of the second 
 and third radical letters, reminds us of the broken 
 crashing of the Trumpet's blast. 
 
 The order for the construction and the use of 
 these Trumpets is given at length in the Book of 
 Numbers. 
 
 'And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 
 Make thee two Trumpets of silver; of a whole 
 piece shalt thou make them : that thou mayest 
 use them for the calling of the assembly, and for 
 the journeying of the camps.' Then we have 
 various military signals, which are to be given in 
 various emergencies. 'And the sons of Aaron, 
 the priest, shall blow with the Trumpets ; and 
 they shall be to you for an ordinance for ever 
 
 ^ See his remarks on the onomatopoetic structure of 
 '"liy^*n. Hebrew Graniuiar^ by Nicholson, § 333 : also 
 Gesenius, Lex. Hebr. s. v. 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS loi 
 
 throughout your generations. And if ye go to war 
 in your land against the enemy that oppresseth 
 you, then ye shall blow an alarm with the Trum- 
 pets; and ye shall be remembered before the 
 Lord your God, and ye shall be saved from your 
 enemies. Also in the day of your gladness, and 
 in your solemn days, and in the beginnings of 
 your months, ye shall blow with the Trumpets 
 over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices 
 of your peace offerings ; that they may be to you 
 for a memorial before your God : I am the Lord 
 your God.' ^ 
 
 And these Trumpets, which are called by Moses 
 the Chatzot::erothy are to be distinguished from the 
 one called ShopJiar, the common designation of 
 the Jubilee trumpet;^ which was curved, and is 
 properly called a Cornet, as in our version of the 
 ninety-eighth Psalm, where we have both words in 
 the same line. ' With trumpets and sound of the 
 cornet make a joyful noise before the Lord the 
 King.'^ Our Biblical antiquaries must therefore 
 
 1 Numb. X. I, 2, 8 — lo. - Lev. xxv. 9. 
 
 ^ In Coverdale's version, still in use in our Psalter, instead 
 of comet we have shaiuvis. ' With trumpets also and shawms, 
 O show yourselves joyful before the Lord the King.' Our 
 etymologists are not agreed as to this word. Tyrwhitt, 
 on Chaucer, makes it identical with psalteries. Skinner : 
 ' Lituus a verbo shallcn resonare, nisi a psalmis malis de- 
 flecterc; prius tamen magis placet.' Richardson derives it 
 
102 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 be mistaken in saying that these sculptured figures 
 on the Arch represent the Jubilee trumpets ; ^ 
 from which they differed in size and in structure, 
 as well as in some of the sacred uses in which 
 they were employed in the service of the sanc- 
 tuary. They were probably amongst the Temple 
 spoils, which Josephus tells us were brought to 
 Titus ; and which, if not actually arranged in the 
 pomp, as we here see them upon the rails of the 
 Table, were so placed by the Roman sculptor with 
 an obviously ingenious graphic effect. 
 
 It only remains to notice the Candlestick, which 
 Was also carried in the triumph. 
 
 ' This Candlestick,' says Josephus, ' was, Hke the 
 Table, made of gold, but it was arranged in a dif- 
 ferent manner from those in common use amongst 
 us. For it had a middle column, fixed upon a 
 basis, and slender stalks extended out from it, 
 very similar in their position to the figure of 
 a trident, each constructed with a lamp on the 
 top. And these lamps were seven ; indicating 
 the honour of the hebdomad amongst the Jews.'^ 
 
 from the French, Chalemie and Chalmelle, a reed or pipe. 
 The word was no doubt extant amongst us in Wycliffe's 
 time, but he prefers a simple version of the Vulgate : ' In 
 tubis ductilibus et voce tuba^ cornea?.' ' In trumpis beten 
 out, and in vols of the hornene trumpe.' 
 
 1 Home's Introduction^ Pt. III. chap. i. sect. ii. vol. iii. 
 
 ■■^ Bell. J lid. VII. V. 5. 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 105 
 
 The purport of this passage seems to be, that 
 this Candlestick differed in its structure from those 
 in common use amongst the people, and also from 
 
 THE SEVEN-BRANCHED CANDLESTICK. 
 
 AS IT APPEARED A.D. MDCCX. 
 
 FROM RELAND, DE SPOLHS TEMPLI HIEROSOLYMITANI IN ARCU 
 
 TITIANO. 
 
 those in other parts of the Temple ; which were 
 probably numerous, as in Solomon's time.^ It 
 
 ^ 1 Chion. xxviii. 14, 15. 
 
I04 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 differed from them especially as to its tridental 
 shape, and also as to the number of its lamps, 
 which was held in mystic honour in Israel. 
 
 So also the Talmud enjoins, — That no one 
 shall build a House after the likeness of the Holy 
 one ; nor make a table like its Table ; nor form a 
 Lampstand like the sacred one ; for though they 
 might make one of five, or six, or eight branches, 
 they were not to construct one of seven ; even 
 though they made it not of gold, but of any other 
 metal. ^ 
 
 Such was obviously the great Candlestick, of 
 which we have the figure on the Arch. It has 
 the centre shaft and the six branches : and they 
 are spread out in the manner of a trident : that 
 is, not in many and different directions, as is usual 
 with the branches of modern candelabra, but all 
 extended in the same plane. 
 
 In one respect, indeed, there seems to be a 
 difference between the sculptured figure and the 
 description in Josephus. He says that the 
 branches of the Candlestick were slender ; which 
 cannot be said of the sculptured branches, as com- 
 pared with other objects on the tablet. Reland 
 conjectures that the Roman sculptor made the 
 
 1 Rosh Hasschana^ fol. 25, in Reland, Dc Spoliis^ pp. 
 15, 16. 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 105 
 
 branches larger than they were in the original, in 
 order to give more importance to the figure, and 
 to compensate for its distance from spectators 
 below ; as the bas-reliefs on Trajan's Column are 
 said to increase in size as they approach its 
 summit.i Nothing is said in the sacred ritual as 
 to the size of the Candlestick, or as to the relative 
 proportions of its parts ; but it speaks with great 
 precision of the construction of the branches. 
 
 ' And thou shalt make a Candlestick of pure 
 gold : of beaten work shall the Candlestick be 
 made : its shaft and its branches, its bowls, its 
 knops, and its flowers, shall be of the same. And 
 six branches shall come out of the sides of it ; 
 three branches of the Candlestick out of the one 
 side, and three branches of the Candlestick out 
 of the other side.'-^ 
 
 So far the ritual and the sculptured form agree : 
 but there is more detail in what follows. 
 
 ' Three bowls, made like unto almonds, with a 
 knop and a flower in one branch ; and three bowls 
 made like almonds in the other branch, with a 
 knop and a flower : so in the six branches that 
 come out of the Candlestick.' ^ 
 
 Here wc have an account, not only of the 
 
 ^ Dc SpoIiiSj cap. iv. ^ Exod. xxv. 31, 32. 
 
 2 Exod. xxv. 33. 
 
io6 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 branches, and of the shaft, which forms the 
 seventh hght, but also of certain ornaments upon 
 each of the branches. 
 
 The word Geviyiin^ translated Bowls, generally 
 means the calices or cups of flowers ; here more 
 especially that of the almond ; and probably de- 
 notes the sort of cup which is above and below 
 each of the knops. The word CaptJiorim, trans- 
 lated Knops, is rendered by Josephus 'pome- 
 granates.' It seems to denote the balls or apples 
 which occur between the upper and lower cups. 
 Perachim^ which Gesenius renders 'an artificial 
 flower,' denotes the lily-like blossom which we see 
 on each of the branches, and near the top of the 
 shaft. A writer in the Talmud describes it as 
 the sort of flower which forms the capitals of 
 columns; and with which indeed it well agrees.^ 
 
 But in the two next verses we have matters 
 not so plainly identified with the other parts of 
 the sculptured figure. 
 
 ' And in the Candlestick shall be four bowls 
 
 made like unto almonds, with their knops and 
 
 their flowers. And there shall be a knop under 
 
 two branches of the same, and a knop under 
 
 ^ Gesenius, Lcx\ Hebr. niS. Fiirst, s. v. remarks, pro- 
 bably in reference to the passage cited by Reland from the 
 Talmud : ' Flos, non-nunquam de ornamento architectonice.' 
 The LXX. often render it Kpivov. 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 107 
 
 two branches of the same, and a knop under 
 two branches of the same, according to the six 
 branches that proceed out of the Candlestick.'^ 
 
 Here tJie Candlestick evidently means the up- 
 right shaft or column only, as forming its chief 
 part and stay ; and it seems from these verses 
 that in the original Candlestick in the Tabernacle, 
 these ornaments must have been repeated under 
 each pair of branches, as we see them upon the 
 upper part of the shaft. Here the sculptured 
 figure fails us. The Candlestick made by the last 
 restorers was probably wanting in these decora- 
 tions, or we may conclude that the sculptor would 
 not have omitted so obvious an improvement of 
 the whole figure ; though there is some reason to 
 complain of a want of precision in some of the 
 minor details of his work.^ 
 
 We have only to add a word or two on the 
 Pedestal, which seems to be entirely a piece of 
 Roman work, and must have been utterly unlike 
 the original. Nothing is said in the ritual of this 
 part of the Candlestick ; but we learn from Jewish 
 writers that it stood on three feet, and that the 
 priests who had the charge of it had to mount up 
 
 1 Exod. XXV. 34, 35. 
 
 ^ Reland instances especially the want of uniformity in the 
 lower branches of the Candlestick. — Dc Spoliis^ pp. 7, 39, 59. 
 
io8 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 several steps to set its lamps in order.^ It must 
 evidently, therefore, have been much more ele- 
 vated than this figure would lead one to expect. 
 The original base was probably lost amongst 
 the plunder of the Temple, and the one here 
 represented may have been substituted for it, for 
 the purpose of its being carried in the pomp. 
 Or, it is not improbable that this sculptured 
 pedestal may have originated entirely with the 
 artist who executed the tablet, and who added it 
 merely to complete his work ; together with the 
 common forms of decoration, which we see upon 
 the lower parts of the pedestal ; especially the 
 eagles with garlands in their beaks. Certainly 
 neither these nor the anomalous figures near them 
 could have found admission into the Holy Place.- 
 
 And here ends our present inquiry. Nor need 
 we ask, as in reference to the Table, what was the 
 use of this great Candlestick ; for it formed the 
 
 ' Pfeiffer, De Struct. Temp. vii. 4. 0pp. Pliilol. p. 224 ; 
 also Jarchi's Commoit. on Exodus xxv. 31, in Rosenmiiller's 
 Scholia., vol. i. p. 588. 
 
 '•^ The Jewish doctors, according to Josephus, pronounced 
 it to be unlawful, Kara rov vauu rj elKopas ^ npoTOfias rj fcoou rivos 
 inwvvjxov^pyov dvai. Bell. J lid. I. xxxiii. 2. These figures 
 on the Pedestal were probably nothing more than a Lusiis 
 sciilptof'is, as Reland calls them. The circumstance that the 
 eagle was the Roman rjyeiMovUts TeK[jLi]f)iov, may probably 
 account for its introduction here. 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 109 
 
 only light of the Holy Place, which without it 
 would have been in total darkness. Yet, so 
 entirely was the Tabernacle and its furniture 
 pervaded by an intelligent and acknowledged sym- 
 bolism, that, although we cannot concur in the 
 mystic fancies and ethnical interpretations of Philo 
 and Josephus, there is much to induce us to 
 regard this Candelabrum as an eminent figure of 
 that Divine illumination with which the Church 
 has been enriched in all ages by the Lord and 
 Giver of the Light of Life.^ 
 
 In the number of its branches, so studiously 
 constructed, we have the Church's well-known 
 covenant signature ; ^ and in the pure oil with 
 which they were supplied we have the sacred 
 symbol of the Unction of the Holy One. Thus 
 the Candlestick became an instructive emblem of 
 the covenant people in their special character as 
 
 ^ ' Septem ilkc lampades,' says Vitringa on Rev. i. 20, 
 ' tarn Candelabri Mosaic! typici, qiiam mystici illius Cande- 
 labri, quod Zachari?s in visione exhibitum est, baud dubie 
 respiciunt Ecclesiam CathoHcam, a Verbo et Spiritu Dei 
 illuminandam per omnia illius tempora et status.' — Anac7-isis 
 Apoc. p. 35. 
 
 ^ ' Numerus sanctus et TeXea-cfiopos,' says Fiirst : Vet. Test. 
 Co7icord. s. V. r5.p*: also s. v. ^y^^Jiware^ and the places where 
 it occurs. See also a comprehensive and interesting account 
 of the 'symbolic dignity' of this number, in Archbishop 
 Trench's Conunetitary o?i the Epistles to the Seven Chiii'ches^ 
 pp. 57—64. 
 
no THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 the receivers and dispensers of the Light of Life. 
 And it suggests to all who are children of the 
 Light, that, wherever Christ has placed this Can- 
 dlestick, — this Light of the world, as He calls 
 His disciples, — there no spiritual darkness should 
 be found, but the Light of the knowledge of 
 Him and of His ways ; in which it is their 
 highest dignity and duty, as His Church and 
 representatives, to flourish and abound. 
 
 As regards the value of these Sculptures — as 
 authentic records of Jewish antiquities, of which we 
 possess no other copies, as illustrations of our Lord's 
 prophecy, and confirmations of a great historic 
 fact, — few persons will be disposed to question 
 their importance. And though we cannot suppose 
 that any of the originals, from which the artist 
 made his designs, were actually the work of 
 Bezaleel and Aholiab, or formed a part of the 
 furniture of the Tabernacle, — who can look at 
 them without feeling that their prototypes are 
 undoubtedly to be found in those old records of 
 the Hebrew ritual, — the Books of Exodus and 
 Leviticus.? They take their origin from those 
 venerable ordinances which were delivered upwards 
 of three thousand years ago : they remind us of 
 that solemn archetypal voice which followed the 
 delivery of their models to Moses, — ' See that thou 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS iii 
 
 make all things according to the pattern showed 
 to thee in the mount' i 
 
 On quitting these sculptured memorials it is 
 obvious to ask, What became of their originals ? 
 What did the conquerors do with these spoils, after 
 they had enriched their transitory triumph, and 
 had feasted the eyes of the heathen multitude ; 
 who probably regarded them as nothing more 
 than the relics of the worship of another of those 
 deities who had from time to time submitted to 
 the Roman War-god, being unable to protect 
 their worshippers ? 
 
 Before, however, we answer this question, we 
 may notice another, which Fuller suggests, in 
 immediate connexion with this inquiry ; and it 
 cannot be answered in better words than his 
 own. 
 
 ' We read,' says he, ' what befell Belshazzar, 
 when he quaffed in the vessels of the Temple. 
 Some perchance might have expected that God, to 
 punish the profanation of these holy instruments, 
 should then have showed some signal judgment 
 on the profaners. But the case was altered; the 
 date of ceremonies was then expired, the use of 
 types had ended, Christ, the Truth, being come ; 
 and the moon may set obscurely without any 
 ' Exodus XX. 40 ; Hebrews viii. 5. 
 
112 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 man's taking notice of her, when the sun is 
 risen.' ^ 
 
 Josephus tells us, that after the triumph, Vespa- 
 sian built a temple to Peace ; and that there, 
 amongst other trophies of his conquests, he de- 
 posited the vessels that had been taken from the 
 Temple : the Law and the vails or curtains of 
 the Sanctuary he ordered to be laid up in the 
 imperial palace.^ 
 
 This Temple of Peace was, according to Herodian, 
 the largest and the most beautiful work of art 
 in Rome ; the richest also in its endowments.^ 
 Different opinions have, however, been formed of 
 Vespasian's design in its erection. Some writers 
 say that his only object was to leave a memorial 
 of his successful career, and of the settlement of 
 the imperial crown in his family. Others say 
 that he affected nothing less than the character 
 and the honours of that great Personage who had 
 been expected to spring out of Judaea, and to 
 carry His peaceful dominion to the ends of the 
 world.* A delusion into which he may, perhaps, 
 
 1 Pisgah- Sight of Palestine^ v. 19, p. 179. 
 
 2 Bell. Jud. VII. V. 7. 
 
 ^ Herodian, Hist. lib. i. cap. xiv. 
 
 * See the statements of Castalio and Baronius in Pitiscus' 
 edition of Suetonius, Tit. Flav. Vcsp. cap. ix., note by the 
 editor. But Castalio's inference in favour of the former of 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 113 
 
 have fallen, when he found it adopted, as we have 
 seen it was, by one \\\\o had already predicted his 
 elevation to the throne ; ^ and who was too ready 
 to foster the suggestion of his heathen flatterers, — 
 That there was nothing beyond the reach of his 
 high destiny; nothing, after all the good fortune 
 that had befallen him, too great to be believed.- 
 
 This temple was, however, but a short-lived 
 monument, whatever may have been the object 
 in erecting it. It lasted but little longer than a 
 century : but even that was longer than the Flavian 
 dynasty, which came to so ignoble an end in 
 Domitian. It was destroyed by fire in the reign 
 of Commodus, in a manner that could not be 
 accounted for, and which was considered as ominous 
 of the disastrous times that ensued.^ It was burnt 
 to the ground ; and could not, therefore, have 
 been that building whose ruins bore so long the 
 name of Vespasian's Temple of Peace, and have 
 
 these opinions, cannot be sustained by the Inscription 011 
 which he rests it ; as may be seen by reference to the entire 
 Inscription in Grater's Corpus Inscript.^ torn. i. p. ccxxxix. 
 
 1 Bell. Jud. III. viii. 9. 
 
 2 ' Cuncta Fortunas suce patere ratus,' says Tacitus, ' nee 
 quidquam ultra incredibile.' — Hist. IV. Ixxxi. Such, too, was 
 the notion under which Vespasian, when in Egypt, was 
 prevailed upon to try his hand at miracles, just after he had 
 been raised to the empire by the voice of his legions. 
 
 3 Herodian, Hist. lib. 1. cap. xiv. 
 
 H 
 
114 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 hardly lost It even now. If, however, we may- 
 credit later writers, the Jewish spoils did not 
 perish with this temple : but how they were 
 saved, and where they were deposited, till we 
 hear of them again, we know not.^ 
 
 As for the story, still current in Rome, and 
 which has been referred to in some recent works,^ 
 — that the golden Candlestick was lost in the Tiber, 
 when Maxentius, after his defeat at Saxa Rubra, 
 was attempting to cross the Milvian bridge, — 
 there does not seem to be any reliable authority. 
 None is given in the works above mentioned. 
 Nor is there, as I learn from a friend, whom I 
 requested to examine the sculptures on the Arch 
 of Constantine, — where, if anywhere, we might 
 expect to find it, — any trace of this story ; though 
 Constantine's arch was built to commemorate this 
 very victory at the Milvian bridge, and he is 
 
 1 In Dyer's Ruins of Ronic^ there are some lines on 
 ' Salem's sacred spoils,' which were deposited in this Temple 
 of Peace ; but, amongst other mistakes, he says that these 
 spoils are now ' entombed there, beneath the sunk roof With 
 most antiquaries, up to the time of his poem, he was under 
 the impression that the enormous ruined vaults on the north 
 of the Forum were the remains of this temple. It is now 
 generally held that they are the ruins of a Basilica of Con- 
 stantine, and that of Vespasian's temple there are no remains. 
 — Burton's Antiquities^ vol. i. p. 218. 
 
 2 Dean Stanley's Eastern Church, Lecture vi. p. 226. Dr. 
 Smith's Dictivnary of the Bible, vol. i. p. 250. 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 115 
 
 represented on one of its bas-reliefs as bearing 
 down upon Maxentius, who is struggling under- 
 neath him in the river. 
 
 But though we must question the truth of this 
 story, we have other information as to the fate of 
 these Spoils, which is entitled to much more credit. 
 
 We are told by Theophanes that, on the third 
 day after that on which the emperor Maximus 
 was killed, Genseric, the Vandal, having entered 
 Rome, sent on shipboard all the money that 
 he found there, and the most remarkable things 
 in the city ; amongst which there were certain 
 golden treasures and jewels that had belonged to 
 the churches, and Hebrew vessels which Titus, 
 after the capture of Jerusalem, had brought to 
 Rome ; and, taking with him Eudoxia, the queen, 
 and her daughters, he sailed away with them to 
 Africa. 
 
 Another notice of Jewish spoils, about half 
 a century later than the preceding, occurs in 
 Procopius's History of the Gothic War. He states 
 in his account of the exploits of Theodoric, that 
 the old town Carcaso, in Languedoc, then in the 
 hands of the Visigoths, was vigorously besieged 
 by a body of Germans, in consequence of a report 
 that royal treasures were concealed there, which 
 Alaric the Elder had brought from Rome ; and 
 
ii6 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 that amongst them there were costly things which 
 had once belonged to Solomon, and many other 
 articles, adorned with precious stones, which the 
 Romans had formerly brought from Jerusalem. 
 We are not told how far this report was true, as 
 to the treasures being Jewish treasures ; but that, 
 on the arrival of Theodoric, who came to protect 
 the rights of his grandson, the city was relieved 
 of its besiegers ; and that, after his return from 
 other conquests, he carried off the treasures to 
 Ravenna. 
 
 What became of these treasures does not ap- 
 pear. But, with regard to the spoils before men- 
 tioned, which Genseric had carried away into 
 Africa, we have further information in another 
 work of Procopius. 
 
 He tells us, in his History of the Vandal 
 WaVy that, after the subjugation of the Vandals 
 in Africa, Belisarius came with Gelimer, and a 
 large amount of spoils, to Byzantium, and there 
 enacted something of w^hat the Romans call a 
 triumph : yet not exactly in their ancient fashion ; 
 for he went on foot from his house to the palace, 
 with the thrones and chariots of the Vandal queen, 
 and with the spoils which Genseric had carried off 
 from Rome ; and that amongst them were the 
 vessels which, on the destruction of Jerusalem, 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 117 
 
 Titus had transported with other things to Rome. 
 He adds, that a Jew, happening to see them, said 
 to a person well known to the emperor, — That, in 
 his opinion, it was not expedient that the spoils 
 should be taken into the palace ; for that they 
 could never be kept in any other place than that 
 where of old they had been deposited by King 
 Solomon [that is, supposing them to have be- 
 longed to the first Temple] ; that this was the 
 reason why Genseric had taken the Roman palace, 
 and why the Romans had now taken that of the 
 Vandals. The historian adds, that, on hearing these 
 words, the emperor (Justinian) was alarmed ; and 
 speedily sent them all away to the holy places 
 of the Christians in Jerusalem. 
 
 These appear to be the last tidings of these 
 Spoils : vague enough and unsatisfactory, as to the 
 specific articles themselves ; whether they consisted 
 up to this period of all those articles to which our 
 attention has been directed ; as to the mode of 
 their conveyance, and as to the sacred places, to 
 which they are said to have been consigned. Gib- 
 bon says, with more than usual reverence for such 
 matters, if indeed he meant to be reverential, but 
 with somewhat less than his usual accuracy, — ' The 
 holy vessels of the Jewish Temple, after their long 
 peregrination, were respectfully deposited in the 
 
Ii8 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 Christian church of Jerusalem.' ^ He does not say 
 what church, though there must have been many- 
 churches at that period in Jerusalem. Nor is Pro- 
 copius more explicit. In fact, the arrival of the 
 Spoils at Jerusalem, though not improbable, can 
 hardly be proved. Not that there are no subsequent 
 historical accounts of sacred relics in that city ; 
 for we have notices, even in the next century, of 
 many sacred things in the churches at Jerusalem, 
 which were plundered and carried off by the 
 Persians : ^ but there is no mention of these Jewish 
 spoils. So that I cannot but concur with Reland, 
 that this account of their having been despatched 
 by Justinian are the last tidings which we have of 
 them.^ Whether they ever reached Jerusalem is 
 uncertain ; and it is all but certain that they never 
 came back to Rome. 
 
 Adrichomius, a writer of the sixteenth cent- 
 ury, in a work on the Geography of the Holy 
 Land, gravely tells us that the Ark of the 
 Covenant, the Tables of the Law, the Rods of 
 
 ^ Decline and Fall ^ chap. xli. A.D. 534. 
 
 2 See Chroiiicon Paschal e^ Co7'piis Byzant. Hist.^ torn. i\'. 
 p. 306 ; and Contextio Geminarum^ sive Eutychii Annates^ 
 edited by Selden and Pocock, torn. ii. pp. 211 — 215. 
 
 ^ ' Quid porro his Spohis accident, et an navis, cni credita 
 sunt, in Pala^stinam appulsa sit, aut aha his vasis reditum 
 praeciderint, nos latet. Certe Hierosolymis nunc non conspi- 
 ciuntur.' — De Spoliis^ p. 138. 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 119 
 
 Moses and Aaron, and some portions even of the 
 Shewbread were, in his days, in the church of 
 S. John Lateran, in Rome,^ but he says nothing of 
 the Shewbread Table, nor of any of the other spoils 
 in question. So that if these relics really survived 
 the burning of Vespasian's Temple of Peace, there 
 is probably some truth in these accounts of their 
 having been carried away from Rome ; otherwise, 
 we should probably have heard of them again, 
 somewhere or other, in that great storehouse of 
 ecclesiastical antiquities, as well as of the less 
 veritable relics, the Ark, the two Tables, and the 
 Rods of Moses and Aaron ; for these things are 
 admitted by the Jews to have been lost on the 
 destruction of the first Temple. 
 
 Still, whatever may have become of these Spoils, 
 — whether there be any truth or not in these 
 stories of their transfer by Genseric into Africa, 
 
 ^ ' Ouas quidem omnia,' says Adrichomius, ' Area videlicit, 
 aiiro tamen nudata, Tabular Lcgis, Virgiie Moysi et Aaronis, 
 Panes quoque Propositionis, ac quatuor column:i?, Romrc in 
 Ecclesia S. Joannis Lateranensis adhuc conscrvantur.' — 
 Thcatriun Terrce Sancta, % H, p. I59- '^he same fabrica- 
 tion about the Ark is also repeated by Minutolius, Dissert. 
 Roman. Anfiq. lUiist. in Sallengre's T/icsatirus, vol. i. p. 118 ; 
 and he adds, after reciting the account of Justinian's de- 
 spatching the spoils to Jerusalem, ' Plura qui cupit, adeat 
 Lipsium, Dc Magmtud. Romcc, lib. III. C. vi.' This, how- 
 ever, is but a false light : I have turned to Lipsius : there is 
 nothing more. 
 
I20 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 and of their reappearance in a second triumphal 
 pomp, in the second great capital of the Roman 
 empire, — these Sculptures survive, and have been 
 bearing their testimony for nearly eighteen 
 hundred years, a record of the desolation which our 
 Lord foretold would come upon Jerusalem and 
 upon her Temple ; which was always deemed her 
 proudest boast, as the palace of the city of the 
 Great King. That edifice which, through all its 
 varying forms and fortunes, was for ages the bond 
 of national union, the centre of the affections of 
 every loyal son of Israel ; and which fell at last 
 only when its faithless people fell away from the 
 covenant of the God of their fathers ; rejecting 
 the King whom He had sent to reign over them ; 
 and scornfully refusing, for forty years, all offers of 
 the Gospel of His grace, till their City, Temple, 
 Saviour, — all was lost.^ 
 
 1 ' Neque eversa est Judcneorum respiiblica,' says Limborch, 
 * nisi postquam Euangelium omnibus quaquaversum Jiidaeis 
 pra^dicatum, et ab iis rejectum essct ; ne quisquam se ob 
 alterius crimen, aut totiim populum ob Hierosolymitanorum 
 solummodo crimen (uti hie facit Vir doct.) pimiri conqueri 
 posset. Idque juxta vaticinium Servatoris nostri Jesu Christi, 
 Matt. xxiv. 14 : " Et pra:dicabitur hoc Euangchum Regni in 
 universe orbe" (quousque nempe Judasi sunt dispersi) "in 
 testimonium omnibus gentibus ; " (quod nempe non ob crimen 
 solum Hierosolymitanorum, sed totius populi inter omnes 
 gentes dispersi, templum et respublica evertatur,) " et tunc 
 veniet consummatio." '—Dc Verit. Rclii>: Christ. Arnica Col la- 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 121 
 
 Vv'"c sec then how this Arch subserves a 
 purpose which was never thought of by the 
 Romans who erected it. They built it to per- 
 petuate the triumph of their arms, and of the great 
 general who had led them to victory. They have 
 exhibited him and his victorious army in what 
 they deemed the summit of human glory ; and 
 with the view to transmit to future times some 
 record of the power and splendour of that empire, 
 which, as it has extended to the ends of the 
 known world, they fondly thought would also last 
 for ever. Their visions of glory have long since 
 vanished ; while these records of their fallen power 
 and grandeur serve to establish the claims of that 
 Kingdom which was destined to succeed their 
 fourth great monarchy ; to surpass the utmost 
 limits of the Roman sway ; to be spread out under 
 the whole heaven ; an everlasting dominion which 
 shall not pass away:^ and which had already 
 begun, much to the annoyance of the votaries of 
 Heathendom,^ to take root amongst them far and 
 
 tin cum criidito Jiidcro. Qiuxst. 11. cap. vi. p. 252. See also 
 the remainder of this able and interesting answer to Orobio : 
 'De praesenti Juda^orum dispersione, et qua ratione in ea ut 
 popuhis separatiis subsistant.' 
 
 1 Daniel vii. 3 — 14. 
 
 2 Witness those indignant lines of Rutilius on the progress 
 of the Gospel, to the extrusion of the gods of old Rome, by 
 
122 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 near, before the destruction of those typical ser- 
 vices which perished for ever with the Jewish 
 Temple. 
 
 There are also other thoughts that naturally 
 arise, as we look at these memorials of a Church 
 and of an Empire which have long since passed 
 away. What a lesson do they read to every 
 Christian nation, especially to such a nation as 
 ours, to know the times of visitation, to under- 
 stand our privileges and our duties, to see why 
 God has so richly endowed us with the light of 
 His truth and the power of diffusing it ; to be like 
 Israel, a blessing in the midst of the earth : and 
 to know when God is coming near us in distress 
 of nations, tribulation, perplexity ; the shaking 
 of the powers of the political firmament, that 
 the Kingdom that cannot be shaken may re- 
 main ! ^ 
 
 For there are, no doubt, for every people as for 
 
 despised and subjugated Jews. 'Atque utinam nunquam 
 Judaea subacta fuisset, Pompeii bellis, imperioque Titi. Latius 
 excisai pestis contagia serpunt, Victoresque suos natio victa 
 premit.' — Iter. \. 395. 
 
 ' Would that JudiT2a ne'er had fallen a prey 
 To Pompey's arms and Titus' princely power ! 
 The exscinded pest still wider works its way ; 
 The conciuered trample on their conqueror.' 
 
 ^ Luke xxi, 25 — 27 ; Hcb. xii. 26, 27. 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 123 
 
 every soul of man, definite times of visitation, of 
 which one must be the last. Hence it concerns us 
 to mark and understand the grace and mercy of 
 that visitation, as well as that it has its appointed 
 limit.^ Jerusalem unhappily would know neither : 
 Jerusalem was accordingly crushed to the earth. 
 Her beautiful House was made desolate, her 
 children were dispersed throughout the world ; 
 and so must they continue till they welcome with 
 blessing the long-rejected King of Israel." 
 
 And yet what a striking contrast is their 
 state even in their present fall and dispersion, to 
 that of the conquerors, who erected this Arch to 
 commemorate their domination over them ! Though 
 no longer enjoying any political existence, they 
 exist as a people in almost every country in the 
 world ; in regions which their conquerors never 
 reached ; where not even the Roman name was 
 known ; bearing about with them the same dis- 
 tinctive marks of race and of religion as when our 
 Lord predicted the fall of their commonwealth, 
 and when Titus led them through the streets of 
 Rome in fetters. They abide, as it is predicted 
 ' they shall abide, many days,' — now the days of 
 nearly eighteen hundred years, — 'without a king, 
 and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and 
 
 I Stier on Luke xix. 43, 44. '"^ MaU. xxii. 7 ; xxiii. 39. 
 
124 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 without an image, and without an cphod, and with- 
 out a teraphim.' ^ For they are now as adverse to 
 all idol worship as they were prone to it in former 
 times. 
 
 But are they to continue in this state ? Are 
 they to be merely witnesses of those glorious pro- 
 mises to others, of which they are not to be partakers 
 themselves ? Is the Trumpet-call never to be heard 
 again in Israel, summoning together their scattered 
 children ? Is the light of their Candlestick quenched 
 for ever? Is the Holy Table never again to be 
 spread for them, in testimony that the Lord is 
 keeping house amongst them ; feeding them with 
 the Bread of His presence, the joy and strength of 
 man's heart ? 
 
 Surely, the word of promise tells us that Israel's 
 present doom is not to last for ever. ' They shall 
 seek the Lord their God, and David their King ; 
 and shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the 
 latter days.' ^ 
 
 * It shall come to pass that the great Trumpet 
 shall be blown ; ' — not the silver trumpet for the 
 restoration of the Tabernacle, but the great mystic 
 Trumpet of the world's jubilee : ^ — * and they shall 
 
 1 Rosea iii. 4. 2Hoseaiii.5. 
 
 2 That is, not the Chatzotzei-ah^ but the ShopJuw; as it is 
 here, Isaiah xxvii. 13. 
 
THE JEWISH SACRED VESSELS 125 
 
 come which were ready to perish in the land of 
 Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, 
 and shall worship the Lord in the Holy Mount at 
 Jerusalem.' ^ 
 
 The sacred Table shall be again set up for them, 
 — as it is indeed for all God's people now, — in 
 thankful remembrance of a greater redemption 
 than that of Israel by the Angel of the Covenant : 
 who still leads and feeds His chosen in the wilder- 
 ness; still sends them Bread from heaven, and 
 admits to communion and fellowship with Him, 
 not the members of one tribe only, but * the spiritual 
 house, the holy priesthood', of all who are true 
 believers in His name.^ 
 
 The great Candlestick shall be again lighted 
 up for them with the light of the knowledge of 
 God's glory, in Him who is the very Light of 
 Light ; who walks in the midst of His golden 
 candlesticks ; whose light shall then be seven times 
 
 ^ This is part of a great prophecy which seems to belong- 
 to the last age of the present dispensation ; and which could 
 not have been fulfilled, as Vitringa has shown, in the days of 
 Hezekiah, nor in the return from Babylon, nor as yet in these 
 times of the Gospel. Assyria and Egypt are probably the 
 two great mystic world-powers which will fall before the 
 final trumpet-call to Israel. See Vitringa on Isaiah xxvii. 13 ; 
 and his 'ErrLfierpov ad cap. xi. 15, Dt^ Assy rid my stud . 
 
 ^ I Peter ii. 5, 9. 
 
126 THE ARCH OF TITUS 
 
 multiplied. ' For the light of the moon shall be 
 as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun 
 shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in 
 the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of His 
 people, and healeth the stroke of their wound.' ^ 
 
 ^ Isaiah xxx, 26. 
 
LIST OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 
 
 Exodus, 
 
 XX. 40 p. Ill 
 
 XXV. 23 95 
 
 XXV. 23-25 91 
 
 XXV. 26, 27 94 
 
 XXV. 31 108 
 
 XXV. 31-33 105 
 
 XXV. 34, 35 107 
 
 Leviticus. 
 
 xxiv. 5-9 97 
 
 XXV. 9 loi 
 
 Numbers. 
 
 X. I, 2, 8-10 lOI 
 
 XV. 14-16 19 
 
 Deuteronomy. 
 xxviii. 49-59 40 
 
 2 Kings. 
 xxiv 88 
 
 I Chronicles. 
 xxviii. 14, 15 103 
 
 Ezra. 
 vi., vii 88 
 
 ISAIAII. 
 xxvii. 13 125 
 
 XXIX. 3, 4 37 
 
 XXX. 26 126 
 
 Daniel. 
 
 vii. 3-14 121 
 
 ix. 27 28 
 
 xi. 31 26 
 
 IIOSEA. 
 
 iii- 4, 5 124 
 
 MlCAII. 
 
 • - j:) 
 
 Matthew. 
 ii- 1-6 33 
 
 V. 35 49 
 
 xxii. 1-7 49 
 
 xxii. 7 123 
 
 xxiii. 34-46 14 
 
 xxiii. 39 123 
 
 xxiv 17 
 
 xxiv. 15 27 
 
 xxiv. 15, 16 26,28 
 
 xxiv. 21, 22 49 
 
 Mark. 
 
 xiii 17 
 
 xiii. 14 26 
 
 LuKK. 
 xix. 43 36 
 
 ■^i-^- 43, 44 15, 48, 
 
 123 
 
 xxi 17 
 
 xxi. 20, 21 26, 28 
 
 xxi. 25-27 122 
 
 xxiii. 28, 29 41 
 
 John. 
 
 X. 22, 23 90 
 
 -^i- 4^ 53 
 
 Acts. 
 i'i- 14, 15 50 
 
 Heiirews. 
 
 viii. 2 90 
 
 viii. 5 Ill 
 
 i^'- 7,25 43 
 
 ix. 8 90 
 
 X. 19 90 
 
 xii. 26, 27 122 
 
 I Peier. 
 
 i'- 5, 9 125 
 
 3 John. 
 
 23 
 
 Revelation. 
 i. 20 109 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abomination of desolation, the, 
 26 
 
 Adrichomius quoted, 119 
 
 Agrippa, laile of, 19 
 
 Arch of Titus, date of, 64 ; in- 
 scriptions on, 65 ; representa- 
 tions of Titus on, 67, 89 ; style 
 of, 71 ; details of, 72 ; frieze 
 of, 73 ; chariot on, 78 ; sculp- 
 tures on, 82 ; spoils on, 85 ; 
 purpose of, 121 
 
 Bellori quoted, 74, 83 
 
 Bethhoron, 22 
 
 Book of the Law, 85 
 
 Caesarea, revolt at, 18 
 
 Candlestick, the golden, 102 ; 
 legend of, II 4 
 
 Cassius, Dion, quoted, 51 
 
 Cicero quoted, 51, 62, 89 
 
 Cornets, loi 
 
 Cups, the sacred, 98 
 
 Delphic tables, 95 
 
 Donati quoted, 58 
 
 Dryden quoted, 67 
 
 Eagles, Roman, 27 
 
 Felix, rule of, 17 
 
 Florus, rule of, 17 
 
 Gadara, burning of, 24 
 
 Gallus, Cestius, conduct of, 21 
 
 Grotius quoted, 27 
 
 Italy quoted, 6;^ 
 
 Jerusalem, Gallus at, 21 ; fac- 
 tions in, 25 ; Titus before the 
 city, 26 ; population of, 30 ; 
 assaults of, 31 ; famine in, 32 ; 
 a wall round, 34 ; dead in, 37 ; 
 cessation of daily sacrifice, 38 ; 
 capture of, 39 ; fate of captives 
 of, 50 
 
 Jews, the present state of, 123; 
 future of, 124 
 
 Josephus, revolt of, 23 ; capture 
 of, 24 
 
 Jotapata, siege of, 24 
 
 Juvenal quoted, 80 
 
 Lampe quoted, 23 
 
 Limborch quoted, 120 
 
 Livy quoted, 40 
 
 Milton quoted, 44 
 
 Ovid quoted, 58, 60 
 
 Pella, the flight to, 28 
 
 Pilate, rule of, 17 
 
 Pliny quoted, 59 
 
 Pope quoted, 70, 77 
 
 Procopius quoted, 116 
 
 Propertius quoted, 57 
 
 Reland quoted, 92, 98, 118 
 
 Rutilius quoted, 121 
 
 Shawms, loi 
 
 Spoils, sacred, 85 ; fate of, 115 
 
 Statius quoted, 76 
 
 Table of shewbread, the, 91 
 
 Tacitus quoted, 27, 34, 41, 44, 
 66, 113 
 
 Tarichoea, capture of, 24 
 
 Temple, doom of, 14 ; capture 
 of, 39 ; magnificence of, 42 ; 
 destruction of, 45 
 
 Temple of Peace, the, 112 
 
 Tertullian quoted, 27, 80 
 
 Titus, enters Palestine, 24 ; re- 
 turns to Rome, 25 ; before 
 Jerusalem, 26 ; cruelty of, 32 ; 
 triumph of, 56 ; inscription 
 to, 65 ; representation of, on 
 Arch, 76 ; medals of, 77 
 
 Triumph of Titus, 54 
 
 Trumpets, the, 99 
 
 Vespasian, conduct of, 23 ; be- 
 comes emperor, 25 ; medal 
 of, 77 ; his Temple of Peace, 
 112 
 
 Vitringa quoted, 109 
 
 Zealots, the, 18 
 
 Zonaras quoted, 57 
 
 Richard Clay &* Sons, Limited, London ^^ Bungay. 
 
BS1197.8.K71189t 
 
 The arch of Titus and the spoils of the 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00051 1727