Джеймс Миченер - The Source

At the foot of the wall, illuminated by flares held by his Roman generals, stood Vespasian, a great solid man with a warrior’s stern insistence upon ending this siege. “Yigal, worker at the olive press, I have swallowed my pride and I ask you again: Will you throw open your gates?”

“Never,” Yigal replied.

“For the last time, will you accept an honorable peace?”

“This is a town of God,” Yigal replied from the darkness of the wall, “and there can be no honorable peace with the gods you bring from Rome.”

“Do you intend, then, to sacrifice the people of this town?”

“We are with God, and He will save us,” Yigal answered, and for the last time the determined Roman veteran and the obdurate Jew faced each other at the wall of King David. They were of about the same age, each a dedicated man, each honorable and a man to trust—when the time came for Vespasian to die he would say quietly, “A Roman emperor should die standing on his feet, ready to face all enemies,” and in this defiant posture he would meet death, of ten successive emperors from Tiberius to Domitian the only one to escape assassination or forced suicide. But between him and Yigal there could be no conciliation.

“When I next face you, Yigal of the olive press, the meeting will be terrible,” and Vespasian was gone.

On the nineteenth day of the siege a fearful thing happened and on the nineteenth night began a sequence of events which, involving as they did Josephus and Rab Naaman, would be remembered in history. Both occurrences were protested by Yigal, but he was helpless to prevent either. On the morning of this critical day General Josephus ordered his professional soldiers to drag out the tuns of olive oil that Yigal had provided, and a large fire was started in the forum between the roofless Augusteana and the wrecked Greek temple. When Yigal saw the fire and realized what was intended he asked Josephus if this was necessary, and the young general nodded.

“But this has been an honorable war,” Yigal protested.

Josephus turned from the fire to reply, “You wanted the war. Don’t come crying when I take steps to win it.”

“Will this cruel step accomplish anything?”

“It may very well drive Vespasian from the walls.”

“It may also …”

Josephus became angry and left the fires where the oil was being heated. “Yigal,” he said with some bitterness, “you know that if the Romans ever take this town you are immediately dead. You’ve known this for some time, so why are you now cowardly?”

“For myself I ceased to fear twenty-seven years ago,” Yigal replied, “when I faced General Petronius with no weapons, and since that day I have never feared to die. You and I are dead, Josephus, but if we fight honorably the Romans may spare our women and children. If you proceed with your present plans they will have just cause to slay not only you and me, but the children as well.”

At Yigal’s suggestion that he, Josephus, might also die as the result of what was about to happen, the young general blanched. He caught his breath, as if it were indecent for Yigal to suggest such a possibility. Impatiently he dismissed Yigal and told his men, “Stoke up the fires. And get those ladders ready.”

Yigal, banished from the scene, hurried to the home of old Naaman to enlist his aid in protest against what Josephus intended, but he found the bearded old scholar lost in contemplation of his holy books and nothing could summon him back to this world. “Rab Naaman,” Yigal begged, “a terrible thing is about to be done, and only your authority can stop it.”

“The question, Yigal,” said the spiritual leader, “is no longer Makor, but that of the entire Jewish nation. How can we survive? Hotheads like you and Josephus insisted upon war, and now we shall be swept away. The synagogue will be destroyed and our children will be led off in cages to be slaves among the heathens. I am not concerned with what General Josephus does or does not do at this moment. I am concerned only with the Jewish people, for what we do in these next months and years may be final.”

In vain Yigal tried to summon the old man to a serious discussion of the burning oil, but the scholar would speak only of the years ahead. “We survived Babylon because of great Jews like Ezekiel and Rimmon of this town. And also because the Persians rescued us. Who will rescue us this time, for there are no longer any Persians? When we leave Makor this time we leave forever, and the lives of our children and their children’s children for all generations will be spent in alien lands.” The old man, terrified by this vision, caught at Yigal’s arm and cried, “How shall we survive?” The olive worker had no chance to reply, for at the wall there was a shouting, and the Jews of Makor cheered as if the victory was theirs, so that Yigal had to leave the old scholar; he knew that his people by their actions at that moment were assuring not victory, but a terrible defeat.

To six different positions on the wall, wherever the Romans had moved up a tower, the men of Josephus had carried tubs of bubbling oil and small buckets for ladling it out. Protected by bowmen they waited on the walls until a Roman soldier in full armor came within reach, and then with surprising skill they drenched him with the boiling oil and shouted with glee as the ghastly stuff crept in beneath his armor, scalding and burning as it went. The Roman, trapped in his gear, could do nothing to escape the punishment, so that no matter where on the tower he stood he had to clutch with both hands at his burning prison, trying vainly to tear away the hides and metal that covered him. Meanwhile the oil kept burning into his skin, and he would lose his balance and fall shrieking onto the glacis, where he would roll down the sloping side and die in an agony of scalding blisters and consuming burns.

The most hideous part of this death was that it occurred in the midst of the man’s companions at the foot of the wall. They had to watch as the screaming body rolled amongst them, like a flattened ball used in some brutal game, and at their very feet the writhing man would beg for rescue while his companions were powerless to help. Once or twice kindly friends tried throwing water on the tortured man, but this helped only to spread the oil and deepen the suffering. One soldier from Gaul, watching helpless while his tent companion twisted in mortal pain on the ground, drove a spear through his friend’s neck, killing him mercifully.

It was at this point that Vespasian came to a portion of the wall where six Roman soldiers lay dying in their harness, screaming for death to release them from the unbearable anguish, and he knelt at the head of one who had served Rome well and passed his fingers over the man’s scalded forehead. Oil, he said to himself as he studied his fingers, rubbing them together as his soldier died. Olive oil. Turning to Trajan he said, “When we occupy this town I want the maximum number of prisoners taken alive.”

That night Josephus started his digging. He convened a meeting attended by Yigal, Naaman and his professional lieutenants. Baldly, and in few words, he announced, “It’s absolutely essential that the Romans do not capture me. I am needed in Jotapata and in Jerusalem. I do not want to leave Makor at this crucial point, but the welfare of the Jews demands that I go … to more important duties elsewhere.”

Yigal did not protest, for he had always known that Josephus was an important man, but when the general of the Galilean forces explained how he proposed to escape, Yigal was appalled. “I’ve had my engineer study the situation,” the young general said, “and he thinks that it would be quite safe for us to dig a small upward tunnel leading from the well to some point outside the walls, in the wadi where the Romans do not guard.”