Death
Days prior to the siege of Jerusalem, Eleazar ben Simon was betrayed by John of Gischala and killed. According to Josephus, John sent a party to the Zealot stronghold in the Temple to offer a sacrifice before the coming festival of Passover. Yet when Eleazar and his Zealots opened the gates to permit entry, John's forces slaughtered Eleazar and his officials in order to regain the support of the Zealots. Shortly after Eleazar's death in the summer of 70 AD, Titus Flavius crushed the armies of Simon, John, and Eleazar, crucifying thousands of rebels outside the city. Josephus estimates that approximately one million Jews were killed in the siege, not to mention the destruction of the sacred Temple.
Read more about this topic: Eleazar Ben Simon
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Solomon! where is thy throne? It is gone in the wind.
Babylon! where is thy might? It is gone in the wind.
Happy in death are they only whose hearts have consigned
All Earth’s affections and longings and cares to the wind.”
—James Clarence Mangan (1803–1849)
“In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life. All these dead, mechanized, specialized actions, stealing a little bit of life a thousand times a day until the mind and body are exhausted, until that death which is not the end of life but the final saturation with absence.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
“And anyone is free to condemn me to death
If he leaves it to nature to carry out the sentence.
I shall will to the common stock of air my breath
And pay a death tax of fairly polite repentance.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)