Yet to those matchless enjoyments I gave up but one day. By the next dawn, the trumpet sounded for the march. I knew the importance of following up the first blow in all wars—its matchless importance in a war of insurrection. To meet the disciplined troops of Rome in pitched battles would be madness. The true maneuver was to distract their attention by variety of onset, cut off their communications, keep their camps in perpetual alarm, and make our activity, numbers, and knowledge of the country the substitutes for equipment, experience, and the science of the soldier.
In summoning those brave men, I renewed the regulations of the Mosaic law[35]—a law whose regard for natural feelings distinguished it in the most striking manner from the stern violences of the pagan levy. No man was required to take up arms who had built a house and had not yet dedicated it; no man who had planted a vineyard or olive ground, and had not yet reaped the produce; no man who had betrothed a wife and had not yet taken her home; and no man during the first year of his marriage.
My prisoners were my last embarrassment. To leave them to the chance of popular mercy, or to leave them immured in the fortress, would be cruelty. To let them loose would be, of course, to give so many soldiers to the enemy. I adopted the simpler expedient of marching them to Berytus, seizing a squadron of the Roman provision ships, and embarking the whole for Italy. To my old friend the captain, whose cheerfulness could be abated only by a failure of the vintage, I offered a tranquil settlement among our hills. The etiquette of soldiership was formidably tasked by my offer, for the veteran was thoroughly weary of his thankless service. He hesitated, swore that I deserved to be a Roman, and even a captain of horse; but finished by saying that, bad a trade as the army was, he was too old to learn a better. I gave him and some others their unconditional liberty, and he parted from the Jewish rebel with more obvious regret than perhaps he ever dreamed himself capable of feeling for anything but his horse and his Falernian.
Eleazar took the charge of my family and the command of Masada. The sun burst out with cheerful omen on the troops, as I wound down the steep road, named the Serpent, from its extreme obliquity. The sight before me was of a nature to exhilarate the heaviest heart; an immense host making the air ring with acclamations at the coming of their chieftain. The mental perspective of public honors and national service was still more exalting. Yet I felt a boding depression, as if within those walls had begun and ended my prosperity!