On that very day and hour, while the Jews were plunging their daggers in the hearts of the Romans, a great and terrible slaughter of their own people was going on in Cæsarea, where the Syrians and Greeks had risen upon the Jews, and massacred twenty thousand of them in a single day. And in every Syrian city the same madness and hatred seized the people, and the Jews were ruthlessly slaughtered in all. No more provocation was needed; no more was possible. In spite of all their turbulence, their ungovernable obstinacy, their fanaticism and pride, which made the war inevitable, and in the then state of mankind these very massacres inevitable,—one feels a profound sympathy with the people who dared to fight and die, seeing that it was hopeless to look for better things. The heads of the people began the war with gloomy forebodings; the common masses with the wildest enthusiasm, which became the mere intoxication of success when they drove back Cestius from the walls of the city, on the very eve of his anticipated victory—for Cestius hastened southwards with an army of twenty thousand men, and besieged the city. The people, divided amongst themselves, were on the point of opening the gates to the Romans, when, to the surprise of everybody, Cestius suddenly broke up his camp and began to retreat. Why he did so, no one ever knew; possessed by a divine madness, Josephus thinks, because God would take no pity on the city and the Sanctuary. As the heavy armed Romans plodded on their way in serried ranks, they were followed by a countless multitude, gathering in numbers every hour, who assailed them with darts, with stones, and with insults. The retreat became a flight, and Cestius brought back his army with a quarter of its numbers killed, having allowed the Roman arms to receive the most terrible disgrace they had ever endured in the East.
Vespasian was sent hastily with a force of three legions, besides the cohorts of auxiliaries. A finer army had never been put into the field, nor did any army have ever harder work before them. Of the first campaign, that in Galilee, our limits will not allow us to write. In the graphic pages of Josephus, himself the hero of Jotapata, or in the still more graphic pages of Milman, may be read how the Jews fought, step by step, bringing to their defence not only the most dogged courage, but also the most ingenious devices; how the blue waves of the Lake of Galilee were reddened with the blood of those whom the Romans killed in their boats; how Vespasian broke his word and sold as slaves those he had promised to pardon; how Gamala fought and Gischala fell, and how for the sins of the people, John was permitted by Heaven to escape and become the tyrant of Jerusalem.