Note 52 — Chapter LVIII · Eleazar the Convert

—page 446. The loss of life among the Jews during the siege of Jerusalem was almost incredible. Josephus reckoned it at 1,100,000, a number not difficult to credit if we remember that “nearly the whole male population of Judea had been gathered together for the Passover when the city was beleaguered. The prisoners taken in the whole war were 90,000.” Had it not been for the Jews of the dispersion, the nation would have perished with the city. It was due to the compassion of Titus that a movement that might have destroyed even this remnant was stopped almost at its inception. When persecution of the Jews began at Antioch, where several Jews were put to death for an alleged plot to set fire to the city, from which it would probably have spread over the empire, Titus put an end to it by his famous order and rebuke: “The country of the Jews is destroyed, thither they can not return; it would be hard to allow them no home to retreat to; leave them in peace.”