PART
TWO
Paganism
How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her.
—LAMENTATIONS,
1.1–2
Even while Jerusalem was still standing and the Jews at peace with us, the practice of their sacred rites was at variance with the glory of our empire and the customs of our ancestors.
—CICERO, Pro L.
Flacco
It is better for a person to live in the Land of Israel in a city entirely of non-Jews than to live outside the Land in a city entirely Jewish. He who is buried there it is as if he were born in Jerusalem and he who is buried in Jerusalem, it is as though he were born under the throne of glory.
—JUDAH HANASI,
Talmud
Ten measures of beauty descended upon the world, nine were given to Jerusalem and one to the rest of the world.
—MIDRASH TANHUMA,
Kedoshim 10
For the freedom of Jerusalem.
—SIMON BAR KOCHBA,
coins
Thus was Jerusalem destroyed on the very day of Saturn, the day which even now the Jews reverence most.
—DIO CASSIUS, Roman History