They went in bodies, in numbers from a handful from some remote but
pious hamlet to great armies from the leveled cities of Joppa,
Ptolemais and Anthedon, from Caesarea and Tyre and Sidon, from the
enthusiastic towns in Galilee, and even from far-off Antioch and
Ephesus. They were not fewer in number, because of a year of warfare
and the menace of an approaching army upon the city in which they were
to take refuge. But there were more--double, even triple the number
that usually went up to Jerusalem at this time. For of the millions of
inhabitants in Judea in the unhappy year of 70 A.D., a third of them
were plundered and homeless refugees from ruined cities. Therefore,
instead of the armies of men, happy, hopeful and enthusiastic, who had
journeyed in former years to Jerusalem, there passed before the
Maccabee a mixed multitude of men and women and children. Thousands
carried with them all that warfare had left to them--pitiful parcels
of treasure or household goods, or extra clothing; other thousands
bore nothing in their hands, and by the wear in their garments and the
hunger in their faces, it seemed that they owned nothing to carry.
The Maccabee noted finally the entire absence of the travelers who
fared in state. Not in all that long procession that wound up the
stony passage from the west, did he see a single Sadducee.
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