Uproar had broken out
instantly among the four stolid legions of Titus on the Assyrian
bivouac. Lights flashed out everywhere; great running to and fro could
be distinguished; rapid trumpet-calls and the prolonged roll of drums
from company quarters to quarters were echoed back from Antonia and
from Hippicus. The startled shouts of commanders; the nervous dropping
of arms; the sharp excited response to roll-call; the sound of
sentries challenging, the curt response by countersign, showed
everywhere irregularities and the symptoms of panic in the immovable
ranks of Titus.
Seraiah meanwhile had disappeared from his place as mysteriously as he
had come.
Many of the Jews who remained on the wall believed that he had passed
into the Roman camp and was troubling it. The fall of the tower, and
the confusion it had wrought in the Roman camp, never occurred to them
to have been fortuitous incidents with which Seraiah had nothing to
do. Of the thousands that witnessed that miracle, most of them were
convinced that the hour had come.
Meanwhile Jerusalem was roaring with excitement. The city was ready
for a Messiah. Seraiah had arisen at the psychological moment. Earlier
the Jews would have been too critical to accept him readily; later
they would have reviled him for coming too late. Whatever his advent
lacked in thunders, in darkness, voices, and shaking of the earth, had
been passed by his miraculous work against the Romans.
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