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"Away with her," said Simon the son of Gioras, and the others nodded their heads in assent. Then they gathered together discussing the manner of her end, while Benoni stormed at them in vain. Not quite in vain, however, for they yielded something to his pleading. "So be it," said their spokesman, Simon the Zealot.
But he deserted the Zealots and seized the inner court of the Temple, so that there was war between him and Simon, son of Gioras. Thus Eleazar, John, and Simon each led a band in constant fightings, and the Temple was everywhere defiled by murders.
She remembered that this man was seated next to that Simeon who had been so bitter against her and pronounced upon her the cruel sentence of death, also that some one in the crowd had addressed him as Simon, the son of Gioras, none other than the savage general whom the Jews had admitted into the city to make way upon the Zealot, John of Gischala.
One of these factions was led by the famous John of Gischala, another by Simon bar Gioras, and a third by Eleazar. These factions of a party which since the reduction of Judea to a Roman province soon after the death of Herod had resisted the oppression of the procurators, were now stirred to revolt by the exactions of the procurator Gessius Florus.
Caleb made no answer, but one of the Sanhedrim, a sharp-faced man, named Simeon, the friend of Simon, the son of Gioras, the Zealot, who sat next to him, cried, "Cease this foolishness; the daughter of Satan is beautiful; doubtless Caleb desires her for himself; but what has that to do with us?" though he added vindictively, "it should be remembered against him that he is striving to hide the truth."
During the respite which the Jews enjoyed before the final siege of Jerusalem, he alleges that a bitter feud was waged incessantly between Eleazar the son of Simon, who held the Inner Court of the Temple, Simon, the son of Gioras, who held the Upper and the greater part of the Lower city, and John of Gischala, who occupied the outer part of the Temple.
But in a short time such implacable and fierce oppressors, with such genius for ferocity and bloodshed, had developed among the Jews' own factions that the miserable citizens had turned to the tyrant Rome for rescue. They who had risen against Florus and had driven him out would have willingly accepted him again in place of Simon bar Gioras and John of Gischala, before two years had elapsed.
Who were the reigning kings during Sappho's time?" "But go on. You repose much on her influence. Perhaps she has the will but not the power to help you." "Power! She is the mistress of John of Gischala and actual potentate over Jerusalem at this hour." "Unless Simon bar Gioras hath taken the upper hand within the last few days. Remember the fortunes of factionists are ephemeral."
Masada had been occupied by Eleazar, a grandson of Judas of Galilee, the leader of the most fanatical section of the Zealots; and it fell to the procurator Flavius Silva to reduce it. Josephus utters a final outburst against the hated nationalist party and especially its two leaders, Simon of Gioras and John of Gischala, though both had become victims of Roman revenge.
The weariness of her body, the foul talk, the fouler cruelty, the cold discussion of the sale of human beings to the first-comer as though they were sheep or swine, the fear of her fate that night, pressed upon and overcame her mind, so that she felt inclined, like Simon, the son of Gioras, to sink fainting to the pavement and lie there till the cruel rods beat her to her feet again.
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