The general who was sent in Vespasian’s place successfully completed his mission and destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem, but ultimately, he was punished for his actions.

Vespasian went to Rome and sent Titus in his place…Titus taunted and blasphemed God on High.

What did he do? He took a prostitute by the hand, and entered the Holy of Holies. He spread a Torah scroll underneath them and committed the sin of sexual intercourse upon it. He then took a sword and stabbed the curtain that partitions the Holy of Holies from the Sanctuary. A miracle occurred and blood spurted from it. He foolishly thought that he had killed God Himself.…

Abba Hanan says: “Who is mighty like You, Lord?” (Psalms 89:9). Who is mighty and resistant like You? As You hear the scorn and the blasphemy of that wicked man, yet remain silent. Similarly, the school of Rabbi Yishmael taught: The verse: “Who is like You among the powers [elim], Lord?” (Exodus 15:11), should be expounded as: Who is like You among the mute [ilemim], who remain silent in the face of blasphemy?

What did Titus do? He took the curtain and fashioned it into a large basket of sorts, and brought all of the sacred Temple vessels, placed them in it, and put them on a ship to be taken so he could be acclaimed in his city.… En route, a wave in the sea rose against him to drown him. Titus said: It seems to me that the might of their God is manifest only in water: Pharaoh came and He drowned him in water. Sisera came and He drowned him in water. He stands against me as well, to drown me in water. If He is mighty, let Him ascend to dry land and wage war against me there. A divine voice emerged and said to him: Wicked one, son of a wicked one, descendant of Esau the wicked, I have a lowly creature in My world and it is called a gnat…ascend to dry land and wage war with it. He ascended to dry land, and a gnat came, entered his nostril, and picked at his brain for seven years. One day he passed by the gate of a blacksmith’s workshop. The gnat heard the sound of the blacksmith’s hammer and was silenced. Titus said: There is a remedy for my pain. Each day they would bring a blacksmith and they would hammer before him. Titus would give four dinars to a gentile blacksmith, but to a Jew he would say to him: It is payment enough for you that you saw your enemy suffering. He did this for thirty days with similar results. From that point forward, once the gnat grew accustomed to the sound, it grew accustomed, and resumed picking at Titus’s brain.

The Sages taught that Rabbi Pinhas ben Arova said: I was among the noblemen of Rome, and when Titus died they split open his head and found that the gnat had grown to the size of a sparrow weighing two sela coins. It was taught in a baraita: It was like a one-year-old pigeon weighing two litra [approximately 650 g].

Abaye said: We have a tradition that the gnat’s mouth was copper and its claws were iron. When Titus was dying, he said to his attendants: Burn that man [me], and scatter his ashes across the seven seas, so that the God of the Jews will not find him and subject him to judgment. (Gittin 56b)