Jerusalem's Traitor: Josephus, Masada, and the Fall of Judea

by Seward, Desmond

  By this time, Josephus was beginning to take an interest in public affairs. Looking back, he comments, “these were the days when seeds were sown that would bring the city to destruction.”25 The richer magnates began to exploit the dissatisfaction of the poor, recruiting them as strong-men to use in the faction fighting that raged throughout the city streets. At the same time, they recruited Zealot knifemen. But the priests and nobles were starting to lose control. Class war had broken out, “men of power oppressing the masses and the masses doing their best to pull down the men of power—one side bent on tyranny, the other on violence and stealing the property of the rich.”26 The province was sliding into anarchy.

  Yet the man whom Nero appointed as Albinus’s successor in 64 CE, Gessius Florus, made Albinus seem virtuous in comparison. Nevertheless, full-scale revolution and war with Rome must have seemed inconceivable when Josephus left Judea shortly before the recall of Albinus and the arrival of Florus. He must have had no inkling of the disastrous situation he was going to find on his return to Jerusalem.

  3

  Rome and Poppaea

  “Poppaea, Nero’s wife, who was a worshipper of God . . .”

  JOSEPHUS, JEWISH ANTIQUITIES, 20, 195

  “WHILE FELIX WAS procurator of Judea some priests whom I happened to know, [both] thoroughly decent men, were sent by him to Rome in chains on the flimsiest of charges, supposedly to explain themselves to Caesar,” Josephus tells us. “I wanted to find a way of freeing them, one reason being that I had heard how even in prison they never for a moment stopped practicing their religion, surviving on figs and nuts [in the absence of properly prepared, kosher food].” Despite Felix’s recall in disgrace in the year 60 CE, they were left to rot in jail, with their case still unheard. Finally, Josephus decided to go and plead for their release. He says that he set out shortly after his twenty-sixth birthday—possibly in 63, certainly before March 64.1

  We do not know what the original incident was that had led to the men’s imprisonment. Felix may perhaps have sent them to be tried by the emperor for taking part in the fighting between factions that was by now making life in Jerusalem so unpleasant, but it is just as likely to have been a brazen attempt by the venal procurator to get the pair out of the way because they were key witnesses to one of his shabby crimes.

  Josephus’s motive was not just compassion, however. He always had too much of an eye for the main chance. If successful, he would make a name for himself and impress the Sanhedrin, who may have sent him on the mission because of his fluent koine Greek, although he does not make any mention of this—perhaps to claim more credit for himself. Certainly, there could be no better way of advancing his career. His visit to imperial Rome was going to be one of the most formative experiences of his entire life.

  He knew exactly whom to approach when he got there. During the brief procuratorship of Felix’s successor, Porcius Festus, from 60 to 62, King Agrippa II had a new dining room constructed on the east side of the royal palace, from where he could watch in comfort all that was going on inside the Temple. Outraged, the priests responded by building a high wall to block his view. Festus thought it wise to maintain good relations with Agrippa, who had important contacts at Rome, so he immediately demolished the wall, not realizing that it was within the Temple precincts. The Jews then asked the procurator for permission to send an embassy of ten leading citizens to Rome and seek justice from the emperor, although they were far from sure that they would get it. Festus made no objection. The ten were led by the current high priest, Ishmael ben Phiabi. Somewhat to their surprise they obtained everything they wanted after the Empress Poppaea intervened—either the wall was rebuilt or the dining room pulled down—although Ishmael and the Temple treasurer were made to stay in Rome as hostages for their people’s behavior. This gave Agrippa the chance to depose Ishmael and appoint a more pliable high priest. Reports of the empress’s friendly attitude must have circulated all over Jerusalem.2

  Big ships sailed regularly to Rome from the great port of Caesarea, with its long mole and seawall, and carried a large complement of passengers. After going up the coast they would steer for Crete, then for Greece, and finally for Italy, putting in almost daily at harbors en route to take on fresh food and water and new passengers.

  “I reached Rome only after an exceptionally dangerous sea voyage during which our vessel foundered in the Adriatic, leaving six hundred of us to swim throughout the entire night,” he recalls. “Towards daybreak, however, by the mercy of God we spotted a ship from Cyrene, and I and about eighty others succeeded in outswimming the rest and were allowed to come on board.” There was no room on the boat for the remainder of the passengers and crew, who were presumably left to drown, but Josephus was always philosophical about other people’s misfortunes. Eventually he landed at Puteoli (modern Pozzuoli) near Naples and made his way to Rome.3

  However beautiful and imposing Jerusalem may have been, it cannot have compared with the glittering megalopolis that Josephus found when he arrived. In today’s terms it was a combination of Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago with London, Paris, and every other European capital thrown in, since it was not just the center of the Roman Empire but the political, economic, and cultural center of the civilized world. There was something monstrous about the scale of this vast urban conglomeration, which a Jew might be forgiven for comparing to Babylon of unhappy memory. Undeniably, it was magnificent, full of huge and wonderful buildings—the Capitol, the Forum, the Pantheon, and the Temple of Mars being only the best known. Their walls were covered in marble, their roofs in gilded tiles, while everywhere there were statues of marble, bronze, or even gold. Yet at the same time, the city was overcrowded and dirty, a rabbit warren of filthy lanes lying behind these marvels.

  There were open air theaters for the miming companies whose spectacles and dancing, frequently obscene, drew audiences of thousands, together with amphitheaters for gladiatorial “games.” There were also “circuses,” long circuits for the hugely popular chariot races. However, it is unlikely that many Jews went to entertainments of this sort, which they considered impious. On the other hand, they must have enjoyed the numerous public gardens.

  Josephus found plenty of his own people in Rome. Fifty years before, the geographer Strabo had complained that Jews were taking over every city in the world. In Josephus’s own words, “there is not a single city, whether Greek or barbarian, not a single nation, which our custom of doing no work on the seventh day has not reached, where our fasts, lamp lighting and food rituals go unobserved.”4 Rome had become a center of the “Diaspora,” the Jewish expatriate communities, with a Hebrew population numbering tens of thousands, who inhabited districts all over the city, each group living near a synagogue and with their own extensive cemeteries. Mainly merchants, many specialized in luxuries from the eastern parts of the Roman Empire—slaves and exotic animals, jewels and precious metals, silks and furs, ivory and perfume.

  Roman traditionalists, who despised all foreigners except a few Greeks, looked down on them. Cicero had sneered at their “superstitions that deny all that Rome stands for,”5 and Seneca condemned “this evil race’s customs.” The Emperor Tiberius had even started to banish them from Italy, although he changed his mind, and the Emperor Claudius had threatened them with expulsion as troublemakers—most likely due to the uproar caused in the synagogues by Christian missionaries.6

  Today, it is hard for us to understand just how much the monotheism of Jews and Christians, interlopers from the alien East, affronted the innate polytheism of the ancient Romans. There were also those who found Jewish taboos not so much austere as ridiculous. Philo of Alexandria records that when he led an embassy to the Emperor Caligula, the entire court burst out laughing when Caligula asked him why Hebrews never touched pork.7

  Hostility toward Jews during this time should not be exaggerated, however. Julius Caesar had introduced legislation to guarantee their religious liberty, a law that had been confirmed by Augustu
s, who exempted them from military service. Racial antipathy was far from widespread in a city whose population was so mixed, with a never ending flood of immigrants, and on the whole they found no trouble in fitting into Roman life. Although they did not make sacrifices to the gods of Rome, they had no objection to praying for the well-being of her government in their synagogues. It was a privilege granted to no other group.

  Moreover, as in every other city where the Diaspora had settled, the Roman Jews, while retaining their faith, were strongly influenced by Philhellenism. At their services, they used the Septuagint, a translation of the Jewish scriptures into Greek, and the better educated read the classics of Greek literature, from Homer to the great philosophers and fashionable poets. The widely respected Philo of Alexandria, who died in about 50 CE, was himself a distinguished philosopher who employed Platonism to prove the existence of the Jewish God.

  As a young man with a very good mind, Josephus could not have been uninfluenced by the Diaspora’s intellectual climate. His stay at Rome was a period of intense intellectual development, the equivalent of a university education. Surely it was now that he began to read Greek authors, acquiring the foundations of the learning that would make him a great scholar. We know from his writings that by the time he was middle-aged he had read not only Homer but Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, together with Sophocles, Euripides, Demosthenes, and Epicurus.

  On the other hand, he would have noticed approvingly how Roman Jews never for a moment forgot that Jerusalem was their true home, scrupulously observing the Law. Although they read the Torah in Greek (the Pentateuch) and spoke the koine instead of Aramaic, very few apostatized to further their careers. (No practicing Jew could become an imperial official as it meant worshipping pagan gods.) Their staunch monotheism impressed their neighbors, making converts. To some extent they proselytized, activities the poet Horace laughed at good-naturedly in the Satires.8 Many Romans who were interested but did not convert—to the extent of undergoing circumcision or taking ritual baths—remained fascinated by these extraordinary people.

  It is likely that during his stay in Rome Josephus lived in one of the ramshackle tenements that housed most citizens; six, seven, or even ten stories high, jerry-built of rubble and the cheapest timber, these were apt to collapse without warning. Only the very rich could afford their own dwellings. The endless streets, many of which were soon to be demolished by the great fire of 64 CE, appear to have been as filthy as they were narrow. Belonging to a race noted for its cleanliness, he would have made a point of avoiding such amenities as the communal baths or the public lavatories, since Jews had their own, more fastidious arrangements.

  He was able to go anywhere because there were Jews everywhere. His mission and background ensured a welcome, while among Romans as well as Jews he was helped by his fluent koine Greek. Educated by Greek tutors, upper-class Romans were bilingual, and instead of speaking Latin to each other, they spoke a polished version of the koine, in much the same way that eighteenth-century Europeans preferred to speak French. It was not only the language of intellectuals but the polite language. (Pace Shakespeare, when Julius Caesar was stabbed, he had cried, “Kai su, teknon!” not “Et tu, Brute!”) Most useful of all, it was used in court circles.

  It is quite likely that he went at least once to the games; although they were considered impious by Jews, the games were unquestionably the most popular entertainment in Rome. In the arena, watched by thousands, gladiators recruited from the large numbers of jailed prisoners of war and criminals fought each other to the death or were pitted against bears, wolves, and lions crazed with hunger; others were burned alive or fed to ravenous animals. These ghastly spectacles appealed to all classes. Even Cicero praised them as an admirable means of teaching young men to fear neither death nor physical suffering, although he felt sorry for the animals. Writing four centuries later, Augustine of Hippo describes in his Confessions how a gentle philosopher friend who had been dragged along against his will to see the same sort of games (they must have changed very little since Nero’s time) succumbed to their dreadful fascination, despite having tried to keep his eyes shut:A sudden shouting made him open them . . . and as soon as he saw all the blood running it was as though he had swallowed some fiercely intoxicating magic potion. Instead of looking away, he now watched greedily, drinking in every detail of the scene. He reveled in the sheer horror, suddenly overwhelmed by a murderous thirst for killing. No longer the same person who had come to the arena, he was just the same as everybody else in that baying crowd . . . He gazed besottedly, cheering and cheering, feverish with savage excitement. When at last he left the arena, his mind had become so hopelessly diseased that he could think of nothing but the next games.9

  If Josephus did go, he never could have guessed that before too long thousands of his fellow countrymen were going to be slaughtered methodically in games just like these, all over the empire. It is possible, however, that he made a point of staying away. The inspiration behind such spectacles was paganism at its most evil, utterly repugnant to a devout Jew. Yet he knew at least one coreligionist who had adopted a profession still more pagan than that of a gladiator—even if it was not quite as short-lived.

  “I made friends with Alliturus who, besides being a Jew, was in favor with Nero because he was an actor,” he tells us.10 It has been suggested that the word he uses for actor, mimologos, implies that Alliturus was a mime actor of the sort who entertained the guests at court banquets, which would explain why Alliturus was in the emperor’s good books. If so, it was a curious profession for a Jew, since the mimes that were staged must have included a considerable amount of bawdiness and pornographic tableaux, especially when celebrating pagan festivals: gods and goddesses copulated, satyrs raped nymphs.

  Alliturus took the young Pharisee to the imperial court, in the hope of securing the priests’ release. Some idea of what he saw can be obtained from the Satyricon of Petronius, which was probably written in 65—during Josephus’s stay at Rome. If anyone knew Nero’s court, it was the author whom the emperor made his “arbiter of elegance.” He relied on Petronius’s advice on sensual enjoyment taken to the extreme, on the ultimate refinements of debauchery, though later he forced him to commit suicide. Sardonic and pornographic, in exquisite prose the novel depicts a world in which money’s only rival is sexual pleasure, whether heterosexual or homosexual. (At one point the narrator says he feels the entire population of Rome has been swallowing aphrodisiacs.) The most memorable section is the banquet given by the multimillionaire ex-slave Trimalchio—to some extent modeled on Nero—where the food includes dormice dipped in honey, sows’ udders, and peahens’ eggs, accompanied by acrobatic displays in which the acrobats know that a bad performance will be punished by death. That is what meals must have been like at court. No doubt Josephus had encountered luxury in the great houses of Jerusalem, but never on so obscene a scale.

  The two people who presided over the court and set what might be called its tone were, of course, Nero and his wife, Poppaea. A practitioner of almost every known vice, horribly cruel, and responsible for many murders, the emperor was a neurotic hedonist who, not content with absolute power, wanted to be regarded as a great artist. Nonetheless, in his own way he did not lack intelligence. The empress was even more of an enigma.

  “Through [Alliturus] I got an introduction to Poppaea, Caesar’s consort,” he explains. The loveliest woman of her time, whose legendary beauty is confirmed by one or two portrait busts, according to Tacitus, Poppaea Sabina “had every gift save an unpolluted mind,” inspiring lasting devotion among the men who were her lovers.11 Rich, high born, intelligent, and amusing, she was at the same time a byword for promiscuity and ruthlessness. Largely responsible for Nero’s murder of his wife and of his mother, she had married him as her third husband after a carefully planned seduction. She also played a part in destroying his minister and former tutor, the disapproving Seneca.

  Yet, surprisingly, this sinister termagant may hav
e been a believer in the Jewish faith—despite her taste for astrology. Significantly, she took ritual baths and enrolled a large number of Jews among her entourage. Describing how Poppaea had helped Rabbi Ishmael’s delegation, Josephus comments mysteriously and without elaboration that she was “a worshipper of God.”12

  On being presented to her—if we can accept Tacitus’s description of Poppaea—Josephus found himself confronted by not a ferocious slut but a dignified, surprisingly prudish-looking young lady who, as far as he could make out, was staggeringly beautiful, although it was difficult to be sure because in public she hid her face behind a veil. She gave him a gracious welcome. “As soon as I could, I begged her to help me in getting the priests released from prison,” he writes in his autobiography.13 Poppaea took a strong liking to this eloquent, intelligent, and no doubt charming young Jewish nobleman. Not only did she obtain the priests’ release, but she loaded him with expensive gifts.