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

by Seward, Desmond

  If a fine first-century portrait bust really is that of Josephus, then it may well have been commissioned by Poppaea, which indicates a certain affection on her part. Handsome, sensitive, and a little melancholy, this is the face of someone who in time could have developed considerable force of character. The fact that it is indistinguishable from that of a young Roman patrician shows how quickly he had adapted to life at Nero’s court.

  However, if he developed any hopes of a career as one of the empress’s courtiers, they came to an abrupt end at some date in 65 CE when her bad-tempered husband killed her with a kick when she was pregnant—“for scolding him for coming home late from the races.”14 There were rumors of poison, but in reality Nero was heartbroken. He had Poppaea embalmed instead of cremated and gave her a state funeral at which he praised her beauty and good qualities.15

  Josephus spent from two to two and a half years at Rome. He must have been there during the firestorm that broke out on 18 July 64 and raged for ten days, destroying most of the city. The emperor himself was widely believed to have ordered his secret agents to start the fire, prompted by the whim that he could rebuild it more beautifully. “To get rid of the rumours, he falsely blamed the people popularly known as Christians, who were hated for their crimes, and punished them with exquisite tortures,” says Tacitus, explaining that anybody who admitted to being one was wrapped in animal skins and fed to savage dogs, nailed to a cross or “set alight at dusk to illuminate the night.”16 Even the Roman mob felt sorry for them. Nero placed these human torches in his own gardens, which he opened to the public, so it is possible that Josephus saw them burning.

  Although Josephus does not mention it—he was writing for the later Flavian emperors at the time—he may have actually met Nero, aside from simply seeing him on one of his frequent public appearances. “Of about average height, his body was pockmarked and smelly, while he had light yellow hair, good but not handsome features, blue, rather weak eyes, too thick a neck, a big belly and spindly legs,” is Suetonius’s feline description of the last of the Julian dynasty. “He was ridiculously fussy about his person and his clothes, having his hair done in rows of curls.”17 However, suggestions that the emperor personally recruited Josephus as a secret agent and gave him specific orders for undercover activities in Judea can be dismissed as melodramatic speculation.18

  From talking to people in the street, he learned that the Romans were never going to forgive Nero for his murders, let alone for the fire. Jewish friends must have been worried by the regime’s growing instability. Yet he may have received other favors from the emperor besides the release of the priests. His account of him, written years after, is remarkable for what it leaves out. While describing how Nero poisoned his brother, had his own mother murdered, and killed his wife Octavia, he condemns other historians for what they write about Nero: “they rave against him impertinently, telling all sorts of lies . . . with no respect for truth.”19 Perhaps such uncharacteristic restraint conceals some sort of gratitude.

  He must have been received by Poppaea at Nero’s colossal new palace, built after the fire, which reached from the Palatine Hill to the Esquiline and had a triple colonnade in front that was a mile wide. The entrance hall contained a statue of the Emperor Nero calculated to overawe the most hard-boiled; Suetonius says it stood one hundred and twenty feet tall. The palace’s interior was covered in gold, inlaid with gems and mother-of-pearl. The ceilings in its dining rooms were made of carved ivory, with panels that opened to shower the guests with flower petals as pipes sprinkled them with perfume. The main banquet hall was circular and revolved. The baths were constantly filled with seawater or sulfur water.20 But the “Golden House” was just one among the innumerable marvels of this amazing city.

  Friends would point out the leading courtiers. Among them were three future rulers of Rome. The most distinguished was a bald, grim-faced septuagenarian, Servius Sulpicius Galba, an old-fashioned Roman aristocrat of whom Tacitus observed in a famous epigram, “had he never become Emperor, no one would have doubted his ability to reign.”21 Short and bandy-legged, Salvius Otho, who wore a wig, was more dangerous than he looked; the former husband of Poppaea, he had been forced to divorce her although he was wildly in love with her. The third, the perpetually drunken Aulus Vitellius, with his huge stomach and obsequious manner, was altogether lacking in dignity. Every courtier took care to flatter Nero, but Vitellius literally groveled in his presence. He was the cheerleader of the claque that shamelessly applauded whenever the emperor gave one of his stage performances.

  Someone else who fawned on Nero was King Agrippa II. Born in 27 CE, the last of the Herodian dynasty, he was king of only a scrappy domain that included Gaulonitis, Batanea, and Trachonitis—east of the Sea of Tiberias—together with the Galilean cities of Tiberias and Taricheae. Constantly commuting between Caesarea and Italy, Agrippa frequented Nero’s court in the vain hope of being created King of Judea. Despite his ancestors’ Idumean blood, and although he had been brought up in Rome where he felt thoroughly at home, he regarded himself as totally Jewish and sometimes occupied his family palace at Jerusalem.

  We know from what he wrote how much Josephus admired the soldiers of Rome. He must have watched the crack legionaries who regularly paraded on the Campus Martius with highly polished weapons and armor, led by eagle-bearers in lion skins, performing meticulous drill movements at the order of red-cloaked centurions—each in command of a century of eighty men. He would also have encountered the superb Praetorian guards at the gates of the imperial palaces. Here is a summary of his impressions after he had seen the legions in action.

  What they undergo when training is in no way different from fighting, since each soldier is trained every day as if on campaign, with the utmost thoroughness, which is why they always stand up so well to the rigors of war. No setback affects their discipline, they are incapable of panic and cannot be frightened, while nothing tires them, with the result that they invariably defeat untrained opponents. It is no exaggeration to say that their drilling is a bloodless battle and their battles are blood-stained drilling. The enemy never has a chance of catching them off guard because as soon as they march into his territory they refuse to go into action until they have fortified their camp . . . Nothing is done without a command. At first light, the legionaries report to their centurions and the centurions go to salute their tribunes, every senior officer then going to their general, who gives them the watchword for the day together with his orders. . . .

  Foot-soldiers wear breastplate and helmet, with a sword on each side, the longer on the left while that on the right is only nine inches long. The picked troops around the general are armed with a half-pike and small shield, but most of the infantry are equipped with a javelin and a long shield, a saw, a [hod-like] basket and a pick, together with an axe, a strap and a sickle, besides enough provisions for three days—so there is not much difference between an infantry man and a packhorse. A cavalryman has a long sword at his right side and carries a lance, protected by a shield slanted to cover his horse’s flank, while he also has a quiver holding three broad-bladed javelins that are not much smaller than spears. Like the foot-soldiers, he wears breastplate and helmet.22

  This account needs qualification. Although they had metal helmets, legionaries wore armor made from hardened leather straps and metal studs and carried oblong leather shields that were strengthened with iron. Officers (including centurions) were distinguished by cuirasses of scale, chain, or plate armor, red horsehair crests, and colored cloaks. The sword—worn on the right side and not on the left, as Josephus says—was the gladius, a short, straight weapon with a blade two feet long and two inches wide. The javelin was the pilum, with a slender wooden shaft four and half feet long with a barbed iron head of the same length—its neck made of soft metal, which bent and hung down after piercing an enemy’s shield, so as to hamper him. The stirrup had not yet been invented, and a charge by mounted troops did not have the impact it would have in later ce
nturies. Nor does Josephus appreciate that the tools carried by the legionaries made them sappers as well as frontline troops. Disciplined until teamwork became second nature, trained not only to fight but as skilled siege engineers, they were capable of building or demolishing elaborate fortifications.

  What he did not see on parade on the Campus Martius was the auxiliary cavalry recruited locally wherever the army was operating, light horse who were armed with bows, lances, and javelins. In addition there were swarms of auxiliary foot soldiers, such as archers and slingers.

  “Because they always agree on a carefully thought out plan before going into action, and since the plan is implemented by such a formidable army, it is scarcely surprising that in the east the Euphrates, in the west the ocean, in the south the rich part of Africa, and in the north the Danube and the Rhine have become the frontiers of their empire,” he tells us. He adds that “my reason for giving this description is not to praise the Romans, but simply to console all the people they have conquered, besides warning anybody who has any foolish ideas about trying to resist them.”23

  Most soldiers seen by Josephus in Judea had been recruited locally and were of poor quality, if good enough for tracking down bandits.24 Even regular troops ran to seed in the East. “Legionaries brought in from Syria had been demoralized by not being on active service for a long time, and as a result the majority proved incapable of doing the job of a Roman soldier properly,” says Tacitus, writing of a campaign against the Parthians about 60 CE. “There were veterans in their ranks who had never mounted guard or done sentry duty, and found any fortification totally impregnable, men who refused to wear helmets or body armour, a useless bunch of swaggering bullies whose sole concern was loot.”25 Now, however, Josephus saw the best troops of a regular army numbering a quarter of a million men. It must have dawned on him that nobody could hope to defeat them.

  Having made a success of a difficult mission, Josephus went home to Judea. After Poppaea’s death there was no point in staying at Rome. Yet his time there had begun his transformation into a Diaspora Jew who took a keen interest in Greek literature, while his visits to the imperial court had given him a firsthand knowledge of Roman politics and how to deal with Rome’s ruling class. At the same time, his encounters with the Hebrew community had shown him that one could be both a Jew and a loyal Roman. Above all, he had seen the irresistible might of the legions.

  4

  The Jew Baiter

  “It was [the procurator] Florus who gave us no option other than to fight the Romans, as we thought that it would be better to be destroyed at once instead of little by little.”

  JOSEPHUS, JEWISH ANTIQUITIES, 20, 257

  JOSEPHUS SAILED HOME to Judea at some date during the first half of 66, no doubt expecting to be warmly congratulated. He had every reason to think that, together with his important contacts at Rome, his success should open up all sorts of opportunities that would enable him to aim at such prizes as membership of the Sanhedrin. But as soon as he reached Caesarea, he found a totally different climate from the one that existed when he had left Judea. A great deal had happened while he was away because of a man who, to use an anachronistic term, was one of the most baneful anti-Semites in history.

  This was the new procurator, Gessius Florus, a Roman by blood although born in Greek Clazomenae on the coast of Asia Minor. He brought with him a promisingly named wife, Cleopatra, whose friendship with the Empress Poppaea had got him his post in Judea. Josephus says tantalizingly that she was “in no way different from [her husband] in wickedness” but gives us no further details.1 Florus was a man who boasted about how he ill-treated his “subjects,” punishing innocent Jews as if they were criminals, while practicing all kinds of robbery and graft. No one had more contempt for the truth or was better at telling lies. “He plundered whole cities and ruined entire communities, more or less giving official permission for anyone to turn bandit so long as he shared in the loot,” Josephus tells us. “Because of his greed for money, complete districts were laid waste, many people fleeing from their homeland and taking refuge abroad.”2

  Florus had developed a devouring hatred for the people he ruled, possibly after trouble with Jewish communities in Asia Minor. It is clear that from the start he had made up his mind to do the Jews of Judea all the harm he could. As he tried to goad them into a rebellion against the Roman imperial authority that would provide him with the excuse he needed for retaliation, his behavior verged increasingly on insanity. The account which follows of the horrors he perpetrated is taken almost verbatim from Josephus’s Jewish War. Even the hostile Tacitus admits that Florus pushed the Jews’ patience beyond the breaking point.3 Although Josephus had not yet returned to Judea, he spoke to eyewitnesses who had been caught up in these events, enabling him to recreate them for his readers.

  Nobody dared to complain to the legate of Syria, Cestius Gallus, until he visited Jerusalem on the eve of Passover. Then a vast crowd begged him to remove Florus, “who stood beside him laughing.” Cestius, an elderly mediocrity with no idea of how dangerous the situation was becoming, promised he would see that the procurator treated them fairly, after which he went back to Antioch. Florus accompanied him as far as Caesarea, hiding his fury. He also concealed his plan to make a war break out, since (if Josephus can be believed) he had decided that it was the only way to hide his crimes; if peace continued, the Jews would find a means of appealing to Caesar.

  In reality, there was no point in making an appeal to the imperial lunatic at Rome. Nero was not even in his capital but wandering around Greece and pretending to be an actor. Before he went off on his holiday—and before Florus’s arrival in Judea—in answer to a desperate plea from the Caesarean Jews for help against the Greeks, he sent back a rescript drafted by his secretary, Beryllus, who had been bribed by the city’s Greek community. 4 The rescript deprived the Jews of every privilege they had secured over the years, giving complete control of Caesarea to the Greeks, who at once took the opportunity to build a row of shops and block access to a synagogue. Misguidedly, the Jewish elders then paid Florus a large sum of money to see that the shops were removed, but he simply pocketed the bribe and allowed the rioters to expel all Jews from the city. The Greeks’ next action was to perform a parody of Jewish sacrifice outside the synagogue, using an upturned chamber pot as an “altar.” When the elders complained to Florus, demanding their money back, he imprisoned them—on the charge of removing copies of the Torah from Caesarea. Understandably, his behavior caused outrage in Jerusalem. Josephus believed that the rescript was a major factor in causing “the miseries which befell our nation.”5

  Jerusalem became the scene of the procurator’s next misdeed. Here he acted as if he had been encouraged to “blow the war into flame,” seizing the enormous sum of seventeen talents from the Temple treasury, on the pretense that Caesar needed it, a deliberate affront to the entire Jewish people. In response, a mob rushed into the Temple, calling on Nero by name, imploring him to free them from Florus’s government, while another group paraded a begging bowl around the city in cheerful derision, telling bystanders that the procurator was destitute and faint from hunger. Enraged by the insult, Florus marched on the city with a large detachment of troops, sending fifty cavalry ahead. When a big crowd went out to welcome the horsemen, hoping to placate Florus, the troops were ordered to disperse them with a charge.

  On 16 May—the day after he arrived at the palace—Florus had his judge’s chair placed on a platform outside, summoned Jerusalem’s leading citizens, and demanded that all demonstrators be handed over to him, threatening that otherwise they themselves would be punished. In response, the citizens insisted that the city’s population was peace-loving, apologizing for any insults and begging him to pardon the people who had caused the uproar. Inevitably, they explained, the crowd had included some stupid young hotheads, and while it was impossible to identify those who were guilty, every one of them was sorry for what he had done. For the sake of the nation and if he w
anted to keep the city safe for the Romans, the procurator would be well advised to forgive the guilty few rather than punish a large number of innocent people.

  Florus was infuriated by this reasonable appeal. His reaction was to let his troops loose on the Upper Market, telling them to sack the entire district and kill anybody they met. Jew-haters (most of them seem to have been Samaritans) who were eager for loot, they obeyed with unrestrained savagery, breaking into the houses, slaughtering every man, woman, and child they found inside. The inhabitants fled through the streets, hotly pursued, many more being cut down, while others were dragged before the procurator, who had them scourged and crucified. Josephus was told that, including infants in arms, over 3,500 people died that day. What was extraordinary, however, was the unheard-of way in which members of the Jewish ruling class, pillars of the imperial regime, were treated. “For Florus dared to do what no one had ever dared to do before, to have men of equestrian rank whipped before his judgment seat and then nailed to crosses, men who although they were Jews were also Roman citizens.”6

  King Agrippa II’s sister, Berenice, was in Jerusalem to make a thirty days’ thanksgiving for a blessing from God—abstaining from wine and shaving her head. (Although she had married her uncle and was rumored to sleep with her brother, in her own way she was devout enough.) She sent her master of horse and the captain of her bodyguard to Florus, begging him to stop the bloodshed, but he took no notice, while his soldiers deliberately tortured people to death in front of her. They even tried to kill her, but she escaped into her palace where she spent the night under the protection of her guards. Although Berenice had stood barefoot with her cropped head in front of Florus’s platform, she had been ignored by him and was lucky to escape with her life.