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

by Seward, Desmond

  It is likely that from the start these rough provincials had distrusted this rich aristocrat from Jerusalem. Now they threatened him with their swords, promising they would cut him down if he tried to surrender to the Romans. He must join them in a mass suicide. Frightened that they might attack him, before killing themselves, Josephus tried to talk them into a more reasonable frame of mind—“like a philosopher.” His reply, which he puts in The Jewish War, is too long to quote in full, but even if composed in retrospect, it must repeat some of the things he said.

  “What makes us so frightened of going up to the Romans?” he asked. “Is it death? If so, why are we afraid of it when we’ve made up our minds to kill ourselves—we only suspect the enemy might kill us. Or are we scared of being made slaves? Well, just now we’re not exactly free.” Then he argued that suicide was a sin. “The souls of men who act against themselves in this mad way are shut up in the darkest hole in Hades while God punishes their children, blaming them for their fathers’ sin. God hates such a deed and the crime is punished by our lawgiver [Moses]—the law demands that the bodies of suicides should never be exposed until the sun has set before they are buried, yet we are allowed to bury the corpses of our enemies much sooner.” There is no need to doubt his sincerity in questioning what he called “self-murder.” Many rabbis disapproved of suicide. No doubt, Zealots preferred it to captivity—as they were to show at Masada—but Josephus did not subscribe to the Fourth Philosophy.

  “I am not going over to the Romans because I want to betray myself,” he ended. “I would be as stupid as a deserter if I did—they do it to save themselves while I should be doing it to destroy myself. Yet in a way I should rather like it to be a piece of Roman treachery. If they kill me after giving their word to spare my life, I shall die happy, since it will show up their falseness and their lies, and be worth even more than winning a victory.”6

  His speech caused uproar, and he describes himself as being like a wild beast at bay surrounded by huntsmen. “They were infuriated by Josephus,” he admits frankly. “They ran at him from all sides with drawn swords, calling him a coward, and were only too keen to thrust at him.” The scene in the cave must have been a nightmare, the former governor trying desperately to dodge the sword blades in the darkness, ducking and pleading. In the end, he somehow managed to calm them down.7

  Even so, he was still committed to a suicide pact. “Since we are all determined to die, let us draw lots about how we do it,” he announced, neatly gaining control of the situation. “The one who draws the first lot will die by the hand of the one who draws the second lot, until we have worked our way through all of us—nobody ought to die by his own hand as it would be unfair if a survivor was left to change his mind and stay alive after everybody else was dead.” The forty calmly allowed themselves to be killed in turn, until only Josephus and another man remained. “Disliking the prospect of being condemned by lot out a choice of two or of shedding the blood of a fellow Jew, he soon talked the other man into abandoning the pact and persuaded him to go on living.”8 But he had only won the right to climb out of the cave and face the Romans.

  “It happened by chance or by God’s providence” is how he explains his survival.9 Some commentators are not so sure, convinced that he rigged the draw. It has been suggested that this was a circular count rather than simply drawing lots and that he might have fixed the result by using a formula that mathematicians unjustly call the “Josephus count.”10 Yet we only know what went on in the cave at Jotapata because Josephus chooses to tell us. If he had thought there was anything sinister he would never have told the story, while clearly he was proud of having tried to prevent his companions from “murdering themselves.” Nor does he appear to have been accused by his enemies of having done anything wrong in the cave, although they must have read The Jewish War.

  There were many men who were prophets in first-century Judea, all of them convinced that they possessed the gifts of another Jeremiah or Isaiah. Nor did the Roman dismiss such foreknowledge out of hand; they had their own pagan oracles. It was in this context that Josephus claimed to have dreams in which he saw how the war would end and who was going to rule Rome. Although he never actually describes himself as a prophet, before the conflict was over, he too would be comparing himself to Jeremiah.

  Throughout the summer of 67 CE Vespasian must have been an extremely worried man. Only the previous autumn Emperor Nero had forced his best general, Domitius Corbulo, to commit suicide, although Corbulo had routed the Parthians, ridding Rome of her biggest danger in the East. Admittedly, the aristocratic Corbulo was destroyed for having relations who had political ambitions. Suetonius, in his Lives of the Caesars, explained why Vespasian had been chosen: “because of the obscurity of his family and lineage there was no need to fear him.”11 Yet Nero might easily come to the conclusion that he was not so harmless after all. Every senior commander feared the emperor. (Later, his successor, Galba, said that when he had received letters from Rome, he had always wondered if they contained Nero’s orders for his death.)

  Almost as alarming, the emperor was growing increasingly unpopular. There had been a botched attempt at a coup in 65, involving members of the Praetorian guard, and another, perhaps successful coup must have seemed far from unlikely. If it happened, it meant civil war of a sort unseen for a century, with the dilemma of choosing the right side in order to survive. More than a few strong men were likely to fight each other for Nero’s place, while the Roman aristocracy still sighed for a republic. The future was full of danger. Even so, Vespasian was determined to win this war, whatever might happen at Rome, and in the circumstances Judea was much safer than Italy.

  Taking so much trouble to coax the enemy general out of the cave shows the value he set on taking him prisoner. Josephus himself admits that it was too high: “he thought the war would be more or less over, once Josephus was in his hands.”12 Yet the former governor of Galilee possessed a good deal of information that would be extremely useful to the Romans. Not only was his topographical expertise—later, evident in his writings—and his knowledge of the baffling Judean landscape vitally important for their strategy and tactics, but to some extent he would be able to make informed guesses at what the Jewish leaders were thinking at Jerusalem.

  At the very least, as an enemy commander he would be a welcome ornament for a spectacular procession through Rome in the event of Vespasian being awarded a triumph after a successful campaign. However, this was far too optimistic a calculation to weigh heavily with such a realist, since Nero was most unlikely to reward him in such a way. On balance, it is likely that Vespasian had not yet made up his mind whether to execute the prisoner as soon as he had been debriefed or send him back to Nero to show that the campaign in Judea was going well.

  Josephus cannot have known what to expect when, led by the centurion Nicanor, he was dragged into the Roman general’s presence. Legionaries flocked around the general and his prisoner, struggling to get a better view, demanding that he be put to death. We may question his claim that all the officers felt sorry for him. No doubt, he felt he stood a good chance of being nailed to a cross, the standard penalty for anyone who rebelled against Rome. However, we know that he had already thought of a plan that might just work, his only hope of survival.

  He saw, sitting on a curule chair with a folding seat, the invariable camp stool of a Roman commander, a stocky, bald man with a beaked Roman nose whose lined forehead and tightly compressed mouth gave him an oddly tense expression. (Suetonius says that Vespasian always looked as though he were suffering from constipation.13) Yet, judging from the surviving portrait busts and from coin profiles, if it was an alarmingly tough face, it was also a noticeably humorous one. In the eyes of Roman aristocrats he was “not quite a gentleman,” and he seems to have lacked their frozen hauteur.

  Next to Vespasian stood his lieutenant, his twenty-seven-year-old elder son, Titus. Not so tall as his father but with the same nose, he was, despite having a plump belly, a
handsome and dignified young man with a kind expression. Yet for all his smile, it was obvious that Titus, too, was very formidable indeed.

  Knowing the Roman cult of dignity, Josephus looked as unconcerned as possible when he was pushed forward. If one can believe his account, this had its effect on Titus, who immediately felt sorry for him, and it made some of the other Roman officers feel the same way. The prisoner begged to be allowed to say something in private to Vespasian, who told everybody except Titus and two senior officers to leave them, and then Josephus appealed to his captor:You may think you have done no more than take Josephus prisoner, but I am here to tell you something of vital importance, Vespasian. Had I not been sent to you by God, I should have obeyed the Jewish Law and killed myself—I know how defeated generals ought to die. So why send me to Nero, then? Because Nero and those who will follow him are not going to survive. Vespasian, you shall become Caesar and Emperor, you and your son here. Put me in chains, keep me close to you, because you, Caesar, are not only my lord, but the lord of land and sea, the lord of all mankind. Guard me carefully so that I can be punished if I have said anything that has not been decreed by God.14

  Always skeptical, Vespasian at first suspected that he was lying to save his life. So did the two officers. “I’m surprised you did not prophesy to the people of Jotapata that their city would fall, and that you failed to foresee you were going to be taken prisoner,” one of them retorted unpleasantly. “Or are you just talking nonsense in a futile attempt to escape what is coming to you?” It was his most dangerous moment.15

  “But I of course I prophesied that Jotapata would fall, on the forty-seventh day, and that I was going to be captured alive by the Romans,” answered Josephus.16 Vespasian then ordered that other prisoners be questioned about this—presumably female prisoners, since the men had all been slaughtered. When the Roman learned that these predictions really had been made by Josephus, he began to take them more seriously, and there was no more talk of sending him to Nero. Vespasian agreed with Titus that he should be spared, giving orders for him to be kept in close but comfortable confinement.

  One distinguished modern historian suggests that Josephus invented the prophecy later and inserted it in The Jewish War in order to conceal the extent of his collaboration with the Romans.17 Yet this seems highly unlikely. Although he almost certainly supplied the Romans with vital information, it is surely taking skepticism too far to doubt that he made some sort of prediction to Vespasian.

  It must be remembered that he was not alone in making such a prediction. As has been seen, Suetonius mentions in his Lives of the Caesars how a rumor had been circulating for years in the East that new rulers of the world were about to emerge in Judea. Time and again, prophets and “magicians” in Judea had foretold the coming of a messiah. Might he not be a gentile instead of a Jew? Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai told Vespasian he was going to become emperor, just as Josephus had done. There were pagan omens, too. Both Tacitus and Suetonius mention how Vespasian consulted the oracle of Ba’al on Mount Carmel. “While he was offering sacrifice there and pondering over his secret ambitions, Basilides, priest of the shrine, carefully examined the entrails of the sacrificial victims and then told him, ‘Whatever you are planning, whether it is building a house, enlarging your estates or increasing the number of slaves you own, it is certain that a mighty dwelling, immense territory and a whole host of men have been given to you.’”18 Both Vespasian and Titus took this sort of foreknowledge very seriously indeed.

  Describing how he prophesied before Vespasian, Josephus takes care to remove the incident from the climate of messianic expectation that was widespread among his fellow countrymen. He does so to conceal Jewish resentment at the Roman occupation so that he can argue that most Jews had been against the war but were manipulated by a handful of extremists who prevented them from making peace.19

  Josephus’s prophetic utterance before Vespasian was more than a guess about the political situation at Rome or a cynical calculation that it might turn out to be useful for Vespasian’s reputation. He genuinely believed he possessed some sort of prophetic gift, and later he became convinced that he was a prophet in the full, Old Testament sense of the word. The only plausible explanation for his survival after Jotapata is that he really did make his prophecy about the future of the Roman Empire, and it was so convincing that Vespasian and Titus decided it might come true. There is no other good reason for the favor they showed him. His belief in his powers as a prophet also explains his behavior on many occasions during the subsequent course of the war.20

  10

  Josephus the Prisoner

  “Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.”

  PROVERBS, XXVII, 1

  AFTER CAPTURING JOTAPATA, Vespasian withdrew with two legions to Ptolemais and then Caesarea Maritima. A third was sent to the Greek city of Scythopolis, ten kilometers away. No doubt, his weary troops hoped that the campaigning season of 67 CE would end earlier than usual, since they had been savagely mauled and felt that they needed time to recuperate. Their tough old general did not have room for such a luxury.

  When the legions marched into Caesarea, a mob of Greeks swarmed around them, howling for Josephus’s execution, but were ignored by Vespasian. During the next few months, he must frequently have questioned his prisoner. If one reads between the lines of The Jewish War, it very much looks as if Josephus kept on repeating the prediction that had saved his life besides using every trick he knew in trying to convince his captors of Jewish mastery of the occult.

  In his Jewish Antiquities, Josephus mentions a performance that he no doubt laid on to impress them. “I saw a fellow Jew called Eleazar casting out a demon in front of Vespasian, his sons and his tribunes,” he tells us. “This is how he did it. Under the nose of the possessed man he put a ring enclosing a root recommended by Solomon and, as the man sniffed it, pulled the demon out through his nose: when the man fell down, he commanded the demon to leave him, calling on Solomon and reciting spells.”1 Eleazar may have been an Essene, and the magic root was probably the phosphorescent and presumably foul-smelling baaras plant, which supposedly grew near Masada and is described in the seventh book of The Jewish War.

  Although Vespasian kept Josephus under close guard, he gave him new clothes and valuable presents.2 At Caesarea Maritima, he was probably housed in the governor’s pleasant white palace by the sea and was more comfortable than he had been for months. He recalled that the climate was as genial in winter as it was suffocatingly hot in summer. As time went by, his captivity was relaxed, and his chains were taken off. “Vespasian showed in all sorts of ways how much he respected me,” Josephus tells us proudly.3 He even gave him a wife, although he already had one at Jerusalem (of whom nothing is known), ordering him to marry her. She was “one of the women taken prisoner to Caesarea, a virgin and a native of that place.”4 That is all he says about her, but since she had avoided being sent to the slave market, we may guess that she must have been good-looking and desirable. She left him after his release.

  Nonetheless, he cannot have failed to see that his life was still in danger. If Nero survived, Vespasian was not a man to forgive what he would see as deception. We can guess too that his relations with Roman officers, apart from Vespasian and Titus, were strained. Admittedly, as a fluent speaker of Greek who knew Rome, he had more in common with them than with his recent comrades, the hillbillies of Jotapata. They may even have respected him as a patrician: it is revealing that Suetonius places him among the nobiles, the highborn. Even so, they distrusted an enemy commander who had defected and always remained suspicious. This early period as a prisoner, never knowing whether the next day would be his last, must have been nerve-racking for Josephus.

  Most Jews regarded him as a traitor, a man fighting against his own country. At first only rumors of the fall of Jotapata reached Jerusalem, since there were no survivors to tell the tale. Many people refused to believe that it had fallen. When the rumors
were confirmed, Josephus was said to be among the dead. He possessed a dry wit and records with amusement how the news “filled all Jerusalem with sorrow . . . the wailing did not cease for a whole month, people hiring professional pipers to play laments in the streets.” They mourned him more than friends and family. After all, he had been one of the nation’s leading generals. Sorrow turned to rage, however, when it became known that not only had he survived, but he was being unusually well treated by the Romans. He notes dryly that he was called a coward and a deserter and that the inhabitants’ eagerness to take revenge on him made them keener than ever to fight the legionaries.5

  Yet we can assume that there were exceptions among what have been called his fellow upper-class moderates, those Jews for whom he later wrote the Vita.6 They included people still inside Jerusalem. As the Roman army remorselessly ground forward, they came to agree with his view that the war was hopeless and that the Jewish nation had been taken over by a fanatical minority. Men like this secretly sympathized with his going over to the Romans and wished they were able to follow his example.