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

by Seward, Desmond

  Identifying potential Jewish allies and trying to understand their attitude would have been of real interest to Vespasian during his conversations with Josephus. We know that these were frequent from his statement in the Contra Apionem: “While I was a prisoner, Vespasian and Titus demanded my constant attendance on them, at first in chains.”7 Presumably, they recognized a pragmatist rather than a renegade in the turncoat general, someone who could be extremely helpful. Nor is it too much to suspect that these two Romans took a liking to the Jewish patrician, which was to find expression in future favors.

  Meanwhile, Josephus got to know Vespasian well, developing genuine admiration for this soldier who fought as hard as he marched. Despite his grim face, the general in private life was an exceptionally good-natured man, tolerant of criticism and even jokes at his expense, seldom bearing a grudge. He was pleasant company, fond of laughter. We know from Suetonius what his tranquil routine as emperor would be, and it cannot have been so different when he was at Caesarea Maritima.

  He rose early, just before daybreak, and after reading letters and official reports, received his friends. While they were greeting him, he dressed, putting on his own shoes. Having dealt with any business, he went for a drive and then took a nap, sleeping with one of the concubines whom he acquired when [his wife] Coenis died. After his rest, he had a bath and then dined. They say he was never in a better mood or readier to grant favours than at such times, and members of his household waited for them if they wanted to make a petition.8

  For all his love of a quiet life, Vespasian was never idle. Although his army was so badly in need of a rest, before July was over he marched out from Caesarea to deal with the seaport of Joppa farther down the coast, which, despite having been sacked by Cestius, had turned itself into a pirates’ nest. Fugitives from Jewish cities destroyed in the recent campaigns had settled here in large numbers, and many took to stealing boats to use as privateers, preying on the local merchant shipping and making communications between Egypt and Syria increasingly hazardous. They also endangered the export of grain from Alexandria on which the citizens of Rome depended for their bread.

  When they heard that the Roman army was approaching, the pirates took refuge on board their boats. However, Joppa is not a natural harbor, and when a violent storm (called “the black north wind” by Josephus) blew up during the night, there was no safe haven in which to shelter, and the ships were driven onto the rocky shore or collided with each other. Some of the pirates killed themselves in the belief that dying by the sword was less painful than drowning, while others were dashed into bloody fragments by the rocks. A ghastly screaming could be heard above the roaring of the wind and the waves. The description in The Jewish War is so vivid that one can only conclude that Josephus was present on Vespasian’s staff and heard the noise for himself. Later, over 4,000 mangled bodies were washed up onto the nearby beaches.9

  The next morning, Vespasian marched into a deserted Joppa at the head of his legions, without opposition since nobody was left alive. After razing it to the ground, he left a detachment of cavalry in a fortified camp on the former acropolis, defended by a handful of infantry. The cavalry were given specific orders to ride out and devastate the surrounding countryside, destroying the local cities and villages, which they did every day for a month—reducing it to a desert. The Romans had recovered control of the entire coastline.

  Vespasian then led his troops to the northeast to visit King Agrippa II at his capital in the Golan, Caesarea Philippi. Apart from a few cities, the king’s lands lay outside Jewish territory, as he and his subjects were Idumeans. While nobody could have been more civilized than Agrippa, the Jews regarded Idumeans as barbarous descendants of Ishmael, even if they were fellow believers, a distinction that perhaps made the Idumeans more acceptable to the Romans. Vespasian spent three weeks at Caesarea Philippi, resting his troops and being entertained lavishly. The Jewish War refers to “feasting,” so it is likely that Agrippa gave some good parties, and Josephus, as Vespasian’s expert on the natives, would have been there to enjoy them. The Roman general got what he wanted from Agrippa: license to crush the Jewish rebels who had recently taken over the king’s cities of Tiberias and Taricheae.

  Vespasian’s three legions pitched camp three miles away from Tiberias, but in view of its walls. The decurion Valerian was then sent forward with six horsemen to offer terms to the citizens. Dismounting, so as to look more peaceable, Valerian said he knew very well that the Tiberians loved peace and that he realized they had been forced into rebellion by a small minority. (Josephus must have told him.) While he was speaking, Jesus ben Sapphias—Josephus’s old enemy—made a sudden sortie with his thugs, and Valerian had to run for it, leaving his horses behind. However, Tiberias’s notables went out to Vespasian, begging him not to blame the city for the behavior of a few lunatics, and Jesus fled to Taricheae. The next day, after breaking down the south wall to facilitate their entry, the Romans marched in without violence. Vespasian promised the citizens that they would be safe so long as they remained loyal to King Agrippa.

  He then moved his camp to between Tiberias and Taricheae. Reinforcements were pouring into Taricheae, and although no new general had taken Josephus’s place, its garrison obviously meant to fight. Protected by a hill behind it and by walls, the city seemed strong enough, with a fleet of boats on Lake Gennesaret ready to evacuate the defenders should things go wrong. The irrepressible Jesus ben Sapphias attacked the Roman camp as it was being built, trying to demolish the fortifications. Outnumbered, he was easily beaten off, and withdrew to the boats from where his bowmen shot at the Romans on the shore.

  Vespasian now learned that the enemy had gathered in large numbers on the plain before Taricheae, and he sent his son with a cohort of 600 picked legionaries to disperse it. The enemy force was bigger than anticipated, so Titus asked his father for more troops. While waiting for them, he cheered his men with a rousing speech, telling them they were better armed, better disciplined, and more experienced than the Jews. Their opponents were brave alright, but it was a crazy sort of bravery; they might be fighting for their country’s liberty, whereas he and his men were fighting for glory. “Don’t let me down, and keep in mind that God will be helping my attack. Remember, we’re better than they are at close quarters.”10

  In response to his request, Ulpius Traianus came up with 400 cavalry, while Antonius Silo occupied the hill behind Taricheae with 2,000 archers, keeping the enemy bowmen too busy to help their fellow citizens outside. Then Titus charged into the Jews on the plain. The Jews fought well enough, but being poorly armed and without shields, they had no defense against the Roman cavalry’s long lances. They broke, bolting for the city, and were cut to pieces or trampled down as they ran, many being headed off and slaughtered. Inside the walls, uproar ensued between the citizens who wanted to give in and the fanatical rebels who had taken refuge in the city and were determined to go on fighting.

  Guessing what was happening, Titus saw his chance and cheered his men on again. “Now’s the time!” he yelled. “Why are we waiting, comrades, when God is handing the Jews over to us? We are going to go inside and win! Can’t you hear them quarrelling?”11 Then he jumped on his horse and led a charge along the shore, riding through the lake’s shallows to burst into the city where it was unfortified. The usual massacre began, but he called it off fairly soon. Jesus ben Sapphias and his gang got away into the countryside, while large numbers of diehards took refuge in the boats on Lake Gennesaret.

  Vespasian soon arrived, and after placing guards around Taricheae with orders to kill anyone who tried to leave, he set about dealing with the boats, building big rafts. The Jews’ craft were very small, and they had no chance of landing since the shore was closely watched by horsemen. When the rafts were ready, manned by legionaries and spread out in a long line, they sailed toward the enemy. Desperately, the Jews threw javelins and stones, which had no effect on armored men. Their boats were boarded, rammed, or forced on shore.
Many were speared in the water or shot with arrows; those who tried to climb on the rafts had their heads or hands cut off. The whole lake was colored with blood and choked with bodies, not a single fugitive escaping. For weeks a dreadful stench came from the shore, which was littered with rotting corpses. Including those who had already perished in the city, the dead amounted to 6,500.

  Vespasian had no desire to hand back a deserted, valueless Taricheae to Agrippa. Seated on a curule chair on a platform in the center of the city, he gave orders for the locals to be separated from the newcomers who had led the rebellion; the former were pardoned, while the latter were told to go to Tiberias and take their goods with them. Although the road was guarded by soldiers to make sure they did not run away, they went cheerfully enough, convinced that their lives had been spared. When they reached Tiberias, however, they were herded into the stadium where the old and sick, numbering about, 1,200, were butchered, while 6,000 strong young men were put in chains and sent as navvies to dig Nero’s canal at Corinth. Of the remainder, amounting to nearly 40,000, over 30,000 were sold in the slave markets. Those from Agrippa’s territory were returned to their king, who then sold them off as slaves in just the same way.

  According to Josephus, Vespasian had been a little uneasy about duping the refugees into believing they would be spared. “His war council overcame his scruples, arguing that nothing wrong could ever be done to Jews”—meaning that Jews did not possess the right to be considered as human.12 However impressive and likeable he may have seemed, Vespasian, like so many great Romans, had an evil side and was no stranger to treachery.

  Titus, who does not seem to have shared his father’s uneasiness, was very proud of having captured Taricheae and, in particular, of the battle on Lake Gennesaret. Ships would feature prominently in his triumph at Rome in 71 CE, and there are references to it on some of his father’s coins.

  By now it was September. After the fall of Taricheae, nearly all the Galilean cities and fortresses still in rebel hands surrendered. There were three important exceptions: Gamala, Mount Tabor, and Gischala. Although the Roman campaigning season had in theory come to an end, and it was time to take up winter quarters and rest his battle-weary legions, the iron-willed Vespasian was determined to complete the job before the year was over.

  The best fortified of the surviving Jewish strongholds was the seemingly impregnable Gamala in the Golan, on the far side of the lake from Taricheae. In fact, Gamala was even more inaccessible than Jotapata. (It was the birthplace of Judas the Galilean, founder of the Zealots.) So vivid is the description of the city in The Jewish War that the reader realizes how familiar Josephus must have been with the city, as governor of Galilee as well as during the siege.

  At the top of what he calls a high mountain, Gamala was built on a rough spur like a hump on a long neck, and thus its name, which meant “camel.” Surrounded on three sides by deep, impassable ravines, there was a slightly more accessible approach on one side, although the inhabitants had carved a huge, slanting trench out of the rock to defend it. The houses were built all along the mountain face, crowded above each other, so that the city looked as if it were hanging in midair and about to topple down at any moment. The mountain top served as a citadel while, unlike Jotapata, there was a spring at the far end of the city and a well inside the walls, which supposedly ensured an adequate water supply. Not only was the place almost impregnable, but during the previous year Josephus had made it even stronger with trenches and subterranean passages.

  The Romans had given Gamala to King Agrippa II, but its people refused to submit to him and remained stubborn supporters of the rebellion. The city’s capture and its return would not only please Agrippa but destroy an important rebel center that was menacing Galilee. Even so, after all the heavy casualties inflicted on Vespasian’s men during the long and grueling siege of Jotapata, one can only wonder that he felt so confident about his ability to capture such an eagle’s nest. However, he had the former commander of Jotapata by his side to advise him and read the defenders’ minds.

  Because of the strength of its mountaintop site, the people of Gamala were far more convinced that they could hold out against a siege than the Jotapatans had been. There were fewer fighting men in their city, but they relied on its natural defenses. Agrippa’s troops had been besieging them for the past seven months without making any progress.

  When Vespasian arrived on 24 September with King Agrippa, he found that his normal practice of surrounding a besieged city with a ring of soldiers was ruled out by the terrain. Instead he placed sentries and lookouts at each convenient point, besides occupying a nearby hill. As soon as the legionaries had pitched their camps on the hill and fortified them, he set about constructing assault platforms. One was built by the Fifteenth Legion at the eastern end, facing the city’s highest tower, while another was constructed opposite the town center. The Tenth Legion filled in trenches and ravines. Agrippa went up to the walls to try and persuade the defenders to surrender, offering good terms, and begging them to listen to reason. They refused to hear him, and one of their slingers hit the king on the right elbow with a lucky shot. The Romans were shaken by such a savage response. If these men would try to kill a distinguished fellow countryman who had their best interests at heart, then they were going to put up an unusually bitter fight.

  The assault platforms were completed in a surprisingly short time by the legionaries who had done the same job at Jotapata. They started to bring up artillery. Chares and Joseph, the city’s leaders, ordered the men of Gamala onto the ramparts, although they were already losing heart—partly because their supposedly inexhaustible water supply was running dry, partly because of insufficient stocks of food. Throwing javelins, they managed for a time to slow down the legionaries who were hauling the siege engines forward, but when the scorpions and stone-throwers were in position and began shooting, they abandoned the walls and took cover in the city.

  The besiegers now used battering rams to breach the walls in three places and poured in “with a mighty sound of trumpets and clash of arms, and of soldiers shouting.”13 For a moment, it looked as if Gamala had fallen. Fighting desperately, its citizens were pushed back into the upper part of the city.

  Then, everything went wrong for the Romans. Unexpectedly, the defenders charged downhill from the upper city, hurling back their astonished enemies. Jammed into the steep, narrow streets that twisted along the mountainside, the legionaries were unable to benefit from superior weaponry. Trying to escape, they started jumping onto the flat roofs of the low houses, but as more and more did so, the rickety dry-stone shanties fell down, causing further deaths; some were killed by falling beams, some broke their legs, others were suffocated by the dust, and a few even stabbed themselves. The wreckage gave the citizens plenty of stones to throw, while they snatched up swords from dead and dying enemies. Clouds of dust made it hard to see, and Romans killed each other by mistake. In the murk, it was difficult for them to find their way out of the city.

  Upset at seeing his men suffer so many casualties and anxious to regain control of the situation, Vespasian pushed forward—instead of retreating—amid the confusion into the upper city, accompanied by a handful of officers. Suddenly, he too found himself cut off. Always a fighter, he managed to rally enough troops to form a tortoise, taking his place in the front line. Holding their shields in front or above them, beating off their enemies, they retreated step by step until they were outside the walls.

  The Romans had suffered severe losses, their most important casualty being the distinguished decurion Ebutius, who had “done very great mischief to the Jews” in the recent campaigns. Others managed to escape death through sheer good luck. “A centurion named Gallus and ten soldiers, isolated in the fighting, went and hid in a house,” Josephus informs us. “That evening, still in their hiding place, he and his men who were Syrians [Aramaic speakers] could hear the owners talking at supper about what the citizens meant to do and in particular about what they were
going to do to Romans. During the night, he and his comrades emerged and killed the lot, escaping back to their camp.”14

  The legionaries were thoroughly dejected. They had never been routed in such a way before; moreover, they had nearly suffered the disgrace of losing their general. Vespasian explained to them in a tactful speech what had gone wrong. He reminded them that as soldiers they must expect casualties. Like all ancient authors, Josephus cannot help turning the speech into an oration, but as he was present, his version may be fairly near the truth. It certainly sounds like the sort of thing Vespasian would have said to his troops:A lot of Jews have been killed by us and now we are paying back part of what we owe to fate. Just as it’s stupid to be puffed up by winning, so it’s silly to be disheartened if things go wrong. The change from either mood can be a quick one, and the best soldier is the sort who’s steady in bad times and cheerfully struggles on to put things right. What occurred just now had nothing to do with inadequacy on our side or Jewish bravery, but happened because it’s a tricky place, which worked in their favor and slowed us up. Your mistake lay in being too excited and not thinking—you should never have followed the enemy to the top. After capturing the lower city, you ought to have lured them down into a stand-up combat, but by trying to win a victory as quickly as possible you forgot about safety. Our successes come from training and discipline. Impetuosity and lack of self-control are not Roman qualities, they are mistakes made by barbarians, and they’re usually made by Jews. It is up to us to rediscover our natural fighting skills instead of being angry or depressed by this small set-back. You can cheer yourselves up by using your own right arms in the proper way. Because that’s how you are going to avenge your dead comrades and punish the men who killed them. And it’s my job to be the first into action and the last out.15