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

by Seward, Desmond

  In fairness, it has to be said that fanatical extremists like the Zealots needed a strong leader such as John. Even The Jewish War admits that some of them followed him out of sheer affection, which the author characteristically attributes to his skill “at using deceit and pretence to win support.” Yet he was by no means without statesmanlike qualities. He urged Mesopotamian Jews to persuade the Parthians to attack the Romans. Meanwhile, he strengthened fortifications and stored food for the coming siege. Even Josephus has to confess that “many people were attracted by his energy of body and mind”—which can only mean dynamism accompanied by a magnetic personality.13 John of Gischala’s dominance survived unchallenged from spring 68 until spring the following year. Despite his tendency toward tyranny and his followers’ proneness to use their swords, what has been called his “revolution” was limited to imposing Zealot ideals on the citizens with a certain amount of bloodshed. Although by now the new Jewish state was restricted to the capital and a few cities in the province of Judea, it still functioned with reasonable efficiency. Coins with optimistic inscriptions continued to be struck, and there was no interruption of the daily ritual of sacrifice at the Temple.

  13

  The Reconquest of Judea

  “Go not forth into the field, nor walk by the way: for the sword of the enemy and fear is on every side.”

  JEREMIAH, VI, 25

  UNDERSTANDABLY, THE ROMANS at their headquarters in Caesarea Maritima were delighted by the news of near civil war inside Jerusalem, seeing it as heaven-sent. Vespasian’s war council told him that he ought to attack without delay. “Providence has helped us by making the enemy fall out with each other, but things could change very quickly,” they advised. “The Jews may easily grow tired of quarrelling or come to regret all the killings, and form a common front again.”1

  Vespasian disagreed. “You’re making a bad mistake about our next move,” he answered.

  You’re much too keen on showing the enemy how formidable and well armed we are, forgetting about strategy and casualties. If we attack the city now, the effect will only be to re-unite our opponents, who can use their full strength against us. If we wait for a bit longer, however, we shall have a lot less of them to fight, as it looks as if a fair number are going to be killed in the faction fighting. God is a much better general than I am and, by the way he is handing over the Jews to the Romans without any effort on our part, he is giving our army a bloodless victory. Since our enemies are busy dying by their own hands and suffering from the worst handicap imaginable-civil war—the best thing that we can do in the circumstances is to stay as spectators instead of taking on fanatics who welcome death and are already busy murdering each other. If anyone here thinks a victory is spoiled if it’s won without a fight, then he had better understand that a success won with delaying tactics is always infinitely preferable to risking disaster by letting a battle begin too soon.2

  Vespasian’s officers accepted his assessment, and just as he had expected, the Zealots became even more divided into factions. He made sure that he was kept fully informed of developments in Jerusalem by regularly interrogating any refugees who managed to avoid the guards at the gates. When he began the campaigning season of 68, his legions marched out from Caesarea as if he intended to besiege the capital. In reality, his priority was to overrun the rest of Palestine until not a single city remained in Jewish hands apart from Jerusalem—a strategy of isolation.

  His first objective was the province of Perea, the rugged, mountainous province east of Galilee. Crossing the Jordan, he advanced on Perea’s capital, Gadara. Although it was strongly fortified and contained Zealots who wanted to fight, the city’s notables and its wealthier citizens secretly sent a deputation to meet him with a promise of immediate surrender. Rich men, they had no wish to suffer the fate of the Galileans. The Zealots realized what had happened only when they saw the Romans approaching. There was no time for them to prepare a defense, so, after lynching Dole-sus—the leader of the notables who had organized the surrender behind their backs—and mangling his corpse, they fled from the city. Those who remained demolished the fortifications, cheering Vespasian as he marched in. He left a garrison of both infantry and cavalry to protect them in case the patriots should try to return to Gadara.

  Vespasian did more than merely leave a garrison behind, however. He sent that highly experienced tribune Placidus after the patriots, with a force of 3,000 legionaries and 500 horsemen—which shows there must have been a sizeable group of Zealots at Gadara. Seeing cavalry in the distance, the fugitives realized they were being pursued and took refuge in a large fortified village called Bethennabris, where they armed the young men, making them promise to fight by their side. When the Romans came up, they charged out to attack. Placidus’s men fell back, luring the Jews away from the walls until the cavalry could cut them off and shoot them down at leisure. A large group rushed at the legionaries, “hurling themselves like wild beasts on their enemies’ swords.”3 Poorly armed, with no body armor, they were cut down in droves.

  Placidus blocked their retreat with his cavalry, his men using javelins and arrows to lethal effect. Only the most determined of the Zealots were able to cut their way back to Bethennabris. Its inhabitants managed to shut the gates, but the Romans launched assault after assault, before storming the village in the evening and slaughtering everybody they caught inside, a fair number fleeing into the surrounding hills. After looting the houses, the legionaries set fire to them, reducing the place to ashes.

  Enough survivors escaped from Bethennabris to spread word that the whole Roman army was coming. Terrified, the region’s entire population fled toward Jericho, but their escape was prevented by the Jordan River, swollen by rain and no longer fordable. Drawing up his troops on as broad a front as possible, Placidus attacked the fugitives on the river bank, massacring 15,000 while “an incalculable number” threw themselves into the Jordan and drowned. Over 2,000 were captured, besides countless donkeys, sheep, oxen, and camels. The Jewish War tells us that although the disaster was no worse than others suffered by the Jews, it appeared more serious because the countryside was strewn with dead bodies, and the corpses floating in the Jordan made the river impassable. Exploiting the general terror, Placidus overran towns and villages in the area, slaughtering fugitive patriots wherever he found them. In a short time, he reimposed Roman rule on all Perea as far as the Dead Sea, except for the fortress of Machaerus.

  Meanwhile, Vespasian had more to worry him than Palestine. In the middle of March 68, Julius Vindex, the governor of Gaul, and a group of Gallic chieftains had revolted against Nero, supported by Sulpicius Galba, governor of Nearer Spain, and by Salvius Otho, governor of Lusitania. Although the revolt was crushed within two months by the legions from Germany, Nero’s regime began to look increasingly fragile. Not only was the emperor’s behavior unacceptable, despite his rushing back to Rome at the end of 67 after his long holiday in Greece, but the government was running short of money. The long war with the Parthians from 54 to 63 CE had cost Rome huge sums, as had the British rebellion in 60 CE, while the Jewish war was also costing a great deal as it dragged on. Quite apart from the enormous expense of putting them down, revolts meant that taxes went unpaid, and in consequence less cash was available to keep the Roman population in idle pleasure—to pay for “bread and circuses.” Subject provinces were asked to pay even heavier levies, causing discontent all over the empire. If the imperial authority collapsed, the entire Roman world would be in turmoil. It might even disintegrate.

  “Vespasian had already foreseen that civil war was looming, recognizing the terrible danger into which it would plunge the empire, and in the circumstances he decided that if he could settle the problems in the east as soon as possible, it would help to calm down the mood in Italy,” Josephus informs us. “This was why he had been so busy during the winter in garrisoning all the villages and smaller towns that he had conquered.”4 In addition, we can guess that after Vindex’s abortive rebellion
, Vespasian had grown even more nervous that Nero might decide to order his own liquidation, as he, too, was an army commander who could be a potential rival. Yet at this date the thought of becoming emperor does not seem to have crossed his mind.

  In such uncertain times, the best course of action was for him to be seen as doing his job properly, by crushing the Jews without further delay. He abandoned his former policy of waiting for the Zealots to weaken themselves by civil war and embarked on a campaign that was designed to prepare the way for the siege and capture of Jerusalem. At no time dilatory, he showed extraordinary energy (although he was nearly sixty) once he had decided to cow the province of Judea into submission.

  While Placidus was reconquering Perea, leaving Traianus in overall command of the operation, Vespasian marched back to Caesarea Maritima and inland down to Antipatris where he restored Roman rule in two days. After this, he devastated the surrounding region “with fire and sword” for miles around, destroying every village as he went. Having conquered the territory around Thamna, he marched on Lydda and Jamna, killing or enslaving the inhabitants and replacing them with deserters from Jerusalem, who included men from the upper classes.

  He left the Fifth Legion (Macedonia) in a fortified camp at Emmaus, so that it could block the approaches to Jerusalem, before going on Bethleptepha southwest of the capital, burning it to the ground and laying waste the surrounding countryside—which involved slaughtering everything that moved. Marching even further south, across the Judean border into Idumea, he captured two important villages, putting 10,000 of their inhabitants to the sword and enslaving another thousand.

  He then went north through the hills to Jericho, most of whose inhabitants ran into the surrounding mountains when they heard he was coming. Those foolish enough to risk staying behind were massacred, with a few exceptions. He showed signs of a scientific bent by selecting prisoners who could not swim, tying their hands behind them, and throwing them into the Dead Sea to see if they would float—which they did “as if a wind had forced them upward.” In spirit, the experiment anticipated some of those by the Nazis, the prisoners presumably being put to death after their ordeal.5

  Vespasian was soon joined by Traianus with all the troops from Perea, reinforcements that enabled him to establish fortified camps at Jericho and Adida, each with a garrison of legionaries and auxiliary cavalry. In addition, he sent Lucius Annius to the city of Gerasa with a small mixed force of horse and infantry. Annius stormed it at his first attempt, massacring a thousand young men, enslaving any of the rest he could catch and then, after allowing his soldiers to loot the houses, setting fire to the city—a process he repeated at all the surrounding villages.

  The aim behind all this activity was to isolate Jerusalem, which Vespasian planned to blockade on every side with a ring of strong points. (Josephus’s knowledge of the local topography must have been useful when choosing the sites for these.) Each step in his recent campaign had been designed to make absolutely sure of his communications, by methodically eliminating every center of opposition on the coast and in the countryside, so that no enemy force remained that could interrupt his supply lines. Until now, he had deliberately left the enemy capital alone. However, it seemed clear that the moment was fast approaching when he would at last be ready to deal with it.

  About this time, during the spring of 68, a particularly interesting deserter arrived in the Roman camp, probably when Vespasian had returned to Caesarea. This was an elderly judge from Jerusalem, a former merchant—and former pupil of Hillel—named Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, who was to become famous throughout Judea for his learning. There are several versions of what took place, but on the whole they agree. Yohanan shared Josephus’s view of the war, about which he had grown increasingly unhappy, either because he was against it or because he believed in a compromise peace. In the end he escaped from the capital in a coffin, after being nearly stabbed to death by a guard who stuck his sword inside to make sure that the body really was a corpse.

  When he saw Vespasian, Yohanan shouted in Latin, “Vive Dominus Imperator!”—“Lord Emperor, live for ever!” Apparently he did so in front of a large crowd, since an alarmed Vespasian answered that he was not emperor, and Nero would have him killed if he heard about it. Yohanan then told him he was going to be a king, as there was a tradition that the Temple would surrender only to a king, and that a prince would cut down the forests of Lebanon. He quoted Isaiah, “he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall to a mighty one”(Isaiah, 10, 34). Rabban Yohanan, who knew how well Josephus’s prophecy had been received by Vespasian, also asked for permission to set up a rabbinic school near Jamnia (Yavneh), a town in the coastal plain where many of those who had fled from the city had been allowed to take refuge.6 Ironically, his school was to become a subtle, intellectual rebellion against everything represented by Rome.

  Although it has been suggested that the story of his prophecy was included to cover up some kind of sordid bargain, perhaps an offer of covert collaboration, there is no good reason to suspect that Yohanan contributed to the war against his fellow countrymen .7 He was just the sort of cultivated Jew who was welcomed by the Romans in their longsighted efforts to divide their opponents and rebuild a pliant ruling class who would cooperate with them after the war. However, it was almost certainly his prophecy that ensured his freedom.

  Before this, other Jews of less distinguished background than Rabban Yohanan’s, whose names have not survived, had prophesied that Vespasian was going to rule the world. Their predictions had now been strongly supported by someone far more impressive, further confirmation of the accuracy of Josephus’s much earlier prophesy, which was now about to be borne out by events.

  On 9 June 68, after the entire army—including the Praetorian guard—rebelled, Nero cut his throat on hearing that he had been outlawed by the Senate as a public enemy and was going to be executed “in the ancient fashion”—flogged to death.8 The seventy-three-year-old Galba was proclaimed emperor, and in the autumn Vespasian sent Titus to Rome to swear allegiance and ask for orders, as his command had lapsed automatically at Nero’s death. He was forced to abandon his plans for besieging Jerusalem.

  14

  Simon bar Giora

  “A man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth.”

  JEREMIAH, XV, 10

  IN THE MEANTIME, Jerusalem was facing fresh and extremely serious trouble of a new sort, in the person of Simon bar Giora. “A young man, a Gerasene by birth, perhaps not quite so cunning as John who was then in control of the city, but much fiercer and far more daring,” is how Josephus curtly describes Simon in The Jewish War.1 As always, however, one must be careful in accepting at face value his description of an enemy.

  Simon’s obscure origin and the fact that he had been born at the little city of Gerasa made him an object of contempt to the snobbish Josephus, who portrays him as a bloodstained tyrant from the gutter, yet perhaps it was not all that far from the truth. He was half-Greek, his father having been a convert to the Jewish faith. Admittedly, one modern historian, Martin Goodman, has argued, unconvincingly, that he was a member of the ruling class.2 However lowly Simon’s background may have been, never for a moment did Josephus underestimate this ruthless leader, who was always resourceful and always able to arouse the deepest loyalty. The Romans saw him as their most dangerous opponent.

  Josephus and his friends would have every reason to hate him. In their eyes, Simon and John of Gischala were the two evil geniuses of the war, Simon being the worst. Yet in his own terrible way, Simon was very much a Zealot. Probably, his hatred for the Judean magnates was inspired not so much by his humble origin or a leveling instinct, as by what he saw as their betrayal of the nation, their long-standing failure to resist Roman occupation and their readiness to collaborate. His extraordinarily rapid rise to power, which could only have happened in a situation where the social order had broken down, deserves a full description.

  During th
e short period when the late lamented Ananus had run Jerusalem, the wily old high priest had recognized at once that despite his youth, Simon bar Giora was very dangerous indeed. This was apparent from the disturbingly aggressive way in which he was behaving. Before he could become any more of a threat, Ananus had him thrown out of the toparchy (administrative district) of Acrabatene after discovering that Simon was trying to build up a power base in the area by ingratiating himself with the peasants.

  After his expulsion from Jerusalem, he took refuge with the Zealot sicarii at Masada by the Dead Sea. At first the knifemen were suspicious and would only let him stay in the outer courtyard of the fortress, with his womenfolk, barring him from their quarters in King Herod’s former palace, but he was an unusually congenial companion, a sympathetic listener, and his magnetic personality and unfeigned devotion to the Zealot cause impressed them. Soon they were allowing him to go on their cattle raids around Masada. Enormously ambitious, he quickly grew dissatisfied with this way of life, especially after hearing that his old enemy Ananus had been killed and that the Zealots had taken over the capital.