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

by Seward, Desmond

  Outwardly, at least, Titus really does seem to have possessed an unusually attractive personality. His troops were devoted to him. Yet Suetonius, while on the whole admiring, has to admit that at times he could display some very unpleasant qualities, such as ruthlessness and cruelty. He had no qualms about committing murder. When Titus returned to Rome after the Jewish War, he took command of the Praetorian guard and then used the guard to liquidate anybody he distrusted. He had a debilitating weakness for sexual pleasures, keeping whole troops of catamites and eunuchs, besides indulging in a long and potentially disastrous passion for a great Jewish lady. Despite his charm and talent for diplomacy, he had a flair for turning distinguished Romans into enemies.

  What is beyond dispute is that Titus was a shrewd statesman and a brave if rash general. He fully appreciated that the Roman public would be unhappy until he captured Jerusalem and restored the imperial army’s reputation. If he succeeded, it would shed much needed luster on the new Flavian dynasty, of which he was the heir. Never for a moment, least of all on this vitally important expedition, did he lose sight of his goal, which was to succeed his father on the throne of the Roman Empire. Writing not long after Titus’s death, Tacitus notes, with his usual acuteness, his solicitous determination: “in order that he might one day be thought worthy of an even higher distinction, Titus always dressed splendidly in magnificent armour, at the same time demonstrating that he was a determined and resourceful soldier, taking care to earn respect [among all ranks] by his unfailing courtesy and friendliness, and by mixing with his troops in action or on the march without doing any harm to his dignity as a general.”3

  His most obvious handicap as a soldier was a fondness for taking risks. Like Vespasian, he led from the front, but unlike his father, he could be reckless to the point of folly. Sometimes his pugnacious liking for hand-to-hand combat endangered not only his own life but those of his men. Although they admired his dash and courage, his wild, often rash gallantry nearly resulted in his being taken prisoner on more than one occasion. Overconfident, he was one of those dangerous generals who are capable of turning victory into defeat.

  We know the route that Titus took on his way from Alexandria to Judea in the spring of 70 CE because Josephus traveled with him and has left us an account of his journey, which involved crossing the Egyptian desert. They were accompanied by the elderly prefect of Egypt, Tiberius Alexander, who first proclaimed Vespasian as emperor and had been a devoted supporter of the Flavians from the beginning. “The most reliable of all Vespasian’s friends,” is how Josephus describes him. “Because of his age and experience, he had unrivaled knowledge of the art of war.”4 He also possessed exceptionally valuable experience of Jews and Judea.

  One reason why Vespasian appointed Tiberius as Titus’s second-in-command may have been to discourage his son and heir from embarking on any rash adventures. Always a realist, the emperor had often seen Titus in action on the battlefield and knew of his failings. It is likely that the cautious old general’s restraining influence made a substantial contribution to the campaign behind the scenes, an aspect of the war that has not received sufficient recognition.

  Slightly sinister, Tiberius was that rare phenomenon in the ancient world: a renegade Jew who had betrayed the faith of his ancestors and sacrificed to the pagan gods of imperial Rome in order to further his career. He came from an impeccably patrician background; his father, Alexander the Alabarch, had belonged to one of the great families of the Greek-speaking Jewish Diaspora in Egypt, his brother had been Queen Berenice’s first husband, and his uncle was the philosopher Philo. Twenty years earlier, he had been an unusually effective governor of Judea—“making no alteration in the ancient laws, he kept the nation in tranquillity,” says The Jewish War.5 By this Josephus means that he had done so not just by crucifying 20,000 Zealots but by respecting religious beliefs.

  Clearly, Josephus respected and admired Tiberius Alexander in many ways. He may even have liked him. Certainly, the pair had a lot in common. Like White Russians fighting the Bolsheviks, as patricians they did not think they were betraying their fellow countrymen; they simply felt disgust that their beautiful capital should be governed by men whom they regarded as criminals from the gutter. Even so, Josephus must have found Tiberius’s self-seeking abandonment of Judaism deeply distasteful; “he did not continue in the religion of his ancestors,” is his carefully laconic comment. 6 Built on apostasy, a career such as that of Tiberius contradicted Josephus’s own cherished view that one could belong to both nations without disowning the Jewish faith.

  From Alexandria the Romans marched to Nicopolis, where the troops boarded big galleys and sailed along the Nile through the district of Mendes until they reached the city of Thmuis. Here they disembarked and continued their journey by land, spending a night at the small town of Tanis, where they built their usual fortified camps. The second night was spent at Heracleopolis and the third at Pelusium, where they rested for two days before fording the Pelusian estuary. After a day’s march through the desert, they camped at the temple of the Casian Jupiter, and after another day’s march, at Ostrakine, suffering from a severe shortage of water since the place had no proper wells. Next, they halted at Rhinocorora, from where they marched to Raphia, which marked the Judean border. Their fifth major camp was at Gaza, after which, continuing along the coast by way of Ashkelon, Jamna, and Joppa, they went on to Caesarea. Here, Titus intended to concentrate his entire army, including local auxiliaries and allies.

  The army that assembled at Caesarea was bigger than Vespasian’s. Titus had four legions, the best soldiers in the world, supplemented by other forces. The legions included the Fifth Legion commanded by Sextus Cerealis, the Tenth Legion commanded by Larcius Lepidus, the Fifteenth Legion commanded by Titus Frigius, and the Twelfth Legion (“Fulminata”) whose commander Josephus does not name—the last understandably keen to avenge its disgraceful rout by the Jews in 66. The Syrian auxiliaries included twenty cohorts of infantry with eight squadrons of cavalry. In addition, there were some substantial detachments of local troops that had been provided by the region’s client rulers. These were led in person by King Agrippa II and King Sohaemus of Emeas.

  In all, Titus’s army numbered between 50,000 and 60,000 men. The sheer size of this force shows just how much respect the Romans must have felt for the fighting quality of the Jews, untrained soldiers though they might be. In retrospect it seems astonishing that Rome would have sent such a big army instead of a small expeditionary force.

  Meanwhile, the men who were occupying Jerusalem had now split into three mutually hostile groups. Josephus attributes the development to divine retribution and compares the “sedition” to a wild beast devouring its own flesh. Even those who sympathize with the patriots find it difficult to defend their insane disunity. Throughout The Jewish War Josephus makes the claim, directly or implicitly, that if only men of his own class had been left in charge, such as Ananus, then the city might have put up a much better fight and obtained reasonable—although no doubt harsh—terms from the Romans. In fairness to his opinion, it has to be said that nothing could have been worse than what was happening under the Zealot leaders.

  The garrison was already divided between John of Gischala’s supporters in the Temple and those of Simon bar Giora in the Upper City—and much of the Lower City, when Eleazar ben Simon, who was no less determined to be supreme ruler, fell out with John. Although equally bloodstained, he pretended to be horrified by his atrocities. Eleazar’s following included Judas ben Chelcias and Simon ben Ezron, “men of power,” and Hezekiah ben Chobari, whom The Jewish War calls “a man of some distinction”—fellow members of the old upper class. Josephus adds that each of these men commanded a large personal following, which implies that the defense was fragmented even at grassroots level.7

  Suddenly, Eleazar and his friends seized the inner court of the Temple, fortifying the gates that led to the Sanctuary. Well armed, they had plenty of food since they felt no guilt abou
t eating the animals brought in for sacrifice, but as there were comparatively few of them, they did not feel strong enough to evict John from the outer Temple. Although John’s men outnumbered them, Eleazar’s men were higher up in the great complex of buildings and were able to shoot down on their opponents. John nonetheless launched attack after attack, and there were frequent sallies by both sides, with a constant exchange of missiles. Despite suffering more casualties than he inflicted, John would not give up, so that in consequence the Temple was covered in blood.

  Seeing John being attacked with such ferocity by Eleazar from above, Simon bar Giora renewed his own onslaught against him. However, John beat off the attacks from below without too much difficulty, by using close-combat weapons such as bows or javelins, while he kept Eleazar’s men safely at bay with scorpions and stone-firing ballistae, though his men were not yet very skilled at using them. Unfortunately, the artillery killed not only his enemies but worshippers in the Temple. For the Zealots, until nearly the end, ensured that the sacrifices were continued, and Eleazar’s men admitted any Jews who wished to make them, after a careful search—locals from top to toe, strangers less strictly—although having gained admission they sometimes regretted it. There were days when the bodies of natives and foreigners, of priests and pilgrims, lay beside those of sheep, goats, and oxen that had also been caught in the bombardment, and pools of mingled animal and human blood covered the courts of the Lord. Josephus comments that civil war had turned the Temple into a charnel house.

  Huge quantities of the wine among the tithes and firstfruits in the Temple storerooms were consumed by Eleazar’s party, and in their frenzy of drunken aggression they redoubled their attacks on John’s men. However, John’s main quarrel was with Simon. Whenever pressure from above slackened—as happened a good deal on account of Eleazar’s people being too drunk to fight—he took the opportunity to launch sallies against Simon’s troops, frequently driving them back through the streets, before his soldiers were forced to retreat by counterattacks.

  During these skirmishes John’s men set fire to the storehouses containing the provisions on which Simon’s army depended, and then Simon’s troops retaliated by setting fire to John’s supplies. Their leaders were unable to stop them. As a result, grain that might have fed the defenders for a decade was destroyed during a Sabbatical “seventh year,” when the Jews were required to let the land rest and therefore had no harvest to replenish their stores.8 This burning of irreplaceable supplies underlines the Zealots’ two crippling weaknesses—lack of discipline and lack of a proper command structure.

  Between them, the three groups of Zealots were tearing the people of Jerusalem to pieces. Ordinary citizens were in utter despair. They could see not the slightest likelihood of the three factions reaching an agreement with each other, and they had very little chance to escape, since there were guards everywhere. If they agreed on nothing else, the Zealot chieftains concurred in murdering anyone who suggested making peace with the Romans or anyone whom they suspected of planning to escape. While the noise made by rival groups fighting each other day and night was deafening, so was the moaning of people who lost friends or relatives but dared not wail. Nobody bothered to bury the dead. Those who did not belong to one of the Zealot groups could see no point in it since they regarded themselves as already condemned to death. On the other hand, patriots fought each other mercilessly, trampling on the corpses beneath their feet.

  John appropriated a consignment of huge beams of timber, intended as supports for the Sanctuary, that had been brought down from Mount Lebanon at vast labor and expense by King Agrippa. Instead, John used them to build defense towers for protection against his Zealot enemies. The towers never saw action, however, since events developed too quickly. Shortly after the arrival of large numbers of Jews from all over the East as well as from Judea, pilgrims who had come to celebrate the Passover, Titus appeared in front of the city walls.

  Josephus had ridden all the way to Jerusalem with Titus’s staff, and he gives us a graphic snapshot of the Romans’ advance into enemy territory, something that he had actually seen with his own eyes:The allied kings’ forces and auxiliary troops went first, and after them pioneers and camp-builders. Next came the generals’ baggage with its escort. Then, Titus himself with spearmen and other picked troops, and behind him the legions’ cavalry. They rode in front of the army’s artillery, which was followed by the tribunes and commanders of cohorts escorted by a crack corps. Then, preceded by trumpeters, came the Eagles, borne by standard-bearers. After them marched the main body of the army, legionaries six abreast, who were followed by their camp-servants and their baggage. Finally came the mercenaries, carefully supervised by a rearguard [of legionaries].9

  Titus had marched through Samaria to Gophna, and thence, after a long day’s march, camped in a valley that the Jews called the “Valley of Thorns” in Aramaic. It was about three and a half miles distance from Jerusalem, although well out of sight of the defenders. From here, with a squadron of 600 picked cavalrymen, he had ridden ahead to reconnoiter the city and find out what he could do to weaken the Jews’ morale—and to see if there was any chance of terrifying them into surrender without any fighting. He had the impression, only too well justified, that ordinary folk wanted peace, but that none of them dared say so for fear of the Zealots.

  As he rode along the main approach road to Jerusalem a few days before Passover, he could see no sign of life on the walls, but when he left the road to go down the path toward the Psephinus Tower at the northwest corner, leading his troops in single file, a large force of Jews suddenly charged out from the North Gate next to the Towers of the Women from where they had been watching him. They broke through the Romans in such a cunning way that he found himself cut off with only a handful of men.

  Since he could not gallop onward because the ground in front of him was a maze of allotments divided by ditches and dry-stone walls, he wheeled his horse around, forcing his way back to the main body of his force through a whole host of enemies, killing several with his sword. Without a helmet or a breastplate, he was lucky not to be hit by the hail of javelins that slew one of his comrades or hacked to death like another companion. The incident was a tonic for the defenders; they had only just failed to catch him, and his death might have prevented the siege from taking place at all.

  The Jewish War gives considerable space to this incident, attributing Titus’s survival to divine protection. Josephus’s horror in the description of Titus’s peril and relief at his escape is almost palpable. He knew only too well that had his patron been killed, the Roman officers would have put him to death in the shortest possible space of time.

  During the night, the Fifth Legion arrived from Emmaus, and the next morning Titus moved his army up onto the hill called Mount Scopus (Lookout Hill). A low hill to the north of Jerusalem, this was a famous vantage point from where pilgrims caught their first sight of the great city and the gleaming white and gold Sanctuary. He gave orders to build and fortify a joint camp for the Twelfth Legion and the Fifteenth Legion at a spot that was about three-quarters of a mile from the walls, with another camp 600 yards farther back for the Fifth Legion. Realizing his men must be exhausted after a night march, he wanted them to be out of range of the enemy so that they could get some rest before they began to dig entrenchments. They had scarcely started work when the Tenth Legion arrived and was ordered to camp east of the city, three-quarters of a mile away, on the Mount of Olives.

  The legionary camp played a vital role in Roman tactics and strategy. Built with amazing speed—the legions had a tradition of teamwork worthy of today’s modern armies—it was as much a fortified town as a camping ground. If possible, it was sited near a stream on a dry, well-drained site that was free of undergrowth or could easily be cleared. It always had two broad main streets fifty feet wide, which were joined at right angles by lesser streets. Specific areas for sleeping (under leather tents), eating, washing, and drilling were carefully marked out,
and there were ovens, storage depots, drains, rubbish pits, and latrines. An annex contained a wagon park, horse lines, and a smithy. Each camp was protected by ditches and stockades; wooden towers and sometimes dry-stone walls were added if it was to be occupied for any length of time. (A “marching” or overnight camp was much simpler.) A safeguard against surprise attacks, the fortified camp provided a stronghold should things go wrong. Time and again, such a structure averted defeat. On departure, it was burned down so that an enemy could not use it.

  During the Judean campaign Josephus was accustomed to living for months on end in camps of this sort, when he was attached to the staff of Vespasian or Titus. Thus, he was able to provide an eyewitness description of what the legionaries were building for a long stay outside Jerusalem:The inner part of the camp is for tents, while outside it looks just like a wall with its neatly spaced towers in which scorpions, catapults, stone-projectors and other missile-firers are mounted, always ready to shoot. Four gates are provided, one in each section of the wall, big enough for pack-animals to enter and wide enough for sorties in strength in case of emergency. Inside, the camp is marked out into streets, the officers’ tents being in the middle, in the centre of which is the commander-in-chief ’s tent, looking a bit like a temple. Suddenly you see a city spring up before you, complete with market place and workshops, with offices for the centurions and divisional commanders where they meet or hold courtmartials. The outer wall and the buildings inside go up with astonishing speed because so many men are at work. If advisable, a ditch is built around it, six feet wide and six deep.10