During the winter, Titus paid a last visit to Jerusalem. Instead of boasting of his victory, he deplored the destruction of such a wonderful city, cursing the men who had brought ruin upon it by rebelling against Rome. Josephus, who was with him, tells us that the Romans were still digging up large quantities of gold and silver hidden during the siege. But he reveals nothing about his own feelings.
Titus’s melancholy mood may have had to do with more than the sight of a ruined Jerusalem. There was worrying news from Europe. The Germans and the northern Gauls had revolted, encouraged by the recent civil war and the hope that Vespasian would not last long. At the same time, the Scythians had launched a serious raid across the Danube into Moesia. However, the Germans and Gauls were quickly defeated, the Scythians were checked, and peace was restored to the entire empire.
Accompanied by Josephus, Titus marched into Egypt across the desert, attending the consecration of the sacred bull Apis in the temple at Memphis. During the service he wore a diadem, which seemed to confirm rumors of his planning to invade Italy and replace his father. During the siege the legionaries had hailed him as “Imperator,” and although they were only acclaiming him as a victorious general, it had aroused suspicion. His troops were so devoted to him that when he was leaving Judea they begged him to stay, which made some think that he intended to revolt against Vespasian and make himself ruler of the East. Josephus must have listened to these rumors with horror. He had no wish to find himself in the middle of another dangerous civil war in which once again he would have to choose sides.
But Titus was much too sensible to rebel and risk losing his chance of inheriting the empire. Sending ahead of him the 700 prisoners who had been chosen for their fine appearance, together with Simon and John, he sailed from Alexandria to Italy in the spring of 71. It was a pleasant voyage, according to The Jewish War.21 Josephus writes from personal experience, since he says in the Vita, Titus “took me on board with him, treating me with every mark of esteem.”22 Their ship put in at Regium, then at Puteoli. From there, Titus rushed up to Rome where, to show that the rumors about him were groundless, he burst into Vespasian’s presence with the words, “Here I am, father, here I am!”23 “From that time on he never ceased to act as the emperor’s partner, even as his protector,” Suetonius tells us.24
“On our arrival in Rome, I was treated with the greatest consideration by Vespasian,” Josephus informs us in his autobiography. “He gave me a lodging in the house in which he had lived before becoming Emperor, honored me by making me a Roman citizen, and bestowed a pension on me. He continued his benevolence towards me until the day he left this life, without any lessening in his kindness.”25 That inspired prophecy at Jotapata was certainly paying dividends. Becoming a Roman citizen meant a considerable rise in his legal and social status and was particularly useful in any dealings with the authorities. He was no longer just a Jewish refugee.
In June, Titus and Vespasian shared a joint triumph, which was almost a coronation. Josephus records every detail in The Jewish War with such enthusiasm that one has to remind oneself that he was a Jew, since it celebrated the humiliation of his nation and his faith. However, by then he was writing for a non-Jewish readership and had been a Roman citizen for several years.
The entire Roman army paraded before dawn in front of the Temple of Isis, where father and son had spent the night. The pair came out at daybreak, in purple robes and crowned with laurel wreaths, and then proceeded to the Octavian Walks where the Senate and chief magistrates were waiting. Here they seated themselves on two ivory chairs on a tribune. After offering sacrifice and prayers, they put on triumphal robes before taking their places in the pageant.
The plunder was carried in procession, “like some flowing river,” masses of gold and silver, rare jewels set in crowns or simply in heaps. Even the robes worn by the 700 prisoners were beyond price. There were floats, some of them four stories high, depicting battles by sea and land, the storming of fortresses and towns, all deluged in blood, temples burning down, houses being demolished and burying their owners in their ruins, warships sinking. A captured city governor was made to sit on each float. Then came the crimson veils, the great gold table of the shewbread, and the seven-branched candlestick that had once adorned the Sanctuary, with a copy of the Torah, after which followed ivory and gold statues of the Roman gods who had supposedly conquered the God of the Jews. As a climax, Vespasian and Titus brought up the rear of the procession, riding superb chargers.26
The procession ended at the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, where it was a hallowed Roman tradition to await the news that an enemy leader was dead. This time the leader was Simon bar Giora, who had been forced to walk in the pageant with a halter tied round his neck. Beaten as he went, he was dragged along by the halter into the Forum and then into the Mammertine prison at its northeastern end where he was ceremonially scourged and tortured before finally being put to death. When the news that he had been killed reached the Temple of Jupiter, the crowd broke into a great shout of joy.
There is a mystery about what happened to John of Gischala, who also marched in the triumph. All we know from The Jewish War is that he was sentenced to lifelong captivity. The novelist Lion Feuchtwanger makes an oddly convincing case for it having been far from unpleasant, although he would never again see Gush Halav. One wonders how he escaped the ghastly fate of his fellow commander, Simon. For all his savagery, the Romans may have recognized a certain greatness of spirit in the man.
Josephus tells us that afterward, Vespasian built a Temple of Peace, which he lavishly embellished with marvelous paintings and statues. Here he placed the golden ornaments from the Sanctuary, although he kept the Torah from the Holy of Holies and the crimson veil in the Palace. The seven-branched candlestick appears in one of the reliefs of the Arch of Titus. Nearly five hundred years later, King Genseric of the Vandals took the menorah and the golden table to Carthage, from where they were recovered by Belisarius in 533. Then the Emperor Justinian sent them back to Jerusalem. They vanished for good during the seventh century.
Despite Josephus’s glowing account, the triumph must have been a dreadful experience for him. The crowd’s mood was not just one of rejoicing; it was also one of bitter hatred for the race that had more than once humiliated their supposedly invincible army. No doubt, the new Roman citizen was reassured by his patron’s popularity, and presumably he felt satisfaction at the death of the “tyrant” Simon bar Giora. But throughout his entire life he can have seen no more harrowing spectacle than this reenactment of his country’s defeat and destruction, together with the parade of the sacred ornaments from the Holy of Holies.
What happened at the fall of Jerusalem was genocide. No other word can describe what took place. The Romans never showed mercy to defeated enemies, and the realization that the siege had almost failed—which could have meant the fall of the Flavian dynasty and renewed civil war—made them still more merciless. In any case, after suffering so many casualties the legionaries were determined to exact a memorably vicious reckoning, while as usual the Syrian and Arab auxiliaries were bent on doing as much harm to Jews as they could. Titus’s prolonged cruelty to prisoners was excessive, even by Roman standards. Far more dreadful than the Babylonian sack of the city six centuries earlier, the siege and fall of Jerusalem was the worst disaster suffered by the Jewish people until the twentieth century. It is no exaggeration to call it a holocaust.
22
The Propagandist
“I shall describe the cruelty of the [Jewish] tyrants to their fellow countrymen, in contrast to the clemency of the Romans towards a race of foreigners, and how often Titus showed his eagerness to save the City and the Temple by inviting the rebels to make terms.”
JOSEPHUS, THE JEWISH WAR, 1, 27
FOR AN AMBITIOUS young man who still had a career to make there could be no point in staying in a wrecked Judea. Josephus does not tell us whether Vespasian had invited him to settle in Rome, but it seems more than probable i
n view of his “lodging” in the former Flavian mansion on the Quirinal, his Roman citizenship, and his pension. Since his family’s estate outside Jerusalem had been appropriated (presumably to supply the garrison with food), Titus gave him as compensation another estate, “in the plain,” which meant the fertile shefelah near the sea.1 Vespasian also presented him with another large tract of good Judean land.
Yet we should not read too much into such gifts. Although he took the emperor’s name, so did many other new citizens, and it is likely that Flavius Josephus was never quite as high in favor as he would have us believe. It is also possible that his lodging in the Flavian mansion was just a room for a short period. He did not receive the title of “Friend of Caesar” (amicus Caesaris), nor was he among the comites, the emperor’s formally acknowledged companions. It has even been suggested by a modern historian that he had a comparatively low place at court, in the same category as magicians and buffoons.2
Nobody could claim that Vespasian’s Rome was a tranquil haven of security during its early years. When Josephus arrived with Titus in 71, he must have noticed the uneasy atmosphere all over the city. Everybody remembered how the Roman Empire had nearly disintegrated only a few months earlier. The public buildings that burned down during Vitellius’s overthrow had not yet been rebuilt, while the civil war, the uprisings in Gaul and Germany, and the need to reward the troops had left the administration desperately short of money. Despite the victories of Vespasian and Titus, and their triumph in Rome, the new dynasty was still very insecure. The Senate dreamed of regaining the right to choose emperors, so much so that Vespasian ordered the execution of one of its members, Helvidius Priscus, and sent other senators into exile.3
The problem of who would succeed Vespasian was far more dangerous than any senatorial nostalgia for a republic, however. Even after he gave his elder son titles to show that he was his heir, the succession remained in doubt. The events of 69 had shown that an emperor might be elected by the army. Licinius Mucianus, the extremely able general who, after establishing an alliance with Titus had captured Rome for Vespasian in 70, thought he had not been properly rewarded, and there is some evidence that he was trying to turn the new emperor against Titus, even hoping to become his heir, which may be why Titus had suddenly come rushing back to Rome. Fortunately for Titus, Mucianus died in 75. Then Domitian began to dream of supplanting his elder brother, who in any case had other secret enemies. Throughout Vespasian’s reign there were whispers of conspiracy. 4 The politically minded Josephus must have sensed these menacing undercurrents, which scarcely made for peace of mind.
While there is no indication that he spent much time at court, he saw a lot of King Agrippa II, who came to Rome as a favorite of Vespasian and was granted the rank of praetor. It looks as if Agrippa was not quite sure what to make of Josephus; there are hints that sometimes he may have listened to slanders about him. However, we can be sure that Josephus took great care to flatter the last prince of the House of Herod. Someone else from Judea was in Rome during these days. Queen Berenice was living with Titus in his palace, despite her being ten years his senior. The Romans loathed Berenice, seeing her as a new Cleopatra, eager to become empress. They were repelled by rumors of her former incestuous relationship with her brother, Agrippa, and irritated by her glittering panoply of diamonds. Josephus does not refer to receiving any favors from her.
“My privileged position aroused envy and exposed me to dangers,” he tells us.5 He was envied by other Jews, and not only by those in Rome. This became evident in the case of a Jewish weaver called Jonathan, who had stirred up a rising at Cyrene that caused the death of 2,000 Jews whom he persuaded to join him. Promising the usual signs and portents, he had led them into the desert, where they were massacred by the troops of Catullus, governor of the Libyan Pentapolis. When caught, he accused the richest Jewish citizen in Cyrene of having given money to arm the rebels. The governor then forced him to accuse another 3,000 Jews in Libya, who had their property confiscated and were executed. After exhausting this source of plunder, Catullus aimed still higher, and ordered Jonathan to denounce well-known Jews in Alexandria and Rome, among them being Josephus. Hoping to convince Vespasian, the governor went to Rome, bringing Jonathan in chains. Brought before the emperor, the man insisted that Josephus had given him money and weapons. He did not deceive Vespasian, who had him burned alive—“the punishment he deserved,” says Josephus. Catullus escaped with a rebuke but was not allowed to return to Cyrene.
Josephus records Catullus’s last days with characteristic relish, telling us how the governor was struck down by a disgusting disease. He would dream that those whom he had murdered were standing by his bed, and then he would leap out of it as if he were on fire. In the end his bowels became riddled with ulcers and fell out, “providing unusually striking evidence that God in his providence visits the wicked with punishment.”6
“Subsequently, many other false accusations were made against me by people who envied my good fortune, but by the providence of God, I survived them all safely,” says Josephus.7 By his own account, his private life suddenly became very happy. “At about this time I divorced my wife, dissatisfied by her behavior,” he tells us in the Vita. “She had borne me three children, two of whom died although one called Hyrcanus is still alive. Afterwards I married a woman of Jewish extraction, who belonged to a family that had settled in Crete. Her parents were very distinguished, the most prominent people in the country. In character she infinitely surpassed the majority of her sex, as she would show throughout her subsequent life. By her I had two sons—Justus, the elder, and then Simonides, who is surnamed Agrippa.”8
Shortly after 70 CE, Josephus wrote a history of the recent war in Judea. It was probably little more than a pamphlet written at Vespasian’s bidding, but no copy has survived. As Josephus describes it in the preface of The Jewish War, it was written in Aramaic and was designed “to give an accurate account of the war and all the miseries that resulted from it, and how it ended, to Parthians, Babylonians and remote Arabians, to our Jewish kindred beyond the Euphrates and to the Assyrians.”9 His goal was to make these potentially troublesome compatriots realize how futile it would be for them to try and encourage any further rebellions in Judea.
Another purpose of the pamphlet was to reinforce the Parthians’ fear of Rome. Their king, Vologaeses, remembered all too well the defeats that had been inflicted on his soldiers by the Roman legions during the 60s. Living in terror of a rival for his throne, he had cravenly offered 40,000 troops to Vespasian in 69 when he saw that he was winning, and he had been so impressed by Titus’s capture of Jerusalem that he sent him a golden crown during his visit to Zeugma on the Euphrates. The Romans understood perfectly that these friendly gestures were inspired by fear and that the Parthians would not hesitate to attack them if they saw any chance of success.
A third purpose was to explain to the Jews of the Diaspora not only how the Temple itself had been destroyed but why: it was a judgment of God on the people of Jerusalem.10 This was among Josephus’s most fervently held convictions.
Apparently he had a Greek translation made and showed it to Vespasian, who liked what he read. It may have been the emperor and not Josephus who first realized that a book could be useful for his insecure dynasty; lacking the aristocratic background of their blue-blooded Julio-Claudian predecessors, the Flavians needed monuments to give them an air of permanence. This was the reason that the triumph had been so welcome, and why Vespasian had ostentatiously founded his new Temple of Peace. The reconquest of Judea featured prominently on their coins, that vital means of propaganda, and it would later be depicted on the Arch of Titus.
A full-scale chronicle of the war in Judea, written in Greek, with numerous copies made by professional scribes on papyrus rolls (the period’s method of publication) could command a wide circulation in the Roman world and would demonstrate that throughout the campaign the Flavians had enjoyed the favor of the gods. The author was expected to make the
most of his Jotapata prophecy of Vespasian’s future greatness and to praise the heroic exploits of Titus. If no more than conjecture, this is certainly a plausible explanation of the origin of the book that we know as The Jewish War.
“There are people who by necessity and force of circumstance are obliged to write history because they took part in what happened and have no excuse for not putting it on paper for posterity’s sake,” he writes in the preface to his Antiquities of the Jews.11 He adds, “Some people decide to explain little known events on which light needs to be shed, because the general public should be made aware of them on account of their importance, events in which the writers have been involved. These are my reasons [for writing].”12
He had his own notebooks, and Vespasian and Titus lent him their war diaries, and these may have been supplemented by the jottings of other soldiers. Yet apart from his booklet, he had no apparent qualifications for such a task, especially for writing in Greek. In the last chapter of the Antiquities , written years after The Jewish War, he tells us frankly, “I have worked hard to . . . understand the elements of the Greek language, but I am so used to speaking our own tongue that I cannot pronounce Greek properly.”13 Yet if he could not speak Greek with a perfect accent, we know that he wrote it very well indeed.
Jerusalem's Traitor: Josephus, Masada, and the Fall of Judea Page 30
