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

by Seward, Desmond

  Our weapons and ramparts, our supposedly impregnable fortresses, and our love of freedom that could never be cowed by any threat, encouraged us to rise in revolt. But this helped us for only a short time, raising our hopes before turning into a total disaster. We have all been defeated and have all fallen into the hands of the enemy, as if we had been meant to do no more than adorn their victory instead of saving the lives of our people. We must think of those of us who fell in battle as the really lucky ones, since at least they died defending liberty and they did not betray it. But who can fail to pity all the others now under the Roman heel? Who would not prefer to die rather than share their fate? Some have been broken on the rack, some have been burned or scourged to death. Some have been half-eaten by wild beasts and then kept alive to be fed to them for a second time, amid the jeers and laughter of their gloating enemies. The most wretched, however, are those who are still alive and pray for death, but who are never granted it.

  Eleazar went on to mourn for the destruction of Jerusalem, mother city of the Jewish nation. “What has become of that city of ours in which it was believed that God himself dwelt?” It would have been better had they all died before seeing her overthrown and witnessing the profanation and destruction of the Temple. He and his comrades at Masada had hoped to avenge her, but now that hope had gone, they should at least die with honor.

  Finally, he warned what they could expect if they surrendered to the Romans. “Ghastly will be the fate of young men who fall into their hands, whose sturdy bodies can stay alive for hours under prolonged torture, no less ghastly will be that of old men whose weaker physique will break sooner,” he ended. “A husband will see his wife dragged away to be raped and will hear his child screaming for a father whose hands are bound.”

  But our hands are still unbound and they still hold swords. While they remain like this, give them the chance of doing good service. Let us die unenslaved by our enemies and leave this life with our wives and children, free men to the last. This is what our Law commands, this is what our families deserve. God has ordained we should do it, while the Romans want the exact opposite and for none of us to die before being captured. Hurry, then, so that instead of having the pleasure of taking us prisoner they will be astonished at our deaths and awed by our courage.5

  He was unable to finish his speech, as his listeners rushed into the palace that they seem to have used as a barracks (although it appears that some lived in turrets on the walls). After embracing their families, they killed them, before piling up and setting fire to their possessions. Then, having chosen, by lot, ten comrades to put the rest to death, they lay down with their arms around the bodies of their wives and children and held up their throats. When the ten had completed their work, they drew lots with each other until only a single Zealot remained. After inspecting all the bodies to make sure that no one else was left alive, he set light to the palace and then drove his sword through his heart, falling dead beside his family. Nine hundred and sixty people, including women and children, died in the defenders’ suicide pact, which took place on 15 April.6

  The garrison had died in the belief that there were no survivors. However, a woman who was a relation of Eleazar and “superior to most females in intelligence and education,” managed to escape the bloodbath, together with an old crone and five children. They did so by hiding in a cistern.7

  The next morning, the Romans finally stormed into Masada through the breach, over plank bridges that they pushed across from the siege ramps. Inside the fortress, there was no sight or sound of anybody, while they could see flames rising from the palace. The silence everywhere was uncanny. Eventually, the bewildered legionaries gave a great shout, the sort of joint war cry they yelled after discharging a particularly large missile. On hearing it, the two women crept out of the cistern and explained what had happened. At first, they did not believe them, but at last they managed to extinguish some of the flames and enter the palace. When they found the dead bodies lying in neat rows, instead of crowing at the sight of so many defeated enemies, the Romans were awestruck.8

  Fiercely proud of his Jewishness, Josephus finally came down on the side of the Zealots. No doubt, Eleazar’s noble speeches, as they appear in The Jewish War, can only be inspired guesswork and owe a good deal to Greek literature. Eleazar’s cousin, who survived to tell the tale, could not possibly have given a word-for-word account. The legionaries would only have jotted down a summary of what she told them, and it is very unlikely that Josephus ever spoke to her. He may have obtained information from Flavius Silva’s war diary or from other Roman officers who had been present at the siege, but most of his account is the product of his own fertile imagination. Yet the speeches he puts into Eleazar’s mouth are remarkably convincing and probably very near the truth.

  What is so strange about Josephus’s description of what took place at Masada is that he starts off with an impassioned denunciation of Zealots and sicarii, using phrases such as “barbarous towards their allies,” “no work of perdition untried,” or “wild and brutish disposition,” and then portrays them as heroes. Similarly, his glowing eulogy of their mass suicide is in odd contrast to the disapproval of an easy way out that he had so eloquently expressed in the cave at Jotapata. The only possible explanation for these contradictions must be that as he learned more about what had happened, his latent patriotism was aroused by the defenders’ unshakable integrity.

  The historical importance of Masada rests on more than defenders’ heroism or the legionaries’ spectacular engineering. Eleazar’s speeches give us an insight into the spirit that inspired the Zealots. Fortunately, Josephus was so moved that he tries to tell us what went on in their minds instead of dismissing them as just another band of knifemen in his customary, biased fashion. What is surprising is that their “Fourth Philosophy” had an unmistakably Platonic tinge. At the same time, they seem to have had some sort of link with the Essenes; archaeologists have found on the site a fragmented copy of the Book of Ecclesiasticus, which also occurs among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

  In addition, the second of Eleazar’s speeches gives us a glimpse of Josephus’s true feelings about the war with Rome, something that he normally conceals in his books. It reveals his anguish at his country’s destruction and the suffering of his fellow Jews.

  A handful of Zealots remained after the fall of Masada, although not in Judea. A group 600 strong escaped to Alexandria where they tried to persuade the Diaspora to take revenge on the Romans, murdering people who disagreed. But after the Alexandrian elders warned the Egyptian Jews that these men would bring disaster on them, they were handed over to the authorities. They astonished everyone by the way they endured branding irons and flames rather than call the emperor “lord.” Despite describing their presence as a “contagion,” Josephus again hints at his divided loyalties when he comments that their commitment came from “desperation or strength of mind, call it what you will.”9 What struck spectators most was the behavior of Zealot children under torture; despite their puny little bodies, they were no less resolute than their parents.

  Lupus, in charge of the administration at Alexandria, reported to Rome that he was having trouble with Jewish fanatics. Apprehensive about a possible Zealot revival and determined to eliminate any conceivable rallying point, Vespasian ordered him to destroy the Temple of Onias at Leontopolis. In the delta, near Memphis, this had been built three hundred and fifty years earlier by the high priest Onias, an exile from Jerusalem, who had hoped to erect a rival to the Sanctuary in Jerusalem. Although according to the description given by The Jewish War, it was much less impressive, it was served by priests who daily offered the sacrifices. Lupus closed the temple down at once, and in August 73 his successor, Paulinus, removed the furnishings and forbade its priests to go near it.10

  Further indignities were inflicted on the Jews who survived in Judea. A huge amount of land was confiscated, which became the emperor’s personal property or was put up for sale. There were, of course, a few exc
eptions from the general misery. Some of the old ruling class who had fled from Jerusalem were resettled, so that Judea’s eleven administrative districts were once again controlled by its members, as Vespasian had always planned. The Sanhedrin reemerged, although as a council of learned men rather than magnates. Yohanan ben Zakkai’s school at Jamnia flourished anew, so much so that it took the first steps toward a written codification of Jewish law.

  On the whole, however, it was a time of unrelieved humiliation. The office of high priest was abolished, while, still more hurtful, the Temple tribute became a tax on all Jews, the fiscus judaeicus, which went toward the upkeep of the pagan temple of Jupiter Capitolinus at Rome. For years there was no resistance. Too many of the population had been killed or reduced to slavery.

  Throughout the empire, Jews were taxed unmercifully, a vicious, long lasting legacy of the war in Judea. There was a relaxation under Nerva in the late 90s, but the crippling taxes were soon reintroduced. Driven beyond endurance, Jews of the Diaspora in Egypt, Cyrene, and Cyprus rose in desperation in 115, killing large numbers of their oppressors, though we do not know their precise objective. Whatever it was, within two years they had been put down with merciless savagery. The revolt did not involve Judea.

  Yet nothing could destroy the spirit of the Jews so long as they stayed in their God-given homeland. Like Josephus, they expected that the Temple would be rebuilt, and Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai prophesied the coming of a “King Hezekiah.” Regardless of Josephus’s warning that God was no longer on their side, they again challenged fate. The conflict is said to have been caused by the Emperor Hadrian’s decision in 130 to build a new, pagan city on the ruins of Jerusalem, with a temple of Jupiter on the site of the Sanctuary. It was to be called Aelia Capitolina, Aelia being the emperor’s family name. This was an intolerable provocation for the Jews, since it meant that a Third Temple could not arise. However, a late Roman source (Spartianus) gives a different explanation for the revolt, citing an edict of Hadrian that banned circumcision.

  The Jews’ leader was Simeon bar Kosiba (called Kokhba, “Son of the Star,” in rabbinic accounts), who may well have been a descendant of Judas the Galilean. He was supported by one of the greatest scholars of the day, Rabbi Akiva ben Joseph, which shows the depth of his appeal. In 132, after a carefully planned campaign, he and his followers drove the Romans out of southern Judea, occupying Jerusalem and establishing a new Israel. Instead of relying on strongholds such as Masada, they used a network of tunnels for surprise attacks and beat off several Roman armies. For three years Simeon ruled as Nasi (Prince), at first governing with his uncle, Eleazar the Priest, but then having him put to death on a mistaken suspicion of treachery. Like the Zealots, Bar Kokhba hoped for help from the Parthians, which this time really looked as if it would come—until Parthia was unexpectedly invaded by barbarians.

  Inevitably, Simeon was defeated and killed in 135, when Hadrian’s legionaries stormed his last fortress at Bether in the mountains between Jerusalem and the sea, massacring its defenders. His supporters were ruthlessly hunted down and butchered, including Rabbi Akiva. Those few Jews who had not been exterminated were expelled from Judea, and the pagan city of Aelia Capitolina was finally built upon the ruins of Jerusalem.

  24

  A Roman Citizen

  “So anxious was the Emperor Titus that my volumes should be the sole authority from which the world should be made aware of the facts that he put his own signature on them and gave orders for their publication.”

  JOSEPHUS, VITA, 361

  WE POSSESS VERY LITTLE information about Josephus’s later life, apart from the sparse details that he gives about himself in the Vita and the occasional reference to a friend or a patron—he does not seem to have had many—and to his enemies. However, he tells us that he lived in Rome for several decades, in reasonable prosperity. He boasts of favors from all three Flavian emperors and never complains of poverty. Indeed, he was sufficiently well off to own an expensive, highly educated slave as a tutor for his son. Clearly, he spent much of his time reading history and writing it.

  According to Eusebius, he was so much admired that a statue of him was erected in Rome, and his books were placed in all the public libraries. (If there was a statue of him in Eusebius’s time, it must have been set up later, by Christians, who argued that his account of the destruction of Jerusalem confirmed the prophecies of Jesus of Nazareth.1) In The Jewish War he claims to be one of the best-known Jews in Rome, but there is no evidence to support this, although one modern historian calls him “an important person in Roman society.”2

  In contrast, it has been convincingly suggested that he led a lonely, isolated life while he was working on his books, with no friends among the ruling class, not even among the officers whom he had met on the Judean campaign. Because of the war, the Romans’ former amused tolerance of Jews had been replaced by a deep dislike, of the sort so harshly expressed by Tacitus.3 Nor can the Diaspora have felt much affection for a turncoat who chronicled their nation’s tragedy with such apparent enthusiasm and blackened the reputation of the Zealots.4

  It may be that Josephus devoted his entire time to literature and never left Rome, yet this is improbable, given his energetic, enterprising personality. A plausible case can be made for his traveling extensively, on some sort of political business.5 In addition, it seems unlikely that he did not return to Judea to inspect his estates and see relatives, and he could well have taken the opportunity to visit the distinguished new rabbinical community at Jamna (Yavneh). It also looks as if he met his final wife while visiting Crete. Admittedly, all this is based on conjecture.

  He was to write several other books, and his literary output appears to indicate that living in Rome gave him a sense of purpose. It can be argued that one of the principal reasons why he wrote his later works was to show his highly sophisticated Roman readership that he and his fellow Jewish landowners—those few who survived—were just as much patricians as any of the aristocrats from the other countries in the eastern Roman Empire. Even if his books praised Rome and earned him a respected place in Greek literature and a reputation as a faithful servant of Caesar, he never ceased to be a Jew, proud of his nation and his faith.

  We do not know when he finished the seven books of The Jewish War, although it is clear that the bulk of the manuscript was ready before Vespasian’s death. “So confident was I about what I had written that I was bold enough to cite as witnesses for its accuracy the two commanders-in-chief during the war, Vespasian and Titus,” he tells us in the Contra Apionem . “They were the first people to whom I presented my volumes, copies being later given to Romans who had served on the campaign, while I sold others to some of my fellow countrymen who appreciated Greek literature.”6 Among these Jewish readers were “the most admirable King Agrippa” and his brother-in-law Julius Archelaus, who had married Agrippa’s sister Mariamne. But it looks as if he submitted the book for imperial approval shortly before Vespasian died, since it was authorized by his successor. “So eager was Emperor Titus that my volumes should be the source from which the world learned the facts, that he affixed his signature to them and gave orders for their publication,” he states in the Vita, indicating a date of 79 or 80 CE.7

  “King Agrippa wrote sixty-two letters confirming the truth of my account,” he adds somewhat defensively, quoting from two of them. The first reads, “King Agrippa to dearest Josephus, greeting. I have read your book with great pleasure. You seem to me have written with more care and accuracy than anyone else who has dealt with the subject. Send me the other volumes.” The second says, “From what you have written, you appear to be in no need of further information to explain how it all happened, and from the start. But when we next meet, I shall tell you a lot that is not generally known.”8

  For a time, relations with King Agrippa were soured by the favor the king showed to a bitter enemy from Josephus’s days as governor of Galilee, whom Agrippa appointed as his private secretary. This was Justus of Tib
erias, who during the Judean campaign had escaped execution as a rebel only because of Queen Berenice’s mediation. He was an odd choice as secretary as he had been in trouble with the king for forgery, even being condemned to death and then pardoned for a second time at Berenice’s request. However, soon after his appointment Agrippa again sacked him for forgery, this time for good.

  During late 78 or early 79, Josephus was reminded that Rome could be very unsafe, when he heard how a plot against his patron, Titus, had been crushed just in time. The conspirators were Caecina Alienus and Eprius Marcellus, two highly influential senators who were close friends of the late Mucianus. Since by now Vespasian was growing old and showing signs of ill health, the pair—together with a group of senior officers—decided to ensure that Titus would never succeed him, although we do not know the name of their candidate for the throne.

  An impressive-looking man in early middle age, Caecina seems have enjoyed wide popularity, despite a long history of embezzlement and treachery. Quietly, he armed his supporters in readiness for a coup. At the very last moment the plot was revealed by an informant who gave Titus a copy of a speech that Caecina was on the verge of delivering to the soldiers, written in his own hand. Titus reacted by inviting Caecina to dinner and then having him stabbed as he left the dining room. Marcellus was arrested shortly afterward, cutting his throat in despair when brought before the Senate for questioning.