Rome 2: The Coming of the King
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Agrippa II, grandson of Herod the Great. Brought up in Rome, Agrippa was Roman to his core and was used as a client king by both Claudius and Nero. Josephus gives him an impassioned speech which ‘proves’ Rome’s superiority to the Hebrews and is supposed to be an attempt to talk the rebelling zealots to peace. In reality, it was Roman propaganda, about as plausible as Boudica’s speech to her warriors or Calgacus’ famous speech before the battle of Mons Graupius, ‘They wreak a desolation and call it peace’, both of which were written by Tacitus as a way of speaking to his contemporaries without being charged with treason. Agrippa was weak, and achieved little with his reign. The rumours surrounding his sister were almost certainly false, but he died without issue, although even if he had sired a dozen sons the client kingships would still have been lost in the aftermath of the rebellion.
Berenice of Cilicia, Agrippa’s much-married sister, sounds as if she was made of sterner stuff than her brother, for all that ancient historians give more weight to her fabled beauty and her many lovers than to her undoubted political acumen. Following her brother’s failure to subdue the rebellion by speech, she is said to have walked barefoot with her head shorn in Jerusalem in ‘fulfilment of a vow’. Historians are agreed that there was no known vow which required this, but it might well have been required as a penance. I have written it accordingly. Her son Hyrcanus is mentioned, but little else, and her sister Drusilla is important to us as being mother of Kleopatra, a fictional character (her real daughter was named Antonia Clementiana).
The Poet: Jocasta Papinius Statius is a fiction, but her brother Publius Papinius Statius was a well-known poet of the era. I have no evidence at all of a poetic sister, but it would not be the last time an accomplished woman had her work passed off as by a man.
The Teacher: Seneca the Younger, also known as Lucius Annaeus Seneca, died by his own hand at Nero’s order in late AD 65 following the failure of the Pisoan conspiracy, which was aimed first at deposing Nero and then – possibly – at installing Seneca in his place. We have no record of his being a spymaster, but he was remarkably well informed throughout his life and it is improbable that he could have been so without a network of agents.
Jucundus, commander of the cavalry in Caesarea, is mentioned in the incident of the dove that was sacrificed on the upturned vessel. Josephus himself makes no mention of the meaning of this act, presuming that his listeners will know. I am indebted to the Whiston translation for its explanation of the act of desecration thereby symbolized.
Saulos (Saul of Tarsus, St Paul) is one of the most divisive figures in early first-century history. Depending on your viewpoint, he was either the vehicle by which Christianity was brought to the Gentiles, and a saint, or a charismatic egotist who believed he had a hotline to his own private deity and was prone to outbreaks of verbal violence to an extent that nowadays would be classified as psychologically unstable.
There are seven attested letters by someone who called himself Paul and who wrote first person, as if to congregations under his pastoral care. My thesis, explained in greater detail in the Author’s Note following Rome: The Emperor’s Spy, is that Saulos was a Roman agent, that he initially endeavoured to suppress by extreme violence the insurgency that was sweeping Judaea and Palestine and was named by Josephus the ‘Fourth Philosophy’, and when that failed, instead of trying to coerce the people of Israel into denying their god, he took that same god and changed it.
Inventing a messiah, based on the death of the insurgent leader Judas the Galilean, also known as Judas of the Sicarioi, he removed the conditions of the previous covenant: namely the table laws and the need to circumcise the boy children. He preached his new cult round the eastern Mediterranean in the face of considerable opposition from the Jerusalem Assembly. (See James, the Brother of Christ by Robert H. Eisenman for full details of the enmity between Paul and James.)
Those who had known the Galilean in life were, not surprisingly, unhappy about this development, and when Saulos was finally summoned to Jerusalem there were men among their number who took vows not to eat, drink or go near a woman until he was dead. The Romans, hearing this, sent in several brigades of men to get him out; not a likely act unless to rescue someone of high value.
Thereafter, Saulos vanishes from our historical record. He is conveniently absent by the time James, brother to the Galilean, was assassinated by the Sanhedrin for the crime of being too popular. James, the Nazarite, was a vegetarian, pacifist and celibate who kept order in Jerusalem for approximately thirty years. It was his death that set the War Party and the Peace Party at each other’s throats, and led, ultimately – and with the help of Governor Florus’ idiocy – to the war that destroyed their city.
And yet – the great fire of Rome began in AD 64 on the night the dog star rose over Rome and we know that there were at the time apocalyptic manuscripts declaring that the Kingdom of Heaven could not arise unless or until Rome had burned under the eye of that star. Somebody, in my view, lit the fire in an effort to bring about the prophecy. I believe that person to have been Saulos, or his agents.
Although I have no proof, it seems to me also likely that someone was acting to push Gessius Florus to his acts of overt insanity in Jerusalem: there is no other reason for him to have behaved as he did, except to instigate the ultimate riot that would see the destruction of that city, and therefore of Judaea as a semi-independent province.
And so I have built my fiction around this supposition: that Saulos required Jerusalem to fall in order to fulfil a prophecy. Or at least, to tell his followers that he had fulfilled the prophecy. He himself, I imagine, would have been very happy to rule a client kingdom under Rome, where his cut of the taxes would have left him a wealthy man, ruling at last over people he had failed otherwise to subdue.
Menachem, grandson of Judas the Galilean, also known as Judas of the Sicarioi. Menachem was the hero-seed around which this book grew. His assault on Masada is written so simply in Josephus:
In the mean time, one Menahem, the son of that Judas, who was called the Galilean (who was a very cunning sophister [sic] and had formerly reproached the Jews under Cyrenius, that after God, they were subject to the Romans), took some of the men of note with him, and retired to Masada, where he broke open King Herod’s armoury, and gave arms not only to his own people, but to other robbers also. These he made use of for a guard, and returned in the state of a king to Jerusalem; he became the leader of the sedition.
(Flavius Josephus, Wars of the Jews 2.7:18)
For nearly two thousand years, history has skipped past this passage, moving on to the more exciting moments of the siege, or the final assault by the Roman legions on Masada, five years later, when nine hundred Hebrews held off the might of Rome’s army until, finally surrounded, they drew lots and killed themselves.
And yet Menachem, had he succeeded in creating of Judaea an independent nation and holding it against the might of Rome, would have been one of the great heroes of history. As it is, simply by scaling the rock at Masada in AD 66 and defeating the Roman garrison there, he achieved something almost miraculous that deserves recognition.
Masada
The image below is a modern one, but very little has changed in the past two thousand years except that the Romans built a vast ramp up the side to give their legions access when they retook the fortress in AD 70, and this can be seen today.
In Menachem’s time, without the ramp, and with the Snake Path – visible here on the eastern slopes – as the only known entry, it was convincingly believed to be impregnable. Even today, it’s still an imposing and awe-inspiring place. One look at the sheer drop on either side of the mountain of stone rising out of the desert would be enough to put off most assaulting armies.
Nevertheless, Menachem not only had the vision to attempt the assault but also the skill at arms to defeat the Roman garrison who held the fortress on top, and thereby arm his men in sufficient numbers to take Jerusalem and drive out the Roman garrison there.
&n
bsp; Thereafter, as Josephus proclaims, Menachem ‘returned in the state of a king’ to Jerusalem, and became leader of the sedition, which makes him – in my opinion – the first likely contender for the title of Jewish messiah. If he had held the city and ushered in the theocracy his grandfather had fought and died for, he would have been the true King of Israel – and the history of the world would be different in so many ways.
This, therefore, is the heart of this book: the taking of Masada and the insurrection that could put a good king on the throne. It took place against a background of regional turmoil: Volgases, King of Kings of Parthia, had installed his own brother on the throne of Armenia and then effectively dared Nero to do something about it. The resulting war saw the humiliation of a Roman legion. An uprising in Judaea was the last thing anybody wanted or needed, but it was more easily dealt with than the giant empire to its east, which goes some way to explaining the Roman desire to keep Judaea secure throughout the first and second centuries.
Before that, though, the Hebrews had one more major triumph: the defeat of the Twelfth legion at the battle of Beth Horon, and the capture of its eagle. The next book in this series, The Eagle of the Twelfth, charts the fortunes of that legion and the efforts of some of the surviving legionaries to regain their standard, and their honour.
About the Author
M. C. Scott qualified as a veterinary surgeon and taught at the University of Cambridge before turning a lifelong passion for the ancient world into a bestselling writing career.
As well as undertaking research in the University library for this series of novels, Scott is noted for the depth, accuracy and textured depictions of life in Roman times – and has spent weeks living in a roundhouse, has learned to make Roman swords and driven horses in harness the better to bring the detail to life. As Chair of the newly formed Historical Writers’ Association, Scott is active in the promotion of all forms of historical writing.
For more information on all aspects of her work, visit: www.mcscott.co.uk
For the Historical Writers’ Association, see: www.TheHWA.co.uk
Also by M. C. Scott
HEN’S TEETH
NIGHT MARES
STRONGER THAN DEATH
NO GOOD DEED
BOUDICA: DREAMING THE EAGLE
BOUDICA: DREAMING THE BULL
BOUDICA: DREAMING THE HOUND
BOUDICA: DREAMING THE SERPENT SPEAR
THE CRYSTAL SKULL
ROME: THE EMPEROR’S SPY
For more information about M. C. Scott,
please visit: www.mcscott.co.uk
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First published in Great Britain
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Copyright © M. C. Scott 2011
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Photograph of Masada in Author’s Note © Manahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images
Maps © Tom Coulson at Encompass Graphics
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