The Great Jewish Revolt

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Speaker 13 It's 70 AD.

Speaker 1 Jerusalem is under siege. Some 50,000 Roman soldiers have descended on the city, keen to crush the greatest beacon of resistance still standing on.

Speaker 1 The brutal siege that followed would be the climax to a bloody revolt that has been going on for four years. An anti-Roman revolt that still resonates with many people today.

Speaker 1 We know it as the Great Jewish Revolt.

Speaker 13 It's the Ancients on History It.

Speaker 1 I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. Joining me today to talk through the story of the Great Jewish Revolt, I was delighted to interview Dr.

Speaker 1 Guy Maclean Rogers, the classist historian and an author who has written an incredibly detailed book on the Great Jewish Revolt from origins to endking. Let's get into the interview.

Speaker 1 Guy, it is a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.

Speaker 13 Well, thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 You're more than welcome, but I hope you're ready because this is a massive topic, the Great Jewish Revolt. So we've got eight years, a war that lasted eight years.

Speaker 1 We've got two Roman emperors, a merciless siege of Jerusalem. And I mean, this whole event, it still holds so much meaning today, isn't it? It's still significant for people down to present day.

Speaker 13 Yeah, that's exactly right.

Speaker 13 I mean, I tell my students all the time that most of the ancient history that I teach is fascinating and interesting, especially to ancient historians, but it's kind of all over.

Speaker 13 It doesn't really matter to most of my students who won the Peloponnesian War, but the revolt against Rome in 66 and its outcome with the destruction of the temple and then kind of the progressive deterioration in relations between Romans and Jews and Jews and Christians, unfortunately has resonances right down to the present.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 actually, although I wrote the book back in 2020, 21, the events of the last year to year and a half have only kind of heightened that sense that this is history that isn't over. It's living history.

Speaker 13 So, yeah, it's still present in the minds of tens of millions of people.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. An interesting comparison or contrast you put there, Guy, with the Peloponnesian War between Athens and its allies and Sparta and its allies.
But let's set the scene.

Speaker 1 So, with the Great Jewish Revolt, what kinds of sources do you have to study this incredibly important period in ancient history?

Speaker 13 So obviously, the main source for the war itself is a narrative written by a very interesting and brilliant writer called Josephus, Flavius Josephus, after he acquired Roman citizenship.

Speaker 13 His works are a little bit tricky because

Speaker 13 he in fact wrote an original version of it, apparently in Aramaic, which was kind of the sister language of Hebrew, and sent that version to his countrymen across the Euphrates River relatively soon after the war was completed in 73 or 74.

Speaker 13 We don't have that.

Speaker 13 When Josephus went to Rome with Titus, he wrote a Greek version of it, which was finished around 79 CE.

Speaker 13 And that's the basic narrative account. Like a lot of people who have engagement with major historical events, Josephus decided afterward that he needed to write a much longer book about his people.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 so in the 80s and early 90s, he wrote this monstrously large history of the Jewish people, which is usually called the Antiquities, Antiquities, but in fact was called in Greek the Archaeologica.

Speaker 13 And there's a section of it which deals a second time with the revolt.

Speaker 13 And toward the end of that, he decided that he needed to do what a lot of people, a lot of American generals do anyway, to write his life story,

Speaker 13 which was made as a kind of an addendum to the antiquities.

Speaker 13 And one of the tricky parts of reconstructing what really happened is that there are some contradictions between his account of what went on, especially in the North during the war, in the life as compared to the war.

Speaker 13 And then finally, in the late 90s,

Speaker 13 he wrote another work, which was another defense of Judaism and Jews and their traditions. kind of against the slurs of this Greek intellectual called Appian.

Speaker 13 And again,

Speaker 13 there are kind of valuable pieces of information in that work as well. So we have to try to stitch everything together from

Speaker 13 those multiple sources written by Josephus.

Speaker 13 There also are accounts, shorter accounts in Greco-Roman sources like Suetonius and Tacitus and a third century Roman historian Cassius Dio.

Speaker 13 And then there are coins and archaeological artifacts and inscriptions.

Speaker 13 And I just want to put a plug in for the epigraphical sources, which have been put together in an unbelievably professional and useful corpus by

Speaker 13 a group of scholars in Israel and outside of Israel. which have English translations of all the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, and other language inscriptions throughout antiquity.

Speaker 13 So we have a lot of sources. The trick is always, you know, making sense of them.

Speaker 1 Sourcing fact from fiction, but as you've highlighted there, Guy, and just to restate, the importance of Josephus, because he was actively there, he was an eyewitness.

Speaker 1 He participated in this revolt, as we're going to see. He writes several works and in some of those in detail he explores this revolt.

Speaker 1 But as you say, and with so many other ancient historians, my mind immediately actually goes to one of those prime figures who wrote about the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides,

Speaker 1 where he is involved in the fighting.

Speaker 1 Analyze the evidence very critically because there is probably some bias in there trying to big up your role in the story and ultimately justify why, as we'll see with the Romans, he is on the losing side.

Speaker 13 Yeah, no, that's actually exactly right.

Speaker 13 In the case of the analogy between Thucydides and Josephus, it's probably not quite as strong because Thucydides failed to relieve a city that was under siege for the Athenians, whereas Josephus, after the siege and conquest of Jotapida, where he was kind of the presiding general on the Jewish side, you know, he surrendered and he went over to the Roman side and actually accompanied Titus to the siege of Jerusalem in seven days.

Speaker 13 So

Speaker 13 you're 100% correct. There are kind of, there are problems with

Speaker 13 working with Josephus's text, which are, I think, almost unique in antiquity.

Speaker 13 And on that, also, a colleague of mine, a very good Josephus scholar named Steve Mason, has kind of brought out some of the rhetorical issues in Josephus's text.

Speaker 13 And then finally, very quickly, you know, Josephus has a sort of deuteronomic view of history, which is essentially that, you know, God determines how everything is going to come out.

Speaker 13 And when the Jewish people are faithful to his commands, everything works out well. And when they don't, there's disaster.
And that's sort of the frame that he puts all of this in for his readers.

Speaker 13 So we have to take all of those things into account.

Speaker 1 So let's set the scene for the Ultimate outbreak of this great revolt. So in those decades previous, Guy, how did the Romans control Judea?

Speaker 1 Because I have in my mind immediately big Titanic names like King Herod the Great at the time of Jesus of Nazareth.

Speaker 1 So what do we know about how the Romans controlled Judea in the run-up to this great revolt?

Speaker 13 Right. So I think the the starting point for understanding what happened and what went wrong really is just after the assassination of Julius Caesar.

Speaker 13 After Caesar was killed on the Ides of March in 44, his right-hand man, Mark Anthony, who had had some experience in this region, decided that the point man for Roman policy should be this guy, Antipater II, who was a an Edumayan and his sons, Herod, eventually Herod the Great and his brother Fasael, who originally were made tetrarchs or rulers of a quarter of territory.

Speaker 13 But after a couple of years,

Speaker 13 Antony decided that he would push the Roman Senate to make Herod into the king of Judea, the Galilee, the so-called Pariah, which is the region to the east of the Jordan River, and then also South Syria.

Speaker 13 So in 40, 40, Herod becomes king.

Speaker 13 And basically, from a strategic point of view, Herod's role was going to be kind of Rome's man to hold down

Speaker 13 this very valuable real estate, which was in between

Speaker 13 the Roman enemies, the Parthians to the east, and then, of course, the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. So it took Herod a few years to consolidate his rule, but by 37, he was kind of in charge there.

Speaker 1 And this is BC. This is BCE.
So this is BCE. This was 50 years before the revolt breaks out.

Speaker 13 Right. So he's in charge from 37 until he dies in 4.
And in my book, I sort of argue that probably

Speaker 13 the reason why Herod was successful was that he figured out that on the one hand, it would be important for him to keep order, which was always a kind of Roman requirement of their client kings.

Speaker 13 But he wasn't really that interested in policing the beliefs and the cultural practices of the people living in his kingdom, as long as they didn't cross the line into

Speaker 13 public actions.

Speaker 13 So that's kind of how he did it. Unfortunately, after he died, his heir, his son and heir, Archelaus,

Speaker 13 wasn't as successful.

Speaker 13 And after

Speaker 13 a relatively brief reign as ethnarch, not king, Augustus kind of had enough of his incompetence and rusticated him to southern Gaul.

Speaker 13 And at that point,

Speaker 13 he decided that he would start sending out governors, hand-picked governors who are called prefects to Judea to keep on top of things.

Speaker 1 Right. So it goes from cloying kingdom to sending this son basically into a lovely, not an exile, but a farmland retreat in what is today southern France.
Right.

Speaker 1 And then it's the governors are basically the new rulers of Judea, Roman governors. I'm guessing this is names like Pontius Pilate, who we have from the Bible as well.
Are they the new figures?

Speaker 13 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 13 I mean, Pontius Pilate, of course, is the most famous of the prefects, because, of course, according to the Gospel of John 19, 16, he's the guy that gave the order for the execution of somebody your audience may have heard of, Yeshua Nazarene, otherwise known as Jesus Christ.

Speaker 13 But in fact, Punctuus Pilate had a lot of problems apart from that.

Speaker 13 And although his prefecture lasted for 10 years, He definitely made some mistakes which caused unrest, like for instance, at one point, trying to sneak some Roman military standsards into Jerusalem, which probably had representations of the Roman emperors on them.

Speaker 13 So the record of the prefects who were in charge from six to 41 was mixed at best.

Speaker 13 And I would say that the same goes for the guys who were running the show in Rome, like our friend Gaius Caligula, whose reign was from 37 to 41, who had the brilliant idea of introducing a statue of himself into the temple itself, which undoubtedly would have caused a major rebellion, a first big Jewish revolt at the time, except that he was assassinated.

Speaker 13 So, you know, the early period from six to 41, there were problems. In 41, the Emperor Claudius decided to return Judea to client client king rule under this guy, Agrippa I.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 he sort of went back to the Herodian model of trying to, you know, leave people alone as long as they didn't cause riots and things like that.

Speaker 13 But he died suddenly in 44.

Speaker 13 And at that point,

Speaker 13 the Romans decided again to send out governors, this time called procurators.

Speaker 13 And it's really in the period from 44 to 66 when the revolt broke out, that you can see things begin to spiral out of control as a result, in large part, of not only Roman mismanagement, but also increasing tensions between the different ethnic groups that were living side by side in most of the towns and cities in the region.

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Speaker 1 So there are these tensions that start bubbling under the surface just before the revolt begins.

Speaker 1 And as you've highlighted there, these tensions, they've been there for decades by the time of 66 AD or CE, and then it's almost an eruption of those tensions.

Speaker 13 That's exactly right.

Speaker 13 In fact, our friend Alexander the Great, in many ways, was responsible for kind of laying the groundwork for all of this, because until Alexander went through there in 332, basically there were only indigenous peoples living in this area, speaking, you know, these Near Eastern languages.

Speaker 13 In Alexander's wake, his successor, Seleucus, in this area, and his successors brought in a different culture with different practices and traditions.

Speaker 13 And by the time we get to the middle of the first century CE,

Speaker 13 these peoples are living side by side in places like Caesarea on the coast, which was probably originally what they call a Phoenician foundation.

Speaker 13 but had been kind of re-founded by Herod the Great as a place that had synagogues in it, but also, you know, Greco-Roman public buildings and games being celebrated.

Speaker 1 Theaters and race courses and stuff.

Speaker 13 Yes, everything. All the sort of typical things that you would find in a Greek city of the first century.
And there developed a conflict and a rivalry over who was going to be kind of in charge.

Speaker 13 of places like Caesarea. Was it going to be the Hellenes, the Greeks, or people who Josephus called Syrians, who are probably non-ethnically Greek, but culturally Greek people,

Speaker 13 or the Jews. And actually, that's kind of the exact

Speaker 13 starting point for the war itself, according to Josephus. That rivalry in Caesarea.
It led to a riot over a sacrifice that a Greek guy decided he would make next to a synagogue owned by the Jews. And

Speaker 13 that was the start of it.

Speaker 1 Well, yes, guys, so let's explore this trigger point.

Speaker 1 So you've highlighted that there are these underlying tensions between these different cultural groups and various religions and so on and that kind of contrast and clashing.

Speaker 1 So highlight this spark and what happens in Caesarea with this Greek man deciding to do this sacrifice outside of a synagogue.

Speaker 13 Right. So the background to the spark spark which lit off the revolt was this conflict over who was going to be able to say that they were in charge of Caesarea.

Speaker 13 And essentially both sides were provoking the other, but it got ratcheted up by this attempted sacrifice of birds outside of the synagogue. We don't know

Speaker 13 exactly what the purpose of the sacrifice was, but of course it would have been presumably two or four gods or goddesses

Speaker 13 and would have been seen by the Jews as an abomination.

Speaker 13 And they attempted to get the governor, the procurator, this guy, Gessius Florus, to intervene.

Speaker 13 And instead of doing that, he sort of took off and

Speaker 13 went to Jerusalem. And

Speaker 13 because

Speaker 13 at the the time, apparently

Speaker 13 the Jews of Judea were in arrears in the payment of the tribute to the Romans, he decided that what he would do is he would go to the temple treasury and withdraw 17 talents worth of silver, which was an enormous sum of money from the treasury.

Speaker 13 which was not the procedure that he was supposed to follow. And when

Speaker 13 the civilian population of Jerusalem protested against that, he unleashed upon them the auxiliary troops that were under his command. And they massacred something like 3,600 civilians.
And

Speaker 13 as I tell my students,

Speaker 13 in these situations of ethnic conflict, they tend to be resolvable until large amounts of blood are shed. And it's really at that point in the spring of 66

Speaker 13 that ethnic conflict turns into a

Speaker 13 war in Judea centered in Jerusalem.

Speaker 1 So it is Jerusalem. I can imagine, as you say, news of that spreads far and wide.

Speaker 1 For instance, in my head, I was thinking similarities with maybe the Boston Massacre before the American War of Independence, but I'm not quite sure that quite fits.

Speaker 1 But maybe, in regards to that, that value, well, how information about that is spread across to different groups of Jewish people across the area, and all of a sudden, the rebellion, this idea of revolt, really takes deep and strong roots.

Speaker 13 Exactly. There were among the Jews leaders who tried to convince the population of Jerusalem to not react to what happened and escalate the situation.

Speaker 13 But I think you're exactly right that the news of what had happened, and I really think for your audience that it's worth thinking about how it is that people would react to having their, you know, their sisters, their brothers, their grandparents killed.

Speaker 13 really without very much provocation.

Speaker 13 And at that point, I think a lot of people who were kind of sitting on the fence were kind of pushed over to the side of thinking that they really couldn't live with this particular governor.

Speaker 13 And when the Romans showed no inclination to punish this guy or replace him, I think that that's when the people who were in favor of a national liberation

Speaker 13 movement in Judea gained the upper hand. And that's really the start of the war.

Speaker 13 Again, Josephus focuses on this episode where after this happens, the guy who was the head of security in the temple, a man named Eleazar, convinces the priests to no longer accept sacrifices on behalf of Rome, the Romans, and Caesar or the emperor.

Speaker 13 He says that that that's really the point at which the war begins. But I see that as essentially symbolic.

Speaker 13 They are no longer willing to ask their God to intervene on behalf of the welfare. So this is kind of a separation point.

Speaker 13 And then the fighting begins shortly afterward.

Speaker 1 And so you have that spark. And as you said, we've gone from Caesarea to Jerusalem and the revolt, you know, Caesar, the revolt is really taking root now and spreading far and wide.

Speaker 1 But of course, for those who decide still to take up arms against the Romans and join this revolt, I'm presuming it's mostly people from the Jewish population, you're still going up against a juggernaut, against the superpower.

Speaker 1 So you must know sooner or later the Romans will come for you. So what is their strategy to try and fight the Romans once they've pinned their colours to revolt?

Speaker 13 It's not clear that during the early days, so spring, early summer of 66, that they had an absolutely coherent strategy.

Speaker 13 But as soon as the dust settles and they realize there's going to be a Roman reaction, they do put together an army.

Speaker 13 Of course, the Romans, in reaction to what had happened in Jerusalem, send the governor of Syria down

Speaker 13 to first the Galilee and then to Jerusalem,

Speaker 13 led by this guy, Cestius Gallus, with a fairly large army, a substantial army of about 30,000. I don't think that he thought that he was going to have to besiege Jerusalem.

Speaker 13 I think he thought that he was going to go and intimidate them into acquiescence, but that's not the way it worked out. And

Speaker 13 his army got mauled on the way into Jerusalem and on the way out of Jerusalem, losing more than 5,300 infantrymen and a cohort worth of cavalrymen.

Speaker 13 And that really put the cat among the pigeons, because at that point, it was clear that the Jews who were in revolt were going to fight and they were not intimidated by Roman legions, and

Speaker 13 they could do damage to them. And that was a shock to the Romans.

Speaker 1 It's a massive shock, isn't it? Because it said this army, 30,000. It's not just the local troops that the Jews have been able to manage and overwhelm in Jerusalem.

Speaker 1 This is an army which would include legionaries, so like the best troops the Romans have available, their citizen soldiers.

Speaker 1 It almost feels like another, dare I say, a Teuterburg forest kind of thing where, you know, full sense of security, ambushed, significantly mauled, as you've highlighted there, and almost then the Romans realizing, oh, bleep, you know, this is actually a much more difficult situation.

Speaker 1 This is a bigger revolt than we actually anticipated, than we imagined. Right.

Speaker 13 You're right. There is an analogy with what went on in Tudor Burg, although the Romans lost a lot more guys in that Vauld in 9 CE.

Speaker 13 On the other hand, the Jews had been cooperating with the Romans for a a long time, actually, arguably since even before the time of Julius Caesar. So I'm sure this was a huge shock for them.

Speaker 13 And as a result of that,

Speaker 13 Nero, the Roman, reigning Roman emperor, felt compelled to give the portfolio.

Speaker 13 the job of quelling what was clearly at this point a nationalist revolt over to another general, this guy Vespasian, who was a very experienced general.

Speaker 13 And it took Vespasian about a year or so, so into the winter of 67

Speaker 13 to put together a much larger army, an army which ultimately comprised about 60,000 soldiers, again, divided up into legionaries, allies, and auxiliaries.

Speaker 13 But just so that people can get an idea of the scale of this, you know, know, although there are kind of differences among the ancient historians, most ancient historians believe that Alexander the Great went over to Asia Minor in 334 with like 40 or 45,000 soldiers.

Speaker 13 So this was a massive army that Vespasian then brought down into

Speaker 13 the Galilee in the spring of 67.

Speaker 13 with the intention of ultimately taking it down to Jerusalem.

Speaker 1 And Vespasian, at this time, a bit of background context. I always remember him because he's an officer when the Romans invade Britain more than 20 years earlier.
He's got a lot of experience.

Speaker 1 He's, well, I guess maybe not near the heart of Nero's regime, but he's an important figure. And has he had to journey?

Speaker 1 You mentioned it takes over a year for him to prepare and get this massive army to invade Judea.

Speaker 1 Has he come from elsewhere in the empire to get to the eastern provinces?

Speaker 13 Right.

Speaker 13 He was actually with Nero, who was on a concert tour in achia so he didn't have that far to go he was in greece he was an interesting character you know his reputation both at the time and among modern ancient historians has always been sort of as a competent if somewhat intellectually dull

Speaker 13 officer but in fact i think it masks that reputation masks a more complex character including a character of some degree of sort of ruthlessness and cruelty as well, as he would prove pretty rapidly once he led the invasion force into the Galilee.

Speaker 13 And so there's a war in the north in 67, in the spring of 67, and the two big sort of flashpoints were Jotapida, which we talked about a little bit before, where Josephus was the commander conquered by the Romans after a siege which lasted somewhere between

Speaker 13 38 to 47 days. And then up on the Golan Heights at Gam La,

Speaker 13 another siege. And just to link this up a little bit with what I had to say about the Spasians.

Speaker 13 So Gam La is one of these places that's built up on a ridge with the high point where the ultimate defense of the Jews took place.

Speaker 13 And when the Romans finally pushed their way up there and conquered it, they just massacred everybody there,

Speaker 13 including the women and children.

Speaker 13 And Josephus, who's often accused of being a kind of, you know, a front man for his Roman masters, takes the time to point out that the Romans chucked over the side of the cliff all the babies that they found and everything.

Speaker 13 So there are some details in Josephus' accounts of the war, which shows that, you know, Josephus, despite those issues that we have to think about when we use him as a source, didn't just whitewash what happened in this war.

Speaker 13 And he's critical of Roman leadership in different times in the war.

Speaker 1 That's quite similar to the vivid descriptions we have of the final fall of Carthage and that very, very brutal and bloody. eradication of the Carthaginian population.

Speaker 1 But with that, so Vespasian with this large army, he's taken those key strongholds in the north, in Galilee, you know, defeated Josephus at Grotapata.

Speaker 1 The Jewish faction opposing them in this war, as they've seen this new Roman army arrive, it's huge and it's gaining success as it's creeping its way towards Jerusalem.

Speaker 1 Is there anxiety in the Jewish ranks? So I've got in my notes here, there's almost an internal civil war that erupts around this time. in Jerusalem.

Speaker 13 Right. So from the very beginning, even before the outbreak of the revolt within Jerusalem, there were very deep divisions among the population.

Speaker 13 And once the revolt broke out, there definitely were strong opinions held by people about the wisdom of continuing the war or negotiating with the Romans.

Speaker 13 But as I said, after the shedding of so much civilian blood, the groups people often focus upon, the Saqqari-i, the so-called the dagger men, the

Speaker 13 and the zealots really kind of gained the upper hand, especially the zealots in Jerusalem. Interestingly, they were kind of undeterred by what happened in the Galilee.

Speaker 13 They were committed, and we have some evidence which is a little bit difficult to interpret. but is still, I think, vital for understanding attitudes at the time within Jerusalem.

Speaker 13 So as soon as these rebel groups got in charge in Jerusalem in 66, they started minting coins which have on them sort of slogans

Speaker 13 about

Speaker 13 their goals.

Speaker 13 And in the third and fourth year of the war, when it's obvious what's going to happen, which is it's either going to be Vespasian or after the suicide of Nero and Vespasian decides to pursue his future back in Rome, it turns out to be Titus.

Speaker 13 The groups in Jerusalem are having inscribed on those coins for the freedom of Zion, freedom of Zion.

Speaker 13 So,

Speaker 13 you know, there's a lot of talk to go back to your

Speaker 13 original question about,

Speaker 13 you know, the resonances of this war.

Speaker 13 A lot of people talk these days and comment on the origins of Zionism, but you know, Zion and Zionism go back, in fact, to this time period and even before it was a hill in Jerusalem.

Speaker 13 But Zion is also an idea of the people.

Speaker 13 So, the short answer to your question is that these people

Speaker 13 in 67 and 68 and 69

Speaker 13 were fighting among themselves in Jerusalem, but there was a huge level of commitment to actually achieving independence from Rome, no matter what the cost was.

Speaker 13 So that's why, even though they realized that Vespasian was coming for them, they were undeterred.

Speaker 1 The hardliners are very much at the seat of power in Jerusalem at that time, aren't they? They're determined to keep fighting.

Speaker 1 And it seems like the Vespasian steamroller is going to get closer and closer to Jerusalem. You hint at it there, Guy, that actually it's Titus who will get to Jerusalem.

Speaker 1 And quite briefly, before we explore the siege of Jerusalem, what's this? What's this brief hiatus which forces Vespasian to leave the scene?

Speaker 1 And ultimately, it's Titus, his son, who will continue the war.

Speaker 13 Right. So within Rome, of course, there were massive problems.

Speaker 13 Nero's reign really changed dramatically after the the fire in Rome in 64, which just thoroughly destroyed three districts of Rome and seven others, and was one of the reasons why Nero put the squeeze on people to get their tribute monies in Enton in the provinces.

Speaker 13 In some sense, Nero never recovered from that. And

Speaker 13 with the outbreak of the revolt, which didn't go well for the Romans in the very beginning,

Speaker 13 His popularity was deteriorating, and

Speaker 13 there were plenty of influential Romans around after 66 who had thoughts of trying to get rid of Nero.

Speaker 13 And so eventually,

Speaker 13 after rebellions by some of the governors up in the

Speaker 13 Rhine-Danube border areas of the Roman Empire. Nero committed suicide, and that led to a struggle, a succession struggle in 68, 69, famously called the year of the four emperors, Nero's replacements.

Speaker 13 And Vespasian, as it were, turned out to be the last man standing, in part because the Syrian legions and the legions in Egypt threw their weight behind him.

Speaker 13 And so instead of pursuing a risky siege of Jerusalem, Vespasian decided to kind of hold off and

Speaker 13 eventually make his way to Rome. And he delegated

Speaker 13 finishing the Judean war to his son Titus. So it was left to Titus in the second half of 69

Speaker 13 and then the beginning of 70 to go to Jerusalem and to conduct that siege.

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Speaker 1 All right, so we've got now to the siege of Jerusalem. Guy, what happens with the siege of Jerusalem?

Speaker 1 This feels like the pinnacle, the climax to this whole revolt with the Romans, tens of thousands of Romans laying outside Jerusalem's very, very strong walls and those very determined defenders within.

Speaker 13 Right. So in a sense, this was kind of a replay of what had happened earlier in the war when the governor Cessus Gallus came down to try to intimidate the Jews into quitting.

Speaker 13 The difference was that Titus knew that this was a siege operation, which was going to require siege equipment. And also, even more importantly,

Speaker 13 planning for supply, for logistics, because he had to, you know, feed the Roman army there over months. He knew that to be the case.
So the Romans had to break through the three sets of walls.

Speaker 13 And it turned out to be an incredibly difficult task.

Speaker 13 And nowhere in josephus's multiple accounts of this does he give us roman casualty figures and i've always suspected that the reason for that was that they were quite high interestingly descriptions of the combat it often turns out to be the case that the rebels kind of outfight the romans but The Romans did what the Romans always did, which was to use their superior organization and their technical abilities.

Speaker 1 The siege machinery, yes, casupos.

Speaker 13 The siege machinery to kind of batter their way through the walls, clear the defenders from them, establish camps, and then move on.

Speaker 13 Eventually, it became kind of a numbers game and then a supply game within the city itself. And essentially, the defenders were running out of food.

Speaker 13 Unfortunately, from the point of view of the rebels, in some sense, the siege and conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple by the end of August

Speaker 13 was kind of the denouement

Speaker 13 or the inevitable outcome of the strategy which the rebels had adopted from the very beginning of the war, which was knowing that the Romans were coming to sort of back themselves into strongly defended places.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 in my book, I argue, easy for me to say, and I say this humbly, easy for me to say, but I think that that was probably

Speaker 13 not a wise strategy because it kind of guaranteed that they would draw the Romans to these fortified places. And the most most fortified place, of course, was Jerusalem.

Speaker 13 So in the end, it wasn't an accident that the war ended with the siege and then the burning down of the temple itself at the end of August.

Speaker 1 It's interesting, Guy, isn't it? Because I also remember that famous painting which shows Romans, it looks like they're with a catapult or something, and they're at the walls of a gate.

Speaker 1 And it's a very kind of, I dare say romantic, but very artistic portrayal of the siege Jerusalem.

Speaker 1 but i also know historically you know those walls but layers of walls in jerusalem the romans fighting their way through each layer and then one of the great legacies of herod the great alongside the temple which we'll get to was i think it's at the entrance to temple mount or around that area they had a strong fortress called the antonia fortress correct very

Speaker 1 strong an important stronghold for those last defenders but once the romans ultimately breach that stronghold the antonia fortress named after Mark Antony, then they're up on Temple Mount.

Speaker 1 And is it this picture of those last few rebels fighting in the temple itself? Is it like defending the last great building right at the center of Jerusalem?

Speaker 1 Is that kind of the end of the siege, those last few fighters there?

Speaker 13 It's the end of the temple and the defense of the temple, but in fact, it's not the end of the siege of Jerusalem. It's a horrible scene.

Speaker 13 I mean, reading Josephus' description description of it, it's a terrible thing.

Speaker 13 But there were rebels who survived even the destruction of the temple and continued to fight in Jerusalem itself, both above ground and actually below ground as well. So they did keep on fighting.

Speaker 13 So the siege went on in Jerusalem and Titus kind of unleashed his soldiers against the surviving civilian population of Jerusalem, and there were several more massacres within the city itself.

Speaker 13 You raised the issue of the analogy with Carthage before. I think it's a pretty good analogy.

Speaker 13 I think that we do have to imagine something like that at the end with a war, as it were, against the civilian population, many of whom would not have wanted to be there in the first place.

Speaker 1 A bloody, a brutal end to the siege of Jerusalem. How significant is the destruction and the sacking of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Romans?

Speaker 13 Massively important.

Speaker 13 This was the destruction of the center of the sacrificial cult of the Jews. In fact, there were other temples, but they weren't recognized by

Speaker 13 the priestly authorities.

Speaker 13 And there's a huge amount of controversy among ancient historians about

Speaker 13 whether the Romans intentionally burned down the temple or not.

Speaker 13 But

Speaker 13 one thing that I think people should keep in mind is that after the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem, when Vespasian found out that there were Saqqari

Speaker 13 who were fomenting resistance in Egypt as well, he ordered

Speaker 13 one of those kind of alternative satellite temples there in a place called Leontopolis, also to be destroyed, which is a sign that he wanted to eradicate the sacrificial cult of the Jews.

Speaker 13 He wanted to do it. So

Speaker 13 I think that this was a

Speaker 13 a massive event, obviously, in the history of the Jews.

Speaker 13 And I'm I'm sure some of your audience members will know that after the destruction of the temple, Jewish scholars who had either escaped from Jerusalem or relocated to Javna afterward on the coast then spent literally hundreds of years debating what the significance of the destruction of the temple was.

Speaker 13 So it becomes incredibly important in Jewish history, but also the histories of Rome and

Speaker 13 Christianity.

Speaker 13 So in Rome, although Josephus in his works tries to argue that his friend Titus didn't want to destroy the temple, we have several monuments and inscriptions in Rome in which Titus and Vespasian were quite happy to be bragging about the way that they had destroyed Jerusalem, which includes the temple, of course.

Speaker 13 So you can't have it both ways. So this becomes the support and the justification for the Flavian dynasty of Vespasian and Titus and Domitian, changes the history of Rome.

Speaker 13 And then unfortunately, in the third and fourth centuries, Christian writers make the case that the destruction of the temple was kind of punishment for the co-Jews executing Jesus. And

Speaker 13 that very unfortunate, untrue and unfortunate slur goes on for literally hundreds and hundreds of years and sort of poisons relations.

Speaker 13 And we're still living with the consequences of that, alas.

Speaker 1 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 I will mention quickly one of those monuments that you've highlighted in Rome boasting about kind of the Roman destruction of the temple, which is the famous Arch of Titus, isn't it, in the Roman Forum, which shows those soldiers bringing back, I'm presuming, it's the treasures from the temple, including the famous Menorah.

Speaker 1 There is so much gold, so much wealth stored in the temple that the Romans sack and bring back to Rome.

Speaker 1 And if my memory serves me correctly, there's also that line of thought with the copper scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, that the treasure it's referring to is treasure that may have been taken out of the temple.

Speaker 1 The truth of that, well, we cover in another podcast episode, so check that one out too.

Speaker 1 Should also mention that the Arch of Titus, the famous Arch of Titus, it is showing on it that the kind of the looting of the Second Temple in its destruction by the Romans at the pinnacle of the Great Jewish Revolt.

Speaker 13 That's exactly right.

Speaker 13 And not only that, but some of the treasures taken from the temple were displayed by Vespasian in a kind of marble museum of things looted from peoples in the in the Roman Empire. And we know now

Speaker 13 that in the Flavian Amphitheater, or actually outside of it, there was at least one inscription, probably more,

Speaker 13 which claimed that the amphitheater had been built from the spoils of this war.

Speaker 13 So as I say to my students, you know, when you go to Rome and the amphitheater or coliseum is the most visited archaeological site in Italy, tens of millions of people every year.

Speaker 13 It is Rome. It's the metonym for Rome.
Everyone that goes to Rome has a picture taken in front of that. It's a war memorial, but it's a triumphant memorial over the Jews.

Speaker 13 And I also, when I go there, which I do all the time,

Speaker 13 I always think to myself, you know, Rome had a large Jewish population at the time in the late first century. And, you know, every day they would be walking by this memorial to the eradication

Speaker 13 of their sanctuary and their defeat in war. And I asked my students to think about what the implications of that are historically.

Speaker 13 And there was

Speaker 13 a third monument as well in the Circus Maximus, another place that had tens of millions of people pass through it from antiquity into the medieval period,

Speaker 13 in which Titus was celebrated for destroying Jerusalem and falsely claiming that he was the first one ever to capture it. So the Flavian dynasty used this war.
as its primary claim to fame and power.

Speaker 1 Naturally, there is almost an addendum you can do to the great Jewish revolt, which is that last stand at Masada with the Saqqari.

Speaker 1 We have done two episodes on Masada, on the ancients with Professor Jodi Magnus in the past, so we won't explore that in detail today.

Speaker 1 I think to end this episode, Guy, I'll just kind of bring it back to the start.

Speaker 1 The great significance of this revolt, not just in Roman minds, not just in Jewish minds back in antiquity for hundreds of years following it, but also its importance down to the present day.

Speaker 1 This is a revolt that has endured in the minds, particularly of Jews ever since antiquity.

Speaker 13 That's exactly right. And

Speaker 13 there is no

Speaker 13 evidence that in any way

Speaker 13 the story and then the memory of what happened is going away. This is an inflection point,

Speaker 13 I believe, in human history. I think it's the most significant event of the first century and one with

Speaker 13 the greatest historical consequences, the end of which

Speaker 13 we have not yet seen. And that's both kind of a challenge, but also a little bit humbling for all of us who are involved in it, because

Speaker 13 people are invested in this story

Speaker 13 and its significance

Speaker 13 in a way that they are not for any other event in antiquity that

Speaker 13 I know of. This story, as I say, is not over.

Speaker 13 When you go to Jerusalem and you go to the so-called Western Wall, which is really part of the retaining wall for the Temple Mount that Herod had built, you're aware that you are at an active religious site.

Speaker 13 This is not like going to the temple of Artemis in Ephesus and seeing a column from that temple there, one lonely column.

Speaker 13 We are, in a sense, part of this story still.

Speaker 13 And I think that that's why it has so much purchase. and draws so much attention to this day.

Speaker 1 Guy, this has been a fantastic chat. Last but certainly not least, your book on this topic, which explores it in even more detail.
It is called...

Speaker 13 It's called For the Freedom of Zion.

Speaker 1 Brilliant. Guy, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.

Speaker 13 Oh, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

Speaker 1 Well, there you go. There was Dr.
Guy McLean Rogers talking you through the story of the Great Jewish Revolt.

Speaker 1 If you want to learn more about the events that followed the fall of Jerusalem, particularly the siege of Masada, well, you can can listen to two further Ancients episodes we recorded on that very topic with Dr.

Speaker 1 Jodi Magnus. They are called Besieging Masada, the first part, and Myths of Masada, the second part.
Two great interviews there from a few years ago.

Speaker 1 Thank you for listening to this episode of the Ancients. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favor.

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Speaker 1 That's enough from me and I'll see you in the next episode.

Speaker 3 Dashing through the store, Dave's looking for a gift. One you can't ignore.
But not the socks he picks.

Speaker 4 I know, I'm putting them back.

Speaker 5 Hey, Dave, here's a tip.

Speaker 3 Put scratchers on your list.

Speaker 1 Oh, scratchers? Good idea.

Speaker 6 It's an easy shopping trip.

Speaker 3 We're glad we could assist.

Speaker 7 Thanks, random singing people.

Speaker 8 So be like Dave this holiday and give the gift of play.

Speaker 10 Scratchers from the California lottery. A little play can make your day.

Speaker 11 Please play responsibly. Must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

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