The Great Jewish Revolt

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It's 70 AD.

Jerusalem is under siege.

Some 50,000 Roman soldiers have descended on the city, keen to crush the greatest beacon of resistance still standing.

The brutal siege that followed would be the climax to a a bloody revolt that has been going on for four years.

An anti-Roman revolt that still resonates with many people today.

We know it as the Great Jewish Revolt.

It's the Ancients on History It.

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.

Guy Maclean Rogers, the classicist historian and an author who has written an incredibly detailed book on the Great Jewish Revolt from origins to ending it.

Let's get into the interview.

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

Well, thank you for inviting me.

I appreciate it.

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.

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.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

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.

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 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.

And

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.

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

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.

So with the Great Jewish Revolt, what kinds of sources do you have

to study?

this incredibly important period in ancient history.

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.

His works are a little bit tricky because

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.

We don't have that.

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

CE.

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.

And

so in the 80s and early 90s, he wrote this monstrously large history of the Jewish people.

which is usually called the Antiquities, but in fact was called in Greek the Archaeologica.

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

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, which was made as a kind of an addendum to the Antiquities.

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.

And then finally, in the late 90s,

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.

And again, there are kind of valuable pieces of information in that work as well.

So we have to try to stitch everything together from

those multiple sources written by Josephus.

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

And then there are coins and archaeological artifacts and inscriptions.

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

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.

So we have a lot of sources.

The trick is always, you know, making sense of them.

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.

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.

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, where he is involved in the fighting.

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.

Yeah, no, that's actually exactly right.

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.

So

you're 100% correct.

There are kind of

problems with

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

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.

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.

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.

So we have to take all those things into account.

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?

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

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

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.

After Caesar was killed on the Ides of March in 44,

his right-hand man, Mark Antony, who had had some experience in this region, decided that the point man for Roman policy should be this guy, Antipater II, who was

an Edumayan, and his sons, Herod, eventually Herod the Great and his brother Fasse,

who originally were made tetrarchs or rulers of a quarter of territory.

But after a couple of years,

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.

So in 40, Herod becomes king.

And basically, from a strategic point of view, Herod's role was going to be kind of Rome's man to hold down this very valuable real estate, which was in between

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 to consolidate his rule.

But by 37, he was kind of in charge there.

And this is BC.

This is BCE.

So this is BC.

It was 50 years before the revolt breaks out.

Right.

So he's in charge from 37 until he dies in 4.

And in my book, I sort of argue that probably 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.

But he 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

public actions.

So that's kind of how he did it.

Unfortunately, after he died, his heir, his son and heir, Archelaus,

wasn't as successful.

And after,

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

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

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.

And then it's the governors are basically the new rulers of Judea, Roman governors.

I'm guessing this names like Pontius Pilate, who we have from the Bible as well.

They're the new figures.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, Pontius Pilate, of course, is the most famous of the prefix 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.

But in fact, Pontius Pilate had a lot of problems apart from that.

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.

So the record of the prefects who were in charge from 6 to 41 was mixed at best.

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 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.

So, you know, the early period from 6 to 41, there were problems.

In 41, the Emperor Claudius decided to return Judea to client king rule under this guy, Agrippa I.

And

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.

But he died suddenly in 44.

And at that point, the Romans decided again to send out governors, this time called procurators.

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

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.

That's exactly right.

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.

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

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

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

Theaters and race courses and stuff.

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 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,

or the Jews.

And actually, that's kind of the exact

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

that was the start of it.

Well, yes, guys.

So let's explore this trigger point.

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.

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

Right.

So the background to the 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.

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

exactly what the purpose of the sacrifice was, but of course it would have been presumably to or for some gods or goddesses

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

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

And instead of doing that,

he sort of took off and

went to Jerusalem.

And

because

at the time, apparently 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, which was not the procedure that he was supposed to follow.

And

when

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, you know, as I tell my students, you know,

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

that ethnic conflict turns into

a war in Judea centered in Jerusalem.

So it is Jerusalem.

I can imagine, as you say, news of that spreads far and wide.

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.

But maybe in regards to 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.

Exactly.

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

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.

really without very much provocation.

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.

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

movement in Judea gained the upper hand.

And that's really the start of the war.

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.

he says that that's really the point at which the war begins.

But I see that as essentially symbolic.

They are no longer willing to ask their God to intervene on behalf of the welfare.

So this is kind of a separation point.

And then the fighting begins shortly afterward.

And so you have that spark.

And as you said, we go from Caesarea to Jerusalem.

And the revolt, you know, seeds of the revolt is really taking root now and spreading far and wide.

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.

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?

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

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

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

to first the Galilee and then to Jerusalem,

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.

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

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.

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 they could they could do damage to them.

And that was a shock to the Romans.

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.

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

It almost feels like another, dare I say, a Tudorberg 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.

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

Right.

You're right.

There is an analogy with what went on in Tudorburg.

Although the Romans lost a lot more guys in that bald in 9 CE.

On the other hand, the Jews had been cooperating with the Romans for

a long time, actually arguably since even before the time of Julius Caesar.

So I'm sure this was a huge shock for them.

And as a result of that,

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

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 and it took vespasian about a year or so so into the winter of 67

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

But just so that people can get an idea of of the scale of this, you 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.

So this was a massive army that Vespasian then brought down into the Galilee.

in the spring of 67

with the intention of ultimately taking it down to Jerusalem.

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.

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?

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

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

Right.

He was actually with Nero, who was on a concert tour in Achaia.

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

officer.

But in fact, I think it masks that reputation masks a more complex character, including a 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.

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

38 to 47 days.

And then up on the Golan Heights at Gamla, another siege.

And just to link this up a little bit with what I had to say about the Spasian, 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.

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

including the women and children.

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.

So there are some details in Josephus's 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.

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

It'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.

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 Jotapata.

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.

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.

Right.

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

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.

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

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.

So, as soon as these rebel groups got in charge in Jerusalem in 1966, they started minting coins which have on them sort of slogans about

their

goals.

And in the third and fourth year of the war, when you know 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, the groups in Jerusalem are having inscribed on those coins for the freedom of Zion, freedom of Zion.

So,

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

original question about,

you know, the resonances of this war.

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.

But Zion is also an idea of the people.

So

the short answer to your question is that these

people in 67 and 68 and 69

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.

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

The hardliners are very much at the seat of power in Jerusalem at that time, aren't they?

They're determined to keep fighting.

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.

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

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

Right.

So, within Rome, of course, there were massive problems.

Nero's reign really changed dramatically after 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 on time in the provinces.

In some sense, Nero never recovered from that.

And

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

his popularity was deteriorating.

And

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

And so eventually,

after rebellions by some of the governors up in the

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.

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.

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

and eventually make his way to Rome.

And he delegated

finishing the Judean war to his son Titus.

So it was left to Titus in the second half of 69

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

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All right, so we've got now to the siege of Jerusalem.

Guy, what happens with the siege of Jerusalem?

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.

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.

The difference was that Titus knew that this was a siege operation, which was going to require siege equipment.

And also, even more importantly,

planning for supply, for logistics, because he had to

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.

It turned out to be an incredibly difficult task.

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.

The siege machinery, yes, Cassipos.

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

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.

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

was kind of the denouement 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.

And

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 not a wise strategy.

because it kind of guaranteed that they would draw the Romans to these fortified places.

And the most fortified place, of course, was Jerusalem.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

You raised the issue of the analogy with Carthage before.

I think it's a pretty good analogy.

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.

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?

Massively important.

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 the priestly authorities.

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

whether the Romans intentionally burned down the temple or not.

But

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 Sakari

who were fomenting resistance in Egypt as well, he ordered

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.

He wanted to do it.

So I think that this was a

massive event, obviously, in the history of the Jews.

And 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.

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

Christianity.

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.

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.

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 quote-Jews executing executing Jesus.

And, you know, that very unfortunate, untrue, and unfortunate slur goes on for literally hundreds and hundreds of years and sort of poisons relations.

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

Absolutely.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

That's exactly right.

And not only that, but some of the treasures taken from the temple were displayed by the Spasian in a kind of harble museum of things looted looted from peoples in the Roman Empire.

And we know now that in the Flavian Amphitheater, or actually outside of it, there was at least one inscription, probably more, which claimed that the amphitheater had been built from the spoils of this war.

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

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.

And I also...

When I go there, which I do all the time,

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

of their sanctuary and their defeat in war.

And I asked my students to think about what the implications of that are historically.

And there was

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, 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.

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

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.

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

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

That's exactly right.

And

there is no

evidence that in any way

the story and then the memory of what happened is going away.

This is an inflection point, I believe, in human history.

I think it's the most significant event of the first century and the one with

the greatest historical consequences, the end of which

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

people are invested in this story

and its significance

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

I know of.

This story, as I say, is not over.

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.

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

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

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

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...

It's called For the Freedom of Zion.

Brilliant.

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

Oh, thank you for having me.

It was a pleasure.

Well, there you go.

That was Dr.

Guy Maclean Rogers talking you through the story of the Great Jewish Revolt.

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

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.

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 favour.

Don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hits podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com slash subscribe.

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

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