Jews vs. Rome: VDH Interviews Barry Strauss on New Book

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Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson with the Victor Davis Hanson Show.

I'm solo today

because we're doing one of our interviews, and today we're interviewing Barry Strauss.

He is the

Coralis Dean, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

You know him from some 17 books he's written on the classical world.

He wrote a book on rowing.

He writes both on Roman and Greek history.

throughout antiquity, early antiquity, late antiquity.

He was a professor at what, Barry, for 45 years at Cornell.

Roughly, yeah.

Yes.

We're roughly the same age, 71, I think.

That's right.

And we knew each other when we were 25 at the American School of Classical Studies.

Yes.

And now he's a colleague at the Hoover Institution.

Some of you have seen that he writes opinion journalism on contemporary topics, but we're here today because on August 19th, his new book And it's very timely, The Jews versus Rome, will appear from Simon and Schuster.

And the subtitle is Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World's Mightiest Empire.

And

he's the author as well as The War That Made the Roman Empire.

So we'll get right back to the interview with Professor Strauss in a minute after we hear from our sponsor.

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And we're back.

Barry, this is your 17th book.

Did you,

you've written about Jewish history tangentially in all of your books about the Roman Empire, but did contemporary events, when did you start to think of this and start to write it?

And did it have anything with the turmoil in the Middle East?

Or was that just something that occurred while you were writing it?

Well, you know, I started writing this book in 2020.

And by the way, Victor, thank you very much for having me on.

It's great to talk to you, as always.

So I started writing this book in 2020.

And one of the reasons I wanted to write it was

the then, you know, below-the-surface war between Israel and Iran.

And

it struck me in looking back in the earlier history that

Iran, the ancient Iranian empires, were actually very friendly with ancient Israel and very friendly with the Jews.

Cyrus the Great, of course, but also in the period of the revolts, the Parthian Empire was an ally of the Jews.

And then later on, the Sasanians were also an ally of the Jews.

So I realized, and I read a little bit about Iranian history later on, that the current regime, the Islamic Republic, and its hostility, you know, its deadly hostility to Israel, is not in the mainstream of Iranian history.

So I wanted to look at a different period and see that.

Yeah, and

I think you're right.

And even the Shah was, of all the people in the Middle East, the most, I thought, the most reasonable with Israel.

Yes, he was.

Absolutely.

He was.

And one of the things that struck me in some of the signature battles, and I think everybody should read it, especially the siege and destruction of Jerusalem.

It's pretty harrowing.

The Masada incidents there, the Bar Kova.

But what struck me is that

many of the revolts were taking place at at a time when we, I don't know, we would call them the good emperors, but the emperors were people like Vespasian or Titus or Hadrian that were not really the more deranged, sinister, pathological types.

Yeah, well, of course, it's true,

and it's certainly a stain on Hadrian's escutcheon, especially

that the most bloody revolt and suppression of the revolt, Barcoch Revolt, took place under Hadrian.

But the Great Revolt begins because of Nero, who is a deranged emperor.

And it's Nero who,

he's not friendly towards the Jews, and he instructs his governors basically to squeeze them until the pips squeak.

The temple in Jerusalem was fabulously wealthy, and Nero wanted to get his hands on that money.

His local governor,

also Judea, as Israel was called in this period, it had a large Jewish population, but it also had several Gentile populations, among them in particular Greek speakers.

They were hostile towards the Jews, and the governor tended to favor the Greeks

against the Jews.

And he didn't just favor them.

He actually massacred civilians in Jerusalem as part of his policy.

So that tipped the scales towards revolt.

When you talked about the revolt

that sent Titus and Vespasian,

to subdue the Jews in 1970.

Jerusalem, except for, I think, because I I remember one section of the wall was almost considered impenetrable.

It was kind of like Constantinople later.

So there was, it wasn't just a feudal idea.

They thought that they really could outlast Rome, didn't they?

And maybe the Parthians might help or something.

It wasn't like the Third Punic War that was doomed from the beginning.

No, I don't think it was doomed from the beginning.

And

most people think it was doomed, but there are several other scholars who think the Jews had a chance.

They cut their own throats because the rebels inside Jerusalem came from several different factions, and they preferred to fight and kill each other rather than fighting the Romans.

Until finally, they got their act together and united against the Romans.

It's a bit too late.

The other thing they did was they destroyed the grain supply.

They burned each other's grain, and in the end, there wasn't enough food.

They could have lasted a very long time.

Instead, the siege lasted for five months,

which is not much longer than the earlier sieges of Jerusalem that took place.

So they did it to themselves in a real way.

It's really dramatic when we think of this first result of the destruction of the second temple.

It was a huge temple, 30 acres, and we see it today when you go to Jerusalem on Temple Mount.

Tell us a little bit, what was the...

What was the effect on Jews after the destruction of the temple?

I noticed that when you go to Jerusalem today, you can go into places and see the third temple project where people in their dreams think they're going to build it again.

Yeah.

I mean that's

the what was the effect and what was on the Jewish people after the destruction of the second temple?

Well I think that it's a great question.

Certainly many people despaired,

but there are others who said, look, this is not our first rodeo.

The first temple was destroyed.

The biblical promise would be that it would be restored within 70 years, and it was.

And so they believed that the second temple

had been destroyed and would also be repaired within 70 years.

We have some apocalyptic writings from this era that

talk about the hope that the temple will be destroyed, the people of Israel will be redeemed, and Rome will be swept away.

Of course, another group of Jews had a different reaction.

These were the followers of Jesus, and

they felt that the destruction of the temple

showed that their way was the right way.

And they still considered themselves to be Jews, but they thought that Jesus' message, which was in some ways a message that you don't need the temple, that there are other ways to have redemption, they thought the destruction of the temple showed the time was ripe for this message.

So it was an important step in what scholars call the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity.

And there was never

any likelihood that the Romans would ever allow it, you think?

Well, you know,

probably not, because the Romans understood that the temple really was the heart of the rebellion, the heart and soul of the rebellion.

And so I don't think they were likely to

let it survive.

I think they underestimated the resilience and the tenacity of Judaism, however, and they underestimated the importance of the Torah alongside the temple.

And they thought, once we got rid of the temple, we don't have to worry about that.

Actually, I take that back a little bit.

They were worried.

And one sign of it is that they impose the notorious Jewish tax on Jews, not just in Judea and not just on rebels, but on every Jew around the Roman Empire.

Now had to pay a tax to the chief god of Rome, to Jupiter of the Capitoline Hill.

It was humiliating, but also a way to keep the rebels in line,

prevent future rebellions from starting, or so they thought.

So they thought.

What was it about the Jews in the sense that the Iberians, the Spanish, the Gauls, the Carthaginians, all of these peoples that were incorporated into the Roman Empire, once they I mean, there were periodic outbreaks, especially

in

Scotland, along Hadrian's Wall, et cetera, and along the Danube and the Rhine.

But what was it what was unique about the Jews that made them because they weren't the most numerous of peoples, and they didn't have the greatest assets, but why were they the most reluctant to bend the need of Rome in a way that other peoples who had more resources and manpower felt that it would be futile?

What was it about this, was it a messianic idea that they were God's chosen people?

Partly an apocalyptic messianic idea, and lots of groups of people.

among the Jews who propagated this idea.

Not just the Christians, the early Christians in their own way, but also the Essenes,

people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran.

And you have the Torah, and you have a group of leaders, religious leaders, the people who become the rabbis, who create new ways for Judaism to survive.

The service of the temple is replicated in a series of daily prayers, which exist to this day.

So there is that.

But on a practical matter, the other thing that's really important to remember is there's a huge Jewish diaspora outside of Judea, both within the Roman Empire, and even more important, outside of the Roman Empire and the Parthian Empire.

Those Jews are out of Rome's grasp, out of Rome's reach, and they can help their brethren in Judea to recover and to continue, think about future revolts.

The other factor we have to point out is the Romans really mishandled the situation.

First of all, this humiliating tax.

Second, the refusal to allow the Jews to rebuild the temple.

And third, they mishandle their relationship with Parthia.

Trajan invades the Parthian Empire.

And this is the signal for Jews, mostly outside of ancient Israel, mostly in Egypt, Libya, Cyprus, and also in Mesopotamia, Iraq.

They rebel.

at this very time, causing big, big problems for the Romans.

And the Romans' response to that is to say, after they give up on their invasion of Iran, of Parthia is a failure.

They have to withdraw from Mesopotamia.

The ruler, Trajan, dies, and a new ruler comes in, Hadrian.

And Hadrian's response is to say,

we haven't forgotten what the Jews did, and we're going to show them we are going to rebuild Jerusalem, but not as a Jewish city.

We're going to rebuild it as a pagan city with pagan temples

to stand in replacing the Jewish temple.

That is not a signal of reconciliation.

It's just the opposite.

And it spurs the Bar Kokhba revolt.

What did the...

You touch on it in the book.

What did the ascendants of Christianity in Judea

have in the first second and third century on these revolts?

There were not Christian Jews that actively participated or were there?

There may have been.

I mean, you know, we depend on the church fathers and Christian sources to talk about this.

And the picture they give is that the followers of Christ did not participate in the revolt.

Perhaps that's true.

Certainly the followers of Jesus believed that he was the Messiah, and so they weren't going to follow messianic figures.

And we know that there were messianic figures in these revolts.

So by and large, they wouldn't.

There might have been some Christians who joined in the revolt, but the church fathers are not going to want to emphasize that.

They want to show that the Christians are loyal Romans.

We're talking with Barry Strauss.

He's the author of the forthcoming The Jews versus Rome.

It comes out from Simon Schuster.

It'll be, it's available now on Amazon.

Subtitle is Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World's Mightiest Empire.

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And we're back with Barry Strauss and we're discussing the Jews versus Rome.

At this time in the empire,

was there a sizable Jewish

Christian presence in the Holy Land that rivaled traditional Judaism, or was it more a diaspora already of Christianity into North Africa and Italy, etc.?

Aaron Powell, it's certainly a diaspora phenomenon, and it also extends into the Parthian Empire, by the way.

There don't seem to be many Jewish Christians

in Judea

after these revolts.

At least, but there were Christians.

Whether they consider themselves Jews, that's another question.

Certainly among the Greek speakers, there were Christians in this period.

There probably were some Jewish Christians who survived the Bar Kokhba revolt as well.

You're one of the chief sources

for at least two of these revolts, and maybe it was Josephus.

What was unique about him?

I know that he almost died in a shipwreck and that he was considered an apostate, but

he was from a very wealthy family.

He was very well connected, and he had these contacts with Rome.

He was kind of a Polybius character that...

He was like a Polybius character.

Yeah.

Except that even more than Polybius, he actively fought against Rome.

So he's an important general in the Great Revolt, and he personally leads the defense of a small city, the city of Yotapata

in northern Israel, in the Galilee.

And they hold out for, he says, 47 days against the Romans.

And he gives a long story about the...

defense of the city, of course making himself look heroic.

But the city was excavated in the 1990s.

Terrific archaeological story, which confirms a lot of the details in Josephus.

So here he plays this big role leading this defense of the city heroically against the Romans.

And then there's this very infamous experience, event in which the survivors decide to commit suicide, killing each other.

There's a lottery.

And by hook or by crook, Josephus is one of the last two guys standing.

And he says to his fellow, on second thought, let's survive and go over to the Romans.

So they do.

And Josephus then changes his tune.

He says he's had a dream, a vision from above that Rome is fated to win.

And to survive, the Jews should go over to the Romans, which he does,

and eventually ends up in Rome as a client of the imperial family of Vespasian and Titus.

And there he devotes the rest of his life to writing books about Jewish history.

They're partly a defense of himself.

They're partly a defense of the Jewish people.

And they're partly a warning to Jews, don't do it again.

Masada, when you go to Masada, and there's this ritual that I guess is famous of IDF people who take an oath.

Right.

And what is it about Masada?

Is it the last stand or the collective suicide that makes it such an iconic moment, not just in Israel's history, but

in Jewish history?

Yeah.

Josephus, we owe this to Josephus.

You know, as I said,

even though his own career career was kind of suspect, he still is patriotic and loyal to, as he sees it, to the Jews.

And so he takes this incident at Masada, which frankly was a relatively small incident in Roman military history, and he glorifies it.

He heroizes it.

And

he puts speeches in the mouth of the Jewish leader there, the leader of the rebels.

These speeches are some of the greatest defenses of freedom that survive from the ancient world.

And Josephus wrote in Greek.

So I'd say there's one of the greatest defenses of freedom that survive in the Greek tradition.

And

it's an eerie thing in his book.

And then to go to Masada, as you know, it's an extremely dramatic site, hardly a more dramatic one from the ancient world.

And so much of it has survived.

It was excavated by the Israelis.

They see it as a symbol.

There was a famous poem written in the 1920s by an early Zionist that says, has the line in it, Masada will not fall again.

And so Masada is seen as a rallying cry of Jewish resistance, a rallying cry of Zionism, and a symbol of what's at stake if the Jews do not take up arms and defend themselves.

One of the

messages or maybe

unintentional effects of reading the book, and I think our viewers,

when they read it, will have the same effect, is that the narrative of anti-Israelis that Israel was a settler or colonial power or it came in through Zionism,

I mean, when you look at what you're writing about, not just in the first or second millennium, but I mean, we're talking about the first, second, third AD.

This was an entirely Jewish country.

I mean,

there was no Arab migration in there until the 7th or 8th century.

And

it just resonates Jewishness, the names, the places, the people.

And it really reminds everybody that it was for thousands of years the historic homeland of the Jews.

Absolutely.

Yeah, and you don't get that in modern journalism to the same effect.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: No, I think people are either ignorant or ill-disposed towards Israel and towards the Jewish people.

But the reality is

it is the historic Jewish homeland.

Yeah, it it really is, and the artifacts see it.

When you

I know you've been to Israel, but when you were researching it and you were in Israel, what was the reaction when you met Israeli historians or government people to see these sites in connection with your research?

Well,

Israeli historians were very open and they were extremely helpful.

As I said,

this archaeologist who had excavated the place where Josephus fought, Jotapata, Jotapata, he gave me a personal tour of the site.

Another one of my colleagues led me to Masada.

I'd been there before, but it was great to have his take on it.

And we also went to Qumran, where the Essenes were.

And

many other Israeli guides who I worked with,

they were very happy to show me around.

I think a lot of Israelis feel that the revolts were a mistake,

that they were tragic, they were quixotic, and that if the Jews had simply gotten along with the Romans, swallowed their pride, gotten along with the Romans, that they never would have been exiled from their homeland.

And I guess my response is to say, who can know?

Who can really know if that's true?

Look at the Carthaginians.

Yeah, look at the Carthaginians.

They did everything.

They dismantled their army.

They told

Scipio Aemilianus, they said everything.

They met every condition, and then they wanted to destroy the city and move it 10 miles inland, and they couldn't finally do that.

That's right.

How about the Bark?

Tell us a little bit about Barkova,

one of the most dramatic of the revolts.

Yeah, Barkokpa.

So

that was his Nome de Guerre.

His real name was Barkoseva, and Barkokva means son of the star.

And that's one of the symbols of the Messiah.

So clearly, they're a messianic, if he didn't call himself the Messiah, some of his followers did, they're messianic aspects of the revolt.

Very smart guy.

What he does is totally different than the first revolt.

He builds underground shelters, tunnels, caves,

uses pre-existing fortresses, and springs the revolt on the Romans, completely shocks them.

They're unprepared.

And the blow is devastating.

In order to suppress the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Romans have to send armies from other provinces.

And their best general is the governor of Britain.

So they have to take this guy from Britain and send him to Judea.

And it takes them

years to put down the revolt.

Yeah.

And

when do you think

we have all these diasporas, but when, at what moment was Judea considered

too hostile or inhospitable to Jews?

And we started to see the great diasporas that went into the northern part of the empire that later became

centers of Jewish culture learning in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Western Europe.

At what point did that fragmentation happen at the end in the empire?

You know, it's already starting in this period, but it's important to point out that for a number of centuries after the Bar Kokhba revolt, there is a large Jewish community in northern Israel in particular, in Galilee and Golan.

And

while the Talmud, the most famous Talmud is the Babylonian Talmud, comes from the area that's now southern Iraq, there's also a Jerusalem Talmud, which is written by these scholars and rabbis and sages in northern Israel,

mostly in Tiberias, so in the Galilee.

It's a number of centuries

until after the Arab conquest before the Jewish population

in Israel becomes very, very small.

It never peters out entirely, but it comes quite small.

So by the high Middle Ages,

the

center of action has moved, as you say, to Western Europe and to Mesopotamia.

We're talking with Barry Strauss.

He's the author of the forthcoming The Jews versus Rome.

It comes out from Simon Schuster.

It's available now on Amazon.

Subtitle is Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World's Mightiest Empire.

And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

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And we're back with Barry Strauss and we're discussing the Jews versus Rome.

Barry, this is really the first book I know you've written on all periods of Roman history, but this is the first that you've dedicated to the Jewish experience, isn't it?

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

And

did you, when you were writing about Actium and Cleopatra and Roman leadership,

All of that seems to have been incorporated in this book.

It gave you a lot of insights, I found, from from your earlier work, and you've written

16 or 17 books on antiquity.

Are you thinking of going back to Greece again?

I know you've written about the Trojan War.

You've written about the Battle of Salamis

again.

Yes, I remember you're primary, like me, a Hellenist.

Yep, I started out as a Hellenist, but I always had a fondness for Italy and for Rome.

I think it's because my father was a combat soldier in the U.S.

Army in Italy in World War II, and he marched into Rome on the day that Rome was liberated in June of 1944.

He had a book on his bookshelf called The Road to Rome.

I think that had a big impact on me.

One of the advantages when you read these books,

Barry is known among classicists as having a wide variety of language facilities.

And you read or speak French,

German, Turkish even, don't you?

Just a little Turkish.

Modern Greek.

Your modern Greek is always better than mine.

Oh, I don't know, know, Victor, but thank you.

Italian also.

Italian.

And I can certainly read Spanish and Hebrew, so-so.

Some Hebrews.

And when we were young,

some 50 years ago,

to conduct classical scholarship, you really needed to know German and French.

And I guess now that's less true that there's automatic translations online and things.

Oh, great.

I don't see people using these European languages to the same degree that we had to.

Well, they don't, but they should.

I mean, there's a lot of stuff that isn't translated.

It depends what you're going to do.

For instance, if you want to write about Caesar in Gaul, there's no way you can do that without knowing French.

Forget it.

You really have to do that.

And likewise, with other local things.

If you want to do the Romans in Italy, you really have to know Italian.

Yeah, and I don't think classical great histories of, I mean, George George Grote is a great history, but Balak and Usol are not translated.

And they're not translated.

They're great histories of Greece.

Yeah.

And we all had to read them.

Tell us what your next,

what's your next book?

I know we're getting into our septogenarians now, but

what are you going to do?

You know, I'm going to keep writing as long as I can hold a pen.

That's good.

That's good.

My next book is going to be on classical leadership and

the lessons, to use,

if I may, from the leaders in the ancient world.

It strikes me that classical leaders are, the two things about them, they tend to be transformational leaders.

They have a vision.

And they tend to be great orators and great communicators.

And I think that they're really terrific models.

Which ones are you looking at, if you know yet?

Peregrine?

Well, obviously.

I don't know entirely, but I, you know, two clusters have occurred to to me.

From the Greeks, I like the leaders around the Persian War.

So

Leonidas, Themistocles, then compare that to Xerxes.

And I also can bring in Queen Esther, who there is real reason to think that

she existed and was Xerxes' queen.

And for the Roman period,

for the Greeks, I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do about Pericles and Demosthenes, who I'd also really like to bring into the story.

So that doesn't chronologically work so well, but I think they're just too important to leave out.

The Romans, chronologically, it works really nicely because if you're looking at the generation of Caesar and Augustus, you have Caesar, you have Augustus, you have Cicero,

you have Agrippa, and you have Herod.

I mean, that's quite a cast.

And Cleopatra, how could I leave her out?

So it's quite a cast of characters that you can do.

That's good.

I hope if I can,

I have this book on Trump and then an ag book, but I want to write, if it's possible, a history of a Paminondas, who I think was, you know, Cicero said that he was Princeps Greci, the first man of Greece.

Yes.

But I think a lot of the damage was done to his name when Xenophon didn't mention him by name and hated him.

And then Plutarch's life of a Paminondas, which apparently is one of the most popular in the Middle Ages, is lost.

I know.

And so he didn't get a good deal.

I wrote a novel once about him, but I'd like to write a history about him.

There's no main history that I know of.

That would be great.

English, there are some in Italian.

He's a fascinating character.

He is.

He really is.

So he would be somebody that I think was a great leader.

And

so a couple of other things, just to wrap up.

So you're now at the Hoover Institution,

and you're designated as a senior fellow, military history, history in general, contemporary culture.

You're a member of the military history working group.

And you often write

for Strategica about contemporary wars and tactics and strategy.

To what degree do you incorporate all of this knowledge about ancient warfare into contemporary

exegesis about these ongoing wars in Ukraine or the Middle East?

It seems like you've done that pretty well.

Well, thanks.

I mean, I think it's crucial.

I don't really think you can understand war unless you've read the classics, Thucydides from our period, Clausevitz.

There's a lot in Sunza.

So I always try to incorporate those ideas in what I'm writing.

And I think hardly anything that I write is not marked by the lessons that they have to teach us.

Well, thank you.

Barry,

we're going to take a final break, and we'll be back with Barry Strauss, Hoover Fellow, author of The Jews in Rome, that appears on August 19th.

It's available at Amazon.

We'll be right back.

And

we're right back here.

Barry, where is the best place, Amazon, to buy the book or just books?

Amazon, Barnes ⁇ Nobles, there's something called IndieBound.

You can buy the book in any of those places.

And you're headed, aren't you, pretty soon in the near future to Israel?

Yeah, I'm going to Israel

at the end of the month.

I'm going to be teaching a two-week course there, a mini-course on the Roman way of war in Jerusalem.

Oh, good.

And are you going to be talking about the

Jews versus Rome, obviously?

Yes, I am.

And

I'll be speaking in public about the book there as well.

Oh, good.

Yeah.

Good.

And I hope there's a Hebrew translation coming out very soon.

I hope so.

Ten Caesars was translated into Hebrew, which really tickled me pink.

Well, that's great.

Well, everybody, we've been talking to Barry Strauss and I'll urge you to buy the Jews versus Rome.

It's got fascinating first-hand descriptions about the destruction of the second temple, about a cast of Roman characters, Hadrian, Titus, Domitian, Silva,

Masada, everything is in there and it's very relevant to contemporary and often divisive arguments, controversies about what's going on now with Israel and its various enemies.

And if there's one thing I took away from this book, Barry, it is if I were the Iranians or the Hezbollah or the Hamas people or the Houthis,

I would be very careful about attacking Israel because they have a long history of defiance.

I know they can be squabbling in antiquity, but if they are united, they're almost indomitable.

Thank you, Victor.

Thank you, everybody, for listening.

This is Victor Davis-Hansen for the Victor Davis-Hansen podcast, and we've been interviewing Barry Strauss.