Next day, mourners poured into the Upper Market, bewailing the dead and cursing the procurator. Knowing Florus’s insane temper, the more important citizens and high priests implored the crowd of mourners not to provoke any further bloodshed, as they wept, tore their clothes, and heaped dust on their heads. The crowd dispersed, realizing the wisdom of this appeal and that they were in serious danger with such a madman in charge.
The last thing Florus wanted was for the demonstrations to die down. Sending for the high priests and the city’s other leaders, he told them that the only way the people of Jerusalem could prove they were not going to revolt again was to go into the countryside and welcome two cohorts of soldiers marching up from Caesarea. At the same time he sent orders to his officers to cut down anyone who uttered a word against him. After much persuasion by the priests, a crowd marched out to meet them quietly enough, but when the troops ignored their greetings they shouted abuse at the procurator. Immediately one of the cohorts charged, chasing the panic-stricken mob back to Jerusalem, many of them being trampled to death while trying to get through the gates.
The soldiers burst into the city with them but were suddenly checked by the Jews, who seized whatever weapons they could find, hurling spears and tiles down from the rooftops. They also demolished the porticos between the Temple and the Antonia, making it impossible for Florus to launch a further raid on the treasury. Baffled, he withdrew the cohort that had been engaged, leaving the other, as requested by the city authorities, who promised to keep order. He then sent a report to Cestius at Antioch, claiming that the Jews had begun the fighting and started a revolt.
However, the Jews’ leaders wrote to Cestius to explain what had really happened, as did Berenice. After consulting his officers, a very worried Cestius sent a tribune named Neopolitanus to investigate. He arrived at Jerusalem at the same time as Agrippa, a mob going out for miles to greet them, led by the dead men’s wailing widows. Complaining to both men about Florus’s atrocities, the citizens showed them the blood-stained Upper Market where the massacre had taken place, together with the looted houses. They also persuaded Neopolitanus to walk round the city with a single servant, so he would realize there was no hostility against Romans apart from Florus and his thugs. The tribune was convinced that no one in Jerusalem wanted a revolt, and before leaving he even prayed in his pagan way at the Temple, in the Court of the Gentiles. Apparently, he took back a reassuring report to Cestius at Antioch: If there were troublemakers in the city, most citizens wanted peace and the continuation of Roman government.7
Meanwhile the Jews begged Agrippa and the high priests to send an embassy to Nero to denounce Florus, arguing that if they did not, the fighting would be taken as evidence of their guilt. Agrippa disagreed; perhaps he feared Nero might make matters worse. Despite the good impression received by Neopolitanus, Agrippa realized there was every likelihood of a full-scale rebellion. Deciding to make a speech, he asked his sister, Berenice, to support him by sitting in a window of the Hasmonean palace so that the crowd could see her watching while he delivered it. These two last Herodians hoped to appeal to any lingering loyalty to their dynasty.
Standing outside the Temple, he delivered a long, impassioned harangue. Josephus was not there to hear it, but almost certainly Agrippa gave him a copy of it years later, and although he polished the speech to look like something from the Greek classics, his version carries conviction. It also conveys Josephus’s own considered view of the situation, which was probably that of most of the Jewish ruling class. What follows is the gist of Agrippa’s speech.
“If I thought you all wanted to fight the Romans and that the honest and good hearted among you were tired of living in peace, then I should not bother to make a speech like this,” said Agrippa. “But I realize that a lot of you are young men who have not known the horror of war, that others are over optimistic about gaining independence, and that selfish people hope to profit from it.” He was well aware of how much they had suffered, how pleasant freedom from foreign rule must seem. Even so, they should submit. “I can see that the procurator ill-treats you.” This did not mean that all Romans were ill-treating them, let alone Caesar; no one in Rome knew what was going on. Why make war because of one man when their much better armed ancestors had been conquered by Pompey with a small detachment of legionaries. Yet now they were proposing to challenge the full might of the entire Roman Empire.
“Just what sort of an army have you got, and what sort of weapons?” asked Agrippa. “Do you have a fleet to take control of the seas from the Romans, do you have the money to pay for the campaigns?” Then he listed in detail all the nations that had been conquered by Rome and how. “Despite the Britons living on an island as big as this entire continent, protected by an ocean, the Romans crossed the sea and crushed them—today, a mere four legions are enough to run the place.” If the Jews went to war, the Romans would certainly burn down Jerusalem and exterminate the entire nation. “If you won’t have pity on your wives and children, at least have pity on your capital and its holy walls, have pity on the Temple and the Sanctuary.”8
At the end of his speech Agrippa and his sister burst into tears. Deeply moved, the people of Jerusalem shouted they had never had any intention of fighting Rome, but only wanted to fight Florus because of what he had done to them. Agrippa replied that they had already been fighting Rome, by not paying the tribute due to Caesar and by pulling down the porticos between the Temple and the Antonia Fortress. However, if they paid the tribute and rebuilt the colonnades, then that would be an end to it, since the Antonia was not Florus’s business nor was he going to be paid the tribute.
The Temple porticos were repaired and the arrears of tribute owing to Caesar began to be collected from the villages. It looked as if Agrippa had managed to avert the war.
Then he overplayed his hand, by announcing that the Jews must continue to obey Florus until Rome appointed a successor. Terrified by the prospect of what Florus might do to them, a mob gathered in front of the king’s palace, yelling abuse and throwing stones. In despair, Agrippa left Jerusalem for the safety of his border kingdom. Yet he was still hoping to defuse the situation by sending an embassy of rich—and no doubt very apprehensive—citizens to Florus at Caesarea with a message that advised the procurator to employ them if he wanted to collect the remainder of Caesar’s tribute.9
It was plain that the peace party could expect nothing more from the king; he was obviously too committed to Rome.
5
War
“And the Lord discomfited them before Israel, and slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, and chased them along the way that goeth up to Beth-horon.”
JOSHUA, X, 10
IN JULY 66 CE the disturbances at Jerusalem turned into a revolt that became a full-scale war of independence. The first, unmistakable sign was when Eleazar, captain of the Temple and son of Ananias ben Nedebaeus, the high priest—and the person once kidnapped by the sicarii—persuaded the priests who were in charge of the sacrifices not to accept further gifts from gentiles or to make any more offerings on their behalf. Obviously, Josephus knew Eleazar, whom he describes with a distinct lack of enthusiasm as “a very confident young man.”1 He may have learned his extremist views from the knifemen while he was being held as a hostage by them. Although Eleazar was the son of a high priest, many of his followers came from the poverty-stricken lower clergy, who bitterly resented the high priests and the upper class.
Josephus describes the critical turning point in the crisis: “The moment when our war with the Romans really began was when the [priests] refused to go on sacrificing on behalf of Caesar. Although many of the high priests and notables implored them not to stop the usual offerings for the [Roman] government, they remained obdurate. Why they were so sure of themselves was because there were such a lot of them, while they looked for leadership to Eleazar, the Temple captain.”2 What was particularly alarming was that Eleazar was a patrician, a member of the class on whose cooperation t
he Roman regime depended. He may well have been one of the young hotheads to whom Agrippa had alluded in his speech a few days before.
In the meantime, a band of Zealot sicarii, who wanted war and freedom at any cost, seized the great Herodian stronghold of Masada on the Dead Sea. They took it by treachery, slaughtering every Roman inside, and installed a garrison of their own, which would hold the fortress for the next seven years. This was a deliberate act of rebellion, even more unmistakable than the insult made to Caesar at the Temple.
At Jerusalem, realizing that a crisis had been reached, the high priests and notables called a public meeting at the “bronze gate” (the gate into the inner Temple or Court of the Priests). Led by Ananias, they pleaded frantically that the sacrifices in honor of Caesar be resumed. However, they were shouted down by the extremists, who included the Temple officials and lower clergy. Fearful that Rome was going to blame them, they sent delegations to Florus and Agrippa, insisting that they were guiltless of disloyalty to the emperor.
Many of the poor joined the rebellion, which took place at a time when fresh hardships were afflicting a country already made restive by savage taxation. It seems that Judea had suffered from a series of bad harvests and that more farmers than ever were losing their holdings. Many went to beg in Jerusalem where, despite the alms of the devout, people were already starving. Josephus tells us that 18,000 workmen had been laid off when the Temple was completed in 64 CE, though some found employment in paving the capital’s streets with white marble. The Jews had become “two nations,” the have-nots identifying Roman government with the rich. Significantly, the rebels burned down not only the palaces of Agrippa and Berenice and the house of the high priest Ananias but also the archives containing debtors’ records. Josephus says they did so with the express purpose of winning over poor men to their cause.3
Weapons were available, if scarcely those of soldiers. Because of the threat from brigands and thieves, a fair number of Jews owned spears or swords. Apparently, the spears were of a type that if necessary could be thrown like javelins, while the swords were not much bigger than long knives and resembled the daggers used by sicarii. In addition, many must have possessed hunting bows and also slings for shooting birds. Later, these haphazard arms would be supplemented with weapons from the arsenals in the Herodian royal palaces as well as captured Roman equipment.
Florus did not even bother to answer the high priests’ envoys, “as he had always meant to start a war.”4 Agrippa was horrified and immediately dispatched 3,000 cavalry to Jerusalem. When they arrived, the peace party joined them in the Upper City, while the rebels under Eleazar occupied the Lower City and the Temple. Seven days of slaughter followed, each side trying to drive the other from their strongholds with an exchange of spears, slingshots, and stones. The loyalists and Agrippa’s men were outnumbered, and eventually Eleazar’s men, aided by sicarii, drove them from the Upper City. Some of the high priests and notables hid in the sewers while others, including Ananias—father of the rebel leader—shut themselves inside the Upper Palace. Two days later, on 17 August, the rebels stormed the Antonia, massacring the defenders. For the moment, the loyalists held out in the Upper Palace.
A new leader now emerged: Menahem, a son of the Zealot Judas the Galilean and the sicarii ’s current chief, seems to have seen himself as another Judas Maccabaeus. Accompanied by like-minded extremists and joined by a large number of bandits en route, he went to Masada, where he broke into the arsenal, taking any weapons needed to turn his followers into a formidable bodyguard. He then returned to Jerusalem, robed like a king, to assume command of the rebellion and organize the siege of the Upper Palace. Since his men lacked siege engines, they undermined a bastion, which they brought crashing down on 6 September. Those of its defenders who were Jews were allowed to withdraw unharmed, as were Agrippa’s men. Most of the Roman troops managed to escape to the three great towers of King Herod’s palace, but the rest were killed as they tried to reach safety. Next day, the high priest Ananias and his brother Hezekiah—two men who epitomized the old regime—had their throats cut by Menahem’s men after they were caught hiding in an aqueduct.5
Drunk with success, especially at having killed Ananias, Menahem became impossibly arrogant, torturing and murdering opponents. People began to grumble that there did not seem to be much point in exchanging a Roman tyrant for a Jewish one, particularly for a man of such obscure background. One day, when he appeared in the Temple in royal robes, he was suddenly attacked by Ananias’s son Eleazar and the Temple guard, the spectators joining in with stones until he and his bodyguard fled. Captured at Ophales, Menahem was tortured to death, along with his leading henchmen. A few escaped to Masada, among them someone of whom more will be heard—his kinsman, Eleazar ben Yair.
Menahem’s royal pretensions are not without significance, however. Less than two hundred and fifty years earlier, Judas Maccabaeus had defeated a far more numerous enemy army of experienced soldiers with a makeshift guerrilla force. Why should God not intervene and save his chosen people once again? Clearly, Menahem had hoped to reincarnate the Maccabee monarchy. No doubt, he was unbalanced and had failed, but it is obvious that the memory of the first Maccabees remained very much alive and was still an inspiration to the Jewish nation.
What was left of the Roman garrison held out in the more or less impregnable towers of Hippicus, Phasael, and Mariamne. Losing his nerve, the commander, Metilius, asked for terms. It was agreed on oath that the troops’ lives would be spared if they surrendered their weapons, but when they marched out and laid down their swords and shields, they were butchered on the spot. Only Metilius (probably one of the few genuine Romans among them) was spared, after begging to become a Jew and be circumcised in return for his life. Everyone knew that there was no turning back after a massacre on this scale. “The city was full of sadness, moderate men being appalled at the thought of having to pay for the rebels’ crime,” comments Josephus, adding, “These murders were committed on the Sabbath, the day on which Jews refrain from labor for reasons of religion.”6
On the same day that the garrison in Jerusalem was cut down (17 September), the Greeks in Caesarea took the opportunity to slaughter their city’s Jewish community, presumably with Florus’s encouragement. On the Sabbath, when they were all in their homes or at the synagogues, 20,000 men, women, and children were killed within an hour. Florus caught the few who escaped and sent them to the galleys. The bloodshed spread, as Greeks massacred Jews throughout Judea and Syria. The victims included not just Hebrews but converts to the Jewish faith as well. At Ashkelon, 2,500 were killed, and almost as many perished at Ptolemais (Akka), while thousands more were murdered at Tyre, Hippos, Gadara, and other cities and in the surrounding villages. Yet nowhere had the Jews given their neighbors any possible grounds for suspicion.
This thirst for Hebrew blood also affected Egypt. After some vicious provocation by the local Greeks, the vast Jewish colony at Alexandria rioted so menacingly that the panic-stricken Roman governor sent his legionaries into the Jewish quarter of Alexandria known as the Delta, with specific orders to kill, loot, and burn the houses. The Jews put up a gallant resistance with what weapons they could lay hands on, but they were overwhelmed. The legionaries then proceeded to slaughter people of all ages “till the place overflowed with blood and 50,000 lay dead in heaps.” Even the governor was shaken, calling off his men, but he could not stop the Alexandrians from savaging the bodies.7
These pogroms were partly due to a violent Jewish reaction to the news from Judea. Florus’s calculated refusal to restrain the Caesarean Greeks from launching a pogrom had triggered a bloodbath, as the Jews attacked Greek towns and villages in revenge, killing large numbers of their inhabitants. Every city in Syria and non-Jewish Judea was split into two murderous armed camps, “the daytime spent in shedding blood, the night-time in fear, the latter being the more terrible.” Besides revenge, loot was a strong motive on both sides. “It was quite usual to see cities full of unburied b
odies, with those of old men and babies strewn all over the place, the women’s corpses lying naked.”8
In the midst of this mayhem, the Jews showed sound strategic sense. They captured the fortress of Cypros, which commanded Jericho, cutting the Roman defenders’ throats and demolishing its fortifications. They also talked the enemy garrison at Machaerus into surrender, installing a garrison of their own at this reputedly impregnable fortress on the cliffs east of the Dead Sea.
It seems clear that Josephus returned from Rome at about this time, during September 66 CE but before the pogrom at Caesarea, since otherwise he would have been murdered as soon as he stepped off the boat. He must have been horrified by the situation in Jerusalem.
I found a lot happening that was completely new, with all too many people wildly enthusiastic at the prospect of a revolt against Rome. So I did my best to dissuade the men who were attempting to make us revolt. I tried as hard as I could to make them see reason. I told them to think about what sort of a nation it was they were going to fight, to remember that they did not have Romans’ military training or the same unfailing good luck in war. I warned them not to be so reckless, not so crazy as to expose their land and families and themselves to the most dreadful danger. Using arguments like these, fully aware that a war of this sort could only end in disaster for us, again and again I tried to stop them. But it was no good. I lacked the powers of persuasion that might just possibly have shaken them out of their imbecility.9
Jerusalem's Traitor: Josephus, Masada, and the Fall of Judea Page 7