Jerusalem's Traitor: Josephus, Masada, and the Fall of Judea

by Seward, Desmond

  As they were continuing their journey, along the coast of Greece, they heard of Galba’s assassination. Agrippa decided to go on to Rome, but Titus, “as if by divine inspiration,” sailed back to Syria and quickly rejoined his father at Caesarea Maritima.4 His decision to return to Judea, instead of going on to Rome and paying homage to Vitellius, indicates that he believed the time was right for his father to launch a fight for the supreme power. Never a gambler, Vespasian was reluctant. “It would be a very strange thing if, at the age of sixty and with two sons, I committed myself to a civil war,” he muttered.5 He seems to have thought that he was too humbly born, too obscure, and too old to succeed.

  Vespasian was finally persuaded to act, however, after he heard a speech that was delivered in the presence of his senior officers by the legate of Syria, Licinius Mucianus. Although the legate was a fine soldier, he and Vespasian did not have much else in common. Mucianus was a flamboyant homosexual who enjoyed dressing in women’s clothes and an intellectual who had written a book on the natural wonders of Syria, Mirabilia. It was probably Mucianus who inspired Vespasian’s quip remark, “I am content to be a man.” Moreover, it seems that they had had some irritating disputes over supplies and jurisdiction. Yet the legate was a shrewd politician, who discerned in Vespasian all the qualities that would make him an excellent emperor.

  “Whatever spirit and fire Vitellius’s soldiers may once have had for war is being drained away in taverns by drunken brawling and aping their leader’s vices,” Mucianus told him. “You, by contrast, have complete control of Syria, Judea and Egypt, you have nine good legions unweakened by fighting too many battles and made up of men who don’t quarrel among themselves, you have an army toughened by plenty of campaigning that defeats its country’s enemies again and again, you have a fine fleet, sound cavalry and auxiliaries, you have local kings who are devoted to you, and finally you have your own unrivalled military experience.”6

  After this peroration Vespasian’s officers begged him to save the Roman Empire, citing oracles that had predicted his inevitable success. On 1 July 69, in front of legionaries who roared their applause, he was proclaimed Caesar at Alexandria by the prefect of Egypt, Tiberius Alexander. The troops in Judea began addressing him as “Imperator,” while those in Syria showed no less enthusiasm. Local rulers offered to help finance his campaign, including Agrippa II and Berenice, and to lend him their own troops.

  A conference was held at Berytus (Beirut) by his supporters to work out how they should topple Vitellius. One of the first decisions was to call off all operations against Jerusalem, so that the legions involved could be transferred to the task force that was about to invade Europe. It was decided, however, that the garrisons in Judea must be kept up to strength and that as soon as Vespasian was on the throne Titus should resume the Judean campaign. A plan to invade Europe and then, in cooperation with forces from other parts of the empire, locate and destroy Vitellius’s armies was carefully laid out. They also agreed that Vespasian should stay in the East, coordinating the campaign from Egypt.

  It must be remembered that when Vespasian claimed the throne, his victory was by no means a foregone conclusion. Far from being defeated, Vitellius was still very much emperor—in fact, as well as name. No doubt, Vespasian was in every way superior, as a soldier and as a man, and he was supported by some of the best officers in the Roman army. Yet it was crucial not to underestimate Vitellius. Although he was incompetent and uninspiring where civilians were concerned, Vespasian’s flabby opponent knew how to make himself popular with soldiers, so that he could rely on many thousands of legionaries who would fight to the death for him—and not merely because they hoped to be rewarded with “donatives” (cash bonuses). Moreover, these legions from the Rhine were generally considered to be the finest troops in the entire Rome army. Furthermore, he, too, had some extremely capable commanders—notably Fabius Valens and Caecina Alienus. Above all, the Emperor Vitellius controlled Rome, whose very name was a talisman.

  Josephus tells us that from the beginning Vespasian’s first priority was to secure possession of Alexandria, since Egypt, with its vast supplies of grain, was the principal breadbasket of the empire. Once in control of what was the region’s only port for grain transports, he would be able to starve Italy and Vitellius into submission, if necessary. He also needed the two legions that were stationed in Egypt.

  Before leaving for Alexandria in October, he remembered how Josephus had hailed him as emperor even when Nero was alive. Summoning Mucianus and other senior officers, he spoke warmly of Josephus’s bravery at Jotapata, reminding them of his prediction, which had clearly been of divine origin. “‘It is shameful,’ said Vespasian ‘that the man who foresaw I would become Emperor and is a messenger from God should still be a captive and treated as a prisoner.’” He gave orders for Josephus to be brought into his presence and formally set at liberty.

  “‘It is only fair that any reproach of having been a prisoner should be removed with the fetters, and if we cut them off instead of merely unfastening them it will take away the stigma!’” suggested Titus. This was customary in the case of someone who had been unjustly imprisoned, so that he would not suffer from the despised status of “freedman”—former slave. Vespasian agreed, and he had the chains publicly hacked off with an axe. Josephus, who had long ceased to wear them, put them on again for the ceremony. “After he received his freedom as a reward for his prophecy, people believed what he had to say about the future,” is his complacent comment.7

  In Egypt, Vespasian installed himself and his staff at Alexandria, the capital. Founded by Alexander the Great, this was for all intents and purposes a Greek city, with very few native Egyptians among a population that numbered almost a million. The walls were fifteen miles in circumference, around a metropolis of straight, narrow streets laid out on a grid pattern, and the major thoroughfares were filled with mansions, public buildings, and temples. The biggest temple, the Serapeum, housed not only the cult of the god Serapis but a major part of the largest public library in the world. Because Alexandra lacked a natural harbor, a port had been created by constructing a long mole out to the island of Pharos—on which stood a light-house 400 feet tall that was one of the wonders of antiquity.

  Josephus went to Egypt with Vespasian. Although he would have made himself available whenever needed, this cannot have been very often, as there was little use for expert advice on Judea when the campaign was in abeyance. It is likely that he spent his time among the local Diaspora, which was the most flourishing Jewish community outside Jerusalem, and by now swollen with refugees from Judea. The majority seem to have been poor, although some of them were very rich indeed. A few had even acquired citizenship, including the brother of the philosopher Philo, Alexander the Alabarch (head of the customs service). There was a high degree of hellenization, which, along with the city’s superb libraries, offered enviable opportunities for anyone interested in Greek literature.

  Josephus chose a new wife from among the Diaspora, although the marriage turned out to be unhappy. (All he says about the wife that Vespasian had given him is that they had parted.) Presumably they began their life together in the Jewish quarter in the northeastern part of the city, on the seashore—“by universal consent its finest residential quarter,” he informs us nostalgically.8 There could have been no more delightful place to spend a winter. His wife would have three sons, one of whom, perhaps significantly, he named Hyrcanus, after a Maccabee ancestor. This was his hero, King John Hyrcanus, “who was unique in possessing three of the most desirable things in the world: the government of his nation, the high priesthood, and the gift of prophecy. The Deity talked to him, so that he knew about everything that happened afterwards.”9

  He tells us nothing about any other contact he may have had with the local Diaspora, although he gives a certain amount of information about anti-Semitism in Alexandria. Ironically, to some extent this was due to the Alexandrian Jews’ support for the Romans. He explains how th
ey were organized into what the Greeks called a politeuma, a corporation of aliens ruled by a council of seventy elders—a local Sanhedrin—whose head was an ethnarch. They had an assembly and their own law court and archives. The great problem of the Diaspora’s richer and more hellenized members was to acquire citizenship without abandoning their religion. If Josephus ever thought of settling here, a handicap of this sort would have driven the idea from his mind.

  He has more to say about Vitellius’s overthrow. Understandably, he took keen interest in a campaign that was going to decide his future, even if he does not reveal how worried he must have felt while it was taking place. It is likely that he remembered seeing the appalling figure of Vitellius at Nero’s court, a big man with a huge potbelly, a limp, and a face purple from hard drinking. “His parents had been aghast at the horoscope drawn up for him by the astrologers,” says Suetonius, who alleges that as a boy, Vitellius was one of Tiberius’s “wantons” on Capri and furthered his father’s career by serving as the emperor’s catamite—being branded with the obscene nickname of “Sphintria” for the rest of his life. Suetonius says that he became stained by every sort of baseness as he grew older, that his besetting sins were gluttony and cruelty; he enjoyed inflicting torture and death on anyone, even on friends.10

  He had no experience as a soldier, and everybody had been astounded when Galba put him in command of Lower Germany, but by tirelessly currying favor with the troops, granting any request they might make, remitting punishments regardless of discipline, he had become hugely popular. They liked his cheerful hail-fellow-well-met manner and were amused by his gargantuan drinking and feasting, which he regularly shared with them at mass, open-air banquets. It was these Rhineland legionaries who had acclaimed him as emperor, hoping for rich rewards.

  Meanwhile, besides those in Judea and Syria, other legions in Spain, Gaul, and Britain, in Illyria, Moesia, and Pannonia came out in support of Vespasian, as a general who knew how to win battles. His cause was helped by the circulation of a letter from the late Emperor Otho—possibly forged—that begged him to save Rome. In possession of the war chest for the Judean campaign, Vespasian had the funds to finance his bid for the throne. He could also rely on the loyalty of the former officers of that gifted general Domitius Corbulo, who for years had fought the Parthians so successfully, before Nero made him commit suicide. They included Mucianus. Vespasian sent him through the Balkans to Italy with a large army and orders to march on Rome. In the meantime, his allies from northern and western Europe invaded the peninsula across the Alps.

  By the time reports of the war in Europe reached Alexandria, they were already out of date, leaving Vespasian’s supporters in uneasy suspense. The news that came was of very big battles, with massive casualties. It was some time before a decisive confrontation took place, and no doubt Josephus trembled for the future. But over the next few months Vitellius’s position deteriorated and then began to collapse, partly because of his self-indulgence, which resulted in a faltering direction of military affairs apparent to everybody—in marked contrast to the leadership shown by Vespasian. Eventually, Vitellius’s armies lost two crucial battles in succession—at Cremona in Cisalpine Gaul in October, where he lost 30,000 men, and at Narnia in southern Italy (near modern Spoleto) early in December, when the bulk of his troops went over to the enemy, led by their commander. These defeats proved to be decisive. Vitellius’s best general, Fabius Valens, was captured in Gaul, on a desperate mission to raise reinforcements. He was sent back to Italy where he was beheaded. The emperor’s other outstanding commander, Caecina Alienus, had already gone over to Vespasian. Terrified, he offered to abdicate in return for a pension.

  There were dramatic scenes at Rome in mid-December when Vespasian’s supporters, including some senators, failed in a premature attempt to seize the city. Vitellius’s soldiers reacted by storming and burning the capitol, the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, where they had taken refuge, and Vespasian’s younger son, Domitian, escaped from the ensuing massacre on the Capitoline Hill only by dressing in the vestments of a priest of Isis. (Tacitus thought that the burning of the capitol was the most disgraceful event in the entire history of Rome.) For a week longer Vitellius clung to the throne.

  Vespasian’s army marched into Rome on 20 December 69 CE. “Drunk and gorged to excess with the luxuries of the table, as can happen with men when they are in desperate circumstances, Vitellius came out of the palace and, after being dragged through the crowd and treated with every possible sort of indignity, was put to death in the heart of Rome,” is how The Jewish War describes the former emperor’s fate, omitting the sickening details of his lynching that are recorded by Suetonius—how a dagger was held under his chin to make him hold his head up and how he was tortured with exquisite refinements. “He had ruled for eight months and five days and if his life had lasted longer, I personally am of the opinion that the resources of the entire Empire would not been enough to satisfy his vast appetite for self-indulgence.”11

  Even so, as Tacitus emphasizes, the death of Vitellius was the end of the war rather than the beginning of peace. Eventually, however, Mucianus took control of the capital in Vespasian’s name.

  Josephus comments, with obvious emotion, “The whole empire was safe once again, and beyond all expectation the Roman state survived.”12 Clearly, he had feared that it was going to disintegrate. This is quite understandable since the struggle for the throne had been a cataclysmic upheaval during which tens of thousands died in the fighting. His hero worship of Titus probably dates from this period, as Josephus had seen just how much his skillful organization behind the scenes had contributed to his father’s victory.

  Vespasian was still at Alexandria when he received the news that he had won, and he remained there for much of the following year. Embassies from all over the world flocked to congratulate him. So many people came that even though the Egyptian capital was nearly as big as Rome, it seemed too small to contain them all, says Josephus—a comment that contains a hint of relief at his patron’s triumph. The new emperor was not to enter Rome until September, or perhaps even October, 70. However, Josephus would not be among his entourage—he was needed elsewhere.

  Now that the civil war had at last been won, Vespasian “turned his thoughts to what was left of Judea,” which meant Jerusalem and the Zealots.13 Judging from what followed, he and his staff officers planned the campaign in meticulous detail. We can be sure that Josephus was involved in the planning, since he had access to news of what was happening in the enemy capital through letters that were reaching the Alexandrian Diaspora. Titus was sent with a picked force to besiege and capture Jerusalem, accompanied by the former Jewish general.

  The bloody upheaval of 69 CE shook Josephus badly, even if he watched it from the safety of Alexandria. He does not mention his personal reactions, as that would undermine his claims to be a prophet. Yet before the civil war broke out, he had already developed misgivings about the future of the Roman Empire and Roman civilization in general. As he wrote in the preface to The Jewish War, “The Jews expected that their kindred beyond the Euphrates would join their revolt while in any case the Romans were having trouble with their neighbors the Gauls and the Celts who were restless and on the move.”14 Nero’s death had turned an already dangerous situation into one of extreme peril.

  The empire’s collapse had been the Zealots’ greatest hope, but it did not happen. The crisis transformed Josephus. From now on, he would see himself as both Jewish and Roman, a dual identity that he reveals in his books. In addition, he had come to believe that in many important ways Jews and Romans shared the same ideals.15

  Above all, Josephus decided that he really was a prophet. If he had foretold Vespasian’s rise to the throne as a desperate ruse to save his life, the fact that it was borne out by events confirmed his belief that he could see into the future and predict the fate of the Jews. This explains much of his behavior during the fresh campaign in Judea.

  16


  Titus Takes Command

  “And I will take away from you the voice of mirth and the voice of joy and the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride; and all the land shall be without any footsteps of inhabitants.”

  PROPHECY OF BARUCH, II, 23

  “FROM ALEXANDRIA I WAS SENT with Titus to the siege of Jerusalem,” Josephus tells us in the Vita. He adds, “There my life was frequently in danger, from the Jews who were eager to get their hands on me so that they could wreak their revenge, and from the Romans who attributed every set-back they suffered to some sort of treachery on my part—they were always noisily demanding that the Emperor should punish me as the man who was secretly betraying them. However, Titus Caesar, well aware of just how much the fortunes of war swing backward and forward, silenced his soldiers’ grumbling by taking no notice.”1 As so often, Josephus had reason to be grateful to Titus.

  In view of his regard for Titus, the patron whom—judging from what he afterward wrote about him—he all but worshipped, it is worth examining the Roman in some detail. An enigma, he baffled contemporaries because of the pleasant face that he invariably showed to the world. Suetonius claims he was “the delight and darling of the human race, because he knew how to win everybody’s affection, by nature, cunning or sheer good fortune.” The same source also tells us that he was handsome and dignified, a fine soldier and an accomplished horseman. Well read, possessing an amazing memory, Titus wrote poetry in Latin and Greek, besides singing and playing the harp. “I have heard from many people that he was able to write shorthand very fast and liked to have competitions with his secretaries to see who was quickest,” says Suetonius. “He could imitate any writing shown to him and would joke that he ought to have been ‘the prince of forgers.’”2 Above all, he appeared to be a kind man, sensitive to people’s feelings.