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

by Seward, Desmond

  “In the leisure provided by Rome, with my sources at hand and the aid of assistants to help me with the Greek tongue, I settled down to writing my account of what had taken place,” Josephus tells us in Contra Apionem, another work written long after The Jewish War.14 This passage has convinced some scholars that he relied on secretaries to write his books for him, and some argue that it is obvious from the different prose styles he uses. However, the “assistant theory” has been demolished by Tessa Rajak, who points out that it was normal for an author to use different styles in a long book, in a period when authors often copied the prose of writers whom they admired.15

  Clearly, Josephus thoroughly enjoyed writing history, and he may have seen himself as following in the footsteps of giants such as Thucydides and Livy. (It is unlikely that he read Livy in the original since the interminable volumes of the great chronicler of Rome were in Latin, although he may have acquired a superficial, outline knowledge of them from some Greek epitome.) This perhaps explains his desire to be as comprehensive as possible and why The Jewish War’s first two books, a third of the entire work, have nothing to do with the war but tell the story of Judea from the Maccabees up to the last rulers of the House of Herod.

  His greatest problem, however, was to give an account of the recent conflict with Rome that would absolve the Jews of as much blame as possible. He does so by portraying the Zealot regime as a bloodthirsty jacquerie against the aristocracy, who were the only real Jews. If some of the magnates joined in the revolt, it was only because they were forced into it by Florus; they had always wanted peace. He conceals the fact that many of them had been only too willing to join the Zealots, whom he caricatures as brutish fanatics or godless criminals.

  And Josephus has a deeper message: God deserted his Chosen People and used the Romans to destroy the Temple, just as God had used the Babylonians to destroy the first sanctuary. This is why the Jews must never fight the Romans again; they are bound to lose.

  Loyal though Josephus may have been to Rome, he can never forget that he is writing about the ruin and humiliation of the country of his birth. Even if he hides it, he must have been deeply distressed at having to tell the story during the years that it took him to write The Jewish War. Then, while he was in the middle of his task, in 73 or 74, he heard reports of an incident that would provide an epilogue to restore Jewish pride. It was that of the Zealots’ magnificent last stand at Masada.

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  Masada and the Last Zealots

  “Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles of the heaven; they pursued us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us in the wilderness.”

  LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH, IV, 19

  FAR MORE PEOPLE HAVE heard of the siege of Masada than have ever heard of Josephus. It has inspired films, novels, and documentaries and attracted one of the most popular archaeological digs of the entire twentieth century. New books on Masada are published nearly every year. Yet we only know its story from The Jewish War. No monumental inscription mentions it, let alone any other contemporary historian, and archaeologists have failed to add substantially to our knowledge.

  Although Jerusalem had fallen to the Romans, plenty of mopping up remained to be done since there were still three Zealot strongholds: Herodium, Machaerus, and Masada. Their garrisons supported themselves through “banditry,” which probably meant rustling livestock and commandeering grain rather than highway robbery. Lucilius Bassus, once commander of the Roman fleet, took over as governor of Judea from Sextus Cerealis in 71 and made their destruction his immediate priority. Despite being heavily fortified and well supplied with water, the fortress of Herodium, which was seven miles south of Bethlehem in the hills facing Arabia, seems to have surrendered to Bassus’s troops fairly promptly, apparently in 71, but we have no details.1

  Lucilius Bassus then led his army, which included the Tenth Legion with its wild boar eagle, to Machaerus, probably in 72. East of the Dead Sea in Perea, this was regarded as the most formidable stronghold in the whole kingdom of Judea after Jerusalem. (It was where John the Baptist had been beheaded.) It had been in Zealot hands since the start of the war, and its legendary invulnerability made it a rallying point for anyone who had managed to escape from the capital. Built on a huge rock of a hill, it was surrounded by ravines. Stretching as far as the Dead Sea, the ravine on the west side was seven miles long. Although those on the north and south sides were smaller, they presented almost as much of an obstacle. The ravine on the east side was not quite so daunting, although it was at least 150 feet deep.

  Machaerus was one of King Herod’s favorite refuges, and he had strengthened it with walls and bastions that enclosed an entire town. From the town, a steep path climbed up to a citadel on the summit of the great hill whose ramparts were buttressed at the corners by towers ninety feet high. Inside was a palace “of surpassing beauty.” His builders had hacked large cisterns in the rock that stored an inexhaustible supply of rainwater, and Herod had stocked the arsenal with missiles and siege artillery that was still in working order seventy years after his death. But Herod never had to face Roman legionaries.

  After examining the fortress, Bassus decided that his best plan would be to fill the smallest ravine on the east side and build an assault ramp on top. Knowing how skillful the legionaries were at siege craft, the Zealot garrison withdrew to the citadel, leaving the town below—crammed with refugees from miles around—to fend off the first attacks. Should the Romans show signs of gaining the upper hand, they intended to use the citadel as a bargaining counter with which to buy their lives. Meanwhile they launched sorties to stop the ravine from being filled, killing large numbers of the enemy as they brought faggots and sacks of earth. Before it could be completed, an accident ended the siege.

  Among the bravest of the Zealots was a handsome and much-liked young man named Eleazar, who constantly distinguished himself by his daring during the sorties. He so often emerged unscathed that he grew careless. After one of these engagements he was standing outside the gates, chatting with friends on the ramparts, when a legionary named Rufus, an Egyptian, stole up behind him. Seizing Eleazar around the waist, despite his armor, Rufus succeeded in dragging him all the way back to the Roman lines. Bassus promptly had him stripped, tied to a stake in front of the walls, and scourged. Seeing the defenders’ horror, the general ordered a cross to be set up, as if intending to crucify him. Eleazar, who was not as tough as might have been expected, never stopped shrieking. His harrowing screams upset the garrison so much that they sent envoys to the Romans, offering to evacuate the fortress if they were allowed to leave in safety with him. Bassus accepted the conditions.

  When they heard of the surrender, the townsmen—guessing they had been left out of the bargain—made up their minds to escape during the night, but as soon as the gates were opened, the garrison told Bassus of the plan to avoid any suspicion of treachery. The general turned his troops loose on the unfortunate townsmen, and only the most determined managed to cut their way out; 1,700 were slaughtered, and the women and children were enslaved. Bassus nonetheless honored his agreement with the garrison, whom he allowed to depart with Eleazar.

  However, Bassus immediately followed the garrison at full speed to a wood known as the Forest of Jardes (whose site is unknown but which was somewhere in the Jordan Valley), where its members had taken refuge, joining some survivors from the capital. Together, the Zealots in the wood numbered about 3,000 men, their leader being Judas ben Ari, a former commander of a company of soldiers at Jerusalem during the siege and one of the very few who had succeeded in escaping through the underground passages. Bassus surrounded the forest with his cavalry to prevent anyone from escaping, while his legionaries began to methodically chop down the trees that provided their quarry with cover. When the Jews realized what was happening, they made a desperate effort to break out, but were all killed, including Judas, while Roman casualties amounted to only twelve dead with a few wounded.2

  Lucilius Bassus died, apparentl
y in the winter of 72 or early 73, so the Romans did not recommence their mopping-up operations until 74. When spring came that year and the campaigning season opened, Bassus’s newly appointed successor, Lucius Flavius Silva, assembled all units available in Judea, about 10,000 men, and marched to Masada in the extreme south of the province, west of the Dead Sea. A fortress thought to be no less “impregnable” than Machaerus had been—Josephus considered it even stronger—this was garrisoned by 600 Zealots, whom, as so often, The Jewish War pejoratively calls sicarii, knifemen. Unlike the fainthearted defenders of Machaerus, they possessed an unusually gallant and charismatic commander in Eleazar ben Yair, who was a descendant and possibly a grandson of Judas the Galilean, founder of the Zealots.

  Like Machaerus, Masada was another natural citadel that had been a favorite stronghold of the paranoiac King Herod. He had regarded it as the most secure of all his refuges, in case his subjects revolted or he should be attacked by Cleopatra, who coveted Judea and urged Mark Antony to destroy him. The king had lavished time and money on improving its fortifications, equipping it with an unusually large arsenal.

  Like Machaerus, too, its greatest strength lay in its natural defenses. It was built on top of a great honey-colored rock whose sides seemed almost vertical. “Surrounded by ravines so deep that the eye cannot see down to the bottom of them, so steep as to be unclimbable by any living creature, there are only two paths by which it can be reached and then only with difficulty,” says Josephus. “You have to go up to the fortress step by step, taking care where you put your feet. Death is always very near, since the chasms on each side are so vast that they terrify the toughest spirits. After climbing more than three miles, you finally reach the top and find not a summit but an open plain.”3 Herod had fortified the entire summit, which measured three-quarters of a mile in circumference, with a white limestone wall that was eighteen feet tall and twelve feet broad. This was buttressed by thirty-seven stone towers that were each seventy-five feet high. As at Machaerus, there were not only a beautiful palace and a synagogue inside the wall but fields where food could be grown and pasture for cattle and sheep.

  When Eleazar had seized the fortress, he had discovered that its cellars held huge quantities of grain, pulses, dried fruit, wine, and oil that were in good condition, despite having been stored for a century, and which provided enough food to feed his men for many years. Enormous cisterns cut into the rock supplied water. The arsenal was packed with weapons of every type, and they had remained free from rust and were still usable. (Josephus attributes the surprising preservation of the foodstuffs and weapons to the mountain air near the Dead Sea.)

  Arriving early in March 73, Silva ordered the legionaries to build his headquarters camp on the inhospitable rocks to the northwest that joined the hill on which Masada stood to the nearby mountains. There was no convenient spring in so bleak and stony a landscape, so he had water and food brought from miles away by teams of Jewish prisoners. His next step was to order the building of a wall around the hill so that none of the defenders could escape. Stretching for two miles, it was the usual circumvallatio , complete with towers. The main bastion was a large camp to the southeast, supported by six small camps. There were also four small forts that blocked a pass through mountains to the north. Then he quickly identified the single natural feature that provided a chance of getting at his enemy.

  The obvious approach was the only road up, the well-named “snake path” on the east side, a narrow track that, besides being alarmingly steep, twisted and turned every few yards. Not only was it guarded by a tower, but boulders had been heaped at each bend of the path to roll down onto enemies. Instead, Silva selected the “Leuce” or “White Cliff ” on the west side, a large flat rock or ledge that jutted straight out from the hillside to within 450 feet of the summit, and sent troops to seize it.

  The Romans then embarked on the Herculean task of building a ramp of packed earth on the White Cliff that would reach all the way up to the level of the fortress. With their usual amazing teamwork, the legionaries raised, in a short space of time, a mound well over 300 feet high, on top of which they erected a platform of timber and stones packed with earth that was 75 feet tall and as broad across. From this platform, iron-plated wooden siege towers, the biggest of which was 90 feet tall, were able to operate. Scorpions and onagers fired at the enemy so effectively from them that the defenders could not man the ramparts or use the vast supplies of javelins in their arsenal. Meanwhile, a ram battered the wall ceaselessly. Although it took longer than expected, eventually the masonry collapsed and opened a large breach.

  The Zealots were ready, having built another wall inside that consisted of a framework of large beams of timber packed with earth. The ram could make no impression on this ingenious structure, since every blow only packed the earth more tightly. However, the resourceful Silva solved the problem by ordering his men to throw lighted torches at it. Although there was a dangerous moment when a breeze blew the flames back into the besiegers’ faces, the wind changed, and the wooden beams caught fire, destroying the new wall. The Romans prepared to launch their final assault on the following day.

  Eleazar ben Yair had no illusions about the situation, realizing that there was no possible means of escape. Assembling his comrades, he told them his solution, although, for reasons that will become apparent, what he actually said has not survived. However, Josephus’s reconstruction is extremely convincing, since it reflects all the ideals of the Zealots. The speech is too long to give in its entirety, but here is a summary.

  “We made up our minds long ago that we would never serve the Romans or anyone else other than God,” he told them. “We were the first [Jews] to revolt and we are the last still fighting them, which is a blessing since it means we can still die honorably.” Perhaps they should have guessed long ago that God had doomed the Jewish nation to destruction, and perhaps they were being punished for mistreating their countrymen, he continued. But by killing themselves and their families they would die less cruelly than if the Romans killed them, and their wives would escape dishonor and their children would never know what it meant to be a slave. “First we must burn our property and the fortress as it will disappoint the Romans to lose our bodies and our goods. Leave the food, since it shows we did not kill ourselves from hunger, but, as we swore at the start, prefer death to slavery.”4

  To Eleazar’s chagrin, the majority of the garrison were reluctant to end their lives so abruptly, and many broke down and wept. He then delivered a magnificent second speech. Josephus’s reconstruction contains an eloquent expression of Zealot philosophy, and he explains how they had seen the war with Rome. It is also a belated tribute from the author of The Jewish War, since it contradicts all that he had previously written about them. The speech is worth quoting at greater length than the first, even if there is not sufficient space to provide it in full.

  “I made a very bad mistake in thinking that I was helping brave men who fight for freedom, men determined to live with honor or die,” Eleazar began contemptuously. “It looks as if you are no better than anybody else in your courage or fortitude. You’re even frightened of a death that could save you from the most ghastly suffering, at a moment when there is no time left for delay or seeking advice.” Then he launched into a panegyric in praise of suicide:Life, not death, is man’s real misfortune. For death gives freedom to our souls and lets them return to their own pure and natural home, where they will be immune from every calamity. So long as they are imprisoned in a mortal body and have to suffer its miseries, then they are in fact dead, because the mortal has nothing in common with the divine. No doubt, the soul may achieve a good deal even when confined inside a body, since it can use it as an instrument, moving it invisibly and enabling it to do things beyond the capacity of any mortal nature. However, only when freed from the weight that pulls it down to earth and allowed to go back to its rightful setting can the soul regain all its divinely bestowed energy and unhampered powers, becoming no l
ess invisible to human eyes than God himself. It cannot be detected when in the body, entering it unseen and leaving unseen, its nature incorruptible, though causing the body to change. For whatever the soul touches is going to live and flourish, and whatever it abandons will wither away and die, because of its overwhelmingly immortal energy.

  Sleep is surely the best proof of what I am saying to you, the deep sleep during which the soul is undistracted by the body and, unfettered, enjoys its sweetest rest, when, once again in contact with God because of its close kinship with him, it travels through the universe and foresees many of the things that will happen in future times. So why then should we be frightened of death, when we are so fond of sleep? And how can it be anything else than misguided for us to hope for freedom in our lives while we are denying ourselves the freedom of eternity?

  “We die by the will of God,” he told his men. “It seems that long ago God must have passed a decree against the entire Jewish race—that we would have to leave this life if we didn’t live it properly,” he explained. “So don’t blame yourselves or give the Romans any credit.” Something infinitely more powerful than any human agency was responsible for the

  Zealots’ defeat. Why had the Jews of Caesarea been slaughtered on the Sabbath when they had not even thought of rebelling against Rome? Why had 18,000 Jews been butchered at Scythopolis despite being ready to fight against the Zealots? Why had every city in Syria murdered its Jewish population, even though it consisted of Jews loyal to Rome? Why had over 60,000 Jews been tortured to death in Egypt?