To the Death

by Peter R. Hall

  Florus, knew success at Jerusalem would not go well for him. Somehow he had to turn the situation to his advantage, which meant things had to go badly, particularly for the Legate - a man who was a ditherer and had had little experience in military matters. He was a politician. The son of a consul he too was a consul, who lacked the wealth needed to buy real political power, and whose prime reason for accepting the Governorship of Syria and the overseeing of Judaea, was the opportunity to extort the fortune he lacked.

  Knowing that Gallus’ officers were as corrupt as he was, Florus had secretly bribed the Legate’s second in command, Tyranius Priscus, and those officers most senior and closest to the Legate. They had been paid to ensure any assault on Jerusalem would fail, resulting in an early withdrawal while they awaited reinforcements from Rome. Above all, this would buy Florus the time he needed, in order to arrange for Gallus to have a fatal accident or be killed in the withdrawal.

  Consequently, inexplicably to the legion’s soldiers, their commander did nothing for two months. Gallus then ordered that the Antonia was to be assaulted. A picked band of legionaries was ordered to undermine the wall, opening up the chance to attack the Temple. It was at this point that a number of priests offered to open the city gates if Gallus would spare the city. Before he could decide whether or not to accept the offer, the would-be collaborators were found out. The furious nationalists threw the traitors off the walls and bombarded their broken bodies with rocks.

  All of this happened in early November. Winter, which promised to be early, was approaching fast and the highlands of Judaea would be scoured by freezing ice-filled winds. An army camped in the open for any length of time would find just staying alive a full-time job.

  So, with the city his for the taking, the Legate, gulled by his own officers, decided to withdraw and wait for reinforcements from Rome - a decision that presented him with an immediate problem.

  During the weeks he had dithered, the Jews had been busy. Every building in the narrow streets surrounding the new city had been evacuated. Tons of masonry had been added to the stone prised loose with iron bars from their roofs. Under the cover of darkness men supplied with food and water had taken cover on the flat rooftops, hiding in the mounds of stone that would become ammunition. At pinch points in the streets and alleys that spread like a web around the Roman position they collapsed walls, blocking the road to any would-be advancing infantry.

  Unaware of these preparations, Gallus knew that pulling out of the city and re-joining his main forces would not go unchallenged. He needed time to achieve this and time to put distance between his forces and the Jews. A few officers who had not pocketed Florus’ gold argued against retreat. Threatened with a court martial for insubordination, they had fallen silent, at which point Gallus played them a particularly dirty trick. He ordered them to hand-pick six hundred of their steadiest men and take up a defensive position on the roofs of the buildings not occupied by the Jews. They were ordered to cover Gallus’ retreat by delaying the Jews for twelve hours. They were to do this by spreading themselves thinly and calling out to each other as though on sentry duty. Under no circumstances were they to leave their posts in an attempt to re-join the main force, until twelve hours had elapsed.

  It says much for Roman training and discipline that the doomed men obeyed their orders and held their positions, fighting to the last man before being overwhelmed and killed.

  Meanwhile, Gallus’ forces retreated through the mountains with the Jews in vengeful pursuit. The Legate, hell bent on speed at all costs, disregarded the first and last rule of mountain warfare against an enemy that knows the terrain. He failed to take command of the high ground. Before the Romans had even got as far as Beth-Horon, they had taken a mauling. The Roman column, compressed between the valley walls, was attacked from above. First they were showered with javelins and arrows. Then they experienced avalanches of loose scree and stones, released by tripping trigged boulders.

  With their way blocked, the Romans were forced to turn back and seek a new route, only to be hit by Jewish cavalry galloping out of the narrow side gullies and concentrating on the Romans’ baggage train and siege weapons. When Gallus’ cavalry tried to relieve the pressure, the Jews focused on injuring and killing their enemy’s horses - a much easier target than armoured riders. Repeatedly the Jews attacked hard and fast, hit and run, never directly engaging with an enemy that was the best in the world in set piece confrontations.

  Nightfall had brought some respite to the battered Romans, who finally sought refuge in Beth-Horon. When Gallus gathered his officers together and asked the whereabouts of the Procurator, he was told he was dead, mashed to pulp by one of the boulders bouncing wildly down a mountain slope.

  At dawn, a haggard Gallus woke to the realisation that the worst was yet to come. Every hill was lined with the enemy - waiting, ready, totally silent.

  Forced to continue, the Romans marched and were harried all the way. By the time they reached Antiparis six thousand had died – the equivalent of a complete legion. They also counted the loss of the Twelfth Legion’s eagle - an unspeakable disgrace. At this point Gallus abandoned his baggage and his siege train of artillery, which the warlord Simon ben Gioras and his followers delivered to the authorities in Jerusalem. Gioras had hoped that this would buy him a position of authority in the city, but was rejected by the ruling council who did not want a warlord in their midst when they attempted to negotiate with the Romans.

  When Gallus eventually made it as far as Caesarea and the safety of the legions stationed there, he was a broken man. His campaign had turned into calamity. The rebels now controlled the whole of Jerusalem. They held the strongholds of Machaerus in southern Peraea, Masada and a large part of Judaea. At this point, some of the city’s leading citizens left Jerusalem and headed for Jordan.

  Learning of the Legate’s defeat the citizens of Damascus, a predominantly Greek city with a long standing grudge against its Jewish minority, decided to get rid of them. They achieved this by rounding them up and holding them in the city’s gymnasium, from which they released them in batches to cut their throats at leisure.

  18

  To celebrate his thirtieth birthday, the Emperor decided to tour Greece. He would liberate Hellus (which meant it would be exempt from tribute). This tour of Greece would celebrate the world’s first artistic games at which, of course, Nero would win all the significant first prizes. It was in Greece that Nero came under the influence of a Satanist and magician; a Greek named Karkinos.

  Under the magus’ influence, an already seriously flawed character slipped into madness. He came to believe that his role in life was to become an artist of the highest aesthetic and spiritual standing. As a living deity his destiny and duty was to demonstrate by example. People were told to abandon accepted morality and copy his example. Nero, utterly without morals, announced anything was allowed; that the moral laws of society were an invention and were to be discarded.

  In the Grecian artistic games, the senators and their wives were invited to participate in competitions embracing music, poetry and chariot racing - three categories based on the Greek festivals of antiquity. What was not part of Greek antiquity were elderly Roman matriarchs being forced to lose their dignity, capering in an unseemly manner on the stage, whilst their equally elderly husbands, powerful and respected senators, found themselves in clumsy combat in the gladiatorial arena.

  Not to be outdone, Nero himself pranced about on the stage in the feminine roles; a particular practice that scandalised a senate heartily sick of its ruler. More than a few minds were secretly scheming as to how they might rid themselves of the monster who had the power of life and death over them, who offended their sensibilities and insulted all the virtues and morality that embodied what it was to be Roman. They had put up with Nero’s scandalous incestuous relationship with his mother, but refused to support him when he scandalised the whole of Roman society, by marrying a freedman called Doryphorus in a ceremony complete with
dowry and bridal veil. The couple celebrated their marriage by indulging in one of Nero’s favourite pastimes of dressing up in the skins of tigers and disembowelling men and women tied to stakes. This revolting behaviour reached its peak at a banquet turned orgy, given in Nero’s honour by Tigellinus. The entertainment took place on a raft, moored on a lake owned by Marcus Agrippa. The raft had been towed by gilded barges rowed by degenerates and unfortunates; the disfigured and malformed.

  On the quays, brothels had been stocked with high ranking courtesans who had to vie for trade with lower ranking prostitutes, male and female, who solicited competitively, indicating by lewd posturing and gesturing their unnatural and bizarre sexual services. That which caused the most offence had been the panders offering children of all ages for their use. The sexually inexperienced youngsters stared about in bewilderment and incomprehension - and eventually terror as their role became apparent.

  Like all dictators, Nero worried about possible rivals. He began to imagine enemies everywhere as his behaviour massively alienated the senatorial class. Increasing paranoia deepened his suspicions. Prominent senators were charged with imaginary crimes and executed if they refused to commit suicide. Nero wasn’t the first emperor to employ a system called bonadamnatorum. Condemning men to death and confiscating their estates and all their worldly possessions; the dependents of his victims left penniless and banished from the empire on pain of death if they ever returned. In sixty five, Nero had ordered the Empire’s best general, Corbulo, to return from the east and then ordered him to kill himself. Tragically, in the following year, Nero recalled the commanders of the legions in Lower and Upper Germany, the talented Scribonius brothers, Rufus and Proculus, ordering them to commit suicide or face execution. This brought about the demise of Rome’s three outstanding generals, whose loyalty to Rome and the Emperor was unswerving.

  As a further safeguard against a putsch in his absence from the capital, the entire senate and their families had been invited to join him in Greece. Among these was the fifty eight year old retired general Flavius Vespasian, who had played a part in Claudius’ invasion of Britain where he had captured the Isle of Wight and later Maiden Castle, for which he was awarded the insignia of a Triumph. Made a consul in fifty one, he retired two years’ later to the country. This took him away from court and particularly Nero’s mother Agrippina, who had taken a dislike to him. With good reason, Vespasian feared the daughter of Germanicus Caesar and sister of Caligula. When Claudius died in fifty four it was from being poisoned by Agrippina, who was his second wife.

  Ferociously ambitious and determined to be Empress she contrived to get Nero, her son by her first husband Domitius Ahenobarbus, accepted as heir to the purple in place of Britannicus, Claudius’ own son by his former wife Messalina.

  Within a year of Nero’s succession Britannicus was dead, having fallen victim to a poisoned dish of mushrooms served to him by Agrippina. She was consolidating her hold on the Empire by sleeping with her son Nero and having herself declared Augusta - an act which eventually prompted Nero to have her assassinated.

  Called out of retirement, Vespasian became governor of the province of Africa which he successfully administered for two years. While he was in Africa his wife died, leaving him with the responsibility of two sons. The eldest, Titus, a serving officer in the army; the youngest aged thirteen, Domitian, was a strange youth, with a liking for pain – other people’s - particularly when he was the cause.

  Returning from Africa, Vespasian was surprised and chagrined to be invited to join the Court in Greece. The general, who was indifferent to the arts, particularly singing and music, could not find a credible excuse to turn down the royal invitation. It was during an excruciatingly boring poetry reading by Nero - one of his own of course - that a courier arrived from Judaea; a senior tribune sent by Cestius Gallus from Antioch. The crash of his hobnailed sandals on the marbled floor announced his presence, interrupting the senators, court nobles and their wives, who were gathered in an admiring circle round Nero as he proclaimed one of his excruciatingly bad poems.

  Flanked on each side by Nero’s personal bodyguard, the tribune saluted and dropped to one knee. Nero, incredulous at the interruption, stared at him in silence. The entire court held its breath. The tribune cleared his throat. “My Lord Caesar, I bring greetings from your most loyal subject Cestius Gallus, Legate of Syria and Judaea”. The soldier paused before continuing. “The Legate sends you a report of the grave circumstances that have arisen in Judaea”. At this the tribune offered the scroll he had brought.

  Sensing that whatever was written on the proffered report was something he didn’t want to know, the Emperor refused to take it. Instead he caught Vespasian’s eye and, with a barely perceptible nod, indicated he was to accept the unwelcome news. Vespasian dismissed the courier and waited. He made no attempt to give the message to the Emperor, though he knew without being told that it contained dire news - as indeed did Nero, who had flung himself into a chair frowning heavily, lips compressed in anger.

  After what seemed an age, he held out his hand with a deep sigh and breaking the seal unrolled the report. Its contents brought him to his feet with a roar. “Rebellion”. The word was literally spat out, saliva splattering those nearest to him. “The filthy, ungrateful Jews have rebelled”.

  The gasp from the assembled courtiers was lost in the tirade unleashed by the Emperor. Pounding up and down on the dais, sweat streaming down his face, he castigated his absent Legate and the rebellious Jews in equal measure. In the middle of his rant, Nero stopped as suddenly as he had started, remembering he had murdered Rome’s best generals. Who could he send to Judaea; somebody who would do the job, and would not have dreams of Empire? That man, he suddenly realised, was standing next to him; a capable soldier from an ordinary family with no political background - a safe pair of hands.

  So in February, the fifty-seven-year old Vespasian was appointed to the rank of Legatus. His orders were to avenge Rome for the loss of a legion and its eagle, to punish the Jews for insulting the Emperor by ceasing to offer the daily sacrifice for Rome and for the Emperor, to set an example to the world of Rome’s power and be a lesson to those who thought to challenge it. His orders were that Israel was to cease to exist, Jerusalem to be razed to the ground and the Jewish people annihilated.

  With him would go the man who would replace Gallus - Gaius Licinius Mucianus who, like Vespasian, was ‘old school’, a statesman and a soldier.

  Vespasian, glad to take his leave of a court he detested and an Emperor he held in contempt, set out for Antioch via the Hellespont and Turkey. Here he took command of two legions, the Fifth Macedonica and the famous Tenth Fretensis, and marched to Ptolemais. From there he made his way to Acre and was met by King Agrippa who pledged his loyalty. Together they marched to Sepphoris, already garrisoned by Roman troops. This would be Vespasian’s headquarters for the coming campaign.

  First he would gather all his forces and only when they were under his command would he move. Throughout his military life Vespasian had stuck to a policy of attacking each target with maximum force, eliminating the enemy to ensure there would be no survivors to trouble him later. Having settled at Sepphoris his first task was to send orders to his son Titus and an old friend, Tiberius Julius Alexander, who had served as a staff officer under the senior general Gnaeus Domititius Corbulo during the campaigns against the Parthians in sixty two. He was an experienced soldier who, under Claudius, had been appointed procurator of Judaea in 46–48.

  Meanwhile, Judaea was an opportunity for Vespasian, who saw the war as a chance to get away from Nero. It would be Tiberius who would advise Vespasian to adopt the strategy of allowing the Jews of Jerusalem to destroy themselves. He also pinpointed the three rival leaders and their followers - Eleazar ben Simon, leader of the zealots; the private army of John of Gischala; and Simon Ben Gioras, who was supported by men from Idumaea, the southern part of Judaea that the Romans did not control. All three, Tiberius pointed o
ut, had different agendas. John strove for political freedom. Simon on the other hand stood at the head of a Messianic movement. Eleazar was a nationalist who wanted the Romans out of Judaea, with himself in power as ruler of Jerusalem.

  19

  The six hundred recruits wore cloaks as protection against the elements. Those who had belongings had them strapped in a bundle carried on their shoulders. It was a dark night, with dampness in the air that signalled rain was on the way. The newly arrived trainees, anxious to get into the warmth of the barracks that surrounded the parade ground, envied the legionaries who had been their escorts and who had been dismissed to its warmth and a hot meal.

  The ragged lines of volunteers shivered in the icy rain that had started to fall. The vast recruit training camp, located in the country north of Rome, was ideally suited to its purpose. Here the would-be legionaries would eventually take part in field exercises that simulated combat in every kind of terrain and in conditions and circumstances dictated by their tutors.

  Gaius Iovis the duty centurion, immaculately turned out, was flanked by a dozen NCOs and the optio, the junior officer responsible for the administrative tasks associated with the men under the centurion’s command; punishment records, administering the men’s pay, savings, equipment, sentry rotas, organising weapons inspections, feed for the section’s mules, ration collection and barrack inspections - all of which had to be carried out and recorded accurately, much of it on a daily basis. This required the optio to be literate, good with numbers, have organisational skills and a firm grasp of logistics. He performed these duties as an addition to being a soldier, and was not excused any of the day-to-day duties of a legionary. The rank and his performance were pre-requisites to promotion to centurion.

  Gaius Iovis was as indifferent to the weather as he was to his new charges’ discomfort. “The men who brought you here” he bellowed “are soldiers of Rome; the best in the world. You signed up to join them and my job is to make sure you are fit to do so. Those of you who work hard in the next six months will leave here as legionaries. Those that fail – if they survive - could end up in the Empire’s mines or chained to a galley oar.” With that ominous promise the shivering men were finally dismissed to barracks.