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“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, apparently 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 less 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?
Our weapons and ramparts, our supposedly impregnable fortresses, and our love of freedom that could never be cowed by any threat, encouraged us to rise in revolt. But this helped us for only a short time, raising our hopes before turning into a total disaster. We have all been defeated and have all fallen into the hands of the enemy, as if we had been meant to do no more than adorn their victory instead of saving the lives of our people. We must think of those of us who fell in battle as the really lucky ones, since at least they died defending liberty and they did not betray it. But who can fail to pity all the others now under the Roman heel? Who would not prefer to die rather than share their fate? Some have been broken on the rack, some have been burned or scourged to death. Some have been half-eaten by wild beasts and then kept alive to be fed to them for a second time, amid the jeers and laughter of their gloating enemies. The most wretched, however, are those who are still alive and pray for death, but who are never granted it.
Eleazar went on to mourn for the destruction of Jerusalem, mother city of the Jewish nation. “What has become of that city of ours in which it was believed that God himself dwelt?” It would have been better had they all died before seeing her overthrown and witnessing the profanation and destruction of the Temple. He and his comrades at Masada had hoped to avenge her, but now that hope had gone, they should at least die with honor.
Finally, he warned what they could expect if they surrendered to the Romans. “Ghastly will be the fate of young men who fall into their hands, whose sturdy bodies can stay alive for hours under prolonged torture, no less ghastly will be that of old men whose weaker physique will break sooner,” he ended. “A husband will see his wife dragged away to be raped and will hear his child screaming for a father whose hands are bound.”
But our hands are still unbound and they still hold swords. While they remain like this, give them the chance of doing good service. Let us die unenslaved by our enemies and leave this life with our wives and children, free men to the last. This is what our Law commands, this is what our families deserve. God has ordained we should do it, while the Romans want the exact opposite and for none of us to die before being captured. Hurry, then, so that instead of having the pleasure of taking us prisoner they will be astonished at our deaths and awed by our courage.5
He was unable to finish his speech, as his listeners rushed into the palace that they seem to have used as a barracks (although it appears that some lived in turrets on the walls). After embracing their families, they killed them, before piling up and setting fire to their possessions. Then, having chosen, by lot, ten comrades to put the rest to death, they lay down with their arms around the bodies of their wives and children and held up their throats. When the ten had completed their work, they drew lots with each other until only a single Zealot remained. After inspecting all the bodies to make sure that no one else was left alive, he set light to the palace and then drove his sword through his heart, falling dead beside his family. Nine hundred and sixty people, including women and children, died in the defenders’ suicide pact, which took place on 15 April.6
The garrison had died in the belief that there were no survivors. However, a woman who was a relation of Eleazar and “superior to most females in intelligence and education,” managed to escape the bloodbath, together with an old crone and five children. They did so by hiding in a cistern.7
The next morning, the Romans finally stormed into Masada through the breach, over plank bridges that they pushed across from the siege ramps. Inside the fortress, there was no sight or sound of anybody, while they could see flames rising from the palace. The silence everywhere was uncanny. Eventually, the bewildered legionaries gave a great shout, the sort of joint war cry they yelled after discharging a particularly large missile. On hearing it, the two women crept out of the cistern and explained what had happened. At first, they did not believe them, but at last they managed to extinguish some of the flames and enter the palace. When they found the dead bodies lying in neat rows, instead of crowing at the sight of so many defeated enemies, the Romans were awestruck.8
Fiercely proud of his Jewishness, Josephus finally came down on the side of the Zealots. No doubt, Eleazar’s noble speeches, as they appear in The Jewish War, can only be inspired guesswork and owe a good deal to Greek literature. Eleazar’s cousin, who survived to tell the tale, could not possibly have given a word-for-word account. The legionaries would only have jotted down a summary of what she told them, and it is very unlikely that Josephus ever spoke to her. He may have obtained information from Flavius Silva’s war diary or from other Roman officers who had been present at the siege, but most of his account is the product of his own fertile imagination. Yet the speeches he puts into Eleazar’s mouth are remarkably convincing and probably very near the truth.
What is so strange about Josephus’s description of what took place at Masada is that he starts off with an impassioned denunciation of Zealots and sicarii, using phrases such as “barbarous towards their allies,” “no work of perdition untried,” or “wild and brutish disposition,” and then portrays them as heroes. Similarly, his glowing eulogy of their mass suicide is in odd contrast to the disapproval of an easy way out that he had so eloquently expressed in the cave at Jotapata. The only possible explanation for these contradictions must be that as he learned more about what had happened, his latent patriotism was aroused by the defenders’ unshakable integrity.
The historical importance of Masada rests on more than defenders’ heroism or the legionaries’ spectacular engineering. Eleazar’s speeches give us an insight into the spirit that inspired the Zealots. Fortunately, Josephus was so moved that he tries to tell us what went on in their minds instead of dismissing them as just another band of knifemen in his customary, biased fashion. What is surprising is that their “Fourth Philosophy” had an unmistakably Platonic tinge. At the same time, they seem to have had some sort of link with the Essenes; archaeologists have found on the site a fragmented copy of the Book of Ecclesiasticus, which also occurs among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In addition, the second of Eleazar’s speeches gives us a glimpse of Josephus’s true feelings about the war with Rome, something that he normally conceals in his books. It reveals his anguish at his country’s destruction and the suffering of his fellow Jews.
A handful of Zealots remained after the fall of Masada, although not in Judea. A group 600 strong escaped to Alexandria where they tried to persuade the Diaspora to take revenge on the Romans, murdering people who disagreed. But after the Alexandrian elders warned the Egyptian Jews that these men would bring disaster on them, they were handed over to the authorities. They astonished everyone by the way they endured branding irons and flames rather than call the emperor “lord.” Despite describing their presence as a “contagion,” Josephus again hints at his divided loyalties when he comments that their commitment came from “desperation or strength of mind, call it what you will.”9 What struck spectators most was the behavior of Zealot children under torture; despite their puny little bodies, they were no less resolute than their parents.
Lupus, in charge of the administration at Alexandria, reported to Rome that he was having trouble with Jewish fanatics. Apprehensive about a possible Zealot revival and determined to eliminate any conceivable rallying point, Vespasian ordered him to destroy the Temple of Onias at Leontopolis. In the delta, near Memphis, this had been built three hundred and fifty years earlier by the high priest Onias, an exile from Jerusalem, who had hoped to erect a rival to the Sanctuary in Jerusalem. Although according to the description given by The Jewish War, it was much less impressive, it was served by priests who daily offered the sacrifices. Lupus closed the temple down at once, and in August 73 his successor, Paulinus, removed the furnishings and forbade its priests to go near it.10
Further indignities were inflicted on the Jews who survived in Judea. A huge amount of land was confiscated, which became the emperor’s personal property or was put up for sale. There were, of course, a few exceptions from the general misery. Some of the old ruling class who had fled from Jerusalem were resettled, so that Judea’s eleven administrative districts were once again controlled by its members, as Vespasian had always planned. The Sanhedrin reemerged, although as a council of learned men rather than magnates. Yohanan ben Zakkai’s school at Jamnia flourished anew, so much so that it took the first steps toward a written codification of Jewish law.
On the whole, however, it was a time of unrelieved humiliation. The office of high priest was abolished, while, still more hurtful, the Temple tribute became a tax on all Jews, the fiscus judaeicus, which went toward the upkeep of the pagan temple of Jupiter Capitolinus at Rome. For years there was no resistance. Too many of the population had been killed or reduced to slavery.
Throughout the empire, Jews were taxed unmercifully, a vicious, long lasting legacy of the war in Judea. There was a relaxation under Nerva in the late 90s, but the crippling taxes were soon reintroduced. Driven beyond endurance, Jews of the Diaspora in Egypt, Cyrene, and Cyprus rose in desperation in 115, killing large numbers of their oppressors, though we do not know their precise objective. Whatever it was, within two years they had been put down with merciless savagery. The revolt did not involve Judea.
Yet nothing could destroy the spirit of the Jews so long as they stayed in their God-given homeland. Like Josephus, they expected that the Temple would be rebuilt, and Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai prophesied the coming of a “King Hezekiah.” Regardless of Josephus’s warning that God was no longer on their side, they again challenged fate. The conflict is said to have been caused by the Emperor Hadrian’s decision in 130 to build a new, pagan city on the ruins of Jerusalem, with a temple of Jupiter on the site of the Sanctuary. It was to be called Aelia Capitolina, Aelia being the emperor’s family name. This was an intolerable provocation for the Jews, since it meant that a Third Temple could not arise. However, a late Roman source (Spartianus) gives a different explanation for the revolt, citing an edict of Hadrian that banned circumcision.
The Jews’ leader was Simeon bar Kosiba (called Kokhba, “Son of the Star,” in rabbinic accounts), who may well have been a descendant of Judas the Galilean. He was supported by one of the greatest scholars of the day, Rabbi Akiva ben Joseph, which shows the depth of his appeal. In 132, after a carefully planned campaign, he and his followers drove the Romans out of southern Judea, occupying Jerusalem and establishing a new Israel. Instead of relying on strongholds such as Masada, they used a network of tunnels for surprise attacks and beat off several Roman armies. For three years Simeon ruled as Nasi (Prince), at first governing with his uncle, Eleazar the Priest, but then having him put to death on a mistaken suspicion of treachery. Like the Zealots, Bar Kokhba hoped for help from the Parthians, which this time really looked as if it would come—until Parthia was unexpectedly invaded by barbarians.
Inevitably, Simeon was defeated and killed in 135, when Hadrian’s legionaries stormed his last fortress at Bether in the mountains between Jerusalem and the sea, massacring its defenders. His supporters were ruthlessly hunted down and butchered, including Rabbi Akiva. Those few Jews who had not been exterminated were expelled from Judea, and the pagan city of Aelia Capitolina was finally built upon the ruins of Jerusalem.