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“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 the 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 bodies, 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
Suddenly, he realized that he might be arrested and murdered out of hand, partly because of his plain speaking and partly because more than a few members of his class were already suspected of collaborating. Josephus probably looked very much the noble, in a silk tunic and wearing a gold ring. It was time for him to hide. The Antonia had already been captured so he took refuge in the inner court of the Temple, which he could enter because he was a priest. No doubt he disguised himself in cheaper clothing, taking care to avoid any smart acquaintances, since the lower clergy who staffed the Temple were staunch supporters of Eleazar and fanatically anti-Roman. The fact that he had been away for so long may have given him anonymity. He did not dare to emerge until Menahem and his friends disappeared from the scene.
Then I felt safe enough to venture out of the Temple and was once again able to talk to important people [who mattered]—high priests and influential Pharisees. Naturally, we were all very worried. We could see the people arming and had no idea what to do because we had no way of stopping the rebels. Aware every moment of the day that each one of us was in real danger, we tactfully pretended to share their opinions, but at least we tried to suggest they should do nothing rash and ought to leave the enemy alone until he attacked, so as to have the excuse of only using weapons in self-defense. While doing this, we were of course all hoping that Cestius was soon going to arrive with a large army and quickly put an end to the rebellion.10
At Antioch, Cestius Gallus realized that he had to act without further delay, as the Romans normally campaigned only between March and September. He assembled a formidable army, his best force being the Twelfth Legion Fulminata (the “Thunderer”), which may have numbered 6,000 men if up to strength, along with about 2,000 men from each of the other three legions stationed in Syria. He also took six cohorts and four troops of local recruits. (A cohort consisted of roughly 600 men.) In addition, he had 20,000 auxiliaries supplied by friendly potentates such as King Agrippa II and by the Syrian cities of northern Judea. Mainly light horse or bowmen, these native levies were of questionable value, but at least they could be relied on to hate Jews.
Accompanied by Agrippa who acted as his guide, Cestius marched down the coast to Ptolemais, from where he sent out a detachment to destroy the beautiful city of Zabulon, burning it to the ground, while he himself sacked the Jewish villages in the area. During his absence, however, a Jewish force attacked Ptolemais, killing 2,000 troops. He then marched on to Caesarea, where he set up his base. From here his men ravaged the surrounding country and put the villages to the torch, besides exterminating the entire population of Joppa—over 8,000 people—after surrounding the city by sea and land so that no one could escape. Finding Lydda empty of inhabitants, save for fifty who were butchered, he burned it to the ground.
The commander of the Twelfth Legion, Caesennius Gallus, advanced into Galilee with a strong detachment, receiving a warm welcome at the capital, Sepphoris. Even so, some guerrillas held out in the mountains in central Galilee and inflicted 200 casualties when the Romans approached. However, the legionaries quickly outflanked them, killing about 2,000 and ending armed resistance in the area—for the time being.
These tactics were designed to terrify Judea into abject submission, particularly Jerusalem, and were standard Roman practice. No doubt, Cestius expected he would have very little trouble when he reached the capital. However, he had given all too clear warning of his approach and was in for a very nasty surprise.
Marching by way of Antipatris and Lydda and climbing Beth-horon, Cestius pitched camp at Gibeon, six miles from Jerusalem. He was accompanied by Gessius Florus. Although it was the Sabbath, the Jews attacked the Romans here, with such fury that they broke through their ranks and killed over 500 of them while incurring a loss of only twenty-two men on their side, before retreating into the city. A ferocious young man called Simon bar Giora—who subsequently came to play a major role in the war with Rome—fell on the enemy rearguard while it was ascending Beth-horon, inflicting further casualties and capturing a mule train laden with weapons.
King Agrippa II made a final, frantic effort to secure a peaceful solution, sending two of his men, who were well known in Jerusalem, to promise the Jews that Cestius would do his best to persuade Caesar to give them a complete pardon if they laid down their arms. Fearful that the offer might be accepted, the extremists deliberately killed one of the envoys and wounded the other, who barely escaped with his life by running away. If Josephus has told the truth, a great crowd of people in the city were so angry at losing this last opportunity of ending the conflict that they stoned the saboteurs of the king’s peace efforts.
The legate now moved his headquarters camp closer to Jerusalem, up onto Mount Scopus (“Lookout Hill”), which was a mere three-quarters of a mile away from the walls. However, he did not launch an assault for another three days, as he was still hoping the city would surrender; in the meantime he sent out foragers to gather provisions. At last, on 4 October, he made a move and—no doubt much to his astonishment—was able to march his men into the Upper City without meeting any resistance, setting fire to Bezetha (the New City) and the timber market, before setting up a new camp outside Herod’s Palace. Terrified, the extremists and their followers retreated into the Inner City and the Temple.
Had Cestius forced his way into the Temple at this moment, the rebellion would have been over. However, he was persuaded to postpone the attack by his quartermaster, who had been bribed by Florus, desperate to have a war. As it was, Ananus, son of Jonathan, sent a message to the legate, saying he would open the gates, but Cestius refused to believe that the message was genuine. Next day, the Roman assault began in earnest, but the hard-liners had regained their nerve and resisted fiercely. After five days of inconclusive fighting, the legate sent in his best troops supported by picked archers, attacking the Temple from the north side, yet the defenders beat them off time and again with a hail of missiles.
Finally, the legionaries adopted the Roman tactic known as the testudo (tortoise), which consisted of holding their shields over their heads so that any spears thrown at them glanced off harmlessly. Protected like this, they were able to undermine the wall and set the Temple gate alight. Some of the defenders fled while supporters of the Romans prepared to open the gate, led by Ananus ben Jonathan, who seems to have been a member of the ruling class. Josephus may well have been among them. “If Cestius had kept on for just a little longer, he would certainly have captured the city,” he says. “But I think those criminal rebels had already made God take a deep dislike to both city and sanctuary, and that He would not allow the war to come to an end.”11
The legate did not realize that his opponents had nearly abandoned hope or that he had so many supporters inside the city. Suddenly, he called off the attack. He withdrew from Jerusalem to his camp on Mount Scopus, as the defenders harried his rearguard, killing a substantial number of Romans. Next day, Cestius withdrew still further, again for no apparent reason. Led by Eleazar ben Simon, his enemies followed closely, throwing javelins from the roadside at his columns and cutting down stragglers, the lightly armed Jews being able to dodge their heavily equipped opponents. Sometimes the Roman formations disintegrated, making the soldiers still more vulnerable. Among the casualties were the commander of the Sixth Legion and a tribune, along with other senior officers. They also lost a great deal of baggage.
Withdrawal turned into retreat and retreat into a rout. Cestius attempted to make a stand in his fortified camp at Gibeon, but after two days he saw that he was almost surrounded by the insurgents whose numbers, now that they were winning, grew by the hour. On the third day, 8 November, he decided to pull out, killing all his pack mules except those that carried throwing spears and siege weaponry. As he and his men painfully descended the narrow, difficult road down from Gibeon to Beth-horon, the Jews kept up a constant hail of spears, inflicting more and more casualties. It was too steep for cavalry to have any chance of dispersing them; what is more, the legionaries could not keep their ranks, so their shields and armor failed to provide enough protection. Roman morale began to break, the men groaning and cursing. In contrast, the Jews were cheering. But for nightfall, Cestius and his whole army would have been butchered or taken prisoner.
During the night of 8 November, Cestius positioned 400 crack troops at what seemed to be a defensible site on Beth-horon, with orders that on next morning they should hoist emblems that would give the impression he and the army were still inside. Then, abandoning his siege weaponry, he and the rest of his men marched off as quietly as possible while it was still dark. The next morning, the Jews came up, overwhelmed and massacred the 400 legionaries, and then set off in hot pursuit of the retreating legionaries. But by then Cestius and the bulk of his troops had got too far ahead and were able to reach Syria in safety. Not since Varus’s defeat by the Germans sixty years earlier had the armies of Rome experienced such a crushing defeat.
Singing with joy, the Jews returned to Jerusalem and a heroes’ welcome. They carried the arms and armor stripped from the dead Romans, which could be used to equip their own men. They also brought back the siege weaponry and heavy artillery abandoned by the Romans in their flight, which included stone-throwing catapults for demolishing walls and large, quick-firing mechanical bows that shot a huge arrow capable of going straight through several men one after another. These, too, would be employed against the enemy in future battles. In addition, they seem to have captured Cestius’s war chest, which contained a large sum of money.
During the recent engagement at Beth-horon the Jews had suffered surprisingly few casualties, despite fighting the legionaries at close quarters. On the other hand, it was plausibly estimated that the Romans had lost 5,500 infantry and 380 cavalry. Most impressive of all, we know from Suetonius that the poorly armed, amateur soldiers of Jerusalem had succeeded in capturing one of Cestius’s “eagles,” that of the Twelfth Legion Fulminata. A legion’s eagle, it will be remembered, was a hallowed standard for which legionaries were supposed to give their lives rather than suffer the indelible disgrace of losing it. No one could deny that the Jews had won a victory worthy of the Maccabees.