CHAPTER 13
Jewish Wars:
The Death of Jerusalem
AD 66–70

BERENICE THE BAREFOOT QUEEN: REVOLUTION

Berenice walked barefoot to the Praetorium herself—the same route Jesus would have taken from Herod Antipas back to Pilate thirty years earlier. The beautiful Berenice—daughter and sister of kings, and twice a queen—was on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to thank God for her recovery from an illness, fasting for thirty days and shaving her head (surprising in this Romanized Herodian). Now she threw herself before Florus and begged him to stop, but he wanted vengeance and booty. As his reinforcements approached Jerusalem, the Jews were divided between those keen on reconciliation with the Romans and the radicals who were preparing for war, perhaps in the hope of winning a limited independence under Roman suzerainty.

The priests in the Temple paraded the holy vessels, sprinkling the dust of mourning in their hair, in a bid to restrain the young rebels. The Jews marched out peacefully to greet the Roman cohorts, but on Florus’ instructions the cavalry rode them down. The crowds ran for the gates but many suffocated in the stampede. Florus then charged towards the Temple Mount, hoping to seize the commanding Antonia Fortress. In response the Jews bombarded the Romans with spears from the rooftops, occupied the Antonia and cut down the bridges that led into the Temple, turning it into a fortress of its own.

Just as Florus left, Herod Agrippa arrived from Alexandria. The king called an assembly of the Jerusalemites in the Upper City beneath his Palace. As Berenice listened from the safety of the roof, Agrippa begged the Jews to stay the rebellion: “Don’t venture to oppose the entire empire of the Romans. War, if it be once begun, is not easily laid down. The power of the Romans is invincible in all parts of the habitable earth. Have pity, if not on your women and children, yet upon this metropolis—spare the Temple!” Agrippa and his sister wept openly. The Jerusalemites shouted that they wished only to fight Florus. Agrippa told them to pay their tribute. The people agreed and Agrippa led them to the Temple to arrange these peaceful gestures. But on the Temple Mount, King Agrippa insisted the Jews obey Florus until a new procurator arrived, outraging the crowd all over again.

The priests, including Josephus, met in the Temple and debated whether to stop the daily sacrifice to the Roman emperor that signified loyalty to Rome. This decisive act of rebellion was approved—“the foundation of war with the Romans,” wrote Josephus, who himself joined the revolt. As the rebels seized the Temple and the moderate grandees took the Upper City, the Jewish factions bombarded each other with slingshot and spears.

Agrippa and Berenice left Jerusalem, sending 3,000 cavalry to back the moderates, but it was the extremists who triumphed. The Zealots, a popular party based around the Temple, and the Sicarii, the dagger-wielding brigands, stormed the Upper City and drove out King Agrippa’s troops. They burned the palaces of the high priest and the Maccabees as well as the archives where debts were recorded. For a short moment, their leader, a “barbarous, cruel” warlord ruled Jerusalem until the priests assassinated him and the Sicarii escaped to the Masada fortress near the Dead Sea and played no further part until Jerusalem had fallen.

The priests were back in nominal control but from now on, the factions in Jerusalem and their warlords, often provincial opportunists and local adventurers as well as religious fanatics, embarked on a savage and chaotic Jewish civil war. Even Josephus, our sole source, fails to clarify who formed these factions and what they believed. But he traces the strain of religious anti-Roman zealotry all the way back to the Galilean rebellions after Herod the Great’s death: “they have a passion for liberty, which is almost unconquerable since they are convinced God alone is their leader.” They “sowed the seed from which sprang life.” During the next few years, he says, Jew fought Jew “in a perpetual slaughter.”

The Roman garrison of 600, still holding Herod the Great’s Citadel, agreed to give up their arms in return for safe passage out of the city but these Syrians and Greeks who had massacred so many innocent Jews were then “savagely butchered.” King Agrippa abandoned his attempts to mediate and threw in his hand with Rome. In November 66, the Roman Governor of Syria, backed by Agrippa and allied kings, marched down from Antioch and fought his way into Jerusalem. Yet he abruptly retired, perhaps having been bribed, and his retreat under ferocious Jewish attack cost the lives of more than 5,000 Roman soldiers, and the eagle of a legion.

The die was cast. Roman pride had to be avenged. The rebels chose the former high priest, Ananus, as the leader of independent Israel. He strengthened the walls, while the city echoed to the hammering and forging of armour and weapons. He also appointed generals, among them Josephus, the future historian, who now left the city as the commander of Galilee, where he found himself fighting a warlord, John of Gischala, more viciously than either of them fought the Romans.

The new Jewish coins celebrated “The Freedom of Zion” and “Jerusalem the Holy”—yet it seemed this was a liberation that not many had wanted and the city waited like “a place doomed to destruction.” Nero was in Greece to perform his songs and compete in chariot-races in the Olympic Games (he won even though he fell out of his chariot), when he heard that Israel had rebelled.

JOSEPHUS’ PROPHECY: THE MULETEER AS EMPEROR

Nero feared victorious generals, so he chose as the commander of his Jewish War a dogged veteran from his own entourage. Titus Flavius Vespasianus was in his late fifties and often annoyed the emperor by falling asleep during his theatrical performances. But he had made his name in the conquest of Britain and his nickname—The Muleteer—revealed his unglamorous dependability and the fortune he had made by selling mules to the army.

Sending his son Titus to Alexandria to collect reinforcements, Vespasian mustered an army of 60,000, four legions plus Syrian slingers, Arab archers and the cavalry of King Herod Agrippa. Then he marched down the coast to Ptolemais (Acre). In early 67, he methodically started to reconquer Galilee, resisted fanatically by Josephus and his Galileans. Finally, Vespasian besieged Josephus in his fortress of Jotapata. On 29 July that year, Titus crept through the shattered walls and seized the city. The Jews fought to the death, many of them committing suicide.

Josephus and some other survivors hid in a cave. When the Romans trapped them, they decided to kill themselves and drew lots to determine who would kill whom. “By the providence of God” (or by cheating), Josephus drew the last lot and emerged alive from the cave. Vespasian decided to send him as a prize to Nero, which would entail an atrocious death. Josephus asked to speak to the general. When he stood before Vespasian and Titus, he said: “Vespasian! I come to you as a messenger of greater tidings. Do you send me to Nero? Why? It is you, Vespasian, who are and shall be Caesar and Emperor, you and your son.” The dour Vespasian was flattered, keeping Josephus in prison but sending him presents. Titus, who was almost the same age as Josephus, befriended him.

As Vespasian and Titus advanced towards Judaea, Josephus’ rival, John of Gischala, escaped to Jerusalem—“a city without a governor” engaged in a frenzy of self-destructive butchery.

JERUSALEM THE BROTHEL: THE TYRANTS JOHN AND SIMON

The gates of Jerusalem remained open to Jewish pilgrims, so religious fanatics, battle-hardened cut-throats and thousands of refugees poured into the city, where the rebels expended their energies in gang warfare, orgiastic pleasure-seeking and vicious witch-hunts for traitors.

Young, brash brigands now challenged the rule of the priests. They seized the Temple, overthrowing the high priest himself, electing by lot in his stead a “mere rustic.” Ananus rallied the Jerusalemites and attacked the Temple, but he hesitated to storm the inner courts and Holy of Holies. John of Gischala and his Galilean fighters saw an opportunity to win the entire city. John invited in the Idumeans, that “most barbarous and bloody nation” from south of Jerusalem. The Idumeans broke into the city, stormed the Temple, which “overflowed with blood,” and then rampaged through the streets, killing 12,000. They murdered Ananus and then his priests, stripped them and stamped on the naked bodies, before tossing them over the walls to be eaten by dogs. “The death of Ananus,” says Josephus, “was the beginning of the destruction of the city.” Finally, laden with booty and sated with blood, the Idumeans left a Jerusalem dominated by a new strongman, John of Gischala.

Even though the Romans were not far away, John gave free rein to his Galileans and Zealots to enjoy their prizes. The Holy House became a bawdy-house; but some of John’s supporters soon lost faith in this tyrant and defected to the rising power outside the city, a young warlord named Simon ben Giora, “not as cunning as John but superior in strength and courage.” Simon “was a greater terror to the people than the Romans themselves.” The Jerusalemites, hoping to save themselves from one tyrant, invited in a second—Simon ben Giora—who soon occupied much of the city. But John still held the Temple. Now the Zealots rebelled against him, seizing the Inner Temple so that, in the words of Tacitus, “there were three generals, three armies” fighting each other for one city—even though the Romans were getting closer. When nearby Jericho fell to Vespasian, all three Jewish factions ceased fighting each other and worked to fortify Jerusalem, digging trenches and strengthening Herod Agrippa I’s Third Wall in the north. Vespasian prepared to besiege Jerusalem. But then all at once he stopped.

Rome had lost its head. On 9 June 68, Nero, beset by rebellions, committed suicide with the words: “What an artist the world is losing in me!” In quick succession, Rome acclaimed and destroyed three emperors while three False Neros arose and foundered in the provinces—as if one real one had not been enough. Finally, the legions of Judaea and Egypt hailed Vespasian as their own emperor. The Muleteer remembered Josephus’ prophecy and freed him, granting him citizenship and appointing him as his adviser, almost his mascot, as he conquered first Judaea—and then the world. Berenice pawned her jewels to help fund Vespasian’s bid for the throne of Rome: the Muleteer was grateful. The new emperor headed via Alexandria to Rome and his son Titus, commanding 60,000 troops, advanced on the Holy City, knowing that his dynasty would be made or broken by the fate of Jerusalem.⁵⁵