Episode Three
After ham-fisted efforts by local Roman officials to collect taxes from the Judeans resulted in riots, Nero sent the governor of Syria, Cestius Gallus, with an entire legion – 5,000 men – in 66 ce to ‘restore order’ in the region. The governor was ambushed on the way to Jerusalem by Simon bar Giora, losing some siege engines in the fray. On arrival, he tried to set a siege but due to the loss of equipment was unable to capture the inner city and was forced to retreat. As they marched back to the coast, Simon bar Giora led his forces to ambush and destroy Cestius Gallus and his remaining legion. This was the greatest humiliation inflicted on Rome since Hannibal and it greatly roused the nationalist impulses of the Judeans such that the poison of rebellion began to spread to neighboring provinces.
Caesar Nero was desperate to quash the Judean rebellions and to bring the whole area under regular consular rule, so in 68 ce, he sent his top general, Flavius Vespasian, with four legions – 20,000 men – to Syria. From there, they marched south, stopping at every town and junction where they either took tribute (from the towns that ‘supported’ Rome) or laid siege on rebel holdings until they would slaughter the inhabitants and burn the buildings down. Along the way, Nero died and Vespasian was summoned to take his place, leaving his son Flavius Titus to take over the Judean operation and see it through to the bloody end.
As they marched south, rebel groups fled toward Jerusalem until the town was over-packed with rebels and Passover celebrants. By the time the legions had arrived at Jerusalem, there had already been a series of battles, a fire, and the deliberate destruction of supplies: Titus delayed attacking the walls presuming the Judeans would kill each other in due time. In Jerusalem, the people suffered greatly over eight months of starvation and disease before the city was finally taken. The survivors were either sold into slavery or crucified. Then the temple was looted, burned and pushed into the valley below. This was memorialized in stone: Titus’ Arch in Rome shows Romans carrying away temple goods and pushing Judean slaves before them.
Many thousands of Judeans were killed over the eighteen months of the Judean operation. Miles of roads around Jerusalem and the centers of rebellion in Galilee were decorated with crucified corpses. The Jordan River ran red on more than one occasion, and the Sea of Galilee at one point had so many floating bodies that it was said one could ‘walk on water’. The violent destruction of Jerusalem, which even the Romans considered to be ancient, was severe enough to seem disrespectful to the gods. There was concern that history might judge them poorly for what today we would easily label ‘genocide’. So Caesar directed the writing of a history of the Jewish peoples to show they had always been warlike and deserving of their fate, and so around 70-75 ce, Flavius Josephus Mattathias penned The Jewish War which recounts the history I’ve summarized here.
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