The Great Revolt: The First Jewish-Roman War
by From Epics of History: More Prisoners of Eternity.
The Romans conquered Judea in 63 BC. Though many Jews were happy to co-operate with the occupiers and prosper under their rule, others disagreed. The trouble was they often disagreed with each other more than they ever did the enemy. They never combined to resist Roman rule, but nevertheless resist they did.
As the months wore on the people of Jerusalem starved as the suicidal civil war continued around them. Those Jews who managed to escape were killed by the Romans as rebels; those who tried to escape the city but failed were killed by the Zealots and Sicarii as traitors. By the summer of 70 AD the Romans were making incursions into the city but they were made to pay a heavy price as the Jews fought ferociously for every inch of their land. Still it wasn’t until the fall of the city appeared imminent that the two Zealot leaders Eliazar ben Simon and John of Gischala, and the Sicarii leader Simon Bar Giora at last joined forces in the defence of Jerusalem. All the people of Jerusalem took to arms, men, women and children, in these last desperate days; but the walls of the city had been breached and the outcome was inevitable. On 29 July, the Jewish Temple was ransacked and destroyed, despite Titus ordering its preservation. It was never to be rebuilt. Simon Bar Giora, who commanded the defence of the Temple, died in the fighting. John of Gischala escaped and surrendered himself to King Agrippa II and was to spend the rest of his life in prison. Those Sicarii who escaped in the last frantic and confused moments of the battle headed for the fortress of Masada.
Masada stood perched atop an 1800 foot high plateau and was a formidable structure. It was here that the last drama of the Great Jewish Revolt was to be played out. But it wasn’t until 72 AD that the new Roman Governor Lucius Flavius Silva, decided to eliminate the last remaining thorn in the side of Roman rule in Judea. Flavius set about besieging the fortress building ramparts around and leading up to it so that battering rams could be used against its walls. The Sicarii did very little to impede his progress instead they continued to raid nearby towns that they felt were uncooperative or had collaborated with the Romans, killing many hundreds more of their own people.
The fortress of Masada was commanded by Eleazor ben Ya’ir (Who may have been Eleazor ben Simon) and the people within numbered around 950, mostly women and children. The actual siege lasted 2 months and the defenders managed to repulse some half-hearted Roman assaults but once a breach in the walls had been made it was only a short matter of time before the Romans launched a full-scale assault. Eleazor ben Ya’ir gathered his people around and ordered that they must all now take their own lives. As suicide is anathema to Judaism it was decided that people would draw lots to see who would kill whom. Then only the last man would have to commit suicide, possibly Eleazor ben Ya’ir himself. The mass-suicide was designed to show the Romans that the Jewish people would rather die than acknowledge defeat, be sold into slavery, and witness the destruction of their religion. When the Romans entered the fortress they found only 2 women and 5 children still alive, and were almost certainly sold into slavery.
The Great Jewish Revolt against Roman rule had come to an end, it wasn’t to be the last, but never again was Roman rule seriously threatened. Its consequences were severe as hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed and sold into slavery, and many, many more were to die of starvation and disease. It also marked the beginning of the Jewish diaspora as large swathes of the population fled far and wide in an attempt to escape the dead hand of Roman oppression.
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