RESISTANCE TO THE ROMAN
OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE
Masada at the time of the revolt
Both the great Jewish revolts against Roman rule should be seen not just as risings by a colonized people, inspired by religious nationalism, but as a racial and cultural conflict between Jews and Greeks....The Great Revolt of 66 AD and the siege of Jerusalem constitute one of the most important and horrifying events in Jewish history....Josephus was probably correct to see this long, savage and disastrous war as the work of small, malignant minorities on both sides....Titus had 60,000 men and the latest siege equipment. He could rely on starvation adn Jewish divisions to do their work. The defenders had about 25,00 fighters, split into groups: the Zealots, under Eleazar ben Sinon, held the Antonia and the Temple; the extremist Simon ben Giora and his Sicarii ran the upper city; and there were Idumeans and other partisans under John of Giscala. The mass of the citizens and refugees were the helpless prisoners of these militants. Josephus
describes the final stages of the siege [of Jerusalem] in horrifying detail. The Romans had to fight all the way. They stormed the Antonia, then took the Temple, which was burned, then Herod's citadel a month later. The people were sold as slaves, or massacred, or saved to die in the arenas of Caesarea, Antioch and Rome. Simeon ben Giora was captured alive, takent to Rome for Titus' triumphal process, then executed in the Forum....
After the fall of Jerusalem, only three Jewish centres of resistance remained: Herodium, which was taken soon after; Machaerus, taken in 72 AD; and Masada, the spectacular, 1,300-foot high rock on the edge of the Judaean desert....The details of the siege have been vividly recreated. SIlva had the entire Xth legion, plus auxiliaries, and countless Jewish prisoners of war as labourers. Taking the place was essentially a problem in military engineering of precisely the type in which Rome excelled. Its fall was inevitable and, when this became apparent, Eleazar [grand-nephew of Zealot founder and executed revolutionary, Judah the Galilean] forced or persuaded the remaining defenders to engage in an act of mass suicide....
Jerusalem was left a ruined city by the siege, its Temple destroyed, the walls nothing but rubble. But the woeful experience of these seven bloody years did not end the Graeco-Jewish clash nor the capacity of religious sentiment to drive pious Jews, young and old, to violent defence of their faith, however hopeless....
The last Jewish risings were precipitated by a wave of government hostility to the Jews under the Emperor Hadrian, who was in the East 128-32. Initially sympathetic to Judaism, he later swung into hostility...and developed a particular loathing for circumcision, which he classified with castration, a form of self-mutilation forbidden on pain of death. Hadrian introduced pan-Hellenistic policies throughout the East and one of his projects was to create a new, pagan polis on the ruins of Jerusalem, with a Roman temple dedicated to Jupiter on Temple Mount....
The Jews did not dare rise while Hadrian was in the East, though they armed secretly and built hidden fortifications. There were two legions stationed in the area. But as soon as Hadrian departed, the Jews of Judea struck and, says Dio [Roman historian Dio Cassius], 'the Jews in the entire world also rose and joined them and created a great deal of trouble for the Romans, secretly or openly, and even many gentile people came to their aid.' The revolt lasted four years. Roman losses, says Dio, were heavy. Legions had to be concentrated in Palestine from all over the Empire, including Britain and the Danube, so that eventually the Jews were facing no fewer than twelve. Once again, Roman methods were slow but systematic and sure, splitting up and isolating the rebel forces, starving outlying pockets into surrender, then gradually closing in on the remaining centres of resistance. The Jews occupied Jerusalem for a time but it had no walls and was not defensible. They held various fortresses....They seem to have made their headquarters in what was then the town of Betar, in the Judaean hills south-west of the capital, and this final stronghold fell to the Romans in 135 AD....
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Titus conquering Jerusalem
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