The Great Jewish Revolt

70 AD. Tens of thousands of Roman troops surround Jerusalem. What follows is one of the most brutal sieges in ancient history—and the dramatic climax of the Great Jewish Revolt. In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Guy Maclean Rogers to uncover the full story of this epic uprising against Rome. From its origins in rising tensions and religious strife to the devastating siege and destruction of the Second Temple, discover how this revolt shaped the ancient world and continues to resonate today. For more on The Great Jewish Revolt listen to our episode on Masada: Besieging Masada: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0FcheOKepMhzYGDjZUcP6a Myths of Masada: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5YncKSM3r79AD8PwmZNWjk Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

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• 1:35Tristan Hughes?

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• 2:18Tristan Hughes?

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• 2:58Tristan Hughes?

  It's 7080. Jerusalem is under siege. Some 50,000 Roman soldiers have descended on the city, keen to crush the greatest beacon of resistance still standing on. The brutal siege that followed would be the climax to a bloody revolt that has been going on for four years. An anti-Roman revolt that still resonates with many people today. We know it as the Great Jewish Revolt. It's the ancients of history hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. Joining me today to talk through the story of the Great Jewish Revolt, I was delighted to interview Dr. Guy McLean Rogers, the classicist historian, and an author who

• 3:41Tristan Hughes?

  has written an incredibly detailed book on the Great Jewish Revolt from origins to endgame. Let's get into the interview.

• 3:52Tristan Hughes?

  Guy, it is a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.

• 3:55Speaker 04

  Well, thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it.

• 3:57Tristan Hughes?

  You're more than welcome, but I hope you're ready because this is a massive topic, the Great Jewish Revolt. So we've got eight years. Of all that last eight years, we've got two Roman emperors, a merciless siege of Jerusalem, and, I mean, this whole event, it still holds so much meaning today, isn't it? It's still significant for people down to present day.

• 4:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, I tell my students all the time that most of the ancient history that I teach is fascinating and interesting, especially to ancient historians, but it's kind of all over. It doesn't really matter to most of my students who won the Peloponnesian War, but the revolt against Rome in sixty six and its outcome with the destruction of the temple and then kind of the progressive deterioration in relations between Romans and Jews and Jews and Christians unfortunately has resonances right down to the present.

• 4:58Speaker 04

  And actually, although I wrote the book back in twenty twenty twenty one, the events of the last year, the year and a half have only kind of heightened that sense that this is history that isn't over. It's living history. So, yeah, it's still present in the minds of tens of millions of people.

• 5:22Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. An interesting comparison or contrast you put there, Guy, with the Peloponnesian War between Athens and its allies and Spartans and its allies. But let's set the scene. So with the Great Jewish Revolt, what kinds of sources do you have to study this incredibly important period in ancient history?

• 5:42Speaker 04

  So obviously, the main source for the war itself is a narrative written by a very interesting and brilliant writer called Josephus, Labius Josephus, after he acquired Roman citizenship. His works are a little bit tricky because he, in fact, wrote an original version of it, apparently in Aramaic, which was kind of the sister language of Hebrew, and sent that version to his countrymen across the Euphrates River relatively soon after the war was completed in seventy three or seventy four. We don't have that.

• 6:28Speaker 04

  When Josephus went to Rome with Titus, he wrote a Greek version of it, which was finished around 79 CE. And that's the basic narrative account. Like a lot of people who have engagement with major historical events, Josephus decided afterward that he needed to write a much longer book about his people. And so in the 80s and early 90s, he wrote this monstrously large history of the Jewish people, which is usually called the Antiquities, but in fact was called in Greek the Archaeologica.

• 7:13Speaker 04

  And there's a section of it which deals a second time with the revolt. And toward the end of that, he decided that he needed to do what a lot of people, a lot of American generals do anyway, to write his life story, which was made as a kind of an addendum to the Antiquities. And one of the tricky parts of reconstructing what really happened is that there are some contradictions between his account of what went on, especially in the north during the war, in the life as compared to the war. And then finally, in the late 90s,

• 7:57Speaker 04

  he wrote another work, which was another defense of Judaism and Jews and their traditions, kind of against the slurs of this Greek intellectual called Appian. And again, there are kind of valuable pieces of information in that work as well. So we have to try to stitch everything together from those multiple sources written by Josephus. There also are accounts, shorter accounts in Greco-Roman sources, like Swetonius and Tacitus and...

• 8:37Speaker 04

  A third century Roman historian Cassius Dio. And then there are coins and archaeological artifacts and inscriptions. And I just want to put a plug in for the epigraphical sources, which have been put together in an unbelievably professional and useful corpus by a group of scholars in Israel and outside of Israel, which have English translations of all the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, and other language inscriptions throughout antiquity. So we have a lot of sources. The trick is always is, you know, making sense of them.

• 9:18Tristan Hughes?

  Sorting fact from fiction. But as you've highlighted there, Guy, and just to restate, the importance of Josephus because he was actively there. He was an eyewitness. He participated in this revolt. As we're going to see, you write several works, and in some of those in detail, he explores this revolt. But as you say, and with so many other ancient historians, my mind immediately actually goes to one of those prime figures who wrote about the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides, where he is involved in the fighting. Analyze the evidence very critically, because there is probably some bias in there trying to big up your role in the story. And also really justify why, as we'll see with the Romans, he is on the losing side.

• 10:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, that's actually exactly right. In the case of the analogy between Thucydides and Josephus, it's probably not quite as strong because Thucydides failed to relieve a city that was under siege for the Athenians. Whereas Josephus, after the siege and conquest of Jotopita, where he was kind of the presiding general on the Jewish side, you know, he surrendered and he went over to the Roman side and actually accompanied Titus to the siege of Jerusalem in seven days. So.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  So you're 100% correct. There are problems with working with Josephus's text, which are, I think, almost unique in antiquity. And also, a colleague of mine, a very good Josephus scholar named Steve Mason, has brought out some of the rhetorical issues in Josephus's text. And then finally, very quickly, Josephus has a sort of Deuteronomical view of history, which is essentially that God determines how everything is going to come out. And when the Jewish people are faithful to His commands, everything works

• 11:22Speaker 04

  out well. And when they don't, there's disaster. And that's sort of the brain that he puts all of this in for his readers. So we have to take all of those things into account.

• 11:34Tristan Hughes?

  So let's set the scene for the ultimate outbreak of this great revolt. So in those decades previous, Guy, how did the Romans control Judea? Because I have in my mind immediately big Titanic names like King Herod the Great at the time of Jesus of Nazareth. So what do we know about how the Romans controlled Judea in the run up to this great revolt?

• 12:01Speaker 04

  Right. So I think the starting point for understanding what happened and what went wrong really is just after the assassination of Julius Caesar. After Caesar was killed on the Ides of March in 44, his right hand man, Mark Antony, who had had some experience in this region, decided that the point man for Roman policy should be this guy Antipater II, who was an Ithumian, and his sons, Herod, eventually Herod the Great, and his brother

• 12:39Speaker 04

  Facile, who originally were made tetraarchs, or rulers of a quarter of territory. But after a couple of years, Antony decided that he would push the Roman Senate to make Herod into the king of Judea, the Galilee, the so-called Paria, which is the region to the east of the Jordan River, and then also South Syria. So in forty, Herod becomes king. And basically, from a strategic point of view, Herod's role was going to be kind of Rome's man to hold down

• 13:22Speaker 04

  this very valuable real estate, which was in between the Roman enemies, the Parthians to the east, and then, of course, the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. So it took Herod a few years to consolidate his role, but by thirty-seven, he was kind of in charge there.

• 13:44Tristan Hughes?

  And this is B.C. This is BCE. So this is more than fifty years before the revolt breaks out, got it?

• 13:49Speaker 04

  Right. So he's in charge from thirty-seven until he dies in four. And in my book, I sort of argue that probably the reason why Herod was successful was that he figured out that on the one hand, it would be important for him to keep order, which was always a kind of Roman requirement of their client kings. But he wasn't really that interested in policing the beliefs and the cultural practices of the people living in his kingdom as long as they didn't cross the line into, you know, public actions. So that's kind

• 14:30Speaker 04

  of how he did it. Unfortunately, after he died, his heir, his son-in-her, Archelaus, wasn't as successful.

• 14:43Speaker 04

  And after, you know, a relatively brief reign as ethnarch, not king, Augustus kind of had enough of his incompetence and rusticated him to southern Gaul. And at that point, he decided that he would start sending out governors, handpicked governors, who are called prefects to Judea to keep on top of things.

• 15:11Tristan Hughes?

  Right. So it goes from client kingdom to sending this son basically to lovely, not an exile, but a farmland retreat in what is today southern France.

• 15:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 15:19Tristan Hughes?

  And then it's the governors are basically the new rulers of Judea, Roman governors. I'm guessing this names like Pontius Pilate, who we have from the Bible as well. Are they, they're the new figures?

• 15:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, Pontius Pilate, of course, is the most famous of the prefects because of course, according to the Gospel of John, 1916, he's the guy that gave the order for the execution of somebody your audience may have heard of, Yeshua Nazarene, otherwise known as Jesus Christ. But in fact, Pontius Pilate had a lot of problems apart from that. And although his prefecture lasted for 10 years, he definitely made some mistakes which caused unrest.

• 16:07Speaker 04

  Like for instance, at one point, trying to sneak some Roman military standards into Jerusalem, which probably had representations of the Roman emperors on them. So the record of the prefects who were in charge from six to 41 was mixed at best. And I would say that the same goes for the guys who are running the show in Rome, like our friend Gaius Caligula, whose reign was from 37 to 41, who had the brilliant idea of introducing a statue of himself into the temple itself, which undoubtedly would have caused a major rebellion, a first big Jewish revolt at the time.

• 16:52Speaker 04

  Except that he was assassinated. So, you know, the early period from six to forty one, there were problems. In forty one, the Emperor Claudius decided to return Judea to client king rule under this guy Agrippa the first. And he sort of went back to the Herodian model of trying to, you know, leave people alone as long as they didn't cause riots and things like that. But he died suddenly in forty four. And at that point, the Romans decided again to send out governors,

• 17:35Speaker 04

  this time called procurators. And it's really in the period from forty four to sixty six, when the, when the revolt broke out, that you can see things begin to spiral out of control as a result, in large part of not only Roman mismanagement, but also increasing tensions between the different ethnic groups that were living side by side in most of the towns and cities in the region.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  This is the story of the one. As a shipping manager, he's running the dock, stocking supplies and making sure every order goes out on time. And Granger helps him stay prepared. From shipping supplies to PPE to hand tools, he counts on Granger to keep products moving and trucks rolling. So his operation runs smoothly, no matter the shift. Call one eight hundred Granger, click Granger dot com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done.

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• 18:59Speaker 02

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• 20:15Tristan Hughes?

  So there are these tensions that start bubbling under the surface just before the revolt begins. And as you've highlighted there, these tensions, they've been there for decades by the time of 66 AD or CE. And then it's almost an eruption of those tensions.

• 20:32Speaker 04

  That's exactly right. In fact, our friend Alexander the Great, in many ways, was responsible for laying the groundwork for all of this. Because until Alexander went through there in 332, basically, there were only indigenous peoples living in this area, speaking these Near Eastern languages. In Alexander's wake, his successors, the Lucas in this area, and his successors brought in a different culture, with different practices and traditions. And by the time we get to the middle of the first century CE...

• 21:11Speaker 04

  These peoples are living side by side in places like Caesarea on the coast, which was probably originally what they call a Phoenician foundation, but it had been kind of refounded by Hera the Great as a place that had synagogues in it, but also, you know, Greco-Roman public buildings and games being celebrated.

• 21:38Tristan Hughes?

  Theatres and racecourses and stuff like that.

• 21:39Speaker 04

  Yes, everything, all the the sort of typical things you would find in a Greek city of the first century. And there developed a conflict and a rivalry over who was going to be kind of in charge of places like Caesarea. Was it going to be the Hellenes, the Greeks, or people who Josephus called Syrians, who are probably non-ethnically Greek, but culturally Greek people? Or the Jews? And actually, that's kind of the exact starting point for the war itself, according to Josephus.

• 22:21Speaker 04

  That rivalry in Caesarea, it led to a riot over a sacrifice that a Greek guy decided he would make next to a synagogue owned by the Jews. And that was the start of it.

• 22:37Tristan Hughes?

  Well, yes, guys, so let's explore this trigger point. So you've highlighted that there, that these underlying tensions between these different cultural groups and various religions and so on, and that that kind of contrast and clashing. So highlight this spark and what happens in Caesarea with this Greek man deciding to to do this sacrifice outside of a synagogue.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  Right, so the background to the the spark which lit off the revolt was this conflict over who was going to be able to say that they were in charge of Caesarea. And essentially, both sides were provoking the other. But it got ratcheted up by this attempted sacrifice of birds outside of the synagogue. We don't know. Exactly what the purpose of the sacrifice was, but of course, it would have been presumably two or four some gods or goddesses and would have been seen by the Jews as an abomination.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  And they attempted to get the governor, the procurator, this guy Gessius Florus, to intervene. And instead of doing that, he, he sort of took off and went to Jerusalem. And because at the time, apparently, the, the Jews were of Judea were in arrears in the payment of the, the tribute to the Romans. He decided that he, what he would do is he would go to the temple treasury and withdraw 17 talents worth of silver, which was an enormous sum of money from the treasury,

• 24:25Speaker 04

  which was not the procedure that he was supposed to follow. And when the civilian population of Jerusalem protested against that, he unleashed upon them the auxiliary troops that were under his command and they massacred something like 3,600 civilians. And, you know, as I, I tell my students, you know, in, in these situations of ethnic conflict, they tend to be resolvable until large amounts of blood are shed.

• 25:04Speaker 04

  And it's really at that point in the spring of 66 that ethnic conflict turns into a, a war in Judea centered in Jerusalem.

• 25:19Tristan Hughes?

  So it is Jerusalem. I can imagine, as you say, news of that spreads far and wide. For instance, in my head, I was thinking similarities with maybe the Boston massacre before the American War of Independence. But I'm not quite sure that quite fits, but maybe in regards to that, that value. Well, how information about that is spread across to different groups of Jewish people across the area and all of a sudden the rebellion, this idea of revolt really takes deep and strong roots.

• 25:49Speaker 04

  Exactly. There were among the Jews leaders who tried to convince the population of Jerusalem to not react to what happened and escalate the situation. But I think you're exactly right that the news of what had happened. And I really think for your audience, that it's worth thinking about how it is that people would react to having their, you know, their sisters, their brothers, their grandparents killed, really without very much provocation. And at that point, I think a lot of people who were kind of sitting on the fence

• 26:33Speaker 04

  were kind of pushed over to the side of thinking that they really couldn't live with this, this particular governor. And when the Romans showed no inclination to punish this guy or replace him, I, I think that that's when the people who were in favor of a national liberation movement in Judea gained the upper hand. And that's, that's really the start of the war. Again, Josephus focuses on this episode where after this happens,

• 27:12Speaker 04

  the guy who was the, the head of security in the temple, a man named Elie Azar convinces the priests to no longer accept sacrifices on behalf of Rome, the Romans and Caesar or the emperor. He says that that's really the, the point at which the war begins. But I see that as essentially symbolic.

• 27:39Speaker 04

  They they are no longer willing to ask their God intervene on behalf of the welfare. So this is kind of a separation point. And then the fighting begins shortly afterward.

• 27:53Tristan Hughes?

  And so you have that spark. And as you said, we go from Caesarea to Jerusalem and the revolt, you know, seeds of the revolt is really taking root now and spreading far and wide. But of course, for those who decide still to take up arms against the Romans and join this revolt, I'm presuming it's mostly people from the Jewish population. You're still going up against a juggernaut, against the superpower. So you must know sooner or later, the Romans will come for you. So what is their strategy to try and fight the Romans once they've pinned their colors to revolt?

• 28:31Speaker 04

  It's not clear that during the early days, so spring, early summer of sixty six, that they had an absolutely coherent strategy. But as soon as the the dust settles and they realize there's going to be a Roman reaction, they do put together an army. Of course, the Romans, in reaction to what had happened in Jerusalem, send the governor of Syria down to first the Galilee and then to Jerusalem,

• 29:10Speaker 04

  led by this guy, Cassius Gallus, with a fairly large army, a substantial army of about thirty thousand. I don't think that he thought that he was going to have to besiege Jerusalem. I think he thought that he was going to go and intimidate them into acquiescence. But that's not the way it worked out. And his his army got mauled on the way into Jerusalem and on the way out of Jerusalem, losing, you know, more than fifty three hundred infantrymen and a cohort worth of cavalrymen. And that really put the cat among the pigeons because at that point.

• 29:49Speaker 04

  It was clear that the Jews who were in revolt were going to fight and they were not intimidated by Roman legions and they could, they could do damage to them. And that was a shock to the Romans.

• 30:06Tristan Hughes?

  It's a massive shock, isn't it? Because it said this army, thirty thousand, it's not just the local troops that the Jews had been able to manage and overwhelm in Jerusalem. This is an army which would include legionaries, like the best troops the Romans have available, their citizen soldiers. It almost feels like another, dare I say, a Tudaburg Forest kind of thing where, you know, full sense of security, ambushed, significantly mauled, as you've highlighted there, and almost then the Romans realizing, oh, bleep, you know, this is actually a much more difficult situation. This is a bigger revolt than we actually anticipated, than we imagined.

• 30:43Speaker 04

  Right. You're right. There is an analogy with what went on Tudaburg. Although the Romans lost a lot more guys in that valed in nine CE. On the other hand, the Jews had been cooperating with the Romans for, for a long time, actually arguably since even before the time of Julius Caesar. So I'm sure this was a, a huge shock for them. And as a result of that, Nero, the Roman, reigning Roman emperor, felt compelled to give the, the portfolio, the job of quelling what was clearly at this point a nationalist revolt

• 31:26Speaker 04

  over to another general, this guy Vespasian, who was a very experienced general. And it took Vespasian about a year or so. So into the winter of sixty seven.

• 31:41Speaker 04

  To put together a much larger army, an army which ultimately comprised about 60,000 soldiers.

• 31:51Tristan Hughes?

  Wow.

• 31:51Speaker 04

  Again, divided up into legionaries, allies and auxiliaries. But just so that people can get an idea of the scale of this, you know, although there are kind of differences among the ancient historians, most ancient historians believe that Alexander the Great went over to Asia Minor in 334 with like 40 or 45,000 soldiers. So this was a massive army that Vespasian then brought down into the Galilee in the spring of 67 with the intention of ultimately taking it down to Jerusalem.

• 32:31Tristan Hughes?

  And Vespasian at this time, a bit of background context, I always remember him because he's, he's an officer when the Romans invade Britain.

• 32:38Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:38Tristan Hughes?

  More than 20 years earlier, he's got a lot of experience. He's, well, I guess maybe not near the heart of Nero's regime, but he's an important figure. And has he had to journey, you mentioned it takes over a year for him to prepare and get this massive army to invade Judea. Has he come from elsewhere in the empire to get to the eastern provinces?

• 32:56Speaker 04

  Right, he was actually with Nero, who was on a concert tour in Achaia. So he didn't have that far to go. He was in Greece. He was an interesting character, you know, his reputation, both at the time and among modern ancient historians has always been sort of as a competent, if somewhat intellectually dull officer. But in fact, I think it masks, that reputation masks a more complex character, including a character of some degree of sort of ruthlessness and cruelty as well, as he would prove pretty rapidly.

• 33:37Speaker 04

  Once he led the invasion force into the, the Galilee. And so there's a war in the north in 67, in the spring of 67. And the two big sort of flashpoints were Jotapida, which we talked about a little bit before, where Josephus was the.

• 33:57Speaker 04

  Commander conquered by the Romans after, you know, a siege which lasted somewhere between, you know, thirty eight to forty seven days and then up on the Golan Heights at Gamla, another siege. And just to link this up a little bit with what I had to say about the Spasian. So Gamla is one of these places that's built up on a ridge with the high point where the ultimate defense of the Jews took place. And when the Romans finally pushed their way up there and conquered it, they just massacred everybody there and including the women and children. And Josephus, who's often accused of being a kind of, you

• 34:41Speaker 04

  know, a front man for his Roman masters, takes the time to point out that the Romans chucked over the side of the cliff all the babies that they found and everything. So there are some details in Josephus's accounts of the war, which shows that, you know, Josephus, despite those issues that we have to think about when we use him as a source, didn't just whitewash what happened in this war. And he's critical of Roman leadership in different times in the war.

• 35:15Tristan Hughes?

  It's quite similar to the vivid descriptions we have of the final fall of Carthage and that very, very bruised and bloody eradication of the Carthaginian population. But with that, so the Spasian with this large army, he's taken those key strongholds in the north in Galilee, you know, defeated Josephus at Jotapata. The Jewish faction opposing them in this war, as they've seen this new Roman army arrive, it's huge and it's gaining success as it's creeping its way towards Jerusalem. Is there anxiety in the Jewish ranks? So I've got in my notes here, there's always an internal civil war that erupts around this time in Jerusalem.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  Right. So from the very beginning, even before the outbreak of the revolt within Jerusalem, there were very deep divisions among the population.

• 36:07Speaker 04

  And once the revolt broke out, there definitely were strong opinions held by people about the wisdom of continuing the war or negotiating with the Romans. But as I said, after the shedding of so much civilian blood, the groups people often focus upon, the Sicarii, the so-called the Dagromen.

• 36:30Tristan Hughes?

  The Sicarii.

• 36:31Speaker 04

  And the zealots really kind of gained the upper hand, especially the zealots in Jerusalem. Interestingly, they were kind of undeterred by what happened in the Galilee. They were committed, and we have some evidence, which is a little bit difficult to interpret, but is still, I think, vital for understanding attitudes at the time within Jerusalem. So as soon as these rebel groups got in charge in Jerusalem in 66, they started minting coins, which have on them sort of slogans about their, their goals.

• 37:13Speaker 04

  And in the third and fourth year of the war, when, you know, it's obvious what's going to happen, which is it's either going to be Vespasian or after the suicide of Nero and Vespasian decides to pursue his future back in Rome, it turns out to be Titus. The groups in, in Jerusalem are having inscribed on those coins for the freedom of Zion, freedom of Zion. So, you know, there's a lot of talk, to go back to your original question about, you know, the resonances of this war.

• 37:59Speaker 04

  A lot of people talk these days and comment on the origins of Zionism. But you know, Zion and Zionism go back, in fact, to this time period and even before. It was a hill in Jerusalem. But Zion is also an idea of the people. So the short answer to your question is that these people in sixty seven and sixty eight and sixty nine were fighting among themselves in Jerusalem. But there was a huge level of commitment to actually achieving independence from Rome, no matter what the cost was.

• 38:43Speaker 04

  So that's why, even though they realized that Vespasian was coming for them, they were undeterred.

• 38:52Tristan Hughes?

  The hardliners are very much at the seat of power in Jerusalem at that time, aren't they? They're determined to keep fighting. And it seems like the Vespasian steamroller is going to get closer and closer to Jerusalem. You hinted at it there, Guy, that actually it's Titus who will get to Jerusalem. And quite briefly, before we explore the siege of Jerusalem, what is always this brief hiatus, which forces Vespasian to leave the scene? And ultimately, it's Titus, his son, who will continue the war?

• 39:19Speaker 04

  Right, so within Rome, of course, there were massive problems. Nero's reign really changed dramatically after the fire in Rome in sixty four, which just thoroughly destroyed three districts of Rome and seven others. And was one of the reasons why Nero put the squeeze on people to get their tribute monies in on time in the provinces. In some sense, Nero never recovered from that. And with the outbreak of the revolt, which didn't go well for the Romans in the very beginning.

• 40:00Speaker 04

  His popularity was deteriorating and there were, there were plenty of influential Romans around after 66 who had thoughts of trying to get rid of Nero. And so eventually, after rebellions by some of the governors up in the, uh, the Rhine-Danube border areas of the Roman Empire, Nero committed suicide and that led to a struggle, a succession struggle in 68, 69, famously called the year of the four emperors, Nero's replacements.

• 40:44Speaker 04

  And Vespasian, as it were, showed out to be the last man standing, in part because the Syrian legions and the legions in Egypt threw their weight behind him. And so instead of pursuing a risky siege of Jerusalem, Vespasian decided to kind of hold off and eventually make his way to Rome and he delegated finishing the Judean war to his son Titus. So it was left to Titus in the second half of 69 and then the beginning of 70 to, to go to Jerusalem and to conduct that siege.

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• 43:04Tristan Hughes?

  All right, so we've got now to the siege of Jerusalem. Guy, what happens with the siege of Jerusalem? This feels like the pinnacle, the climax to this whole revolt with the Romans, tens of thousands of Romans laying outside Jerusalem's very, very strong walls and those very determined defenders within.

• 43:24Speaker 04

  Right, so in a sense, this was kind of a replay of what had happened earlier in the war when the governor Cassius Gallus came down to try to intimidate the Jews into quitting. The difference was that Titus knew that this was a siege operation, which was going to require siege equipment and also even more importantly, planning for supply, for logistics, because he had to, you know, feed the Roman army there over months. He knew that to be the case. So the Romans had to break through the three sets of walls

• 44:08Speaker 04

  and it turned out to be an incredibly difficult task.

• 44:14Speaker 04

  And nowhere in Josephus's multiple accounts of this, does he give us Roman casualty figures? And I've always suspected that the reason for that was that they were quite high. Interestingly, descriptions of the combat, it often turns out to be the case that the rebels kind of outfight the Romans. But the Romans did what the Romans always did, which was to use their superior organization and their technical abilities.

• 44:50Tristan Hughes?

  The siege machinery, yes, catapults.

• 44:52Speaker 04

  The siege machinery to kind of batter their way through the walls, clear the defenders from them, establish camps, then move on. Eventually, it became kind of a a numbers game and then a supply game within the city itself. And essentially, the the defenders were running out of food. Unfortunately, from the point of view of of the rebels, in some sense, the siege and conquest of of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple by the end of August was kind of the denouement

• 45:36Speaker 04

  or the the inevitable outcome of the strategy which the rebels had adopted from the very beginning of the war, which was knowing that the Romans were coming to sort of back themselves into strongly defended places. And in my book, I argue, easy for me to say, and I say this humbly, easy for me to say, but I think that that was probably not a wise strategy because it kind of guaranteed that they would draw the Romans to these fortified places. And the most fortified place, of course, was Jerusalem.

• 46:19Speaker 04

  So in the end, it wasn't an accident that the war ended with the siege and then the burning down of the temple itself at the end of August.

• 46:33Tristan Hughes?

  It's interesting, Guy, isn't it? Because I also remember that famous painting which shows Romans, it looks like they were with a catapult or something, and they're at the walls of a gate. And it's a very kind of, dare I say, romantic, but very artistic portrayal of the siege Jerusalem. But I also know historically, you know, those walls, but layers of walls in Jerusalem, the Romans fighting their way through each layer. And then one of the great legacies of Herod the Great alongside the temple, which we'll get to, was, I think it's at the entrance to Temple Mount, where around that area, they had a strong fortress called the Antonia Fortress.

• 47:06Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 47:07Tristan Hughes?

  Very strong, an important stronghold for those last defenders. But once the Romans ultimately breach that stronghold, the Antonia Fortress, named after Mark Antony, then they're up on Temple Mount. And is it this picture of those last few rebels fighting in the temple itself? Is it like defending the last great building right at the centre of Jerusalem? Is that kind of the end of the siege, those last few fighters there?

• 47:34Speaker 04

  It's the end of the temple and the defence of the temple, but in fact, it's not the end of the siege of Jerusalem. It's a horrible scene. I mean, reading Josephus's description of it, it's a terrible thing. But there were rebels who survived even the destruction of the temple and continued to fight in Jerusalem itself, both above ground and actually below ground as well. So they did keep on fighting. So the siege went on in Jerusalem and Titus kind of unleashed his soldiers against the, their surviving civilian population

• 48:15Speaker 04

  of Jerusalem. And there were several more massacres within the city itself. You raised the issue of the analogy with Carthage before. I think it's a pretty good analogy. I think that we do have to imagine something like that at the end with a war, as it were, against a civilian population, many of whom would not have wanted to be there in the first place.

• 48:40Tristan Hughes?

  A bloody brutal end to the siege of Jerusalem. How significant is the destruction and the sacking of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Romans?

• 48:50Speaker 04

  Massively important. This is the destruction of the center of the sacrificial cult of the Jews. In fact, there were other temples, but they weren't recognized by the priestly authorities. And there's a huge amount of controversy among ancient historians about whether the Romans intentionally burned down the temple or not. But one thing that I think people should keep in mind is that after the destruction

• 49:34Speaker 04

  of the temple in Jerusalem, when Vespasian found out that there were Sicarii who were fomenting resistance in Egypt as well, he ordered one of those kind of alternative satellite temples there in a place called Laontopolis also to be destroyed, which is a sign that he wanted to eradicate the sacrificial cult of the Jews. He wanted to do it. So I think that this was a massive event, obviously, in the history of the Jews.

• 50:15Speaker 04

  And I'm sure some of your audience members will know that after the destruction of the temple... Jewish scholars who had either escaped from Jerusalem or relocated to Javna afterward on the coast, then spent literally hundreds of years debating what the significance of the destruction of the temple was. So it becomes incredibly important in Jewish history, but also the histories of Rome and Christianity. So in Rome, although Josephus in his works tries to argue that his friend Titus didn't want to destroy the temple,

• 51:00Speaker 04

  we have several monuments and inscriptions in Rome in which Titus and Vespasian were quite happy to be bragging about the way that they had destroyed Jerusalem, which includes the temple, of course. So you can't have it both ways. So this becomes the support and the justification for the Flavian dynasty of Vespasian and Titus and Domitian, changes the history of Rome. And then unfortunately, in the third and fourth centuries, Christian writers make the case that the destruction of the temple was kind of punishment

• 51:42Speaker 04

  for the co-Jews executing Jesus. And that very unfortunate, untrue and unfortunate slur goes on for literally hundreds and hundreds of years and poisons relations. And we're still living with the consequences of that, alas.

• 52:06Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. I will mention quickly one of those monuments that you've highlighted in Rome boasting about the Roman destruction of the temple, which is the famous Arch of Titus, isn't it? In the Roman Forum, which shows those soldiers bringing back, I'm presuming it's the treasures from the temple, including the famous mineral. There is so much gold, so much wealth stored in the temple that the Romans can bring back to Rome. And if I remember he serves me correctly, there's also that line of thought with the copper scroll. One of the Dead Sea Scrolls that the treasure it's referring to is treasure that may have been taken out of the temple. The truth of that, well, we cover in another podcast episode, so check that one out, too.

• 52:49Tristan Hughes?

  Should also mention that that arch of Titus, the famous arch of Titus, it is showing on it that the kind of the looting of the second temple in its destruction by the Romans at the pinnacle of the Great Jewish Revolt.

• 53:01Speaker 04

  That's exactly right. And not only that, but some of the treasures taken from the temple were were displayed by the Spasian in a kind of horrible museum of things looted from peoples in the in the Roman Empire. And we know now that in the Flavian Amphitheatre, or actually outside of it, there was at least one inscription, probably more, which claimed that the the amphitheatre had been built from the spoils of this war. So as I say to my students, you know,

• 53:41Speaker 04

  when you go to Rome and and the the amphitheatre or Colosseum is the most visited archaeological site in Italy, tens of millions of people every year. It is Rome, it's the metonym for Rome. Everyone that goes to Rome has a picture taken in front of that. It's a war memorial, but it's a triumphant memorial over the Jews. And I also, when I go there, which I do all the time, I always think to myself, you know, Rome had a large Jewish population at the time in the late first century. And, you know, every day they would be walking by

• 54:24Speaker 04

  this memorial to the eradication of their sanctuary and their defeat in war. And I ask my students to think about what the implications of that are historically. And there was a third, a third monument as well in the Circus Maximus, another place that had tens of millions of people pass through it from antiquity into the the medieval period.

• 54:57Speaker 04

  In which Titus was celebrated for destroying Jerusalem and falsely claiming that he was the first one ever to capture it. So the Flavian dynasty used this war as its primary claim to fame and power.

• 55:13Tristan Hughes?

  Naturally, there is almost an addendum you can do to the Great Jewish Revolt, which is that last stand at Masada with the Sicarii. We have done two episodes on Masada on the Ancients with Professor Jody Magnus in the past, so we won't explore that in detail today. I think to end this episode, Guy, I'll just kind of bring it back to the start. The great significance of this revolt, not just in Roman minds, not just in Jewish minds back in antiquity for hundreds of years following it, but also its importance down to the present day. This is a revolt that has endured in the minds particularly of Jews ever since antiquity.

• 55:54Speaker 04

  That's exactly right. And there is no, no evidence that in any way the story and then the memory of what happened is going away. This is an inflection point, I believe, in human history. I think it's the most significant event of the first century and the one with the, the greatest historical consequences, the end of which we have not

• 56:31Speaker 04

  yet seen. And that's both kind of a challenge, but also a little bit humbling for all of us who are involved in it, because people are invested in this story and its significance.

• 56:52Speaker 04

  In a way that they are not for any other event in antiquity that that I know of. This story, as I say, is not over. When you go to Jerusalem and you go to the so-called Western Wall, which is really part of the retaining wall for the temple mount that Herod had built, you're aware that you are at an active religious site. This is not like going to the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus and seeing a column from that temple there, one lonely column.

• 57:30Speaker 04

  We are, we are, in a sense, part of this story still. And I think that that's why it has so much purchase and draws so much attention to this day.

• 57:43Tristan Hughes?

  Guy, this has been a fantastic chat. Last but certainly not least, your book on this topic, which explores it in even more detail. It is called?

• 57:51Speaker 04

  It's called For the Freedom of Zion.

• 57:54Tristan Hughes?

  Brilliant, Guy. It just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.

• 57:59Speaker 04

  Oh, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

• 58:04Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was Dr Guy McLean Rogers talking you through the story of the Great Jewish Revolt. If you want to learn more about the events that followed the fall of Jerusalem, particularly the siege of Masada, where you can listen to two further ancients episodes we recorded on that very topic with Dr Jody Magnus. They are called The Siege in Masada, the first part, and Myths of Masada, the second part. Two great interviews there from a few years ago. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favor. Don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hits podcasts ad-free

• 58:44Tristan Hughes?

  and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's enough from me, and I'll see you in the next episode.

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