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- [00:06]
James Osborne
It was under the rule of the infamous Emperor Nero that the Great Revolt, the first of the Jewish Roman wars, began, sparking many decades of continuous conflict. Speaking to James Osborne for this episode of the History Extra Podcast, Barry Strauss, whose latest book is Jews vs Rome, traces the story following the fate of the Jewish rebels and and the legacy of the conflict.
- [00:30]
In the book, you look at the first Jewish Roman War, the Diaspora Revolt and the Barcock Revolt. And this is a series of wars between the Roman Empire and the Jewish people. You could say that this entire episode begins in 66 AD with the great Revolt, which is the first of the three wars. But of course there's a lot of backstory here. Could you please sketch the story of the Jewish people up until the this point and explain Judea's position at this moment in antiquity.
- [00:59]
Barry Strauss
Judea, which is what ancient Israel was called at this period, was a very old country. The earliest evidence we have of the Jews presence in the Holy Land is the end of the 13th century BCE in an Egyptian inscription we know that there was a kingdom or kingdoms in the Iron Age and that Jewish Judea was conquered first by the Assyrians and then by the Neo Babylonians. And in the beginning of the 6th century BCE, the elite at any rate was exiled. Jerusalem was captured. Jerusalem, the capital, the first temple was destroyed and part of the population was exiled to Babylonia, to what's now southern Iraq. And then with the conquest of the Neo Babylonian Empire. But the Persian Empire, they were allowed to return and, and some of them did. Some of them stayed in Babylonia, some of them returned to Judea, rebuilt Jerusalem and the Temple. And Judea was first a Persian province for several centuries, then conquered by Alexander and the Macedonians, went back and forth between the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires. And then in the second century BCE it won its independence under the Maccabees and was an independent state for about a century. While when the Romans entered the scene in the year 63 BCE they conquered Judea. They were actually invited in by one side in a factual dispute. They put their favorite king on the throne, they reduced the size of the state, and they made it a Roman dependency. And then about 25 years later it was conquered, this time by a new Persian new Iranian empire, the Parthian Empire, who briefly put their favorite candidate on the throne, after which the Romans reconquered it. And in 37 BCE, a new Roman king, Herod, the infamous Herod the Great, was on the throne, ruled for about three decades after his death. The kingdom was divided among his sons. And then in the year 6 CE, the Romans, the emperor Augustus, pulled the plug and made most of Judea a Roman province, which is what it was for most of the time for the next 60 years, until the great revolt broke out in 66.
- [03:17]
James Osborne
So by the time we get to 66 and the start of this great revolt, Judea is a country that has a really long, deep history, kind of extending back to ancient Mesopotamia. So this is, this is really a place that has a lot of history and has been already the site of a lot of conflict. Just to go a bit deeper on Judea, who exactly was living there by the time we get to 66? And what did Jewish identity mean at this moment in time? Is it ethnic, is it religious, is it cultural, is it something else entirely?
- [03:51]
Barry Strauss
Yeah, those are great questions. So in 66, Judea consisted of several different peoples. The main one, the dominant one, was the Jews. Their capital was Jerusalem. And they lived in the center of the country, in Judea and also in other places, notably Galilee and the Golan. To the north of Judea was Samaria. And there lived the Samaritans, who were the Samaritans. They also worshiped the God of Israel. They also had the Torah. But they did not recognize Jerusalem as their religious center. And they had their own priesthood and their own temple. There were a dozen or so cities in the region and they were predominantly inhabited by Greek speakers. Some of them were originally Syrians, Some of them were descendants of native people, native Canaanites. Some of them were descendants of Greco Macedonian colonists. Additionally, there were two groups of Arab peoples living in the northern part of the country, in the southern part of the country and also in the south central part of the country, there were the Idumeans. Who were the Idumeans? Well, they were descended from the ancient Edomites who had originally lived in what is now Jordan. They had migrated westward several centuries earlier. And in the 2nd century BCE they were conquered by the Hasmonean kings, the Jewish kings, and they converted to Judaism. So all these different people are living, living in the country.
- [05:24]
James Osborne
Okay, so in 66 AD then we have all these different groups. We have different cities, different languages. Would you say that this is a slightly divided kingdom?
- [05:35]
Barry Strauss
I would describe it as a divided kingdom. It was divided among these various different ethnic national groups, religious groups, but it was also divided among the Jewish people themselves. There were a variety of different groups among the Jews, as is well known. So in Jerusalem there was the priesthood, the so called Sadducees, the righteous ones. There was also the Pharisees, a group of popular religious teachers, preachers, scribes, scholars who worked with the people both in Jerusalem and outside in the countryside. In addition, there were those who had separated themselves from either group, the Essenes. And they were an apocalyptic group, a messianic group. They did not recognize the legitimacy of the priesthood in Jerusalem, and they were waiting for the day when a legitimate priest, one of their own, would return as high priest and would govern the temple in Jerusalem. Additionally, in 66, there was the new movement of Christ followers, or Jesus followers, the people who would become Christians. As you know, Jesus mission on earth came to an end several decades earlier. This was a group, a small group, but a growing group in Judea and elsewhere. So among the Jews, there were different people there also, I should say probably the majority of Jews were unhappy with the Roman rule, and a small minority were actually violently opposed to the Roman rule. There were two groups one could talk about. One is the. The Zealots. This would be a group among the priests. These were people who were extremely zealous for their religion and had trouble with the Romans, did not like the Roman rule. And then a very violent group called the Dagger Men or the Sicarii, that emerged a decade or two before the great revolt in 66. They were assassins. They carried daggers, and their target was not only Romans, but fellow Jews who they considered to be collaborators. And finally, I should say there were collaborators. There were Jews who accepted the Roman rule. Either they were resigned to it or they were glad to have the Romans ruling, glad to be part of the empire. These were generally to be wealthy people, noble people. There was still a Jewish king or two Jewish kings ruling in the northern parts of the country. And one of them had a certain amount of authority in Jerusalem. So there's great divisions in this country among the Jews themselves, not to mention among the different nationalities living there.
- [08:14]
James Osborne
It sounds like this is a place that's really deeply riven by lots of opposing ways of thinking. Now, let's flip to rome. So in 66, Nero is the emperor. The Punic wars are long past. Boudicca's revolt has just been put down in opposition to this picture of Judea as divided and unstable. Would you describe the Roman Empire as being at a moment of stability in 66?
- [08:42]
Barry Strauss
Well, perhaps compared to Judea, the Roman Empire looks stable, but in fact, it was going through problems of its own. So there had just been an uprising against Nero among the Roman nobility, which Nero had put down. And three years earlier, in 63, the Romans had suffered a defeat on the eastern frontier. They sent an army to the east, and that army was forced to surrender to the Parthians. It was humiliated. So there was a lot of instability, a lot of discontent with Nero as emperor. Everybody knew that people were waiting for an opportunity, if they could, to get rid of Nero. So Rome more stable than Judea, but not entirely stable.
- [09:26]
James Osborne
Okay, so in 66, we can think of Judea as divided along nearly every ideological fault line. But then you have Rome, which is powerful, but also unstable, crucially, under Nero. So what then actually sparks the first of these wars? What sparks the great revolt? Do we know what the immediate trigger was and any of the deep occurrence that made 66 such an explosive year?
- [09:57]
Barry Strauss
First, it's important to say that there had been smaller revolts against the Romans before 66. One in the year 4 BCE and then another one in the year 6 CE. And then there had been a series of incidents in the countryside and a series of Messianic figures. This is the golden age of apocalyptic thinking and Messianic thinking in Jewish culture and in Eastern culture more generally. So, in a sense, Judea was ripe for a revolt. But what made it happen was, first of all, the Roman governor, the procurator at the time was a man named Florus. And Florus was a Greek, not a friend of the Jewish people, and encouraged by Nero to get money because Nero needed money. There had been the Great Fire of Rome. So there was a riot against the Jews in Caesarea, which was the capital of the Roman rule. It was a seaport. Florus accepted a bribe from the Jews and promised to help them from the Jewish community in that town promised to help them. And then he reneged on the promise. And then on top of that, he helped himself to a part of the treasury of the Temple in Jerusalem. There were demonstrations against Florists in Jerusalem, and he put them down brutally. He sent in troops to massacre civilians. On top of that, there was a riot and then a massacre of Jews by the Gentile population in Caesarea, which led to further uprisings, both of Jews against Gentiles and Gentiles against Jews in the cities of the region extending into Syria. So there are these series of incidents, and this encourages the zealots in Jerusalem to make their move. Now, earlier, decades earlier, Herod had gotten Augustus to agree to sponsor daily sacrifices in the temple on behalf of the Roman emperor. The emperors expected people in the Roman world to worship the emperor and to sacrifice to the emperor. The Jews were exempt. They were, as a colleague of mine once Called them licensed atheists from the Roman point of view. But Augustus subsidized daily sacrifices at the temple on behalf of the Emperor. Well, the priesthood in Jerusalem now said that it's no longer possible to have non Jews sacrifice in the Temple. The sacrifices are closed off to non Jews, which was in effect a way of closing off these sacrifices by the Emperor and in effect declaring independence from Rome, saying, we no longer recognize the authority of the Romans. That was the sign that the revolt had broken out. And shortly afterwards the rebels in Jerusalem massacred the Roman garrison in Jerusalem. If it hadn't been clear before that a revolt was going on, it was certainly clear now.
- [12:56]
James Osborne
Okay, so to mix my metaphors, you've got these simmering undercurrents for decades, but then also as we build up to 66, there's also a series of sparks. There's lots of different things which I guess each seem like they could have individually been the moment when a revolt starts. But really, I think from listening to you it sounds like you can almost boil it down to there is just a lack of respect from the Romans towards the people of Judea in all these different ways. In all these different actions from Florists especially, you've just got this continuous lack of respect towards them as self governing people, towards their religious ideas. So you get the outbreak of the revolt. Can you then take me through the course of the early stages of the war? Like once the revolt begins, what do we then see?
- [13:49]
Barry Strauss
Sure. Well, when the revolt begins, the Roman governor of Syria comes south with a force, an army, about 30,000 men, to try to put the revolt down. I should point out that the Romans did not keep legions in Judea. Judea was governed by what the Romans called auxiliary troops. These were local troops who were recruited to fight for Rome. But they were not the elite troops of the legions. And by and large they weren't Jews either. Many of them were Samaritans and there was bad blood between them and the Jews. So they weren't able to put down the revolt. The Roman governor of Syria comes in. He's an older man named Castius, and he has a somewhat lackadaisical approach to this. I think he thinks that a simple show of force will put the rebels in their place and stop the troubles. But he's not prepared to lay siege to Jerusalem. It's the autumn, it's not the time of year to lay siege. The rains are about to begin and he is forced to go back home with his tail between his legs. Now both on the way to Jerusalem. But more significantly, on the way back to Jerusalem, the troops are ambushed, and they're particularly ambushed in a narrow valley and mountains leading westward from Jerusalem. It's called the Beit Horon Valley. It had been the scene of ambushes of armies before, and once again it was the scene of a successful ambush. The rebels destroy most of the Roman legion, so thousands of men are killed. This is a tremendous humiliation for Rome and it's not the sort of thing that the Romans can take lying down. It's bad for business to have provincials destroying a legion. And so Nero now has to send in reinforcements. He chooses a general who is a good general and a non threatening general. Nero had already forced his best general to commit suicide because he felt threatened by him. So now he chooses a man named Vespasianus. Vespasian, who had fought in Britain, had a successful military record, but seemed to be non threatening because he had no connection to the Roman nobility. He came from what was in the eyes of the Romans, a middle class family from the Sabine country north of Rome. And Nero felt, no way is this guy going to turn around and threaten me on the throne. So he sends Vespasian to the east. Vespasian has a larger force, closer to 60,000 men, and with them, in the next year, the year 67, he begins to defeat the rebels place after place. He starts in the north and proceeds to the conquest of Galilee and the Golan, which he succeeds in doing, forcing the surviving rebels in those areas either to surrender or to be killed or to flee to Jerusalem. And they went to Jerusalem not just for religious reasons, but because Jerusalem is an extremely well defended fortresses. It's one of the most highly fortified cities in the ancient world and it is not easy to lay siege to. In fact, it is impregnable on three sides. Only on the north is it vulnerable. And it's the north, of course, which invaders always targeted.
- [17:15]
James Osborne
So this is the opening stages of the war, really. It's the first two years. It seems to me that initially Rome responds quite conventionally, and then you have the Jews deploying what you might describe as guerrilla tactics. Would you say that Rome did initially underestimate the Jewish revolt?
- [17:34]
Barry Strauss
Yes, Rome underestimated the Jewish revolt. In fact, Rome tended to underestimate all the revolts against it. The Romans, it appears, lived in a state of irresponsible bliss towards the provincials. Again and again they're scratching their heads and saying, how could this have happened when rebellion after rebellion takes place in the provinces? But in part, it's because the Romans in general are relatively arrogant towards the people they conquer and think that the local elites will naturally gravitate to the Romans, both because of the threat of Roman military might and also the attraction of Roman culture, and also because the Romans, at the end of the day, have a very small army. They only have about 300,000 men to conquer an empire that stretches about 3,000 miles and whose population is perhaps 50 million people, most of whom do not want to be conquered by Rome in the first place. So revolts were inevitable. They were the price of doing business for the Romans, just as automobile accidents are the price of doing business for us.
- [18:35]
James Osborne
That's interesting. You've got Rome underestimating the Jewish resistance, but at the same time, this is a part of a broader pattern for them. But then it also strikes me that as soon as Rome does begin to take the revolt seriously and sends Vespasian down to deal with it, as soon as you have that more serious response, it feels like the Jewish rebels are almost immediately on the back foot. And I wondered, did they have a plan in place? Did they have any kind of sense of how they were going to win this war? Was that even an objective? Did they even think that was possible?
- [19:13]
Barry Strauss
Yeah, that's really a great question. It's a question that many of us have. You know, after the rebels were so successful with a guerrilla attack on the Romans, why did they switch to conventional tactics right away? I think one reason is that they tried to take another city, the city of Ascalon, modern Ashkelon, which had a non Jewish population, a non Jewish majority population, and a Roman garrison. They tried to take that and they were completely defeated by the Roman army, which devastated the rebel army. I think that discouraged them from going out in the field again. And I don't know why else they did not switch to a guerrilla strategy. But one reason might be because I think the rebels themselves were divided. And some of them thought, look, we should negotiate with the Romans from positions of strength. And so they retreated to fortified cities around the country. The other thing is that the rebels were hoping for help from the Parthians. All along there was always this idea that the Parthians will come in and help us. Either the Parthian state itself, which I think was quite unlikely, and they knew that, or the Jewish population of the Parthian Empire, which was considerable, there was a considerable diasporic population there, or perhaps the one vassal kingdom of the Parthian Empire whose ruling dynasty had converted to Judaism, that is the country of Adiabeen, which is Roughly modern Iraqi Kurdistan. They were very friendly. They had, as I said, the royals had converted to Judaism, they had built palaces in Judea, and they sent their sons to Jerusalem to be educated. And indeed, some of the members of the dynasty were in Jerusalem in 66. They had joined the rebellion and they were fighting for the rebels. So they were hoping that if they could hold out and do well enough against the Romans, and that aid would come their way from the east and it would make it an entirely different war. So, not great reasons to understand their strategy or lack thereof, but perhaps it gives us some idea of what they were thinking.
- [21:16]
James Osborne
Yeah, that begins to make more sense of it. So we're in the year 67. They've retreated to Jerusalem to fortified positions after finding this initial success. And they are hoping that either the Parthians will come to help while Rome is at this moment of weakness, or perhaps they might be able to negotiate some kind of conclusion from this position of strength from Jerusalem. Neither of those two things happen. What is Vespasian's response?
- [21:48]
Barry Strauss
Vespasian's response is a strategy of going from place to place in the countryside, defeating town after town, getting the inhabitants to surrender or massacring them or enslaving them, driving more and more refugees to Jerusalem and slowly squeezing Jerusalem, slowly squeezing its supplies, hoping, I think, that the rebels will see reason and surrender, because the siege of Jerusalem going to be long, costly, expensive and bloody. But before Vespasian can complete this strategy, politics intervenes and Nero is driven from the throne in Rome. He commits suicide and a new emperor takes the throne. In fact, a series of new emperors take the throne. And Vespasian very prudently says, I think I'm going to call a halt to this war until I get new instructions from the new master of Rome, whoever he may be.
- [22:45]
James Osborne
Yes, So I do want to pause and dwell on this moment. So this is the year 69, and this is the year of the four emperors, which listeners might have heard of. So this has obviously disrupted Vespasian's plans, which perhaps gives the Jews at Jerusalem a moment of reprieve. Can you establish the importance of the Year of the Four Emperors within the broader Roman context, but also within the context of this war?
- [23:15]
Barry Strauss
So Nero's driven out of office and he is replaced first by an elderly senator who's in Spain, a man named Galba. Galba's replaced in turn by a man named Otho, who is replaced in turn by a man named Vitellius. So all heck is breaking loose on the Roman scene in Other words, and the dynasty that Augustus had put in place, or even Julius Caesar had put in place, has now come to an end. And it is unclear who is going to be legitimate, who's going to have, as the Chinese would say, the mandate of Heaven, who's going to rule Rome and their armies marching back and forth in the Roman world. But to top it all off, there's a fourth candidate for the throne, a fourth pretender, and that is Vespasian himself. And to add to the picture, the kingmaker is none other than a Jew in the Roman service, a man named Tiberius Julius Alexander, who was an Alexandrian Jewish who had held a number of important positions, civil and military positions, in Rome, and at the moment was governor of Egypt and controlled several legions. The fact that he goes over to Vespasian and acknowledges him as emperor gives Vespasian the heft to be able to say, I've got armies enough that I can take Rome myself. And so this is also going to put a halt to the business of repressing the revolt in little Judea, which, after all, is a very small place compared to the entire Roman Empire. So Vespasian's eyes now are on the big prize. Rome and Judea is secondary.
- [24:58]
James Osborne
So Vespasian is distracted away from Judea. But once he does become Emperor, he must also be very, very keenly aware of what's going on there and the challenges with trying to root out this Jewish revolt. Once he does become emperor, how does he react to begin to bring this war, this ongoing war that's been stretching on for a handful of years now, how does he go about trying to bring that to an end?
- [25:25]
Barry Strauss
Once he becomes Emperor, Vespasian returns to the subject of the Jewish war and he gives the command to his son titus, who's about 30 years old. Titus had fought with him in Judea before, and so he knew the country, but he's still quite young. So Titus takes as his chief of staff none other than Tiberius Julius Alexander, the governor of Egypt, and a very safe pair of hands when it comes to military matters. The two of them put together an army of legions and auxiliaries and allies, and it's now their turn to march on Jerusalem and to get the city to surrender or to suffer a siege. But the rebels in charge of Jerusalem have no intention of surrendering. They believe they can withstand a siege. That is a very dangerous position for them to take, and irresponsible, because in the meantime, what has happened in Jerusalem is that the rebels have fought each other. They fought and killed Each other. They seem to be as interested, if not more interested, in internecine warfare than in fighting the Roman enemy. And to top it all off, they burnt the grain supplies in the city. Jerusalem had had grain supplies that would last several years. It also had a natural source of water, a spring within the walls. So they didn't have to worry about water, which is always an issue in the Middle East. They did have to worry about food. And now there was a shortage of food. And this was the city that decided to withstand a Roman siege. And in the year 70, the Romans get down to the business of laying siege to the city.
- [27:09]
James Osborne
Yeah. And of course, it's in the year 70, under the command of Titus, that we see the destruction of the second Temple of Jerusalem. This is one of the great tragedies of Jewish history. For listeners, how would you explain the significance of that event, both culturally but also politically, within the context of the war?
- [27:31]
Barry Strauss
So culturally, the Jewish religion had stood on three pillars up to this time. The belief in God, the belief in the Torah, and the belief in the Temple. And in the last century, particularly starting with Herod, the Temple had been built bigger and better than ever. It became a center of pilgrimage from around the Jewish world, from around the Diaspora, stretching westward and eastward. And now the Temple was gone. It was destroyed. The Jews wanted to rebuild it. They mourned it, they wanted to rebuild it. But the Romans wouldn't let them rebuild it because it also had a political significance. From the point of view of the Romans, Judea was a Roman province governed from the city of Caesarea on the sea on the Mediterranean. From the point of view of the Jews, Judea was Israel. It was the Holy Land, and it was governed from the house of God, the Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Temple had always been the beating heart of the rebellion. And the Romans believed that if they destroy the Temple, they destroy any future possibility of rebellion. So from their point of view, from the political point of view, it's absolutely out of the question that the Jews would be allowed to rebuild the Temple,
- [28:48]
James Osborne
of course, because it's this symbol of Jewish uniqueness, and that's something that the Romans want to suppress. So the Temple's been destroyed. Do you see this as the beginning of the end of the revolt?
- [29:01]
Barry Strauss
It is the end of the revolt. With the destruction of both the Temple and Jerusalem, the entire city of Jerusalem is destroyed. The revolt is effectively over. There's still a few pockets of resistance. Some of the rebels flee to Egypt and to Cyrenaica, that is northeastern Libya, where there are large Jewish populations, some of them flee to places in the countryside, most famously Masada, where in fact, the dagger men, the Sicarii, had fled at the beginning of the revolt when they ran into trouble with other factional groups in Jerusalem. And they were still there when the Romans finally decide to suppress them. This is not anything new. The Romans had done this before in rebellions. They had allowed communities of surviving rebels to survive until the Romans, in their own good time, got around to wiping them out. And so it's probably in the winter of 74 when the Roman army goes after Masada and decides to get rid of this last group of rebels once and for all. The very famous scene, of course, from ancient history, the siege of Masada and the mass suicide execution of the rebels on top of the hill there.
- [30:18]
James Osborne
Yeah, of course. And that really does bring the first of these three wars to its kind of final conclusion. You emphasize a lot in your book that Jewish disunity played this big role in their defeat. And you mentioned how disunited they were while they were seeking to withstand the siege in Jerusalem. It also strikes me as you're talking that perhaps they had opportunities that they didn't fully capitalise on. Such as? With all the instability going on in Rome in the year of the Four Emperors, it seems like perhaps if they had been more united, they might have been able to muster some kind of better response that would have been able to give them a bit more leverage, perhaps. Overall, what do you think they did well in this war and where do you think they made their biggest mistakes?
- [31:11]
Barry Strauss
Yeah, that's a really great question. I think the fact that they revolted at all is a tribute to their success. The fact that they were able to defeat Cestius army, destroy a legion, is a great success. The fact that they fortified their cities and they refortified Jerusalem, they strengthened the fortifications, fortified the city of Jotapata in Galilee, where Josephus was in command. Again, that speaks to their success. But overall, the lack of unity just fatally hamstrung this rebellion. Their inability to have a unified command. I just don't think that anyone can run a war under those circumstances. And their self destruction in Jerusalem is just really outstanding. No way they could have won under those circumstances. So I can't give them very high marks from the military point of view, I'm afraid.
- [32:04]
James Osborne
Do you think there was ever a moment when they could have, if not won, perhaps come out the other side stronger than they had gone in? Or was that just never going to happen?
- [32:14]
Barry Strauss
If they negotiated early on from a position of strength in Jerusalem and said to the Romans, look, there's been a terrible misunderstanding here and can we have a new arrangement so that there'll be no longer any massacres of civilians? Then perhaps they could have made a deal with the Romans. I mean, the Romans had been known to stand down in revolts before. However, they would really have to worry about the future and when the Romans might turn around and say enough of this. So very tough to have any kind of successor revolt against, against the Romans. But yes, I would say that would be their best strategy early on to negotiate and say, look, we've shown what we can do, we know what you guys can do. Let's reestablish our relationship with us being an ally of Rome. Give us a little more assurance that you're not going to do this sort of stuff anymore.
- [33:07]
James Osborne
But of course, as you say, Rome isn't ever going to be one to have seen to acquiesce to one of its client states. Even if those leading the Jewish revolt had had a momentary success through that route of negotiation. You know, you say that like this would have come to have consequences further down the line. Do you think that's right?
- [33:28]
Barry Strauss
Probably. It depends. You know, the Germans successfully revolted against the Romans. They destroyed three Roman legions. And after the Romans sent in punitive expeditions, the Romans basically accepted the fact they lost and they withdrew. So it's not entirely impossible that they would have succeeded. I mean, I think that one thing that's been suggested by Martin Goodman, you know, very great historian in this period, is that the Romans might have allowed the Jews to have the hill country around Jerusalem. As long as the Romans had the coast and the main highway, the so called Via Maris, they might have agreed to something like that. I don't think that's totally impossible. But an entirely independent Jewish state driving the Romans out, there's no way the Romans would ever have agreed to that.
- [34:13]
James Osborne
And this is all counterfactual. But what isn't counterfactual is the fact that after the revolt, after it's done, Rome imposed very harsh measures on Judea. Can you set out how they reacted after the revolt had ended?
- [34:27]
Barry Strauss
Well, I mean, a lot of people had been killed, a lot of Jews have been killed. And Josephus says that 97,000 people were enslaved and sold abroad. And although his numbers are often exaggerated, this is one that might be accurate because they did, after all, keep account of slaves that they, they sold. Jerusalem was destroyed, it was in ruins, it was left in ruins. Just as Carthage and Corinth had been left in ruins for a long time. And now there was a Roman Legion, the 10th Legion, that was garrisoned in Jerusalem. Lots of land was confiscated. Jerusalem was confiscated and given to the Romans. The temple was not going to be rebuilt. The priesthood was not going to carry out its functions at the temple. And so it was a harsh settlement nonetheless. The majority of the Jewish population still lived in the land and there was a chance to rebuild, if not to rebuild, the temple. The other measure that the Romans carried out is something extraordinary, and that is the Fiscus Judaicus, the Jewish tax. Every Jew within the Empire was now required to pay an annual tax to Rome, and not just to Rome, but to the chief God of Rome, to Jupiter of the Capitoline Hill. And this was meant to be humiliating. It was, it said, in effect, our God has won, your God has lost, he doesn't even have a house anymore. But also was a way of driving home the message to all Jews that don't try this again, Rome is in charge, and don't even think about rebelling any further.
- [36:04]
James Osborne
But of course, as we know, they certainly do try it again. Do you think that the Romans made a strategic mistake by being so punitive? I mean, we've talked about the mistakes on the Jewish side, but do you think that the Romans actually created the conditions for the second and then stemming from that third revolts? And would you posit that this is almost one continuous long struggle, much like how historians now will say that the Second World War is inseparable from the first and that it grew out of it, that it was contingent on it? Do you see that here?
- [36:45]
Barry Strauss
That's an excellent point, James, and I certainly do. I think that the three revolts were all part of a continuum and that the Romans, by being so punitive, by doing this extraordinary, humiliating thing, we're creating the conditions for the second revolt? I think they would have been much better off enlisting the Jews as friends rather than making permanent enemies of them as they did so. Indeed, a mistake.
- [37:13]
James Osborne
That's a really interesting point. So do you think, as a military historian, that there's almost a strategic lesson for how great powers should treat their defeated enemies in a lesson in being magnanimous in victory and power?
- [37:30]
Barry Strauss
Absolutely. You took the words out of my mouth, as Churchill said, in victory, magnanimity. And this is a case in which the Romans do the opposite.
- [37:38]
James Osborne
And as you said, then, this then creates the conditions that lead on to the second and the third wars. And that's an incredibly long story and they're just as fascinating. And of course that's all in your book. But putting those two wars aside for now and stepping back and looking at the broader picture, I want to ask some broader questions. Something that I was super interested in was why do we see this almost unique resilience from this specific set of people? Like there are other peoples that Rome conquered, so the Britons and the Gauls, and they eventually did fade into the empire, but Judea really, really almost refuses to be entirely absorbed. What explains that, if anything?
- [38:18]
Barry Strauss
Yeah, I think the simple answer is they almost succeed. I mean, as my colleague Seth Schwartz says, it was a very thin margin that kept them going. In some ways the Romans were successful. In some ways, many Jews did essentially assimilate to Roman ways without question. What keeps them going is first of all the holy book, the Torah, the fact that they have their book of books. And secondly, the rabbinic movement grows up and this is a movement of men who believe that they need to keep the religion alive, they need to keep the people alive, and they come up with strategies to do that. They believe that resistance must continue, but it will be spiritual resistance, not physical resistance, not material resistance against the Romans. They accept the Roman rule, they are humble before the Romans, they're deferential in front of the Romans, but in their hearts and in their writings, in their teachings, they continued the traditions of the Jewish people.
- [39:24]
James Osborne
You mentioned the belief in spiritual resistance being part of the explanation for why this group of people are so resilient. I wanted to step back and ask more broadly, how central was religion in this conflict between the people of Judea, the Jews and the Romans? Some accounts treat it just as pretext, and then I've also seen it described as the driving cause. Where on the axis would you situate it?
- [39:51]
Barry Strauss
Well, in my book I talk about the rebellion being a place where the apocalypse and geostrategy meet. And I think that's how I see it. I think that religion is absolutely crucial in driving the rebels. As I said, this is the golden age of apocalyptic thinking, thinking the world's going to come to an end and the redemption is at hand and a messianic figure will lead the Jews to the Kingdom of God. On the other hand, the rebels are not just wild eyed religious fanatics. They're also thinking about strategy, geostrategy. They're thinking about the Parthian Empire, they're thinking about the Roman strengths and weaknesses. So from the point of view of the rebels, I think both are important in a way. The more difficult Question is, what role does religion play for the Roman Romans? And it's hard to imagine that the Romans look at this and say, we are so insulted by the God of Israel and the failure of these people to recognize the emperor as a God and to recognize Jupiter, that we're going to go to war against them. I don't think that was the case. However, it's not as if the Romans were completely indifferent to religion. They weren't. The fact that the temple of Jupiter is destroyed during this war, not destroyed by Jews, destroyed in the civil war in Rome, makes the Romans think there's a lot more at stake in this war. And it is a matter of our gods versus their God. So they see that and it's important for them. And that's one of the reasons why they have the Jewish tax after the war. I don't think it's anywhere near as important as it is for the Jews, but it's there as a factor that's
- [41:29]
James Osborne
interesting to think that the role of religion in this conflict is actually different for the different sides.
- [41:34]
Barry Strauss
I think it is, yeah.
- [41:35]
James Osborne
That makes a lot of sense. So to wrap up this really broad story, and obviously there's so much more to it, do you think that this episode of history of the Roman Judean wars is still relevant to the current Jewish culture and identity? And where do you think that this moment in history sits among the other defining moments of Jewish history?
- [41:59]
Barry Strauss
So I do think it's relevant. I do think this period is relevant to current Jewish identity, Jewish history. As you know, the early Zionists looked to the rebels as role models. In some sense, they modeled themselves on the rebels. They took names from the rebellion. And Masada has long played an important role as a symbol of Zionism, a symbol of Israeli identity and a symbol of Jewish identity. Furthermore, what remains of the Temple, the Wall, the foundation wall that Herod built to hold up his new Temple Mount, part of that, the west, part of the Western Wall has been venerated by Jews for millennia, really, since the destruction of the Temple. So it plays an important role. That being said, there are many different opinions among Jews about, about this period. Some will look at it as a sad period that we should not focus on, and we need to turn the page and not focus on this period. And there are some Jews today who would say, you know, that the Diaspora in antiquity was incredibly rich. Culturally, it remains incredibly rich today. We shouldn't focus on this period. There's so many other things that are more important in the Jewish story to focus on. So I think it's a matter of debate how important it is. I think it's very important. But not everyone would agree.
- [43:24]
James Osborne
That was Barry Strauss speaking to James Osborne. Barry is a professor of history and humanistic studies at Cornell University and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. His book, which examines the wars in full, is Jews versus Two Centuries of Rebellion against the World's Mightiest Empire. This is the story of the 1. As a maintenance tech at a university, he knows ordering from multiple suppliers takes time away from keeping their arena up and running. That's why he counts on Granger to get everything he needs, from lighting and H vac p parts to plumbing supplies, all in one place. And with fast, dependable delivery, he's stocked and ready for the next tip off. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.