Jerusalem: The Biography

The pageant of divine statues and gilded floats, three or even four storeys high, heaped with treasure, afforded the spectators both ‘pleasure and surprise’, noted Josephus drily, ‘for there was to be seen a happy country laid waste’. The fall of Jerusalem was acted out in tableaux vivants – legionaries charging, Jews massacred, Temple in flames – and on top of each float stood the Roman commanders of every town taken. There followed what was for Josephus the cruellest cut of all, the splendours of the Holy of Holies: the golden table, the candelabra and the Law of the Jews. The star prisoner, Simon ben Giora, was paraded with a rope around his neck.

When the procession stopped at the Temple of Jupiter, Simon and the rebel chieftains were executed; the crowds cheered; sacrifices were consecrated. There died Jerusalem, mused Josephus: ‘Neither its antiquity, nor its deep wealth, nor its people spread over the whole habitable world nor yet the great glory of its religious rites, were sufficient to prevent its ruin.’

The Triumph was commemorated by the construction of the Arch of Titus, which still stands in Rome.^* Jewish spoils paid for the Colosseum and the Temple of Peace, where Vespasian displayed the prizes of Jerusalem – except for the Law scrolls and the purple veils of the Holy of Holies that were placed in the imperial palace itself. The Triumph and remodelling of central Rome celebrated not just a new dynasty but a rededication of the empire itself and victory over Judaism. The tax paid by all Jews to the Temple was replaced by the Fiscus Judaicus, paid to the Roman state to fund the rebuilding of the Temple of Jupiter, a humiliation fiercely enforced.^* Yet most Jews, surviving in Judaea and Galilee, and in the populous communities of the Mediterranean and Babylonia, lived as they had lived before, accepting Roman or Parthian rule.

The Jewish War was not quite over. The Masada Fortress held out for three years, under Eleazar the Galilean, as the Romans raised a ramp to storm it. In April 73, their leader addressed his men and their families about the realities of this darknew world: ‘Where is this city that was believed to have God himself inhabiting therein?’ Jerusalem was gone and now they faced slavery:

We long ago my generous friends resolved never to be servants to the Romans nor to any other than God Himself. We were the first that revolted against them; we are the last that fight against them and I cannot but esteem it as a favour that God has granted us that it is still in our power to die bravely and in a state of freedom, in a glorious manner, together with our dearest friends. Let our wives die before they are abused and our children before they have tasted slavery.

So the ‘husbands tenderly embraced their wives, and took their children into their arms, giving the longest parting kisses to them with tears in their eyes’. Each man killed his wife and children; ten men were chosen by lot to slay the rest until all 960 were dead.

To most Romans, the Masada suicide confirmed Jews as demented fanatics. Tacitus, though writing thirty years later, expressed the conventional view that the Jews were ‘sinister and revolting’ bigots, with bizarre superstitions including monotheism and circumcision, who despised Roman gods, ‘rejected patriotism’ and ‘have entrenched themselves by their very wickedness’. Yet Josephus collected the details of Masada from the handful of survivors who hid during the suicide and could not conceal his admiration for Jewish courage.

BERENICE: THE JEWISH CLEOPATRA

Josephus lived in Vespasian’s old house in Rome. Titus gave him some of the scrolls from the Temple, a pension and lands in Judaea, and commissioned his first book, The Jewish War. The emperor and Titus were not Josephus’ only source. ‘When you come to me,’ wrote his ‘dear friend’ King Herod Agrippa, ‘I’ll inform you of a great many things.’ But Josephus realized that ‘my privileged position exacted envy and brought danger’: he needed the imperial protection he received up to the reign of Domitian, who solicitously executed some of his enemies. Yet even as Josephus basked in Flavian favour in his last years – he died around ad 100 – he hoped the Temple would be rebuilt, and his pride in the Jewish contribution to civilization surged: ‘We’ve introduced the rest of the world to a very large number of beautiful ideas. What greater beauty than inviolable piety? What higher justice than obedience to the Laws?’