Masada and Eleazar’s Speeches

When Bassus had died in Judea, Flavius Silva succeeded him as governor. He saw that the rest of the country had all been subdued in the war and that only one fortress still held out in revolt, so he gathered all the forces in the region and marched against it. The fortress was called Masada. The Sicarii who had seized it were led by a man of influence named Eleazar. He was a descendant of the Judas who, as we related earlier, persuaded not a few Jews not to enroll in the census when Quirinius was sent to Judea as censor. For it was then that the Sicarii banded together against those who were willing to submit to the Romans and treated them in every way as enemies, plundering and driving off their possessions and setting fire to their houses. They said such people were no different from foreigners, since they had so ignobly thrown away the freedom the Jews thought worth fighting for and had openly chosen slavery under the Romans. [a]

But this was only a pretext, put forward as a cloak for their cruelty and their greed, as they made plain by their actions. For those who had joined them in the revolt and taken part with them in the war against the Romans suffered still worse outrages at their hands; and when they were shown up again as lying about their pretext, they only did more harm to those who justly reproached them for their wickedness. Somehow that time had become so fertile in every kind of wickedness among the Jews that no evil deed was left undone, and if anyone had wanted to invent something, he could have found nothing new. So diseased were they all, in private and in public, and so did they compete to outdo one another in impiety toward God and injustice toward their neighbors: the men of power oppressing the common people, and the common people eager to destroy the men of power. The one side craved tyranny; the other craved violence and the plunder of the rich.

It was the Sicarii who first began this lawlessness and this cruelty toward their own kin, leaving no word unspoken that might insult, and no deed untried that might destroy, those they plotted against. Yet John showed that even they were more moderate than he was. He not only killed everyone who gave just and useful advice, treating such men as the very worst enemies he had among the citizens, but he also filled his country with countless evils, as a man would who had already dared to be impious toward God. He set unlawful food on his table and abandoned the established purity of our fathers, so that it was no longer any wonder that a man so mad in his impiety toward God did not keep gentleness and fellowship toward men. Again, what evil did Simon son of Gioras not commit? What outrage against the persons of free men did those who had made him their tyrant hold back from? What friendship, what kinship, did not rather make them bolder in their daily murders? To harm strangers they considered a mean sort of wickedness; cruelty to their nearest relatives they thought a splendid display.

The madness of the Idumeans rivaled the folly of these men. Those most abominable wretches slaughtered the high priests, so that not even a part of reverence toward God might be preserved, and cut away whatever remnant of civil government was left. They brought in complete lawlessness in everything, and in it flourished the breed of men called Zealots, who proved their name true by their deeds. For they copied every work of wickedness, and if memory had handed down any evil done before, they did not leave it unemulated. They had taken the name from zeal for what is good, either to mock those they wronged, because of their own brutal nature, or because they counted the greatest evils good. So each of them found a fitting end, God awarding them all the punishment they deserved. Every penalty that human nature can endure fell upon them, down to the last end of their lives, which they met dying in tortures of every kind. Yet one might say they suffered less than they had done, for a punishment matching their deeds was not possible. But to mourn as they deserve those who fell victim to these men’s cruelty is not for the present occasion. I return, then, to the remaining part of the narrative.

For it was against Eleazar and the Sicarii who held Masada with him that the Roman general now came, leading his forces. He at once took control of the whole surrounding country, placing garrisons at its most strategic points. He built a wall all the way around the fortress, so that none of the besieged could easily escape, and posted men to guard it. He himself camped at a spot he had chosen as the most suitable for the siege, where the rocks of the fortress came closest to the neighboring mountain, though it was otherwise ill-placed for getting supplies in plenty. Not only did food have to be brought from far off, at great hardship to the Jews assigned to the task, but even drinking water had to be carried to the camp, since the place had no spring nearby. Having made these arrangements beforehand, Silva turned to the siege. It called for great skill and hard labor because of the strength of the fortress, which was of the following kind.

A rock of no small circumference and lofty height is broken off on every side by deep ravines. They drop sheer from a bottom the eye cannot see, and no living creature can set foot on them, except in two places where the rock gives way to an ascent, and not an easy one. One of the paths runs from Lake Asphaltitis toward the sunrise; the other comes from the west, where the going is easier. The first they call the Snake, likening it to that creature for its narrowness and its endless windings. It breaks off around the jutting cliffs, often doubles back on itself, and then stretches out again little by little, barely making headway. Whoever walks on it must plant first one foot and then the other. Death is in plain view, for on either side the cliffs yawn to a depth whose terror can unnerve any courage. After nearly four miles of such a path, what remains is the summit, which does not narrow to a sharp point but is a plain on top. [g]

On this summit Jonathan the high priest first built a fortress and named it Masada. Later King Herod took great pains over improving the place. He raised a wall of white stone around the whole circuit of the summit, nearly a mile long, eighteen feet high and twelve feet thick. On it stood thirty-seven towers, each seventy-five feet high, from which one could pass into rooms built all around the inside of the wall. For the king had left the top, which was rich soil and softer than any plain, open for farming, so that if supplies from outside ever ran short, those who had trusted their safety to the fortress would not suffer from that lack either. He also built a palace on it at the western ascent, below the walls of the citadel and inclining toward the north. The palace wall was high and strong, with towers ninety feet high at its four corners. Inside, the rooms, colonnades and baths were fitted out in every style and at great cost. Columns, each cut from a single stone, stood everywhere, and the walls and floors of the rooms were paved with stone of many colors. At every inhabited spot, both on top and around the palace and in front of the wall, he had cut many large cisterns in the rock to store water, contriving a supply as plentiful as people have who use springs. A road dug through the rock led up from the palace to the very top of the summit, hidden from those outside. Even the open roads, however, could not easily be used by enemies. The eastern one, as we said, is impassable by its very nature; and across the western one, at its narrowest point, he built a great tower no less than 1,500 feet from the summit. It could not be passed and was not easy to take, and it was built so as to make the way through hard even for those walking with nothing to fear. So the fortress had been strengthened against enemy attack both by nature and by the hand of man.

Still more would one have marveled at the splendor and the lasting freshness of the stores laid up inside. A great deal of grain was stored there, enough to last a long time, much wine and oil, every kind of pulse, and dates heaped up in piles. When Eleazar and his Sicarii made themselves masters of the fortress by treachery, he found all of it in good condition and in no way inferior to provisions newly laid in, although nearly a hundred years had passed from the time it was stored to the capture of the place by the Romans. Indeed, the Romans too found what remained of the produce unspoiled. One would not be wrong to suppose that the air was the cause of its lasting, since at the height of the citadel it is free of every earthy and muddy mixture. A great mass of weapons of every kind was also found there, stored up by the king, enough for ten thousand men, together with unworked iron, bronze and lead, for the preparations had been made for serious reasons. It is said that Herod furnished this fortress as a refuge for himself, suspecting a double danger. One was from the Jewish people, that they might depose him and bring back to power the kings who had reigned before him. The greater and more dangerous one was from Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. She did not hide her intentions, but often spoke to Antony, asking him to kill Herod and begging him to give her the kingdom of the Jews. And one would rather wonder that Antony, miserably enslaved as he was by his passion for her, never obeyed her orders in this, than that anyone should have expected him to refuse her. Because of such fears Herod built up Masada, and he was to leave it to the Romans as the last task of their war against the Jews. [j]

When the Roman commander, as we said, had walled the whole place around from outside and taken the most careful precautions that no one should escape, he set about the siege. He found only one spot that could take the building of earthworks. Behind the tower that blocked the road leading from the west to the palace and the summit, there was a projection of rock of great breadth, jutting far out, but 450 feet below the height of Masada. They called it Leuke, the White. Silva climbed up onto it, occupied it, and ordered the army to bring earth. They worked eagerly and in great numbers, and a solid embankment rose to a height of three hundred feet. Even so, this did not seem firm enough or high enough as a base for the engines, and on top of it a platform of great fitted stones was built, seventy-five feet both in width and in height. The other engines were built like those that Vespasian first, and Titus after him, had devised for their sieges. A tower ninety feet high was also completed, cased all over in iron. From it the Romans shot many bolts and stones from their catapults and quickly drove back those fighting from the wall and kept them from leaning out over it. At the same time Silva had a great battering ram made and ordered it driven against the wall again and again, and with difficulty he broke through a part of it and brought it down. [m]

But the Sicarii were quick to build another wall inside, which would not suffer anything of the kind from the engines. They made it soft and able to deaden the force of the blows, in this way. They laid great beams lengthwise, end to end, joined at their cut ends. There were two parallel rows of these, set as far apart as the thickness of a wall, and they filled the space between with earth. And so that the earth would not spill out as the mound rose, they tied the lengthwise beams together with other beams laid crosswise. So their work was much like a built wall; and the blows of the engines, falling on something that gave way, were deadened, while the shaking packed it down and made it firmer than before. When Silva saw this, he thought he would do better to take the wall by fire, and he ordered his soldiers to hurl burning torches at it in volleys. Since it was made mostly of wood, it quickly caught, and being loose in structure it burned through its depth and blazed up in a great flame. Just as the fire began, a north wind was blowing that alarmed the Romans; it turned the flame back from above and drove it against them, and they almost gave up their engines for lost, expecting them to burn. Then suddenly the wind shifted to the south, as if by divine providence, and blowing hard the other way it carried the flame against the wall, which was now burning right through. So the Romans, having had God as their ally, went back to their camp rejoicing, resolved to attack the enemy the next day; and that night they kept a more careful watch, so that none of the defenders could slip away unseen.

Eleazar, however, neither thought of flight himself nor meant to allow anyone else to attempt it. He saw the wall being consumed by the fire, and he could think of no other way of safety or of resistance. He set before his eyes what the Romans would do to them and to their children and wives if they won, and he resolved on death for them all. Judging this the best course in the circumstances, he gathered the bravest of his companions and urged them to the deed with words like these: “Brave men, long ago we resolved to be slaves neither to the Romans nor to anyone else but God, for he alone is the true and just Master of mankind. Now the time has come that bids us make that resolve good in deed. At such a moment let us not disgrace ourselves. We once refused to endure even a slavery that carried no danger; let us not now choose, along with slavery, punishments past all remedy, as we shall if we fall alive into Roman hands. For we were the first of all to revolt from them, and we are the last still fighting them. I think it is also a grace God has given us that we are able to die nobly and as free men, as others could not, who were overcome when they did not expect it. [n]

“For us it is plain that capture will come with the day; but we are still free to choose a noble death together with those we love most. Our enemies cannot prevent this, though they pray to take us alive, and we can no longer beat them in battle. Perhaps we should have guessed God’s mind at once, from the very beginning, when we set out to claim our freedom and everything went hard for us at one another’s hands, and worse at the enemy’s, and recognized that the Jewish race, once dear to him, had been condemned. For if he had stayed kindly, or even only moderately angry, he would not have overlooked the destruction of so many people, or given up his most holy city to fire and to demolition by our enemies. Did we really hope that we alone of the whole Jewish race would survive with our freedom intact, as though we had committed no sin against God and had shared in no crime, we who even taught the others? See, then, how he proves our expectations empty, bringing on us in our misery a necessity stronger than our hopes. Not even the nature of this fortress, impregnable as it is, has helped to save us. Though we have food in plenty, a mass of weapons, and more than enough of everything else, God himself has plainly taken away our hope of rescue. That fire which was being carried against our enemies did not turn back of its own accord onto the wall we built. This is wrath for the many wrongs we dared, in our madness, against our own people. For these wrongs let us pay the penalty, not to the Romans, our bitterest enemies, but to God, by our own hands; that penalty is milder. Let our wives die unabused and our children without knowing slavery. After them, let us do one another a noble kindness, keeping our freedom as our fine burial shroud. But first let us destroy our money and the fortress with fire. The Romans will be grieved, I know it well, to win neither our bodies nor the plunder. Let us leave only the food, for it will bear witness for us when we are dead that we were not overcome by want, but that, as we resolved from the beginning, we chose death rather than slavery.”

So Eleazar spoke. But his words did not fall the same way on the minds of all who were there. Some were eager to obey and all but filled with delight, thinking death a noble thing. But the softer among them were overcome by pity for their wives and families, and, as they looked at one another and saw their own certain death, they showed by their tears that they were unwilling. When Eleazar saw them shrinking and their spirits breaking at the size of the plan, he was afraid that by their wailing and tears they might unman even those who had heard his words with courage. So he did not stop urging them. Rousing himself and filled with great spirit, he set out to speak more brilliantly, about the immortality of the soul. With a loud cry of indignation he fixed his eyes on those who were weeping and said: “I was greatly deceived when I thought I would have good men as partners in the struggle for freedom, men resolved to live with honor or to die. You have turned out to be no different from ordinary people in virtue or courage, since you are afraid even of a death that will free you from the greatest evils, when you ought neither to hesitate over this nor wait for anyone to advise you. [r]

“From long ago, from the moment we could first understand, the teachings of our fathers and of God have been training us, and our ancestors confirmed them by their deeds and their spirit: that it is life, not death, that is the calamity for human beings. Death gives souls their freedom and lets them depart to their own pure place, where they will feel no calamity at all. But as long as they are bound in a mortal body and share its evils, they are, to speak the strict truth, dead; for the fellowship of the divine with the mortal is unfitting. It is true that the soul can do great things even while it is bound to the body. It makes the body its instrument of sense, moving it unseen and carrying it in its actions beyond what mortal nature could do. But when it is freed from the weight that drags it down to earth and hangs upon it, and regains its own place, then it shares a blessed strength and a power unhindered on every side, remaining invisible to human eyes, like God himself. For not even while it is in the body is it seen. It comes in unseen and departs again unseen. It has one nature, and that incorruptible, but it is the cause of change in the body. Whatever the soul touches lives and flourishes; whatever it leaves withers and dies, so great a share of immortality does it have. Let sleep be your clearest proof of what I say. In sleep, when the body does not distract them, souls enjoy the sweetest rest, alone with themselves; and conversing with God, because they are akin to him, they range everywhere and foretell many things to come. Why, then, should we fear death when we love the rest that sleep brings? And how is it not foolish to pursue freedom in this life and grudge ourselves the eternal one?

“We who have been trained at home ought to be an example to others of readiness for death. But if we do need assurance from foreigners, let us look at the Indians who profess to practice wisdom. These good men endure the time of life unwillingly, as a necessary service owed to nature, and they hasten to release their souls from their bodies. Though no misfortune presses or drives them, out of longing for the immortal life they announce to others that they are about to depart. No one stops them; instead everyone congratulates them, and each gives them letters to carry to his own family, so firm and true do they believe the life of souls with one another to be. Then, when they have heard the messages entrusted to them, they hand their bodies over to the fire, so that the soul may be parted from the body in the greatest purity, and they die amid hymns sung in their honor. Their dearest friends send them off to death more readily than other people send their fellow citizens on a very long journey; they weep for themselves, but count the others blessed, as already taking their place among the immortals. Are we not ashamed, then, to think more meanly than the Indians, and by our cowardice to insult shamefully the laws of our fathers, which all mankind has come to envy? But even if we had been taught the opposite from the start, that life is the greatest good for human beings and death a calamity, the moment itself calls on us to bear death with a stout heart, since we die by God’s will and by necessity. For long ago, it seems, God passed this sentence against the whole Jewish race in common: that we should be parted from life, since we were not going to use it rightly.

“Do not lay the blame on yourselves, and do not give the Romans the credit, as though it were the war against them that has destroyed us all. These things did not happen by their strength; a mightier cause has intervened and given them the appearance of victory. By what Roman weapons did the Jews who lived in Caesarea die? They were not even intending to revolt from Rome. While they were keeping the seventh-day festival, the mob of Caesarea fell on them and slaughtered them with their wives and children, though they did not even raise a hand in return, and without any regard even for the Romans, who counted as enemies only us who had revolted. But someone will say that the people of Caesarea always had a quarrel with those who lived among them, and that when the chance came they gave full vent to their old hatred. What, then, shall we say of the Jews in Scythopolis? They dared to make war on us for the sake of the Greeks, instead of joining us, their own kin, in resisting the Romans. Much good their goodwill and loyalty to those people did them! They were cruelly slaughtered by them, whole households together, and that was the reward they received for their alliance. What they had kept the Greeks from suffering at our hands, they suffered themselves, as though they had wanted to do it to them. It would take too long to speak of each case now. For you know that there is not a city in Syria that has not killed the Jews living in it, though those Jews were more hostile to us than to the Romans. Even the people of Damascus, unable to invent so much as a plausible pretext, filled their city with the foulest murder, slaughtering eighteen thousand Jews together with their wives and families. As for Egypt, we have learned that the number of those put to death there with torture exceeded sixty thousand.

“Those Jews, perhaps, being in a foreign land and finding nothing to set against their enemies, died in that way. But we who took up the war against the Romans in our own land, what did we lack of all that could give hope of sure victory? We had weapons and walls and fortresses hard to take, and a spirit unshaken by dangers in the cause of freedom, and these encouraged everyone to revolt. Yet these things served only for a short time and, after lifting us up with hopes, proved the beginning of greater evils. Everything has been taken; everything has fallen to the enemy, as though it had all been made ready for their more glorious victory and not for the safety of those who prepared it. Those who died in battle we may rightly call blessed, for they died defending their freedom, not giving it up. But the multitude who have fallen into the Romans’ hands, who would not pity them? Who would not hurry to die before suffering what they have suffered? Some have died on the rack, tortured with fire and whips. Others, half eaten by wild beasts, have been kept alive to feed them a second time, giving laughter and sport to our enemies. And the most wretched of them, we must suppose, are those still alive, who pray again and again for death and cannot have it.

“Where is that great city now, the mother city of the whole Jewish race, fortified by so many circuits of walls, screened by so many forts and such huge towers, barely able to hold its stores for the war, and with so many tens of thousands of men to fight for it? What has become of the city that was believed to have God for its founder? It has been torn up by the roots from its foundations, and the only memorial of it left is that of its destroyers, still quartered on its ruins. Unhappy old men sit by the ashes of the sanctuary, with a few women whom the enemy has kept alive for the most shameful outrage. Which of us, turning these things over in his mind, will bear to look upon the sun, even if he could live without danger? Who is so much his country’s enemy, so unmanly and so fond of life, that he does not regret having lived until now? I wish we had all died before we saw that holy city razed by enemy hands and the holy sanctuary so impiously dug up from its foundations. But since a hope that was not ignoble deceived us, that perhaps we might be able to avenge the city on our enemies, and that hope has now vanished and left us alone in our necessity, let us hurry to die nobly. Let us have pity on ourselves and our children and our wives while we can still receive pity from our own hands.

“We were born for death, and so were those we have fathered, and not even the fortunate can escape it. But outrage and slavery, and the sight of our wives led away to shame with their children, are not evils that nature makes necessary for human beings. Those who endure them do so through their own cowardice, because they would not die first when they could. We revolted from the Romans priding ourselves on our courage, and now, at the very last, when they invited us to save ourselves, we refused. Who, then, cannot see how great their fury will be if they take us alive? Wretched will be the young, whose bodily strength will hold out through many tortures; wretched the old, whose years cannot bear the calamities. A man will see his wife dragged off by force; he will hear the voice of his child crying ‘Father!’ while his own hands are bound. But while our hands are free and hold a sword, let them do us a noble service. Let us die unenslaved by our enemies, and leave life together with our children and wives as free men. This is what our laws command; this is what our wives and children beg of us. God has sent the necessity for it, while the Romans want the opposite and are afraid that any of us may die before the capture. Let us hurry, then, and instead of the enjoyment they hope to have over us, leave them astonishment at our death and wonder at our daring.”