The Deaths on Masada

While he still wanted to go on urging them, they all cut him short and pressed on to the deed, filled with an impulse nothing could check. They went off like men possessed, each eager to get ahead of the next, thinking it proof of their courage and good judgment not to be seen among the last; so great a passion had seized them to kill their wives and children and themselves. Nor, when they came to the deed, did they lose their edge, as one might have thought. They kept their resolve as unwavering as it had been while they listened to the speech. The tender feeling for their own remained in them all, but reason, sure that it had chosen what was best for those they loved, prevailed. At one and the same time they embraced their wives, held them close, took their children in their arms and clung to them with last kisses and tears; and at one and the same time, as though they were served by other men’s hands, they carried out their plan. Their comfort in the necessity of killing was the thought of the evils they would suffer if they fell into the enemy’s hands. In the end not one was found unequal to so great a deed; every one of them went through with it on those nearest to him. Wretched in their necessity, they thought it the lightest of the evils before them to kill their own wives and children with their own hands. [a]

Then, no longer able to bear the anguish of what they had done, and thinking they would wrong the dead if they outlived them even a short time, they quickly piled all their possessions in one heap and set fire to it. They chose ten men from among themselves by lot to be the slayers of all the rest. Each man lay down beside his wife and children where they lay, threw his arms around them, and offered his throat to those carrying out that grim service. When these ten had killed them all without flinching, they set the same rule of the lot for one another: the one on whom it fell would kill the other nine and, after all of them, himself. So sure were they all of themselves that none would fall short of another in doing or in suffering. In the end the nine offered their throats, and the one last man looked around over the mass of bodies lying there, in case anyone among so many slain still needed his hand. When he saw that all were dead, he set a great fire in the palace, and with all the strength of his hand drove his sword clean through himself and fell beside his family. So they died, believing they had left no living soul of theirs to fall into the hands of the Romans.

But an old woman, and another who was a relative of Eleazar and surpassed most women in good sense and education, escaped notice together with five children by hiding in the underground conduits that carried drinking water, while the rest had their minds on the slaughter. The dead numbered nine hundred and sixty, counting the women and children with them. This tragedy took place on the fifteenth of the month of Xanthicus.

The Romans, still expecting a battle, armed themselves at dawn, bridged the way from their earthworks with gangways, and launched the assault. They saw no enemy, only a terrible emptiness on every side, fire within, and silence, and they were at a loss to guess what had happened. At last they raised a shout, as at the loosing of a volley, to see whether they could call out anyone inside. The women heard the shout, came up out of the conduits, and told the Romans what had been done, just as it happened, the second of them describing clearly everything that was said and how it was done. They did not readily believe her, doubting that so great a deed could have been dared. They set about putting out the fire, quickly cut a way through it, and came inside the palace. There they came upon the mass of the slain, and they did not rejoice as over enemies, but marveled at the nobility of the resolve and at the contempt of death that so many had shown, unflinching, in the deed itself. [c]