How the War Began

The people took this advice. They went up into the temple with the king and Bernice and began rebuilding the colonnades, while the rulers and the council members divided themselves among the villages and collected the tribute. The forty talents that were owing were soon gathered. In this way Agrippa held off the threat of war for the time being. But when he went on to try to persuade the crowd to obey Florus until Caesar sent someone to replace him, they were provoked. They abused the king and proclaimed him banished from the city, and some of the rebels even dared to throw stones at him. The king saw that the fury of the revolutionaries could no longer be held back, and he was angry at the insults he had suffered. So he sent their rulers, together with the men of power, to Florus at Caesarea, so that Florus could appoint some of them to collect the tribute of the countryside, and he himself withdrew into his own kingdom. [a]

About this time some of those who were doing most to stir up the war banded together and made for a fortress called Masada. They took it by stealth, slaughtered the Roman garrison, and put a garrison of their own in its place. At the same time, in the temple, Eleazar son of Ananias the high priest, a very bold young man who was then captain of the temple, persuaded those who officiated at the service to accept no gift or sacrifice from any foreigner. This was the true beginning of the war with the Romans, for on this ground they rejected the sacrifice offered for the Romans and for Caesar. Many of the high priests and leading citizens begged them not to give up the customary sacrifice for the rulers, but they would not give way. They trusted a great deal in their own numbers, for the strongest of the revolutionaries were working with them, but above all they looked to Eleazar, the captain of the temple. [c]

At this the men of power met together with the high priests and the leading Pharisees. Thinking that their troubles were now past remedy, they took counsel about the whole situation, and they decided to try what words could do with the rebels. They gathered the people in front of the bronze gate, the gate of the inner temple that faced the rising sun. First they spoke at length of their indignation at the audacity of the revolt and at their bringing so great a war upon their country. Then they exposed how senseless the rebels’ pretext was. Their ancestors, they said, had adorned the sanctuary largely from the gifts of foreigners, always accepting the presents of other nations. Far from forbidding anyone’s sacrifices, which would be the height of impiety, they had set up around the temple the offerings that could still be seen there, and that had remained for so long a time. But now these men were provoking the arms of the Romans and courting a war with them. They were introducing a strange new worship, and, besides putting the city in danger, they were bringing on it a verdict of impiety, if among the Jews alone no foreigner might either sacrifice or worship. If anyone brought in such a law against a single private person, they would be indignant at it as a decree of inhumanity; yet they looked on unconcerned while the Romans and Caesar himself were shut out from the offerings. They had reason to fear that, having rejected the sacrifices for the Romans, they might be prevented from sacrificing even for themselves, and that the city would be shut out from the protection of the empire, unless they quickly came to their senses, restored the sacrifices, and repaired the insult before word of it reached those they had insulted. [e]

As they said this, they brought forward priests who were expert in the ancestral customs, and these declared that all their forefathers had accepted the sacrifices of foreigners. But none of the revolutionaries paid any attention. The robber faction would not even listen; they were busy laying the groundwork for the war. The men of power saw that the revolt was now too strong for them to put down, and that the danger from the Romans would fall on them first. So they set about clearing themselves of blame. They sent envoys, some to Florus, led by Simon son of Ananias, and others to Agrippa, the most prominent of whom were Saul, Antipas and Costobarus, who were related to the king. They begged both of them to come up to the city with an army and cut the revolt short before it became too strong to put down. To Florus this dreadful news was good news. He was set on kindling the war, and he gave the envoys no answer at all. Agrippa, however, cared equally for those who were revolting and for those against whom the war was being raised. He wanted the Jews kept safe for the Romans, and the temple and the mother city kept safe for the Jews, and he knew that the disturbance would do him no good either. So he sent two thousand horsemen to help the people, men from Auranitis, Batanea and Trachonitis, with Darius as their cavalry commander and Philip son of Jacimus as their general. [g]

Encouraged by this, the men of power, together with the high priests and all the part of the people who wanted peace, took possession of the upper city, for the rebels held the lower city and the temple. Both sides used sling-stones and other missiles without letup, and volleys of arrows flew constantly from both quarters. At times they sallied out in companies and fought hand to hand; the rebels had the advantage in daring, the king’s soldiers in skill. The king’s men strove above all to take the temple and drive out those who were defiling the sanctuary; Eleazar’s rebels strove to take the upper city in addition to what they already held. For seven days there was heavy slaughter on both sides, and neither yielded the part it had taken. [j]

The next day was the festival of Wood-carrying, when it was the custom for everyone to bring wood for the altar, so that the fire, which is kept burning always and never goes out, might never lack fuel. The rebels shut their opponents out of the observance. Many of the sicarii had crowded in with the weaker people (that was what they called the robbers who carried swords hidden in the folds of their clothes), and the rebels took them into their ranks and pressed their attack with more confidence. The king’s soldiers were outmatched in numbers and daring, and gave way before their force, and were driven out of the upper city. The rebels fell on it and set fire to the house of Ananias the high priest and to the palaces of Agrippa and Bernice. Next they carried the fire to the public archives, hurrying to destroy the moneylenders’ bonds and cut off the collection of debts, so as to win over the crowd of those who would benefit, and to set the poor against the rich without fear. The keepers of the record office fled, and they set fire to it. When they had burned down the sinews of the city, they went after their enemies. Some of the men of power and of the high priests went down into the underground passages and hid there. Others fled with the king’s soldiers to the upper palace and quickly shut the gates; among them were Ananias the high priest, his brother Hezekiah, and the envoys who had been sent to Agrippa. For the time being the rebels were content with their victory and with the buildings they had burned, and they rested. [k]

On the next day, the fifteenth of the month Lous, they attacked Antonia. They besieged the garrison there for two days, then captured and slaughtered them and set the fortress on fire. Then they moved on to the palace, where the king’s soldiers had taken refuge, divided themselves into four bodies, and assaulted the walls. None of those inside dared to make a sally, because the attackers were so many, but they spread out along the breastworks and the towers and shot at those who came near, and many of the robbers fell beneath the walls. The fighting did not stop night or day. The rebels expected those inside to give in for lack of food, and those inside expected the besiegers to give in from exhaustion. [m]

Meanwhile a certain Menahem, son of Judas called the Galilean, a very clever sophist, the man who in the days of Quirinius had once reproached the Jews for submitting to the Romans as masters after God, took his close followers with him and went off to Masada. There he broke open King Herod’s armory and armed not only his own countrymen but other robbers as well. With these as his bodyguard he returned to Jerusalem like a king, became the leader of the revolt, and directed the siege. But they had no siege engines, and they could not undermine the wall in the open, because they were being struck from above. So they began a tunnel from a long way off and dug under one of the towers, leaving it hanging on props; then they set fire to the timber that held it up and came out. When the props had burned through underneath, the tower suddenly collapsed, but another wall came into view, built up inside it. The defenders had sensed their plan beforehand, perhaps because the tower shook as it was being undermined, and had made a second line of defense for themselves. The attackers, who saw it unexpectedly just when they thought the place was already theirs, were dismayed. Those inside, however, sent to Menahem and the leaders of the revolt and asked to be allowed to leave under a truce. This was granted only to the king’s soldiers and the native Jews, and they went out. The Romans, left alone, lost heart. They could not force their way through such a multitude, they thought it a disgrace to ask for terms, and even if terms were given they could not trust them. So they abandoned their camp as too easily taken and fled up to the royal towers, the one called Hippicus, and Phasael, and Mariamne. Menahem’s men burst into the place the soldiers had fled from, killed every one they caught before he could escape, plundered the baggage, and set fire to the camp. This happened on the sixth of the month Gorpiaeus. [n]

On the following day Ananias the high priest was caught hiding near the canal in the grounds of the royal palace, and the robbers killed him, together with his brother Hezekiah. The rebels surrounded the towers and kept them under guard, so that none of the soldiers could escape. The capture of the strongholds and the death of Ananias the high priest so puffed Menahem up that he became savage. Thinking he had no rival left to dispute the leadership with him, he became an intolerable tyrant. But Eleazar’s party rose against him. They said to one another that, having revolted from the Romans out of love of liberty, they ought not to throw that liberty away to one of their own people and bear a master who, even if he did nothing violent, was still beneath them; and that if someone had to take charge of affairs, it ought to be anyone rather than he. So they made an agreement together and attacked him in the temple. He had gone up there to worship in great pomp, dressed in royal robes, with his zealots following him in arms. When Eleazar’s men rushed at him, the rest of the people too, in their fury, snatched up stones and pelted the sophist, thinking that if he were brought down the whole revolt would collapse. Menahem’s men held out for a short while, but when they saw the whole crowd rushing at them, they fled wherever each man could. Those who were caught were killed, and those who hid were hunted out. A few escaped secretly to Masada, among them Eleazar son of Jair, a relative of Menahem, who later ruled Masada as a tyrant. Menahem himself fled to the place called Ophlas and was skulking there in hiding. They took him alive, dragged him out into the open, tortured him with many torments, and killed him. They did the same to his officers, and to Absalom, the most notorious agent of his tyranny. [r]

As I said, the people had helped in this because they hoped for some remedy for the whole revolt. But Eleazar’s men had not killed Menahem out of any hurry to end the war; they killed him so as to wage it with less fear. In fact, when the people strongly urged them to give up the siege of the soldiers, they pressed it all the harder, until Metilius, the Roman commander, and his men could hold out no longer. They sent to Eleazar’s party asking only for their lives under a truce, and offering to hand over their arms and all their other belongings. Eleazar’s men seized on the request and sent up to them Gorion son of Nicomedes, Ananias son of Sadduk, and Judas son of Jonathan, to give them the right hand and oaths. When that had been done, Metilius led his soldiers down. As long as the soldiers had their weapons, none of the rebels laid a hand on them or showed any sign of treachery. But as soon as they had all laid down their shields and swords according to the terms, and were going away suspecting nothing more, Eleazar’s men rushed at them, surrounded them, and killed them. The soldiers neither defended themselves nor begged for mercy; they only cried out about the agreement and the oaths. So they were all savagely butchered except Metilius. He begged for mercy and promised to become a Jew, even to the point of being circumcised, and they spared him alone. To the Romans the loss was light, for only a few men were lost out of a boundless army. But to the Jews it seemed the prelude to their own capture. They saw that the causes of the war were now beyond remedy, and that the city was stained with so great a pollution that some wrath from heaven could be expected, even if they escaped the vengeance of the Romans, and they mourned publicly. The city was full of dejection, and every moderate man was troubled, expecting to pay the penalty himself for the rebels’ crimes. For the massacre was in fact carried out on the sabbath, a day on which the Jews, for religion’s sake, rest even from innocent work. [u]