The Jewish War: Book 3

[cahn]

Last week: The Jews are basically in an abusive relationship with Rome and have no good options; they choose the particular bad option of picking a war with Rome that they can't win. The Romans are terrible. Also continuing discussion here about Britannicus, Messalina, and the Praetorians.

This week: Vespasian comes down like a ton of bricks. That whole !!!! part of Josephus happens, where he gets stuck in the cave with a bunch of others and invents and wins the Josephus problem (well, in the text it says they draw lots, so he doesn't actually really cite what developed into the problem) (*) and surrenders to the Romans once he and another guy are the only ones left, and prophesies to Vespasian that he will become emperor. (selenak: Is it Feuchtwanger's invention to add the nomenclature of Messiah in there too? That definitely... upped the ante.)

(I'll comment more on this tomorrow -- I got done with the reading late and obviously barely got this written.)

Next week: first part of book 4, to "Despite the Zealotes didn't exactly behave as if they disbelieved the prophecies, they themselves contributed to their fulfillment" (Josephus describing the Zealotes as the worst!) (388)

(*) E. wanted to know what I was reading, so I told her about the Josephus problem, and she said, "Real-world applications of math!"

Comments

[cahn]

We can see here the hollowness of Josephus's claims to have trained his field army in the Roman manner (2.577); when push comes to shove, his army is brave, but lacks either the equipment or the discipline to face the Romans in open battle

Ohhhh this is an interesting inference, I didn't pick up on that, but yeah that makes sense.

This suggests to me that it's not necessarily true, actually. Perhaps he said something vaguer, which during the year of the four emperors was retrospectively reinterpreted this way by both of them. The prophecy itself is delivered in private (for obvious reasons)--- just Vespasian and Titus, plus "two of his closest associates", who are probably his long-time army comrades as well as clients. It would make sense that the historian repeats (as usual) what should have been said, not what was actually said.

Ooh. I guess the story is so interestingly dramatic that this didn't even really occur to me. (I am a drama-loving person, okay.) But I guess that probably is the most logical conclusion!

That is really cool that you can confirm Josephus' descriptions, two thousand years later. And the fish!