The Jewish War: First half of Book 5

[cahn]

Happy day-after-Easter!

Last week: Eyeliner shows that the Zealot faction is really bad! (No, really!) The Year of the Four Emperors, and those emperors discussed. Nero and his end. Lord Hervey of Frederician salon makes a surprise appearance!

This week: Titus attacks Jerusalem, but the factions have already done a lot of the work for him...

Next week: Rest of book 5!

Comments

[cahn]

And here's my recap:

Eleazer secedes from the Zealot party, ostensibly in revulsion at the daily atrocities perpetrated in John's unremitting lust for blood, but in reality he could not bear being junior to a tyrant who came to prominence later than him, and he wanted total control under a despotism of his own. I feel like I'm noticing that Josephus never seems to ascribe good motives to any of the Jews, though often to the Flavians (I suppose I can see why the latter, anyway). His guys seize the inner court of the temple. There's also Simon and John with their own factions, so we've got three "rival gang bosses" (29). (And Josephus breaks his usual practice of not commenting on the action -- which is why I was surprised by that footnote last week wondering why he didn't comment on Vespasian and the prisoners thrown into the Dead Sea -- to say, Oh my poor city, what did you ever suffer from the Romans compared to this? :( (19) )

Titus, meanwhile, has a bunch of disciplined Roman soldiers. The warring factions realize this is a Problem and "forged an unholy alliance" (72) (lol) and go up against the Romans, which would maybe have been effective except that Titus comes to the rescue! He's so great!

Then there's a lull in the external war, which of course is the signal to resurrect factional conflict inside the city (98). John's guys attack Eleazer's guys. I think the upshot is that at the end of that there is just John's faction and Simon's faction.

Some of the Romans are tricked by the Jews (though Titus, natch, is not taken in) and think the Jews will surrender, but they don't and a bunch of them get killed/wounded. Titus is upset! He says he's going to punish the troops involved, but the legions get him to reconsider (but also he realizes that it's not very practical to punish everyone involved).

There is a lot more scene setting -- and Herod gets invoked again -- and also there is a tapestry with colors with "scarlet suggested fire, linen the earth, blue the air, and purple the sea" -- hm, should I understand that whenever I see those colors?

Okay, back to partisan fighting. John and Simon are still going at it. Titus starts attacking with stone-throwers and battering rams and such, at which point the partisans are like, huh, maybe we ought to fight the Romans together. I guess better late than never? Once the Jews are united, they are good fighters, but so are the Romans. Oh, I forgot to mention that Josephus is there with Titus and of course always is very clever about things, like knowing when Castor is trying to trick them.

[zdenka]

Does Josephus ever mention R. Yochanan ben Zakkai? I feel like we should have a Yochanan ben Zakkai digression at some point.

/Not actually doing the reading, just enjoying cahn's summaries and the conversation, and popping up with tangential thoughts at random times . . .