The Jewish War: Last half of book 5
Apr. 12th, 2026 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnLast week: Titus saving the day single-handedly as a millenium-old trope. The synoptic gospels foreshadowing these events, and discussion of the abomination of desolation. The Yom Kippur service description of the priest in his vestments. How much Titus might have intended the destruction of Jerusalem, and when, and how much that question may be different from how Josephus feels like he needs to justify it? A mention of R. Yochanan ben Zakkai, which all of you should definitely tell me more about :D
This week: Jerusalem is under siege. It's quite awful for those under siege, what with famine inside the city and getting crucified by Romans if they try to escape. Titus and Josephus continue to be blameless and awesome.
Next week: First half of Book 6: "...from its rebuilding by Haggai in the second year of the reign of Cyrus to its capture under Vespasian was 639 years and 45 days" (270).
This week: Jerusalem is under siege. It's quite awful for those under siege, what with famine inside the city and getting crucified by Romans if they try to escape. Titus and Josephus continue to be blameless and awesome.
Next week: First half of Book 6: "...from its rebuilding by Haggai in the second year of the reign of Cyrus to its capture under Vespasian was 639 years and 45 days" (270).
A recap
Date: 2026-04-13 05:06 am (UTC)Titus really wanted to "preserve the city for himself, and the temple for the city" and destroys two walls out of three, and tries to get the city to surrender. The militants inside the city think this means Titus is weak, and keep fighting. They seem not to have thought through the part where sieges tend to invite famine ("blind too to the famine that was creeping up on them") but the militants think this is OK if the peacemongers are the ones who get hit by the famine. ("Fate was dictating that the innocent should perish with the guilty" -- God gets the credit for the downfall of the guilty, and fate gets the blame for the innocents! Not that this is unique to Josephus, of course -- my church does this too.) Titus pays his guys "in full view of the enemy" (this is kind of hilarious to me after
Titus gets Josephus to go round outside the wall and give speeches to the Jews on why they should surrender. Many of his arguments seem to boil down to "actually we are crap at winning fights" (not an actual quote :) ) -- okay, I'm being facetious here, a nicer way of putting it: "In sum, our fathers never triumphed by recourse to arms, and never failed to win through without warfare when they put their trust in God." The insurgents, shockingly, are not convinced by the rhetoric that they suck at winning fights, but the more general people try to desert (Titus seems to let them "go where they wanted in the country"). And high time, too, because famine really starts hitting the city hard. It's really awful. Anyone who looks like they might have food is beat up and/or killed ("while those already emaciated were passed over, as there seemed no point in killing people who would soon be dead of starvation.") Now, when they fall into the hands of the enemy, they get scourged, tortured, and crucified. (I don't really understand why the treatment differs so greatly in what seems to be about the same period of time?) Titus is appalled by this, good for him I guess, but he doesn't actually stop it because he thinks it might inspire the Jews to surrender. (It does not.)
Various battle-type things happen, and Titus then decides to build a wall around the entire city so no one can get out at all, so that either they'll surrender or starve. Josephus reports that it took three days, which our version says is way faster than it actually probably took. (Three days is a ritually significant number, though, right?) Well... the city is just a mess, between death from famine and death from the "terrorists." "At first the insurgents had the bodies buried at public expense, as the smell was unbearable: when this could no longer be maintained, they threw them from the wall into the ravines." (This also bothers Titus. I guess good for him, again?)
Josephus is still going round trying (vainly) to get the Jews to surrender. He gets struck on the head by a stone. The insurgents want to take his body (not because they like him) but fortunately for him, Titus sends out a rescue party. The non-insurgents "despair, convinced as they were that they had lost the one man who was giving them hope of escape to the Romans." (The footnote points out that Josephus really thinks he is super important here...) The deserters... they swallow gold coins that get pooped out so they won't lose them to search, which when the Arabs and Syrians find out, means that they cut them open. Augh. "To me this seems the cruellest of all the calamities suffered by the Jews: in one night nearly 2,000 of them were ripped open." I am with you, Josephus. Titus gets angry enough at this that he forbids it with harsh penalties, but it still happens.
As the book ends, famine is taking over the city.
Re: A recap
Date: 2026-04-13 10:18 am (UTC)Titus playing his legions: actually is likely connected to Galba NOT paying, in that Titus, not being stupid, undoubtedly had heard about this - it has only happened in the previous year! - and since he can't see in the future, he can't know whether or not his father will be as easily toppled as the previous three guys. => Keeping his legions happy is important; this isn't a gesture just directed at the besieged Jews.
BTW, it's interesting that it takes four days to pay all the soldiers. I'm terrible at maths, but presumably that says something about how many there must have been?
Josephus has to go through some major verbal contortions to exculpate Titus from the fact that his legionnaries crucify the not-really-deserters who left the city to look for food but not to change sides. Mind you, the reasoning itself feels plausible from a purely pragmatic pov) - that he can't spare that guards for prisoners who would outnumber said guards - , but it's a bit hard to swallow that it was the Roman soldiers who were responsible for the extra cruelty of nailing to the cross in "every possible position. At the very least, Titus okayed it. Though note that Josephus describes it instead of leaving it out altogether.
(It reminds me of two famous sieges - one that Titus might actually have been influenced by - Caesar in front of Alesia in Gaul, where he refused to let the old, women and children leave the besieged by him city so that they starved between Gallic and Roman lines (something Caesar does mention point blank in De Bello Gallico, so it's not like he is strying to hide it, which tells you something about Roman ideas of warfare) - and also many centuries later Richelieu during the siege of La Rochelle (where he also refused to let the starving civilians leave and insisted on an unconditional surrender.)
(Titus later cutting off the hands of prisoners and sending them back into the besieged city instead of crucifying them is new to me but follows the same cold logic. They can't fight this way, but they're still a starving person more and thus the problem of Simon and John, and even if they should die shortly after being sent back, more dead bodies within the city makes conditions even worse and thus the urgency of surrender.)
I'm also entirely unsurprised the Romans crucifying Jews en masse does not encourage a faster surrender but that the leadership in Jerusalem shows this to the other besieged to demonstrate to them they have nothing to lose. BTW, as opposed to Josephus earlier rant about John of Gischala's guys crossdressing and wearing guyliner some chapters ago, I find his descriptions of what's going on within the besieged city mostly believable. I think you can tell that he did hear a lot from (not-crucified) actual deserters and later survivors about what had been going on - such vicious details like pressing peas into body openings. And of course taking food from the Temple as the ultimate blasphemy. This is something that strikes us and presumably even Josephus' non-Jewish readers back in the day very differently - if you're starving, of course it makes sense to not only longer sacrifice food to God but eat it yourself - but which is something Yighal Amir adapted in his dystopian five minutes into the future novel "The Third Temple" which I read last year.
Josephus' speech reads a lot like "As you know, Bob" with all its incidents from Jewish history, and presumably in its written form is entirely intended for his Greek and Roman readers. God knows what he actually said, though of course he must have said something at the time. I like the detail of his mother out loud saying he was dead to her anyway but secretly grieving, and then rejoicing when he's still alive. Not least because while Feuchtwanger did include the detail about Josephus' father Matthias being put into pirson in his novel which is also mentioned in Book 5, he adapted the mother out of the novel, so I hadn't known she was also still alive and around. Presumably she, too, was (if she survived the siege) one of Josephus' sources about what was going inside. And for all that we deservedly give Josephus a hard time for his ego, it's worth remembering BOTH of his parents are among the people still in Jerusalem at this point. He really had every motivation to not just hope but work for a faster surrender of the city.
Something amusing in all the grimness is the fact Josephus for all his written insistence in the speech that the Jews can't win because the Romans are the superior soldiers takes the time for a swipe at the Macedonians via the story of Antiochus the Macedonian with asorted troops showing up to support the Roman cause and getting a total drumming by the besieged Jews, concluding that even real life Macedonians need the luck of Alexander to win. Since Macedonians were regarded as the ultimate tough guy soldiers of the ancient world from the time of Alexander's father Philip (the FW to Alexander's Fritz, remember) till the Roman Republic took on one Hellenistic Kingdom after the next, including Macedonia, and swallowed them, thus dethroning them as the No.1 Tough Guys, what Josephus is really saying here is that the Jews are now No.2 via implication.
The deserters who have swallowed gold coins (and those just suspected of it) being cut upon, 2000 of them - yes, it's absolutely horrible, but here is where I doubt it was done exclusively by "Arabs and Syrians" instead of also by Roman soldiers. What are they doing around a besieged Jerusalem? Does Josephus mean auxiliary troops?
Re: A recap
Date: 2026-04-13 11:27 pm (UTC)Re: A recap
Date: 2026-04-14 04:05 am (UTC)Titus playing his legions: actually is likely connected to Galba NOT paying, in that Titus, not being stupid, undoubtedly had heard about this - it has only happened in the previous year! - and since he can't see in the future, he can't know whether or not his father will be as easily toppled as the previous three guys. => Keeping his legions happy is important; this isn't a gesture just directed at the besieged Jews.
Ohhhhh with my usual disregard for chronology I didn't even realize that it was only the year before, although of course (and yeah, let's not make the siege last any longer than it has to...) -- right, yeah, it would be especially important to do that now!
Josephus has to go through some major verbal contortions to exculpate Titus from the fact that his legionnaries crucify the not-really-deserters who left the city to look for food but not to change sides.
Heh, yeah. There's so much "well, he just felt really bad about it! But didn't actually stop it!" there...
BTW, as opposed to Josephus earlier rant about John of Gischala's guys crossdressing and wearing guyliner some chapters ago, I find his descriptions of what's going on within the besieged city mostly believable.
Yeah, I am also more likely to believe this. I think the tone is different, too -- more of a sustained sadness than the sort of titillated-outrage that I felt was more the tone of the EYELINER.
And of course taking food from the Temple as the ultimate blasphemy. This is something that strikes us and presumably even Josephus' non-Jewish readers back in the day very differently - if you're starving, of course it makes sense to not only longer sacrifice food to God but eat it yourself
Yeah -- I mean -- it's sensible, but!
Titus
Date: 2026-04-14 03:26 pm (UTC)I'm trying to think of parallels - not of the actual deeds but of how they are presented by historians - and the Ancient World doesn't directly spring to mind, but from the Early Middle Ages onwards, we have quite a lot of *Ruler whom I, the Chronicler, owe my allegiance to* Felt really bad about atrocity and someone else did it anyway, not directly him" whereas of course when it's the other side, then the arch villain said ruler is warring against gleefully and personally commanded the atrocity out of his black heart.
The Romans, at least the Pre Christian ones, have somewhat different attitude since they do love inserting a ruthless barbarian justifying their own brutal retaliations, but also, them going out to conquer without a ruthless barbarian showing up first is also cool by them (if the conquest is successful). And I mean, yes, Cato the Younger wanted to get Caesar on what we today would surely call war crimes in Gaul, but Cato the Younger wasn't moved by the Gaul's plight, he was (justifiably) afraid Caesar would not retire into private life once his command in Gaul had ended and would not stop dominating Rome. Basically, the impression I get is that if you are a Roman general, you're supposed to defeat the Roman enemy by whichever means necessary. You're not supposed to wipe them out entirely, mind, and you're certainly not supposed to brutalize client kingdoms, loyal allies and provinces which are in a peaceful state, that's just bad politics and interrupts trade, but if there is a war or a rebellion and you get send there to deal with it, then anything you do to ensure that a) it's over and b) it won't happen again just a few years down the line is fine with the Roman public.
What I'm trying to suss out is whether or not Josephus contorting himself so much to assure us Titus was sorry and didn't really want to do all this but had to was necessary for the Roman part of his readers, and I suspect it wasn't, the Romans would have been cool with Titus doing whatever to end the Jewish War, so basically he's doing it for himself mainly for the reasons we talked about in the last entry. Plus there might have been another reason which I just came across and will mention in a moment.
In terms of Titus' actual motives and what he might have been thinking, it's an interesting conundrum. Because on the one hand, he has no idea whether his father is going to last any longer than the previous three Emperors, and so bringing this war to an end and going home to back up Dad's rule with a military success and oh, yeah, those successful legions is important. (Plus going by Suetionius' biography of both men, basically in the years of Vespasian's rule Titus was his father's enforcer, playing bad cop to Vespasian's good cop; he took over the Praetorians - the only man Vespasian trusted to do this without stabbing him in the back - and allowed Vespasian to look even better as the serene Emperor. Which was why people were surprised when Titus became Emperor and he in turn now started to play good cop and was the mild one instead of Enforcer Guy, forgiving his enemies etc. (I would say that shows that Vespasian and Titus had a very shrewd grasp on what power dynamics and PR Rome needed after Nero's burn out and the chaotic Year of the Four Emperors.) So all of this shows not only that Titus is very able to be absolutely ruthless without some underlings doing it without his knowledge, and he had good reasons and motivations to finish this war already.
On the other hand: he also had motivation to not do so too quickly. Because while we're no longer in the Republic but solidly in the Empire, achieving military victories for Rome is still the crowning achievement for every aristocratic Roman's career, especially since recent events had proved Emperors who aren't good commanders themselves like Nero are no longer viable. And this is Titus' big chance to prove himself, his own command now that Dad is back in Rome. He might not get another war again while still in his prime, because while he's a generation younger than Dad Vespasian, he's not that young anymore. He's in his late 20s when the war starts so now probably 30,, he's got a marriage behind him and a daughter from it already. Alexander was already conqueror of the world at that age, and everyone in the Ancient World who is in the military businesss has an Alexander complex. Also, there's Berenice. You may have noticed she has disappeared from Josephus' account. In his brief autobiography which was definitely written after Titus' death but before that of Domitian, he mentions her at that time, saying for example that she successfully pleaded for the life of his arch rival Justus of Tiberias (Sir not Appearing in The Jewish War but Appearing In the Autobiography). Now, because Titus' relationship with Berenice was such an incendiary topic for the Romans with their Cleopatra complex, I can see Josephus not mentioning it at all in "The Jewish War" either because Titus directly asked him not to or because he gathered it wouldn't be welcome. (And maybe he didn't want to risk what both he and Berenice might still have been hoping for at this point, i.e. her staying with Titus for good, complete with what that would mean for Roman-Jewish long term relations.)
Now to the theory for Josephus' "Titus was really sorry and didn't want to do it, but he had to" presentationI found: this article theorizes and quotes thusly:
In The Jewish War, Josephus describes Titus as merciful, as having tried to avoid killing Jews who surrendered and waiting until the last possible moment before destroying Jerusalem and burning down the Temple. Some have claimed that Josephus wrote the account this way out of friendship with Titus who was also his patron. Ilan, on the other hand, believes Josephus’s account to be an unflattering description of Titus in the eyes of the Romans who were the book’s target audience. Instead, she contends, it was Titus’s idea to portray himself in this way for the benefit of none other than Berenice—as a kind of mea culpa for the actions he had been forced to commit in Judea.
And you know - that actually makes psychological sense and fits with the fact that from a purely Roman (and for that matter Greek) pov, Josephus really does not have to show Titus as sympathetic to the Jewish people, or wanting the preserve the Temple and the city, see above for how war campaigns usually gets presented in Roman sources. But maybe he did it for just one reader in particular. (As well as needing to believe that Titus was originally well intentioned because of his own actions.)
How do we know Titus was serious enough about Berenice to care what she thought of him? Because he really had that long term relationship with her and the Roman historicans, who were by no means sympathetic to Berenice (like I said: Cleopatra complex), write stuff like the following bits from Suetonius when he compares Titus in his Prince Hal phase (i.e. during his father's reign) to Titus in his Henry V phase (i.e. during the two short years of his own reign before his premature death):
Prince Hal!Titus: From that moment on he never ceased to serve as the partner and even the protector of the Emperor. (...)He also became th first man of non-equestrian rank to serve as prefect of the praetorian guard, a command which he exercised in a fairly high-handed and brutal manner(...). In addition to cruelty, he was suspected as well - because he liked to stay up into the middle of the night playing drinking games with his most dissollute friends - of a taste for overindulgence; also - because of the troupes of male prostitutes and eunuchs he kept, as well as the notorious affair he conducted with Queen Berenice, whom he is actually reported to have promised to marry - of wallowing in sexual excess.
(Note Josephus gives us neither Berenice nor the dancing boys and eunuchs. I feel let down, Josephus.)
(More seriously, remember the crossdressing guyliners from John of Gischala? That's Suetonius using the same trope about unreformed Titus.)
Henry V!Titus: He sent Berenice away from Rome the moment he became Emperor; something that caused him no less pain than it did her. He stopped lavishing favours on the boys whom he had always particularly adored, dancers whose talent was such that in due course they took to the stage, and even stopped watching them perform in public altogether.
Basically, Berenice in Roman histories is presented the Falstaff to Titus' Prince Hal. Just sexier. (Mind you, she was eleven years older than him, another thing baffling male readers through the millennia. Antony at least was older than Cleopatra!) Personally, I hope she got at least some of the dancing boys in the divorce. I's a very Roman thing to present the affair with Berenice - an adult woman - as sexually debauched in a way entertaining a troup of "male prostitutes/dancing boys" was seen at. Whereas of course modern readers would first want to know how we are to understand the term "boys" here, and how old they were. That Titus either had them or at least had the reputation of having them (pre-Emperorship) incidentally might also give us another glimpse of what it meant growing up at Nero's court. (Yuletide!) But yeah: can see him signalling to Josephus he'd very much like it if his book makes clear to Berenice that Titus really really tried but couldn't help it despite good intentions that the whole thing went up in literal flames.
(Whether or not he promised to Berenice he would not burn the Temple, as he does in Feuchtwange's novel.)
(Feuchtwanger didn't give us the dancing boys, either, but then these were historical novels written in the 1930s, so bisexual or gay action pretty much is none apparant.)
Re: Titus
Date: 2026-04-15 03:19 am (UTC)Ha, I love the pragmatism!
What I'm trying to suss out is whether or not Josephus contorting himself so much to assure us Titus was sorry and didn't really want to do all this but had to was necessary for the Roman part of his readers, and I suspect it wasn't, the Romans would have been cool with Titus doing whatever to end the Jewish War, so basically he's doing it for himself mainly for the reasons we talked about in the last entry. Plus there might have been another reason which I just came across and will mention in a moment.
Heh, that rather makes sense. I guess I would have thought he was doing it for his readers as well as himself, but I'm willing to believe that he was doing it just for himself --
Which was why people were surprised when Titus became Emperor and he in turn now started to play good cop and was the mild one instead of Enforcer Guy, forgiving his enemies etc. (I would say that shows that Vespasian and Titus had a very shrewd grasp on what power dynamics and PR Rome needed after Nero's burn out and the chaotic Year of the Four Emperors.)
Ooh. I of course have a particular picture in my head of Titus from Feuchtwanger, but it's good to remember that he doesn't have to be that way. (My headcanon of Louis XVI is definitely not anything like Feuchtwanger's character!)
And you know - that actually makes psychological sense and fits with the fact that from a purely Roman (and for that matter Greek) pov, Josephus really does not have to show Titus as sympathetic to the Jewish people, or wanting the preserve the Temple and the city, see above for how war campaigns usually gets presented in Roman sources. But maybe he did it for just one reader in particular. (As well as needing to believe that Titus was originally well intentioned because of his own actions.)
Oooooh. This is so iiiiinteresting!
(Note Josephus gives us neither Berenice nor the dancing boys and eunuchs. I feel let down, Josephus.)
okay, I legit laughed :)
That Titus either had them or at least had the reputation of having them (pre-Emperorship) incidentally might also give us another glimpse of what it meant growing up at Nero's court. (Yuletide!)
I have to say I am getting more excited about this fic every week :P
Re: Titus
Date: 2026-04-15 09:56 am (UTC)(In another connection to salon, a reminder that Fritz in his old age confesses, via letter (either to Voltaire or Heinrich, can’t remember which one) to crying over Racine’s drama about Titus and Berenice and writes who would have thought he’d get sappy about love stories but he does. I’m going out on a limb here and will guess Berenice isn’t the one he’s identifying himself with, but Titus, the monarch forsaking True Love and joy for duty and service to the state.)
(Since Fritz wasn’t allowed to learn proper Latin, he wouldn’t have known about the dancing boys in addition to Berenice, of course. I very much doubt any French translation of Suetonius available to him would not have been censored, plus he seems to have taken much Roman history from Montesquieu anyway.)
What made me giggle like I’m 12 when checking up on my Suetonius was that Suetonius takes care to mention the boys were actually good enough as dancers to become successfull in public performances and Reformed!Titus even foresook watching them in public. I suppose Suetonius is getting at the contrast to Nero performing himself on the stage (shock horror for proper Roman aristocrats), since Titus has the anti Nero career anyway (starts out looked at as somewhat shady, between being a masterforger and a ruthless enforcer for Dad, has banquets and dancing boys and then also has his sole long term serious romantic relationship, not counting his arranged marriage earlier, with a foreign Queen older than himself, then becomes proper monarch who works hard, regards a day lost where he hasn’t done something good, forgives enemies and sends all sexual distractions away, where Nero starts out as a promising lad taught by Seneca, regarded as a softie and Mama’s boy, and then turns into a decadent self indulgent bastard who performs in public and goes on tour to Greece for a year as if he’s a rock star). But I can’t help but compare the insistence that those boys were good, competent dancers to how one of the clerics defended my guy the medieval Emperor Frederick II of the charge of keeping a harem by saying he’s keeping those girls for their agility with their fingers because they were such excellent weavers.
To get a bit more serious again: of course Titus, being a competent soldier (no one, friend or foe, is disputing that), wouldn’t have brought any troupe of dancers with him to the front line, so Josephus isn’t falsifying history by not mentioning them. But by the time he’s writing the entire account, he’s in Rome and must have known Titus in peacetime as well, so if there is any truth to Suetonius’ account of Prince Hal!Titus , him portraying John of Gishala’s followers as indulging in “effeminate” clichés looks like a massive case of projecting…
no subject
Date: 2026-04-13 05:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-13 10:24 am (UTC)My suggestion to divide book 6 is to stop with the burning of the Temple ("...until the destrusction under Vespasian sixhundredandthirtynine years and forty five days" in my translation.)
no subject
Date: 2026-04-14 04:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-14 05:58 pm (UTC)lished paper are both ill conceived and absurd; Holley knows neither the Book of Mormon nor the writings of Flavius Josephus.]" But go on, tell us how you really feel about the guy.
It's possible that Samuel's wall-top sermon owes something to other sources: Jonah "went into the city a day's walk" before preaching, but Jonah's Nineveh (3 days walk across) is crazily oversized. If I started at Battery Park on the southern tip of Manhattan and walked 20 miles north--- a standard pace for a full day's walk--- I'd deliver my message about God's judgement on the iniquities of Times Square somewhere up in Yonkers. So a parallel story to Jonah would probably set the preaching somewhere else. Jeremiah (ch 20) is put in the stocks "in the upper gate" for his prophecies as well. It doesn't say whether people threw things.
Just by the by, I've always found it fascinating how the Gadianton Robbers are supposedly refounded by people who found relics of the first guys in a cave. (Or do I have this wrong? Does it ever say exactly how or why they were refounded? I don't remember.) Like, "Look, we found the records of a society of evildoers who were utterly wiped out because of how terrible they were. Let's painstakingly reconstruct their secret code of conduct so we can do it all over again!" Sounds unlikely and then you realize neo-Nazis do exactly that, so...
no subject
Date: 2026-04-15 03:33 am (UTC)And yes, there's a ton of stuff (much more than Josephus) both micro and macro that you could argue was inspired by various bits of the Bible. (Even discounting the parts where various prophets just straight-up quote whole chapters of Isaiah or Malachi or Matthew from the KJV.) Though neither Jonah nor Jeremiah ever really reminded me that much of Samuel the Lamanite. I think it was the shouting things from the wall around the city while people are trying to kill him that made the resonance in my mind, even if Josephus actually shouts things from outside the wall. It just feels to me like the sort of dramatic image one might remember from a book and be tempted to put in a fanfic, lol. Not a scholarly argument, just an argument from feels :)
I remembered another thing in Josephus that reminded me of the BoM, though this is definitely not at all a smoking gun, just me being very silly: One of Orson Scott Card's arguments for the BoM as a historical document rather than a novel (I should also append here, although this is probably obvious, that this was an essay he wrote from the POV of a novelist, not as a historian) was that sometimes the action just stops so that the author can, for example, carefully explain how the currency system works which is never brought up again -- which he, as a novelist, points out is not something you would do if you were writing a novel. ...Which of course reminds me of the Essenes! :)
My understanding is that the Gadianton robbers mostly just make up the secret combinations again (Now behold, those secret oaths and covenants did not come forth unto Gadianton from the records which were delivered unto Helaman; but behold, they were put into the heart of Gadianton by that same being who did entice our first parents to partake of the forbidden fruit (Helaman 6:26)). But they would have presumably known about the guys who were wiped out, yeah, even if they didn't know or follow the exact details. That's... a really chilling comparison to neo-Nazis. Huh. Gonna go revise my estimate of how historically plausible that is.
The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem
Date: 2026-04-13 11:51 am (UTC)The Roman authorities then sent Vespasian Caesar against the Jews. He came and laid siege to Jerusalem for three years. There were at that time in Jerusalem these three wealthy people: Nakdimon ben Guryon, ben Kalba Savua, and ben Tzitzit HaKesat. .... These three wealthy people offered their assistance. One of them said to the leaders of the city: I will feed the residents with wheat and barley. And one of them said to leaders of the city: I will provide the residents with wine, salt, and oil. And one of them said to the leaders of the city: I will supply the residents with wood. The Gemara comments: And the Sages gave special praise to he who gave the wood, since this was an especially expensive gift. As Rav Ḥisda would give all of the keys [aklidei] to his servant, except for the key to his shed for storing wood, which he deemed the most important of them all. As Rav Ḥisda said: One storehouse [akhleva] of wheat requires sixty storehouses of wood for cooking and baking fuel. These three wealthy men had between them enough commodities to sustain the besieged for twenty-one years. There were certain zealots among the people of Jerusalem. The Sages said to them: Let us go out and make peace with the Romans. But the zealots did not allow them to do this. The zealots said to the Sages: Let us go out and engage in battle against the Romans. But the Sages said to them: You will not be successful. It would be better for you to wait until the siege is broken. In order to force the residents of the city to engage in battle, the zealots arose and burned down these storehouses [ambarei] of wheat and barley, and there was a general famine. (Gittin 56a)
Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem
Date: 2026-04-13 03:20 pm (UTC)Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem
Date: 2026-04-13 03:50 pm (UTC)For context, the section right before this one is like: btw the emperor Nero converted to Judaism and this other famous rabbi is descended from him. Which very obviously didn't happen and I don't think anyone seriously thought it happened?? So you would need an actual Talmud scholar to know the context of all this, and sadly I am not one. :)
I have the sense that the Sages are the rabbis/scholars/Sanhedrin rather than the priests (kohanim), but there might have been overlap?
Side note: I'm going to be away for a few days, and I might not have time to write up R. Yochanan ben Zakkai before that, but if not, I will when I come back!
Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem
Date: 2026-04-13 04:05 pm (UTC)(I still get a kick out of the idea of a famous rabbi claiming descend from Nero, though. I mean, of all the ancestors to claim... would make him related to both Mark Antony and Octavian/Augustus in a direct blood connection, too.)
Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem
Date: 2026-04-14 04:13 am (UTC)Poppea
Date: 2026-04-14 08:11 am (UTC)(She does appear in this capacity early in the first novel of Feuchtwanger’s trilogy, you might recall, and also that readers were bewildered on Poppea showing up in a non-evil femme fatale capacity.)
(The other source for pro Poppea material are inscriptions in Pompeii, which was her hometown, and apparently she was a generous patroness for the locals since there are a lot of dedications and praises to her. Bear in mind that Pompeii was destroyed/frozen in time during the reign of Titus, i.e. if said Poppea praising inscriptions were just for show during Nero’s reign because the inhabitants had to, they would have had all the years of Vespasian’s government to erase them again and praise the Flavians instead.)
All of which, btw, doesn’t mean she was totally innocent of what Tacitus blames her for - I mean, minus the usual percentage of Roman/Tacitan misogyny and trashing any prominent woman who is not Cornelia mother of the Gracchi -; I totally buy that when marrying Nero’s bff Otho while Nero was already interested in her, she also had her eyes in the main chance. Naive about how lethal imperial family politics could get, she was not. Especially given Messalina gets blamed for the death of her (Poppea’s, not Messalina’s) mother So if she wanted to be Empress, she might have considered Nero would just divorce Octavia (divorce being relatively easy in Roman society), but also to prefer the more lethal solution. And Agrippina had been the most influential and dangerous woman in Rome for years and years at this point; Agrippina had been against Nero ending his marriage with Octavia and marrying Poppea. So yes, I’m also completely willing to believe Poppea encouraging Nero to kill his mother once that was on the table.
But clearly, “beautiful, ruthless wife of dictator” wasn’t all there was to her personality. People can be complex, including ruthless go-getters. Let’s just remind ourselves here of that most famous of Imperial converts, to wit, Constantine. Who was interested in Christianity and promoting it years and years before finally converting on his death bed. In between supposedly seeing the sign of the cross telling him he would win in this sign against Maxentius on the Milvian Bridge and his deathbed conversion many years later, and after sponsoring the first great economic Council, the Council of Nicea, at which he was present, Constantine killed his oldest son and his wife and some of his half siblings. Strangely, this never got him as bad a press as Poppea.
Re: Poppea
Date: 2026-04-15 03:38 am (UTC)Ah, yeah, thanks for this!
Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem
Date: 2026-04-14 04:13 am (UTC)Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem
Date: 2026-04-14 12:27 am (UTC)The Pirke Avot (Precepts of the Fathers) section of the Talmud starts with "Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly..." but by the era we're talking about, we're solidly in the territory of attested people who would have been eyewitnesses to these events. I'll let
Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem
Date: 2026-04-14 04:16 am (UTC)(There are some mathematical tractates which make this very clear. It's a completely independent mathematical/logical tradition--- you don't get any sense that these guys have heard of Euclid or Archimedes.)
Huh, this is really neat. So do they come up with something that works sort of like Euclidean geometry, or...?
Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem
Date: 2026-04-14 12:28 pm (UTC)See section seven "The role of mathematical proof" for the "quasi-inductive" nature of the arguments.
Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem
Date: 2026-04-15 03:39 am (UTC)Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem
Date: 2026-04-14 04:10 am (UTC)Incidentally….
Date: 2026-04-14 08:18 am (UTC)Re: Incidentally….
Date: 2026-04-15 03:40 am (UTC)