The Jewish War: Last half of book 5

[cahn]

Last 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).

Comments

Re: The Talmud on the Siege of Jerusalem

[cahn]

Oh lol wow! That's kind of amazing.

Poppea

[selenak]

Mind you: Poppea has a terrible image in both Tacitus and Suetonius as an evil femme fatale who encouraged Nero to off his first wife and kill his mother and who had her eye on being Empress even when marrying Otho, so Josephus - who writes before Tacitus and Suetonius but at a time when Poppea and Nero are dead and Nero-as-evil at least is official Flavian policy - presenting her in a positive light as a generous patroness who intercedes with Nero on behalf of the Jews at least twice, even calling her “religious” (which earlier influential Romans who did have Jewish clientel like Mark Antony or Caesar where definitely not called) is all the more remarkable. It’s not like he’s gaining brownie points from his own patrons from this, which makes me believe it must be true, Poppea Sabina was actually interested in Judaism and Josephus did witness her interceding on behalf of Jewish causes twice.

(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

[cahn]

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.

Ah, yeah, thanks for this!