The Jewish War: First half of Book 6

[cahn]

Last week: Sieges are awful. Josephus tells us that Titus really totally felt bad about all the awfulness (even though he didn't stop them) and there is a theory that maybe by "us" he meant "Berenice." Titus had dancing boys?? (Josephus does not mention any, sadly.) Does Samuel the Lamanite in the Book of Mormon owe anything to Josephus speaking truth to the wicked? Unclear. Talmud on the Sages vs. the Zealots as an interesting correlated story to Josephus. Poppea's complexity including both an interest in (conversion to?) Judaism as well as being ruthless; comparison to Constantine's much better press.

This week: The temple is destroyed.

Next week: End of Book 6.

Comments

[cahn]

Also, note to those who may not be following the previous posts any more: lannamichaels has joined the chat about the mass suicide in Book 4 (most threw themselves, their children, and their wives over the edge into the ravine)!

Recap

[cahn]

The siege of Jerusalem gets worse. The Jews put up a desperate fight to keep the Romans from breaking down the last wall, but when they do there's another wall behind it! Titus gives another stirring speech to get his men to scale that wall (which would be certain death). (One guy actually volunteers and against the odds does pretty well actually until he trips and falls. ) Titus sends Josephus out again to talk to John. Josephus is (as always) very well-spoken (but actually yeah, I do think he is very upset) and he says some people do decide to escape the city because of it. Some refugees try to ask the insurgents to give in to the Romans or at least to withdraw from the temple so the sanctuary could be preserved: unless there was absolutely compelling need, the Romans would never bring themselves to set fire to the holy places. (Our footnote says that Josephus' readers of course knew what was going to happen a few days later.) The insurgents kill them instead (I think? I can't quite make it out from the text). (Do we really think this happened?) Titus also tells them that he's willing to preserve the temple. John and his boys don't listen, of course. So Titus keeps fighting them. Josephus tells various stories of the fighting.

One of the stories involves the Jews setting fire to a colonnade (I didn't know what a colonnade was until now... I guess architecture is another thing I don't know about) which is obviously not good for the Romans who were on it. Nobody could help them, but it was at least some consolation to the doomed men to see the distress of the leader [Titus] for whom they were giving up their lives... Every one of them took with him to his death those cries, that sympathy coming from Caesar like some glorious burial shroud, and died content. Really? Really, Josephus? Another story is about a dude who asks his fellow soldier to break his fall by promising everything he has, but he doesn't ever have to pay up because "the weight of him flattened his catcher on the stone pavement with instantly fatal result."

Meanwhile, there is famine, resulting in the absolutely awful story of the woman who eats her own child. But it was the fathers, [Titus] said, not the mothers, who were responsible for the resort to such food: it was they who were obstinately remaining under arms even after privations as acute as these. I mean, on one hand we know Josephus is going to blame John for anything he can, but on the other, this actually sounds like a welcome exception to the rule that women get blamed for everything... maybe because Josephus is Jewish more than Roman? :P

Titus, now realizing that his attempt to spare a foreign temple was only causing injury and death to his own men, gave orders for the gates to be fired. Footnote says that this is the outer wall of the Temple enclosure. He then has a meeting where he and the others decide not to destroy the temple. Footnote says that "Sulpicius Severus, a Christian historian who wrote a universal chronicle in Latin in the late fourth and early fifth century AD, preserved a tradition, which may have come from Tacitus, that Titus' council of war had explicitly decided that the temple should be destroyed. But in favour of Josephus' accuracy in his account of this council are the date he was writing and his knowledge that many of those alleged to have been present could have denied its truth if it was an invention." However, if what selenak said in the last post is true and Titus wanted it to look to, say, Berenice, as if he'd wanted to spare the temple, even if at the time he'd said no, would anyone really have spoken up against him?

Anyway... one of the Roman soldiers, without waiting for orders and oblivious to the horror of what he was doing, in what must have been some devilish impulse grabbed a piece of the burning timber and, hoisted up by one of his colleagues, flung the brand through a gold-plated window which gave into the rooms lining the sanctuary on the north side. There is basically a riot in which Josephus says Caesar is trying to hold back the fire but various soldiers keep feeding it. And so, though it was none of Caesar's wish, the temple was fired.

Re: Recap

[selenak]

Josephus' lament for the destroyed trees and landscape around Jerusalem (which the Romans used to build siege engines) at the start of this book and him saying no one who had seen Jerusalem (which is his home city, it's worth reminding, not "just" of religious significance to him) pre war would have recognized the landscape immediately gave me both WWI and Tolkien associations - you know, the land looking tike moon craters . And certainly there are no more woods around Jerusalem to this day. (At least that I recall, though I was there decades ago.)

Something I noticed that in this book, Josephus starts to list the names of Jewish fighters who have been especially brave in battle at the end of each description of a fight, not just of the Romans like Sabinus the Syrian whom you mention in your recap. Given that these names are irrelevant to his Roman and Greek readership, I think they're there both for the Jewish readers and to give testimony; chances are few of any of these men he lists survived, and he wouldn't be wrong to suspect once their own families are gone nobody would remember them anymore if he doesn't do this.

My translation has Josephus describe the Syrian who does the suicide mission for Titus excplicitly as "black", which I found interesting because from what I recall, skin colour usually isn't mentioned in Roman historical accounts. (Unless we're talking about Suetonius' gossipy biographies of the Caesars; he does mention everyone's skin tone down to the last pimble.)

The story of the woman who eats her own child: made it into Feuchtwanger's novel, minus everyone's speeches, and I do recall looking it up when I read the novel (i.e. whether Feuchtwanger was making this up or basing it on Josephus' account) because it is just so terrible. Now from a writing pov, I think it's meant as the ultimate horror and desecration of humanity, and it's deliberate that it's set immediately before the Temple going up in flames. I.e. after the most fundamental law of human nature is broken within Jerusalem, the Temple is doomed. And Josephus does draw on precedence; googling tells me there is maternal cannibalism mentioned as the ultimate horror in Deuteronomy 28, Lamentations 2 and 4, and 2 Kings 6. However, none of this means I think Josephus point blank invented it and that there was no Mary/Mirjam who ate her child in the siege of Jerusalem. He's publishing only a few years after the event, and if he had made it up, there would have been a lot of survivors on both sides able to say so, because they would have heard about it when it happened. So my guess is that it did happen, but everyone from the mother to Titus making speeches did not, and also it probably didn't happen directly before the Roman assault on the Temple.

I mean, on one hand we know Josephus is going to blame John for anything he can, but on the other, this actually sounds like a welcome exception to the rule that women get blamed for everything... maybe because Josephus is Jewish more than Roman? :P


Possibly. Mind you, the women have actually zero say in whether or not the city surrenders, so quite aside from rethorics, it is a correct statement. Leaving out, of course, that if the Romans just left, there would also be no starvation.

But in favour of Josephus' accuracy in his account of this council are the date he was writing and his knowledge that many of those alleged to have been present could have denied its truth if it was an invention. However, if what selenak said in the last post is true and Titus wanted it to look to, say, Berenice, as if he'd wanted to spare the temple, even if at the time he'd said no, would anyone really have spoken up against him?

Well, don't forget, even if the theory that Titus wanted Berenice to believe he did his best to spare the Temple and asked Josephus to write the acccount with this in mind is correct, it wasn't something Titus could or would have said officially to his fellow Romans. From a Roman pov, efforts to spare the Temple at this late stage of the siege are an unnecessary luxury. Plus Romans don't just have a Cleopatra complex, they also have an Antony complex, i.e. from a Roman pov, it's more in Titus' interests to look like a tough guy putting Roman interests first. So basically, if once "The Jewish War" is published there are veterans from Titus' staff who want to say "what rubbish is this, Titus gave us point blank instructions to torch the Temple", it's not in Titus' interest to stop them saying this. And while we know Josephus had his critics and his feuds, I don't think a contemporary to his life time controversy on this particular point of this narrative was mentioned.

All this isn't to say that Titus' council of war couldn't still have decided the Temple was to be destroyed, just that Josephus point blank claiming the opposite, for whatever reason, would have exposed him to a lot of attacks on the very work with which he wanted to make his name in the Roman and Hellenistic world.

(Feuchtwanger as a novelist presents Titus as eternally torn, as you may recall, between his better and his worse side, so he does give the order to spare the Temple, but he does it in a way that betrays a part of him also wants the Temple to burn, and that's what the Roman officer he gives the order to latches on to and who unambiguously hates the Jews latches on to, and that's what Titus can never admit to himself afterwards, hence him horrifying Josephus years later when dying via the final question "Why was the Temple destroyed?")

A few posts ago, I said that there are basically two opposing historical precedents for how this with the Temple and Jerusalem could have gone in terms of Roman treatment of a defeated opponent - the Carthage model, where the city was destroyed, Temples very much included, and the Egypt model, where basically life in Alexandria went on as before, just that you know paid your taxes directly to the Romans, and all of the buildings survived intact. But of course there was no lengthy siege of Alexandria, while Carthage and Rome fought three lengthy wars against each other, and the longer the war lasts, the lesser the chance that anyone or anything gets spared thereafter. Especially if the conquering party earlier has been made to lose face.

True not just of the Romans. Alexander the Great before he ever left Greece to fight the Persians famously destroyed Thebes for daring to start a rebellion against the Macedonians, and when I say "destroyed", I do mean "torched" and "sold the population into slavery afterwards", and those were fellow Greeks. And if we go back into myth, there is always Troy. Which reminds me: of course everyone of Josephus' Greek and Roman readers would have had the Iliad in mind when talking about a besieged and finally taken city. The Iliad, and the post Iliad dramas and myths around the Trojan War and its aftermath. Because: the Gods who were on the side of the Greeks during the actual war, like Athena and Poseidon, turn from them once the victorious Greeks torch their temples and blaspheme within said temples by raping priestesses like Cassandra. In Euripides' Trojan Women, there is a prologue between Poseidon and Athena where this is explicitly tied to the fact that all of the Greek city kingdoms and most of their rulers will fall or suffer long misfortune. (With the exception of Sparta and Menelaos, but even there his and Helen's only daughter Hermione will be involved in another bloody tragedy elswhere.)

So basically: torching a Temple = REALLY BAD LUCK FOR WHOEVER DOES IT, mythologically speaking, in the ancient world. (Even with Carthage, the Romans had something of a split attitude, in that on the one hand, it was seens as the ultimate triumph, otoh, you had lots of historians declaring it was all downhill from there because without Carthage as a rival, Rome went soft and turned to inner strife and thus the Republic fell.) Now Josephus goes above and beyond to exculpate Titus personally, but his readers would have noticed within their own life time that the Flavian dynasty only lasts for a relatively short while - three Emperors, Titus himself rules only for two years (albeit you can count Vespasian's earlier reign as heavily influenced by him in that he was his father's right hand man, still, it's Vespasian who is boss) and dies at a relatively young age without a son to succeed him, and his brother Domitian while ruling longer ends up assassinated and as one of the few Emperors undergoing a damnatio memoriae. So if you want to go by mythic tropes, it's relatively easy to tie the destruction of the Temple to the downfall of the Flavian dynasty just a few years after it was established.

Re: Recap

[cenozoicsynapsid]

And certainly there are no more woods around Jerusalem to this day. (At least that I recall, though I was there decades ago.)
Oh, forgot to mention. In my recollection, Jerusalem is actually greener than much of the surrounding (lower and hotter) part of Judea. A quick glance at Google Earth confirms this: the area between Bet Shemesh and Jerusalem is more wooded than practically anything until you get to Caesaria. Of course, what is and isn't wooded has a lot to do with later periods of warfare and devastation, as well as the climate.

Re: Recap

[cahn]

Given that these names are irrelevant to his Roman and Greek readership, I think they're there both for the Jewish readers and to give testimony; chances are few of any of these men he lists survived, and he wouldn't be wrong to suspect once their own families are gone nobody would remember them anymore if he doesn't do this.

Oh gosh. Yeah, that makes sense. :/

(Unless we're talking about Suetonius' gossipy biographies of the Caesars; he does mention everyone's skin tone down to the last pimble.)

cenozoicsynapsid mentioned our translation, so I'm just going to laugh at this :)

And Josephus does draw on precedence; googling tells me there is maternal cannibalism mentioned as the ultimate horror in Deuteronomy 28, Lamentations 2 and 4, and 2 Kings 6. However, none of this means I think Josephus point blank invented it and that there was no Mary/Mirjam who ate her child in the siege of Jerusalem. He's publishing only a few years after the event, and if he had made it up, there would have been a lot of survivors on both sides able to say so, because they would have heard about it when it happened. So my guess is that it did happen, but everyone from the mother to Titus making speeches did not, and also it probably didn't happen directly before the Roman assault on the Temple.

Yeah -- the Deut and Lamentations references are not concrete events so much as they seem to be instantiations of the ultimate horror, though 2 Kings 6 does purport to be a story that happened (though differently than in Josephus). But yeah, that makes sense :/

So basically, if once "The Jewish War" is published there are veterans from Titus' staff who want to say "what rubbish is this, Titus gave us point blank instructions to torch the Temple", it's not in Titus' interest to stop them saying this.

Ohhh okay!

so he does give the order to spare the Temple, but he does it in a way that betrays a part of him also wants the Temple to burn, and that's what the Roman officer he gives the order to latches on to and who unambiguously hates the Jews latches on to, and that's what Titus can never admit to himself afterwards, hence him horrifying Josephus years later when dying via the final question "Why was the Temple destroyed?"

:/

So basically: torching a Temple = REALLY BAD LUCK FOR WHOEVER DOES IT, mythologically speaking, in the ancient world.

Ohhhh. That's really interesting, especially what you say about the readers noticing that the Flavian dynasty didn't last too long. Though none of our Talmud readers (I think?) have told us (yet) that there's anything in the Talmud about it, which if this is common knowledge might end up there? But then again maybe the Talmudic writers weren't paying too much attention to that kind of thing.

Re: Recap

[cenozoicsynapsid]

J seems to emphasize in this section how close the Jews come to a successful defense... despite the obvious futility of their effort, as we have already discussed. The Romans (if they can do nothing else) can just starve them out. In fact, what he doesn't say is that Titus is pressing the assault--- with predictably high casualties for his men--- precisely because Vespasian needs to begin his reign as emperor with a triumph over the Judeans. This is what is setting the timetable. Ladders, storming the breach, the futile efforts to break in at night, are all the strategems that an impatient commander uses to trade bodies for time. I wonder if the soldiers' efforts to fire the temple are based to some extent on their understanding that Titus will continue to incur heavy casualties until the city is successfully taken.

I do think that, whatever the assumptions about the temple, Titus did not just decide to treat Jerusalem like Carthage. In fact, Carthage is a good comparison: Rome wins three Punic Wars before deciding to finally raze the place. And there will be three Roman-Jewish wars, culminating in Bar Kochva's revolt (about a hundred years from now) when the Romans will decide to raze Jerusalem, replace it with a pagan colony and exile most of the Jews. If they'd wanted to do that on this occasion, they probably would have?

It is interesting that (6.115) some of the upper-class citizens and priests leave Jerusalem and are sent by Vespasian to Gophna. Gophna (just north of Jerusalem) is not the same as Yavneh (Jamnia to the Greeks), but they sound extremely similar. I wonder if J has heard something about the escape of R' Yohanan and his disciples, but has mistakenly inferred that Vespasian sent them to the much nearer city of Gophna rather than to Yavneh, on the basis of the similarity of sounds?

selenak, in our translation also, Sabinus the Syrian is "black-skinned, scrawny, with the flesh compact on him". As you say, it seems uncharacteristic for a Roman historian to say much about skin color, nor was skin color prejudice a major factor in Roman ethnic stereotypes. Perhaps we are just to infer that the glorious Titus can inspire men of any nationality to feats of reckless heroism?

Re: Recap

[cahn]

In fact, what he doesn't say is that Titus is pressing the assault--- with predictably high casualties for his men--- precisely because Vespasian needs to begin his reign as emperor with a triumph over the Judeans. This is what is setting the timetable. Ladders, storming the breach, the futile efforts to break in at night, are all the strategems that an impatient commander uses to trade bodies for time. I wonder if the soldiers' efforts to fire the temple are based to some extent on their understanding that Titus will continue to incur heavy casualties until the city is successfully taken.

Ohhhh, that is really interesting, especially your observation that these are strategies for trading bodies and time.

And there will be three Roman-Jewish wars, culminating in Bar Kochva's revolt (about a hundred years from now) when the Romans will decide to raze Jerusalem, replace it with a pagan colony and exile most of the Jews. If they'd wanted to do that on this occasion, they probably would have?

Ah! I suppose it's not much consolation to Josephus that it could have been worse...

Re: Recap

[cenozoicsynapsid]

Brett Devereaux has some good blog articles about ancient siege tactics. Here (no orcs: https://acoup.blog/2021/10/29/collections-fortification-part-i-the-besiegers-playbook/) and here (with orcs: https://acoup.blog/2020/05/01/collections-the-battle-of-helms-deep-part-i-bargaining-for-goods-at-helms-gate/) are two of them.

Re: Recap

[cahn]

Ahhhhh thank you for this! I should read Brett Devereaux more than I actually do.

Re: Recap

[selenak]

precisely because Vespasian needs to begin his reign as emperor with a triumph over the Judeans. This is what is setting the timetable.

Very good point. We know Vespasian is here to stay until his natural death millenia later, but at the time neither Titus nor anyone else can be sure Vespasian will hang around any longer than the previous three guys. If the Year of the Four Emperors proved one thing, then that the rules from the last century don't apply anymore. Anyone (with an army or two) can become Emperor, and they can be deposed as quickly if they don't demonstrate something that makes them different.

Brushing up my Suetonius has also reminded me that people at the time when Titus post victory at Jerusalem made a little detour to Egypt before heading home to Italy were wildly speculating whether he's going to turn this into the era of the Five Emperors and make his own bid for the throne. (For symbolic reasons - apparantly Titus observed the ritual of the Apis bull, which is something Alexander did back in the day when in Egypt - and also because Egypt is still the breadbasket of the ancient world and whoever has troops there could cut off Rome's supply of grain very fast.) Which he doesn't do, but it gives one a sense of the atmosphere at the time, everything still very jittery and up in the air, with a sense that anything is possible.

Another Suetonius tidbit, this time from the Domition bio, is the reminder that one consequence of the Jewish defeat was that Vespasian ordered the tax the Jews had previously paid to the Temple to be paid to him instead where it was used to rebuild the Temple of Jupiter that had been burned down in the grand climax of the Year of the Four Emperors (with young Domitian and Vespasian's brother inside). (The Temple of Jupiter in Rome and the Second Temple in Jerusalem burning down a year or so apart begs for some mythological connection, btw, but for once, Suetonius, who otherwise loves a good omen, doesn't go there.) Domitian keeps this tax when the Jupiter Temple has finished rebuilding - of course he does - but he also introduces the novelty of people suspected of being undercover Judeans tax evaders having to show their penises to prove they aren't (because of circumsision), and Suetonius comments he can still renember that from being a boy. Good grief.

It is interesting that (6.115) some of the upper-class citizens and priests leave Jerusalem and are sent by Vespasian to Gophna. Gophna (just north of Jerusalem) is not the same as Yavneh (Jamnia to the Greeks), but they sound extremely similar. I wonder if J has heard something about the escape of R' Yohanan and his disciples, but has mistakenly inferred that Vespasian sent them to the much nearer city of Gophna rather than to Yavneh, on the basis of the similarity of sounds?

Could be!

As you say, it seems uncharacteristic for a Roman historian to say much about skin color, nor was skin color prejudice a major factor in Roman ethnic stereotypes. Perhaps we are just to infer that the glorious Titus can inspire men of any nationality to feats of reckless heroism?

I guess. Or it's like with the Essenes - for some reason lost on us Josephus goes into details (in this case, skin colour) that don't really seem to contribute something to the narrative.

Re: Recap

[cahn]

Brushing up my Suetonius has also reminded me that people at the time when Titus post victory at Jerusalem made a little detour to Egypt before heading home to Italy were wildly speculating whether he's going to turn this into the era of the Five Emperors and make his own bid for the throne.

Oh wow, that would be an interesting dark AU, though...

Domitian keeps this tax when the Jupiter Temple has finished rebuilding - of course he does - but he also introduces the novelty of people suspected of being undercover Judeans tax evaders having to show their penises to prove they aren't (because of circumsision), and Suetonius comments he can still renember that from being a boy.

Uh. Well. Okay then.

[cahn]

Since I'm saying random stuff about the Book of Mormon: here, Doubtless they were cursing their God for being so slow to punish their enemies: it was no hope of victory now which steeled them to the fight, but rather despair of any other deliverance reminds me a bit of their sorrowing was not unto repentance, because of the goodness of God; but it was rather the sorrowing of the damned, because the Lord would not always suffer them to take happiness in sin. And they did not come unto Jesus with broken hearts and contrite spirits, but they did curse God, and wish to die. Nevertheless they would struggle with the sword for their lives (Mormon 2:13-14). Again, this could have come from lots of other places too, of course...

ETA: I meant to add last week but forgot: On the other hand, if JS were drawing from Josephus, I'd have expected him to be inspired more by some of these very emotional set-pieces, like the cannibal mom or the burning of Jerusalem, and neither of those are at all a feature of the BoM, to my knowledge.