Real Roman History27 Aug

Episode 81. The Jewish War and the Making of Vespasian

Works Cited Primary Sources

Josephus. The Jewish War, Books 2 and 3. The principal source for this episode and, for most of it, the only source. Book 2 covers the procuratorships, the Caesarea dispute, the seventeen talents, the Upper Market killings, Agrippa the Second's speech, the ending of the sacrifice, the factional killings in Jerusalem, and the destruction of Cestius Gallus's column at Beth Horon. Book 3 covers Nero's appointment of Vespasian, the assembly of the army at Ptolemais, and the Galilean campaign including the siege of Jotapata. Josephus commanded the Jewish forces in Galilee during the events of Book 3 and wrote in Rome under Flavian patronage. Every figure and every judgement in the work should be read with both facts in view.
Josephus. The Life. His autobiographical defence of his conduct as commander in Galilee, written decades later in response to the rival account of Justus of Tiberias. It contradicts the Jewish War at several points on his own actions and is the principal evidence for how contested his conduct was among his contemporaries.
Josephus. Jewish Antiquities, Book 20. The sequence of procurators from Cuspius Fadus to Gessius Florus, including the material on Felix and Albinus drawn on in Part One.
Suetonius. Life of Nero. Cited in Episode 78. Used here for the Greek tour and the position Nero was in when the news from Judaea reached him.
Suetonius. Life of Vespasian. The early career, the Claudian invasion of Britain, the African governorship, and the account of Vespasian falling asleep during Nero's recital and the disgrace that followed. Suetonius had access to imperial records and is the fullest source for Vespasian's life before the Judaean command.
Tacitus. Histories, Book 5. The opening chapters give a compressed Roman retrospect on Judaea under the procurators and the outbreak of the war. The characterisation of Antonius Felix as a man who wielded the power of a king with the temperament of a slave is Tacitus's, and it is the one substantial independent check on Josephus's portrait of the procuratorships.

Archaeological Evidence

Caesarea Maritima. The harbour works, the theatre, the aqueducts, and the inscription recording Pontius Pilate's prefecture. The excavated city is the physical setting for the civic dispute that opened the war.
The coinage of the revolt. Silver shekels and half-shekels struck in Jerusalem from the first year of the war, inscribed in palaeo-Hebrew script with the legends Shekel of Israel and Jerusalem the Holy, and dated by year of the revolt. They are the only substantial body of evidence produced by the rebel administration itself rather than by its enemies or by Josephus, and the decision to strike silver at all was a direct assertion of sovereignty.
Gamla. The fortified town in the Golan taken during the Galilean campaign, extensively excavated. The wall, the breach, the siege works, and the arrowhead and ballista distribution are all recoverable, and the site was never reoccupied, which makes the destruction layer unusually legible.
Masada. Yigael Yadin's excavations of the 1960s and the subsequent work established the Herodian palace complex, the armoury, and the Roman siege apparatus. Relevant here for Menahem's seizure of the fortress and the arms he took from it in 66 CE.
Yodfat. The site identified with Josephus's Jotapata, excavated from the 1990s. The excavations recovered the fortification line, evidence of the Roman siege ramp, arrowheads and ballista stones, and human remains in cisterns consistent with the aftermath Josephus describes. The site is one of the few places where his narrative can be tested against physical evidence, and it holds up unusually well.

Secondary Sources

Goodman, Martin. Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations. Allen Lane, 2007. The broader treatment of the relationship across the whole period and the fullest recent account of why two systems that had accommodated each other for decades stopped being able to.
Goodman, Martin. The Ruling Class of Judaea: The Origins of the Jewish Revolt against Rome, A.D. 66–70. Cambridge University Press, 1987. The argument that the revolt originated in the failure of the Jewish ruling class Rome had chosen to govern through, rather than in Roman misgovernment alone. The structural framing of Part One follows Goodman.
Levick, Barbara. Vespasian. Routledge, 1999. The standard modern biography and the framework for Part Five's treatment of why Nero chose him and what the command did to his prospects.
Mason, Steve. A History of the Jewish War, A.D. 66–74. Cambridge University Press, 2016. The major recent revisionist treatment, which questions whether the events of 66 CE constituted a unified national revolt at all and reads much of the standard narrative as an artefact of Josephus's own shaping. Not followed on every point here, but the caution it urges about the received account is applied throughout.
Smallwood, E. Mary. The Jews under Roman Rule: From Pompey to Diocletian. Brill, 1976. The standard narrative history of the province across the whole Roman period, and the reference used for the sequence and dating of the procuratorships.

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