Siege of Masada (spring AD 73 or 74)

The last act of the Jewish War. Masada, Herod’s fortress on a lonely rock above the Dead Sea, was held by the Sicarii of Eleazar ben Yair. The governor Flavius Silva surrounded the rock with a wall and camps, and with the Tenth Legion raised a ramp on a natural spur called the White Promontory. An iron-plated tower was set on the ramp, a battering ram broke the wall, and the defenders’ second wall, of wood and earth, was set on fire by the Romans; Josephus writes that the wind first drove the fire against them and then turned. According to Josephus the defenders chose death rather than slavery: nine hundred and sixty people died, and two women and five children survived. Josephus gives the day, the fifteenth of Xanthicus, but not the year, hence the dispute: 73 or 74. An event from the Vespasian episode, chapter “The Fortress on the Rock”.