Lucius Flavius Silva (governor of Judaea c. AD 73–⁠74)

Lucius Flavius Silva took over Judaea after the death of Lucilius Bassus. The country was already subdued; only Masada still held out. Silva gathered his army, surrounded the rock with a wall so that no one could escape, and set up camps around it. Water and food had to be carried from far away, as there was no spring nearby. With the Tenth Legion he raised a ramp on a rocky spur called the White Promontory, placed an iron-plated tower on it and broke the wall with a battering ram. The defenders built a second wall behind it, of wood and earth; Silva had it set on fire. After the capture he left a garrison in the fortress and returned to Caesarea. The ramp and traces of the camps are still visible today, and an inscription from his home town of Urbs Salvia allows the fall of Masada to be dated to AD 73 or 74. He appears in the Vespasian episode, in the chapter “The Fortress on the Rock”.