The Fortress on the Rock — Vespasian: Money Doesn’t Stink

Masada is King Herod’s fortress on a lone rock above the Dead Sea, with cliffs so deep the eye cannot reach the bottom. It is held by rebels under Eleazar ben Yair. The governor Flavius Silva surrounds the rock with a wall so that no one can escape. Then with the Tenth Legion he heaps up a ramp on the rock’s spur right up to the walls. Water and food are carried from afar by Jews who were forced to do it.

When the wall breaks, the defenders choose death over slavery. Josephus writes of nine hundred and sixty dead, women and children included. Two women and five children survived, hidden in underground channels. They are the ones who told the Romans what happened. Josephus gives the day: the fifteenth of the month of Xanthicus, that is, in spring. He does not give the year, so historians waver between AD 73 and 74.

Josephus puts two long speeches in Eleazar’s mouth. He claims that one of the survivors told the Romans the course of events and the words. But he composed the speeches in this form himself: ancient historians wrote speeches for their heroes, as they thought those heroes ought to have spoken. By contrast, the siege wall, eight Roman camps and the ramp stand in the desert to this day. Scholars who have measured them concluded that on the main points Josephus told the truth. In the 20th century Masada became a symbol, and historians still argue over how much of the story is fact and how much monument.

The war is over. What remains is the bill.