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The siege of Masada was one of the final events in the First Jewish–Roman War, occurring from 72 to 73 CE on and around a hilltop in present-day Israel. The siege is known to history via a single source, Flavius Josephus , [ 3 ] a Jewish rebel leader captured by the Romans , in whose service he became a historian.
The Roman legion surrounded Masada, building a circumvallation wall and then a siege ramp against the western face of the plateau. [11] According to Dan Gill, [ 19 ] geological investigations in the early 1990s confirmed earlier observations that the 114 m (375 ft) high assault ramp consisted mostly of a natural spur of bedrock.
In Autumn 66, Jewish rebels ambushed a retreating Roman army under Gallus on this road, annihilating a force equivalent to a full legion. Scholars have compared this Roman failure to the disastrous Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE, [ 74 ] [ 78 ] though the latter was much larger in scale, resulting in three times the losses. [ 82 ]
The Jewish–Roman wars were a series of large-scale revolts by the Jews of Judaea against the Roman Empire between 66 and 135 CE. [10] The term primarily applies to the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73) and the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136) which sought restoring Judean independence that was lost since the Hasmonean civil war .
During the siege, many Jews fled to surrounding Moab, Ammon, Edom and other countries to seek refuge. [7] The city eventually fell after a thirty-month siege, and the Babylonian general Nebuzaradan was sent to complete its destruction. [8] The city was plundered, and Solomon's Temple was destroyed. Most of the members of the elite class were ...
The Sicarii [a] (“Knife-wielder”, “dagger-wielder”, “dagger-bearer”; from Latin sica = dagger) were a group of Jewish Zealots, who, in the final decades of the Second Temple period, conducted a campaign of targeted assassinations and kidnappings of Roman officials in Judea and of Jews who collaborated with the Roman Empire.
Menahem ben Judah lived around the time of the First Jewish–Roman War and is mentioned by Josephus.He was the leader of a faction called the Sicarii who carried out assassinations of Romans and collaborators in the Holy Land.
The lengthy siege by Roman Empire troops culminated in the Roman legion surrounding Masada and constructing a siege ramp against the western face of the plateau, moving thousands of tons of stones and beaten earth over several months. Upon reaching the fortress, the Romans discovered that all 960 rebels had committed suicide.