In fact, for most ordinary Jews throughout the province, the burden of Roman taxes and other financial exactions chafed from the start. As the years of foreign rule passed, the notion promoted by Jesus of an acceptable Roman administration in Judaea only became harder to stomach. For many peasants, good agricultural land was in short supply. Its possession, or lack of it, sharply divided regional groups in Palestine and Judaea then as today. While the coastal plain had rich soil and rivers to water it, the upland massif of Judaea was rocky and dry, its soil thin. As a result, it was hard enough to make a living, find the land rent, feed a family and pay one’s dues to the Temple and tithes to the priests without having to dig even deeper for Caesar when the tax collectors came calling.8
But the money-gatherers were unwelcome for another reason. The men who toured the villages of Judaea and relieved the poor of their money were not even Romans. Jewish peasants paid up to a Jewish élite thriving under Roman patronage and tax-collecting contracts. Consequently, the issue of taxes cut a sharp divide in Jewish society. Pax Romana enriched some and slowly killed others.
The seeds of these political and economic tensions were sown when Rome took control of Judaea in 63 BC. From that time on they only grew and grew. By AD 66 Judaea was a time bomb. To set it off, all that was needed was someone to press the button. In May of that year Gessius Florus, the Roman procurator, duly obliged.
OUTBREAK
In its last years, the rapacious regime of the emperor Nero needed money, and lots of it. The burden of heavier taxes and forced levies hit the provinces hard. Gaul and Britain suffered; in Africa six landlords who owned half the land of the province were put to death; now Judaea too was about to feel the pinch.9 One way or another Judaea was going to help make up the shortfall between revenue and Nero’s profligate expenditure. Florus announced that the emperor required the massive sum of 400,000 sesterces. He was even prepared to take it from the funds of the Temple treasury, and declared that units of Roman soldiers were going to come to Jerusalem to get it. Since those funds were made up of the sacred dues paid by ordinary Jews for sacrifices to God, Florus’s threat amounted to stealing of the most outrageous kind. The Jews in the Holy City were furious.
Gessius Florus was the archetypal greedy Roman governor. He delighted in impoverishing the Jews, boasted about his crimes, and lost no opportunity of turning a profit through extortion and robbery. Indeed, he saw it as a sport.10 At least this was the view of Joseph ben Mattathias who witnessed the events. Josephus (his Roman name) was a twenty-nine-year-old priest and scholar, scion of an aristocratic Jewish family that could trace its origins in part to an influential dynasty of priests, known as the Hasmoneans, who had ruled Judaea when the Romans first arrived. He had studied the teachings of the three most prominent Jewish sects, and when he could not decide which one to join, he later claimed to have spent three years living with an ascetic hermit meditating in the desert. After some years carrying out his priestly duties in Jerusalem, he then travelled on a diplomatic mission to Rome, where he remained for two years. By May AD 66, perhaps laden with Roman sympathies, he had returned to Jerusalem, only to find it in the crisis provoked by Florus. It was a crisis that would engulf him and change his life for ever. From this point on he became the eyewitness historian of the revolt of the Jews against Rome.
True to his word, Florus in Caesarea ordered his soldiers to take seventeen talents (435 kilograms or nearly 1000 pounds) of silver from the Temple treasury. From this one action all the tensions between the Romans and Jews erupted. Stealing from the very place where King David had founded the Holy City, where King Solomon had built the first Temple, and where the Jews returning from captivity in Babylon had built the second Temple was the greatest violation of their race and history. The Temple was the ultimate symbol of Jewish identity. But Florus couldn’t have cared less. In a spirit of reasserting Roman power, he gladly gave the order for the Gentile soldiers to force their way into the most holy of places, upturn the sacred objects, push aside the swarms of priests and protesters who stood in the way, and seize the money.
Stirred up by Jewish nationalists and radicals, there was uproar throughout Jerusalem. When news reached Caesarea that the city was up in arms, Florus dashed off to Jerusalem himself with both an infantry and a cavalry unit to restore order and make sure that he received the money. As he entered the city, some jokers went around mimicking beggars and acting as though they were collecting for the impoverished Roman procurator. Now it was Florus’s turn to be angry. He set up a dais in a public space and began an open-air tribunal to bring to justice those who had insulted him. Local leaders formed a line between the Roman leadership and the crowds of angry protesters. Among the moderate priests were Josephus and the high priest Hanan. Apologizing to Florus on behalf of the people of Jerusalem, they desperately tried to calm the crowd and restore order. However, their pleas made no impact. The reality was that the pro-Roman priestly élite was hopelessly exposed. On the one hand, to have tried to bring the culprits before Florus would have resulted in further riots; yet on the other hand, to have sided with the nationalists risked bringing Roman disfavour and an end to their privileges. So at the open-air meeting they compromised and simply begged Florus to forgive the few agitators and extremists for the sake of the many innocent and loyal subjects of Rome. His response, however, only fanned the flames: he sent in the cavalry.
The Roman suppression of protesters in the Upper Market quickly escalated into something much worse. Houses were plundered, over 3000 innocent people were killed, and the instigators of the riot were crucified as a lesson to others. When the Jews plucked up the courage to protest – this time at the massacre – a second bloodbath took place. Once again, the moderates in the Jewish élite were caught in the middle, so they made the traditional signs of supplication: they threw themselves on the ground, covered their heads with dust, tore their clothes and begged the insurgents to stop. They were, they said, only giving the Romans the excuse to plunder further. Once again, the procurator resorted to force. Two more cohorts were drafted in from Caesarea and the soldiers clubbed the protesters to death. When the cavalry pursued those trying to escape, they chased them to the gates of the Antonia Fortress. Here, in the desperate congestion, many were crushed to death and others were beaten to an unrecognizable pulp.11 With each day full of disasters, the authority of the local leaders and priests collapsed, and popular opinion swung dramatically in favour of the nationalists and armed resistance.
Spoiling for a fight, the nationalists organized retaliation. They barricaded the streets, isolated and hemmed in pockets of outnumbered Roman soldiers, and then, using spears, slingshots and loose bricks and tiles, they attacked, driving Florus and most of his Roman cohorts out of the city. While Florus limped back to Caesarea, the solitary Roman cohort left behind was soon slaughtered. Action was needed, but none of the Roman measures taken had any effect. King Agrippa, the clientruler of territories partly in Galilee and partly to the north and east of the Sea of Galilee, was called upon. Perhaps he would have more influence over the outraged Jews in Jerusalem. Supervision of the management of the Temple, including the appointment of the High Priest, had been delegated to him by the emperor for over a decade. But when Agrippa entered the Holy City and addressed the hostile crowds, he too was stoned and driven out.12
News of the successful resistance in Jerusalem spread across the entire province. In fortress after fortress across Judaea, Roman guards were murdered and Jewish rebels took control. To restore order, the emperor of Rome and his senatorial advisers turned to Gaius Cestius Gallus, the newly appointed legate of Syria. Perhaps the full might of a Roman legion and numerous other troops would succeed where the meagre auxiliary forces of Judaea had failed. In mid-October AD 66, with 30,000 troops at his side, Gallus marched from Antioch to Jerusalem with the aim of quashing these rebels in a quick, decisive confrontation. But he was the wrong man for the job. A politician more accustomed to the pleasures of provincial peace than the realities of war, Gallus not only failed to take the city, but on his retreat was caught in a desperate trap. This was to prove the moment when a rebellion in a small province of the empire was transformed into war with the superpower of Rome.