Invading Galilee from the west, Vespasian first took Gabara, where John of Gischala had taken charge of the rebellion. While John again escaped to regroup elsewhere, the town was less fortunate: it was taken at the first assault. Marching into it, Vespasian executed his plan. He showed no clemency, put to the sword everyone except small children, and then burnt down the town itself and all the surrounding villages. However, when he learnt that the commander of Galilee had rallied the largest stronghold of Jewish resistance in Jotapata, he made that town his next port of call. It too was to become a scene of stark conflict. Vespasian had every intention of going on just as he had begun.
Built on a precipice, Jotapata was a natural hilltop stronghold, protected on all sides but the north by deep ravines. Inside the town, awaiting the Roman approach, was Josephus. Although by his mere presence the commander of Galilee had raised the morale of the rebels, deep down he had two conflicting feelings. Rationally he knew that it was futile to attempt to defy Roman power. He even claimed to have made a prophecy to that effect: the town would fall on the forty-seventh day. The only real hope of safety was to give in immediately. Josephus even consoled himself that if he went over to the Romans, he would be pardoned, so what was the point in fighting? However, the second emotion was the greater. He would rather die than betray his motherland and flout the trust that his makeshift, peasant army had placed in him.23 This at least is the picture described by Josephus in his account. It shows signs of the fact that his history was written after the event in an attempt (in part) to present himself to a Roman readership in a good light. One fact was certainly true. Josephus, a Roman sympathizer and unlikely commander, was about to come face to face with the same brute force that had created the Roman empire and was now bloodily stamping out all opposition to it.
It took just five days to clear a road wide enough for the Roman forces to approach Jotapata from the north side. Once in position, Vespasian began the assault. For the first five days the Jews showed an utter disrespect for their vastly superior enemy. Covered by firepower from the town walls, Josephus and his men made daring sallies against the Roman attack, while Vespasian tried to push up the slope and reach the town. After five days of courageous defence, the spirit of the Jews soared with confidence, but then Vespasian changed tack. In order to protect his assault force, he ordered siege towers to be erected against the north wall. Time and again, however, the Roman siege operations were beaten by Jewish resourcefulness.
When the Romans tried to protect the building of the siege towers with hurdles, the Jews made the work difficult by launching rocks from the walls and smashing the Roman defensive works. When the Romans built the siege towers higher, Josephus simply ordered the north wall to be built higher too, his workers protecting themselves with screens made from stretched ox hides. Next, under the combined cover of screens and firepower from a semicircle of 160 artillery engines, Vespasian deployed the unit of soldiers in charge of the battering ram (so called because the iron weight at one end was shaped like a ram’s head). When it eventually drew up against the city wall and began pounding, the Jews dropped huge sacks filled with cloth to soften the blows.
However, the Romans raised their game too. When, in one encounter, Vespasian received an arrow in the foot, he used the occasion to inspire his men. He rose above the pain and urged his soldiers on to ever more intense fighting. Josephus saw how a man was decapitated by an artillery stone, ‘his head flung like a pebble from a sling more than 600 yards [away]’.24 Similarly, a pregnant woman was carried 100 metres (135 yards) under the force of another missile. All around the extraordinary Jewish resistance was the rushing sound of approaching missiles, the noise of their final crash and the constant thudding of dead Jewish bodies as they fell from the walls.
Eventually, the Roman attack yielded a prize: a break in the wall. But as the Romans attacked the breach and forced their way into the town, the Jews had one last surprise in store for them. To protect themselves from the barrage of missiles, the Roman infantry approached in the formation known as the testudo (tortoise). This required twenty-seven men to form up in four ranks and to deploy their shields in a set pattern: some shields protected the sides of the unit, while others were held overhead, each row overlapping with the next. With their protective ‘shell’ in place, the unit moved slowly towards the north wall. Josephus, however, found a way to neutralize even this. Just as the Romans approached, the Jews poured boiling oil over them. The blistering liquid seeped through every little crack in the testudo and threw the Roman units into agony and panic. Some soldiers nonetheless managed to escape and laid a plank in the breach of the wall. The Jews had a plan for this too. They covered it with an oily slick made from boiled fenugreek and thus forced the Romans to slip. Despite these feats of Jewish cunning, nothing could keep the Romans out for ever.
Just before dawn on the forty-seventh day of the siege, Titus led a killing squad noiselessly through the breach. So exhausted with fatigue were the Jews that Titus’s men were able to get within reach of the dozing sentry guards, cut their throats and infiltrate Jotapata. Soon the alarm was raised, but it was too late for the Jews to obstruct the legions now charging like ants into the town. Panic-stricken, the rebels dispersed through the narrow streets. Some surrendered, some put up a meagre fight, while others made a desperate bid to take refuge in pits and caves. Most of the rebels were quickly and easily wheedled out and overpowered. However, as the Roman soldiers took control of the town, it was difficult for them to distinguish the insurgents from the surrendering civilians. When one Jew asked a Roman centurion to help him out of a cave, the Roman willingly gave his hand. He was immediately repaid with a quick upward thrust of a sword that killed him instantly. The Romans continued to search high and low for the insurgents, and one man in particular had yet to show his face.
The man who had correctly prophesied that the city would fall on the forty-seventh day (so he said) had also found a hideaway in a pit. Here he joined forty other rebels. For two days they successfully held out, but on the third day one of their party who sneaked out at night to gather provisions was caught and gave away Josephus’s whereabouts. Vespasian immediately sent two military tribunes to entice the commander out with the promise of safe conduct. Josephus and his men refused. The rank and file of Roman soldiers gathered at the pit entrance were baying for his blood. However, a third Roman officer, by the name of Nicanor, arrived on the scene and was able to keep them back.
Nicanor was a friend of Josephus whom the priest most likely met in Jerusalem. He now swore on that friendship that Vespasian wanted to save the life of the commander who had put up such an extraordinary defence of the town. Down below in the pit, however, the offer sparked a fierce debate. Josephus wanted to surrender. Interpreting his recent dreams, he believed that God was angry with the Jews and that it was His will that the Romans prosper. The others, however, furious that surrender was even being considered, called Josephus a coward and a traitor. They insisted that suicide was the only honourable way out for all of them. If Josephus refused to join them, they said, they would kill him anyway.