In the power vacuum left by the moderate leadership, the city fell into the hands of rival factions of nationalists all struggling for supremacy. Over the next year their numbers increased. When, in AD 68, Vespasian’s army swept through Judaea, Peraea and Idumaea, the peasant leader Simon ben Gioras and his army also eventually fled to Jerusalem. His arrival provoked further conflict. Informed of the Jews’ infighting by deserters, Vespasian’s war council urged their commander on. They said that now was the time to attack Jerusalem. Once again, Vespasian disagreed, choosing to avoid a direct assault on the Holy City. Let the Jews destroy themselves, was his view; with the rebels killing each other and deserting to Rome, the Jews of Jerusalem were doing the Romans’ work for them. However, it was not for this reason that in July of AD 68 the Roman operations in Judaea suddenly came to a complete halt.
The suicide of the emperor Nero launched the government of the Roman empire into the greatest crisis of its history. Vespasian knew that according to the constitution he needed to be reinstated by the new emperor before pursuing the war. Therefore, while a successor was chosen, he temporarily suspended his campaign.30 However, the change that was afoot was far greater than a simple switch of personnel. A revolution was under way that would take the Roman empire into a savage civil war. At stake were two questions: which emperor was to run the empire, and on what grounds should he be appointed? Under the empire’s first dynasty, the Julio-Claudians, succession was in practice hereditary although in principle it could only be confirmed by the Senate and the Roman people in Rome. That system was now challenged by an extraordinary revelation: the power to appoint new emperors lay not only in Rome, but with armies in the provinces, championing their own generals. ‘A well-hidden secret of the empire had been revealed: it was possible, it seemed, for an emperor to be chosen outside Rome.’31
From the sidelines of the Roman east, Vespasian and Titus witnessed a series of amazing reversals in fortune. When Nero’s first successor, Servius Sulpicius Galba, refused to give traditional cash donations to the military on his accession, the armies that had brought him to power withdrew their support, and his brief administration came to an end. Galba’s head was cut off and the Praetorian Guard in Rome declared his successor to be Marcus Salvius Otho. The new emperor’s power base, however, did not stretch beyond the metropolis, and soon the army of the Rhine in Germany declared support for their commander Aulus Vitellius. When his armies defeated Otho’s at the battle of Cremona, Otho committed suicide and Vitellius became emperor. However, the rule of this aristocrat, like that of the two men who preceded him, was to be short-lived. Now a man not of high birth, but of practical military experience, a man who could command widespread support among the armies of the eastern provinces, was about to step into the running for the most powerful job in the ancient world.
On 9 July AD 69 the armies of Judaea declared Vespasian emperor of Rome. They were quickly joined in their chorus by the armies of the Danube. While Vespasian took control of the critically important province of Egypt, two armies made their way to Italy in his support. One was made up of eastern legions and led by the governor of Syria, Gaius Licinius Mucianus; the Danubian legions, led by Marcus Antonius Primus, formed the other. The legions based on the Danube beat the eastern legions to Italy and prepared to take on the forces of Vitellius. Once again, two Roman armies met at Cremona. In a horrendously bloody conflict, the supporters of Vespasian won. The vicious slaughter of Romans, however, was far from over.
In the capital Vespasian’s brother Flavius Sabinus spearheaded an insurrection against Vitellius’s forces before the armies of Antonius and Mucianus could join him. The coup failed, so Sabinus and his faction took refuge on the Capitol. In the attack that followed, the ancient Temple of Jupiter went up in flames. Smoked out, Sabinus and his faction were hauled in front of Vitellius and promptly executed. Revenge was not long in coming. Outside Rome, the legions supporting Vespasian brutally forced their way into the city and defeated Vitellius’s army. Search parties hunted high and low for the emperor himself. They discovered him hiding in a doorkeeper’s lodge beside the palace, the door blocked pathetically by a bed and a mattress. He was then dragged half-naked into the Forum, publicly tortured, beheaded and thrown into the Tiber.32
Vespasian received the news of his victory while still in Egypt in December AD 69. But the celebrations could not have been entirely jubilant. His accession had been a vicious bloodbath in which thousands of Romans had lost their lives. It was hardly the glorious start to the principate that Vespasian wanted. In order to justify seizing power by force and to unify the citizens of the empire in support of his regime, the new emperor Vespasian needed a grand military victory, and he needed it fast. He looked to Judaea. He appointed Titus to be commander of the war, and advised him that with the appointment came a new war aim: immediate victory over the Jews at all costs. The future of the new Flavian dynasty now depended entirely on success in Judaea.33
The news capped an extraordinary change in circumstances for Titus. The young general had suddenly risen from legionary legate to the dizzying heights of son and heir of the emperor of Rome. Now he was given the go-ahead for a mission to match the transformation of his status: an assault on the one city that Vespasian and he had avoided for the best part of three years – Jerusalem. But Titus was not the only man who could now reflect on his dramatic change in position. Since Josephus’s prophecy had come true, Vespasian summoned his prisoner, cut his chains and set him free.
And yet, although his rights had been restored, Josephus soon found out that he had not quite left the firing line. To the young scholar’s mind, Vespasian’s rise may well have been proof that God was on the side of the Romans and that victory over the Jews was a foregone conclusion, but not to the mind of Titus. The new commander of Roman forces in Judaea needed Josephus’s help in facing the greatest challenge of his life.
JERUSALEM
In March AD 70 Titus drew up his army in front of the great walls of the Holy City. To his auxiliary forces and the fifth, tenth and fifteenth legions, Titus had now added another – the twelfth. This was the same legion that had been so disgracefully defeated by the Jews under the command of Cestius Gallus. Now the soldiers of that legion were out for revenge. Yet despite the show of massive Roman force assembling outside the city, inside it the rebel groups of John of Gischala, Simon ben Gioras and Eleazar ben Simon (leader of the Zealots) were in fighting spirits, their hopes riding high. This moment, after all, was the first time that the city had seen Roman soldiers in nearly four years. Gallus, they could tell themselves, had failed to take the city in AD 66, and since that time the Jews of Jerusalem had seen only a reluctance on the part of the Romans even to try to take it.
In fact, many inside its walls believed that Jerusalem was impossible to besiege. The Jews had food and water to last them years, while in the hills of the deserts and woods outside it the Romans would be short of supplies. The great rock of the Temple in Jerusalem was also a natural fortress surrounded by a significant additional defensive structure: three giant walls. While the Romans delayed their attack on Jerusalem, the rebels had even improved these. Despite squandering much of their time before Titus’s arrival on factional warfare, the Jews had completed parts of the unfinished north wall, increasing it to 10 metres (35 feet) in height.