Antiquity
End of the revolt
73·Massada
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
Massada, a fortress built by Herod on a rocky peak overlooking the Dead Sea, remained in the hands of the Sicarii after the fall of Jerusalem. Flavius Silva, governor of Judea, led the Tenth Legion and auxiliaries there, enclosed the rock within a wall of circumvallation whose outline can still be seen, and had a siege ramp raised against the western face.
When the breach was made, the garrison was no longer able to resist. Josephus attributes to its leader, Éléazar ben Yaïr, two speeches through which he convinces his people to die free rather than be sold: the defenders killed one another, having first burned their possessions but spared the food stores, so that Rome would know they had not yielded to hunger. Two women and some children, hidden in a cistern, survived and gave their account.
The site, excavated in the twentieth century, has become in Israel a place of Memory as much as a field of ruins.
- Period :
- Antiquity
- Type :
- Military repression
- Region :
- Land of Israel
- Country :
- Terre d'Israël
Flavius Josèphe, *La Guerre des Juifs*.