Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE)

The siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE was the decisive episode of the First Jewish Revolt against Roman rule. A Roman army under Titus, son of the emperor Vespasian, besieged the city from spring until late summer, broke through its walls, burned the Second Temple and destroyed much of Jerusalem. The loss of the Temple, the centre of Jewish worship for centuries, was a turning point in Jewish history.

Judaea had been under Roman control since the first century BCE, at first through client kings such as Herod the Great and later through Roman governors. Tensions over taxation, the conduct of governors and religious offences built up over decades. In 66 CE, under the emperor Nero, violence in Caesarea and Jerusalem turned into open revolt; the rebels drove out the Roman garrison and defeated a relief force sent by the governor of Syria. Nero gave command of the war to the general Vespasian, who reconquered Galilee and much of the countryside in 67 and 68 CE.

The campaign paused after Nero's death in 68 CE, as rival generals fought for the throne. In 69 CE Vespasian was proclaimed emperor and left for Rome, handing the war to his son Titus.

The city was crowded with refugees and with pilgrims who had come for the Passover festival. Inside, rival factions had been fighting each other: the Zealots under Eleazar ben Simon, the followers of John of Gischala, and the forces of Simon bar Giora. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, the main eyewitness source, their struggles destroyed large stores of grain. When the Romans arrived, the factions largely united to defend the city.

Titus arrived in the spring of 70 CE with four legions and auxiliary troops, a force of several tens of thousands. Jerusalem was protected by three lines of walls on its northern side and by steep valleys elsewhere. Using siege towers and battering rams, the Romans broke through the outer wall and then the second wall in late spring, but the defenders resisted fiercely and destroyed Roman siege works with sorties. Titus then had a continuous wall built around the city to cut off food supplies, and famine spread. In July the Romans captured the Antonia fortress next to the Temple.

In late summer the Romans fought their way into the Temple courts, and the Temple was burned, traditionally on the ninth of the Jewish month of Av. Josephus claims that Titus wished to spare the building; some later sources suggest he ordered its destruction, and historians still debate his intentions. The Romans then took the lower city and, in September, the upper city. Much of Jerusalem was demolished, and the Tenth Legion was left to garrison the ruins.

Josephus gives a figure of 1.1 million deaths during the siege and 97,000 captives taken over the whole war. Most modern historians consider the death toll greatly exaggerated, but agree that the loss of life, from fighting, starvation and executions, was enormous. Simon bar Giora was taken to Rome and executed during the triumph; John of Gischala was imprisoned for life.

Titus and Vespasian celebrated a triumph in Rome in 71 CE, and the Arch of Titus, completed later, still shows Roman soldiers carrying the Temple's menorah. Treasure from Jerusalem helped fund building in Rome, including, it is thought, the Colosseum. Resistance continued at a few strongholds, ending with the fall of Masada in 73 or 74 CE. Jews across the Roman Empire were required to pay a special tax in place of the former Temple tax.

Without the Temple and its sacrifices, Jewish religious life came to centre on prayer, study and the synagogue, led by rabbis. The destruction is still mourned on the fast of Tisha B'Av. Titus himself became emperor in 79 CE, the year of the eruption of Vesuvius.

Our 100 CE map shows Judaea as part of the Roman Empire a generation after the siege.