Siege of Masada

Masada, an isolated, flat-topped desert mountain in what is now Israel, was the last stronghold of the Jewish revolt against Rome. In 72 to 73 AD, by the traditional dating (some scholars prefer 73 to 74), a Roman army under the governor Lucius Flavius Silva surrounded it, built an enormous ramp up its western side and broke in. According to the historian Josephus, nearly all the defenders, members of the Sicarii faction, and their families had killed themselves before the Romans entered. That account has been debated by modern scholars, while the story itself became a powerful symbol in modern Israel.

The rock rises steeply on all sides and was reached by a single narrow, winding path known as the Snake. Josephus says the Hasmoneans first built a fortress there; between 37 and 31 BC Herod the Great strengthened it as a refuge for himself.

When the First Jewish–Roman War broke out in 66 AD, the Sicarii, a radical group led by Eleazar ben Ya'ir, took Masada from its Roman garrison. More Sicarii and their families arrived in 70 after being driven out of Jerusalem by other Jews, and more refugees followed after the Romans destroyed the city and its Temple in the Siege of Jerusalem. From Masada the Sicarii raided the surrounding countryside; Josephus says they killed 700 people at the Jewish settlement of Ein Gedi. Archaeologists have identified a building on the summit adapted as a synagogue.

Josephus, a Jerusalem-born Jew who had been captured early in the war and then released by Vespasian, is the only ancient writer to describe the siege in detail, in his Jewish War. He was not present, and probably drew on Roman military records.

In 72 AD Silva brought the Tenth Legion, Fretensis, auxiliary troops and Jewish prisoners, perhaps 15,000 people in all, of whom some 8,000 to 9,000 were soldiers. Josephus puts the number on the summit at 960. The Romans first ringed the mountain with a wall, then piled up a vast siege ramp against the western face, moving an estimated half a million tonnes of earth. Josephus records no counter-attacks by the defenders during the work, unlike his accounts of other sieges.

Work on the ramp probably took two or three months and was complete by spring 73. The Romans hauled a huge siege tower with a battering ram up it, and set fire to a timber wall with volleys of burning torches. The fortress fell in April 73; a commonly given date is 16 April.

Josephus writes that the Romans found the buildings burning, apart from the food stores, and the defenders dead: following a speech by Eleazar, they had chosen to kill one another rather than be enslaved.

Scholars disagree about how far to trust this. Menahem Stern accepted the mass suicide as historical, linking it to the Sicarii belief that serving any human ruler offended God, though he noted the strongly Greek literary colouring of Eleazar's speech. Others, such as Shaye Cohen and Eric Cline, argue that the archaeological evidence, including remains in a cave and separate fires, points to a more mixed end in which some killed themselves, some fought and some tried to hide, with the Romans killing those they found. Jodi Magness has argued that the remains can be read either way. The site was excavated between 1963 and 1965 by Yigael Yadin.

Early Zionist writers turned Masada into a story of heroic resistance, presenting the Sicarii as national heroes. After the Holocaust the story resonated strongly in Israeli youth movements, public life and military ceremonies, and Masada became a national symbol of a last stand. Historians now often call this retelling the Masada myth, because it was built selectively from Josephus's account.

Our 100 map shows Judaea as part of the Roman Empire a generation after the revolt was crushed.