Show Notes
It's 70 CE, the walls of Jerusalem are crumbling, and the city is eating itself alive — literally. In this episode of Life of Caesar, Cameron and Ray wade deep into Josephus's harrowing account of the final, grinding assault on the Antonia Fortress and the Temple Mount, where the siege of Jerusalem has reached a level of horror almost beyond comprehension. Titus is still trying to take the city intact, still offering surrender terms that rebel leader John of Gischala keeps refusing, even as 600,000 corpses have been thrown out of the gates and the starving population has been reduced to eating dung, leather belts, and — in one unforgettable episode — a widow named Mary from Perea who roasts and eats her own infant son, leaving even Jerusalem's most hardened killers staggering into the street in shock. Meanwhile, the Roman assaults keep producing their own gruesome catalogue of disasters: brave volunteers like Sabinus the Syrian and the Abian centurion Julian charge the walls in spectacular solo acts of courage, only to be undone by the cruel physics of hobnailed caliga boots sliding out on blood-slicked marble floors. A trumpeter and sixteen centuries break into the Antonia in a daring pre-dawn raid, a legionnaire named Longus cuts his own throat rather than surrender or burn, and a soldier called Artorius survives a sixty-foot jump by landing on — and killing — his tentmate Lucius, who had agreed to catch him in exchange for his inheritance. Through it all, Josephus insists it wasn't the Romans but God himself who condemned the Jews, a theological contortion Cameron links to the writing of the Gospel of Mark and the birth of Christianity from the ashes of the Temple. There's also a lengthy and highly entertaining detour into medieval witch trials, broomsticks, and the surprisingly pharmaceutical origins of flying — Cameron has been reading Carlo Ginzburg, and he has things to tell you about salves and sticks that will change how you watch *Wicked* forever.
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We're at Masada. Silva has his 10th Legion, a 91-metre siege mound, an iron-plated tower, and a battering ram the size of a small building. The 960 Sicarii inside have a second wall made of logs and dirt that just gets stronger the harder you hit it.... until Silva works out that wood burns. Meanwhile Josephus, the Jewish general who surrendered to Vespasian and spent the rest of his life on the Roman payroll, keeps assuring us that God is firmly on the Roman side. Make of that what you will.
This episode we're deep into Josephus on the Sicarii, the original cloak-and-dagger assassination squad - literally, they hid curved daggers under their cloaks - who spent the Jewish-Roman War killing other Jews for not being Jewish enough.... according to Josephus, who is of course completely unbiased. We also end up somewhere unexpected: how Jewish civil war, Jew-on-Jew violence, and the trauma of a civilisation being flattened might explain rather a lot about where Christianity came from.
Paetus is back. You remember Paetus - the general who declared "mission accomplished" against the Parthians and then immediately had to beg Corbulo to come rescue him. Now, ten years on, he's got a new emperor and a second chance at glory, and he's found himself a suitably soft target: Antiochus IV of Commagene, a loyal Roman client king of nearly forty years who, as far as anyone can tell, hasn't actually done anything wrong. Antiochus's response is to pack up his family, pitch a tent 22 kilometres outside the city, and basically wave his hands in the air going "see? nothing to see here." Vespasian, to his credit, tells Paetus to take the chains off the old man.... which is more than Paetus deserves.
Bassus is mopping up the last Jewish holdouts in Judaea, and things go about as well as you'd expect for everyone who isn't a Roman. The defenders of Machaerus negotiate a deal to walk free.... turns out the Gentiles living below the fortress weren't included in that deal. Then Vespasian, ever the pragmatist, declares all of Judaea his personal property and slaps a permanent tax on Jews everywhere in the empire. Not governing Judaea. Owning it.
This episode we go deep on the hilltop fortresses still holding out in Judaea after the fall of Jerusalem, which turns into a very long detour through Pliny the Elder's chapter on menstrual blood.... which is, it turns out, absolutely packed with practical tips you can use at home. Don't let your pregnant horses anywhere near a menstruating virgin, obviously. We also get to Machaerus, the fortress where John the Baptist allegedly lost his head, and a magic root that will kill your dog but cure demonic possession, so swings and roundabouts.