Vitellius #20 – Despite Everything, I Was Your Emperor

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.