The 70 CE siege of Jerusalem was a Roman response to the Great Jewish Revolt, in which Jewish Zealots rose up against their Roman occupiers, attacking patrols, and eventually occupying the Temple, as well as the abandoned Roman forts of Masada and Herodion. Ultimately, Rome was forced to send more legions, in an attempt to quell the uprisings. Despite early successes in repelling the Roman sieges, the Zealots fought among themselves, lacking proper leadership, discipline, training, and preparation for the battles that were to follow.
Titus surrounded the city, with three legions on the western side, and a fourth on the Mount of Olives to the east. He put pressure on the food & water supplies of the inhabitants by allowing pilgrims to enter the city to celebrate Passover, and then refusing them egress. After Jewish sallies killed a number of Roman soldiers, Titus sent Flavius Josephus, a former Jewish commander, now loyal to Rome, to negotiate with the defenders; this failed, and another sally was launched.
In mid-May, Titus set to destroying the newly built Third Wall with a ram, breaching it as well as the Second Wall, and turning their attention to the Fortress of Antonia, just north of the Temple Mount. The Romans were then drawn into street fighting with the Zealots and sustained heavy enough losses that they were ordered to retreat. Flavius Josephus failed in another attempt at negotiations, and Jewish attacks prevented the construction of siege towers at the Fortress of Antonia. Food, water, and other provisions were dwindling, but small foraging parties managed to sneak supplies into the city, harrying Roman forces in the process. A new wall was ordered to be built, to put an end to the success of these foragers, and siege tower construction was restarted as well.
After several failed attempts to breach or scale the walls of the Fortress, the Romans finally launched a secret attack, overwhelming sleeping Zealot guards and taking the Fortress. This was the second highest ground in the city, after the Temple Mount, and provided a perfect point from which to attack the Temple itself. Battering rams made little progress, but the fighting itself eventually set the walls on fire. Destroying the Temple was not among Titus' goals, possibly due in large part to the massive expansions done by Herod mere decades earlier. Most likely, Titus had wanted to seize it and transform it into a pagan temple, dedicated to the Roman Emperor and to the Roman pantheon. But the flames spread quite quickly and were soon unquenchable. The Temple was destroyed on Tisha B'Av, at the end of August, and as the flames spread into the residential sections of the city, along with the Roman legions, Jewish resistance crumbled quickly. The city was completely under Roman control by the 7th of September.
Although this did not fully cement Roman control over the region, and the Jewish Revolt was not fully suppressed, the seizure of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple represents the end of an independently controlled Palestine; it passed from Roman hands to the Arabs, then the Ottomans, and finally the British before becoming an independent state once again in 1948. The destruction of the Temple is still mourned annually as the Jewish holiday Tisha B'Av, and the Arch of Titus in Rome, depicting & celebrating the sack of Jerusalem and the Temple, still stands in Rome.
See also
Last updated: 05-25-2005 17:12:28
