ricus suavus

There are several mysteries about the Zealot story of Masada in Josephus' "Jewish Wars" history which need to be solved. Of course at this late date the only way to do this is by interpreting what Joseph wrote according to archaeology of the site, knowledge of the terrain and the Roman army, and basic realism. This naturally opens up the topic to a great deal of conjecture and this is definitely a case where there is more conjecture and romanticization than fact. And scholars LOVE to speculate as much as everybody else. It's not only an ego thing for them, it's also a cash thing. But I have no books to grind out for my bread and butter so I will do it for free, and since I'm neither Jewish nor Italian, unbiasedly. The first and most obvious question is what happened to the remains of all those almost thousand bodies killed on Masada? What would the Roman soldiers have done with them? It seems most likely from common ancient practice that they would have been burnt in a mass pyre and the bones dumped over the cliff. Naturally almost two thousand years of erosion from the cliffside would have covered them without a trace. As to skeletons found in a cave of the cliff, both male and female with some children, it is difficult without artifacts to identify their ethnicity and sometimes even these can be misleading. It is known that after the capture of the citadel a garrison of soldiers was reinstalled on the mountaintop detached from the Tenth Fretensis Legion and some of these could be their remains. It is certainly possible that there were some female and child survivors of the attack Josephus was unaware of who were adopted as the wives and children of the soldiers left to garrison the fortress and whose remains were found in the cave also. Josephus also states that the Zealots in Masada raided and killed the inhabitants of the nearby settlement of En Gedi. This is not much of a mystery when it is considered that they needed food and supplies and because their fellow Jews refused to join them in rebellion. We know from Josephus that the sentiment was not universal among the Jews or many more would have joined both within and without Palestine and the Empire. And though many historians tend to think that King Herod had kept the long storagerooms adjoining his palace stocked full of food, anything other than wheat for bread, and dryable fruits such as figs, dates, and pomegranates or different nuts, would whither or rot if kept long. Meat, even if dried, was probably a rarity, and the biggest imports would have been olive oil from the groves of Jerusalem, wine from the vineyeards of En Gedi, and datenuts from the orchards of Jericho, not to mention plenty of wood or bitumen from the Dead Sea for use as fuel and of course loads of salt for preservative. Even kings did not live as luxuriously as they do now. As for the crux issue of what really happened at Masada, the main questions here are: would the Romans have really been able to build a wood seige tower in the middle of the desert with no trees around for a suitable enough lumber supply? Would they then have pulled said seige tower up the ramp simply to leave it at the top unguarded and exposed to the torches of the Zealots after retiring to camp to rest for the night? Would they really have foolishly attacked in daylight? Would they have really sent at least one whole legion of six thousand troops up to attack a concentratedly defended narrow access? Is that sound military tactic for which the Romans are famous? Would the Zealot rebels really have bothered drawing a death lottery in the middle of the night? It seems obvious to me the answers are all "NO!" Even though Josephus claimed he derived his account from two women survivors, it is questionable just how observant they would have been in such unpleasantly adverse circumstances and how much Josephus embellished. There is good evidence to suggest he was basing his version of the event on his own witness of the events of the seige of Jerusalem and his previous participation in the suicide lottery situation of his companions when he was initially commander of rebel forces in Galilee just before he was captured. This last incident is itself a mysterious set of circumstances, though naturally not near as well known about as Masada. Since the answers to all these questions is reasonably a negative, it can be plausibly deduced what probably did happen during the Zealots' stay in the fortress. Josephus mentions a lottery for ten men to decide who would kill all the adult males and then another drawing to pick the one to kill the other nine and himself. During the excavation of the site in the late 1960's and early '70's eleven ostraca or pottery shards with the names of men written in Hebrew on each one was found near the ruins of the palace, including one with the name of the Zealot commander Elezar Ben Yair mentioned by Josephus. Why eleven? And why was Elezar conspicously among them? Did he have such a domineering personality that he felt confident to manipulate the drawing so that his name would be picked last of all to make sure everyone died as intended? And how would the women who were wives and mothers and served as the source of this testimony have even known about the lottery since according to the story they would have been in deep hiding from their husbands as they claimed they were when found by the soldiers; escapees from the PRE-suicide lottery slaughter by the men with wives and children! Rational conjecture would suggest that these were not signs of a suicide lottery but of a drawing for commanders over a disorganized mass of desperate rebel fanatics seeking refuge in the middle of the desert and conducted appropriately near the building that would be their headquarters, Herod's former palace; winner for the first pick of chief commander being Elezar and the other men his ten assistant commanders. Ten men for ten groups or companies of sixty men each thus making a Roman army sized cohort of six hundred warriors out of a total of 967 people, leaving 367 women and children and thus indicating half the males were married but only a quarter of those were fathers. This demographic makes perfect sense since rationally more men than women would be prone to defy the Imperial Roman army when all else was lost; half would according to Jewish Law and prevalent custom be married but not most men would bring their wives into such a desperate situation, and least of all those with children. And Josephus does state the rebels modeled themselves throughout the rebellion on Roman army organization and tactics in the hope of acheiving some degree of parity between opposing forces. It was not a suicide lottery for death and self-destruction in the midst of the last desperate night of their lives, but a hopeful choice of leadership in broad daylight with ALL present assembled (left through chance to God) for victory and success before the Romans even arrived; desperate if only in their pressing need to make a drastic raid for further provisions. Six hundred rebel warriors against two thousand times that number: twelve thousand troops of two legions, the Tenth Fretensis and the Sixth Ferrata with six thousand each. So whether only one legion attacked or both, they were outnumbered from one to two hundred times. Definitely odds in which God was needed!! So where does the story of the "mass suicide" come in? WAS there even a suicide event?? IF Josephus really did get this information from the female survivors, then it would definitely seem that they witnessed something at least horribly similar. For the answers to these questions we have to turn to considering the true nature of the Roman attack. It has already been explained it would have been ridiculous for the Romans to have called off the attack for the night to retire to their camp and resume it in the morning and leave the wooden ramming tower exposed to the torches of the Zealots just above it. All the soldiers would have found in the morning when they got back up there was a huge heap of ashes! So another question is, would they have had and used such a tower? Unless they hauled one with them through the desert from Jerusalem, they could not have made one in the desolate area without trees! This is an obviously simple fact. But it would have been much easier to carry scaling ladders with them that had been used in the Jerusalem seige, and more likely Josephus embellished these into a tower for dramatic effect; as he did the postponement of the attack itself so that Elezar could deliver the long dramatic sermon on the nature of the soul and the afterlife as justification for the "heroic mass suicide" during the night of the deadly lottery. One almost wonders why Josephus did not schedule this whole event for the date of Purim, the Jewish Feast of Lots mentioned in the Old Testament book of Esther cast by the Jews enemies of the time, officials of the Persian Empire. Here it is written by Josephus almost as if to say Rome was so much greater an empire than Persia or its then contemporary version Parthia, that the Jews were forced by God or Fate to cast lots to destroy themselves before the Romans did them in. However, looked at through the lens of realism and seeing that they did not use such a tower, it can be theorized that they did not wait uselessly until the next morning but deliberately planned a night attack with scaling ladders using a select division to spearhead the assault while some of the rest of one legion secured the citadel afterward. Climbing as silently as possible over the bulwark Josephus claims the rebels blockaded the entrance with, they instantly overwhelmed the guards and proceeded to fight the onslaught of defenders alerted to the danger; probably which were all the unmarried childless men. The rest were left in their quarters to protect their families as best they could. Some no doubt chose to kill them themselves rather than let the sex-starved soldiers heated by brutality and months of the desert sun burning out whatever little discipline they had do the job, or even worse, enslave them and rape the women. Some of those men probably killed themselves to join their loved ones in death, their inevitable fate anyway. It happened fast and furious in a hellacious night of fire and fear and screaming bloody death made worse by the shocking surprise of it all. And in the commotion a few women managed to spare themselves and their children, most likely with their husbands' assistance who went on to fight the invaders and not return. This means that the dramatic story of the "firefight" at the entrance bulwark probably never happened, with the "miraculously" sudden change of wind in favor of the invaders sounding suspiciously similar to the episode recounted during the seige of Jerusalem of a mysterious wind rushing out of the Temple at night announcing the prescence of God "leaving this place" for destruction. A subtle Josephus technique of cautioning future Jews against rebellion by showing God was leaving the Zealots to their doomed fate and condoning their destruction as punishment for unlawful war aginst Rome. It was so good a story even the Roman historian Tacitus repeated it in his historical account of the war, though with a more pagan perspective. The only correct connection between the Josephan account and reality is that by morning Masada would have been full of dead bodies; except some were Roman. Thus ended the true seige and fall of the fortress. As a historical footnote, the destruction of the compound's buildings was not accommplished until history inevitably repeated itself and partisans of the Bar Kochba revolt during Hadrian's reign recaptured the fortress and slaughtered the garrison only to be killed themselves when the Romans reconquered it. This time however they did not regarrison it, but destroyed the buildings to prevent their future possible use as a rebel nest. Masada was abandoned all the time afterward until Byzantine monks built a monastery church there made from the ruins. Yet in a way, Masada then flourished as it had originally with the monks cultivating their own crops on it, but amidst the debris of faded glory and dead dreams.

When Italian archaeologists excavating the ruins of the ancient city of Caesarea Maritima on the coast of Israel in 1961 found half of an inscribed stone slab in or near the ruins of the theater on the beach, they noticed it contained some very significant yet discrepant information. It read (speculations parenthesized): "(CAESAREA)S TIBERIEUM / (PONT)IUS PILATUS / (PRAEF)ECTUS IUDA(EAE) / (CONSECRETAT)". In translation it stated that Pontius Pilatus (the fully Latin version of his name) the prefect of the Judeas, consecrated a temple of Tiberius in Caesarea. Now one of the first things one notices about what is obviously the significantly remaining portion of the inscription is that in the text Pilate refers to himself by the gernerically political term of "prefect", not the more specific and actual title of "procurator" familiar from the gospels. Of even more interesting significance is his use of the name or term in the plural of "Judeas" for obviously more than one. We know of only one from historical sources; that containing the holy city of Jerusalem. But a closer study will reveal why Pilate said this. We know from the histories of the Jewish priest and author Flavius Josephus that Pilate was the procurator of Judea AND Samaria, which were grouped into one district or subprovince belonging to the province of Syria. Pilate was not a provincial Roman governor or legatus as people popularly conceive him. He was subject to the authority of the governor of the province of Syria of which these areas were considered politically or technically a part of, seperated geographically and politically by the tetrarchy of Galilee. That is why in the "Luke" gospel Jesus is described as having been born during the census when Cyrenius was governor of Syria, not when Coponius was procurator of Judea; and why Josephus states Pilate was sent to Rome to answer charges before the Emperor of cruelty to the Samaritans by Vitellius, the legate of Syria, who consequently both deposed Caiaphas and appointed a new chief priest as well as a new procurator. Pilate was playing on the notorious animosity of the Jews and the Samaritans by referring to both Judea AND Samaria (in which territory the district capital, Caesarea Maritima was situated) as if to further incite the Judeans by considering the Samaritans to be equally as much Jews as them. It's well known the Samaritans considered themselves to be Jewish. To Pilate's mind it was probably nothing more than the division of north and south Judea. It's also well known how inconsiderate he was of foreign religious sensibilities. Which leads to the most fascinating fact of all: his consecration of the Tiberieum to Emperor-worship. The word "consecretat" is itself significant. It implies Pilate's role as priest of the Emperor whose temple he sanctified FOR the god, not dedicated TO the god. Perhaps this is why the "John" Gospel mentions that the Jews threatened him with being "no friend of Caesar" if he released Jesus; which is exactly WHY he WOULD NOT have wanted to. The word, which is at the bottom or last line of the inscription, is almost obliterated by erosion but an accent mark over the first capital 'E' giving it the Latin long 'A' sound can be discerned as well as a less clear one over the second 'E'. Also the shape of certain letters such as the 'S', 'C' and the ending 'TAT' can be recognized in a sharply shadowed black/white photograph of the text. The ironically interesting thing though about the message is not any indications of Pilate's attitudes to Jews and Christians (the latter religion's story nonbelievers regard as legendary anyway), but how this solidly authentic contemporary official artifact of Roman imperial politics disproves a statement from one of the most famous Roman historians close to this period, Tacitus. He states in his "Annals" that Tiberius did not allow temples to be built to him anywhere in the Empire except one at Smyrna because he detested sycophancy and knew he was no god. But apparently Tacitus didn't know about the temple built by Pilate at Caesarea standing for three-quarters of a century before he wrote. And that's where the mystery comes in. Where in Caesarea was it? Since it was not found in situ originale, it has to be deduced from whatever other archaeological discoveries of ruins are made of the city. Fortunately, it has always been obviously right under the noses of archaeologists who have instead recognized it for something very different. On a rock terrace promontory of land jutting out into the sea near the theater and surrounded by the remains of both an artificial and a natural rock wall with some stairs at the narrow landward neck, is a rectangular, sloping pit; the deeper lower end of which occasionally fills with seawater. Scholars have claimed this was either the piscina (fish pool) of King Herod's palace or even the swimming pool itself of the palace. The low gradient slope of the depression would definitely argue against both, especially for the latter case as there are not the usual steps into it as seen in the swimming pool of Herod's winter palace at Jericho and of numerous mikvahs or ritual purification baths. However, it is the proper size and shape for the dimensions of a Roman temple built to an emperor during his lifetime. In addition, and as if in confirmation, there are numerous limestone slabs of the same color and dimension as those of the Pilate inscription slab scattered in the area around it as if having formed the pavement of the precinct court where the inscription itself would have been placed instead of in the temple edifice pediment as was customary. He was thus probably demonstrating his humility before a tyrannical emperor busy conducting treason purges back in Rome by having worshippers walk on his name and authority up to the altar and temple of Caesar. Ironically, neither does Josephus make mention of this emperor temple, except for that of Augustus in the harbor, so we don't know when during Pilate's tenure it would have been built. But it is probable that it would have been when Tiberius was becoming the murderously maniacal suspicious paranoid obsessive that the ancient historians describe him as after the conspiracy of his Praetorian Praefect Sejanus to assume the regnum. This did not occur until 31 A.D., the traditonal year of Christ's crucifixion. Tiberius had temporarily retired from active rule to the island of Capri off the coast below Rome around the year 26, so it's possible that Sejanus who served as a sort of co-emperor in this period until his downfall did have something to do with Pilate's appointment as procurator of Judea. If so, perhaps Pilate tried to distance himself from the disgraced Sejanus by "groveling before Tiberius" so to speak. Amd the temple gleaming white in the sun as if rising from the surf of the sea might have been the inspiration to the Christian gospel authors like Paul's companions who would have seen it coming into port, for the story of Christ's parable of the wise man who built his house on rock istead of on sand while the wind and the waves battered it but it did not sink or fall. Since Caesarea was the one city not destroyed during the Jewish rebellion against Rome, the building would still have been intact at the end of the first Christian century. Not wind and waves, but the hand of man who built it and believed in it and then exchanged its destruction for belief in a new god is what destroyed it. But the essential mystery, the site of Pilate's Tiberieum, has been solved, and archaeologists and scholars should now recognize the site from now on for what it really is. As Christ himself supposedly said, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's..."

What's under the Roman Forum? That's what we could have found out if they had not filled in what appears to be an oblong entrance hole with a staircase "apse" at one end situated in the middle of the Via Nova in front of the Basilica Julia. The "hole", which is obviously man-made as its brickwork borders and straight edges show, had originally contained debris "in-fill" from the centuries of the city's destructions but at a lower level than now. City workers, apparently considering it a safety-hazard for tourists (as if they couldn't see it!) filled it in completely to the top and smoothed it flat with the street level surface. Instead, archaeologists should have dug it out completely so we could learn exactly what was the purpose of the subterranean chamber that must be down there and how far under the forum pavement it extended. Now we will probably NEVER know! But my own theory is that since it is the only such opening in the Forum and it is near the shrine of Vesta and the palace of the Vestal Virgins, it actually was the chamber in which Vestals were imprisoned to starve to death after losing their virginity. I know Plutarch claims this was done in a chamber by the Colline Gate, but he has been found to be archaeologically inaccurate about other details; and just thinking about it, why go to all that trouble and expense of escorting a disgraced Vestal through the city when it would have been much more convenient and just as noticeable to have her entombed alive in the center of the city?! There would have been space for a crowd to gather and watch the gloomily scandalous kind of spectacle Romans loved. Since the pit is too big to have been covered with a door, the door sealing her in must have been in an underground entrance to the chamber. This seems to be the only explanation for such an unusually and otherwise inconveniently placed opening in the center of an ancient major thoroughfare of the city for which there are no contemporary accounts of its nature or use from what I know.

Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic were all spoken in Judea at this time as evidenced by archaeology. The Pontius Pilate inscription stone found in 1961 in Caesarea Maritima, Israel is obviously in Latin; the official language of the Roman government. Paul, the apostle, obviously spoke and wrote in Greek. The Jewish priests spoke and wrote the language of their Sacred Scriptures, Hebrew. And the Targums, or Aramaic translations of those scriptures for the rest of the population before they lost their identity as Jews of Judea and began speaking Syriac, were provided for the synagogues; particularly in Galilee. Gibson's movie depicted the Romans speaking Latin to the Jews because he thinks the Roman Catholic Eucharistic celebration should still be done in Latin.