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Siege in the First Jewish–Roman War

The siege of Jerusalem of 70 CE was the decisive event of the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), in which the Roman army led by future emperor Titus besieged Jerusalem, the center of Jewish rebel resistance in the Roman province of Judaea. Following a five month siege, the Romans destroyed the city and the Second Jewish Temple. In April 70 CE, three days before Passover, the Roman army started besieging Jerusalem. According to Josephus, a contemporary historian and the main source for the war, the city was ravaged by murder, famine, and cannibalism. On Tisha B'Av, 70 CE (August 30), Roman forces overwhelmed the defenders and set fire to the Temple. Resistance continued for another month, but eventually the upper and lower parts of the city were taken as well, and the city was burned to the ground. Titus spared only the three towers of the Herodian citadel as a testimony to the city's former might. The siege had a major toll on human life, with many people being killed and enslaved, and large parts of the city destroyed. This victory gave the Flavian dynasty legitimacy to claim control over the empire. A triumph was held in Rome to celebrate the conquest of Jerusalem, and two triumphal arches were built to commemorate it. The treasures looted from the Temple were put on display. The loss of mother city and temple necessitated a reshaping of Jewish culture to ensure its survival. Judaism's Temple based sects, including the priesthood and the Sadducees, diminished in importance. A new form of Judaism that became known as Rabbinic Judaism developed out of Pharisaic school and eventually became the mainstream form of the religion. Many followers of Jesus of Nazareth also survived the city's destruction. They spread his teachings across the Roman Empire, giving rise to the new religion of Christianity. Jerusalem was later re founded as the Roman colony of Aelia Capitolina. Foreign cults were introduced and Jews were forbidden entry. This event is often considered one of the catalysts for the Bar Kokhba revolt.

During the Second Temple Period, Jerusalem was the center of religious and national life for Jews, including those in the Diaspora. The Second Temple attracted tens and maybe hundreds of thousands during the Three Pilgrimage Festivals. In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder celebrated it as "by far, the most famous of the cities of the East". In the early Roman period, Jerusalem had two distinct precincts. The first encompassed the regions within the "first wall", the City of David and the Upper City, and was heavily built up, though less so at its wealthy parts. The second, known as the "suburb" or "Bethesda", lay north of the first and was sparsely populated. It contained that section of Jerusalem within the Herodian "second wall" (which was still standing), though it was itself surrounded by the new "third wall", built by king Agrippa I.

Josephus stated that Agrippa wanted to build a wall at least 5 meters thick, literally impenetrable by contemporary siege engines. Agrippa, however, never moved beyond the foundations, out of fear of emperor Claudius "lest he should suspect that so strong a wall was built in order to make some innovation in public affairs." It was only completed later, to a lesser strength and in much haste, when the First Jewish–Roman War broke out and the defenses of Jerusalem had to be bolstered. Nine towers adorned the third wall.

The First Jewish–Roman War, also known as the Great Jewish Revolt, broke following the appointment of prefect Gessius Florus and his demand to receive Temple funds. which corresponds to year 70 of the Common Era. Titus began his siege a few days before Passover, on 14 Xanthicus (April), surrounding the city with three legions (V Macedonica, XII Fulminata, XV Apollinaris) on the western side and a fourth (X Fretensis) on the Mount of Olives, to the east. If the reference in his Jewish War at 6:421 is to Titus's siege, though difficulties exist with its interpretation, then at the time, according to Josephus, Jerusalem was thronged with many people who had come to celebrate Passover. The thrust of the siege began in the west at the Third Wall, north of the Jaffa Gate. By May, this was breached and the Second Wall also was taken shortly afterwards, leaving the defenders in possession of the Temple and the upper and lower city. The Jewish defenders were split into factions. Simon Bar Giora and John of Giscala, the two prominent Zealot leaders, placed all blame for the failure of the revolt on the shoulders of the moderate leadership. John of Gischala's group murdered another faction leader, Eleazar ben Simon, whose men were entrenched in the forecourts of the Temple. Josephus describes various acts of savagery committed against the people by its own leadership, including the torching of the city's food supply in an apparent bid to force the defenders to fight for their lives. The enmities between John of Gischala and Simon bar Giora were papered over only when the Roman siege engineers began to erect ramparts. Titus then had a wall built to girdle the city in order to starve out the population more effectively. After several failed attempts to breach or scale the walls of the Fortress of Antonia, the Romans finally launched a secret attack. or as a stratagem to make the defenders more desperate, supposing that was necessary in order to repel the Roman army. According to Josephus, when the Romans reached Antonia they tried to destroy the wall which protected it. They removed four stones only, but during the night the wall collapsed. "That night the wall was so shaken by the battering rams in that place where John had used his stratagem before, and had undermined their banks, that the ground then gave way, and the wall fell down suddenly." (v. 28) Following this, Titus had raised banks beside the court of the Temple: on the north west corner, on the north side, and on the west side (v. 150). Josephus goes on to say that the Jews then attacked the Romans on the east, near the Mount of Olives, but Titus drove them back to the valley. Zealots set the north west colonnade on fire (v. 165). The Romans set the next one on fire, and the Jews wanted it to burn (v. 166), and they also trapped some Roman soldiers when they wanted to climb over the wall. They had burned wood under the wall when Romans were trapped on it (v. 178–183). After Jewish allies killed a number of Roman soldiers, Josephus claims that Titus sent him to negotiate with the defenders; this ended with Jews wounding the negotiator with an arrow, and another sally was launched shortly after. Titus was almost captured during this sudden attack, but escaped. Overlooking the Temple compound, the fortress 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; a Roman soldier threw a burning stick onto one of the Temple's walls. Destroying the Temple was not among Titus's goals, possibly due in large part to the massive expansions done by Herod the Great mere decades earlier. Titus had wanted to seize it and transform it into a temple dedicated to the Roman Emperor and the Roman pantheon. However, the fire spread quickly and was soon out of control. The Temple was captured and destroyed on 9/10 Tisha B'Av, sometime in August 70 CE, and the flames spread into the residential sections of the city. Josephus's account absolves Titus of any culpability for the destruction of the Temple, but this may merely reflect his desire to procure favor with the Flavian dynasty. The Roman legions quickly crushed the remaining Jewish resistance. Some of the remaining Jews escaped through hidden tunnels and sewers, while others made a final stand in the Upper City. This defense halted the Roman advance as they had to construct siege towers to assail the remaining Jews. Herod's Palace fell on 7 September, and the city was completely under Roman control by 8 September. The Romans continued to pursue those who had fled the city.

The account of Josephus described Titus as moderate in his approach and, after conferring with others, ordering that the 500 year old Temple be spared. According to Josephus, it was the Jews who first used fire in the Northwest approach to the Temple to try and stop Roman advances. Only then did Roman soldiers set fire to an apartment adjacent to the Temple, starting a conflagration which the Jews subsequently made worse. Josephus had acted as a mediator for the Romans and, when negotiations failed, witnessed the siege and aftermath. He wrote:
Now as soon as the army had no more people to slay or to plunder, because there remained none to be the objects of their fury (for they would not have spared any, had there remained any other work to be done), [Titus] Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and Temple, but should leave as many of the towers standing as they were of the greatest eminence; that is, Phasaelus, and Hippicus, and Mariamne; and so much of the wall enclosed the city on the west side. This wall was spared, in order to afford a camp for such as were to lie in garrison [in the Upper City], as were the towers [the three forts] also spared, in order to demonstrate to posterity what kind of city it was, and how well fortified, which the Roman valor had subdued; but for all the rest of the wall [surrounding Jerusalem], it was so thoroughly laid even with the ground by those that dug it up to the foundation, that there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe it [Jerusalem] had ever been inhabited. This was the end which Jerusalem came to by the madness of those that were for innovations; a city otherwise of great magnificence, and of mighty fame among all mankind. And truly, the very view itself was a melancholy thing; for those places which were adorned with trees and pleasant gardens, were now become desolate country every way, and its trees were all cut down. Nor could any foreigner that had formerly seen Judaea and the most beautiful suburbs of the city, and now saw it as a desert, but lament and mourn sadly at so great a change. For the war had laid all signs of beauty quite waste. Nor had anyone who had known the place before, had come on a sudden to it now, would he have known it again. But though he [a foreigner] were at the city itself, yet would he have inquired for it.

Over the years, various remains that provide evidence of Jerusalem's destruction have been discovered, leading scholars to believe that Josephus' description is accurate. The fire left its mark even on household utensils and objects that were in the same buildings. Limestone vessels were stained with ash or even burned and turned into lime, glass vessels exploded and warped from the heat of the fire until they could not be recovered in the laboratory. In contrast, pottery and basalt survived. The layer of ash and charred wood left over from the fires reached a height of about an average meter, and the rock falls reached up to two meters and more. Massive stone collapses from the Temple Mount's walls were discovered laying over the Herodian street that runs along the Western Wall. Among these stones is the Trumpeting Place inscription, a monumental Hebrew inscription which was thrown down by Roman legionnaires during the destruction of the Temple.

Josephus wrote that 1.1 million people, the majority of them Jewish, were killed during the siege – a death toll he attributes to the celebration of Passover. Josephus goes on to report that after the Romans killed the armed and elderly people, 97,000 were enslaved. Josephus records that many people were sold into slavery, and that of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, 40,000 individuals survived, and the emperor let them to go wherever they chose. Before and during the siege, according to Josephus' account, there were multiple waves of desertions from the city. Josephus' death toll figures have been rejected as impossible by Seth Schwartz, who estimates that about a million people lived in all of Palestine at the time, about half of them Jews, and that sizable Jewish populations remained in the area after the war was over, even in the hard hit region of Judea. Schwartz, however, believes that the captive number of 97,000 is more reliable. Many of the people of the surrounding area are also thought to have been driven from the land or enslaved.

Titus and his soldiers celebrated victory upon their return to Rome by parading the Menorah and Table of the Bread of God's Presence through the streets. Up until this parading, these items had only ever been seen by the High Priest of the Temple. This event was memorialized in the Arch of Titus. Simon bar Giora was executed by being thrown to his death from the Tarpeian Rock at the Temple of Jupiter after being judged a rebel and a traitor, while John of Giscala was sentenced to life imprisonment.

After the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the city and its temple, there were still a few Judean strongholds in which the rebels continued holding out, at Herodium, Machaerus, and Masada. Both Herodium and Machaerus fell to the Roman army within the next two years, with Masada remaining as the final stronghold of the Judean rebels. In 73 CE, the Romans breached the walls of Masada and captured the fortress, with Josephus claiming that nearly all of the Jewish defenders had committed mass suicide prior to the entry of the Romans. With the fall of Masada, the First Jewish–Roman War came to an end.

In 132 CE, six decades after the suppression of the revolt, another revolt known as the Bar Kokhba revolt erupted in Judaea. The construction of a roman colony named Aelia Capitolina over the ruins of Jerusalem and the construction of a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount are thought to have been major catalysts for the revolt. Supported by the Sanhedrin, Simon Bar Kosiba (later known as Bar Kokhba) established an independent state that was conquered by the Romans in 135 CE. The revolt resulted in the extensive depopulation of Judean communities, more so than during the First Jewish–Roman War. The Jewish communities of Judea were devastated to an extent which some scholars describe as a genocide. However, the Jewish population remained strong in other parts of Palestine, thriving in Galilee, Golan, Bet Shean Valley, and the eastern, southern, and western edges of Judea. Emperor Hadrian wiped the name Judaea off the map and replaced it with Syria Palaestina.

The Flavian dynasty celebrated the fall of Jerusalem by building two monumental triumphal arches. The Arch of Titus, which stills stands today, was built 82 CE by the Roman Emperor Domitian on Via Sacra, Rome, to commemorate the siege and fall of Jerusalem. The bas relief on the arch depicts soldiers carrying spoils from the Temple, including the Menorah, during a victory procession. A second, less known Arch of Titus constructed at the southeast entrance to the Circus Maximus was built by the Senate in 82 CE. Only a few traces of it remain today. The Colosseum, otherwise known as the Flavian Amphitheater, built in Rome between 70 and 82 CE, is believed to have been partially financed by the spoils of the Roman victory over the Jews. Archaeological discoveries have found a block of travertine that bears dowel holes that show the Jewish Wars financed the building of the amphitheater. Judaea Capta coinage: Judaea Capta coins were a series of commemorative coins originally issued by Vespasian to celebrate the capture of Judaea and the destruction of the Temple by his son Titus. In Jewish tradition, the annual fast day of Tisha B'Av marks the destruction of the First and Second Temples, which according to Jewish tradition, occurred on the same day on the Hebrew calendar.

The Jewish Amoraim attributed the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem as punishment from God for the "baseless" hatred that pervaded Jewish society at the time. Many Jews in despair are thought to have abandoned Judaism for some version of paganism, and many others sided with the growing Christian sect within Judaism. The destruction was an important point in the separation of Christianity from its Jewish roots: many Christians responded by distancing themselves from the rest of Judaism, as reflected in the Gospels, which portray Jesus as anti Temple and view the destruction of the temple as punishment for rejection of Jesus. Jerusalem retained its importance in Jewish life and culture even after its destruction, and it became a symbol of hope for return, rebuilding and renewal of national life.

The siege and destruction of Jerusalem has inspired writers and artists through the centuries.

The Franks Casket (8th century). The back side of the casket depicts the siege. The Destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem by Nicolas Poussin (1637). Oil on canvas, 147 × 198.5 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Depicts the destruction and looting of the Second Temple by the Roman army led by Titus. The Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus by Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1846). Oil on canvas, 585 × 705 cm. Neue Pinakothek, Munich. An allegorical depiction of the destruction of Jerusalem, dramatically centered on the figure of the High Priest, with Titus entering from the right. The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans Under the Command of Titus, 70 by David Roberts (1850). Oil on canvas, 136 × 197 cm. Private collection. Depicts the burning and looting of Jerusalem by the Roman army under Titus. The Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem by Francesco Hayez (1867). Oil on canvas, 183 × 252 cm. Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice. Depicts the destruction and looting of the Second Temple by the Roman army.

Legend of Destruction (2021), an Israeli animated historical drama film.