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“It was [the procurator] Florus who gave us no option other than to fight the Romans, as we thought that it would be better to be destroyed at once instead of little by little.”
JOSEPHUS, JEWISH ANTIQUITIES, 20, 257
JOSEPHUS SAILED HOME to Judea at some date during the first half of 66, no doubt expecting to be warmly congratulated. He had every reason to think that, together with his important contacts at Rome, his success should open up all sorts of opportunities that would enable him to aim at such prizes as membership of the Sanhedrin. But as soon as he reached Caesarea, he found a totally different climate from the one that existed when he had left Judea. A great deal had happened while he was away because of a man who, to use an anachronistic term, was one of the most baneful anti-Semites in history.
This was the new procurator, Gessius Florus, a Roman by blood although born in Greek Clazomenae on the coast of Asia Minor. He brought with him a promisingly named wife, Cleopatra, whose friendship with the Empress Poppaea had got him his post in Judea. Josephus says tantalizingly that she was “in no way different from [her husband] in wickedness” but gives us no further details.1 Florus was a man who boasted about how he ill-treated his “subjects,” punishing innocent Jews as if they were criminals, while practicing all kinds of robbery and graft. No one had more contempt for the truth or was better at telling lies. “He plundered whole cities and ruined entire communities, more or less giving official permission for anyone to turn bandit so long as he shared in the loot,” Josephus tells us. “Because of his greed for money, complete districts were laid waste, many people fleeing from their homeland and taking refuge abroad.”2
Florus had developed a devouring hatred for the people he ruled, possibly after trouble with Jewish communities in Asia Minor. It is clear that from the start he had made up his mind to do the Jews of Judea all the harm he could. As he tried to goad them into a rebellion against the Roman imperial authority that would provide him with the excuse he needed for retaliation, his behavior verged increasingly on insanity. The account which follows of the horrors he perpetrated is taken almost verbatim from Josephus’sJewish War. Even the hostile Tacitus admits that Florus pushed the Jews’ patience beyond the breaking point.3 Although Josephus had not yet returned to Judea, he spoke to eyewitnesses who had been caught up in these events, enabling him to recreate them for his readers.
Nobody dared to complain to the legate of Syria, Cestius Gallus, until he visited Jerusalem on the eve of Passover. Then a vast crowd begged him to remove Florus, “who stood beside him laughing.” Cestius, an elderly mediocrity with no idea of how dangerous the situation was becoming, promised he would see that the procurator treated them fairly, after which he went back to Antioch. Florus accompanied him as far as Caesarea, hiding his fury. He also concealed his plan to make a war break out, since (if Josephus can be believed) he had decided that it was the only way to hide his crimes; if peace continued, the Jews would find a means of appealing to Caesar.
In reality, there was no point in making an appeal to the imperial lunatic at Rome. Nero was not even in his capital but wandering around Greece and pretending to be an actor. Before he went off on his holiday—and before Florus’s arrival in Judea—in answer to a desperate plea from the Caesarean Jews for help against the Greeks, he sent back a rescript drafted by his secretary, Beryllus, who had been bribed by the city’s Greek community. 4 The rescript deprived the Jews of every privilege they had secured over the years, giving complete control of Caesarea to the Greeks, who at once took the opportunity to build a row of shops and block access to a synagogue. Misguidedly, the Jewish elders then paid Florus a large sum of money to see that the shops were removed, but he simply pocketed the bribe and allowed the rioters to expel all Jews from the city. The Greeks’ next action was to perform a parody of Jewish sacrifice outside the synagogue, using an upturned chamber pot as an “altar.” When the elders complained to Florus, demanding their money back, he imprisoned them—on the charge of removing copies of the Torah from Caesarea. Understandably, his behavior caused outrage in Jerusalem. Josephus believed that the rescript was a major factor in causing “the miseries which befell our nation.”5
Jerusalem became the scene of the procurator’s next misdeed. Here he acted as if he had been encouraged to “blow the war into flame,” seizing the enormous sum of seventeen talents from the Temple treasury, on the pretense that Caesar needed it, a deliberate affront to the entire Jewish people. In response, a mob rushed into the Temple, calling on Nero by name, imploring him to free them from Florus’s government, while another group paraded a begging bowl around the city in cheerful derision, telling bystanders that the procurator was destitute and faint from hunger. Enraged by the insult, Florus marched on the city with a large detachment of troops, sending fifty cavalry ahead. When a big crowd went out to welcome the horsemen, hoping to placate Florus, the troops were ordered to disperse them with a charge.
On 16 May—the day after he arrived at the palace—Florus had his judge’s chair placed on a platform outside, summoned Jerusalem’s leading citizens, and demanded that all demonstrators be handed over to him, threatening that otherwise they themselves would be punished. In response, the citizens insisted that the city’s population was peace-loving, apologizing for any insults and begging him to pardon the people who had caused the uproar. Inevitably, they explained, the crowd had included some stupid young hotheads, and while it was impossible to identify those who were guilty, every one of them was sorry for what he had done. For the sake of the nation and if he wanted to keep the city safe for the Romans, the procurator would be well advised to forgive the guilty few rather than punish a large number of innocent people.
Florus was infuriated by this reasonable appeal. His reaction was to let his troops loose on the Upper Market, telling them to sack the entire district and kill anybody they met. Jew-haters (most of them seem to have been Samaritans) who were eager for loot, they obeyed with unrestrained savagery, breaking into the houses, slaughtering every man, woman, and child they found inside. The inhabitants fled through the streets, hotly pursued, many more being cut down, while others were dragged before the procurator, who had them scourged and crucified. Josephus was told that, including infants in arms, over 3,500 people died that day. What was extraordinary, however, was the unheard-of way in which members of the Jewish ruling class, pillars of the imperial regime, were treated. “For Florus dared to do what no one had ever dared to do before, to have men of equestrian rank whipped before his judgment seat and then nailed to crosses, men who although they were Jews were also Roman citizens.”6
King Agrippa II’s sister, Berenice, was in Jerusalem to make a thirty days’ thanksgiving for a blessing from God—abstaining from wine and shaving her head. (Although she had married her uncle and was rumored to sleep with her brother, in her own way she was devout enough.) She sent her master of horse and the captain of her bodyguard to Florus, begging him to stop the bloodshed, but he took no notice, while his soldiers deliberately tortured people to death in front of her. They even tried to kill her, but she escaped into her palace where she spent the night under the protection of her guards. Although Berenice had stood barefoot with her cropped head in front of Florus’s platform, she had been ignored by him and was lucky to escape with her life.
Next day, mourners poured into the Upper Market, bewailing the dead and cursing the procurator. Knowing Florus’s insane temper, the more important citizens and high priests implored the crowd of mourners not to provoke any further bloodshed, as they wept, tore their clothes, and heaped dust on their heads. The crowd dispersed, realizing the wisdom of this appeal and that they were in serious danger with such a madman in charge.
The last thing Florus wanted was for the demonstrations to die down. Sending for the high priests and the city’s other leaders, he told them that the only way the people of Jerusalem could prove they were not going to revolt again was to go into the countryside and welcome two cohorts of soldiers marching up from Caesarea. At the same time he sent orders to his officers to cut down anyone who uttered a word against him. After much persuasion by the priests, a crowd marched out to meet them quietly enough, but when the troops ignored their greetings they shouted abuse at the procurator. Immediately one of the cohorts charged, chasing the panic-stricken mob back to Jerusalem, many of them being trampled to death while trying to get through the gates.
The soldiers burst into the city with them but were suddenly checked by the Jews, who seized whatever weapons they could find, hurling spears and tiles down from the rooftops. They also demolished the porticos between the Temple and the Antonia, making it impossible for Florus to launch a further raid on the treasury. Baffled, he withdrew the cohort that had been engaged, leaving the other, as requested by the city authorities, who promised to keep order. He then sent a report to Cestius at Antioch, claiming that the Jews had begun the fighting and started a revolt.
However, the Jews’ leaders wrote to Cestius to explain what had really happened, as did Berenice. After consulting his officers, a very worried Cestius sent a tribune named Neopolitanus to investigate. He arrived at Jerusalem at the same time as Agrippa, a mob going out for miles to greet them, led by the dead men’s wailing widows. Complaining to both men about Florus’s atrocities, the citizens showed them the blood-stained Upper Market where the massacre had taken place, together with the looted houses. They also persuaded Neopolitanus to walk round the city with a single servant, so he would realize there was no hostility against Romans apart from Florus and his thugs. The tribune was convinced that no one in Jerusalem wanted a revolt, and before leaving he even prayed in his pagan way at the Temple, in the Court of the Gentiles. Apparently, he took back a reassuring report to Cestius at Antioch: If there were troublemakers in the city, most citizens wanted peace and the continuation of Roman government.7
Meanwhile the Jews begged Agrippa and the high priests to send an embassy to Nero to denounce Florus, arguing that if they did not, the fighting would be taken as evidence of their guilt. Agrippa disagreed; perhaps he feared Nero might make matters worse. Despite the good impression received by Neopolitanus, Agrippa realized there was every likelihood of a full-scale rebellion. Deciding to make a speech, he asked his sister, Berenice, to support him by sitting in a window of the Hasmonean palace so that the crowd could see her watching while he delivered it. These two last Herodians hoped to appeal to any lingering loyalty to their dynasty.
Standing outside the Temple, he delivered a long, impassioned harangue. Josephus was not there to hear it, but almost certainly Agrippa gave him a copy of it years later, and although he polished the speech to look like something from the Greek classics, his version carries conviction. It also conveys Josephus’s own considered view of the situation, which was probably that of most of the Jewish ruling class. What follows is the gist of Agrippa’s speech.
“If I thought you all wanted to fight the Romans and that the honest and good hearted among you were tired of living in peace, then I should not bother to make a speech like this,” said Agrippa. “But I realize that a lot of you are young men who have not known the horror of war, that others are over optimistic about gaining independence, and that selfish people hope to profit from it.” He was well aware of how much they had suffered, how pleasant freedom from foreign rule must seem. Even so, they should submit. “I can see that the procurator ill-treats you.” This did not mean that all Romans were ill-treating them, let alone Caesar; no one in Rome knew what was going on. Why make war because of one man when their much better armed ancestors had been conquered by Pompey with a small detachment of legionaries. Yet now they were proposing to challenge the full might of the entire Roman Empire.
“Just what sort of an army have you got, and what sort of weapons?” asked Agrippa. “Do you have a fleet to take control of the seas from the Romans, do you have the money to pay for the campaigns?” Then he listed in detail all the nations that had been conquered by Rome and how. “Despite the Britons living on an island as big as this entire continent, protected by an ocean, the Romans crossed the sea and crushed them—today, a mere four legions are enough to run the place.” If the Jews went to war, the Romans would certainly burn down Jerusalem and exterminate the entire nation. “If you won’t have pity on your wives and children, at least have pity on your capital and its holy walls, have pity on the Temple and the Sanctuary.”8
At the end of his speech Agrippa and his sister burst into tears. Deeply moved, the people of Jerusalem shouted they had never had any intention of fighting Rome, but only wanted to fight Florus because of what he had done to them. Agrippa replied that they had already been fighting Rome, by not paying the tribute due to Caesar and by pulling down the porticos between the Temple and the Antonia Fortress. However, if they paid the tribute and rebuilt the colonnades, then that would be an end to it, since the Antonia was not Florus’s business nor was he going to be paid the tribute.
The Temple porticos were repaired and the arrears of tribute owing to Caesar began to be collected from the villages. It looked as if Agrippa had managed to avert the war.
Then he overplayed his hand, by announcing that the Jews must continue to obey Florus until Rome appointed a successor. Terrified by the prospect of what Florus might do to them, a mob gathered in front of the king’s palace, yelling abuse and throwing stones. In despair, Agrippa left Jerusalem for the safety of his border kingdom. Yet he was still hoping to defuse the situation by sending an embassy of rich—and no doubt very apprehensive—citizens to Florus at Caesarea with a message that advised the procurator to employ them if he wanted to collect the remainder of Caesar’s tribute.9
It was plain that the peace party could expect nothing more from the king; he was obviously too committed to Rome.