Obsidio Hierosolymorum
About
Titus's legions surrounded rebel Jerusalem, breached its walls after months of starvation and infighting inside the city, and burned the Second Temple to the ground. Josephus put the dead in the hundreds of thousands, with tens of thousands more sold into slavery. It was the decisive blow of the First Jewish-Roman War and ended Temple-centered Jewish worship for good. Titus and his father Vespasian celebrated the victory with a triumph and the arch that still bears his name in Rome.
What happened here
A Roman army fights the way it camps: in lines, by drill, on ground chosen if possible. The legions form up in cohorts with gaps that let ranks rotate, throw a volley of heavy javelins at close range, and then close with the short sword, pushing behind the shield. Auxiliaries hold the flanks and do most of the cavalry work and most of the skirmishing. Battles are short and decided by whether one line breaks, and the killing happens in the pursuit rather than the fighting. The camp is dug and palisaded every night regardless. Afterwards the dead are stripped and the field is looted for days; the ground is remembered locally long after the campaign is a paragraph in someone's history.
In ancient writing
- Josephus, Jewish War 6.249–266
The burning of the Temple, written by a man who watched it from the Roman lines and blamed the fire on a soldier acting without orders.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →