Legion was destroyed, its siege equipment captured and its eagle taken.
Free from imminent Roman intervention, the Zealots set up government in
Jerusalem, divided the country into seven military districts, and began
minting their own silver coins.
When news reached Nero of the Twelfth Legion’s defeat, he was in Greece
engaging in his usual buffooneries and immorality. Nevertheless, he still
possessed sufficient sense to appoint the best man available to deal with the
crisis – Titus Flavius Vespasianus (a.k.a Vespasian), a 57-year-old general
who possessed in his character the best of old Rome. Vespasian was
dispatched to Palestine with three legions.
Vespasian’s tactic was to first retrieve all the lost territories outside Judea
itself. One by one they fell to him: Perea, Lydia, Jamnia. Galilee, defended
by the priest Josephus (later the great Jewish historian), was next conquered
after a 47-day siege. Inhabitants of captured towns were either massacred
or given as slaves to the soldiers. In the winter of 68 AD two separate
Zealot armies under John of Gischala and the priest Eleazar stormed
Jerusalem and massacred everyone suspected of Roman sympathies. In all,
8500 were killed, their blood forming a lake outside the Temple. This was
the moment when the Jerusalem Christians under their new Bishop Simeon
(who was perhaps the brother of St. James the Less) fled to Pella beyond
the Jordan. No doubt, they had remembered the prophesy of Jesus, spoken
when weeping over Jerusalem:
“For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast
up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every
side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within
you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you,
because you did not know the time of your visitation” (St. Luke
19, 43-44).
Meanwhile in Rome, leadership passed from one new Emperor to another
in quick succession. After Nero’s whimpering suicide in June 68 AD,
Galba, Otho and Vitellius all met premature deaths. There was almost as
much chaos in Rome as there was in Jerusalem. In July 69 AD, Vespasian’s
legions proclaimed him Emperor, followed by the Danubian legions a
month later. Vespasian turned the Judean war over to his son, Titus, and
marched on Rome, taking it in December 69 AD.
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