Aerial view of Masada taken from the northwest.
From the book "Holyland Journey".

The Northern Herodian Palace.
The middle terrace with its round building,
and the lower terrace with a wonderful outlook over the Dead Sea
and the Judean Desert, were both built for
Herod's pleasure and entertainment.

Inside an enormous cistern with rock cut steps
leading down from the top of Masada.

For the circumstances of that event, we must go back to the time it happened, the first century A.D. The country, the land of the Jews, known at the time as Judea, was then one of the provinces of the great Roman Empire. It had been conquered in the middle of the previous century and ruled since then by Rome.

The governor of the country was appointed by, and answerable to, the Roman emperor. Sometimes he bore the title of king, sometimes of procurator, like Pontius Pilate, who was procurator of Judea at the time of Jesus. The governor had a large force of Roman soldiers - the celebrated Roman legions - to keep order among the population. For the people were not happy to have their freedom crushed, their land occupied by foreign troops, their lives and religion regulated by foreign rulers. They often rebelled, but the rebellions were harshly suppressed.

Yet each clash with the Roman authorities and every fresh wave of Roman cruelty only made the Jews more determined to regain their freedom. Then, in A.D. 66, the Jews throughout the country rose as one man to drive the Romans from their soil. This was the start of what became known in history as the Great Jewish War against the Romans.

At first the Jews made great gains, and Rome soon realized that she was in danger of losing this prized possession. She feared that if she did, she would soon lose other important parts of her empire. So she decided to send in her most famous general, Vespasian, who had distinguished himself as commander of the Second Legion in the conquest of Britain, and a large number of additional troops.Even so, the Romans had to fight for every inch of ground, and it took them five years to subdue the country.

The end - they thought - came with their conquest of Jerusalem, the capital, and the destruction of the Jewish Temple. The Temple, which had been built by King Solomon a thousand years before, in the tenth century B.C., was the holiest Jewish shrine. Its destruction was felt by every Jew to be the greatest tragedy that had befallen his people. To this day, Jews throughout the world mark the anniversary, the nineth of the Jewish month of Ab, by fasting.

Commanding the Roman armies that conquered Jerusalem was Titus, son of Vespasian, who had in the meantime become emperor of Rome. To set an example to others in the Empire who might think of rebelling, Titus slaughtered thousands of Jewish prisoners and took the rest of the captives to Rome.

But not all. A few managed to escape, and they were determined to continue the fight. They were led by Eleazar ben Ya'ir and were called Zealots. This was because of their "zeal for the Lord," and, I believe, also because they fought zealously.

Eleazar and his band made their painful way eastward from Jerusalem across the Judean desert. Their sufferings were great. Some had been wounded in the Jerusalem fighting. There was no shelter from the hot sun by day nor the bitter cold at night. They had almost no food and very little water. The sharp rocks over which thay had to scramble tore their flesh. They chose this harsh route precisely because thay knew they would not be followed by the enemy - certainly not so quickly. They chose it for another reason as well. At the journey's end lay the rock of Masada, and at Masada they believed they could hold out for a long time against the might of Rome.

Masada, they knew, was a natural fortress. In A.D. 66, at the start of the Jewish War, a group of Zealots had attacked the Roman garrison there and captured it. It had remained in Jewish hands. The Romans had never bothered to retake it, both because they thought it would be too costly - it would need too many troops - and because they believed that after the fall of Jerusalem all Jewish resistance would end. They had not reckoned with Eleazar ben Ya'ir. As soon as he arrived with his party, he set about organizing Masada as a military outpost. With the rock fortress as his base, it was his intention to descend with his men from time to time to make forays against the Romans and against settlers in the region who collaborated with the Romans. If the Romans, goaded by his raids, marched on Masada and tried to capture it, they would find the Jews there holding firm, prepared to make a final stand.

What was there about Masada to give Eleazar such confidence?

It is, as we have said, a natural fortress, a huge rock sticking out from the eastern edge of the Judean plateau, with a sheer drop on all sides. Its flat top, 1,300 feet above the shore of the Dead Sea, is shaped like a diamond. It measures 1,950 feet from its nortern to its southern points and 650 feet from east to west. It is very difficult indeed to climb to the top, but it is possible from two sides: one way is along the "snake path," on the sharp eastern slope, so called because, as described by the unusual man, the first century A.D. historian Josephus, it has "the narrowness and constant windings" of a snake. Writing about the actual climb, Josephus said, "Walking along it is like balancing on a tightrop. The least slip means death; for on either side yawns an abyss so terrifying that it could make the boldest tremble."The other approach was from the west, along a spur which meets the side of the fortress at some distance from the top. From there one has to pick one's way upward over a series of dangerous, winding goat paths. Nature has indeed provided excellent defenses for those occupying Masada's summit. Eleazar knew all this. He also knew that about one hundred years before, someone had improved upon nature and powerfully strengthened Masada's defenses. That "someone," now dead some seventy years, was a man whose memory Eleazar despised, because throughout his life he had fawned upon the Romans. It was ironic that this man's fortifications, built with Roman conquest, would now serve him, Eleazar, and his zealots in resisting the Romans. The man was King Herod, "Herod the Great."

He had been a remarkable man, at times brilliant, at times mad, ambitious, cruel, moody; but he had one constructive passion in life - building. He had built many great cities in the country, the best known being Caesarea, on the Mediterranean coast. Undoubtedly his most spectacular buildings, however, were those he put up on Masada.

Eleazar probably did not know - and certainly did not care - why Herod had spent so much time, money, and energy on fortifying so distant an outpost as Masada. All he was concerned with was the fact that it had been done. But it is worth interrupting our story to find out what Herod's reasons were.

Herod's family were originally Edomites, inhabitants of Idumea, which bordered on the south of Judea. There had been constant enmity between the Jews and the Edomites, and at the end of the second century B.C., Idumea had been conquered by the Jewish State and became part of Judea. Some years later, Herod's grandfather, who was converted to Judaism, was appointed governor of his native province by the Jewish king and became a man of influence. His son, Herod's father, succeeded to this position of influence, and he retained it after the Romans conquered Judea, under Pompey, in 63 B.C. He was a man who always knew how to keep on the right side of whoever was in power - and so did his son, Herod, who in the meantime had become governor of Galilee.

When his father died, in 43 B.C., Herod took over his authority in the State and was soon busily at work gaining the favor of the Romans. He hoped they would make him king of Judea. But the Romans were in a difficult position. On the one hand, they would have liked to put Herod on the throne, for he was their friend and was "reliable." But precisely because of this, even though he was formally a Jew, he did not have the support of the population, the Jews, and the Romans feared there would be unrest. On the other hand, the person whom the Jews wanted was someone who, like themselves, was anti-Roman. He was Antigonus, a member of the greatly loved Jewish royal family, the Maccabees, who had led the successful fight for Jewish freedom in the middle of the second century B.C.

In the year 40 B.C., the choice was taken out of the hands of Rome when the Jews, aided by the Parthians, drove the Romans from Jerusalem. Antigonus was crowned king. Herod had lost the struggle for power, and he promptly fled - to Masada!

It was while he was sitting on top of Masada with his household and some eight hundred followers that Herod became deeply impressed with the defense possibilities of the rock. However, he had no intention of staying there all his life. He still wanted to be king. Leaving his younger brother in charge at Masada, he made his way to Rome. There he was eventually able to persuade the authorities to give him their support as the only way of regaining their power in Judea. The Roman Senate nominated him puppet king and sent him back to Judea with two Roman legions - a powerful force. In the year 37 B.C., after a five month siege, Jerusalem was taken and Antigonus put to death. Herod was enthroned in his place.

What had happened to his followers in Masada while he was away? To his surprise, Herod found that they had been able to hold out all that time, although they had been attacked often. This showed what a useful refuge Masada was, and could be, if he ever needed one; and when he thought of his situation, he thought he might. True, he was on the throne; but he throne was shaky. He faced two dangers. One was from his subjects, the Jews. They hated him, for he was the puppet of their enemy, and would have loved nothing better than to push him off and restore one of their beloved Maccabees. The second danger came from a well-known lady who reigned in Egypt at the time - Cleopatra. Cleopatra had her eyes on the kingdom of Judea and wished it annexed to Egypt. She kept appealing to Mark Anthony, her great and good friend, who was one of the rulers of the Roman Empire, "begging him," according to Josephus, "to destroy Herod and requesting the transfer to herself of Judea,"

In these circumstances, Herod thought it would be a good idea to strengthen the fortifications of Masada and equip it to enable him to withstand a long siege. The orders he must have given to his architects and engineers were to put up buildings and install facilities "fit for a king" - in the event that he would have to live there in refuge for a long time. When Eleazar ben Ya'ir, more than one hundred years later, reached Masada with his bedraggled followers, bleeding, footsore, and hungry, what they saw matched in richness what they had heard.

Within a defense wall encircling the top of the rock, they saw palaces, Roman baths, storerooms, water cisterns, and aqueducts - an amazing collection of buildings on the top of a lonely cliff in the middle of nowhere.

Herod never had to use it as a refuge. He reigned from 37 B.C. until his death in 4 A. D.; but he must have visited Masada often. When he did, it is unlikely that he ever dreamed, in the words of Josephus, " that he was to leave it to the Romans as their very last task in the war against the Jews."

The buildings themselves may have been luxurious, but to Eleazar and his frugal Zealots they were a symbol of all they despised - ostentation, personal comfort, personal ambition, personal power. However, what had served one man, his household, and a small garrison would now serve the community of Zealots, the few hundred families who had escaped from Jerusalem and the few who had been at Masada all the time. The storehouses and water cisterns would be most useful; indeed, they would enable them to hold out for a long time. As for the palaces and outer buildings, they would be used to house a number of families. Additional shelter would be offered by the rooms in the wall that Herod had buily around the perimeter. This was what is known as the casemate type, a double wall with space in between which is divided into chambers, or casemates. What the Zealots would do therefore would be to use these rooms as family dwellings. They would also, in time, build several primitive shacks as additional housing.

All through the rest of A.D. 70, 71, and the first part of 72, the Zealots continued to occupy Masada and harry the Roman authorities whenever they could, as well as disrupt Roman rule in the area. At first the Romans paid little attention to them, dismissing them as one would a gnat. But as the Zealot raids continued, the gnat became a bee and then a wasp with a painful sting, and the Romans began to take notice. "Who are these people?" the Romans asked themselves. "Don't they know when they are beaten? Don't they know that with Jerusalem lost and the rest of the country under firm Roman rule they don't stand a chance?"

What annoyed the Romans even more than their losses in the Zealot raids was the harm to their prestige - the prestige of the great Roman Empire. How could the local Roman governor and commander face their imperial masters when they seemed unable to put down a small group of Judean rebels? But how could they put them down? A large force was necessary, and such a force was not available to the Romans in the first year or so when they were busily trying to establish order in the country after the long savage war.

In A.D. 72, however, the new Roman procurator of Judea, Flavius Silva, considered that the country was now quiet and the population sufficiently terrorized into acceptance of Roman rule. He decided that the time had come to move against the one fortress that still held out - Masada. It is also possible that he got direct instructions from Rome to do so.

Flavius Silva was a general. He had been one of the top commanders of Titus in the conquest of Jerusalem. Cruel he may have been, but he was a first class military man, and he did not underrate the enemy. He knew it would not be easy to take the high rock, particularly if it were defended by Zealots, whom he knew were from Jerusalem to be stubborn and courageous fighters. He decided to march on Masada with a large force - and to lead them himself, for he could not afford a Roman failure. Such a failure would not only be a blow to Roman prestige but it might also have the effect of exciting similar rebellious outbreaks in the rest of the country, and the war against Rome would begin all over again.

He had to make certain of victory, so he took the noted Tenth Legion and additional troops - from 6,000 to 10,000 fighters in all - to subdue the thousand or so Masada defenders. It was quite a compliment to Eleazar ben Ya'ir. In addition to his fighting men, General Silva also pressed into service from 10,000 to 15,000 "bearers" - prisoners of war - to carry supplies over the long stretch of barren desert. Eleazar's group, which in the end totaled 960 men, women, and children, would be facing a total enemy force of not less than 16,000 and possibly as great as 25,000!

After months of preparation, Silva set out across the wilderness with his massive force. The journey must have taken them several weeks, and the stores they carried must have been enormous. They would find no water on the way, so they would have had to take with them every drop they would need during the journey, as well as reserves for the initial period after their arrival. The same was true with food and wood. The problem of supplies for thousands of men - even though the prisoners would get very little - was staggering. This force would not have set out on such a journey without elaborate preparations, as had Eleazar. Eleazar's band numbered comparatively few, and they were in a hurry and desperate and ready to suffer grave privations of thirst and hunger. But the Roman Army was not - particularly when, with so many prisoner-slaves, it was unnecessary.

Eventually they arrived at the foot of Masada on the shore of the Dead Sea, the lowest habitable spot on earth, 1,200 feet below sea level. General Silva took a good look at the rock he had come to conquer, which looked 1,300 feet above the level of the shore. We have no record of his thoughts, but he may well have been shaken by the seemingly impossibility of scaling the steep heights, with a hostile group on top ready to roll down stones or pour boiling oil upon any who attempted the climb.

As he circled the rock from below, Silva noticed that while the steep sides fell away for all or almost all of the 1,300 feet on the north, the east, and the south, the western side fell sharply only about a fifth of the way. At that point there was the spur we mentioned, a neck of hill or kind of bridge known as the "White Cliff," linking the Masada rock with the broad Judean plateau. It was from this direction that Silva decided to launch his attack, and it was here, near the western slope, that he established his headquarters camp.

The written record does not say whether he tried immediately to storm the fortress. He may well have done so, hoping for a quick victory and expecting that his vast numbers would make up for his topographic disadvantage. But if he did, he failed; for we know both from the record, and from the structures he erected, that he was forced to lay siege to Masada and build up to a final assault when his men and war machines could get closer to the summit.

He established eight camps at key points around the base of the rock. Their remains may be seen today. Then he set his slaves to building a powerful siege wall, called a circumvallation, completely encircling the fortress. It was more than two miles long (3,800 yards to be exact), and six feet thick. In one section, it was strengthened by twelve towers. He must have built his wall partly to prevent the Zealots from raiding his troops and partly to stop them from escaping. Not that Eleazar had any intention of fleeing, as we shall see. But Silva did not know this, and he must have been anxious to kill or capture this stubborn band which had caused such trouble to him and his Empire, and he did not want anyone to get away.

When all this work was completed, General Silva commenced the final stage of his operation, the purpose for which he had come - the assault on and capture of the heights of Masada. Getting his troops to scramble up the steep sides of the rock had proved a failure. They could not fight and climb at the same time, and they certainly could not climb with heavy weapons; they formed too easy a target and prey for the defenders on the top. The only way, Silva must have thought, to break through the Zealots' defenses was to build a sloping ramp reaching to the summit. Up this ramp he could move his troops in a solid body, together with siege engines and a battering ram, and hurl this powerful strength against a single point in the Zealots' casemate wall. It would mean hard labor for a lot of men. But he had the prisoner-slaves, and he did not mind how hard they worked. The defenders on the top would of course try to stop the construction. But arrows and catapult stones would force them to keep their heads down and get away from the wall.

Where would it be best to build this ramp? Obviously on the "White Cliff," the western side, close to where he had established his headquarters. From here, the distance to the top of Masada was only about 250 feet, as against the 1,200 or 1,300 feet he would have to bridge if he chose the northern, eastern, or southern slopes.

The Roman general thereupon set his men to building this solid ramp upon the "White Cliff." They piled earth and stones upon it and tamped them down so that the surface was hard. Wooden scaffolding was used to hold the earth in place. To this day you can see the protruding tips of timber. The structure was cone-shaped, narrow at the bottom and broadening to a width of about 650 feet near Masada's wall. That was also its length. This ramp, which is quite well preserved, is regarded as one of the most remarkable siege works of the Romans still in existence.

The ramp did not reach the summit of Masada, possibly because the gradient would have been too steep or perhaps it would have been too difficult and costly in men. At all events, Silva solved that problem by having a pier thrown up on top of the ramp as a base for a high siege tower from which his men could dominate the defenders.

As Josephus says: "Finding that it [the ramp] was not of sufficient strength [and height] to support the [siege] machines, they raised on it a kind of platform, composed of large stones, fifty cubits [75 feet] in height, and of the same breadth. On this platform they built a tower of the height of sixty cubits [90 feet], which they fortified with iron. Exclusive of their common [siege] machines, they had another kind, which had been invented by Vespasian, and were afterward improved by Titus. From the tower above-mentioned the Romans assailed the besieged with such impetuous showers of stones and flights of arrows that they were afraid to appear on the walls. In the interim Silva directed his battering ram against the wall, till at length it was damaged in some places."

What is evident from Josephus' report is that the Romans on the tower's platform, hurling their stones and arrows among the Zealots, gave what is know as "covering fire" to the men beneath them wielding the "ram." This weapon, so called because of its function of butting, like the ram, was used to make a hole in the defense wall through which the troops could rush. It consisted of a huge length of stout wood, usually the trunk of a large tree, with a metal point at its front end. The more advance type was housed in a wooden structure and rested on a flexible "cradle" of loops slung from the roof. This was probably the kind of ram used by Silva, and his men would keep swinging it against the wall with all their strength. The thin walls of a casemate would soon crumble. Troops operating the ram were often covered by a leather canopy to protect them from the heavy stones or boiling oil which the defenders above would aim at their heads. At Masada we know that they were protected not only by their companions on the tower but also by catapult throwers firing from small platforms above the roof of their own ram structure.

It is not hard to imagine the scene among the Zealots when their wall was breached, although from the way they reacted at the time, and from what happened later, we know they did not panic. For months they had been watching the Roman build-up. They could follow every step. They could hear almost every sound. (The acoustics in the area are unusually clear.) They had observed the arrival of the Roman forces, the setting-up of their camps, the building of the siege wall - and finally the construction of the ramp. They knew what was coming. They had, throughout that time, been subjected to constant "fire" by the missiles of the Romans. From the very first thay had kept a day and night vigil all around their casemate wall to prevent the Romans from scaling the heights; they had kept piles of ammunition - stone balls - at key points along the wall to fling at anyone trying to do so. Along the western section of the perimeter, their guards were strengthened. It was clear to them from the Roman preparations that this was where Silve would strike; but just in case the Roman activity was a ruse, a feint to mislead them, they kept a watchful eye all around. Being pitifully few in number, made daily fewer by the Roman missles, the male Zealots were the fighters manning the defenses while the women and older children carried the ammunition, rushed messages from one sector to the other, tended the wounded, cooked the meager rations, and drew and distributed the water.

We can gather from the evidence that up to the final days they were hopeful that they might hold out. Despite their fearful hardships, their moral was high. As month followed month and they saw that the Romans assembled below were apparently powerless to defeat them, they took heart. Their sprits rose as the thought that they, a mere handful, were holding at bay a great Roman army, led by a renowned general. Devoutly religious and familiar with the Bible, some must have surely likened their lot to that of David facing Goliath - except that the Roman Goliath was infinitely more powerful.

But when the siege tower was erected and the battering ram brought up, Eleazar and his commanders must certainly have realized that the end could not be far off. Yet they reacted with great coolness. Unable to keep the ram from the wall, because of the arrows and catapult stones from the Romans on the tower, they knew that the casemate would be breached any minute. What did they do? They promptly rushed all hands to the section of the wall that was now crumbling and improvised an inner wall. This was one which could be put up quickly yet built in such a way that it would better meet the threat of the battering ram. They erected what was in fact a wooden casemate - two parallel walls made of long wooden beams - except that the space between was not left empty but filled with earth, and boards were nailed across the frame to prevent the earth from falling out. It was an ingenious answer to the powerful Roman weapon, whose blows, far from causing damage, simply beat the earth into a more solid and compact barrier.

But General Flavius Silva, an experienced soldier, was also not without ingenuity. Like Eleazar, he too remained the cool commander when things went wrong, although it was far easier for him to do so; and things were going wrong for him now. He was finding that the great weapon on which he had pinned his hopes, the weapon that had actually breached the wall, was now powerless.

Only a little while earlier, when he had been told that the wall was about to crumble, he had imagined his men rushing through the gap and at last, at last, grappling with the enemy. This was the moment he had waited for, the moment for which he had pushed and spurred his men for long weary months to build the camps and the siege wall and the towers and the great ramp - the moment at which he would get at the enemy. We can imagine him as he watches and waits near the foot of the ramp, expecting every moment the report from the top that the ram has done its job, the wall has been pierced and his men are through. He has already received the first news about the breach. Then nothing. The minutes tick by, and still there is no movement of his men onto the summit. We can see him impatiently sending an aide to find out what is holding them up and the aide returning to say that they have struck a snag. He then strides up the ramp to see for himself, and he sees the new defense construction of the Zealots.

After his initial disappointment and after examining the new wall from where he stood, Silva must have decided what to do. He would strike at its one weakness - the timber. He ordered his men to get firebrands - flaming torches - and hurl them at the new barrier. They did, and the wood soon caught fire. Within moments, the whole section was ablaze.

Then there occurred a remarkable and unusual event. The Roman Silva was too experienced a commander not to have thought about the wind before giving the order to set fire to the enemy wall. From his point of view, the wind was blowing in the right direction - toward the Masada summit, carrying the flames with it. But suddenly the wind veered around, blowing the flames back in the faces of the Romans and threatening to set alight their siege tower and battering ram.

Josephus tells us that this strange happening "plunged the Romans into despair." We can well imagine that the hopes of the Jewish Zealots on the other side, only a few yards away, must have risen anew. Indeed, when we think of the momentous hours of that day so long ago - the year was now A.D. 73 - we are struck by the fast succession of ups and downs experienced by both sides. Eleazar's joy was Silva's gloom, and the Roman despair was Zealot hope. Now, with the change of the wind, the defenders must surely have thought that Providence had come to their rescue at the last minute.

But hope died quickly - as quickly as the wind again veered and resumed its former direction, carrying and flinging the flames against the wall, turning it, according to Josephus, into one solid blazing mass.

"Then", says Josephus, "the Romans returned to their camp full of spirits, and with a fixed determination to attack the enemy by break of day on the following morning; and, in the meantime, to place strong guards, that their opponents might not escape in the night."

But the Jewish Zealot leader, Eleazar ben Ya'ir, had no thought of escaping - at least not in the way the Romans thought. He knew, though, that the moment of greatest crisis had come. The banging of the battering ram had stopped. No more stones and arrows were being flung from the siege tower. He had heard the heavy tread of the Roman troops as they marched down the ramp, and he heard their jeers as they went. "See you in the morning," they cried, taunting the Zealots, and Eleazar knew what that meant. With the stone wall breached and the wooden wall burning, nothing now stood between his small group and their meager weapons and the full might of Silva's army. When the Romans returned to the attack in the morning, pouring through the gap in the defenses to engage the Zealots in direct combat, their sheer weight of numbers and the power of their weapons would prove more than a match for the defenders. Even if every Zealot fighter battled to the end, selling his life dearly, the outcome could not be in doubt. Then would follow the slaughter of the survivors or, worse, torture and captivity. He could envisage the women and children dragged in chains through the streets of Judea and then probably Rome, as an example of what happened to people who dared defy Roman authority; and they would end their days in slavery.

These were the thoughts in Eleazar's mind as he stood, sad and lonely, watching the flames devour the improvised wall. Sad not over the life he had led nor the brave fight he had fought but over the way it was now ending - in Roman victory and not in Jewish freedom. Sad, above all, that God had abandoned them. Lonely, because in moments of great decision, every commander was lonely. He knew now what that decision must be. From the way he had reasoned, only two courses were opened to him: surrender or death. General Silva, as soon as the ramp was completed, had called upon him to surrender. Both forces, as we have seen, were within calling distance of each other, and the Romans, when they were not firing at the Zealots, were shouting to them, "Give up. You don't have a chance. Surrender." But the Zealots had either remained silent or rejected the calls with contempt. Now, just after the firebrands had done their work and just before the Romans had left the ramp, they had again cried out to the defenders to give in. When this had been spurned, they had marched off with their gloating promise of a rendezvous in the morning.

Surrender, then, was out of the question. There remained only - death. With this resolution in his mind, Eleazar assembled his comrades and delivered what may well be one of the most dramatic addresses in history, the more moving when one pictures the circumstances. It was related by the only survivors - two women and five children who failed to go through with Eleazar's plan and hid themselves. It has been preserved for us in the writings of Josephus.

These are the words of Eleazar ben Ya'ir on that fateful night on the top of Masada, uttered in the glow of the blazing wall:

"It has been, my friends, the usual custom with the people of our nation, to deny the authority of every other lord than the great Sovereign of the universe, the eternal God; and this we have done without excepting the Romans or anyone else. The time has come when we must demonstrate our sincerity by our conduct; wherefore let us act like men of resolution.

Till this time we have run every risk in preservation of our freedom; but we must now expect thralldom and tormenting punishments if the enemy take us alive, since we first departed from thier dominion and have been the last to resist them. This being the case, we may deem it a favor if we are permitted to choose the death we would die, a favor that has been refused to many of our people.

We shall be made slave tomorrow if we obtain not our liberty this night. But this we may do in a way that our enemies cannot prevent. The utmost of their ambition is to make us prisoners, and it is in vain to struggle against them any longer . . . for Providence hath decreed our destruction. The wind and the fire that combined to destroy our new wall furnish a proof of the justice of this observation; for you cannot think but the sudden turning of the wind was intended as a punishment of the crimes of which we have been guilty toward each other. Admitting, then, that our punishment is at once just and inevitable, what remains but that we rather execute justice ourselves, than leave it to the victorious Romans to pour down on us the vengeance of heaven. Thus acting, we should secure the honor of our wives and protect our children from slavery. Let us . . . make our own terms and die free. But let us first set fire to the fortress and to our possessions; and thus the Romans, neither taking us prisoners nor finding anything to loot, will even regret the possession of the place. One thing only let us spare - our store of food: to serve as a proof that we were not driven to this violent procedure by famine, but maintained our first resolution of dying rather than submitting to slavery."

Not all responded in the same way to Eleazar's appeal. "Some," says Josephus. "were eager to do as he said, deeming death an object of desire in their present situation; while others, from the tenderness of their nature, were moved by pity for their wives and families, and certainly, too, by the prospect of becoming their own executioners. And as they exchanged glances, the tears in their eyes betrayed the sentiment of their minds." So Eleazar, addressing himself particularly, and with the utmost earnestness, to those who were weeping, went on:

" . . . Will anyone who is not destitute of the common spirit of man wish to view the rising of another sun? Nay, would he wish it even if he might live in safety? Can anyone have so little regard to his country, so mean, so contracted a soul, as not to regret that he has survived to behold this fatal day? Happy would it have been for us if we had all been sacrificed, rather that to have witnessed this sacrilegious destruction and to have beheld Jerusalem itself become a pile of ruins.

While hope remained, however, our courage did not fail, and we despaired not of a happy change in our affairs. But as we have now no further reason to expect so auspicious a circumstance, and as we are urged by an invincible necessity to the step we ought now to take, it becomes us to have regard to our wives, our children, and ourselves; and in the plan of our proceeding we should be expeditious, while the means are yet in our power. All men are equally destined to death; and the same fate attends the coward as the brave. But outrage, slavery, and the sight of our wives led away to shame with our children - these are not evils to which man is subject by the laws of nature: men undergo them through their own cowardice if they have the chance to forestall them by death and will not take it.

We had courage to abandon the Romans, to defy those who called themselves our masters, to reject thier offer, now, in the final stages, to spare our lives. Will anyone think that these circumstances will be forgotten if they should take us prisoner?

It is a melancholy reflection to consider the situation of our old people or our youth when we are subjected. The former will die beneath their torments, and the latter lanquish under them while strength remains. The husband must expect to be an eyewitness of the dishonor of his wife, and the parent to behold his children begging for relief from their chains. Yet, while freedom is our own, and we are in pssession of our swords, let us make a determined use of them to preserve our liberties. Let us die free men, gloriously surrounded by our wives and children. And let us be expeditious. Eternal reknown shall be ours by snatching the prize from the hands of our enemies, and leaving them nothing to triumph over but the bodies of those who dared to be their own executioners."

Thus spoke Eleazar. Now the response was unanimous. "Eleazar," says Josephus, had many more arguments to urge, but that the people interrupted him with the warmest expressions of their readiness to adopt the plan he had recommended." So long as there was hope, they had fought, believing, too, that they were the instrument of God's will, through whom the Romans would be conquered and Jewish freedom regained. But now with disaster inevitable, it was clear that the will of God was the reverse of what they had hoped, and death was welcomed. They had little time left, and they moved quickly to do the grim thing that they had to do.

What happened next is related in moving words by Josephus. This is strange, for as we shall see later, Josephus was thoroughly hated - and with good reason - by the Zealots, and he hated them with equal passion. He was a man who wished to find favor in the eyes of his masters in Rome, and all his writings were pro-Roman. Yet he must have been so impressed by the behavior of Eleazar's group that in describing this episode at Masada he was unable to suppress his admiration for their strength of character - so different from his own. This is what he says:

Thus passionately were these people devoted to the destruction of themselves and their families! It was very extraordinary that, when they came to give proof of their resolution, not a man of them failed in the arduous trial. They retained their kindest affections for each other to the last moment, conceiving that they could not render a more acceptable proof of their regard.

Now came the deed!

While they embraced their wives and children for the last time, they wept over and stabbed them in the same moment, taking comfort, however, that this work was not to be performed by their enemies. They considered the necessity of the action as their excuse, and reflected that they only destroyed their dearest friends to prevent their falling by the hands of the Romans. In a word, there was not one man wanting in the necessary courage on the occasion.

These being chosen, the devoted victims embraced the bodies of their deceased families, and then, ranging themselves near them, cheerfully resigned themselves to the hands of the executioners. When these ten men had discharged their disareeable task, they again cast lots as to which of the ten should kill the other nine, and last of all himself: so great was the trust that these people reposed in each other that neither in doing nor in suffering should one differ from another.

The nine devoted victims died with the same resolution as their brethren had done. And the surviving man, having surveyed the bodies in case amidst all the slaughter someone was still left in need of his hand, threw himself on his sword, among his companions, but not till he had first set fire to the palace. The deceased had imagined that not a single Jew would fall into the hands of the Romans. But it afterwards appeared that an old woman and another woman who was related to Eleazar, in intelligence and education superior to mosr women, together with five children, had escaped. They had hidden in the conduits that brought drinking water underground. Including women and children, no less than nine hundred and sixty persons were slain on this occasion. This melancholy scene happened on the fifteenth day of the month of Xanthicus [April]

On the dawn of the following morning, the Romans prepared their scaling ladders [to bridge the gap between the pier on the ramp and the summit of Masada], in order to make an attack. But they were astonished in the highest degree on not hearing any noise but the crackling of the flames and were totally at a loss what conjecture to form. On this they gave a loud shout, as if giving the signal for a volley, in expectation of receiving an answer. This noise alarmed the women in their place of retreat, who immediately coming out related the truth to the Romans as it really happened, the second of them providing a lucid report of Eleazar's speech and the action that had followed. The story, however, appeared so extraordinary that they could not give credit to it; but they exerted themselves in extinguishing the fire. And being employed in this service till they came to the palace, they were found the bodies of the deceased lying in heaps.

Far, however, from exulting in the triumph of joy that might have been expected from enemies, they united to admire the steady virtue and dignity of mind with which the Jews had been inspired, and wondered at that generous contempt of death by which such numbers had been bound in one solemn compact.

This, then, is the story of Masada as it has come down to us from the writings of Josephus.