In the year 70 AD, the city of Jerusalem endured one of the most brutal and consequential sieges in ancient history. For seven long months, the military juggernaut of the Roman Empire unleashed its full fury against the outnumbered Jewish rebels, culminating in the complete destruction of the sacred Second Temple. The fall of Jerusalem marked the catastrophic end of the First Jewish-Roman War (66-73 AD) and resulted in widespread slaughter, enslavement, and diaspora. This cataclysmic event forever changed the course of Jewish history and had seismic religious and geopolitical aftershocks that still reverberate nearly two thousand years later.
Road to Ruin: The First Jewish-Roman War
The roots of the titanic clash between the Roman Empire and the Jews of Judea reach back centuries. Conquered by Pompey the Great in 63 BC, Judea chafed under the yoke of Roman occupation, heavy taxation, and religious persecutions. Violent rebellions like the Zealot Revolt (6 AD) and disturbances under Caligula (37-41 AD) were ruthlessly suppressed but revealed the depths of Jewish resentment. The infamous tyranny of the Roman procurator Gessius Florus, who looted the Temple treasury, finally sparked a widespread Jewish insurrection in 66 AD.
In the war‘s early stages, the Jews shocked the Romans by routing the XII Legion and seizing control of Jerusalem and most of Judea. However, the Emperor Nero dispatched his most capable general, Vespasian, to crush the revolt with a force of nearly 60,000 professional legionaries. Vespasian methodically recaptured rebel strongholds like Galilee and was poised to besiege Jerusalem by the summer of 69 AD. Before he could do so, Nero‘s shocking suicide plunged the empire into the chaos of the Year of Four Emperors. Vespasian withdrew to eventually seize the imperial throne, leaving his son Titus to finish off the stubborn Jewish rebellion.
A City Divided
The respite provided by the Roman civil war did not lead to greater unity among the fractious Jewish rebels in Jerusalem. Instead, the Zealot extremist John of Gischala violently seized control of the Temple Mount, oppressing the population and profaning the sacred precincts. This provoked a counter-rebellion by Simon bar Giora, a rival warlord who conquered the rest of the city. As Titus began his siege in April 70 AD, these two warring factions commanded a combined force of around 30,000 Jewish militia men, along with thousands of refugees from the Roman conquests.
The ancient historian Josephus, himself a former Jewish rebel commander who defected to the Roman side, vividly described the city‘s grim state on the eve of its destruction:
"The sedition at Jerusalem was revived, and divided into three factions, and that one faction fought against the other; which partition in such evil cases may be said to be a good thing, and the effect of divine justice. Now as to the attack the zealots made upon the people, and which I esteem the beginning of the city‘s destruction, it hath been already explained after an accurate manner; as also whence it arose, and to how great a mischief it was increased." – Josephus, The Jewish War, Book V, Chapter 1:1
Titus at the Gates
In April 70 AD, Titus arrived at the gates of Jerusalem leading four battle-hardened legions totaling around 70,000 men. These included:
- Legio V Macedonica
- Legio XII Fulminata
- Legio XV Apollinaris
- Legio X Fretensis
Titus also had the support of numerous auxiliaries and mercenaries provided by client kings like Agrippa II. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, "A host had assembled, vast beyond all previous experience – Romans and allies from the kings, who had sent their picked warriors to the general as a personal favour, or to signify their submission to Rome." (Histories, 5.1)
The Roman war machine quickly seized the newer suburbs outside the city and then the outer fortifications. However, the thick, towering walls of the city proper posed a much stiffer challenge despite the legions‘ ample arsenal of artillery, battering rams and siege towers. The Jewish defenders, though badly outnumbered, fought with suicidal bravery – raining arrows, stones and boiling oil down on the attackers and launching daring sorties to disrupt Roman siege works. As Josephus recounted:
"The Jews also made sallies upon the Romans in parties, by the gates, and fought with those who met them. And when they were driven back, they contrived snares for the Romans. They laid ambushes for them in the valleys and caves, and attacked scattered parties on foraging expeditions, and set fire to everything combustible in the area around the city." – Josephus, The Jewish War, Book V, Chapter 11:4
Titus had several costly setbacks, including when sappers collapsed one of his nearly completed siege ramps and when his camp inside the first wall was almost overrun. He decided to fully encircle the city with a wall to completely cut off supplies and starve out the defenders. The Romans built this circumvallation, 4.5 miles long with 13 guard towers, in just three days – a remarkable feat of martial efficiency and engineering.
The Horrors of Siege Warfare
As spring turned to summer, the Romans gradually tightened the noose around Jerusalem. Inside the walls, the situation grew increasingly desperate for the civilian population. With as many as a million people crammed into the besieged city, including pilgrims there to celebrate Passover, food stocks dwindled and starvation began to exact a grim toll. Josephus relates hellish scenes of suffering:
"Then did the famine widen its progress, and devoured the people by whole houses and families; the upper rooms were full of women and children that were dying by famine, and the lanes of the city were full of the dead bodies of the aged. The children also and the young men wandered about the marketplaces like shadows, all swelled with the famine, and fell down dead, wheresoever their misery seized them." – Josephus, The Jewish War, Book V, Chapter 12:3
To maintain order and deter desertion, the Jewish rebels ruling Jerusalem resorted to horrific atrocities against their own people. Josephus describes how the Zealots under John of Gischala engaged in wanton murder, plunder, and even cannibalism. The rival faction under Simon Bar Giora was no less brutal, torturing and executing anyone suspected of pro-Roman sympathies. Much of the city was consumed by fire and corpses piled up in the streets.
Meanwhile, the Romans pressed the assault with greater intensity as Jewish resistance began to slacken. In the sweltering heat of August, the legions finally smashed their way through to the Temple Mount using a combination of ramming, undermining, and firebrands. They put thousands to the sword and captured the 45-acre complex after a week of apocalyptic violence. With the fall of this final redoubt, the conquest of Jerusalem was complete – but at a terrible price.
Differing Accounts of the Temple‘s Destruction
The historical record contains contradictory accounts surrounding the fateful destruction of the Second Temple on August 29, 70 AD. The main sources are the Jewish turncoat Josephus, who was an eyewitness to the siege, and the later Roman historian Tacitus. Josephus claimed that Titus wished to spare the Temple as "an ornament to the empire" (The Jewish War, 6.4.3). In this telling, it was a Roman soldier acting in a "divine fury" who hurled a flaming brand and started the conflagration. Josephus wrote:
"One of the soldiers, without awaiting any orders and with no dread of so momentous a deed, but urged on by some supernatural force, snatched a blazing piece of wood and, climbing on another soldier‘s back, hurled the flaming brand through a low golden window that gave access, on the north side, to the rooms that surrounded the sanctuary. As the flames shot up, the Jews let out a shout of dismay that matched the tragedy; they flocked to the rescue, with no thought of sparing their lives or husbanding their strength; for the sacred structure that they had constantly guarded with such devotion was vanishing before their very eyes." – Josephus, The Jewish War, Book VI, Chapter 4:5
However, other ancient sources like the Christian chronicler Sulpicus Severus claim that Titus gave explicit orders to destroy the Temple so as to eradicate Judaism and prevent future rebellions. As quoted in Edward Gibbon‘s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:
"Titus himself, in a council of war, had decided that the temple must be destroyed, in order that the religion of the Jews and of the Christians might be more completely abolished; for these religions, although opposed to each other, had nevertheless proceeded from the same founders; the Christians had arisen from among the Jews; if the root were extirpated, the offshoot would speedily perish." – Sulpicius Severus, Chronicles II, 30.6-7
Modern historians continue to debate Titus‘ true motives and the Temple‘s final hours. What is indisputable is that the Romans thoroughly razed the complex, even prying apart the stones to extract the molten gold. The palaces, archives, libraries, and treasury were sacked and burned; Josephus claims that over 100,000 perished in the final battle for the mount alone. For the Romans, this was divine retribution against the rebellious Jews; for the Jews, it was an incomprehensible sacrilege and catastrophe.
Catastrophic Losses
By the time Jerusalem fell in September 70 AD, it had endured one of the longest and costliest sieges in antiquity. The war had lasted a total of seven years and the siege itself went on for a devastating 143 days. Precise casualty figures are difficult to determine, but even conservative estimates are horrific. According to Josephus:
- Over 1.1 million Jews died during the siege, mostly from starvation and disease
- 97,000 were captured and enslaved
- The Romans lost around 10,000 men, many to Jewish guerrilla attacks
Modern historians believe Josephus vastly exaggerated the death toll for polemical and dramatic effect. More recent calculations based on the city‘s likely population and capacity suggest 350,000 – 500,000 Jews perished in Jerusalem from April to September 70 AD. This was still an unfathomable loss of life for a single military campaign in the ancient world. At minimum, a quarter of Judea‘s population had been wiped out and much of the Jewish homeland lay in utter ruin. It was a world-historical defeat and tragedy by any measure.
Lasting Legacy and Impact
The fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD marked a decisive turning point in Jewish history with profound and lasting consequences:
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End of the Second Temple Period: The destruction of the Temple permanently ended the system of priestly rule and ritual sacrifice that had defined Judaism for a millennium. Rabbinical Judaism emerged to fill the void, emphasizing synagogues, scripture study and religious law.
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Rise of the Diaspora: The Great Revolt accelerated the growth of the Jewish Diaspora across the Mediterranean and beyond. Millions of Jews would face centuries of persecution, massacres and oppression as a stateless minority, prefiguring later calamities like the expulsions and pogroms of the Middle Ages.
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Reshaping of Judea: The Romans annexed Judea as an imperial province and initiated a crackdown on Jewish institutions. Much Jewish-owned land was confiscated, the Sanhedrin was abolished, and the Temple tax was diverted to rebuilding a pagan shrine in Rome. The very name Judea was erased when the Emperor Hadrian crushed another Jewish revolt and renamed the region Syria Palaestina in 135 AD.
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Anti-Semitic Propaganda: Roman propaganda used the Jewish defeat to promote negative stereotypes of Jews as treacherous, fanatical and misanthropic. The Arch of Titus, still standing in Rome, depicts the sacking of Jerusalem and Jews as vanquished slaves paraded in a triumphal procession. These images would feed anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish subversion and greed that persisted for centuries.
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Jewish-Christian Schism: The flight of the Judeo-Christian community before the siege, along with the elevation of Gentile converts and the repudiation of the Mosaic Law, marked a decisive break between Judaism and Christianity. The New Testament authors‘ vilification of Pharisees and blame of Jews for killing Christ inflamed theological hatred. Jews came to view Christians as heretical traitors; Christians came to see Jews as accursed Christ-killers.
The Western Wall in Jerusalem, one of the last remnants of the Second Temple, remains the holiest site in Judaism and a place of pilgrimage and prayer. Every year, religious Jews commemorate the destruction of the Temple and fall of Jerusalem on the 9th of Av with fasting and mourning rituals. Few events in ancient history hold such deep and enduring resonance for a people nearly 2000 years later. The siege of 70 AD burns forever in Jewish memory as a formative national trauma, a cautionary tale about the wages of internal discord, and a testament to the indomitable spirit of Jewish survival against impossible odds.
