The Fall of Masada

The event

Masada was originally built up as a nearly impregnable royal fortress by Herod the Great, perched atop a sheer rock plateau overlooking the Dead Sea, stocked with storerooms, palaces, and cisterns designed to let a king survive a long siege in comfort. During the Jewish revolt, a group of rebels — the sicarii, among the most militant of the anti-Roman factions — seized the fortress and held it even after Jerusalem itself had fallen in AD 70.

The Roman governor Flavius Silva eventually brought the Tenth Legion against Masada and, over several months, built an enormous siege ramp up the western side of the plateau — a massive engineering feat whose remains are still visible today and remain one of the best-preserved Roman siege works anywhere in the world. According to Josephus, our only detailed source, when the defenders realized the fortress would fall, their leader persuaded them to take their own lives rather than be captured, so that when Roman troops finally broke through, they found only a handful of survivors amid the dead.

Historians treat some details of Josephus's dramatic account, especially the mass-suicide narrative, with appropriate caution, since no other independent source confirms it. What is certain is the siege, the remarkable Roman engineering, and the fact that Masada's fall closed the book on the war that had begun in AD 66. With Jerusalem in ruins and its last defenders gone, Temple-centered Judaism as it had existed for centuries came to an end — even as the young Christian church, already spreading well beyond Jerusalem and no longer dependent on the Temple, continued to grow across the Roman world.

Dating

Masada's fall is usually dated to AD 73, calculated from Josephus's account of the siege's length, though some historians argue for AD 74. The date does not affect the basic historical outline, and the mass-suicide narrative (details, not the siege itself) is treated cautiously by historians since Josephus is the sole source and was not present at the fortress.

Other witnesses

• Josephus, Wars of the Jews 7.8-9

Further reading

• Bible Odyssey (SBL): Josephus — Masada's only narrative source