Hadrian’s Hard-Won Victory - The BAS Library
Login
Home > Magazines > BAR > September/October 2007

Hadrian’s Hard-Won Victory

Romans Suffer Severe Losses in Jewish War

By Werner Eck

The First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–70 A.D.), which ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and the burning of the Temple, was chronicled by the great Jewish historian Josephus. Much of his Jewish War, which extends to 681 pages in the standard Loeb Classical Texts edition, is an eye-witness account: Josephus commanded the Jewish forces in Galilee until he surrendered in 67; for some time he was a prisoner of war and accompanied Vespasian to Alexandria. Later he returned to Judea with Titus, however, and was thus able to describe the destruction of Jerusalem day by day, sometimes hour […]

Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.

Join the BAS Library!

Already a library member? Log in here.

Institution user? Log in with your IP address or Username

Endnotes

1.

Cassius Dio, Roman History 69.12–14.

2.

See for this new evaluation of the revolt Werner Eck, “The Bar Kokhba Revolt: The Roman Point of View,” The Journal of Roman Studies 89 (1999), pp. 76–89.

3.

Baruch Levine and Ada Yardeni, The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters II (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2001).

4.

Leo Mildenberg, The Coinage of the Bar Kokhba War, (Aarau: Verlag Sauerländer, 1984).

5.

Eck, “The Bar Kokhba Revolt,” p. 88.

6.

Cassius Dio, Roman History 69.13.3.

7.

Cassius Dio, Roman History 69.13.2.

8.

See now Anthony R. Birley, The Roman Government of Britain (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2005), pp. 129–132.

9.

Eck, “The Bar Kokhba Revolt,” pp. 78–79.

10.

See now Werner Eck and Andreas Pangerl, “Die Konstitution für die classis Misenensis aus dem Jahr 160 und der Krieg gegen Bar Kochba unter Hadrian,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 155 (2006), pp. 239–252.

11.

See Sencer Sahin, Die Inschriften von Perge. vol. 1, no. 154 (Bonn, 1999); Hermann Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, vol. 1, no. 1068 (Berlin, 1962) (reprint).

12.

Menachem Mor, “The Roman Legions and the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (132–135 A.D.),” H. Vetter and M. Kandler, eds., Akten des 14. Internationalen Limeskongresses 1986 in Carnuntum, 1 (1990), pp. 163–75; idem, “The Geographical Scope of the Bar Kokhba Revolt,” in Peter Schäfer, ed., The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome (Tübingen, 2003), pp. 107–131.

13.

Eck, “The Bar Kokhba Revolt,” pp. 80–81.

14.

See Anthony R. Birley, Hadrian. The Restless Emperor (London, 1997).

15.

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum III 2830 = Dessau 1056; Année épigraphique 1904, 9 = Anna and Jaro Šašel, Inscriptiones Latinae quae in Iugoslavia inter annos MCMIII et MCMXL repertae et editae sunt, no. 1957 (Ljubljana, 1986).

16.

Cassius Dio, Roman History 69.13.2.

17.

17 Réné Cagnat, ed., Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes, Vol. III no. 174 and 175 (Paris 1906).

18.

Année épigraphique 1934, 231= Géza Alföldy, Römische Statuen in Venetia et Histria (Heidelberg, 1984), 99. 100 = Giovanni Brusin, Inscriptiones Aquileiae (1991), I 236 no. 499.

19.

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XI 5212 = Dessau 1058.

20.

Naphtali Lewis, The Documents from the Bar-Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters. Greek Papyri (Jerusalem, 1989).

21.

Eck, “The Bar Kokhba Revolt,” p. 84–86.

22.

Cassius Dio, Roman History 69.13.1–2.

23.

See Hannah M. Cotton, “The Bar Kokhba Revolt and the Documents from the Judaean Desert: Nabataean Participation in the Revolt” (P. Yadin 52) in Schäfer, ed., The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered, pp. 133–152; Glen Bowersock, “The Tel Shalem Arch and P. Nahal Hever/Seiyal 8, ” in Schäfer, The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered, pp. 177–180.

24.

See Lewis, The Documents from the Bar-Kokhba Period.

25.

Hannah M. Cotton and Ada Yardeni, Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek Texts from Nahal Hever and Other Sites with an Appendix Containing Alleged Qumran Texts (The Seiyâl Collection II) (Oxford, 1997).

26.

See Werner Eck and Gideon Foerster, “Ein Triumphbogen für Hadrian im Tal von Beth Shean bei Tel Shalem,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 12 (1999), pp. 294–313.

27.

According to Bowersock, “The Tel Shalem Arch,” pp. 171–177, the arch has nothing to do with the end of the war against Bar-Kokhba, but was erected in 130 when Hadrian visited the province; this is far from being probable, because a legion never erected an arch for the visit of an emperor; see the arguments against his solution in W. Eck, “Hadrian, the Bar Kokhba Revolt, and the Epigraphic Transmission,” in Schäfer, ed., The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered, pp. 153–170.