Masada מצדה
The rock fortress by the Dead Sea where the Great Revolt against Rome ended in 3830.
Masada is the flat top of a sheer rock above the Dead Sea, fortified by Herod as a refuge: a double wall, palaces on three terraces, cisterns and stores of grain and oil for years of siege. He prepared for a flight he never needed.
In the Great Revolt the fortress is seized by the Sicarii, and after Jerusalem falls in 3828 it remains the last point of resistance, and falls in 3830. The Tenth Legion builds a camp, a circumvallation wall and a huge ramp on the west. When the ram breaches the wall the defenders, in Josephus' account, choose not to be taken alive: some nine hundred and sixty die in the night, and in the morning the legionaries find silence.
Rabbinic sources barely mention the episode; it came through Josephus and became a symbol only in the twentieth century.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- Josephus, “Iudeyskaya voyna” VII — the siege, the ramp, and the last night — a contemporary’s account
Scholarship
- Yigael Yadin's excavations — the palaces, the synagogue, the ostraca bearing names
Basis: tradition.