Dan Snow's History Hit - Bar Kokhba: Hadrian's Worst Nightmare

Episode Date: November 7, 2021

In AD132 began the bloody struggle over who would rule a nation. The clash of two ancient cultures was fought between two strong-willed leaders, Hadrian, the cosmopolitan ruler of the vast Roman Empire, and Shim’on, a Jewish military leader who some believed to be the ‘King Messiah’.During the ‘Second Jewish War’ – the highly motivated Jewish militia sorely tested the highly trained professional Roman army. The rebels withstood the Roman onslaught for three-and-a-half years (AD132–136) and established an independent nation, headed by Shim’on as its president. The outcome of that David and Goliath contest was of great consequence, both for the people of Judaea and for Judaism itself.Having journeyed across three continents to establish the facts, historical detective Lindsay Powell draws on archaeology, art, coins, inscriptions, militaria, as well as secular and religious documents, to detail the people and events at a crucial time in world history.Author of Bar Kokhba: The Jew Who Defied Hadrian and Challenged the Might of Rome, Lindsay joins Dan to discuss who Shim’on (known today as ‘Bar Kokhba’) was, how Hadrian, the Roman emperor who built the famous Wall in northern Britain, responded to the challenge and how, in later ages, ‘Bar Kokhba’ became a hero for the Jews in the Diaspora.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History here. We've got Lindsay Powell back on the podcast. He's been on a couple of times. He's a great writer about classical history and we're talking about one of the most terrible uprisings and counter-insurgencies in Roman history today. The Jewish revolt which has become synonymous with its charismatic leader Shimon bar Kochba. Under the rule of the Emperor Hadrian in about the 130s, Israel, Palestine, Judea rose up in terrible revolt against the Romans. Roman troops were ambushed and units destroyed, and the Romans were forced to send a vast army to Judea to smash this revolt. And after it, they wiped the name of Judea off the map, and the area became known as Syria-Palestine from that

point on. I have been to a place, it could have been the final battle, you'll hear Lindsay talk about Bitar, I've been to that site in Israel-Palestine today, it's just inside the West Bank, it's about eight kilometres or so, five miles south of Jerusalem, and it bears the name of Kirbet el-Yahud, excuse the pronunciation, of Kirbet el-Yahud, excuse the pronunciation, which in Arabic means ruin of the Jews. Is that a tantalising name link with a place that once saw the Jews so catastrophically defeated by Roman forces? It's an extraordinary moment of classical history. Thank you, Lindsay Powell, for coming to talk about it. If you want to hear more episodes of the podcast with Lindsay Powell or classical history, including our episode of our Rise Of series, The Rise of Hannibal, you can do so at History Hit TV. We've got like a Netflix

for history folks. This is real. It's happening. You go on there, you sign up on your TV, sign up on your phone, you sign up on your computer, whatever you want, like any other thing like Netflix, and then you get the world's best history channel for a very small subscription. Less than a cocktail every month. And it's much better for you for you trust me you go to historyhit.tv historyhit.tv you can also listen to all these podcasts without the ads and then you've become a member of history here welcome to the team and you can watch all these great documentaries if you like classic history a lot of classic history recommendations on there trust me but lots of other stuff as well at the moment smashing all the records in the charts we've got the rise of napoleon bonap People love the Korshkin.

I didn't know. It's come as a surprise. We're going to commission a lot more Napoleon content, let me tell you. Anyway, here is Lindsay Powell talking about the Bar Kokhba revolt. Enjoy. Lindsay, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. First of all, quickly, when was the first Jewish war?

The first Jewish war started in 66, ended 70 AD, and you could argue it goes on to 73, 74 with a fall of the Sard. About 66 it starts, and 70 ends with the fall or the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem. Very important date. And that's the beginning of this great Jewish diaspora in which you get Jews heading all over the Near Eastern Europe. I think there's a misunderstanding about that.

There always was a large population of Jews outside of Judea, Palestine, if you will. The Lost Tribes, for example, I mean, there's a large Jewish community in Babylonia from a very early age. There are Jews right across Western Europe. There are synagogues in Rome, even in the early times. For example, Marcus Agrippa and Augustus. I mean, Tiberius throws the Jews out of Rome. So I think there's a misconception that Jews are

somehow not outside of the native homeland. But the first Jewish war is cataclysmic because it involves the destruction of the temple. So cataclysm for the Jews or Judea. So that's the First Jewish War. Tell me about the Second Jewish War. When does that begin? 132 is the date that we have from a number of sources. We can't tell you when. This is the trouble with some of the ancient sources. Unlike us, in the Second World War, you can precisely date it to a day, date, and even a time of day. And Jewish sources imply it was sometime in the late spring, perhaps. But the Roman sources don't tell us. So in fact, there are several different sources that we rely on for this. The obvious Roman ones are, for example, Cassius Dio. There is no Josephus for this war, so this makes it much more of a detective story than the first Jewish war. We actually have Christian

historians, people writing about church history. So we have Justin Martyr, for example, Eusebius, Erosius, and these types of people who are writing or rewriting history, the encroachment, the gaining of Christian values in ancient society. And then we have Jewish sources. So they're called, for example, like the Midrash. They're also called, for example, the Talmud. And these are interpretations of Torah. So Torah is the Pentateuch. It's the first five books of the Old Testament, the law of Moses, effectively. And what's interesting, after the fall of the Temple in 70, the whole Temple culture with the Passover rituals and the singing of songs and the slaughtering of Paschal sheep and so on, all of that ends. So now you have the rise of the rabbis. And the rabbis, there are only about 66 or

70 or something of these individuals at the time we'll be talking about the Second Jewish War. And these become the channel through which Torah is interpreted. The laws are interpreted. So what's very interesting is at the time of this war, you've got a religious dimension, possibly. So it's in the sources that these people are writing, particularly the one individual called Rabbi Akiva, which is really important because it gives us, if you like, through interpretation of Torah, little snippets that sort of point to what was happening in the second Jewish war. It's an unusual way of thinking that you learn about a historical event through a sort of socio-religious interpretation, but it's through these different

kinds of sources. So you've got, if you like, pagan Roman, you've got Christian and Jewish sources that you piece together this narrative of this particular conflict. It's a jigsaw at which you excel, Lindsay. Now, Hadrian's on the throne. He's on the imperial throne. Am I right in thinking, because I went there a few years ago for a Hadrian program, he tries to build a kind of classic Roman colony basically on Temple Mount, right? That's an incredibly provocative thing to do. Well, this is probably the major cause of the war. So going back to 70 with the destruction of the Temple, Josephus basically makes a remark to the effect that it was so ruined that you might not have

ever thought that there was a city there. What's dramatic that you will have been and seen it yourself, if you go to the Western Wall and you go right down to the bottom corner where you get to that archaeological park, you see great big slabs and chunks of rock which were pushed off the top by Titus's soldiers, by his legionaries. There was a mission you can imagine to basically, like Carthage in a sense, to raise it. And in that period between 70 and Hadrian's visit, which would have been possibly after 117 when he's actually declared emperor. He actually becomes the emperor following Trajan. There seems to be in the archaeological record that he saw in that particular place, because it's very high up.

It's a very, very, very dramatic setting. He looks at that and thinks of all the great cities in the east. So we're thinking of Antioch and Palmyra. And looking at this as a wonderful project, let's rebuild this. And looking at this as a wonderful project, let's rebuild this. And rather than rebuilding Jerusalem, the Jewish city, he builds a colonia, a Roman city for retired veterans. There are two legion stations in Judea and they need to go somewhere, right? Caesarea is the obvious place they would normally go to, but it's getting a bit packed. So the opportunity to rebuild this wonderful city, which he provocatively calls Ilia Capitolina.

And Ilia refers to his family because he's Ilius Hadrianus. So he's tying it to him. And the second thing is Capitolina, which refers to the Capitoline gods, the triad of Capitoline. So he's fixing, if you like, this colony in his name to the gods of Rome. And yet this is what was fascinating. I saw ironically in the Christian records that there was a suggestion that Hadrian would rebuild the temple. He would build the third temple. And one of the sort of narratives you see in some of the Jewish sources are the sense of betrayal, that Hadrian goes along with this idea, yes, I will actually rebuild this temple, but then doesn't, and actually builds his other temples. Now, the problem is we have

no archaeological record to tell us really what was kind of on the Temple Mount, so it's a lot of supposition. But once you leave the Temple Mount and go to the area of the piazza, there is evidence that within about five or ten years of actually Hadrian becoming imperator, they've already laid out the streets, they're already going ahead with this. So my interpretation, and I think of Jody Magnus, who's an archaeologist as well, is that when he arrives in Judea in 130, he's not going to see a city and says, I want to build a city. He's going there to check upon what the progress is. So it's all ready and trained. And he has this grand, grand building idea. So you can imagine in his vision, it's just a great opportunity to do a project. But he sort of seems to not make the link between the

provocation that would have on a population for whom this is a really, really sacred place. It's uncharacteristically clumsy of Hadrian, I would say. So what happens? When does violence flare up? The Reconciles to Chess, as I said, I think it's about the spring or early summer of 132. And in Diocassus, he makes the point that the Jews actually waited for Hadrian to go away. This is the Aria. If you look at the ancient sources, I mean, there's probably about 700 words that describe this whole war, and the rest of it you have to discover through Quine's archaeology and the other sources I've mentioned. And it seems to be that the man who

was emerging to lead this is a man whose name is Shimon. And if you read the texts of letters which have been found in the Judean desert, the Judean caves, his name is Shimon ben Kozba. And notice it's a soft S. However, if you look at the Christian sources, they call him Bar Kokhebas. And this seems to be an echo of the name Bar Kokhba, which actually means something very, very different. It means son of a star. Shimon, our warlord, if you will, the Jewish warlord, has a rabbi whose name is Akiba. And this man looks in scripture and discovers in Numbers 24-7 that a man who's going to be subject arises to lead to become a messiah by simply changing one letter in the hebrew name you can change it from cosba to son of a star and this is crucial because what he's basically transforming is a warlord or a rebel leader into a messianic figure and it's actually the christians that

latch onto this and this is why this name survives actually in the christian literature nowhere in roman literature is he called anything it's the Christian literature. Nowhere in Roman literature is he called anything. It's the Christian literature and the Hebrew literature that mentions him. And specifically, the Christian literature calls him Bar Kokhba. The Hebrew literature refers to him as a slight variation of the name. And I said it was Kosbah, which has an S. They use the version with a Z, or Z, Kosbah,zba, which means son of a lie. And the reason why that comes is because when the stories are told afterwards, they revisit this, what is ultimately the second Jewish war is a catastrophe like the first one. And to try and

understand this, they say, you know, Akiba was wrong. This man was not a messiah of anything. In fact, he was a son of a lie. We were misled. So when you read the Jewish text, what's really interesting, you have to sort of take it in a way of an ironic sort of way. They're describing events, and the name translates as, and the son of a lie did this. Whereas you could read it another way, which is to sort of read it purely as a name that means nothing. And this is why it's a fascinating subject, because you're seeing history written through the prism of present day looking backwards. And what do we know about Bar Kokhba and when does he emerge as the leader of this revolt?

Well, he seems to spring into history fully formed. He's mentioned in the Christian literature, and it arises because the Christians are approached by the Jewish rebels, are you with us? And the Christians say, no, we already have our Messiah. We don't need another one. And they are basically ostracized and actually punished and tormented. And this is one of the interesting things as you look back at this, is that there was a large community of Christians at this time who followed the laws of Moses. And this war was instrumental in severing that link. They were basically given the choice, you're a Christian or a Jewish, you can't be somewhere in between. And what we know of the man himself comes from a number of different sources. The Christian sources refer to him as a trickster,

someone who breathes fire and does all this crazy stuff. In other words, somebody you can't possibly trust because he's a con man. And the other sources point to somebody who comes from the south of Judea, who speaks with a bit of a country accent, who's a bit rough. Well, what's very interesting is, and it was David Bevere that pointed this when I was at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, that he actually knows Greek. So, for example, he can actually presumably at least dictate or speak Greek to some level, but he doesn't know Greek philosophy,

so he's not educated in that way. But what he does appreciate is the religious tradition of all things. There's the Aramaic book hand, which is a very famous square-like writing that we're all familiar with. You look at Jewish documents, Hebrew documents. You looked at a document like that, and your instant response was to say, ah, it's a religious text. We hold it in reverence. He insisted that all government communications were written in this. So there's an argument here which says, in fact, Bar Kokhba is the starting point for a number of different things. So the fracturing between Christianity and Judaism, but also this defining of the Jewish identity, Israel identity. And one of those is actually

through the writing. So we have letters that survive from his administrators. There's one even signed by him, amazingly. It's called Mur 43, which refers to a cave on the Dead Sea, Mur Abarat, where he's basically giving military instructions to his lieutenants in the different camps and what we know from archaeology and from the written record when this thing blows up in 132 it seems to be that the populations have been planning for this and there's this cryptic clue in diocas's way he says that the artisans who supplied military equipment to the roman army but they provide swords apparently and. And they made

them of not quite the right quality, so the Roman quartermasters would say, no, fail the test, sling it back. So what they do is they build up this arsenal, so the story goes, of weapons in secret. And in the meantime, they actually take the war underground to dig tunnels beneath their farmsteads and their villages. And it's from there that they hide these caches of weapons and material. And then they will launch their attacks. So when 132 comes along, they're armed and dangerous. They're underground. And they're able to very quickly overwhelm the local sort of police stations, if you will.

A lot of the auxiliary troops would have been doing police duty, as indeed the two legions would have had. And this is what seems to take the romans by surprise is that you would think after the first jewish war of 60 something years before that they'd be alert to this stuff but tinius rufus who's the governor seems to be a bit asleep on the job and gradually communications must filter back to the headquarters in caesarea saying we've lost this unit this is you know these sort of flashpoints and then they begin to realize oh god we have a problem it's quite brilliant because you see what he's doing is he's using the asymmetric approach

of a guerrilla fighter against an army that sets its stall and strength by set-piece battles. So they try to fight the war in the open field, and these people are hiding under the field. And this goes on for something like a year before the Romans really take it seriously. Never, ever fight the Romans on their own terms. I mean, it's just a terrible idea. There must be an insight of that that drives his war doctrine. And for the first year or two, it's brilliantly successful. What's amazing is that this is an organized society where they take Roman coins, denarii, for example, and they create dies of their homages, and they take the coins of the Romans,

and they over-stamp them with their own emeraldss with grapes and the harps and liars and this sort of thing and what they're effectively doing is each roman coin has the head of the emperor hadrian's mostly in this case and they're literally smashing the head of the emperor and replacing it with their own emblems and they're putting for example for the redemption of jerusalem or for the saving of israel and the name of their president by the way he goes under the title of Nazi, when Nazi seems to be often translated as prince, but really kind of means president. He's not presenting himself as a messianic figure, but in his day, he's presenting himself as the president of Israel, not of Judea or Zion, but of Israel. He's positioning himself as a national leader, a national resistant leader.

So Jewish law takes over. The letters point to the fact that they start issuing contracts dating from year one of his presidency and they get to year three. Then the series of coins comes up with no year which seems to suggest that they got bored with it. This thing is going to be around so why do we even need to count this? But they mimic the Romans in terms of their legal and dating system, and they hold out for about three and a half years. And what do we know about that? Because that implies they do have a sort of base which surely the Romans could try and attack conventionally. I mean, it's a guerrilla force, or do they seize and hold territory during this time? Well, what seems to happen is that every camp, which is to intensive purposes,

a couple of houses in the village. So a village or a town becomes an urban district. So they have a person called a parnas, and a parnas is like a civil administrator who looks after law, weights and measures and this sort of thing. So they keep that very much separate. And then there's a Rosh Hamaneah, who is actually a head, Rosh Hamaneah, of a camp. And these two people work together, but the camp commander reports directly to Bar Kokhba in Herodium. So they have this quite well organized structure, but it's very decentralized. So Bar Kokhba, if you read the notes, are obsessed with getting supplies moved around, getting people to pay attention, actually to just follow his instructions. What's really interesting is as you read these letters, you get the impression of this man who's frustrated by incompetence. He is a devout Jew. So a lot of the correspondence we have are about bringing supplies of the four sacred things for Sukkot and Passover.

And he's very particular. You need to get this here before the Sabbath starts, because of course, you're not supposed to move around on the Sabbath. So it's very interesting. You get this idea of a micromanaging bit of a bully, very devout religious man. And it's just fascinating that because you're dealing with a rebel administration, very often what they find is the Romans are not very far away from them. There's an interesting story where somebody had taken somebody's cow and it was the militia taking the cow and the people in the town said, well, they weren't within their rights to do that. So they appeal to Bar Coppa as the ultimate authority. Would you please settle this?

They actually write that we can't send the witnesses because the Romans are nearby. And of course this is quite dangerous if we send a group of people passing the Romans, because guess what? We'll get arrested. So what they do is they hand this document with the plea to a militiaman who's secretly going to go back to Herodium. with the plea to a militiaman who's secretly going to go back to Herodium. And it's just these wonderful little glimpses into how the world of Bar Kokhba's Israel is working in a way

which we don't usually get from other histories. Very often you'll get, for example, like a Josephus, very much a top-down, I was kind of there, but these things happened this way. Here we're dealing with scraps, but what amazing scraps they are. Listen to Dan Snow's history. We're talking about the massive Jewish revolt against Emperor Hadrian. More coming up. Hi, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb. And in my podcast, Not Just the Tudors, we talk about everything from sex to spying, wardrobes to witch trials. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Subscribe from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories

that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Tell me now about the Roman response, because Hadrian sends a vast portion of his army to Judea and in command, of course, you turn to somebody who's dealing with the worst of the worst, somebody who's been in Britain. Well, I think let's sort of recalibrate, because there is a suggestion that all these legions were sent out there. Actually,

what's interesting is there are two legions stationed in Judea. There's the sixth pharatha, which is up in Galilee, and there's one actually based in Jerusalem itself, in the ruins of the city, which is the 10th Fratensis. My analysis suggests it's only about 10% of the total army. So the total army is around about 385,000 troops, but that's still a lot of troops. So it's an army based around the two types of Roman soldiers, the exilia, who were professionalized, but non-Roman troops, and of course the legions. What's interesting about this is that Tinius Rufus, who is Hadrian's man on the ground, he's the governor based in the super palace in Caesarea, his response seems to be, as I implied earlier, a little bit incompetent, not quite hearing what the communiques are telling

him, and somewhat belatedly starts saying, I think we need to mobilize the troops. So the troops start moving around and dealing with, but they take quite serious casualties. What's intriguing about this whole thing is that we don't hear much about Galilee in any of the story. And the implication seems to be, well, Galilee wasn't involved. There is another thinking here, which was in fact that the Roman legion there may have been very effective at putting it down. So in fact, they stamped out possibly the Galilee insurrection and that forced it to be within Judea. At the end of this, there is a triumphal arch. We've got this amazing inscription or part of an inscription. The letters are as big as the ones that appear on the Arch of Titus.

So these are great big letters, and they're very, very finely carved. And this is actually in the Galilee. And you're thinking, well, why would a triumphal arch be in the Galilee? One of the ideas might well be, well, Hadrian visited in 130, and that was like a sort of, you know, welcome to us. It seems a little bit precarious, maybe, that argument. The other argument is that this was raised after the end of the second jewish war as a sort of a triumphal statement we beat him and if that's the case that would suggest maybe there was an involvement in the galley and there's another thing that would maybe suggest that's the

case new york stockbroker was actually on holiday in israel back i think it was in the 70s and just by complete accident found a bronze head of Hadrian in the soil. And it's an Italian manufactured head in the body. The upper torso is probably made in Israel, Judea. And the way that it's buried seems to suggest it was deliberately buried. There's a narrative that you could build around this, which is that the Romans are attacked, and the camp then moves to another place altogether.

So there's a big question mark as to what happens in the Galilee. But in the other area of Judea, what we have is a resident legion, which seems to be dealing with the situation with its auxilia. Tinius Rufus calls on his local governors. And the Roman system of having people with command of a local area is you talk about Roman armies in terms of where they come from. There isn't really a Roman army. There's an army of Syria. There's an army of Britain. There's an army of Egypt. There's an army of Mesian ferry on things. And what they're able to do, they can

write to Hader and say, I need help. But in the meantime, they can call on their neighbor and say, can you send some troops? And the wonderful thing about the set of a religion at this time is they can say, yes, I'm going to send you a vexillation of exilatio which is a detachment so they can say i'm going to send two cohorts and off they go and they march under a flag of exilum and what this points to is the fact that there may be nine legions that we know of in this campaign but they're not full legions they're detachments of and what this means is is that the man on the spot is dealing with this really potentially very confusing scenario. He's normally in charge of the province, but now you've got these commanders coming in from different regions and understanding what's the line of command in all of this. Who's

actually in charge? And what's fascinating is your point earlier, which is, you know, you don't face the Roman army in the field. Well, the corollary of that is that if the enemy won't meet you, you can't engage them. And what's happening as they're moving around, these units are moving around Judea, is they seem to be picked off. And there's a letter which Fronto writes to one of the emperors later, about 30 years after this war, where he talks about, oh, how many Roman troops there were that were slain in this war. And by the way, he talks about how many Britons did the same in Britain. That's my segue into saying that when Hadrian came to Britain, the man on the spot was Sextus Julius Severus, who was the governor. And there seems to be in

the archaeological record, as well as in this letter, some kind of uprising. And in fact, recent archaeological evidence seems to suggest there was a fire burning or there was some kind of thing happening in London, that they actually built that fort, the famous fort that was built in the corner where the Museum in London now is. That was sort of built round about this time. So the implication of that is that Britain is not a calm province. It has turmoil happening. It may well be perhaps up in the north.

Key thing is, why do I tell you that? Because the man who puts this down is a man called sexist julius severus and knowing there's a problem in judea what hadrian does he calls for his best commander and sends him off to judea to sort it out and he takes british commanders with him from maryport and from chester and all this you find that there are inscriptions where men of the british legions are actually being taken down there with him. And you almost get the impression these are men he got to see acting in war. And they go over this long, 2,000 miles, I think it is, to Judea. And this man basically takes over.

And he changes the calculus completely. He realizes they're not going to meet us, so we will meet them. But what he does with vexillations, he breaks them up into smaller combat units. And again, interpreting the Kessistai principally, but overlaying that with some of the Jewish sources, is that they go to the individual villages and farmsteads, and they take them one by one. And you see

this in the archaeological record at places like Horbat Etri and Horbat Brogin, which are these stone village complexes. And they have square farm buildings and barns and so on. They have wine presses, all sorts of interesting agricultural stuff. But they also have tunnels.

And what they do is they just simply besiege them. And they begin to use the other Roman attribute, which is strategic patience, right? They can wait this out. So what they end up by doing is they effectively enclose judea and they start moving inwards and you see in the archaeological record i mean these places are burned they find a couple of these rebel coins and they've been fused together in the heat there are bones that survive which in the one place suggests a very harrowing end where these people

basically beheaded and executed they can tell by the marks in the vertebrae. And their bodies were just basically thrown into these, what would basically be bathing bowls of the mikvah, which were important in Jewish culture. And they were left to rot and putrefy. And then someone later on comes and sweeps them out because they want to rebuild the farm. They think, what an opportunity, we're going to rebuild it. So this is how the archaeological record actually underpins the story. So under Sextus Julius Severus, we get a complete change in doctrine. And over the next year and a half, they basically move the Jewish rebels to a final place, which is Betar. And Betar is the last stand of Bar Kokhba. Tell me about Betar, because it's almost up there with Masada, it's one of the great sort of, well, romantic stories, if that's the right word, of Israeli history.

It's interesting. A couple of lines of thought come to me. The first thing is that the archaeology of the place is hard to pin down because there are several candidates of where this place would be. And it's not helped by the fact that in the records it's called different places. So in the Christian sources, it's often called Bethithira. And there are all sorts of other different spellings of this. They tell us it's within the vicinity of Jerusalem. Most archaeologists now think it's actually a place we call Betar, which is a small Palestinian village in a beautiful valley. And its Arabic name basically means ruin of the Jews. So that

preserves this rather vivid echo of what might have been there. So photography that was taken in the 1920s from the air found the outlines of a circumvallation wall. And it makes perfect sense the way they've done it, the way that the hills undulate. They basically ran the wall across the crests and down into the valleys to seal off the road. So this place is a staging post between Jerusalem and Gaza. And it was rebuilt under Herod. And what's fascinating is you can imagine in its heyday, 1,000, 2,000 people are living in this place in pretty prestigious-looking buildings. There are a couple of springs.

People stop to change horses. They buy a few souvenirs, and off they go to Gaza. At the end of the Bar Kachur, this has become a shantytown. It's become a refugee camp. And there are thousands of people in this place, probably even 10,000, 20,000 people. And you get this vivid picture in the Jewish literature of, they refer to numbers of synagogues.

There are hundreds of synagogues where people were camped and grouped in here. So it's a very tragic place from that standpoint. But Bar Kokhba, who had been based in Herodium, had seen Herodium fall. There's evidence there of fires which were so intense that the caves actually became dust and the timbers had burnt. And it just fascinating but those people escaped some of those troops and the burkhofer escapes to this place and he chooses a baton he quickly builds a wall around this the archaeologist

found this very rough hewn rock wall that was built there and the romans just arrived two legions turn up and they do what they do they build a circulation wall they build two camps overlooking you can see from their perspective oh this is this is just another siege. What's amazing is, other than, for example, the Parthian Wars, which Trajan had fought, the Roman army hadn't really seen much action in quite a long time. So these units are, in a sense, having to learn war almost from the textbook. How do we do a siege? So they pretty much seem to follow the rules here. They build two camps, which overlook Ptah. And then as you fan down further south, there is a range of camps forming a secondary arc. And if you total up the number of troops, it's more troops than were at Masada. So it's almost

as though they say, we are going to stamp this thing out once and for all. And it seems to be that the Jewish insurgents were trapped on the inside. They were cut off from their water. They're building flint arrows and doing what they do to build up their arsenals. On a day we don't know when exactly that was, the Romans unleashed their attack and the Jewish sources point to blood in the streets and flowing down the hills and all sorts of gory things. And again, they invoke that this happened on the 9th of Ab. And the significance of that, if you remember that the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed on the 9th of Ab 70, and the first temple was destroyed on the 9th of Ab, I think it was 586. So they link these dates as being days of sorrow.

Hurban is like a destruction. And they tie the fall of Betar, and therefore the king messiah, to these great events of history. And it's just absolutely fascinating that, again, we have these sorts of little tales in the Jewish texts where they sort of talk about Hadrian not understanding his adversary. And they say, for example, bring me the head so I can show it. And they say, well, no, we couldn't because there was a snake wrapped around it and so on, being protected even death. Or there'll be situations where Hadrian regrets what he's done. So you can see in later ages, they sort of write with a sense of remorse and sorrow and try to make sense of this whole thing. Because a Jewish friend of mine actually said when he read the story, he said, Bar Kokh was an idiot. I mean, how on earth could he win?

Well, here's the funny thing. If you go back to the Maccabees, and maybe that's the inspiration for all of this, they overthrew the Seleucid kings, established the Hashemite dynasty, and they did survive. So maybe out of this craziness, there was this idea that it could possibly happen. But if you look at a map and you see how small Judea is in relation to the whole Roman Empire, it is astonishing that it did take about 50,000 troops to stamp this out. So your earlier point about don't take the Romans is interesting, but he learned to do the opposite, which was, they won't be able to fight me on my terms. And if we just outpace this, if we just hold on, we can do what the Maccabees had done we could actually make our own independent state it didn't quite work out that what so after the terrible defeat at Bataar what effect did that have is it half a million Jews potentially killed during this

uprising well that's Cassius Dio he talks about I think 585 now I trust Cassius Dio that's the problem well but not only that interesting enough if you read the Jewish sources they talk in terms of multiples of 12,000 24,000 these. These are sort of significant numbers, and they talk about just huge, huge numbers, which actually don't make sense. But I think what they point to is the cataclysm, is the word you used, the devastation. It's focused on a small area. And like I said, for example, I don't think Galilee was necessarily involved in this. It's really that area between Hebron and Jerusalem going down to probably the bottom part of the Dead Sea. And what we see actually in the Dead Sea is some of the people who were able to flee fled to En Gedi, which is still on the shore there, famous for its scents and aromatics. And

they produced a lot of the things like palms and citrons that were important in religious ritual at the time. Those people fled from the town into the caves. And we know so much of what we do surviving letters and other things is because they took those things with them. And they died in those caves. Again, strategic patience, the Romans could be quite ruthless, they knew what they were looking for. And they'd actually had a garrison stationed in En Gedi for the years running up to the revolts, if they were aware of what was going on. And they knew that if they just simply built camps on the top of Nahal Havera, which is the Great Canyon, there are several of those which flow streams into the Dead Sea, that they could

just basically starve the people out. Well, except the people didn't come out, they stayed in and they died. They were their bodies and their artifacts were found. And it's very moving when you go to, for example, the Israel Museum and you see pots and pans with the ropes still attached to them. And you see bundles of letters that there are contracts marriage contracts and disputes between a lady called babatha and her husband and the kids who'd moved from moab and arabia to settle in angedi because for them it was the jewish state we are going to have security in this jewish state and for three and a half years that was the case and then after all of that happens what was dramatic is that the roman response is

if i compare it this way so the military response is what they call vastatio which is we now use the word devastation it is a complete and utter obliteration the idea is to set a lesson for all others that you will not copy this land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought

to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. every week. Fascinatingly, it wasn't anti-Jewish. There wasn't the sense of we're out to get Jews. It was we're out to get rebels who happen to be Jews. So things don't work out terribly well for the local population in Judea. But for Jews elsewhere, in what you refer to as the diaspora, life pretty much goes on quite happily. Roman armies actually recruit Jewish soldiers for many, many years, and they see service all over the place on the border with Parthia and up along the Danube rivers. So I think that's important to make here. It wasn't an anti-Jewish religious war. It was a matter of dealing with insurrection in that regard.

But over time, I alluded to earlier, the split between the Christians and the Jews. As the Christians gain an ascendancy in the Roman Empire, and as you move into Byzantine times, there is very definitely an anti-Semitic streak. And what effectively happens is the Jews become more and more dispossessed, if you like, of their identity. And ultimately, with the fall of the Roman Empire in the West,

and then ultimately in the East, and Palestine is taken over by the Arabs, the Jews have to learn to assimilate into the different cultures in which they work and live. And they're building their tradition. They're writing their stories and telling their history. And one of the things that was fascinating to me as I was writing this, it never occurred to me to think about this, is that when we think about history, you and I tend to think about Greeks and Romans and Normans and this sort of thing, but we don't think of Jewish history. It's like Western narratives tend to have written the Jews out of the story. So they're

writing their own. And by the time you get to the 16th and 17th centuries, there's a sort of religious tradition where people are looking back on the story and they're trying to understand, well, what exactly did happen under the second war the second jewish war why was it a catastrophe and they partly turn inwards and decide that actually it's because they failed at being jewish and what they need to do is return to torah and they need to become much more engaged with that and in fact it turns from being messianic into more about studying the books and the literature and And in the meantime, sort of narratives and stories and plays and so on are written. And they changed the narrative of

what I said earlier, where they turned back and they understood it was a failure. And they even changed his name from being Barcov, a son of a star to son of a lie, to in a sense, in the diaspora, they recognize him, there's a heroic quality to him. He takes on the Romans. He actually wins for some of the time. So this idea of the muscular Jew emerges. And at the same time, you've got Theodor Herzl, for example, who's actually advocating for a Jewish homeland, and there's this rise of Zionism. And all of these threads come together. So Bar Kokhba becomes an emblem of what is possible. And a mythology builds around him of being this very heroic figure, a warrior. And by the time you get to the 19th century, where there are discussions about founding a Jewish homeland,

and at one point they're even thinking of Africa, the British trying to fob them off by having a Jewish state in Ethiopia or somewhere, or Zambia. But no, they insist it's got to be in Palestine. in Ethiopia or somewhere in Zambia. But no, they insist it's got to be in Palestine. And in the interwar years between the First and Second World War, when Britain was actually running it under the British mandate, and Britain only got it because, if you remember, in the First World War, basically the Ottoman Empire sided with the Germans of the First World War,

they sided with the Kaiser, lost. And the Brits had marched in with three Jewish legions, as it turns out, of volunteers from around the world, and they basically took it over. then suddenly the british actually partly with the balfour declaration ringing in their ears from 1917 they basically begin to be the focus of jewish immigration so jews actually start buying land and they sort of set up farms and so on and in the meantime there are resistance groups so they start fighting under the banner of Bar Chachba. Once again, you think, well, that's crazy.

The guy lost. But that doesn't matter. It's a bit like King Arthur. It's the idea of the man as being daring enough and spunky enough to be able to take on what would seem to be completely stupid to everybody else. But he dared to do this. And what you find is by the time you get to 1948 in May, when the Jewish state is established, this is all part of the foundation myth of the country. And what's fascinating is that in the 50s and 60s, Yigal Yardim, who's the famous commander, who was actually part of that war to liberate Palestine and become the state of Israel, becomes an archaeologist.

And he goes off into the caves in the Dead Sea and they find these letters. into the caves in the Dead Sea, and they find these letters. And one of the Jewish Israeli historians says, look, a message from the previous president of Israel. And this sort of emotional story, and you can imagine why it would be the case, is they're looking for continuity. They're looking for sort of roots that go well back. The reason why he is because we have always been here is the storyline.

So these letters are found, and they see this name shimon and they say bakak well we're shimon this guy and this is how the sort of strands of mythology and history and religion they all come together at this moment and what's fascinating also ben-gurion writes a speech on the bar mitzvah of israel which would be about i think 13 years after the foundation of israel in 1948 and in the meantime they've captured Adolf Eichmann. And in the same paragraph, he's able to say that our people have actually captured Adolf Eichmann and brought him to trial. And our archaeologists have found the letters of the previous president, Bar Kokhba. And it's just interesting how these parallel sort of events of the want to eradicate and eliminate are overcome by but we're still here and if you go to

that part of israel today there's right on the top of the overlooking the nahal of era there's a monument now in fact it's the second or third because the previous ones got destroyed but they buried bones which they'd found in the caves there and the inscription very much appeals to this emotional tie of you gave up your lives for freedom and we are here burying them and we pay honor to those things so for me i didn't realize it was going to become a story about the foundation of israel i thought it was just going to be about a second jewish war and i go back to this king arthur thing that so much is not known but we think we know and it's those things we think we know actually inspire us if you followed that i agree i think it's really powerful really

really powerful uh resonance, parallels there. Lindsay Powell, thank you very much. Your book is called Bar Kokhba, The Jew Who Defied Hadrian and Challenged the Might of Rome. Good luck with it, man. Thank you very much indeed. But thank you for inviting me.

Always a pleasure. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thanks folks for listening to this episode of Danston's History. As I say all the time, I love doing these podcasts. They are the best thing I do professionally. I feel very lucky to have you listening to them. If you fancied giving them a rating and review, obviously the best rating review possible would be ideal. It makes a big difference to us. I know it's a pain, but we'd really,

really be grateful. And if you want to listen to the other podcasts in our ever-increasing stable, don't forget we've got Susanna Lipscomb with Not Just the Tudors, that's flying high in the charts. We've got our Medieval podcast, Gone Medieval, the brilliant Matt Lewis and Kat Jarman. We've got The Ancients with our very own Tristan Hughes, and we've got warfare as well, dealing with all things military. Please go and check those out wherever you get your pods. you