RE: The Myth of Masada
March 14, 2013 at 2:15 am
(This post was last modified: March 14, 2013 at 2:20 am by Anomalocaris.)
Actually, it is not common for the Romans to crucify captured rebels unless they had been slaves before, the instances mentioned Josephus during seige of Jeruselum not withstanding. They are generally put to the sword, sold as slaves, or in rare instances paroled.
We really won't ever know for sure what happended at Masada, other than there was a rebel force there sufficient for the Romans to encircle it with a legionary force and attack it with a ramp. The siege wall, legionary camp and the rap for the siege engine survives. It could be that in fact the Rebels didn't die on Masada. It could also be that rebels dies and the Romans threw most of the corpses down the cliffs and the bones were subsequently scavenged by desert animals. The few corpses that survived in the cistern simply being the ones that a few lazier Roman soldiers and porters didn't bother to carry all the way to the edge. It seems unlikely that the Romans would have bothered to find the wood to burn hundreds of corpses to the point where no large bone fragments remains, nor such a cremation pile would have left no trace.
We really won't ever know for sure what happended at Masada, other than there was a rebel force there sufficient for the Romans to encircle it with a legionary force and attack it with a ramp. The siege wall, legionary camp and the rap for the siege engine survives. It could be that in fact the Rebels didn't die on Masada. It could also be that rebels dies and the Romans threw most of the corpses down the cliffs and the bones were subsequently scavenged by desert animals. The few corpses that survived in the cistern simply being the ones that a few lazier Roman soldiers and porters didn't bother to carry all the way to the edge. It seems unlikely that the Romans would have bothered to find the wood to burn hundreds of corpses to the point where no large bone fragments remains, nor such a cremation pile would have left no trace.
