Once
the fall of Masada is certain, Eleazar ben Jair, the rebel
leader, decides to persuade the garrison that mass suicide
is their only option. Josephus attributes to Eleazar a long,
stirring exhortation, only the beginning of which is reproduced
here.
However,
neither did Eleazar once think of flying away, nor would he
permit anyone else to do so; but when he saw their wall burnt
down by the fire, and could devise no other way of escaping,
or room for their farther courage, and setting before their
eyes what the Romans would do to them, their children, and
their wives, if they got them into their power, he consulted
about having them all slain. Now, as he judged this to be
the best thing they could do in their present circumstances,
he gathered the most courageous of his companions together,
and encouraged them to take that course by a speech which
he made to them in the manner following: "Since we, long ago,
my generous friends, resolved never to be servants to the
Romans, nor to any other than to God himself, who alone is
the true and just Lord of mankind, the time is now come that
obliges us to make that resolution true in practice. . . ."
When Eleazar finishes speaking, the rebels prepare to carry
out their plans for mass suicide.
Even
as Eleazar was exhorting them, they all cut him off short
and made haste to do the deed, full of an unconquerable impulse,
and moved with a demoniacal fury. So they went their ways
each endeavoring to outdo the other, and thinking that this
eagerness would be a demonstration of their courage and good
conduct if they could avoid appearing among the last. So great
was their zeal to slay their wives and children and themselves
also! . . .
For the husbands tenderly embraced their wives, took their
children into their arms, and gave the longest parting kisses
to them with tears in their eyes. Yet at the same time they
completed what they had resolved upon as if they had been
executed by the hands of strangers, and they had nothing
else to console them but the necessity they were in of doing
this execution to avoid that prospect they had of the miseries
they would suffer from their enemies. . . . Yet there was
an old woman and another who was related to Eleazar, superior
to most women in prudence and learning, with five children,
who had concealed themselves in the subterranean aqueducts,
and who were hidden there when the rest were intent upon
the slaughter of one another. Those others were nine hundred
and sixty in number, including the women and children. This
calamitous slaughter occurred on the fifteenth day of the
month Xanthicus
[Nisan].
The Romans expected that they would be fought in the morning.
Accordingly, they put on their armor and laid bridges of
planks upon their ladders from their embankments to make
an assault upon the fortress. But they saw nobody as an
enemy, only a terrible solitude on every side with a fire
within the place as well as a perfect silence. So they were
at a loss to guess at what had happened. At length they
made a shout, as if it had been at a blow given by the battering-ram,
to try to see whether they could bring anyone out who was
inside. The women heard this noise, came out of their underground
cavern, and informed the Romans of what had been done. One
of the two clearly described all that was said and what
was done and the manner of it. . . .
