The fortress of Masada sits atop an island of rock 450 meters above the shores of the Dead Sea. The flat top of this island is 650 meters long and 300 meters wide. The fortress was built by King Herod in around 30 BC and consisted of luxurious palaces, storerooms, cisterns and thick walls to withstand a siege.
In 6 BC the Romans annexed Judea to the Empire just before Herod died in 4 BC. Tired of Roman occupation, the Jews revolted in 66 AD in what became known as the Great Revolt. In 70 AD the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the last of the rebels fled to Masada under the command of Eleazar Ben Yair.
In 74 AD the Roman Tenth Legion (8,000 troops) under Flavius Silva laid siege to the fortress. The stone foundations of the Roman camps and fortifications are still visible in the plain below. In order to capture Masada, the Romans (with a little help from a lot of slaves) built a ramp of rock and earth from the plain all the way up to the fortress walls. This ramp is still there today. Once completed the Romans pulled (with a little help) a huge wooden siege tower up the ramp to break down the walls.
The night before the Romans broke into Masada, Ben Yair gave a speech to the 960 men, women and children who represented the last resistance against the Roman occupation. He convinced the rebels that it was better to die than to live in shame and humiliation as Roman slaves:
“Since we long ago 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...We were the very first that revolted, and we are the last to fight against them; and I cannot but esteem it as a favor that God has granted us, that it is still in our power to die bravely, and in a state of freedom."
(Elazar ben Yair)
The rebels apparently agreed with him:
“Then, having chosen by lot ten of their number to dispatch the rest, they laid themselves down each beside his prostrate wife and children, and, flinging their arms around them, offered their throats in readiness for the executants of the melancholy office. These, having unswervingly slaughtered all, ordained the same rule of the lot for one another, that he on whom it fell should slay first the nine and then himself last of all; …They had died in the belief that they had left not a soul of them alive to fall into Roman hands; The Romans advanced to the assault … seeing none of the enemy but on all sides an awful solitude, and flames within and silence, they were at a loss to conjecture what had happened. Here encountering the mass of slain, instead of exulting as over enemies, they admired the nobility of their resolve and the contempt of death display by so many in carrying it, unwavering, into execution.”
(Josephus Flavius, The Wars of the Jews, VII, 395-406.)
When the Romans broke through the walls the following morning they found two women and five children alive. The fall of Masada was the final act in the Roman conquest of Judea.
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