In the winter of 73 CE, a Roman general named Flavius Silva stood at the base of a cliff and looked up. Four hundred meters above him, on a flat-topped rock called Masada, 960 Jewish rebels held the last fortress standing against Rome. Jerusalem had fallen three years earlier. The Second Temple — the heart of Jewish worship — burned to nothing. Every other stronghold had surrendered. But this rock in the Judean Desert refused to fall.
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王冠与征服·5/5·1′
The place
Masada
Silva's Ramp
Rome built one of history's greatest siege works to reach 960 people on a cliff -- and found only silence at the top
73 or 74 CE -- the siege lasted approximately two to seven monthsMasada
故事寓意
“The power of an empire is measured not only in what it can destroy but in the lengths it will go to reach what defies it. Rome could have walked away from a rock in the desert. Instead, it moved a mountain to prove that nothing -- not geography, not determination, not the will of desperate men on a cliff -- could stand beyond its grasp. The ramp is still there, testifying that empires will spend more to make a point than the point is worth.”
人物
L
Lucius Flavius Silva Nonius Bassus -- Roman governor of Judaea and commander of the siegeL
Legio X Fretensis -- the Tenth Legion 'of the Strait,' Rome's instrument of destructionE
Eleazar ben Ya'ir -- leader of the Jewish defenders watching from the summitT
Thousands of Jewish prisoners of war -- forced to carry water and build the ramp来源
Josephus, Flavius. Bellum Judaicum, Book VII, chapters 275-406; Yadin, Yigael. Masada: Herod's Fortress and the Zealots' Last Stand, 1966; Richmond, I.A. 'The Roman Siege-Works of Masada, Israel,' Journal of Roman Studies 52, 1962; Roth, Jonathan. 'The Length of the Siege of Masada,' Scripta Classica Israelica 14, 1995; UNESCO World Heritage Nomination Dossier #1040, 2001