Simon bar Giora

Simon bar Giora led the largest of the Jewish factions in the siege of Jerusalem and was executed in Rome at the end of Titus's triumph. His name means son of the proselyte, and Josephus, who is the only real source and who fought against him, describes a movement drawing on the rural poor: Simon freed slaves, cancelled debts and attacked the property of the wealthy in the Judean countryside, which gave him an army and made him unacceptable to the Jerusalem aristocracy. He operated first in Acrabatene and around Masada, then across Idumea. In 69 the population of Jerusalem invited him into the city as protection against John of Gischala and the Zealots, which is how the city came to be divided between three armed factions that spent the year before the siege fighting one another and burning each other's grain stores. Josephus claims the fires destroyed food that would have fed the city for years. When Titus arrived in the spring of 70 the factions combined too late and the walls fell one after another over five months. Simon held the upper city to the end, tried to escape through a tunnel, and surfaced in the ruins of the Temple dressed in white, which the Romans took as a surrender. He was carried to Rome, displayed in the triumph of Vespasian and Titus, scourged and thrown from the Tarpeian rock. The arch of Titus in the Forum commemorates the campaign that ended with his death. Josephus is a hostile witness twice over, having changed sides and written for the emperors who won, and the social programme he describes with disgust is most of the evidence that it existed at all. What is not in doubt is that Rome treated Simon as the leader of the revolt, since he is the one it kept alive for the triumph.

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