The siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE was the decisive event of the First Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire (66–73 CE). Roman forces led by Titus, son of the emperor Vespasian, besieged Jerusalem, the Jewish capital and the revolt's main stronghold. After months of fighting, they breached the defenses, destroyed the Second Temple, and razed the city. Much of its population was killed, enslaved, or displaced by the Romans. The city's fall marked the effective end of the revolt and a turning point in Jewish history.
In winter 69–70, following a respite in the revolt's suppression caused by a succession war in Rome, Titus led four legions and auxiliary forces, numbering at least 48,200 soldiers, back into Judaea. By spring, this army had encircled Jerusalem, whose population had swollen with refugees and Passover pilgrims. Inside the city, rival factions led by John of Gischala, Simon bar Giora, and Eleazar ben Simon fought each other, destroying the city's food supplies and weakening its defenses. The factions eventually united and mounted fierce resistance, but the Romans breached the walls and drove the defenders into the Temple precincts.
In the month of Av (July/August), the Romans captured the Temple Mount and destroyed the Second Temple—an event commemorated annually in Judaism on Tisha B'Av. The rest of Jerusalem fell in the following weeks, and the Romans systematically demolished most of the city. A year later, Titus and Vespasian celebrated the victory with a triumph in Rome, parading Temple spoils—including the menorah—alongside hundreds of captives. The victory was later commemorated in monuments such as the Arch of Titus and on the Judaea capta coinage.
With sacrificial worship no longer possible, Judaism gradually reoriented around Torah study, acts of loving-kindness, and synagogue prayer, a development that culminated in Rabbinic Judaism. Some early Christians interpreted the destruction as a sign that God had turned away from the Jewish people, lending support to supersessionist theology. After the war, Legio X Fretensis established a permanent garrison on the site. Recalling the city's restoration after its destruction in 587/586 BCE, many Jews expected the Temple to be rebuilt, but it remained in ruins. In 130, the emperor Hadrian re-founded Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, a Roman colony dedicated to Jupiter, paving the way for the last major Jewish rebellion: the Bar Kokhba Revolt.
Background
Jerusalem on the eve of the revolt
Jerusalem was a prosperous city during the first century CE, serving as the religious and political center of Jewish life both in Judaea and the diaspora. The city had reached its greatest extent before the modern era, covering about 450 acres (180 ha)—nearly twice the size of the present-day Old City—and was home to tens of thousands of residents.
Jerusalem was organized into several districts. The Upper City, on the southwestern hill, was the city's wealthiest quarter and was home to the elite, including many priestly families. The Lower City, on the southeastern hill, was more densely populated. The city's foremost landmark was the Temple Mount, crowned by the Second Temple. The Temple had long been central to Jewish national and religious identity, and under King Herod (r. 37 to 4 BCE), it was expanded and rebuilt on a monumental scale, making the complex one of the largest religious precincts in the ancient world. The complex also hosted popular assemblies and judicial proceedings, and housed one of the city's largest marketplaces. Its upkeep was funded in part by an annual half-shekel tax levied on Jewish adults, roughly equivalent to two days' wages for an ordinary laborer.
During the Three Pilgrimage Festivals, tens of thousands of visitors from Judaea and abroad traveled to Jerusalem to take part in Temple rituals—an influx that was a major source of the city's wealth. Rabbinic sources describing Jerusalem during the late Second Temple period praise its unparalleled beauty. Avot de-Rabbi Natan, a late antique rabbinic work, states that "There is no beauty like the beauty of Jerusalem", while the Babylonian Talmud declares that no one who never saw Jerusalem in its splendor has seen a beautiful city. Jerusalem's reputation extended well beyond Jewish circles: the Roman author Pliny the Elder, writing a few years after its destruction, retrospectively called it "by far the most famous city of the East"; the historian Tacitus, in a work published three decades after the city's destruction, described it as "the capital of the Jews" and noted a temple of "enormous reaches".
Jerusalem's defenses
Jerusalem was bounded by the Kidron Valley to the east and the Hinnom Valley to the south and west. These natural defenses were reinforced by successive lines of fortification. The First Wall enclosed both the Lower and Upper City and formed the core of Jerusalem. It was constructed in the 2nd century BCE by the Hasmonean kings on the foundations of an earlier wall dating to the kings of Judah. As the city grew, the Second Wall was added further north to protect newer neighborhoods and commercial districts. Continued expansion in the early 40s CE led the Jewish client king Herod Agrippa to begin building the "Third Wall," enclosing the new northern suburb of Bezetha. The Roman emperor Claudius halted its construction, perhaps fearing rebellion or simply due to Agrippa's death. The wall was completed only hastily after the revolt had begun.
The city's defenses also included fortified structures. The Antonia Fortress, positioned at the Temple Mount's northwestern corner, served as both barracks and palace, overlooking the Temple complex. In the western Upper City, north of Herod's Palace, stood another fortified complex (on the site of the present-day Tower of David), enclosed by walls and guarded by three towers named Phasael, Hippicus, and Mariamne.
Jerusalem's large population could not be sustained by local agriculture alone, and the city therefore relied heavily on food imported from elsewhere in Judea, as well as from Samaria, Galilee, and regions farther afield. The city also maintained food reserves. Its water supply relied on large rain-collecting pools, channels drawing from sources such as the Gihon Spring, and aqueducts that brought water from the area near Bethlehem and beyond. During the revolt, the influx of refugees and insurgents swelled the population further, leaving the city increasingly vulnerable to famine.
Jerusalem during the revolt
In the spring of 66 CE, violence broke out between Jews and Greeks in Caesarea Maritima, the Roman provincial capital on the coast of Judaea. Gessius Florus, the Roman procurator, arrived in Jerusalem soon after and seized funds from the Temple treasury. The act triggered widespread unrest, which Florus suppressed with a massacre of civilians. Florus subsequently fled the city; the client king Agrippa II, having failed to dissuade the population from rebellion, was driven out shortly after. The Temple's segan (deputy), Eleazar ben Hanania, then halted the daily sacrifices offered on behalf of the emperor.
The radical Sicarii faction, led by Menahem ben Judah, raided the desert fortress of Masada and seized weapons. Menahem armed his followers and joined the revolt in Jerusalem, where he emerged as a leading figure. The insurgents drove the king's soldiers from the Upper City and burned the house of Eleazar's father, the high priest Ananias, the royal palaces, and the public archives containing debt records. The rebels then captured the Antonia Fortress and besieged Herod's Palace. The Jewish defenders were allowed to surrender, while the Roman soldiers withdrew to the towers of Hippicus, Phasaelus, and Mariamne. The following day, Ananias was killed by the Sicarii, along with his brother. Menahem appeared in public in royal attire before being killed along with many of his followers by Eleazar's faction; a few survivors escaped to Masada, including Menahem's relative Eleazar ben Yair, who later became its leader. In mid-September, the remaining Roman soldiers, negotiating with Eleazar ben Hanania, surrendered after being promised safe passage out of the city, but were nevertheless massacred by his men.
With Jerusalem in open revolt, Gaius Cestius Gallus, the governor of Roman Syria, marched into Judaea in the fall of 66 to suppress the rebellion. He advanced on Jerusalem with an army of approximately 30,000 soldiers, reaching Mount Scopus and burning the northern suburb of Bezetha. He then retreated unexpectedly and in Cheshvan (October/November) 66 was ambushed by Jewish forces at Bethoron, losing nearly an entire legion. Following Gallus's defeat, a provisional Jewish government was established in Jerusalem, appointing commanders across the country and completing the city's Third Wall. John of Gischala led an independent rebel faction in Galilee, while Simon bar Giora led another in Judea.
In 67, the Roman emperor Nero appointed the general Vespasian to suppress the revolt. Vespasian conducted a methodical campaign across Galilee, subduing rebel strongholds one by one. Meanwhile, Jerusalem grew increasingly unstable as refugees and rebel factions, including John of Gischala and his followers, poured into the city. The Zealots, a priestly anti-Roman faction led by Eleazar ben Simon, and the Idumaeans overthrew the city's moderate leadership. By 68, Vespasian had subdued most of Judaea, but Nero's suicide plunged Rome into the succession conflict known as the Year of the Four Emperors. Vespasian postponed the siege of Jerusalem; he reportedly preferred to let the rival Jewish factions exhaust one another while he waited for the spring harvest. In 69, Vespasian was proclaimed imperator by his troops and departed for Italy to secure the imperial throne, entrusting command of the campaign to his son, Titus.
In Jerusalem itself, civil war broke out among the rebel factions. By spring 69, Simon bar Giora's forces were camped outside the city, attacking deserters, while radical factions inside terrorized the population. Hoping to weaken John of Gischala, his opponents admitted Simon to the city. However, Simon's arrival deepened the conflict instead. Josephus, a captured Jewish commander who observed the siege from the Roman side and later chronicled the war under Roman patronage, describes Jerusalem as descending into a three-way civil war, with each faction fighting the other two; Tacitus similarly notes that the city was divided among three generals and three armies. John of Gischala, Eleazar ben Simon, and Simon bar Giora divided the city between them: John held most of the Temple Mount and the southeastern hill, Eleazar the inner Temple court, and Simon, with the largest force, the remainder. In the course of the fighting, the warring factions burned the city's food stores, destroying provisions that would have been critical once the siege began.
Reported omens before the destruction
Josephus recounts several omens said to have foretold the destruction of Jerusalem in the years before it fell. Among those were "a star resembling a sword, which stood over the city, and a comet that continued a whole year"—possibly Halley's Comet, which was visible over Jerusalem in the winter and spring of 66. Other reported signs included a sudden bright light around the Temple altar near the festival of Passover, a cow giving birth to a lamb, and the massive eastern gate of the Temple's inner sanctuary swinging open on its own. Josephus also reports armies in the sky before sunset, and recounts that during the pilgrimage festival of Shavuot, priests in the Temple heard a loud noise followed by a voice declaring, "We are departing from here." Beginning four years before the revolt, a peasant named Jesus ben Ananias wandered the city prophesying its destruction, continuing to do so for more than seven years until he was killed by a Roman projectile during the siege.
Titus's march on Jerusalem and early engagements
In winter 69/70, Titus marched from Egypt through the coastal plain to Caesarea Maritima, where he established his main base. Four legions—V Macedonica, X Fretensis, XII Fulminata, and XV Apollinaris—formed the core of his army, supported by detachments of the Legio III Cyrenaica and the Legio XXII Deiotariana from Egypt, twenty infantry cohorts, eight cavalry alae, Syrian irregulars, and auxiliaries supplied by allied client kings. Tacitus also records the participation of "a strong force of Arabs", whom he described as driven by longstanding hostility toward Jews. In total, this combined force numbered at least 48,200 soldiers, making it considerably larger than the force deployed for the invasion of Britain in 43 CE. Titus's second-in-command was Tiberius Julius Alexander, a Jewish-born equestrian governor and general who had reportedly renounced his ancestral traditions.
Meanwhile, infighting continued within Jerusalem. Eleazar ben Simon had fortified his position in the Temple's inner court, seizing its stores of consecrated first fruits. John of Gischala attacked him from below the Temple's sacred gates, while Simon bar Giora, who held the Upper and Lower cities, struck at John in turn. The factions employed artillery in the fighting, killing many, including among priests and worshippers.
In early Nisan 70 (March/April), Titus set out from Caesarea Maritima with Legio XII Fulminata and Legio XV Apollinaris, marching toward Jerusalem. The Roman army advanced through Samaria, halting to rest at Gophna, about 13 miles (21 km) north of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Legio V Macedonica, under Sextus Vettulenus Cerialis, approached from the west via Emmaus, while Legio X Fretensis, commanded by Aulus Larcius Lepidus Sulpicianus, advanced from the east through Jericho. Titus's own force then made camp in the "Valley of Thorns" near Gibeah, about 3 miles (4.8 km) from Jerusalem. Like earlier commanders who had attacked the city—Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar II, Pompey, and Herod—Titus directed his assault against Jerusalem's northern and northeastern flanks, the only sides not protected by ravines.