From the Temple Ruins to the Arch of Titus: Targeting Religious Identity in Roman Counterinsurgency Operations

Josephus took pains to portray Vespasian, and especially his son Titus, as marked by a profound respect for Jewish religious traditions and culture. If such a sentiment were indeed the case, it would be in keeping with that of the preceding Julio-Claudian emperors. For, although the emperors periodically intervened in Jewish relations with their neighbors, and expelled some Jews from Rome, there were also remarkable policies that recognized the observances of the Jewish people.

The closure and eventual reduction of the temple was directed by Vespasian in response to sedition in Alexandria that was sparked by zealots who had escaped the Roman counterinsurgency operations in Judaea. This act is decidedly odd – the Romans were far more inclined to co-opt or adopt foreign divinities and sanctuaries than desecrate them. Syncretism of divinities served to incorporate regional cults into a wider, cosmopolitan, and hence Roman, identity. Even when the Romans leveled cities to inspire terror and compel obedience, they were wont to spare sacred structures.

So why was there a change of policy? I would like to propose an explanation which rests on Vespasian’s service in Britain as legate of the legio II Augusta. Resistance to Roman rule in Britain was inspired in part by the druids who fostered a strong identity and a measure of unity. In Roman eyes, the druids were fanatical and antisocial, and they undermined the more constructive Celts. As a result, the Romans developed a policy of targeting religious strongholds, and burning groves and shrines. In the exhausted peace after the Boudica revolt, it may well have seemed to Vespasian that the policy of exterminating the people and destroying the places that gave insurrectionists a tangible and traditional alternative to assimilation had served to overcome the British insurgency, and could be similarly effective against the Jews.