“Let Us Leave This World as Free Men”

Ben Yair’s Last Speech According to Josephus

When the besieged Jewish defenders of Masada saw that the Romans had completed a ramp up to their walls and were preparing to attack in the morning, they realized that their long struggle would soon be over. They knew no one could rescue them; they were the last holdout of the Jewish resistance that had fought Rome in the First Jewish Revolt (66–70 A.D.). Jerusalem had fallen in 70 A.D., and the Temple had been destroyed. All other pockets of resistance had been crushed one by one and the captured rebels tortured and killed, enslaved or sent to Rome to die as gladiators.

Masada’s defenders assembled for the last time. According to the first-century A.D. Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, their leader, Eleazar Ben Yair, addressed them with so moving a speech that 960 of the 967 Masada defenders were convinced to commit suicide and die as free persons rather than face torment, slaughter, rape and enslavement at the hands of the Romans. The defenders cast lots, Josephus writes: Ten men would kill the others and then draw lots again to determine which one would kill the other nine before killing himself. Yigael Yadin, Masada’s excavator, believed the inscribed lots he had found (photo at center) were the ones described by Josephus.