Nadene Goldfoot
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The Roman emperor during the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE was Titus, who ruled from 79–81 AD: He was the son of Vespasian. Titus took over command of the Roman army in Judea from his father in 70, when he destroyed Jerusalem after a 5 month siege that included starving the occupants. According to Josephus, Titus endeavored-although unsuccessfully-- to preserve the Temple, but other sources relate that the destruction was deliberate with the object of eliminating the national religious center of the Jews. Jewish tradition gave him the name, "Titus the Wicked."
Despite the bitter battle in Judea, he did not interfere with Jewish rights elsewhere and refused to accede to the demand of the people of Antioch to abolish Jewish privileges there. Antioch was a wealthy and thriving Jewish community in one of the largest cities of the first-century Roman world. The city's population was made up of Syrians, Greeks, Jews, and Romans. The Jewish community in Antioch were granted citizenship rights equal to those of the Greeks by Seleucus Nicator, the founder-king of Antioch. The Jews in Antioch were guaranteed the right to practice their religion and customs from the second century BC. The Jewish privileges were inscribed on brass tablets and carefully guarded. In 71 AD, when the citizens of Antioch requested that the Jews be expelled, Titus instead displayed a copy of the Jewish privileges in Alexandria in public. After Antiochus IV Epiphanes plundered the Temple in Jerusalem, his successors restored brass votive offerings to the Jews to keep in their synagogue.
This may have been due to the influence of his mistress, Berenice, a Judean princess, daughter of Herod's sister, Salome. In the year, 60, she rejoined Agrippa, supporting his efforts to prevent the outbreak of the great Revolt in 66, and later fled with him to the Romans. That's when she became Titus's mistress. Then she was forced by Roman popular opinion to leave him. When Vespusian died, she tried to reconcile with Titus, but failed. Berenice was a member of the
Trajan was the Roman emperor who reigned from the year 98 to 117 CE/AD. His oriental policy led to a major clash with the Jews of Judaea. In 105/6 he annexed the Nabatean kingdom including the Negev and Transjordan. In 115-117, while he was involved in his Parthian war, Jewish risings were happening in Cyrenaica, Egypt and Cyprus, and in Alexandria the Greeks attacked the Jewish population. As a result, in 116;; he ordered a preventive massacre of the Jews in Mesopotamia. Judea itself was kept under firm control by his general, Lucius Quietus. The suppression of the many risings ended the prosperity of the Jewish settlements in Egypt, Cyrenaica, and Cyprus.
Hadrian; Aaelius Hadrianus, was a Roman emperor from 117 to 138 CE/AD. Hadrian assumed control over the vast Roman Empire in AD 117 following the death of his adoptive father, Trajan. As emperor, he broke with the expansionist policies of his predecessors to focus on securing the Roman Empire within its existing borders.
His most impressive statement of this policy was Hadrian’s Wall – a monument that still influences the landscape of northern England today, some 1,900 years after it was built.
He removed and executed the savage governor of Judea, who was Lucius Quietus.
Lucius Quietus was a Roman Berber general and 11th legate of Judaea from 117. He was the principal commander against the Jewish rebellion known as the Kitos War (Kitos is a later corruption of Quietus). As both a general and a highly acclaimed commander, he was notably one of the most accomplished Berber statesmen in ancient Roman history. After the death of the emperor Trajan, Quietus was murdered or executed, possibly on the orders of Trajan's successor Hadrian. What most of people ignore is the fact that behind the Greatness of Emperor Trajan lays the African Berber, Lucius Quietus, who was Trajan’s military Deputy and Chief of staff of his armies… Many history manuals will not tell you who was really Lucius Quietus, how he became the Deputy of the Greatest Roman Emperor of all time and why many people really know nothing about him…
The Diaspora Revolt/or Jewish rebellion, a series of major uprisings by diasporic Jews, occurred in 115–117 in Cyrene (Cyrenaica), Cyprus, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. These uprisings involved the ransacking of towns and the slaughter of Roman citizens and others. When the inhabitants of Babylonia revolted, they were suppressed by Quietus, who was rewarded by being appointed governor of Judaea. There, he faced a period of unrest later known in rabbinic sources as the Kitos War, a name derived from Quietus. Quietus took the city of Lydda and methodically set about defeating the rebellions.
At first the Jews may have thought well of Hadrian because he supported the Egyptian Jewry in disputes with the Greeks and this created a favorable impression on the Jews.
Then He came along with a prohibition against sexual mutilation which extended to circumcision. This was an attack on a fundamental rite of Judaism, and they changed their minds.
As a result of his visit to Palestine in 130 and the implacable attitude of the Jews with whom he negotiated, he decided to commence the hellenization of the country by converting Jerusalem into a Roman colony and named it after himself, Aelia Capitolina.
The Jews rebelled under Bar Kokhba and the ensuing war from 132 to 135 ended with Bar Kokhba's death. It was the most difficult time of Hadrian's reign. Bar Kokhba held Jerusalem for 3 years with his army of young men, an impossible feat in those days to dare to take on the Roman army.
After Hadrians's victory, he received the title of Imperator. Judea became a consular province called Syria-Palaestina. The ruins of Jerusalem were reconstructed as a pagan city and an equestrian statue of Hadrian was erected on the site of the Holy of Holies.
During the siege of Jerusalem during the Roman War, the Temple had served as a center of military activity, and was destroyed by the conquering Romans in 70 CE. A Roman temple was later built on the site, and since the Moslem Period, a mosque has stood there called the Mosque of Omar. The area around the western and southern walls of the (Herodian) Temple compound was extensively excavated in 1968.
Research:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
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