A distinguished historian of Greece and Rome, Guy MacLean Rogers is known for prize-winning monographs on Ephesos (1991; 2012) and a biography of Alexander (2004). Against that background, this impressive study of the war that began under Nero between Jews and Romans represents a new direction for him, one connected to his role, with Hannah Cotton, as Co-Editor of Rome, the Greek World, and the East, the collected essays of the late Sir Fergus Millar, whose friendship and example — and important contributions to the interpretation of the Jewish War — R. explicitly acknowledges in this new book.

A brief but rich Introduction is followed by 24 chapters in five parts, examining the origins of Jewish resistance to Rome following the death of Herod the Great, the outbreak of war in 66 and Vespasian’s campaign in Galilee where Josephus served as general to the rebel-appointed government until his surrender in 67, events leading to the siege and fall of Jerusalem, Flavian triumph and the outcomes of the war after the fall of Masada, with concluding reflections on the causes and significance of the war. The order in which R. considers events closely follows that of our fundamental witness to the course of events, Josephus’ Jewish War; the key difference is that R. begins with Herod, while Josephus’ account, reflecting his Hasmonaean interests, begins a century earlier with the rise of the Hasmonaean dynasty and the quarrel among their descendants which led to Roman intervention in Jerusalem. With great clarity, R. offers a highly accessible, nuanced reading of Josephus’ War, supplemented by other literary evidence, of which the most important and abundant is necessarily from Josephus’ other writings, accompanied by contextualising commentary drawn from a comprehensive analysis of relevant archaeological, numismatic and epigraphic studies. In many respects, this monograph serves as a fine running commentary on the contents of Josephus’ War.

The monograph title represents one of the slogans, ‘freedom of Zion’, inscribed, in palaeo-Hebrew, on coins produced by Jerusalem’s minting authorities during the war — rare evidence for a contemporary Jewish perspective unmediated, and not mentioned, by Josephus. R’s subtitle, referring to his subject as ‘the Great Revolt’, signals the thesis pursued with subtlety throughout: that, contrary to those studies which downplay the war’s scale and significance, this war was ‘not small, short, or insignificant’; a war ‘fought with great ferocity on both sides’, which ‘led to suffering, death and destruction on a scale for which we have no other comparable testimony in the history of the early empire’ (9). A central part of the argument rests on R’s interrogation and elaboration of Josephus’ numbers — of the forces on both sides and what they represented; of the dead and of those taken prisoner and enslaved; of the costs of war, with particular attention to calculating as precisely as possible the Roman military effort, from the disastrous campaign of Cestius Gallus in 66 to the siege of Masada, the last Jewish stronghold of the war. Much of the detail is given in the substantial Appendices.

With regard to the unique and deeply complex figure of Josephus, our principal source for the war, R. presses for reading his testimony as credible, where possible. Josephus’ accounts of his own leadership of the war in Galilee evidence his total failure as leader, an important factor in the failure of the rebel cause, but also the heroic character of the man whom R. judges no coward or traitor, given Josephus’ role in the fighting against Vespasian’s forces and his belief that in choosing to survive he was helping to enact God’s plan; his courage in writing under the Flavian regime and its hostility to Jews is rightly emphasised. It is regrettable, to my mind, that R’s most substantial introduction to Josephus appears in an appendix rather than in the body of the text (Appendix A).

The Jewish War is a text, and event, with an enduring power to generate controversy over its interpretation. R.’s approach to scholarly debates takes a refreshingly light touch — often signalled in the body of the text by reference to the view of ‘some scholars’, very often to be identified (in the endnotes) with Steve Mason, author of A History of the Jewish War: A.D. 66–74 (2016), with whose sophisticated and original analysis R. engages constructively at many points (for example, on whether Josephus witnessed the Flavian triumph that he describes in such detail).

Political and theological consciousness of the present punctuates R’s narrative in ways that are perhaps surprising and rarely explicit in studies of the Jewish War. To take one example: ‘[The Romans] had set the stage for God’s victory, because destroying the Temple turned Jews and their theological heirs back to the word of God. Thus far God’s word has never been successfully besieged’ (10). Such statements are relevant to R.’s insistence on the contemporary significance of this war, that ‘more people alive today are invested in the meaning of the Temple’s destruction than in any other event in ancient history’ (7).

This is a work full of interesting and new observations on fundamental but neglected topics, above all the Roman military effort.