Scholars have long assumed that, when Josephus, in his Bellum Judaicum (henceforth BJ), acrimoniously refers to the leaders of the first Jewish revolt against Rome—John of Gischala, Simon bar Giora and the Zealot chieftains—as ‘brigands’ (λῃσταί) and ‘tyrants’ (τύραννοι), he deploys these monikers as undifferentiated terms of abuse. So Jan Willem van Henten refers to them as part of a ‘semantic field’, while Neil Faulkner and Per Bilde assume that Josephus essentially conflated the terms.Footnote 1 Faulkner states that, while we learn from the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament much about ‘the revolutionary millenarianism of the poor’, ‘Josephus hardly ever refers to the ideology of the masses. The gaps in his analysis are filled with abuse—the stasiastai are simply “deceivers”, “brigands”, and “tyrants”’.Footnote 2 Similarly, Bilde writes that ‘he [sc. Josephus] describes the role of the Jewish people in the War as the innocent, defenceless tool of those who were actually guilty, the Jewish “tyrants”, “bandits” and rebels, in brief, the Jewish war party’.Footnote 3
However, although these and other scholars give the impression that Josephus uses the terms ‘brigand’ and ‘tyrant’ alongside one another as if they were a standard collocation and applies them to the same people, in fact neither point is true. First, concerning the proximity of these two terms to one another, examination of the data shows that there are thirty-seven occurrences of λῃστής in the BJ,Footnote 4 of which:
• twenty-one are at least 20 paragraphs distant from the closest passage containing the word τύραννος; many of these are further than 60 paragraphs away.
• six are between 11 and 20 paragraphs distant from an occurrence of τύραννος.
• six are between 6 and 10 paragraphs distant from an occurrence of τύραννος.
• only four are within 5 paragraphs of an occurrence of τύραννος.Footnote 5
That is, only a little more than a quarter of the occurrences of λῃστής appear within 10 paragraphs of τύραννος, and fewer than a ninth within 5; in more than half of the cases, more than 20 paragraphs separate the two terms. That means that, even before we examine what Josephus actually wrote and meant by the terms, it is wrong to think they are usually collocated.
Second, examination of the passages in which Josephus does use the two terms in some proximity shows clearly that he distinguishes between them. Of the thirty-eight timesFootnote 6 in which λῃστής/λῃσταί appears in the BJ, only twice might it be thought to refer to any of Josephus’ ‘tyrants’. Once Josephus appears to refer to the Zealot leader, Menachem, as a ‘brigand’, but it seems that this is not really the case. What Josephus writes is as follows (BJ 2.433–4):
κἀν τούτῳ Μανάημός τις, υἱὸς Ἰούδα τοῦ καλουμένου Γαλιλαίου, σοφιστὴς δεινότατος, ὁ καὶ ἐπὶ Κυρηνίου ποτὲ Ἰουδαίους ὀνειδίσας ὅτι Ῥωμαίοις ὑπετάσσοντο μετὰ τὸν θεόν, ἀναλαβὼν τοὺς γνωρίμους ἀνεχώρησεν εἰς Μασάδαν, ἔνθα τὴν Ἡρώδου τοῦ βασιλέως ὁπλοθήκην ἀναρρήξας καὶ πρὸς τοῖς δημόταις ἑτέρους λῃστὰς καθοπλίσας, τούτοις τε χρώμενος δορυφόροις, οἷα δὴ βασιλεὺς ἐπάνεισιν εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα καὶ γενόμενος ἡγεμὼν τῆς στάσεως διέτασσεν τὴν πολιορκίαν.
At this period a certain Menachem, son of Judas surnamed the Galilean—that redoubtable doctor who in old days, under Quirinius, had upbraided the Jews for recognizing the Romans as masters when they already had God—took his intimate friends off with him to Masada, where he broke into King Herod's armoury and provided arms both for his fellow-townsmen and for other brigands; then, with these men as his bodyguard, he returned like a veritable king to Jerusalem, became the leader of the revolution and directed the siege of the palace.Footnote 7
Here it is clear that Josephus is characterizing not Menachem but rather his fellow-townsmen as ‘brigands’; he is their leader.Footnote 8 That leaves only one passage in the BJ in which a rebel leader is actually termed a ‘brigand’, namely 2.587:
For he [sc. John of Gischala] was a brigand, who at the outset practised his trade alone (μονότροπος), but afterwards found for his daring deeds accomplices, whose numbers, small at first, grew with his success.
Given the frequency with which Josephus uses λῃστής in the BJ, one exceptional passage, in which it refers to someone known otherwise as a ‘tyrant’, does not pose much of a problem to my argument. Note, however, that the quoted passage comes in the course of Josephus’ chronological survey of John's career, which begins by referring to him as having had a penurious origin and having been a loner. Only later (as the next lines report) did he gather followers. That is, this passage does not relate to the distinction between leaders (‘tyrants’) and followers (‘brigands’) seen in BJ 2.433–4, which this article will continue to develop. Rather, Josephus makes his usage concerning John clear when he reports, a few paragraphs later (§593), that John (who has in the meantime become a leader) ‘directed his band of brigands (τοῖς μὲν ὑφ’ ἑαυτὸν λησταῖς προσέταξεν) to push their raids more vigorously than ever’. John is the commander; his followers are ‘brigands’.Footnote 9
Having shown that Josephus does not use ‘brigand’ of his ‘tyrants’, let us now turn to the few passages in which the two terms do appear in some proximity to one another. The first to consider is BJ 2.271–6:
διαδεξάμενος δὲ παρὰ τούτου τὴν ἐπιτροπὴν ὁ Φῆστος τὸ μάλιστα λυμαινόμενον τὴν χώραν ἐπεξῄει· τῶν γοῦν λῃστῶν συνέλαβέν τε πλείστους καὶ διέφθειρεν οὐκ ὀλίγους. ἀλλ᾽ οὐχ ὁ μετὰ Φῆστον Ἀλβῖνος τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον ἐξηγήσατο τῶν πραγμάτων … καὶ χρήμασιν μὲν οἱ δυνατοὶ τὸν Ἀλβῖνον προσελάμβανον ὥστε τοῦ στασιάζειν αὐτοῖς παρέχειν ἄδειαν, τοῦ δημοτικοῦ δὲ τὸ μὴ χαῖρον ἡσυχίᾳ πρὸς τοὺς Ἀλβίνου κοινωνοὺς ἀπέκλινεν. ἕκαστος δὲ τῶν πονηρῶν ἴδιον στῖφος ὑπεζωσμένος αὐτὸς μὲν ὥσπερ ἀρχιλῃστὴς ἢ τύραννος προανεῖχεν ἐκ τοῦ λόχου, τοῖς δορυφοροῦσι δὲ πρὸς ἁρπαγὰς τῶν μετρίων κατεχρῆτο … καθόλου δὲ ἡ μὲν παρρησία πάντων περικέκοπτο, τυραννὶς δ᾽ ἦν διὰ πλειόνων, καὶ τὰ σπέρματα τῆς μελλούσης ἁλώσεως ἔκτοτε τῇ πόλει κατεβάλλετο.
Festus, who succeeded Felix as procurator, proceeded to attack the principal plague of the country: he captured large numbers of brigands and put not a few to death. The administration of Albinus, who followed Festus, was of another order; there was no form of villainy which he omitted to practise … the influential men among their numbers secured from Albinus, by means of bribes, immunity for their seditious practices, while of the populace all who were dissatisfied with peace joined hands with the governor's accomplices. Each ruffian, with his own band of followers grouped around him, towered above his company like a brigand chief or a tyrant, employing his bodyguard to plunder peaceable citizens … In short, none could now speak his mind, with tyrants on every side; and from this date were sown in the city the seeds of its impending fall.Footnote 10
It is in this passage that the terms ‘brigand’ and ‘tyrant’ are most closely associated, and it is clear, just as in BJ 2.433–4 concerning Menachem, discussed above, that Josephus distinguishes between the two terms. Tyrants can be ‘brigand chiefs’, but ‘brigands’ refers only to the rank-and-file followers and to the foot soldiers of the ‘tyrants’, not to the tyrants themselves. The latter are a different class of people altogether, much like the Roman tyrant was typically an aristocrat belonging to a totally different class of people from his followers, most of whom were simple legionaries from the lower classes. He may have been their chief, but he was not ‘one of them’. This comports well with the English equivalents offered by Rengstorf in his entry for λῃστής (‘robber, bandit, irregular, guerrilla, rebel, member of an insurrectionary group or movement’), in contrast to those he lists for τύραννος (‘absolute ruler, autocrat, despot, tyrant; of the leaders of the rebellious groups in the war against Rome: despot, usurper, tyrant’).Footnote 11 There is no overlap between those two lists of meanings.
In Josephus’ BJ, up until this early and general reference to ‘tyrants’ in 2.271–6, ‘brigands’, especially in Book 1, most often refers to bands of common robbers and bandits. On occasion, such as in the context of the ‘brigands’ dwelling in the caves at Arbel (1.304), there may be a hint of insurgency as well. And, in BJ 2.254, we are introduced to the sicarii, who are said to comprise a ‘new species of bandits’ (λῃστῶν). But after BJ 2.271–6, ‘brigand’ seems increasingly to refer to the common foot soldiers or insurgents who collectively form the warbands that fight alongside or under the command of the ‘tyrant’ chieftain.Footnote 12 Often they are rank-and-file Zealots or sicarii who form a military pact or association with one of the ‘tyrants’ for a season, only to withdraw from the pact when they perceive that their temporary convergence of interests has dissipated.
There are only two other passages, apart from BJ 2.271–6, in which ‘brigand’ and ‘tyrant’ could be said to appear in close proximity to one another so as to constitute a ‘semantic field’ or perhaps a ‘collocation’. But in these passages too proximity does not mean a confluence of meaning or overlap. The first is BJ 6.129, concerning a harangue Titus addresses to John:
This message from Caesar being transmitted through Josephus, the brigands and their tyrant, attributing his exhortations rather to cowardice than goodwill, treated them with contempt.
Here there are many ‘brigands’ but only one ‘tyrant’, namely their leader, John.
The other instance comes at BJ 6.323–6, in the context of the final negotiations of the defeated rebels:
(323) οἱ δὲ περὶ τοὺς τυράννους ὡς τῷ τε πολέμῳ πάντοθεν ἐκρατοῦντο καὶ περιτετειχισμένοις διαφυγεῖν οὐδαμόθεν ἦν, προκαλοῦνται τὸν Τίτον εἰς λόγους. (324) ὁ δὲ καὶ διὰ τὸ φιλάνθρωπον φύσει τὸ γοῦν ἄστυ περισῶσαι προαιρούμενος καὶ τῶν φίλων ἐναγόντων, ἤδη γὰρ μετριάζειν τοὺς λῃστὰς ὑπελάμβανον, ἵσταται κατὰ τὸ πρὸς δύσιν μέρος τοῦ ἔξωθεν ἱεροῦ· (325) ταύτῃ γὰρ ὑπὲρ τὸν ξυστὸν ἦσαν πύλαι, καὶ γέφυρα συνάπτουσα τῷ ἱερῷ τὴν ἄνω πόλιν· αὕτη τότε μέση τῶν τυράννων ἦν καὶ τοῦ Καίσαρος. (326) τὸ δὲ πλῆθος ἑκατέροις βύζην ἐφεστήκει, Ἰουδαῖοι μὲν περὶ Σίμωνα καὶ Ἰωάννην μετέωροι συγγνώμης ἐλπίδι, Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ Καίσαρι καραδοκοῦντες αὐτῶν τὴν ἀξίωσιν.
(323) The tyrants and their followers, beaten on all sides in the war and surrounded by a wall preventing any possibility of escape, now invited Titus to a parley. (324) Anxious, with his innate humanity, at all events to save the town, and instigated by his friends, who supposed that the brigands had at length been brought to reason, Titus took up a position on the west of the outer court of the temple, (325) there being at this point gates opening above the Xystus and a bridge which connected the upper city with the temple and now parted the tyrants from Caesar. (326) The multitude stood in crowds on either side: the Jews, around Simon and John, excited by hopes of pardon, the Romans beside Caesar eagerly waiting to hear their claim.
In this case, the ‘brigands’ mentioned in §324 are identical with ‘those around the tyrants’ of §323, namely the followers of the ‘tyrants’. The latter, called ‘tyrants’ at the end of §325, are named in §326, where they are poised vis-à-vis Titus, just as, in that scene, the Jewish ‘brigands’ are parallel to the Roman soldiers, each grouped alongside their leaders. Simon and John are no more brigands than Titus a simple legionnaire.
Lastly, already in Josephus’ programmatic comments in the prologue to the BJ (§11), he asks his readers’ indulgence for the way in which he takes sides and condemns ‘the tyrants or their bands of brigands’ (πρὸς τοὺς τυράννους ἢ τὸ λῃστρικὸν αὐτῶν). That formulation too demonstrates that the two terms are separate in Josephus’ usage; just as at BJ 6.129 (discussed above) a group of brigands can have its tyrant, so too here tyrants have their bands of brigands.
Josephus’ ‘tyrants’ and ‘brigands’ refer to two entirely separate entities or classes of people: the former exclusively to the revolt's ringleaders; the latter to their common followers and foot soldiers. This distinction drew a parallel between the archetypal Roman tyrant who, more often than not, arose from within the ruling aristocracy, and his Jewish counterparts. In both cases, the ‘tyrant’ was of an entirely different class from his rank-and-file followers, most of whom were of lower social rank. Whether Judaea's rebel leaders were in fact renegade aristocrats is immaterial to this argument.Footnote 13 Josephus was communicating to his Roman contemporaries that his Jewish ‘tyrants’ were akin to their own. In so doing, he was placing the war between Rome and Judaea in the context not of a clash between warring peoples or ideologies but of a shared domestic socio-political malady that had, intermittently and with severe ramifications, plagued Rome itself, especially in the century leading up to, and including, the times of Josephus’ Roman contemporaries.
