Barry Strauss on the Jewish Conflict with Ancient Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion

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Aug 15, 2025

Barry Strauss, a former classics professor at Cornell and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, discusses the Jewish struggles against Rome from 63 BCE to 136 CE. He explores the contrast between Roman narratives, which viewed Jews as rebels, and Jewish perspectives that emphasize a fight for autonomy. Strauss delves into the life of Josephus, revealing his complex identity, and highlights the cultural clash between Jewish ideals of freedom and Roman order. The conversation connects historical events to modern geopolitical issues, making for a thought-provoking dialogue.

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INSIGHT

Two Civilizations, Two Narratives

The three Jewish revolts (66–70, 116, 132–136) form a connected civilizational saga about liberty versus imperial order.
Competing Roman and Jewish memories reveal fundamentally different moral universes and interpretations of the same events.

ANECDOTE

The Three Revolts Timeline

The Great Revolt (66–70) ended with Jerusalem and the temple destroyed and Masada falling by 73/74 CE.
The Diaspora Revolt (116) and Bar Kokhba (132–136) followed and were driven by earlier Roman humiliations and policies.

INSIGHT

Revolt Unity Through Roman Policy

The revolts share unity because later rebellions reacted to Rome's postwar humiliations and policies like temple restrictions and taxes.
Hadrian's founding of Elea Capitolina and possible circumcision ban directly catalyzed Bar Kokhba.

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Between the year 63 before the Common Era, and the year 136 of the Common Era, the Jewish people waged three revolts against the mightiest empire in the world. In retrospect, we can see that these were not only local uprisings, but civilizational confrontations that would echo through history—struggles that pitted the Jewish people’s fierce determination to live as a free nation in their ancestral homeland against Rome’s inexorable drive to impose order across its vast dominions.

What makes these revolts so fascinating is not merely their military drama, but the profound questions they raise about how different civilizations remember and interpret the same events. Recall the way that Rome understood its purpose and its mission, the grand aspirations that fueled Rome’s rise and Rome’s bloodstained greatness. As Vergil puts it in the Book VI of the Aeneid (in John Dryden’s poetic rendering):

But, Rome, ’t is thine alone, with awful sway,

To rule mankind, and make the world obey,

Disposing peace and war by thy own majestic way;

To tame the proud, the fetter’d slave to free:

These are imperial arts, and worthy thee.

When Roman historians recorded these conflicts in Judea, they saw rebellious subjects disrupting the peace that Rome had brought to the world. They saw the Jews as ingrates and troublemakers, who refused to appreciate the benefits of imperial rule. But when Jewish historians look back on this period they tend to see something altogether different: a tragic tale of national resistance—a struggle for freedom—to defend the honor of God, His people, and His land. These competing narratives reveal something essential about the nature of historical memory, and the separate moral universes of these rival civilizational traditions.

To illuminate and explain this conflict, Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver speaks with Barry Strauss, formerly a longtime professor of classics at Cornell University, and now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His forthcoming book is Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World’s Mightiest Empire, to which he brings deep expertise in Roman military history, and also a keen appreciation for the strategic dimensions of these conflicts.