Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE)

Four legions arrive by Passover

Josephus places Titus and four Roman legions outside Jerusalem by Passover in the year 70. XII Fulminata and XV Apollinaris shared a camp at Mount Scopus, northeast of the city; V Macedonica camped nearby, and X Fretensis occupied the Mount of Olives to the east.

The defenders looked out on three newly fortified camps. Josephus records that Titus had offered negotiations through him the preceding day and received no satisfactory answer.

A coup inside the Temple

On 14 Xanthicus, the day this entry marks, Eleazar opened the Temple’s inner gates for worshippers. John of Gischala sent armed men in among them with weapons concealed under their clothes.

They seized the inner Temple, killed or trampled bystanders, and reduced the city’s three rebel factions to two. Worshippers near the altar were trampled while private enemies used the confusion to settle personal scores, according to Josephus.

How firm is 14 April

The conversion of 14 Xanthicus to 14 April is conventional. Josephus uses Macedonian month names inconsistently, sometimes for Julian and sometimes for Judaean dates, and equating Xanthicus mechanically with Nisan conceals the difference between a named Macedonian month and a lunar festival date.

Only the Temple coup is directly dated to that day. The Roman moves assigned to it — bringing the main camp closer, leveling gardens, walls, trees, hollows and rocky obstacles between Mount Scopus and the city’s defenses — are reconstructed from adjacent passages rather than individually timestamped.

The wall that eventually enclosed the whole city came later; this was the opening encampment, not the completed circumvallation.