A provincial revolt in Roman Judaea and the campaign that suppressed it in A.D. 67–70 received unprecedented publicity. The modest achievements of Vespasian and Titus in Judaea came at an unusually dangerous period for the capital. In the domestic turbulence that followed Nero's suicide (June 68), their claim to have conquered a foreign enemy gave them unique bona fides as men capable of uniting Rome in peace. Their supporters promoted this narrative with tireless energy. In the eighteenth century still, Alexander Pope could assume his readers’ familiarity with the coins issued to celebrate Jerusalem's defeat: Iudaea Capta!

The Flavians and their backers left no stone unused in publicity. But was any of this meant to help people understand what had happened over there? Soon after he arrived in Rome, Pliny's younger contemporary Flavius Josephus began complaining about an inverted fame-to-ignorance ratio: so much fuss, so little truth (War 1.1–8). The remaining chapters of this book will explore what lay beneath the fuss: what really happened in the war. In this first chapter we need to understand the fuss itself. It began in Josephus’ day and has continued well into modern times.

The outcome of the Judaean-Roman war affected the course of Western history in three quite different ways. Jewish responses were the most complex, because the loss of mother-city and temple required the reshaping of Judaean culture with a vitality that would enable its survival, eventually as Juda-ism, through the centuries ahead.