Free A Long Way to Shiloh by Lionel Davidson

disregarding the first rule of mountain warfare, he omitted to post pickets to cover his retreat. Formations of guerrillas began to strafe his huge column. They strafed it night and day. The retreat turned into a rout. Six thousand infantry and the entire supply train complete with siege and ballistic equipment, fell to the guerrillas before the Roman force managed to escape.
    The victory was so colossal it alarmed not only the peace party in Jerusalem but the rebels themselves. Retribution was bound to come, and when it did it was best met by a united country. The country was divided into six administrative districts or commands, and the commands allotted on a nonsectarian basis. That of the Northern District, which would bear the first brunt of the expected Roman attack, went to the scion of an old priestly family, Joseph ben Matthias.
    This young man, not quite thirty, wealthy, gifted and amusing , was one of the lights of Jerusalem. He had just had a splendid year in Rome, where he had gone to plead the cause of some friends who had run into political trouble. In Rome, as a friend of the Jewish comic actor Aliturus, the Danny Kaye of his day, he had gained entry to the swinging circle of Poppaea, Caesar’s wife, and had been made welcome. He found himself now in a quandary. No revolutionary, and certainly no Rome-hater , it seemed to him absurd to opt out of the empire because of the excesses of the oafs sent out as governors. But he took up his appointment, dutifully enough, some time during the winter and early spring of 67.
    Just about at the same time, the first consignments went prudently out of the Treasury, into hiding.
    Also at the same time, retribution approached.
    The news of the Jewish revolt had reached the young emperor Nero in Greece, where he had been enjoying a season of Games. He had been not only watching but participating in the Games, as charioteer and singer, and this reminder of the cares of empire annoyed him. But he saw a way of cancelling out one annoyance with another. Among his entourage was a dull retired general who showed a tendency to nod off to sleep while his emperor sang. It seemed to the emperor that this general would be better occupied doing a bit of fighting. He promptly told him off to go and settle the hash in Judea.
    The general, a dull man indeed, was Flavius Vespasian, fifty-seven years old. Undistinguished in birth (his father had ended his days a money-lender in Switzerland) as in his military career, the highlight of which had been the capture of the Isle of Wight, he had now settled to civilian life as a horse-coper.
    Vespasian set about his small task very seriously. He assembled an enormous army. He marched with his army through Turkey, collecting more men as he went. He took his son with him, a jolly young man of twenty-seven called Titus, well-liked by everyone and equally proficient as an athlete, poet, soldier and barrister. They reached their first objective, Galilee, in late spring.
    Ben Matthias, the commander of this district, had now been in it for a few months, uneasily. His appointment had not been approved by all, and particularly not by a somewhat intense revolutionary called John ben Levi, who had now come up to Galilee to keep an eye on him. Both ben Levi and ben Matthias operated their own intelligence services; and within weeks of taking over his command, ben Matthias was aware that disturbing rumours about him were circulating in Jerusalem.
    A very curious incident now occurred. The junta in Jerusalem sent an order for the recall of the Governor of the Northern Command. They went further. A force of 2,500 men was sent to bring him back. ‘If he came quietly.’ as the historian Flavius Josephus records in Chapter 21, Book Two, of his Work, ‘they were to let him give an account of himself. If he insisted on remaining they must treat him as an enemy. But the reason was not explained.’
    Whatever the reason, ben Matthias refused to parley. The force he