From 67 to 68 CE, Vespasian and Titus reduced rebel strongholds across Galilee and the Jordan Valley to isolate Jerusalem. Siege towers creaked against walls at Jotapata, sails whitened the harbor at Caesarea, and the methodical conquest replaced earlier panic with procedure [4][17].
What Happened
Caesarea Maritima became the anvil. Vespasian hammered from there into Galilee, adopting a logic that abandoned spectacle for certainty. Control the roads and ports, lock the grain, break the ring of hill towns, then—and only then—face Jerusalem. The campaign’s rhythm could be traced from Ptolemais and Sepphoris to Jotapata and Tarichaea, each a name that meant another Roman encampment in ditches and another timber ramp rising under shielded hands [4][17].
At Jotapata, after weeks of pressure, rams thumped day and night. The sound—iron on stone, stone on iron—carried to the ravines. When the breach opened, the legionaries poured in with pila and short swords, bronze glinting in the highland sun. Survivors slipped south toward Tiberias and Tarichaea on the Sea of Galilee, where ships and shore were contested in the same methodical way [4][17].
Vespasian did not race. He secured the coastal strip—Joppa, Jamnia, Ashkelon—so that his supply ships could move unharassed. He posted Legio X Fretensis forward at Scythopolis and Jericho, guarding the Jordan crossings. Each placement was a number on a ledger: a cohort here, two alae there, a convoy of 50 wagons spaced a day’s march apart on the road to Antipatris. In Galilee’s basalt hills and the Sharon’s sandy coastal flats, the legions’ scarlet standards marked each box checked [4][17].
The effect inside Jerusalem was corrosive. Refugees brought tales of siege towers and massed cohorts. Factions hardened into factions: John of Giscala versus Simon bar Giora, Eleazar ben Simon against them both. The city’s food stores shrank, the knives came out, and the defenders began to consume themselves while the Romans consumed their countryside [17].
By 68, Vespasian had accomplished his strategic prerequisites. Galilee was broken, the Jordan Valley held, and the approaches to Jerusalem—Emmaus from the west, Jericho from the east, Bethlehem from the south—were guarded by camps and patrols. Then Rome itself shattered into civil war. News from Rome—Galba’s rise, Otho’s thrust, Vitellius on the Rhine—drifted into Antioch and Caesarea like ash on the wind [4]. Vespasian paused, counted his legions, and weighed his next march.
Why This Matters
The campaign replaced rebel mobility with Roman geometry. By clearing Galilee and locking the Jordan crossings, Vespasian prepared the siege of Jerusalem without expending men in rash assaults. The balance tilted: Judea’s countryside fell silent; Jerusalem became an island [4][17].
As an example of siegecraft and attrition, this phase demonstrates how Rome leveraged logistics, coastal control, and staged reductions to crush resistance. The empire’s strength was not a single blow but an apparatus—one that could be paused and resumed even amid civil war in the capital [4].
This groundwork allowed Titus to execute the siege in 70. The Antonia breach and the fire that followed were built on these earlier months of checked boxes and captured towns. Without the outer ring broken in 67–68, the inner sanctum could not have burned in 70 [4][17].
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