This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchelor.

This is CBSI on the world.

I'm John Batchel.

Continuing with Professor Barry Strauss,

Emeritus Cornell University,

a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution

in Palo Alto, California. His new book is Jews versus Rome. This is two centuries of

rebellion by the Jewish warriors against the mightiest empire that ever existed on the planet

until now and maybe forever.

Rome.

Now we come to a part where Jerusalem has been vanquished, destroyed, sold into slavery, murdered.

The temple is destroyed.

But it is not complete because there are Jews scattered across the Roman world.

And sometimes the scattering is quite substantial communities.

In the Parthian Empire, unconquered by Rome, all along North Africa, certainly in Italy

itself, everywhere there are Jews who are substantially well-to-do

and rebellious, just like the original lot back in Jerusalem.

And the emperor is Trajan, and he begins an expedition to conquer Parthia.

What do we need to know about Trajan, Professor?

So Trajan was a military man, more than most of the emperors, and he had a particular

relationship to the Jews in Judea because his father had been one of Vespasian's chief

...