I'm John Bachelor, Professor Barry Strauss, now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution,

Cornell, Emeritus Professor, and we're discussing the Jews versus Rome.

And we've come to a port part where Jerusalem has been destroyed, sold into slavery,

is reconstituting itself in some fashion, and Rome is enjoying a century of conquest. Trajan first, now Hadrian. What do we need to know

about Hadrian and the Jews, Professor? So Hadrian reverses Trajan's policy towards Parthia.

In fact, the Parthians had driven the Romans out of their territory.

Trajan wanted to go back and reconquer it. But Hadrian said, no way. This is a waste of time, money, manpower. We're never going to conquer Parthia. And so he pulls back. However, Hadrian recognizes that the Parthian threat continues,

and he knows that there's been one disloyal group in the empire

that contributed to Rome's defeat in Parthia, and that is the Jews.

And so he turns, for geostrategic reasons, I think, decides to do something

about the Jews. Hadrian becomes Emperor 117. It used to be thought that it was about a decade

and a half later in 130 when he comes up with the plan to rebuild Jerusalem as a pagan city. But we

now know through archaeology that this plan begins right away

as soon as Hadrian takes the throne.

He's starting to rebuild Jerusalem.

This is 117 AD, I believe.

That's correct, to rebuild Jerusalem as a pagan city.

And so this is something that's very high on his list. And I believe

that one of his main motivations for doing this is to make a point to the Jews and to the Parthians.

To the Jews, he wants to say, you're never getting your temple back. Stop this nonsense of

rebelling. We will not tolerate it.

We're going to show who's boss. And so the Parthians, he's also saying, well, we may not have

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