I'm John Batchew with Professor Barry Strauss, and his new book, Jews versus Romans.

We now come to the moment itself, the revolutionary moment, as the professor reports.

The Flavians, that's Fespation, his son Titus, and his son, Dimitian.

They make a decision to destroy, not unlike Carthage, destroy.

And what did the Romans do to the city and to the people, Barry?

Yeah.

So the Romans destroy Jerusalem, and they destroy the temple.

If we believe Josephus, Titus himself did not want the temple

to be destroyed. Neither did his chief of staff, Tiberius, Julius, Alexander. But nonetheless,

things got out of hand and the temple was destroyed. There are those skeptics who would say nonsense.

Titus wanted the temple to be destroyed

because he knew it was the center of the revolt, which it was.

And so the Romans both destroyed the city

and they destroy the temple,

a destruction which to this very day is mourned by Jews

and the wish that the temple be rebuilt is part of standard Jewish

liturgy every day. So an enormously significant decision. If you visit Jerusalem, you go to

what is called the wailing wall, which is part of the mountain that Herod carved out of the

ground, made it square-topped. They threw the big stones over the side and cracked the stones

below them. And you can see it in some instances, so there's been a lot of repair. The Roman soldiers

were ferocious, and they also sold,

they killed so many, and they sold so many into slavery. I get the impression, Professor,

...