It was under the rule of the infamous Emperor Nero that the Great Revolt, the first of the Jewish Roman Wars, began, sparking many decades of continuous conflict.

Speaking to James Osborne for this episode of the History Extra podcast, Barry Strauss, whose

latest book is Jews versus Rome, traces the story following the fate of the Jewish rebels

and the legacy of the conflict.

In the book, you look at the first Jewish Roman war, the Diaspora Revolt and the Barcoq

Revolt and this is a series of wars between

the Roman Empire and the Jewish people. You could say that this entire episode begins in 66 AD

with the Great Revolt, which is the first of the three wars, but of course there's a lot of

backstory here. Could you please sketch the story of the Jewish people up and to this point and explain Judea's position

at this moment in antiquity?

Judea, which is what ancient Israel was called of this period, was a very old country.

The earliest evidence we have of the Jews' presence in the Holy Land is the end of the 13th century BCE in Egyptian inscription.

We know that there was a kingdom or kingdoms in the Iron Age, and that Judea was conquered,

first by the Assyrians and then by the Neo-Babolians, and in the beginning of the 6th century BCE,

the elite, in any rate, the elite in any rate was

exiled. Jerusalem was captured. Jerusalem, the capital. The first temple was destroyed, and part of

the population was exiled to Babylonia, to what's now southern Iraq. And then with the conquest

of the Neo-Babolonian Empire, but the Persian Empire, they were allowed to return.

And some of them did.

Some of them stayed in Babylonia.

Some of them returned to Judea, rebuilt Jerusalem and the temple.

And Judea was first a Persian province for several centuries, then conquered by Alexander

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