First Jewish-Roman War

The First Jewish-Roman War broke out in 66 CE when long-simmering tensions between the Jewish population of Roman Judea and Roman rule, aggravated by heavy taxation, religious friction and provocations by the Roman governor Gessius Florus, erupted into open revolt after Florus seized funds from the Second Temple treasury in Jerusalem. Initial rebel successes, including the destruction of a Roman legion under Cestius Gallus in 66 CE, prompted Emperor Nero to dispatch the general Vespasian, who systematically reconquered Galilee and the Judean countryside over several years, a campaign continued by his son Titus after Vespasian was proclaimed emperor in 69 CE during Rome's own Year of the Four Emperors civil war. Titus besieged Jerusalem in 70 CE, and after months of fighting and starvation within the city, Roman forces breached its walls and destroyed the Second Temple, an event of lasting significance in Jewish history and religious memory, with a small remaining rebel garrison holding out at the fortress of Masada until its fall in 73 or 74 CE. The war's devastation, mass enslavement and the temple's destruction fundamentally reshaped Jewish religious and communal life, accelerating the later shift toward rabbinic Judaism centered on scripture and prayer rather than temple sacrifice.