Echo der Katastrophe: Die Resonanzen der Niederlage Athens in Flavius Josephus’ Bellum Judaicum

Abstract

Two wars, two defeats, two historians: what traces did Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War leave on Flavius Josephus’ Bellum Judaicum? ‘Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis?’ Josephus tried to use certain elements of Thucydidean style, although with a great deal of flexibility. Great war disasters were a topos the two historians had in common; Josephus was overall a historian of disasters. The defeat of Athens deeply influenced the Jewish historian as the exemplary representation of a disaster. At the same time, Josephus’ relation to his predecessor lacks clearly discernable contours. Our lack of certainty in this regard perhaps points to his method and perhaps also to his deficient critical acumen.

The article examines some of Josephus’ references to Thucydides. In respect to the arrival of the news that the Sicilian expedition had been destroyed and that Jotapata had been conquered, Josephus and Thucydides display similarities of presentation. In both historians the scenes in which the news of the disaster are brought divide into two phases. First, the public reacts with mistrust in respect to the announcement of disaster. Since the news of a catastrophe could traumatize those who receive it, public mistrust in the far away homeland was a symptom of their extreme shock. The geographical distance between the battle front and those who received the news played an important role in this response. The criterion of eyewitness (Autopsia) was a decisive aspect of the reliability of the demoralising message.

The deadly news provoked anger and panic. The result was the suppression of the true causes of the defeat by means of speculation. People looked for the possible causes of the spectacular panolethria. They blamed priests, soothsayers or false prophets because of the incomprehensible character of the disaster. In this regard the two historians differ: Thucydides emphasizes the collective, whereas Josephus brings forward the grief of individuals.

Josephus therefore used some elements of Thucydides’ description of the Sicilian disaster as a point of reference for his own depictions of military disasters. However, his descriptions often differ from his example, since his work had other goals and attitudes like accomodation of Roman propaganda. For this reason, the defeat of Athens finds recognizable echoes in his work, but has no exact mirror image.