Lucius Flavius Silva

Who is Lucius Flavius Silva?

Lucius Flavius Silva Nonius Bassus was a late-1st-century Roman general, governor of the province of Iudaea and consul. History remembers Silva as the Roman commander who led his army, composed mainly of the Legio X Fretensis, in 72 AD up to Masada and laid siege to its near-impenetrable mountain fortress occupied by a group of Jewish rebels called the Sicarii. The end of the siege in 73 AD culminated with Silva's forces breaching the defenses of the Masada plateau and the mass suicide of the Sicarii who preferred death to defeat or capture. Silva's actions are documented by 1st-century Jewish-Roman historian Josephus; the remains of a 1st-century Roman victory arch identified in Jerusalem in 2005; and of course the extensive earthworks at the Masada site, a monument to the high-water mark of Roman siege warfare.