"I've fought every kind of barbarian, but the Britons are by far the worst..." Marcus is excited about travelling to Britannia, the island at the edge of the world. But the Britons are savages who tattoo themselves and take the heads of their enemies in battle. They won't bow down to the rule of Rome. As Marcus travels to meet his father he meets a barbarian chief instead and his destiny is changed forever, along with that of Britannia...

A definitive account of the great revolt of Jews against Rome and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple “A lucid yet terrifying account of the 'Jewish War'—the uprising of the Jews in 66 CE, and the Roman empire’s savage response, in a story that stretches from Rome to Jerusalem.”—John Ma, Columbia University This deeply researched and insightful book examines the causes, course, and historical significance of the Jews’ failed revolt against Rome from 66 to 74 CE, including the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. Based on a comprehensive study of all the evidence and new statistical data, Guy Rogers argues that the Jewish rebels fought for their religious and political freedom and lost due to military mistakes. Rogers contends that while the Romans won the war, they lost the peace. When the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple, they thought that they had defeated the God of Israel and eliminated Jews as a strategic threat to their rule. Instead, they ensured the Jews’ ultimate victory. After their defeat Jews turned to the written words of their God, and following those words led the Jews to recover their freedom in the promised land. The war's tragic outcome still shapes the worldview of billions of people today.

During the first and second centuries A.D., the supremacy of the Roman Empire was aggressively challenged by three Jewish rebellions. The facts surrounding the initial uprising of A.D. 66-74 have been filtered through the biased accounts of Judeao Roman historian Flavius Josephus. Primary information regarding the subsequent Diaspora Revolt (A.D. 115-117) and the Bar Kochba Rebellion (A.D. 132-135) is limited to fragmentary anecdotes emphasizing the religious implications of the two insurrections. In contrast, this analytical history focuses objectively on the military aspects of all three Judean uprisings. The events leading up to each rebellion are detailed, while the nine appendices cover such topics as the nature and number of the Jewish rebels and the factual reliability of the controversial Josephus. One appendix hypothesizes an alternative history of the war between Jerusalem and Rome.

If you want a gripping, well-written, detailed story of insurrection against Rome, supported by splendid illustrations, start here.?The Sunday Telegraph

The Jewish revolt against Rome in the first century C.E. provides ancient historians the opportunity to study one of the best-documented provincial revolts in the early Roman Empire. This volume brings together different disciplines, some for the first time. The contributors draw from a wide range of literary, archaeological, documentary, epigraphic and numismatic sources. The focus is on historiographical and methodological reflections on our sources, their nature and the sort of historical questions they allow us to answer. This volume combines fields of research that should not be pursued in isolation from each other if we wish to further our understanding of the Jewish revolt’s historical context.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.