I recently came across an interesting article on how Israel is displaying for the first time a collection of ancient coins excavated from the ruins of the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. It was during the years 66-70 A.D., from which these coins are dated, that the Zealots, a radical segment of the Jewish population in Israel, revolted against Roman rule.
These artifacts have an interesting history in themselves, but on another level they serve as a physical reminder of a time when a people refused to accept the rule of an increasingly corrupt authoritarian government; these people would rather die. In different times and places but with similar circumstances, they would be joined in the fight for liberty by the Iceni in Britain and the Acoma Indians in North America.
Just prior to the Jewish revolt in the first century, the Iceni people of northwest Britain and their remarkable Queen Boudicca led a revolt against the Romans – citing many of the same grievances as the Jews. Nero, the Roman Emperor at the time of both uprisings, encouraged his provincial governors to maximize tax collections. Rome, beginning to become irrevocably bloated in its various appetites, including the extravagant sadism of the gladiatorial games, had many bills to pay. Roman governors could also keep anything above and beyond what was due to Rome – an open invitation to corruption.
The caliber of virtue in Roman soldiers had also declined. Boudicca was flogged and forced to watch her daughters get raped. In Jerusalem, there were accounts of Roman soldiers exposing themselves in the Temple and burning Torah Scrolls.
Both of these revolts were temporarily successful. With the Romans, though, a temporary success usually meant an extended, vicious slaughter when the moments of glory passed. The Iceni and the Jews suffered swift and severe reprisals, the Jews having their sacred temple destroyed – for a second time.
All was not lost, though. What is left to us are two testaments to liberty. Rather than surrender and be made slave or worse, Boudicca drank poison. There in Britain, long before Magna Carta or the Glorious Revolution, we see evidence of the intense passion for freedom. When the Jewish revolt seemed doomed, 960 Zealots made their final stand on the heights of Masada, holding out for three years. Though this tower of rock was virtually impregnable, the Jews there finally realized that the Roman army encamped on the plain below was not going to simply go away. Rather than submit to subjugation, the Jewish men killed their wives and children and then each other in a last, ritualistic act of freedom and defiance. It is on these heights, in fact, that Israeli soldiers today take the oath, “Masada shall not fall again.”
Fast forward to 1599 and the North American version of Masada. Out of the New Mexican desert, seemingly by magic, arises a huge mesa, upon which the Acoma Pueblo resides. It was on these heights that the Acoma Indians, in another epic testament to liberty, would resist the Spanish Empire, then the largest in the world. Over 800 of the Acoma Indians were killed while the Spaniards lost only 12. In true Roman fashion, a Spaniard by the name of Juan de Oñate ordered that men over the age of 25 have half of one foot cut off, and that those between the ages of 12 and 25 would be made slaves for 20 years. Though it can hardly be considered an Indian victory, it did set into motion events that would be continually fueled by bitter memories such as these, events that would lead to the full scale Pueblo Revolt of 1680. This revolt did, in fact, drive the Spanish from the region, at least for a while.
Today, the site where the Israeli coins were found is symbolic, or symptomatic, of a different and much more complicated struggle for liberty – the Arab-Israeli conflict. Both peoples claim the site as a holy place, for the Al-Aqsa Mosque stands atop the ruins of the Second Temple. This mosque is revered as the third holiest Islamic site behind only Mecca and Medina. It is taught that here the Prophet Muhammad ascended into heaven.
Sadly, though, it seems the holier something is held, the more bitter is the hatred and fighting over it.
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