What if the Bar Kokhba revolt had succeeded?
In 132–135 Simon bar Kosiba of Judaea held out against Hadrian's legions for more than three years, but fell with the mountain fortress of Betar. What if the revolt had survived?
What actually happened
Even after Titus destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70, Judaea remained one of Rome's most restless provinces. Around 130, touring the East, Hadrian decided to found a Roman colony named after his own family, Aelia Capitolina, on the ruins of Jerusalem. Cassius Dio writes that this caused the revolt, while the Historia Augusta points to a ban on circumcision; scholars disagree whether the ban came before or after the revolt.
In 132 the revolt led by Simon bar Kosiba broke out. Tradition says Rabbi Akiva called him Bar Kokhba, “son of the star”, and the coins he struck bear slogans such as “Year one of the redemption of Israel” and “For the freedom of Jerusalem”, and the title “Nasi (prince) of Israel”. His letters, found in caves near the Dead Sea in the 1960s, show a meticulous leader who managed villages and land. The rebels harried the Romans from bases in the villages and tunnels of the hill country.
Hadrian brought in Sextus Julius Severus, governor of Britain, and gathered detachments from many legions. Severus did not fight in the open but surrounded villages and caves one by one and starved them out. In summer 135 the mountain fortress of Betar, south-west of Jerusalem, fell, and bar Kosiba died there. Dio says 50 fortresses and 985 villages were destroyed and 580,000 people killed in the fighting, figures that may be exaggerated. The emperor renamed the province Syria Palaestina, and Jews were barred from entering Aelia Capitolina.
The turning point
Rome paid a surprisingly heavy price for this war. Dio reports that Roman losses were so great that Hadrian, writing to the Senate, had to leave out the customary opening “I and the legions are in health”. Some scholars think the Legio XXII Deiotariana, stationed in Egypt, was destroyed in this war, since it disappears from the record around this time. Whether the rebels actually held Jerusalem is also debated, since, despite the slogans on the coins, rebel coins found in Jerusalem are rare.
Still, most historians do not think Judaea could have beaten Rome in the end. The empire could draw troops from other frontiers, and the rebels could not come out of the hills. Yet Hadrian was an emperor who knew how to give up land he could not hold: on taking power he had surrendered Trajan's conquests in Mesopotamia and Armenia. Scholars such as Peter Schäfer and Menahem Mor offer differing pictures of the scale of the revolt and the extent of its control.
The world that might have been
In Crown & Plough the alternative reads: in the winter of 135 the siege lines around Betar collapsed under plague and winter rain. Severus pulled the legions back to the coast, and Jerusalem and the hills of Judaea stayed in Simon bar Kosiba's hands. His coins are stamped “For the freedom of Jerusalem”, and the Senate whispers that the emperor has lost land in the East again. In the game a realm called Judah, ruled by the Nasi, arises in and around Jerusalem and makes a twenty-year truce with Rome.
For a player who started as Hadrian, this world gives a different last three years. You choose whether to make peace with Judaea, raise more legions or hold only the coastal cities; you endure the Senate's icy silence; and when Alan horsemen come down from beyond the Caucasus at the news that Rome has retreated, you leave them to Arrian, governor of Cappadocia. The Alan invasion and Arrian's defence really did happen around 135. The veterans of half-built Aelia Capitolina demand the land they were promised, and from Jerusalem comes news that the Temple is being rebuilt.
Beyond the game, a surviving Judaea would have held on as a small state between great powers, like the Hasmonean kingdom of the Maccabean age. How many generations its independence would have lasted between Rome and Parthia is impossible to say. But the process by which the centre of Judaism moved to Galilee and the rabbis compiled the Mishnah would have gone very differently.
Ripples through time
This turning point comes early in the Roman Empire era, but its memory reaches the next era. If you carry your house into the Age of Vikings and Coronations, the game tells you that this was a world where Betar never fell: in the hills of Judaea, names older than the Roman roads remain.
Other turning points of the same era are Marcus Aurelius's Marcomannia and the Milvian Bridge. In real history Rome called the region Syria Palaestina after the Bar Kokhba revolt, and the name Palaestina lived on as the name of provinces in the Byzantine era.
- Carries into the next era Age of Vikings and Coronations
Play this turning point
Choose the scenario Emperor of the Wall, which begins as Hadrian in 122. The story that starts at the Wall in Britain leads on to bar Kosiba's revolt in 132. In 134's “The road to Betar”, giving Severus both time and legions, or promising their lives to villages that surrender, raises the odds of suppression, while ordering the arrest of everyone who teaches the Law can instead make the revolt fiercer.
If you started the Roman Empire era in another position, in the Currents of History story Bar Kokhba revolt siding with the expeditionary detachments or the supply contracts adds weight to Rome's side. If you live in an eastern province around 134, you can supply grain and mules to the besiegers, or instead carry grain to the fortress by night or hide villagers on the run. This turning point opens only while Rome rules Jerusalem.
Play this turning point → Start the scenario “Emperor of the Wall” →
Questions and answers
Are Bar Kokhba and bar Kosiba the same person?
Yes. The name written in the letters and on the coins found in the caves is Simon bar Kosiba; Bar Kokhba (“son of the star”) is a nickname carrying messianic hopes. Later rabbinic literature also uses the name Bar Koziba, meaning “son of the lie”.
When did Betar fall?
It is dated to summer 135, and Jewish tradition remembers the day as the 9th of Av, the same day as the destruction of the Temple. Betar is the site of a hill fortress near the village of Battir, south-west of modern Jerusalem.
What happened to Judaea after the revolt?
The province was renamed Syria Palaestina, and Jews were barred from Jerusalem, now Aelia Capitolina. The centre of the Jewish community moved to Galilee, where the Mishnah was compiled around 200.
Sources and further reading
Cassius Dio, Roman History, book 69; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book 4; Historia Augusta, Life of Hadrian; the Bar Kosiba letters from the caves of Nahal Hever. Modern accounts: Peter Schäfer (ed.), The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered; Menahem Mor, The Second Jewish Revolt; Anthony Birley, Hadrian: The Restless Emperor.
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