peashooter85:The Forgotten Jews Who Built the Roman Colosseum,One of the great myths of history is t
peashooter85:The Forgotten Jews Who Built the Roman Colosseum,One of the great myths of history is that the Egyptians used Hebrew slaves to build the Great Pyramids. This myth is absolutely ridiculous considering that the pyramids were built over 1,000 years before the Hebrews settled in Egypt. However a little known fact of history was that the Roman Colosseum, one of the greatest monuments of the Roman Empire, was built by Jewish slaves.In 6 AD Judea was made a Roman province governed by a puppet King named Herod. The Judeans did not take Roman occupation too kindly, and by 66 AD the Jews revolted against the Roman Empire. The Romans responded by sending 60,000 Roman soldiers under the command of a general named Vespasian to quell the rebellion. While the Jews fought bravely, they could not stand against the resources, organization, superior weaponry, superior tactics, and downright ruthlessness of the Roman war machine. By 70 AD the Romans had defeated almost every Jewish stronghold and ransacked most of the cities and towns of Judea. In the summer of 70 AD the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem. After seven months of siege the Romans breached Jerusalem’s three defensive walls and laid waste to the city.One of the victims of the Romans was the Temple of Jerusalem, the ancient temple dating to King Solomon (restored by Herod) that was the religious and cultural center of Jewish life. The Romans utterly destroyed the temple down to its foundations, all the while carting off the treasures stored within. Later the Emperor Domitian, son of Vespasian, built the arch of Titus to honor his deceased father. One of the reliefs on the arch depicts the victorious Romans carting off the treasure of the Temple. Along with copious amounts of treasure the Romans also took around 97,000 slaves, Jews who had been former fighters captured during the siege. After the Jewish Rebellion General Vespasian returned to Rome to end a civil war that had developed after the suicide of Nero. Vespasian became emperor by destroying the various factions which claimed the empire. The civil war left Rome severely weakened and to revitalize the empire Vespasian ordered a series of public works and building projects, among them was the construction of a new amphitheater to host Rome’s great games. The new amphitheater was called the Flavian Amphitheater (later called the Colosseum) and was built to commemorate Vespasian’s greatest triumph; the conquest of Jerusalem. In a cruel irony, Vespasian ordered the Colosseum to be built by 20,000 slaves who had been captured during the rebellion. Another 70,000 Jewish slaves were also used to quarry stone for the Colosseum, hauling 50,000 cartloads of stone from the quarry at Tivoli 17 miles away. In addition, the construction project was directly funded by the treasures looted from the temple, as the empire was pretty much broke at the time due to the civil war. The construction project took 8 years to build, however Vespasian died before seeing its completion. His son Titus inaugurated the Colosseum in 80 AD. For the next five hundred years the Colosseum would be used for gladiatorial fights, animals hunts, games, and of course to execute criminals and dissidents. Today as result of the Colosseum’s bloody past, both Jews and Christians consider the structure to be a place of martyrdom. -- source link
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