MASADA  MORNING

Various suicides 

    Centurion Marcus was not a nervous man by nature, nor was he a coward. Neither trait was to be found in a man that had risen from a common legionnaire to command the scout troops for an entire legion. But he was uncomfortable this morning.  Something was not right and it bothered him. Nothing had gone right during the entire siege. The damned Jews that had manned the mountaintop city had put up a much stronger defense than anyone had ever expected. True the ground was as close to perfect for the defenders as could be asked but even so the city should have fallen weeks ago. He had sent cohort after cohort out to try to find a way to attack the city but all had failed and some had not returned at all. Finally, it was decided to build a huge ramp up the side of the cliff in order to bring the full weight of the legion’s might into action. Last night at last the wall had been breached. 
    At first light, the troops were to attack but the lack of men defending the walls and the complete silence of the city had made the possibility of a trap all too real. As a result instead of a massive rush of men the city was entered first by a few careful scouts. Marcus followed closely behind the first of them. 
     Inside it was deathly still. With the exception of a few birds nothing living moved. The parapets were checked first, then any place that could hold large bodies of men. Nothing. Finally, a house was searched. A call of Marcus. Inside was a family, all dead. The children and their mother were laid out in shrouds while the man’s body was covering them. All had died by the blade. Closer examination showed he had killed his family and has washed, dressed, and covered then before killing himself. The house was clean and neat except for his blood. 
    More houses were checked. Each one told the story of how its occupants had met their deaths. Some were much like the first. Others told different stories. In one four children were found, heads bashed in by a club, their naked bodies scattered throughout the house. Everything of value had been burned or despoiled. The father was swinging slowly from a beam. Hanged. Another was also despoiled but in that one the whole family was slowly twisting in the air. To see babes hanged, to realize parents would choose to kill and die rather than submit to Roman rule was something unexpected. 
    The explorations continued. Here was a young woman dressed in wedding finery with a knife sticking from between her small breasts. There two girls, just budding into womanhood, sitting quietly with a smaller boy. Throats slashed open. Another family. Mother, two daughters, son, bodies neatly lay out with their heads sitting on cold chests. Their father and husband nearby with his sword running through his chest. 
    Each house had it’s own tragedies.  An entire family laying in poses of agony. Empty wine goblets on the floor. A vial of some poison that was not the easy death they thought it was nearby. Throats neatly cut, brutally slashed, wrapped with cords pulled tight. Bodies hanging from rafters, laid out neatly, washed, anointed with oils, covered with shrouds. Others just lay where death took them. Loving hearts pierced by knives, swords, of even arrows. All held by hands that once had caressed instead of killed. Babes, toddlers, boys and girls, those almost old enough to start their own lives, men and wives, elders. All dead. 
    A special horror in one house. A couple making love. Surrounded by the things of newly weds. Killed by a single sword thrust that pierced both their bodies as they joined in lovemaking for perhaps the first time. The tales were as varied as the people that make up a city.   Some had chosen to kill and die with as little fuss as possible. Others just seemed to end it as quickly as they could. One house was neat and clean, the next had everything of value destroyed. Some bodies were cleaned and prepared for burial. Some were left as they died. 
    Marcus was stunned as he walked from the city to report. He had spent his entire adult life as a legionnaire and has been part of countless battles and lesser fights. Never had he seen anything like this. Brutal sacks of cities, yes, rapes and looting, yes. This was almost beyond his power to comprehend. A thousand people gone because they would choose to kill their children and themselves to deny the Romans their victory. Unbelievable. 
    That the name of Masada would live for thousands of years as a symbol was something that Marcus could not dream of. The tale of an oppressed people that fought the good fight only to lose to overwhelming force, able to still deny victory by a sacrifice that still rings today. A story that has become a bright light to a people and a cautionary warning to oppressors everywhere.  MASADA. THE CITY ON A MOUNTAIN.