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What happened at Masada?
Some rebels from the great revolt in 135 C.E. against the Romans fled there. The Romans started beseiging them. Because of the inaccesablity of Massada, the Romans started to …build a ramp to get to the fortress. When the ramp got up to the top and they saw that the Romans were about to enter the fortress, the defenders decided to commit suicide rather than be captured. Each man went and killed his family so that his family would not be captured and sold into slavery; then all the men cast a lottery. The man whose lot came up killed all the rest of his companions and then fell on his own sword..
All this is known because two woman and a couple of children hid in a cistern in the fortress and told Josephus Flavius the famous Jewish historian. The pottery shards were found from the lottery with the men's names on them just recently. The archeological evidence proves that what the women told was accurate. (MORE)