The Flavian Jewish War: a Senecan Tragedy

"The Flavian Jewish War" is more than a history of the war Romans waged against Judaea from 69 t- 73 C.E. In the foreground it is the story of the war of brave Romans like Vespasian, Titus and Domitian and an abject rout of the Jewish insurgents. In the background, it is a five-Act Senecan Tragedy in which the heroes of history become villains of the tragedy and the villains of history turn out to be the hero-victims. This transformation is achieved by Josephus through Genres Disjunction of having two texts of diffferent genres in one work. Significantly, the Genres Disjunction is a textual recreation of the attitudinal disjunction of Josephus who covertly despised his Roman benefactors and loved his Jewish nation he seemingly betrayed to the Romans. One of the susidiary aims of this book is to rehabilitate Flavius Josephus as a Jewish patriot.