Roman Revenge

"In what essentially boiled down to class warfare, the words of Josephus are strikingly modern. He noted that those in power oppressed the masses, and that “the masses [were] eager to destroy the powerful.” To the oppressed masses, who supported the more popular fundamentalism of the Pharisees, the great enemies were the Temple elites and the largest landowners, the Sadducees. There also were the ascetic and apocalyptic Essenes, but they lived away from the city and considered Temple life irredeemably corrupt. Added to this, Roman influence in the area was perpetually mediocre and easily undermined because the area was not of much interest in the wider Roman world. Of the quarter million men who made up the Roman standing army, only 3,000 were stationed in Judea at the beginning of ad 66."