11. History’s First Terrorists
The Sicarii were a militant faction of the Zealots, a first century AD Judean political movement that agitated to spark a rebellion in order to free the Holy Lands from the Roman yoke. The result was the Jewish Revolt of 66 to 73 AD, whose course and consequences were terrible to all involved. While the Zealots were radical, their Sicarii splinter went to extremes that made them history’s earliest identifiable terrorists, with methods that meet modern definitions of the term.
The Sicarii, meaning “dagger men” in Latin, earned their name from the knives known as sicae that they used to kill their victims. Their goal was to cleanse the Holy Lands of Romans and their Jewish collaborators, and their standard tactic was to blend into crowds at public gatherings. They would wait for an opportune moment, and when it presented itself, would suddenly charge their target, stab him, and escape during the resulting confusion and panic by blending into the crowd.
