38. Cutting the Cheese Starts a Riot
First-century AD Jewish historian Josephus described how the disturbance began: “The Jews’ ruin came on, for when the multitudes were come together to Jerusalem, to the feast of unleavened bread, and a Roman cohort stood over the cloisters of the temple (for they always were armed and kept guard at the festivals, to prevent any innovation which the multitude thus gathered together might take), one of the soldiers pulled back his garment, and cowering down after an indecent manner, turned his breech [ass] to the Jews, and spoke such words as you might expect at such a posture.
At this the whole multitude had indignation, and made a clamor to Cumanus [the provincial Roman procurator], that he would punish the soldier; while the rasher part of the youth, and such as were naturally the most tumultuous, fell to fighting, and caught up stones, and threw them at the soldiers“. It was the start of a bout of widespread violence and a weird chain of events leading to mass death.
