Kitos War
The Kitos War (115–117) was a rebellion by the Jewish diaspora against Ancient Rome. The rebellions were finally crushed by the Roman general Lusius Quietus, whose name later gave the conflict its title, as "Kitos" is a later corruption of Quietus.
The rebellions occurred while most Roman armies were fighting a war against Parthia, which had been invaded with the Roman armies thus far away from Roman territory. Resentment against the results of the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73) contributed.
There were major uprisings by Jews in Cyrenaica, Cyprus and Egypt that spiraled out of control, resulting in a widespread slaughter of left-behind Roman garrisons and Roman citizens by Jewish rebels. Some of the areas with the heaviest massacres were left so utterly annihilated that others moved in to settle these areas to prevent their complete depopulation.
Dio Cassius claimed that Jews massacred almost half a million people in Africa and Cyprus alone.[1] The Romans in turn killed and enslaved large numbers of Jews.
References
- ↑ Dio's Rome. Volume V. Book 68, paragraph 32. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10890/10890-h/10890-h.htm#a68_32
