Sicarii

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For other uses, see Sicarius.

The Sicarii (

Judea and attempted to expel them and their sympathizers from the area.[1] The Sicarii carried sicae, or small daggers, concealed in their cloaks.[2]
At public gatherings, they pulled out these daggers to attack Romans and alleged Roman sympathizers alike, blending into the crowd after the deed to escape detection.

The Sicarii are regarded as one of the earliest known organized

hitman
.

Etymology

In

Proto-Albanian *tsikā (whence Albanian thika, "knife"), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱey- ("to sharpen") possibly via Illyrian.[5][6] In later Latin usage, "sicarius" was also the standard term for a murderer (see, e.g., the Lex Cornelia de Sicariis et Veneficiis),[7] and to this day "sicario" is a salaried assassin in Spanish[8] and a commissioned murderer in Italian[9] and Portuguese.[10]

History

See also:
Zealot Temple Siege

Victims of the Sicarii are thought to have included the

assassins.[11][12]

At the beginning of the

Eleazar ben Ya'ir, were notable figures in the war, and the group fought in many battles against the Romans as soldiers. Together with a small group of followers, Menahem made his way to the fortress of Masada, took over a Roman garrison and slaughtered all 700 soldiers there. They also took over another fortress called Antonia and overpowered the troops of Agrippa II. He also trained them to conduct various guerrilla operations on Roman convoys and legions stationed around Judea.[4]

Josephus also wrote that the Sicarii raided nearby Hebrew villages including Ein Gedi, where they massacred 700 women and children.[13][14][15]

The Zealots, Sicarii and other prominent rebels finally joined forces to attack and temporarily take Jerusalem from Rome in 66 AD,

series of sieges and raids to remove the rebel factions. The rebels eventually silenced the uprising and Jerusalem stayed in their hands for the duration of the war.[17] The Romans returned to take back the city, and making counter-attacks and laying siege to starve the rebels inside. The rebels held out for some time, but the constant bickering and lack of leadership caused the groups to disintegrate.[16]
The leader of the Sicarii, Menahem, was killed by rival factions during an altercation. Finally, the Romans regained control and destroyed the whole city in 70 AD.

Eleazar and his followers returned to Masada and continued their rebellion against the Romans until 73 AD. The Romans eventually took the fortress and, according to Josephus, found that most of its defenders had committed suicide rather than surrender.[4] In Josephus' The Jewish War (vii), after the fall of the Temple in AD 70, the sicarii became the dominant revolutionary Hebrew faction, scattered abroad. Josephus particularly associates them with the mass suicide at Masada in AD 73 and to the subsequent refusal "to submit to the taxation census when Cyrenius was sent to Judea to make one," as part of their rebellion's religious and political scheme.

procuratorships of Felix (52–60 AD), having no apparent relation with the group called Sicarii by Romans at times of Quirinius.[20] The 2nd century compendium of Jewish oral law, the Mishnah (Makhshirin 1:6), mentions the word sikrin (Hebrew: סיקרין), perhaps related to Sicarii, and which is explained by the early rabbinic commentators as being related to the Greek: ληστής (= robbers), and to government personnel involved with implementing the laws of Sicaricon.[21] Maimonides, in his Mishnah commentary (Makhshirin 1:6), explains the same word sikrin as meaning "people who harass and who are disposed to being violent."[22]

See also

  • Sikrikim, a modern group inspired by the Sicarii
  • Knife attack
    , tactic used by the group
  • List of Jewish civil wars

Notes

  1. ISBN 978-0375726132
    .
  2. ^ Paul Christian Who were the Sicarii?, Meridian Magazine, June 7, 2004
  3. ISBN 978-1439851753
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-0765620484
  5. ISBN 9004110240
    .
  6. ^ Havers, Wilhelm (1984). Die Sprache. A. Sexl. p. 84.
  7. ^ "Definition of sicarius (noun, LNS, sīcārius) - Numen - The Latin Lexicon - An Online Latin Dictionary". Retrieved 30 September 2014.
  8. ^ "sicario, ria". Real Academia Española.
  9. ^ "sicàrio". Treccani.it.
  10. ^ "sicário". Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa.
  11. ^ Smallwood 2001, pp. 281f.
  12. ^ Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book XX 9.
  13. ^ Murphy-O'Connor, Jerome; Cunliffe, Barry. The Holy Land. Oxford Archaeological Guides (5th ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 378–381.
  14. ^ Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book IV 7-2.
  15. ^ Ancient battle divides Israel as Masada 'myth' unravels; Was the siege really so heroic, asks Patrick Cockburn in Jerusalem, The Independent, 30 March 1997
  16. ^
    ISBN 0-415-16618-7
  17. ^ Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book II 8-11, Book II 13-7, Book II 14-4, Book II 14-5.
  18. ^ "Judas Iscariot web", Encyclopædia Britannica, retrieved 30 September 2014
  19. ^ Bastiaan van Iersel, Mark: A Reader-Response Commentary, Continuum International (1998), p. 167.
  20. ^ "Zealots and Sicarii". Archived from the original on 2014-11-18. Retrieved 30 September 2014.
  21. Babylonian Talmud
    (Niddah Tractate), s.v. Mishnah Makhshirin 1:6; also in The Geonic Commentary on Seder Taharot - Attributed to Rabbi Hai Gaon, vol. 2, Berlin 1924, s.v. סיקריקין.
  22. ^ Yosef Qafih (ed.) Mishnah with Maimonides' Commentary (vol. 3), Mossad Harav Kook: Jerusalem 1967, s.v. Makhshirin 1:6 (p. 393) [Hebrew].

References

Further reading

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