Almost 2000 years ago, a desperate band of Jewish revolutionaries called the Zealots fled the catastrophic Roman siege of Jerusalem out into the Judean desert, with a Roman legion in hot pursuit. There they took refuge on the mountain of Masada, where King Herod the Great had built a fantastic palace on the mountain and stocked it with enough food and water for fifty years. The Romans laid siege to the mountain, and, after a two-year effort, finally breached the ramparts of the fortress in a dawn attack. They were stunned to find that the remaining 960 defenders had all committed suicide.
For many years, historians have assumed that the Zealots and their families died by their own swords in order to deprive the Romans of a meaningful victory, and, of course, to avoid the horrors of slavery in the Roman galley fleet. But now a young American engineer and amateur historian comes to modern day Israel to prove a theory he’s held for years: that the Zealots’ mass suicide was done for two reasons: to defy the Romans, but also to protect a monumental secret on the mountain. The Last Man tells the story of his search among the stones and the bones of Masada for evidence that there’s a lot more to the eerie history of this bloody mountain than anyone knows.
Release planned for late Spring 2012 |
