Eleazar ben Yair

Josephus attributes to him the speech defending mass suicide as the only way to preserve freedom; the speech echoes the words of Socrates.

The siege of Masada is one of the best-remembered passages in Josephus, who may have taken it from another source. In it Eleazar ben Yair, head of the Sicarii, makes a passionate but reasoned speech for suicide as the only free and honorable way out; then comes the terrible scene in which the men kill their families and then each other, with ten chosen by lot to dispatch the rest.1 There are good reasons to believe the episode. Masada yielded remains of men, women and children, perhaps the defenders and the families they killed, and eleven pottery sherds bearing men's names or nicknames, possibly the lots (Josephus mentions ten). Recently some scholars have come to doubt the account: certain details may have been invented, by Josephus or his source, to win over Greek and Roman readers, and Eleazar's speech recalls the last words of Socrates.2