The Sicarii[a] (“Knife-wielder”, “dagger-wielder”, “dagger-bearer”; from Latin sica = dagger) were a group of Jewish Zealots, who, in the final decades of the Second Temple period, conducted a campaign of targeted assassinations and kidnappings of Roman officials in Judea and of Jews who collaborated with the Roman Empire. They later became known for a reported mass suicide at the Siege of Masada. The Sicarii carried sicae, or small daggers (sickles), concealed in their cloaks;[1] at public gatherings, they pulled out these daggers to attack, blending into the crowd after the deed to escape detection.
The only source for the history of the Sicarii is Josephus. Victims of the Sicarii are said by Josephus to have included the High Priest Jonathan, and 700 Jewish women and children at Ein Gedi.[2][3]
A relationship between the Zealots and the Sicarii is often stated, but is unclear from the original sources.[4]
The Sicarii are one of the earliest known organized assassination units of cloak and daggers, predating the Order of Assassins and the Japanese ninja by centuries.[5][6]
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[Josephus] says that the defenders of Masada took no part in the war against Rome during the siege of Jerusalem, but instead plundered local villages including En Gedi on the Dead Sea, where "women and children, more than 700 in number, were butchered"… Professor Yadin wanted to prove that the defenders of Masada were the hard-core supporters of a national resistance movement led by the Zealots, the movement which fought in Jerusalem. He interpreted scrolls found at Masada as showing that the defenders came from different sects and groups, though the scrolls may have been looted from nearby villages. What Josephus actually said was that the defenders of Masada were Sicarii, an extreme Jewish group who specialised in assassination and had killed the High Priest in Jerusalem.
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