The Fart That Started a Riot
Understandably, the religious crowd below did not take kindly to the blasphemous insult in the temple. The Jews erupted into riots, and the Romans rushed in soldiers to quell the disturbances. Things escalated, and by the time the dust settled, about 10,000 people lay dead – all because of a chain of events that started with a fart. As seen below, First century AD Jewish historian Flavius Josephus left posterity an account of the lethal flatulence. As he described how the disturbance began:
“The Jews’ ruin came on, for when the multitudes were come together to Jerusalem, to the feast of unleavened bread, and a Roman cohort stood over the cloisters of the temple (for they always were armed and kept guard at the festivals, to prevent any innovation which the multitude thus gathered together might take), one of the soldiers pulled back his garment, and cowering down after an indecent manner, turned his breech [bum] to the Jews, and spoke such words as you might expect at such a posture. At this the whole multitude had indignation, and made a clamor to Cumanus [the provincial Roman procurator], that he would punish the soldier; while the rasher part of the youth, and such as were naturally the most tumultuous, fell to fighting, and caught up stones, and threw them at the soldiers“. Things got worse.