The nearly impregnable Masada resists Roman attempts to reduce it, however.

According to Josephus, additional members of the Sicarii and numerous Jewish families fled Jerusalem after its fall and settled on the mountaintop, using it as a base for harassing the Romans.

The Masada garrison—the last remnant of Jewish rule in Palestine—refuses to surrender.

The Roman governor of Iudaea Lucius Flavius Silva, commanding the legio X Fretensis in 72, lays siege to Masada.

The Roman legion surrounds Masada and builds a circumvallation wall and then a siege embankment against the western face of the plateau, moving thousands of tons of stones and beaten earth to do so.

Josephus does not record any attempts by the Sicarii to counterattack the besiegers during this process, a significant difference from his accounts of other sieges against Jewish fortresses.

He does record their raid before the siege on Ein-Gedi, a nearby Jewish settlement, where the Sicarii allegedly killed seven hundred of its inhabitants.