…constructs the fortress Herodion (Herodium) atop a volcano-like hill with a truncated cone located twelve kilometers (seven and a half miles) south of Jerusalem, near the city of Bethlehem in the present West Bank.

Titus had set sail for Rome in the spring of 71.

A new military governor he has appointed from Rome, Lucilius Bassus, prefect of the fleet stationed at Ravenna, had betrayed Vitellius by siding with Vespasian during the Year of the Four Emperors.

Bassus’s assigned task being the "mopping-up" operations in Judea, he uses X Fretensis to besiege and capture the few remaining fortresses that still resist.

Bassus takes Herodium, then …