The sicarii. The course of the attack of ancient terrorists from a contemporary analytical perspective

Abstract

The authors claim that contemporary international terrorism differs a little from the acts of violence that took place in ancient history. Such an example of the use of political terrorism was Sicarii, a Jewish sect operating in Palestineand Egypt in the years 66-73 CE. Almost all information about this group comes from Flavius Josephus, a Roman historian of Jewish origin. The term sicarii itself has a Latin etymology and means murderers or assassins. It appeared in legal Latin in 81 BCE together with the Act Lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficis, which was one of the first legal regulations in the field of serious organized crime. The Sicarii, however, fought in their own country with the intention of liberating it from the rule of a foreign power, Rome. Using the available source materials, the authors analyzed a typical attack made by Sicarii and confronted it with the achievements of modern forensics and experience in the field of secret services. This made it possible to establish the conditions that had to be met for such an attack. To take place to effectively use terrorism for political struggle by the Sicarii.