Modern Adaptations: Feuchtwanger's Trilogy
The German first edition of Der jüdische Krieg (Verlag; 1932) includes an illustration of a reverse Judea Capta coin on the cover, showing a woman seated below a palm tree with her head bowed in mourning. The illustration is based on coins produced by Roman Emperor Vespasian commemorating the capture of Judea and destruction of the Second Temple by his son Titus. The 1973 English edition Josephus (New York: Atheneum) echoes Roman coinage, this time imagining a commemorative coin of Josephus himself.
The Arch of Titus is illustrated in various editions of Feuchtwanger’s trilogy, such as on the cover of the 1937 Russian edition of Der jüdische Krieg, and on the title page of the Norwegian first edition.
“A theme that has thoroughly moved me for as long as I can recall is the basic human conflict between nationalism and internationalism that exists in the breast of man... I chose to relocate that conflict back into the soul of a man, who, as I see it, experienced it in the same form as so many people today; I transferred it back some 1860 years, into the soul of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus.”
