It's all collected in The Wars of the Jews, Josephus' most well-known text from between 75 and 79 CE.įrom the trailer, it seems like the biggest stretch in the miniseries comes when Josephus promises that he'll tell the story of the women of Masada, who serve as The Dovekeepers' main characters, and that he's only interested in 'the truth.' Hmm. Josephus claimed that Masada's inhabitants resisted until their last moments, when they committed mass suicide and allegedly set their city ablaze as Romans entered their fortress. A little background: While Josephus was a Roman defector, at the end of his life, he painstakingly accounted the resistance of the Jewish people as the Romans bore down on their settlement in Masada, a city on a cliff in ancient Israel. Josephus is portrayed in the TV series by Sam Neill. Since this would have happened in about 70 AD/CE, there's no undisputed account of what happened in Masada.īut there's one text that stands above all others - the writing of Flavius Josephus. According to some texts, this struggle was between the Roman Empire and Jewish people living in Israel, and culminated in a prolonged attack and the suicide of 960 Jewish rebels. The Dovekeepers is based on Alice Hoffman's novel of the same name, which was inspired by the real-life account of The Jewish War and siege of Masada. CBS' limited historical series The Dovekeepers may not take on the entire story, but that doesn't mean it's not an ambitious adaptation.

The dovekeepers