Lucius Flavius Silva Nonius Bassus was a late-1st century Roman general, governor of the province of Iudaea

Judaea (Roman province)

Judaea or Iudaea are terms used by historians to refer to the Roman province that extended over parts of the former regions of the Hasmonean and Herodian kingdoms of Israel...

 and consul

Roman consul

A consul served in the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic.Each year, two consuls were elected together, to serve for a one-year term. Each consul was given veto power over his colleague and the officials would alternate each month...

. History remembers Silva as the Roman commander who led his army, composed mainly of the Legio X Fretensis

Legio X Fretensis

Legio X Fretensis was a Roman legion levied by Augustus Caesar in 41/40 BC to fight during the period of civil war that started the dissolution of the Roman Republic...

, in 73 AD up to Masada

Masada

Masada is the name for a site of ancient palaces and fortifications in the South District of Israel, on top of an isolated rock plateau, or horst, on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea. Masada is best known for the violence that occurred there in the first century CE...

 and laid siege to its near-impenetrable mountain fortress occupied by a group of Jewish rebels called the Sicarii

Sicarii

Sicarii is a term applied, in the decades immediately preceding the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, to an extremist splinter group of the Jewish Zealots, who attempted to expel the Romans and their partisans from Judea using concealed daggers .-History:The Sicarii used...

. The end of the siege culminated with the mass suicide of the Sicarii who preferred death to defeat or capture.