‘Unable to put an unbroken ring of men round the town because of its situation, [Vespasian] posted sentries wherever he could and occupied the hill that overlooked it. When the legions had fortified their camps in the usual way on its slopes, he began to construct platforms at the tail end’ (3, §12–13)

 

It is probably futile to look for the remains of the Roman camps. Attempts by Gutmann to locate them on the plateau north and south of Gamla have not yielded results. Any comparison with the well-preserved stone-built camps at Masada is equally meaningless. Vespasian did not plan to spend much time at Gamla and the camps and sentry posts would have been constructed of perishable wood. Even if their foundations were of stone, these were long ago dismantled by agricultural and building activity during the subsequent centuries, especially from the Byzantine period onwards