In 38 BCE, Jewish partisans of Antigonus who were opposing Herod in his conquest of the land with the help of Roman, sought refuge from his troops in the caves dotting the steep northern cliffs of Mount Arbel, but couldn't escape death. Their story is told by Josephus, who himself fortified the cave-village as a storage base at the beginning of the First Jewish-Roman War against Rome in 66 CE.