Jewish War — Book 2

Josephus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

New disturbances for Archelaus arose from the necessity of his journey to Rome. He had mourned his father seven days and given the people a lavish funeral banquet — a custom among the Jews that ruins many through poverty, since one must give the feast regardless of cost; to omit it is impious — and then he changed into white clothing and went up to the temple, where the people met him with all kinds of acclamations.

He greeted the crowd from a raised platform and a golden throne, thanking them for the zeal they had shown at his father's funeral and for the deference they were already paying him as though he were confirmed king. But he said he would for the present hold back not only from the power itself but even from the titles of it, until Caesar, who by the terms of the will was master of the whole succession, ratified it for him — indeed he had refused to let the army fasten the diadem on him at Jericho. Still, for their eagerness and goodwill, shown alike by the soldiers and by the people, he would repay them in full once his kingship had been confirmed by the ruling powers; for he meant in every way to show himself better to them than his father had been.

Delighted by this, the crowd at once tested his intentions with large demands: some shouted for lighter taxes, others for the abolition of tolls, still others for the release of prisoners. He agreed readily to all of it, courting the crowd's favor, and then, after sacrificing, spent the time feasting with his friends.

It was then, toward evening, that a considerable number of men bent on revolution gathered and began a mourning of their own — now that the public mourning for the king was over — lamenting those whom Herod had punished for cutting down the golden eagle from the temple gate. Their grief was not restrained: there were piercing wails, orchestrated dirges, and beating of breasts that echoed through the whole city, as though for men who had perished by fire for the sake of the ancestral laws and the temple.

They shouted that vengeance ought to be taken on those Herod had honored, and first of all that the man he had installed as high priest should be removed; it was fitting, they said, that they choose a more pious and purer man in his place. Archelaus was provoked by this, but he held back from retaliating because of the pressure of his imminent departure, fearing that if he provoked the crowd to war he might himself be caught up in the uprising. He therefore tried persuasion rather than force to check the agitators, sending the commander of his forces to appeal to them to stop.

But the moment this officer entered the temple, before he could utter a word, the rebels drove him off with stones, along with those who had come with him to restore order — though Archelaus sent many of them in. Whatever was said back to them was met with fury, and it was clear they would not be still if their numbers grew. And now the feast of Unleavened Bread was approaching, which the Jews call Passover, a feast expecting a great multitude of sacrificial victims; countless people came down from the country for the observance, while the mourners for the sophists gathered in the temple, drawing sustenance for their sedition. Alarmed at this, Archelaus, before the sickness could spread through the whole crowd, sent in a tribune with a cohort, with orders to seize the ringleaders of the sedition by force.

At this the whole crowd flew into a rage; most of the cohort they killed by stoning, and the tribune barely escaped, wounded. After this the people, as though nothing terrible had happened, turned back to their sacrifices. But Archelaus no longer thought the crowd could be controlled without bloodshed, and he sent his whole army against them — infantry in a body through the city, cavalry across the plain.

Falling suddenly upon people in the midst of their sacrifices, they killed about three thousand and scattered the rest into the nearby hills. Archelaus' heralds followed, ordering everyone to go home, and all left, abandoning the feast. Archelaus himself, with his mother and his friends Poplas, Ptolemy, and Nicolaus, went down to the coast, leaving Philip in charge of the palace and the household.

Salome set out with him too, along with her children and the king's nephews and sons-in-law — ostensibly to support Archelaus's claim to the succession, but in truth to bring charges over the lawless acts committed at the temple. At Caesarea they were met by Sabinus, the procurator of Syria, on his way up into Judea to secure Herod's money.

Varus arrived and stopped him from going any further, since Archelaus, through Ptolemy, had begged repeatedly for his intervention. So Sabinus, out of deference to Varus, did not hurry to the fortresses at that time, nor did he seal off the treasuries of the royal money from Archelaus, but promised to remain quiet until Caesar's decision, and stayed on at Caesarea. When the obstacles were removed, Varus set off for Antioch, and Archelaus put to sea for Rome.

As soon as he reached Jerusalem in haste, he took possession of the palace and summoned the garrison commanders and stewards, trying to examine the accounts of the money and to take over the fortresses. But Archelaus's own guards did not neglect their orders; they remained at their posts, holding each place in trust for Caesar rather than for Archelaus.

Meanwhile Antipas again disputed the succession, going out to press his claim, insisting that the earlier will was more valid than the codicil, since in it he himself had been named king. Salome had promised beforehand to support him, as had many of the relatives sailing with Archelaus. He brought with him his mother and Nicolaus's brother Ptolemy, who seemed likely to carry weight because of the trust Herod had placed in him — he had in fact been the most honored of his friends.

But Antipas relied most of all, for skill in speaking, on the orator Irenaeus, and it was on his advice that he rejected those who urged him to yield to Archelaus's seniority and to the terms of the codicil. At Rome the sympathies of all the relatives, who hated Archelaus, now shifted to Antipas; each one, above all, wanted autonomy under a Roman governor, but failing that, wanted Antipas as king.

Sabinus helped their cause too, sending letters to accuse Archelaus before Caesar and praise Antipas at length. Salome's party drew up their charges and submitted them to Caesar, and after them Archelaus sent in, through Ptolemy, a written summary of his own claims, along with his father's signet ring and his accounts. Caesar weighed what each side presented privately — the size of the kingdom, the amount of its revenue, and the number of Herod's descendants — and having also read beforehand the dispatches sent by Varus and Sabinus on these matters, he convened a council of the leading Romans, in which he seated, for the first time, Gaius, the adopted son of Agrippa and his daughter Julia. He then gave the parties leave to speak.

Salome's son Antipater, the most formidable speaker among Archelaus's opponents, rose and made his accusation: he said that Archelaus, though in words disputing the kingship only now, had in fact long since made himself king in deed, and was now merely mocking Caesar's hearing — the very man he had not waited for as judge of the succession. For after Herod's death he had sent in agents to place the diadem on him, had sat enthroned in judgment as king, had reassigned ranks in the army and granted promotions, and had moreover granted the people everything they thought fit to ask of a king, releasing even those his father had imprisoned on the gravest charges — and now he had come to beg from his master a mere shadow of the kingship whose substance he had already seized for himself, making Caesar lord not of the facts but only of the titles.

He reproached him too for mocking even the mourning for his father — feigning grief on his face by day, while by night he was drunk with revelry — during which, he said, the very disorder among the crowd had arisen from their outrage at this. And he pressed the whole weight of his case on the multitude slaughtered around the temple, who had come for the feast and were butchered ruthlessly in the midst of their own sacrifices, so that such a heap of corpses had piled up in the temple as not even a foreign war, breaking out without warning, could have produced.

This very cruelty, he said, his own father had foreseen, and had never thought him worthy even of the hope of the kingship, not even when, weaker in mind than in body, he was no longer master of sound judgment and did not even know whom he had named successor in the codicil — and this though he could find no fault at all with the man named in the will proper, which he had drawn up in full bodily health and with a soul free of all passion. But even if one were to give greater weight to the judgment of the dying man, Archelaus had disqualified himself from the kingship by his own lawless acts against it — for what sort of man would he become, once he had received the rule from Caesar, who before receiving it had already destroyed so many?

Having gone through many such charges, and having brought forward most of the relatives as witnesses to each of the accusations, Antipater ended his speech. Then Nicolaus rose on behalf of Archelaus, and argued that the killing in the temple had been unavoidable: those killed had become enemies not only of the kingdom but of Caesar himself, who was the very judge of that kingdom's fate. As to the other charges, he showed that the accusers themselves had been counselors in the very acts they now denounced. And as for the codicil, he argued it should carry authority precisely because in it Herod had made Caesar the guarantor of the succession; for a man sound enough of mind to yield his authority to the master of the world could hardly have erred in judging his own heir — a man sound enough to choose his own arbiter surely knew the one he was choosing.

When Nicolaus had gone through everything, Archelaus came forward and quietly fell at Caesar's knees. Caesar raised him up most kindly, making clear that he thought him worthy of his father's succession, though he pronounced nothing final. He dismissed the council for that day and considered privately what he had heard, weighing whether he should appoint one of those named in the wills as sole successor, or divide the realm among the whole family — for it seemed that, given the sheer number of claimants, some accommodation for all of them was needed.

Before Caesar could decide anything on this, Archelaus's mother, Malthace, fell ill and died, and letters arrived from Varus in Syria concerning a revolt of the Jews. Varus had foreseen this — for after Archelaus sailed he had gone up to Jerusalem to restrain the agitators, since it was plain the crowd would not stay quiet — and had left behind, in the city, one of the three legions from Syria that he had brought with him. He himself returned to Antioch. But Sabinus, arriving on the scene, gave them an occasion for further revolution: he tried to force the garrisons to hand over the fortresses, and searched harshly for the royal money, relying not only on the soldiers Varus had left behind but on a multitude of his own slaves, whom he armed and used as agents of his greed.

When Pentecost came round — the Jews give this name to a feast that falls after a count of seven weeks and takes its title from that number of days — it was not the usual religious observance but sheer outrage that drew the people together. An immense crowd converged from Galilee, from Idumea, from Jericho, and from Perea across the Jordan, though the native population of Judea itself outdid the rest both in numbers and in eagerness. They divided themselves into three companies and encamped in three places — one on the north side of the temple, one on the south by the hippodrome, and the third by the palace on the west — and surrounded the Romans on every side, besieging them.

Sabinus, alarmed both at their numbers and their resolve, sent messenger after messenger to Varus, begging him to come to his aid quickly, warning that the legion would be cut to pieces if he delayed. He himself climbed to the highest tower of the fortress, the one called Phasael after Herod's brother who had been killed by the Parthians, and from there signaled the soldiers of the legion to attack the enemy — for in his terror he did not even dare go down to his own men. Persuaded by his signal, the soldiers rushed forward into the temple and joined fierce battle with the Jews; and for as long as no one attacked them from above, their experience in war gave them the advantage over the untrained crowd. But when many of the Jews climbed onto the porticoes and rained missiles down on their heads,

many of the Romans were crushed, and it was neither easy to fend off those shooting from above nor to withstand those fighting hand to hand at close quarters. Hard pressed on both counts, they set fire to the porticoes — works admirable for their size and their splendor. Those caught on them by the sudden blaze perished in great numbers in the flames; many others leapt down among the enemy below and died there, some threw themselves backward off the wall,

and toppled to their deaths, while others, in their desperation, forestalled the fire with their own swords. Those who crept down from the walls and rushed at the Romans were easy enough to handle, given their panic. With so many dead and the rest scattered by fear, the soldiers fell upon the now-undefended treasury of God and plundered about four hundred talents, of which Sabinus collected whatever the soldiers had not managed to steal for themselves.

But the destruction of these buildings and of these men roused against the Romans a far greater number of Jews, and fiercer ones. They surrounded the palace and threatened to kill everyone inside unless they left at once, promising Sabinus safe passage if he wished to withdraw with his legion. Most of the royal troops deserted and joined them. But the most warlike unit, the three thousand Sebastenes, together with Rufus and Gratus — the one commanding the royal infantry under him, the other the cavalry, each of them, even apart from any troops under his command, a decisive force in war through his own courage and skill — went over to the Romans. The Jews pressed the siege of the walls, meanwhile also attempting the fortress itself and calling on Sabinus and his men to leave and not stand in the way of their regaining, after so long a time,

their ancestral independence. Sabinus would gladly have withdrawn, but he distrusted their promises, suspecting their mildness to be bait set for an ambush; and at the same time, hoping for relief from Varus, he dragged out the siege. Meanwhile the country was in turmoil in many places, and the moment tempted a great many men to aspire to kingship. In Idumea, for instance,

Two thousand of the men who had once served under Herod banded together under arms and fought the royal troops, whom Achiabus, the king's cousin, led from the most defensible positions, avoiding open combat on the plains. In Sepphoris of Galilee, Judas, son of that Ezekias who had once ravaged the countryside as chief brigand and had been subdued by King Herod, gathered no small following, broke open the royal armories, armed the men around him, and made a bid for power against those who coveted it.

In Perea, a certain Simon, one of the king's own slaves, trusting in his handsome build and great size, set a diadem on his own head. Roaming about with a band of brigands he had gathered, he burned the palace at Jericho and many other costly country houses, easily enriching himself with plunder from the flames. He would have gone on to burn every fine residence, had not Gratus, commander of the royal infantry, taken the Trachonite archers and the most warlike of the men of Sebaste and gone out to meet him. Many of the Perean rebels fell in the battle; Simon himself, fleeing up a steep ravine, was cut off by Gratus, who struck him a blow across the neck from the side as he fled and felled him. The palace near the Jordan at Betharamatha was likewise burned, by another band that had gathered from Perea.

At that time a shepherd too dared to lay claim to the kingship. His name was Athronges, and what gave him hope for it was his bodily strength, a spirit that despised death, and, besides these, four brothers just like him. To each of these he assigned an armed company, using them as generals and satraps for his raids, while he himself, like a king, busied himself with the graver matters. It was then that he set the diadem on his own head, and he continued for no small time afterward, overrunning the country with his brothers. Killing Romans and royal troops was their chief object, but no Jew who fell into their hands escaped either, if there was profit to be had. Once they even dared to surround an entire company of Romans near Emmaus, who were conveying grain and weapons to the legion.

They shot down the centurion in command, Arius, and forty of his bravest men; the rest, in danger of suffering the same fate, escaped when Gratus came to their aid with the men of Sebaste. Having done many such deeds to both natives and foreigners throughout the war, in time three of the brothers were captured — the eldest by Archelaus, the next two by falling into the hands of Gratus and Ptolemy — while the fourth surrendered to Archelaus under a pledge of safety. This was the end that awaited them later; but at the time they filled all Judea with a war of brigandage.

When Varus received the letters from Sabinus and the commanders, he grew fearful for the whole legion and hastened to its relief. Taking the remaining two legions and the four squadrons of cavalry attached to them, he marched for Ptolemais, ordering the auxiliary forces from the kings and other rulers to assemble there as well. Passing through Berytus he also took on fifteen hundred heavy infantry from its people. When the rest of his allied forces had joined him at Ptolemais, and when Aretas the Arab, out of his hostility toward Herod, arrived with no small force of cavalry and infantry, Varus at once sent part of his army into Galilee, which bordered on Ptolemais, under Gaius, one of his own friends in command. Gaius routed those who came out against him, took the city of Sepphoris, burned it, and enslaved its inhabitants.

Varus himself, with the whole of his remaining force, marched on Samaria, but spared the city, finding it had taken no part in the disturbances of the others, and instead camped near a village called Arous. This was an estate of Ptolemy's, and for that reason it was plundered by the Arabs, who bore a grudge even against Herod's friends. From there he advanced to another fortified village, Sappho, which they plundered in the same way, along with all the neighboring places they came upon. Everything was filled with fire and slaughter, and nothing withstood the Arabs' plundering.

Emmaus too was burned, its inhabitants having fled, for Varus had ordered it in anger over the killing of Arius and his men. Advancing from there to Jerusalem, he had only to be seen with his army for the Jewish encampments to scatter; the rebels fled off into the countryside, while the people of the city received him and set about clearing themselves of the charge of revolt, saying that they themselves had incited no disturbance but had received the crowds for the festival only under necessity, and so had found themselves besieged along with the Romans rather than fighting alongside the rebels. Coming out to meet him beforehand were Joseph, cousin of Archelaus, and, with Gratus, Rufus, bringing with them the royal army together with the men of Sebaste, and those of the Roman legion arrayed in their customary fashion; for Sabinus could not bear even to appear before Varus, and had already left the city for the coast.

Varus sent detachments of his army throughout the country against those responsible for the uprising, and when many were brought in, he imprisoned those who appeared the less turbulent and crucified about two thousand of the chief offenders. He was informed that ten thousand armed men still remained together in Idumea. Finding that the Arabs were not behaving like allies but were campaigning to satisfy their own resentment, doing harm to the country beyond the bounds of his own policy, out of their hatred for Herod, he sent them away, and hurried against the rebels with his own legions. They, before coming to blows, surrendered themselves on the advice of Achiabus; Varus released the mass of them from blame but sent their leaders to Caesar to be examined.

Caesar pardoned most of them, but ordered some of the king's relatives to be punished, since some among them were kin to Herod by blood, because they had taken up arms against a king of their own house. Having thus settled affairs in Jerusalem and left the legion that had been there before as a garrison, Varus returned to Antioch.

At Rome, meanwhile, another suit arose against Archelaus, brought by the Jews who, before the revolt, had gone out with Varus's permission as envoys concerning the nation's autonomy. Fifty of them were present, and they were joined by more than eight thousand of the Jews resident at Rome. Caesar assembled a council of the leading Romans and his friends in the temple of Apollo on the Palatine, a building of his own construction, adorned with wonderful magnificence. On one side, with the envoys, stood the Jewish crowd; opposite them, with his friends, stood Archelaus; the friends of his relatives stood with neither side — unwilling to join Archelaus out of hatred and envy, yet ashamed to be seen by Caesar among his accusers. Among them was also Philip, Archelaus's brother, sent ahead out of goodwill by Varus for two reasons: to support Archelaus, and, should Caesar divide Herod's estate among all his descendants, to be judged worthy of a share himself.

When the accusers were given leave to speak, they first ran through the lawless acts of Herod, saying they had endured not a king but the cruelest tyrant that ever held power; for though very many had been put to death by him, those left alive had suffered such things that the dead were to be counted fortunate. He had tortured not only the bodies of his subjects but their cities as well: he had disfigured his own, while adorning those of foreigners, lavishing the blood of Judea on peoples abroad. In place of the nation's ancient prosperity and ancestral laws, he had filled it with poverty and the extremity of lawlessness, and, in sum, the Jews had endured more calamities from Herod in a few years than their forefathers had suffered in all the time since their return from Babylon, when Xerxes was king, after their earlier dispersion.

Yet they had advanced so far in submissiveness and in the habit of misfortune that they even endured a voluntary succession to their bitter servitude: they had readily hailed Archelaus, son of so great a tyrant, as king immediately after his father's death, had joined him in mourning Herod's death, and had prayed with him for the succession. And he, as though anxious that he might be thought Herod's bastard rather than his true son, had opened his reign with the slaughter of three thousand citizens — so many victims offered up to God for the sake of his rule, so many corpses with which he had filled the temple at a festival. Those who survived so many disasters had understandably at last turned to face their misfortunes and, by the law of war, were willing to receive their wounds face-on.

They begged the Romans to have pity on what remained of Judea, and not to cast what was left of it before those who tore at it so savagely, but rather to join their country to Syria and administer it under governors of their own; for it would be shown that these people, now slandered as seditious and warlike, knew well how to obey moderate rulers. With this plea the Jews concluded their accusation. Then Nicolaus rose and cleared the kings of the charges leveled against them, while accusing the nation in turn of being by nature unruly and disobedient toward its rulers. He also cast blame on those relatives of Archelaus who had gone over to the side of the accusers.

Then Caesar, having heard both sides, dismissed the council, and a few days later gave half the kingdom to Archelaus, styling him ethnarch, and promising to make him king as well if he proved himself worthy of it. The other half he divided into two tetrarchies, which he gave to two other sons of Herod: one to Philip, the other to Antipas, who had contended with Archelaus over the kingship. Under Antipas came Perea and Galilee, yielding revenue of two hundred talents; Batanea, Trachonitis, Auranitis, and certain parts of the house of Zeno around Jamnia, yielding a revenue of one hundred talents, were placed under Philip.

Archelaus's ethnarchy comprised Idumea, all of Judea, and Samaria — the last relieved of a quarter of its tribute in honor of its refusal to join the others in revolt. The subject cities allotted to him were Strato's Tower, Sebaste, Joppa, and Jerusalem; for the Greek cities of Gaza, Gadara, and Hippos he cut away from the kingdom and added to Syria. The revenue of the territory given to Archelaus came to four hundred talents. Salome, besides what the king had left her in his will — Jamnia, Azotus, and Phasaelis — was made mistress of these, and Caesar also granted her the palace at Ascalon; her total revenue from all these came to sixty talents. Her estate he placed under the authority of Archelaus's toparchy.

Each of the rest of Herod's family received what had been left to them in the will. To his two unmarried daughters, Caesar granted from his own funds five hundred thousand pieces of silver, and gave them in marriage to the sons of Pheroras. After settling the estate, he further divided among them the gift Herod had left to himself, amounting to a thousand talents, keeping back for himself only a few of the deceased's belongings as a token of honor.

About this time, a young man, Jewish by birth but raised at Sidon in the household of a Roman freedman, came to Rome falsely claiming, on the strength of a physical resemblance, to be Alexander, whom Herod had put to death, hoping to pass unnoticed. He had an accomplice of his own people who knew everything about the affairs of the kingdom; coached by him, he claimed that those sent to kill him and Aristobulus had, out of pity, spirited them away by substituting look-alike bodies. With this story he deceived the Jews of Crete and, richly supplied for the journey, sailed on to Melos, where he gathered even greater support through the extraordinary credibility of his tale, and persuaded his hosts there to sail with him to Rome as well. Landing at Dicaearchia, he received an abundance of gifts from the Jews there and was escorted on his way by his father's friends as though he really were king.

So far had the likeness of his features carried conviction that even those who had seen Alexander and knew him well swore that this was indeed he. The whole Jewish population of Rome poured out to see him, and an immense crowd thronged the narrow streets through which he was carried; for the people of Melos had gone so far in their folly as to carry him about in a litter and to provide him with a royal retinue at their own expense.

Caesar, however, who knew Alexander's features exactly, having had him described by Herod's own accusation before him, saw through the deception even before he laid eyes on the man; still, allowing some room for more agreeable hope, he sent a certain Celadus, one of those who knew Alexander well, with orders to bring the youth to him. As soon as Celadus saw him, he at once detected the differences in his face, and, noting that his whole frame was coarser and had the look of a slave, understood the entire scheme. What provoked him most, though, was the impudence of the man's own claims: to those who asked after Aristobulus, he said that he too had survived, but had been purposely left behind in Cyprus to guard against plots, since it was harder to move against them when separated.

Taking him aside privately, Celadus said to him: 'Caesar grants you your life on one condition — that you name the man who persuaded you to play out so great a deception.' The man, promising to tell him, followed him to Caesar and pointed out the Jew who had exploited his resemblance for profit, saying that he had received more gifts in every city than Alexander himself had ever received while alive. Caesar, laughing at all this, enrolled the false Alexander among the oarsmen on account of his fine physique, and ordered the man who had put him up to it to be put to death; the people of Melos were let off with the expenses they had incurred as sufficient punishment for their folly.

Once Archelaus had taken up the ethnarchy, he treated not only the Jews but the Samaritans as well with harshness, in remembrance of their old quarrels with him. Both peoples sent embassies against him to Caesar, and in the ninth year of his rule he was banished to Vienne, a city in Gaul, and his property was confiscated to Caesar's treasury.

Before he was summoned by Caesar, they say he had a dream of this kind: he seemed to see nine ears of grain, full and large, being devoured by oxen. Sending for the seers and some of the Chaldeans, he asked what they thought it signified. When the interpretations differed, a certain Simon, of the Essene sect, said that the ears of grain should be reckoned as years, and the oxen as a change of fortunes, since oxen, in plowing, turn the soil about; so that he would reign for as many years as there were ears of grain, and would end his life after undergoing changes of fortune of various kinds. Five days after hearing this, Archelaus was summoned to trial. I have thought it worth recording also the dream of his wife Glaphyra, which —

She was the daughter of Archelaus, king of Cappadocia, and had first been the wife of Alexander—the brother of the Archelaus we have been discussing, and son of King Herod, by whose hand he had been put to death, as we have shown. After Alexander's death she married Juba, king of Libya, and when he too died she returned home and was living there as a widow with her father. It was then that the ethnarch Archelaus saw her and fell so deeply in love that he at once divorced his wife Mariamme and married her instead. Not long after her arrival in Judea, she dreamed that Alexander stood over her and said:

"Your marriage in Libya should have been enough for you. Not satisfied with that, you have come back again to my hearth, taking a third husband—and my own brother at that, shameless woman. Still, I will not overlook this outrage. I will take you back, whether you wish it or not."

After telling this dream, she lived scarcely two more days.

When Archelaus's territory had been reduced to a Roman province, Coponius, a man of equestrian rank, was sent out as procurator, holding from Caesar the power of life and death. Under his administration a Galilean named Judas incited the local population to revolt, reproaching them for submitting to pay tribute to Rome and, after God, tolerating mortal masters. This man was a teacher with a school of thought all his own, quite unlike the others.

For there are three schools of philosophy among the Jews. The followers of the first are called Pharisees, of the second Sadducees, and the third, who claim to cultivate a particularly strict piety, are called Essenes. These are Jews by birth, but bound to one another by a stronger affection than the others show.

They shun pleasure as an evil and regard self-control and the mastery of the passions as virtue. Marriage they hold in contempt, though they take other men's children while still young enough to be taught and treat them as their own kin, molding them according to their own principles. They do not condemn marriage itself, or the succession it brings, but they guard against the wantonness of women, convinced that no woman keeps faith with one man alone.

They despise wealth, and their sharing of property is remarkable—one cannot find among them a single person who owns more than another. It is their rule that those who enter the sect surrender their property to the order, so that among them all there appears neither the abjectness of poverty nor the excess of riches; the possessions of each member are mingled together as though they belonged to brothers, forming a single estate for them all.

They regard oil as a defilement, and if anyone is anointed against his will he scrubs his body clean; for they set store by a rough, unadorned appearance and by wearing white garments at all times. Officers to manage the community's affairs are chosen by vote, and each is assigned without distinction to the tasks the group as a whole requires.

They have no single city, but many of them live as residents in each town. And to members arriving from elsewhere, all that the local community possesses is thrown open just as if it were their own, and they go in to men they have never met before as if they were their closest friends. For this reason, when they travel they carry nothing at all with them, except weapons against bandits. In every city a steward of the order is appointed specifically to look after visitors, supplying them with clothing and other necessities. In dress and bearing they resemble children brought up under a strict tutor.

They do not change their clothes or sandals until the old ones are completely torn to pieces or worn out by time. They neither buy nor sell anything among themselves; rather, each man gives what he has to whoever needs it and receives in exchange whatever useful thing that man has to offer, and even without such an exchange they are free to take from one another whatever they wish.

Toward the divine they show a particular reverence: before sunrise they speak no word on ordinary matters, but recite certain ancestral prayers to the sun, as though entreating it to rise. After this they are dismissed by their officers, each to the trade he knows, and work diligently until the fifth hour, when they gather again in one place. There, girding themselves with linen cloths, they bathe their bodies in cold water,

and after this purification they assemble in a private hall, which no one of a different persuasion is permitted to enter. Clean now themselves, they proceed to the dining hall as though it were a sacred precinct. Once they are seated in silence, the baker sets out the loaves in order, and the cook serves each man a single dish of one kind of food. Before the meal the priest says a grace,

and it is forbidden for anyone to taste the food before the prayer. When he has finished his meal, he offers a further prayer; both at the beginning and at the end they praise God as the giver of life. Then, laying aside their garments as sacred things, they return again to their labors until evening. Coming back, they dine in the same way, the visitors, if any happen to be present, sitting down with them. No shouting or disturbance ever defiles the house;

in conversation they yield to one another in due order. To outsiders the silence within seems like some fearsome mystery, but the cause of it is their constant sobriety and the fact that among them food and drink are measured out only to satisfaction, never to excess.

In everything else they do nothing except at the command of their officers, but two things are left to their own free choice: giving help and showing mercy. They may assist the deserving on their own initiative whenever there is need, and supply food to those in want; but gifts to relatives may not be made without the permission of the stewards.

They are just stewards of their anger, keep their temper in check, are champions of good faith, and ministers of peace. Whatever they say carries more weight than an oath, and they refrain from swearing at all, regarding it as worse than perjury; for they say a man is already condemned if he cannot be believed without invoking God.

They are remarkably devoted to the writings of the ancients, singling out above all those that serve the health of soul and body; from these they research roots with healing power and the properties of stones, for the treatment of ailments. For those who wish to join their sect, admission is not immediate; the candidate remains outside for a year and follows the same rule of life,

being given a small hatchet, the loincloth already mentioned, and a white garment. Once he has proved his self-control over that period, he is brought closer to their way of life and allowed to share in the purer waters used for cleansing, but he is still not admitted to full membership. After this demonstration of endurance, his character is tested for two more years, and only when he is shown to be worthy is he enrolled in the group.

Before he may touch the common meal, he must swear fearsome oaths to them: first, that he will show piety toward God; then, that he will observe justice toward men, that he will wrong no one whether of his own accord or under orders, that he will always hate the unjust and fight alongside the just, that he will keep faith always with all people, and especially with those in authority, since no one attains power except by God's will;

that if he himself should hold authority, he will never abuse his position or outshine his subordinates in dress or any other display of finery; that he will always love truth and expose liars; that he will keep his hands free from theft and his soul from unholy gain; that he will conceal nothing from his fellow members nor reveal anything of theirs to others, even under threat of death.

Beyond this he swears to pass on the sect's teachings to no one except as he himself received them, to abstain from banditry, and to preserve in like manner both the books of their sect and the names of the angels. With such oaths do they bind those who come to them.

Those convicted of serious offenses they expel from the order. The one expelled often meets a most pitiable end; for bound as he still is by his oaths and customs, he is unable to share in the food of outsiders, and so, forced to eat grass, he wastes away from hunger until he dies. This is why they have, out of pity, taken many such men back at their last gasp, judging that a punishment carried to the point of death is penalty enough for their offenses.

In matters of judgment they are extremely exacting and just; they render verdicts only when at least a hundred are gathered together, and what they decide is unalterable. After God, the name of the lawgiver commands their deepest reverence, and anyone who blasphemes him is punished with death. They defer to their elders and to the majority as a matter of course—if ten sit together, no one will speak against the wishes of the other nine.

They are careful never to spit into the middle of a gathering or to the right side, and they are stricter than all other Jews about refraining from work on the Sabbath. Not only do they prepare their food a day in advance so as to kindle no fire on that day, but they will not even move a vessel or relieve themselves. On other days they dig a hole a foot deep with the small trowel—for this is the kind of little hatchet they give to new members—and, wrapping their cloak around them so as not to offend the rays of the sun,

they crouch over it. Afterward they pull the excavated earth back over the pit, and for this purpose they choose the more remote spots. And though the discharge of waste is a natural function, it is their custom to wash afterward as though defiled by it.

They are divided by length of time in the discipline into four grades, and the junior members are so far inferior to the senior ones that if the latter so much as touch them, they must wash themselves as though they had come into contact with a foreigner. They are long-lived, most of them surviving beyond a hundred years, which I attribute to the simplicity of their diet and their regular way of life. They hold the trials of life in contempt, overcoming pain by strength of will, and regard death, if it comes with honor, as better than immortality itself. The war with Rome tested their spirits to the utmost,

for in it, though racked and twisted, burned and broken, and made to pass through every instrument of torture, so that they might be forced to blaspheme the lawgiver or to eat some forbidden food, they endured neither—nor would they ever flatter their tormentors or shed a single tear. Smiling in their agony and mocking those who inflicted the torment, they gave up their souls cheerfully, confident they would receive them back again.

For this belief is firmly held among them: that the body is corruptible and its matter impermanent, but the soul endures forever, immortal; that souls, emanating from the finest ether, become entangled with bodies as though drawn down into a kind of prison by some natural spell, but that once released from the bonds of the flesh, as though freed at last from a long slavery,

they rejoice and are borne upward. And, in agreement with the sons of Greece, they hold that for the good souls a dwelling place beyond the ocean is reserved, a region troubled by neither rain nor snow nor scorching heat, but ever refreshed by a gentle west wind blowing in from the ocean; while for base souls they mark out a dark and stormy hollow, full of unending torments. It seems to me that the Greeks had the same idea in mind when they assigned

the Isles of the Blessed to their bravest men, whom they call heroes and demigods, and, for the souls of the wicked, the region of the impious in Hades, where they tell tales of certain figures being punished—Sisyphus, Tantalus, Ixion, and Tityus. They too, first of all, hold that souls are everlasting, and second, that this belief serves to encourage virtue and deter vice.

For the good, they say, become better in this life through hope of honor even after death, while the wicked find their impulses checked by the fear that, even if they escape notice while alive, they will suffer undying punishment after death is done. This, then, is the Essenes' theology concerning the soul, an inescapable lure they hold out to those who have once tasted their wisdom.

There are among them also some who profess to foreknow the future, trained from childhood in sacred books, various rites of purification, and the sayings of the prophets; and rarely, if ever, do they miss the mark in their predictions.

There is also another order of Essenes, agreeing with the rest in way of life, customs, and rules, but differing from them in their view of marriage. They believe that men who do not marry cut off the greatest part of life, the continuation of the race—indeed, that if everyone thought the same way, the race would very quickly die out entirely.

Even so, they put their prospective wives to a three-year test, and only marry them once they have menstruated three times, as proof that they are able to bear children. They do not have relations with their wives once they are pregnant, showing thereby that they marry not for pleasure but for the sake of children. Women bathe wearing a garment, just as the men bathe wearing a loincloth. Such are the customs of this order.

Of the two earlier schools, the Pharisees are those reputed to interpret the laws with the greatest precision, and they constitute the leading school. They attribute everything to fate and to God, holding that acting justly or otherwise lies for the most part with human beings, but that fate cooperates in every action as well. Every soul, they maintain, is imperishable, but only the souls of the good pass into another body,

while the souls of the wicked are subjected to eternal punishment. The Sadducees, the second school, do away with fate altogether and hold that God has no part in doing or in overseeing evil; they say that good and evil lie before men to choose between, and that each man turns to one or the other according to his own inclination. They deny the persistence of the soul, and along with it the punishments and honors of the afterlife.

The Pharisees, moreover, are affectionate toward one another and cultivate harmony within the community, whereas the Sadducees are harsher in their dealings even with each other, and their relations even with their own kind are as cold as if they were dealing with strangers. This is what I have to say about the philosophical schools among the Jews.

When Archelaus's ethnarchy had been converted into a province, his remaining brothers, Philip and Herod—known as Antipas—governed their own tetrarchies. Salome, upon her death, left her toparchy, along with Jamnia and the palm groves at Phasaelis, to Julia, the wife of Augustus. When, after the death of Augustus, the government of Rome passed to Julia's son Tiberius, who directed affairs for fifty-seven years, six months, and two days,

Herod and Philip remained in their tetrarchies throughout. Philip founded a city at the sources of the Jordan, in Paneas, calling it Caesarea, and in lower Gaulanitis he founded Julias. Herod founded Tiberias in Galilee, and in Peraea a city likewise named after Julia. Pilate, sent to Judea as procurator by Tiberius, brought into Jerusalem by night, under cover, the...

...images of Caesar, which are called standards, into Jerusalem by night, hidden from view. When this became known by day it stirred the greatest turmoil among the Jews. Those near enough to see them were shocked, since they took it that their laws had been trampled underfoot — for they hold that no likeness may be set up in the city — and at the outcry of the people in the city a great crowd streamed in from the countryside as well. They rushed to Pilate at Caesarea and begged him to remove the standards from Jerusalem and to preserve for them the customs of their fathers.

When Pilate refused, they threw themselves on their faces around his house and held out, unmoving, for five days and as many nights. On the next day Pilate took his seat on the tribunal in the great stadium and, summoning the crowd as if to give them an answer, gave the soldiers a prearranged signal to surround the Jews under arms. When the ranks had closed around them three deep, the Jews stood speechless at the unexpected sight, and Pilate, declaring that he would cut them down unless they accepted the images of Caesar, motioned to the soldiers to bare their swords. But the Jews, as if by agreement, fell to the ground all together and bent back their necks, crying out that they were ready to be killed rather than transgress the law. Pilate, astonished at the depth of their devotion to their religion, ordered the standards removed from Jerusalem at once.

After this he stirred up a further disturbance by spending the sacred treasury — called the Corbonas — on an aqueduct, drawing water from a distance of four hundred stadia. The people were indignant at this, and when Pilate came to Jerusalem they surrounded his tribunal and shouted him down. But he, having foreseen their unrest, had mixed soldiers in with the crowd, armed but disguised in ordinary clothing, and had ordered them not to use the sword but to beat the shouters with clubs; he now gave the signal from the tribunal. Many of the Jews perished from the blows, and many others were trampled to death by their own countrymen in the flight. The crowd was so struck with dismay at the disaster to those who had been killed that it fell silent.

At this time Agrippa, son of that Aristobulus whom his father Herod had put to death, came before Tiberius as an accuser of Herod the tetrarch. When Tiberius refused to entertain the charge, Agrippa remained in Rome, cultivating the goodwill of the emperor's intimates, and above all of Gaius, the son of Germanicus, who was then still a private citizen. Once, entertaining him at dinner and showing him every kind of attention, he finally raised his hands and openly prayed that he might soon see Gaius master of the whole world, once Tiberius was dead. One of his household servants reported this to Tiberius, who, enraged, imprisoned Agrippa and kept him in chains for six months, until he himself died, having governed for twenty-two years, six months, and three days.

When Gaius Caesar was proclaimed emperor, he released Agrippa from his chains and, since Philip had died, made him king in place of Philip's tetrarchy. When Agrippa arrived to take up his rule, envy stirred up in Herod the tetrarch a longing for the like honor. It was above all his wife Herodias who drove him toward this hope of a kingdom, reproaching him for his inaction and telling him that it was only his refusal to sail to Caesar that had cost him a greater rule — for if Caesar had made Agrippa king from a private citizen, how much less would he hesitate to raise Herod from a tetrarch? Persuaded by these words, Herod went to Gaius, who, condemning his greed, punished him with exile to Gaul; for Agrippa had followed him there as his accuser, and Gaius added Herod's tetrarchy to Agrippa's realm. Herod died in Gaul, his wife having gone into exile with him.

Gaius Caesar, meanwhile, grew so insolent toward fortune that he wished to be seen and called a god, and to strip his country of its noblest men, and he extended his impiety to Judea as well. He sent Petronius with an army to Jerusalem to set up his statues in the Temple, with orders that if the Jews refused to receive them, he was to put to death those who resisted and to enslave the rest of the nation. But God, it seems, had other plans for these commands. Petronius, with three legions and many allies from Syria, marched from Antioch into Judea. Some of the Jews disbelieved the reports of war, while others, believing them, found themselves helpless to resist; and fear quickly spread through the whole population once the army had arrived at Ptolemais.

This city lies on the coast of Galilee, built beside the great plain, and is enclosed by mountains: on the east by the hills of Galilee, sixty stadia away; on the south by Carmel, a hundred and twenty stadia distant; and on the north by the highest ridge, which the local people call the Ladder of Tyre, a hundred stadia off. About two stadia from the town flows the little river Belus, beside which stands the tomb of Memnon, and near it a remarkable spot a hundred cubits across. It is round and hollow, and yields a glassy sand: whenever many ships have put in and emptied it, the hollow fills again, as the winds, as if on purpose, sweep in from outside more of the ordinary sand, which the mine at once turns wholly into glass. Still more remarkable to me is that the overflow of glass from that place reverts again to ordinary sand. Such, then, is the nature of this place.

The Jews, gathering with their wives and children in the plain before Ptolemais, begged Petronius, first on behalf of the laws of their fathers, and then for themselves. He, yielding to the crowd and their entreaties, left the statues and the army at Ptolemais, and going on into Galilee summoned the people and all the notables to Tiberias, where he set out for them the strength of Rome and the threats of Caesar, and declared their demand unreasonable.

"All the subject nations," he said, "have set up in their cities, alongside their own gods, the images of Caesar as well; for you alone to stand against this, virtually alone in refusing, would be an act of rebellion joined with insult." When they answered by pointing to the law and the custom of their fathers, saying that it was not lawful to set up the image even of a god — let alone of a man — either in the Temple or anywhere else in the land, Petronius replied: "But I too must keep the law of my own master. If I transgress it and spare you, I will justly perish. It is he who sent me who will make war on you, not I; for I too, like you, stand under orders." At this the whole crowd cried out that they were ready to suffer anything rather than break the law.

Petronius, quieting their outcry, said, "Will you then make war on Caesar?" And the Jews replied that twice each day they offered sacrifice on behalf of Caesar and the Roman people, but that if he wished to set up the images, he would first have to sacrifice the whole nation of the Jews; and they declared themselves ready for slaughter, together with their wives and children. At this Petronius was overcome with wonder and pity at the men's unsurpassed devotion to their religion and their readiness to face death, and for that day they parted without result.

On the following days he gathered the powerful men privately and the multitude in public, sometimes urging them, sometimes advising them, but for the most part threatening them, holding over them the might of Rome, the wrath of Gaius, and his own necessity in the matter. But when they yielded to no attempt to move them, and he saw the land in danger of going unsown — for during the sowing season the people kept the land idle for fifty days on his account — he finally gathered them and said, "I would rather run the risk myself: either, with God's help, I will persuade Caesar and be saved along with you, and gladly; or, if he is enraged, I will readily give up my own life for the sake of so many." With this he dismissed the crowd, who called down many blessings upon him, and taking the army from Ptolemais he returned to Antioch. From there he wrote at once to Caesar, reporting his own entry into Judea and the nation's supplications, and saying that unless Caesar wished to destroy the land along with its men, he must let them keep their law and withdraw the order.

To this letter Gaius replied with no great moderation, threatening Petronius with death for having been a slow servant of his commands. But it happened that the couriers carrying this letter were storm-driven at sea for three months, while others, bringing news of Gaius's death, had a fair voyage. So Petronius received the letter reporting Gaius's death twenty-seven days before the one condemning him.

When Gaius, after ruling three years and eight months, had been murdered, Claudius was seized by the soldiers in Rome and made emperor; the Senate, however, under the leadership of the consuls Sentius Saturninus and Pomponius Secundus, entrusting the guarding of the city to the three cohorts that remained loyal to it, assembled on the Capitol, and, because of Gaius's cruelty, voted to make war on Claudius, intending to restore the government to an aristocracy, as it had been governed of old, or to choose by vote whoever was worthy of the command. It happened at this time that Agrippa, who was staying in Rome, was summoned by the Senate to its council, and by Claudius as well, from the camp, so that he might be of use to each side as needed. Seeing that Claudius already held the advantage in armed strength, Agrippa went over to him.

Claudius sent him as an envoy to the Senate to make known his own intentions: first, that he had been seized against his will by the soldiers, and that he judged it neither right to abandon their zeal for him nor safe to trust to his own fortune — for even to have received the imperial summons was itself dangerous; and second, that he would govern the empire as a good leader, not as a tyrant, content with the honor of the title, and would give back to all a share in deliberation over every matter. Even if he were not by nature a moderate man, he said, the death of Gaius stood before him as sufficient warning toward self-restraint. This was the message Agrippa delivered. The Senate answered that, trusting in its army and its good counsel, it would not submit to voluntary servitude. When Claudius heard the Senate's answer, he sent Agrippa back once more, to tell them that he could not bring himself to betray those who had joined together for his sake, and that he would make war, unwillingly, against those he least wished to fight — but that a place outside the city should first be designated for the battle, since it was not right to defile the sacred precincts of their homeland with kindred bloodshed brought on by their own poor judgment. Agrippa, on hearing this, reported it to the senators.

In the meantime one of the soldiers on the Senate's side drew his sword and cried out, "Comrades, what has come over us, that we should wish to kill our own brothers and rush upon Claudius's kinsmen — when we have an emperor against whom no charge can be brought, and so many just claims upon those against whom we are about to march in arms?" With these words he charged straight through the midst of the Senate, drawing all his fellow soldiers after him.

The patricians, terrified at once by this desertion, and then, when no safe way of retreat appeared, hurried along the soldiers' path toward Claudius. They were met before the wall by men who, in their eagerness to flatter fortune, bared their swords, and those in front would have been in danger before Claudius even learned of the soldiers' intent, had not Agrippa run to him and revealed the danger of the moment — telling him that unless he restrained the fury of those raging against the patricians, he would lose the very men through whose worth his rule would be respected, and be king over an emptied desolation. On hearing this Claudius restrained his soldiers' fury, received the Senate into the camp, and, treating them kindly, went out with them at once to offer to God the thank-offerings for his rule.

He immediately made Agrippa a gift of the whole of his father's kingdom, adding to it from outside its bounds the territories of Trachonitis and Auranitis, which Augustus had given to Herod, and, besides these, a further kingdom, that called after Lysanias. He announced this gift to the people by edict, and ordered the magistrates to have the grant engraved on bronze tablets and set up on the Capitol. He also made a gift to Agrippa's brother Herod — who was also his brother-in-law, being married to Berenice — of the kingdom of Chalcis.

Wealth soon flowed to Agrippa, as was to be expected from so great a realm, and he himself was not slow to make use of it: he began to surround Jerusalem with a wall so massive that, had it been completed, it would have made the Roman siege of the city impossible. But he died at Caesarea before the work could be raised to its full height, having reigned three years as king, and before that having ruled the tetrarchies for three further years. He left three daughters born of Cypros — Berenice, Mariamme, and Drusilla — and a son by the same wife, Agrippa. Since the son was still quite an infant, Claudius once again made the kingdoms into a province and sent as procurator Cuspius Fadus, and after him Tiberius Alexander, who, without disturbing any of the local customs, kept the nation at peace.

After this Herod, king of Chalcis, also died, leaving by his niece Berenice two sons, Berenicianus and Hyrcanus, and by his earlier wife Mariamme, Aristobulus. His other brother Aristobulus had also died as a private citizen, leaving a daughter, Iotape. These, as I have said, were the children of Aristobulus the son of Herod; Aristobulus and Alexander, meanwhile, were sons born to Herod by Mariamme, whom their father had put to death, and the line of Alexander came to reign over Greater Armenia. After the death of Herod, who had ruled Chalcis, Claudius set Agrippa's son Agrippa over his uncle's kingdom, while the procuratorship of the rest of the province passed from Alexander to Cumanus, in whose time disturbances began, and destruction again came upon the Jews.

For when the multitude had gathered in Jerusalem for the feast of Unleavened Bread, and a Roman cohort stood on guard above the portico of the Temple — for they always keep armed watch over the festivals, so that the assembled crowd may not stir up any disorder — one of the soldiers pulled up his garment, bent over indecently, and turned his backside toward the Jews, accompanying the gesture with a sound to match...

and accompanied the gesture with a sound to match. At this the whole crowd was outraged, and they shouted at Cumanus to punish the soldier. The less disciplined among the young men, along with the naturally rebellious element of the nation, went out to fight, snatching up stones and hurling them at the soldiers. Cumanus, afraid the whole population might rush upon him, sent for more men-at-arms. When these poured into the porticoes, panic seized the Jews beyond control, and they turned and fled from the temple into the city. So great was the crush at the exits as people pushed against one another that more than thirty thousand were trampled and crushed to death, and the festival turned to mourning for the whole nation and to lamentation in every household.

Hard on this disaster came another disturbance caused by bandits. On the public road to Beth-horon, robbers fell upon and plundered the baggage of a certain Stephen, a slave of Caesar, as it was being transported. Cumanus sent men to bring in the inhabitants of the surrounding villages in chains, charging them with failing to pursue and capture the robbers. In the course of this, one of the soldiers, finding in a certain village a copy of the sacred Law, tore the scroll apart and threw it into the fire.

The Jews, as though their whole country had been set ablaze, were thrown into confusion, and drawn together by their piety as if by a single instrument to one common outcry, they all ran together to Caesarea before Cumanus, begging him not to leave unpunished the man who had so outraged their God and their Law. He, since the crowd would not be calm unless it found some satisfaction, ordered the soldier led out and, marching him between the ranks of his accusers, commanded that he be taken away to execution. At this the Jews withdrew.

After this came a clash between Galileans and Samaritans. At a village called Geman, which lies in the great plain of Samaria, while many Jews were going up for the festival, a certain Galilean was murdered. At this a great number rushed from Galilee, ready to make war on the Samaritans, but the notables among them went to Cumanus and begged him, before any irreparable disaster occurred, to cross into Galilee and punish those responsible for the murder; only in this way, they said, could the crowd be persuaded to disperse before war broke out. Cumanus, however, ranked their petitions below the business then in hand and sent the suppliants away without result.

When news of the murdered man's fate reached Jerusalem, it threw the crowds into an uproar, and abandoning the festival they rushed toward Samaria without any general in command, obeying none of the magistrates who tried to restrain them. The leaders of their bandit and rebellious element were Eleazar son of Dinaeus and Alexander, who fell upon the neighboring district of the toparchy of Acrabatene, killed the inhabitants without sparing any age, and set the villages on fire. Cumanus, taking one squadron of cavalry called the Sebastenes from Caesarea, went out to help those under attack; he captured many of Eleazar's men and killed a great many more.

As for the rest of the crowd bent on making war against the Samaritans, the magistrates of Jerusalem ran out to them, wrapped in sackcloth and pouring ashes on their heads, and begged them to withdraw, and not, by taking vengeance on the Samaritans, to provoke the Romans against Jerusalem itself; they should have pity on their homeland and their temple, on their own children and wives, all of whom stood in danger of being destroyed for the sake of avenging a single Galilean. Persuaded by this, the Jews dispersed. But many turned to brigandage now that they could act with impunity, and throughout the whole country there was plundering and uprisings by the more reckless.

The leading men among the Samaritans went to Ummidius Quadratus, the governor of Syria, at Tyre, demanding satisfaction from those who had ravaged their country. The notables of the Jews and the high priest Jonathan son of Ananus were also present, and said that it was the Samaritans who had begun the disturbance because of the murder, and that Cumanus was to blame for what followed, because he had refused to pursue the perpetrators of the killing. Quadratus for the time being deferred both parties, saying that he would investigate everything once he came to the region himself; then, going on to Caesarea, he crucified all those whom Cumanus had taken alive.

From there he went on to Lydda and again heard the Samaritans out, and summoning eighteen Jews whom he had learned had taken part in the fighting, he had them executed with the axe. Two others of the most powerful men, together with the high priests Jonathan and Ananias, the latter's son Ananus, and certain other notable Jews, he sent up to Caesar, and likewise the most eminent of the Samaritans. He also ordered Cumanus and Celer the tribune to sail to Rome to give Claudius an account of what had happened. Having settled these matters, he went up from Lydda to Jerusalem, and finding the crowd celebrating the festival of unleavened bread without disturbance, returned to Antioch.

In Rome, Caesar, on hearing the case presented by Cumanus and the Samaritans — Agrippa was also present, arguing zealously on the Jews' behalf, since many of the powerful men stood by Cumanus as well — condemned the Samaritans and ordered three of their most powerful men executed, and sent Cumanus into exile. Celer he sent back a prisoner to Jerusalem, ordering that he be handed over to the Jews for punishment; he was dragged around the city and then had his head cut off. After this Claudius sent Felix, brother of Pallas, as procurator of Judea, Samaria, Galilee, and Peraea, while transferring Agrippa from Chalcis to a greater kingdom, giving him the province that had once belonged to Philip — that is, Trachonitis, Batanea, and Gaulanitis — and adding to it the kingdom of Lysanias and the tetrarchy formerly held by Varus. Claudius himself, having administered the empire for thirteen years, eight months, and twenty days, died, leaving Nero as his successor to the throne, whom, through the schemes of his wife Agrippina, he had adopted as heir to the empire even though he had a legitimate son, Britannicus, by his earlier wife Messalina, and a daughter, Octavia, whom he had married to Nero; he also had a daughter, Antonia, by Petina.

How far Nero, through an excess of good fortune and wealth, lost his senses and abused fortune, or in what manner he dealt with his brother, his wife, and his mother, from whom he went on to extend his cruelty to the noblest men, and how at last, out of derangement, he sank to the stage and the theater since this is common knowledge to all, I shall pass over, and turn instead to what happened among the Jews in his time. He gave Lesser Armenia to Aristobulus, son of Herod, to rule, and to Agrippa's kingdom he added four cities with their toparchies — Abila and Julias in Peraea, Tarichaeae and Tiberias in Galilee — while over the rest of Judea he appointed Felix procurator.

Felix captured the bandit chief Eleazar, who had plundered the country for twenty years, along with many of his companions, and sent them to Rome; the number of the brigands he crucified and of the townspeople convicted of complicity with them whom he punished was beyond counting. Once the country had been cleared of these, another kind of bandit began to grow up in Jerusalem, the so-called sicarii, who murdered people in broad daylight and in the very heart of the city, mingling with the crowd especially at the festivals and concealing small daggers under their clothing, with which they stabbed their opponents.

Then, once their victims had fallen, the killers themselves joined in the outcry of indignation, and by this show of good faith they went entirely undetected. The first to be assassinated by them was the high priest Jonathan; after him many were killed daily, and the fear of these calamities was harder to bear than the calamities themselves, each person expecting death at any hour as if in wartime. Men kept watch from a distance for their enemies, and not even those approaching as friends could be trusted; in the midst of their suspicion and on their guard they were still cut down — such was the speed of the plotters and their skill at escaping notice.

Along with these there arose another band of villains, cleaner of hand but more impious in purpose, who did no less harm to the city's welfare than the assassins did. For deceivers and impostors, under the pretense of divine inspiration, worked to bring about revolutionary changes, and persuaded the crowd to act as if possessed and led them out into the wilderness, promising that there God would show them signs of freedom. Against these Felix, since he judged this the beginning of a revolt, sent cavalry and heavy infantry and destroyed a great number.

But it was the Egyptian false prophet who inflicted an even greater blow on the Jews. This impostor, a magician who had given himself the standing of a prophet, came into the country and gathered about thirty thousand of the deceived; leading them around from the wilderness to the mount called the Mount of Olives, he intended from there to force his way into Jerusalem, overpower the Roman garrison and the people, and rule as a tyrant using the bodyguard who had burst in with him. But Felix anticipated his attack, meeting him with the Roman heavy infantry, and the whole populace joined in the defense, so that when the clash came the Egyptian fled with a few followers, while most of those with him were killed or taken alive, and the rest of the crowd scattered and slipped away each to his own home.

Once these too had been put down, as in a diseased body another part again became inflamed. For the magicians and bandits banded together and drove many into revolt, urging them on toward freedom and threatening death to those who submitted to Roman rule, declaring that they would forcibly strip away the position of those who chose to remain slaves willingly. Dividing themselves by companies throughout the country, they plundered the houses of the powerful, killed the owners, and set the villages on fire, so that the whole of Judea was filled with their madness. And this war, too, was kindled further day by day.

Another disturbance arose around Caesarea, where the Jews mixed among the population there fell into strife with the Syrians in the city. The Jews claimed the city belonged to them, saying that its founder had been a Jew — this was King Herod — while the others, admitting the founder was a Jew, maintained that the city itself belonged to the Greeks, since Herod would never have set up statues and temples in it had he intended it for Jews. Over this the two sides disputed, and their rivalry advanced to weapons, with the bolder men on both sides rushing out to fight each day; for the Jewish elders were unable to restrain their own agitators, and the Greeks thought it a disgrace to be bested by Jews.

The Jews had the advantage in wealth and bodily strength, the Greek population in the support of the soldiers, since the greater part of the Roman force stationed there had been levied from Syria, and being kinsmen of the Syrians were ready to assist them. The governors, for their part, were concerned to suppress the disturbance, and constantly arrested the more violent troublemakers and punished them with whips and chains. Yet the sufferings of those arrested caused no restraint or fear among those left behind; rather they were provoked all the more toward the strife. Once, when the Jews were winning, Felix came forward into the marketplace and with threats ordered them to withdraw; when they did not obey, he sent the soldiers against them and killed a great many, whose property was in the process plundered. As the strife continued, he selected notable men from each side and sent them as envoys to Nero to plead their rights.

Festus, succeeding Felix in the procuratorship, went after what was most damaging the country: he captured a great many of the bandits and destroyed not a few. But Albinus, who came after Festus, did not conduct affairs in the same way — there was no form of wrongdoing he left untried. Not only did he steal from and plunder private estates in matters of public business, and not only did he burden the whole nation with taxes, but he also ransomed back to their relatives, for a price, those imprisoned for banditry by local councils or by earlier procurators, and only the man who paid nothing to the prisons was left behind as a criminal.

At that time the boldness of those in Jerusalem who wished for revolution grew reckless. The powerful men among them won Albinus over with money, so that he would allow them freedom to foment strife, while the common people, who found no joy in quiet, inclined toward Albinus's associates. Each of these ruffians, girded about with his own band, stood out from the pack like a bandit chief or a tyrant, and used his bodyguard to plunder the more moderate citizens. The result was that those who had been robbed had to keep silent about what should have provoked their outrage, while those still untouched, out of fear of suffering the same fate, flattered a man who deserved punishment. In short, free speech everywhere was cut off, and tyranny prevailed on many fronts, and it was from this time that the seeds of the coming destruction were sown in the city.

Such was Albinus, yet Gessius Florus, who came after him, made him appear excellent by comparison. Albinus did most of his wrongdoing furtively and with some concealment, but Gessius paraded his crimes against the nation openly, and, as though sent as an executioner to punish condemned men, left out no form of plunder or outrage. In pitiable cases he was most savage, in shameful ones most shameless; no one ever poured greater contempt on the truth, and no one devised more cunning paths of villainy. To him, gain taken man by man seemed a small thing; he stripped whole cities bare and ruined entire populations, and all but proclaimed throughout the country that everyone was free to plunder, provided he himself received a share of the spoils. Because of his greed, it came about that all the cities were left desolate, and many people abandoned their ancestral ways and fled into foreign provinces.

As long as Cestius Gallus governed the province of Syria, no one dared send an embassy to him against Florus. But when he came to Jerusalem while the festival of unleavened bread was under way, the people, no fewer than three million, crowded around him begging him to have pity on the nation's sufferings, and cried out against Florus as the scourge of the country. Florus, who was present and standing beside Cestius, mocked their cries. Cestius, however, having quieted the crowd's impulse and given them reason to hope that he would make Florus more moderate toward them in the future, returned to Antioch. Florus escorted him as far as Caesarea, all the while deceiving him, and already contemplating war against the nation as the only means by which he supposed he could conceal his own crimes; for he expected that in time of peace the Jews would bring accusers before Caesar, whereas by engineering...

...their revolt, he would use the greater disaster to divert scrutiny away from the milder charges. So, to make sure the nation would be driven to break away, he increased their sufferings day by day.

Meanwhile the Greeks of Caesarea, having won from Nero the right to govern the city, brought back the documents recording the verdict, and the war took its beginning in the twelfth year of Nero's reign, the seventeenth of Agrippa's kingship, in the month Artemisios.

The pretext for it was not proportionate to the scale of the disasters that followed from it. The Jews of Caesarea had a synagogue next to a plot of ground whose owner was a Greek of Caesarea. They had often tried to buy the place, offering a price many times its value; but when he scorned their pleas and, to spite them further, built over the plot, putting up workshops and leaving them only a narrow and thoroughly cramped passage, the hotter-headed of the young men at first rushed forward and tried to stop the building. When Florus checked them from using force, the leading men among the Jews — John the tax collector among them — in their helplessness persuaded Florus, for eight talents of silver, to stop the work. He, intent only on getting the money, promised to do everything asked of him, but once he had taken it, he left Caesarea for Sebaste and abandoned the dispute to run its own course, as if he had sold the Jews a license to fight.

The next day, a Sabbath, when the Jews had gathered at the synagogue, a certain rabble-rouser of Caesarea overturned a pot at their entrance and set it up to sacrifice birds on it. This drove the Jews to an incurable fury, feeling both that their laws had been outraged and that the place had been defiled. The steady and moderate among them thought they ought to take refuge with the authorities, but the seditious element, inflamed by youth, blazed up for a fight. The rioters of Caesarea stood ready, having sent the sacrificer ahead by prior arrangement, and a clash quickly broke out. Jucundus, the cavalry commander assigned to prevent it, came forward, removed the pot, and tried to put an end to the disturbance, but overpowered by the violence of the Caesareans, the Jews snatched up their scrolls of the Law and withdrew to Narbata, a district of theirs sixty stadia from Caesarea. Meanwhile the twelve leading men around John went to Florus at Sebaste, lamented what had happened, and begged for help, delicately reminding him of the eight talents. He had the men arrested and put in chains, charging them with carrying the Law out of Caesarea.

At this there was outrage in Jerusalem, but the people still held their tempers in check. Florus, however, as if he had contracted to fan the war into flame, sent to the sacred treasury and removed seventeen talents, pretending it was for Caesar's needs. At once confusion seized the people; they ran together to the Temple, calling on Caesar's name with piercing cries and begging to be freed from Florus's tyranny. Some of the rioters shouted the foulest abuse at Florus and, carrying a basket around, demanded coins for him, as if he were a pauper in need. This did nothing to check his greed for money — it only provoked him to extort still more. So instead of going to Caesarea, as he should have, to put out the fire of war that had begun there and remove the causes of the unrest — which was, after all, what he was paid to do — he marched on Jerusalem with a force of cavalry and infantry, so that by Roman arms, by fear, and by threats he might strip the city bare.

The people, wanting to disarm his fury in advance, went out to meet the soldiers with acclamations, and made ready to receive Florus with every courtesy. But he sent ahead the centurion Capito with fifty horsemen and ordered them to withdraw, telling them not to mock him now with these professions of friendliness after abusing him so shamefully; for if they were truly noble and outspoken, they should mock him to his face, and prove themselves lovers of liberty not only in words but in arms as well. Terrified by this, and further scattered as Capito's horsemen bore down into their midst, the crowd dispersed before they could greet Florus or show the soldiers their obedience. They withdrew to their houses and passed the night in fear and humiliation.

Florus spent that night quartered in the palace. The next day he had a tribunal set up before it and took his seat, and the chief priests, the leading men, and the most notable citizens of the city came forward and presented themselves before the tribunal. Florus ordered them to hand over the men who had abused him, telling them they would feel his vengeance unless they produced the guilty parties. They replied that the people were peaceably disposed, and asked pardon for those who had spoken out of turn; for in so great a crowd it was no wonder that some were more reckless and, because of their youth, thoughtless, and it was impossible to pick out the guilty one by one, since every offender, once he repented, denied what he had done. If, they said, he truly cared for peace in the nation and wished to preserve the city for Rome, he ought, for the sake of the many who were blameless, to forgive the few who had offended, rather than throw so good a people into turmoil for the sake of a few troublemakers.

This only provoked Florus further. He shouted an order to his soldiers to plunder the so-called upper market and kill whomever they met. Greedy for gain, and taking their commander's order as encouragement, they not only plundered the district to which they had been sent but rushed into every house and slaughtered the occupants. There was flight through the alleys and slaughter of all who were caught; no form of plunder was left untried, and many respectable citizens were seized and brought before Florus, who first had them scourged and then crucified. The total number of those who perished that day, counting women and children — for not even infants were spared — came to about six hundred and thirty. What made the calamity still more grievous was the novelty of this Roman cruelty: what no one had ever dared before, Florus now did — scourging men of equestrian rank before the tribunal and nailing them to the cross, men who, whatever their birth as Jews, held Roman rank.

At this time King Agrippa happened to be away in Alexandria, congratulating Alexander, whom Nero had entrusted with the governance of Egypt. His sister Berenice, however, was present in Jerusalem, and as she watched the soldiers' lawless violence, a terrible anguish came over her. Again and again she sent her cavalry commanders and bodyguards to Florus, begging him to stop the killing. But he, looking neither to the number of the slain nor to the rank of the woman pleading with him, but only to the profit to be made from the plunder, paid no heed. The soldiers' fury even turned against the queen herself: not only did they torture and kill their victims before her very eyes, but they would have killed her too, had she not fled in time to the royal palace, where she spent the night under guard, dreading the soldiers' assault.

She was staying in Jerusalem at the time to fulfill a vow to God; for it is the custom for those afflicted by illness or by other troubles to vow, thirty days before the sacrifice they intend to offer, to abstain from wine and to shave their heads. It was in the midst of performing this very rite that Berenice, barefoot, stood before the tribunal pleading with Florus, and far from meeting with any respect, she found herself in danger of her life.

These events took place on the sixteenth of the month Artemisios. The next day the grief-stricken populace streamed into the upper market and raised loud cries of lamentation over the dead; most of the shouting, though, was hatred directed at Florus. At this the leading men, together with the chief priests, grew afraid; they tore their garments and, falling before each person in turn, begged them to stop, and not provoke Florus into some irreparable act on top of what they had already suffered. The people were quickly persuaded, out of respect for those who appealed to them and in the hope that Florus would commit no further outrage against them.

But once the disturbance had died down, Florus was displeased, and set about rekindling it. He summoned the chief priests and the notable men and told them the only proof that the people intended no further revolt would be if they went out to meet the soldiers coming up from Caesarea — two cohorts were on their way. While the chief priests were still convening the crowd, he sent word ahead instructing the centurions of the cohorts to tell their men neither to return the Jews' greeting, and, if the Jews said anything against him, to use their weapons. The chief priests gathered the people into the Temple and urged them to go out and meet the Romans, and to greet the cohorts before some irreparable disaster occurred. But the seditious element would not obey, and because of those who had died, the people leaned toward the more reckless.

At this every priest and every minister of God brought out the sacred vessels and the vestments in which it was their custom to perform their service, and the harpists and hymn-singers, together with their instruments, threw themselves down and implored the people to preserve these sacred ornaments for them and not provoke the Romans into plundering the divine treasures. The chief priests themselves could be seen with their heads smeared with dust, their chests bare where they had torn their garments. They called each notable man by name, and the people as a whole, begging them not to betray their homeland, for the sake of the smallest offense, to those eager to destroy it. For what benefit, they asked, would it bring the soldiers if the Jews greeted them, or what remedy would it bring for what had already happened, if they failed to go out now? But if they welcomed those approaching, as was customary, Florus would be deprived of any pretext for war, and they themselves would keep their homeland and suffer nothing further. Besides, to obey a handful of rioters, when they themselves, being so great a people, ought instead to compel even those men to see reason, was sheer folly.

Softened by these words, the people, together with the leading citizens, restrained the rioters, some by threats and some by appeals to shame. Then, leading the way in quiet and orderly fashion, they went out to meet the soldiers and greeted them as they drew near. But when the soldiers made no reply, the rioters began shouting against Florus — this was the prearranged signal against them. At once the soldiers surrounded them and struck them with clubs, and the cavalry, pursuing those who fled, trampled them underfoot. Many fell, beaten down by the Romans, but more were crushed by one another in the press. There was a terrible crush at the gates, and as each man rushed to get through ahead of the rest, the flight became slower for everyone, and the destruction of those who stumbled was dreadful; for they were suffocated and crushed by the weight of the crowd pressing in on them, and vanished without trace, so that not even a relative was left behind to recognize them for burial. Soldiers too fell upon them, striking down without discrimination those they overtook, and drove the crowd by force through the place called Bethesda, struggling to get past and to seize control of the Temple and the Antonia fortress. Florus, aiming at the same objective, led out from the royal palace the men who were with him and strove to reach the fortress. But he failed in his design; for the people turned to face him directly and blocked his advance, and, spreading out over the rooftops, pelted the Romans with missiles. Worn down by the shots raining down from above, and too weak to cut through the crowd choking the alleys, they withdrew to the camp beside the palace.

The rioters, fearing that Florus might attack again and seize the Temple by way of the Antonia, at once went up and cut through the colonnades connecting the Temple to the Antonia. This cooled Florus's greed; for he had been eager to get at God's treasures, and it was for that reason he wished to gain access to the Antonia, but once the colonnades were broken off, his ambition was checked. He summoned the chief priests and the council and told them he himself intended to leave the city, but would leave behind whatever garrison they thought fit. When they promised full responsibility for security and for keeping the peace, provided he left them one cohort — though not the one that had fought, since the people bore that cohort particular ill will for what they had suffered — he exchanged the cohort as they asked and withdrew to Caesarea with the rest of his force.

Seeking another pretext to further the war, he wrote to Cestius, falsely charging the Jews with revolt, laying the blame for the start of the fighting on them, and claiming that they had done what in fact they themselves had suffered. Nor did the magistrates of Jerusalem stay silent; they and Berenice wrote to Cestius as well about Florus's lawless conduct in the city. Cestius, having read both accounts, took counsel with his officers. Some advised him to march up with an army, either to punish the revolt, if it had really occurred, or to secure the Jews more firmly in their loyalty; others advised him to send ahead one of his staff officers to investigate the situation and report faithfully on the Jews' state of mind. He sent one of his tribunes, Neapolitanus, who, on the road, encountered King Agrippa returning from Alexandria near Jamnia and informed him who had sent him and why.

There too the chief priests, together with the leading men and the council, came to greet the king. After paying him their respects, they poured out their own sufferings and recounted Florus's cruelty. Agrippa was indignant at this, but with a statesman's tact he turned his anger toward the very Jews he pitied, wishing to humble their spirit and, by making it seem they had not suffered unjustly, to turn them away from thoughts of retaliation. The leading men, being men of standing and, because of their own property, eager for peace, understood the king's rebuke as well-meant; but the common people went out sixty stadia from Jerusalem to greet Agrippa and Neapolitanus. The wives of the murdered men ran ahead wailing, and at their cries of grief the people broke into lamentation and begged Agrippa to help them; they cried out to Neapolitanus over all they had suffered at Florus's hands, and when they entered the city they showed him the deserted marketplace and the plundered houses. Then, through Agrippa, they persuaded Neapolitanus to walk through the city as far as Siloam with a single attendant, so that he might see for himself that the Jews submitted to all other Romans, and hated only Florus, because of the excess of his cruelty toward them. When he had gone through the city and gained sufficient proof of their peaceable temper, he went up to the Temple. There he called the people together, and after praising them at length for their loyalty to Rome, and urging them much...

Agrippa urged them to keep the peace, and then, having worshipped God from the place where the sanctuary could be seen, went back to Cestius. But the crowd of the Jews turned to the king and the chief priests and pressed them to send envoys to Nero against Florus, and not, by staying silent over so much bloodshed, leave themselves open to the suspicion of revolt; for they would appear to have begun the fighting themselves if they did not act first to point out who had actually begun it. It was plain that they would not calm down if anyone tried to stop the embassy.

To Agrippa, appointing men to bring charges against Florus seemed likely to provoke resentment, but standing by while the Jews were fanned into war did not seem to serve his own interests either. So he summoned the crowd to the Xystus, stationed his sister Berenice where all could see her at the house of the Hasmoneans—which stood above the Xystus, facing the upper city, with a bridge joining the Xystus to the temple—and Agrippa spoke as follows.

"If I saw all of you determined to make war on the Romans, and not the purest and most sincere part of the people preferring to keep the peace, I would never have come before you, nor ventured to offer advice; for any speech urging what ought to be done is wasted once an entire audience has agreed on the worse course. But since some of you, through youth, have no experience of the horrors of war, some are swayed by a reckless hope of freedom, and others are goaded by simple greed and by the profit to be made from the weak once matters are thrown into confusion—so that these people, brought back to their senses, might change their minds, and the innocent not suffer for the bad judgment of a few—I thought it right to gather you all in one place and tell you what I believe serves your interest. Let no one raise an uproar against me if he does not like what he hears; for those set irrevocably on revolt can go on thinking as they do even after I have spoken, but for me the speech is wasted even on those willing to listen, unless everyone keeps silent.

I know that many turn the outrages of the procurators and the praises of freedom into high drama. But before I examine who you are and whom you propose to fight, let me first untangle the knot of pretexts you offer. If you are defending yourselves against wrongdoers, why make so much of freedom? If you think slavery itself unbearable, then your complaint against your governors is beside the point—for slavery is equally shameful even under governors who behave with restraint.

Consider each of these grievances in turn and see how slight a foundation they give for war. Take first the charges against the procurators. Those in power need to be placated, not provoked; when you turn small faults into great denunciations, you only convict yourselves in the process, and you drive men who might have wronged you secretly, out of some shame, into wronging you openly instead. Nothing checks blows so well as bearing them, and the patient endurance of the wronged is itself a rebuke that unsettles the wrongdoer. But grant that the Roman officials are incorrigibly harsh—it is not yet true that all Romans wrong you, still less Caesar, against whom you are actually choosing to make war. No villain comes from them by his order, nor can those in the west easily even hear, let alone act on, what happens under the eastern sky so quickly. It is absurd to make war on so many because of one man, and for petty causes against people so great—people who do not even know what we accuse them of. Our own grievances could be put right quickly enough, since no procurator stays forever, and his successors are likely to prove more moderate; but a war, once set in motion, cannot easily be laid down again without disaster, nor easily carried through either.

As for wanting freedom now, the moment for that has passed—you should have fought to keep from ever losing it in the first place. The experience of slavery is bitter, and the struggle to avoid ever entering it is a just one; but the man who has once been mastered and only then revolts is a stubborn slave, not a lover of liberty. That was the time to do everything possible to keep the Romans out—when Pompey first set foot in this land. But our ancestors and their kings, though far superior to you in wealth, in strength, and in spirit, could not hold out against even a small fraction of Roman power; and you, who have inherited mere submission by succession, so much weaker in resources than those who first submitted, mean to stand against the whole dominion of Rome?

Even the Athenians, who once gave up their own city to the flames for the freedom of the Greeks, who chased the arrogant Xerxes—the man who marched over land and sailed over sea, whom the seas could not contain though he led an army wider than Europe—like a runaway on a single ship, and who broke the might of all Asia around little Salamis, now serve the Romans, and the city that once led Greece takes its orders from Italy. The Spartans, after Thermopylae and Plataea and their Agesilaus who ransacked Asia, are content with the same masters, and the Macedonians, who still dream of Philip and of the world dominion that spread out before them under Alexander, bear this same great reversal and bow before the ones to whom fortune has now turned. Countless other nations, with far stronger grounds for asserting their freedom, submit; you alone think it disgraceful to serve those to whom everything else is subject.

With what army, trusting in what weapons, do you mean to fight? Where is the fleet that will dispute the Roman seas for you? Where are the treasuries to fund your ambitions? Do you imagine you are going to war against Egyptians and Arabs? Will you not take the measure of Roman power, will you not weigh your own weakness? Our forces, and those of our neighbors, have been defeated again and again, while Roman strength stands unconquered across the world—and even that has not satisfied them. The whole Euphrates in the east was not enough for them, nor the Danube in the north, nor Libya searched to its uninhabited southern edge, nor Gades in the west; they sought out another world beyond the ocean and carried their arms as far as the Britons, unknown to history before them. What then—are you richer than the Gauls, stronger than the Germans, more clever than the Greeks, more numerous than every people on earth? What gives you the confidence to rise against Rome?

Slavery is harsh, someone will say. How much more so for the Greeks, who surpass every people under the sun in nobility of birth and hold so vast a territory, yet bow before six Roman rods—as do the Macedonians, who have a far better claim than you to fight for their freedom. And the five hundred cities of Asia—do they not, without even a garrison, bow before a single governor and his consular rods? Need I mention the Heniochi, the Colchians, the tribe of the Tauri, the people of the Bosporus, and the nations around the Pontus and Lake Maeotis? Among them, formerly, not even a ruler of their own kind was recognized; now three thousand hoplites hold them in check, and forty warships have brought peace to a sea once unnavigable and wild. Bithynia, Cappadocia, the Pamphylian people, the Lycians, the Cilicians—for all they might say about freedom, do they not pay tribute without needing a single soldier to enforce it? And the Thracians, who occupy a land five days wide and seven long, rougher and far better defended than yours, whose bitter cold turns back any invader—do they not obey two thousand Roman guards? The Illyrians beyond them, who inhabit the territory cut off toward Dalmatia by the Danube, submit to no more than two legions, with whose help they themselves hold back the raids of the Dacians. And the Dalmatians, who rose up for freedom so many times, and who, no sooner subdued than they gathered their strength to revolt again, now keep still under a single Roman legion.

If any people had grounds great enough to justify revolt, it should have been the Gauls, walled in by nature itself—the Alps to the east, the river Rhine to the north, the Pyrenees to the south, the ocean to the west. Yet surrounded by such barriers, numbering three hundred and five nations, holding what one might call the very springs of prosperity and flooding nearly the whole world with their goods, they endure being a source of Roman revenue, their own prosperity managed for them by others. And they endure this not from any weakness of spirit or lack of manly courage—they fought for eighty years for their freedom—but because, along with Roman power, they were overawed by the fortune that serves Rome even better than her arms do. And so they serve under twelve hundred soldiers, though they have almost more cities than that.

Not even the gold mined by the Iberians was enough to sustain their war for freedom, nor the great distance separating them from Rome by land and sea, nor the fierce tribes of the Lusitanians and Cantabrians, nor the neighboring ocean with its tides, fearsome even to the natives themselves; the Romans stretched their arms beyond the Pillars of Heracles, marched through the clouds over the Pyrenees, and enslaved these peoples too—a single garrison sufficed for men so hard to fight and so far removed. Who among you has not heard of the vast numbers of the Germans? You have surely seen for yourselves, often enough, their strength and the size of their bodies, since Romans everywhere keep captives taken from them. Yet these people, who range over boundless land, whose spirit is greater even than their bodies, whose souls despise death and whose tempers outdo the fiercest of wild beasts, are held to the Rhine as the limit of their advance, and tamed by eight Roman legions; those taken captive serve as slaves, while the rest of their nation survives only by flight.

Consider too the wall of the Britons, you who put your trust in the walls of Jerusalem: though ringed by the ocean and inhabiting an island no smaller than our own known world, the Romans sailed there and enslaved them too, and four legions now guard so great an island. And what need is there to say more, when even the Parthians, the most warlike of races, ruling so many nations and possessing such power, send hostages to Rome, and one can see in Italy, under the pretense of peace, the nobility of the East living in servitude? When nearly every people under the sun bows before Roman arms, will you alone go to war—without even considering the fate of the Carthaginians, who, for all their pride in the great Hannibal and their Phoenician nobility, fell before the hand of Scipio?

Neither the Cyrenaeans, of Spartan stock, nor the Marmaridae, the tribe that stretches to the parched desert, nor the Syrtes, dreaded even by those who only hear of them, nor the Nasamones, the Moors, and the countless multitude of the Numidians checked the might of Rome. And the third part of the inhabited world, whose peoples are not even easy to count, bounded by the Atlantic sea and the Pillars of Heracles and reaching to the Red Sea, home to the boundless Ethiopian peoples—all of it they have subdued, and beyond the yearly crops that feed the population of Rome for eight months, its peoples are taxed in every other way as well, and readily supply what the empire needs, counting none of these demands an outrage, as you do, even though only a single legion remains stationed among them.

And what need is there to point you to Rome's power from far away, when Egypt lies close at hand—stretching to the Ethiopians and Arabia Felix, serving as the harbor of India, holding seven and a half million people apart from the residents of Alexandria, as one can reckon from the poll tax—and yet does not think Roman rule beneath it, even though it has in Alexandria such a spark for revolt, given the sheer number of its men, its wealth, and besides that its size. Alexandria's length alone is thirty stades, its width no less than ten, and in a single month it delivers more to Rome than your whole year's tribute, and beyond money, grain enough to feed Rome for four months; and it is walled on every side by impassable deserts, harborless seas, rivers, or marshes. Yet none of this was found stronger than Rome's fortune, and two legions stationed in the city hold deep Egypt in check, along with the Macedonian nobility there.

What allies, then, will you find for this war, out of an uninhabited world? Everyone within the inhabited world is Roman—unless someone stretches his hopes beyond the Euphrates and imagines the kinsmen of Adiabene will come to his aid. But they will not entangle themselves in so great a war without good reason, nor will the Parthian king allow it even if they should decide badly; for he is careful to preserve his truce with Rome, and will regard it as breaking the treaty if any of his subjects marches against the Romans. It remains, then, to take refuge in the help of God. But even this stands arrayed on the side of Rome, for without God it would be impossible for so vast an empire to have been established.

Consider, too, how the strictness of your own religion, even if you were fighting an easily beaten enemy, would make war hard to manage—and how the very observances by which you hope to keep God as your ally, you will be forced to break, and so turn him away instead. Keep the customs of the sabbath, refuse to act on any matter on that day, and you will easily be taken, just as your ancestors were by Pompey, who made those very days the busiest time of his siege, since the besieged themselves stayed idle on them. But break your ancestral law in the course of the war, and I do not know what you will still be fighting for, since your one concern is to preserve your ancestral customs intact. How will you call on the divine for help, once you yourselves have willingly broken the service you owe it?

All who go to war rely on either divine or human help; but when both are cut off as likely sources of aid, those who still fight are choosing plain destruction for themselves. What is there to stop you from killing your own children and wives with your own hands, and burning this most beautiful of homelands? Madness of that kind would at least spare you the reproach of defeat. It is good, friends—it is good, while the ship is still in harbor, to look ahead to the coming storm, rather than be swept into the middle of the gales and perish there. Those who fall into disasters they could not foresee at least keep the world's pity; but a man who rushes toward plain destruction earns reproach as well. Unless, that is, someone imagines he will fight on agreed terms, and that the Romans, once victorious, will show you moderation, rather than—to make an example for the other nations—burn the sacred city and destroy..."

your whole race. For even if you survive, you will find no place to flee, since every people either already has the Romans as masters or fears having them. And the danger is not only for those here, but also for those living in other cities. There is no nation on the inhabited earth that does not contain some portion of our people, and if you go to war, your enemies will slaughter all of them, and because of a few men's bad judgment every city will be filled with the blood of Jews. Those who did it would find some excuse; but if it does not happen, consider how impious it is to raise arms against a people so humane. Let pity move you, if not for your children and wives, then at least for this mother city and its sacred precincts. Spare the temple, and keep the sanctuary with its holy things for yourselves — for the Romans will no longer spare what they have taken, once they have gotten no thanks for sparing it before. I call to witness your holy things, God's sacred angels, and our common homeland, that I have held back nothing that might save you. If you decide on what is necessary, you will have peace together with me; but if you are carried away by passion, you will face the danger without me."

Having said this, he broke into tears, together with his sister, and by his weeping checked much of the crowd's impulse. Yet they cried out that it was not against Rome but against Florus, for what they had suffered, that they meant to fight. To this King Agrippa replied, "But your actions are already those of men at war with Rome — you have not paid Caesar his tribute, and you have torn down the porticoes joining the Antonia. You could remove the grounds for the charge of revolt if you rebuild these and pay the tax; for the fortress does not belong to Florus, nor would you be giving the money to Florus."

The people were persuaded by this, and going up to the temple together with the king and Berenice, they began rebuilding the porticoes, while the magistrates and councilors dispersed through the villages to collect the taxes. The forty talents still owing were quickly gathered. In this way Agrippa held off the threat of war for the time. But when he next tried to persuade the people to obey Florus until Caesar sent a successor in his place, they were provoked, cursed the king, and proclaimed him banished from the city; some of the rebels even dared to throw stones at him.

Seeing that the impulse of the revolutionaries was now beyond restraint, and angered at the insult done to him, the king sent their leaders, along with the men of standing, to Florus at Caesarea, so that Florus might appoint from among them men to collect the region's taxes, while he himself withdrew to his own kingdom. Meanwhile, some of those most eager to stir up war banded together and rushed against a fortress called Masada. Seizing it by stealth, they killed the Roman garrison and installed men of their own in its place.

At the same time, in the temple, Eleazar son of the high priest Ananias, a most audacious young man then serving as captain, persuaded those who officiated in the sacred rites to accept no gift or sacrifice from any foreigner. This was the true foundation of the war against Rome, for by it they rejected the sacrifice offered on Caesar's behalf. Although the chief priests and the notables urged them at length not to abandon the custom of sacrificing for their rulers, they would not yield, relying heavily on their own numbers — for the most vigorous of the revolutionaries supported them — and looking above all to Eleazar, who held command.

So the men of standing came together with the chief priests and the notable Pharisees, and, as though the situation were already beyond remedy, they took counsel about the whole matter. Having decided to try persuading the rebels by argument, they gathered the people before the bronze gate, which faced east on the inner side of the temple. First they reproached them at length for the audacity of their revolt and for threatening their homeland with so great a war; then they exposed the unreasonableness of their pretext, pointing out that their ancestors had adorned the temple mostly with gifts from foreigners, had always accepted the offerings of outside nations, and had never once forbidden anyone's sacrifice — for that would be most impious — but had even set up around the temple the votive offerings still visible after so long a time. These men, by contrast, were now provoking the arms of Rome and courting war from that quarter, introducing a strange innovation in worship, and, along with the danger, condemning the city to impiety, if among the Jews alone no foreigner might sacrifice or worship. If such a rule were imposed on even a single private citizen, they said, people would be indignant at so inhuman a restriction — yet they overlooked it when Rome and Caesar were being excluded from the covenant. They said they feared that, having cast aside the sacrifices offered on Rome's behalf, the Jews might themselves be forbidden to offer sacrifices for their own sake, and that the city might be cut off from the empire's protection, unless they quickly came to their senses, restored the sacrifices, and corrected the wrong before word of the outrage reached those they had insulted. While saying this, they brought forward priests learned in the ancestral traditions, who testified that all their forebears had accepted sacrifices from foreigners. But none of the revolutionaries paid any attention, nor would the men bent on brigandage, busy laying the foundations of war, come near them.

Seeing then that the rebellion was already hard to put down by their own efforts, and that the danger from Rome would fall upon them first, the men of standing tried to clear themselves of blame. They sent envoys to Florus, led by Simon son of Ananias, and others to Agrippa, among them the notables Saul, Antipas, and Costobar, kinsmen of the king. They asked both to come up to the city with a force and, before the revolt became unmanageable, to crush it. For Florus this was welcome news of a grim kind, and since he had already resolved to kindle the war, he gave the envoys no answer. Agrippa, however, caring equally for those in revolt and for those against whom the war was being raised, and wishing the Jews to be preserved for Rome and the temple and mother city to be preserved for the Jews — knowing besides that the disturbance would bring him no advantage — sent two thousand cavalry to help the people: Auranites, Batanaeans, and Trachonites, under the cavalry commander Darius, with Philip son of Jacimus as general.

Emboldened by these forces, the men of standing, together with the chief priests and all of the populace that loved peace, seized the upper city, while the rebels held the lower city and the temple. Both sides used slingstones and long-range weapons without pause, and there was a constant exchange of missiles from either quarter; at times companies sallied out and fought hand to hand, the rebels excelling in daring, the king's men in experience. For the king's men the chief aim of the struggle was to gain control of the temple and drive out those defiling it, while the rebels under Eleazar sought, in addition to what they already held, to seize the upper city as well. For seven days there was heavy slaughter on both sides, and neither yielded the ground it held.

On the following day, the Feast of Wood-Carrying took place, at which it was everyone's custom to bring wood for the altar so that fuel for the fire would never fail, since it burns unquenched forever. On this day the rebels shut out those who differed with them in religion, but let in, mixed among the weak crowd of ordinary worshippers, many of the sicarii — for so they called the brigands who carried daggers hidden under their cloaks — and having gained these recruits, they attacked their task more boldly. The king's men were overcome by numbers and daring and yielded the upper city to their assault. The rebels then set fire to the house of the high priest Ananias and to the palaces of Agrippa and Berenice; after that they carried fire to the public archives, eager to destroy the bonds of moneylenders and cut off the collection of debts, so as to win over a great number of those who had benefited and, with impunity, incite the poor to rise against the rich. When those in charge of the record office fled, they set it ablaze.

When they had thus burned out the sinews of the city, they moved against their enemies. At this point some of the men of standing and the chief priests slipped away into hiding in underground channels, while others, together with the king's men, fled into the upper palace and quickly shut its gates; among them were the high priest Ananias, his brother Ezekias, and those who had gone as envoys to Agrippa. For that day, satisfied with their victory and with what they had burned, they rested.

The next day — the fifteenth of the month Loos — they attacked the Antonia, and after besieging its garrison for two days, they captured them, cut them down, and burned the fortress. Then they moved on to the palace into which the king's men had fled, and dividing themselves into four divisions, made trial of the walls. None of those inside dared to sally out, given the numbers massed against them, but spreading along the parapets and towers they shot at those who approached, and many of the brigands fell beneath the walls. The fighting went on without pause, day and night, the rebels expecting that those inside would give out from lack of food, and those inside expecting that the besiegers would tire.

Meanwhile a certain Menahem, son of Judas called the Galilean — a most formidable teacher who once, in the time of Quirinius, had rebuked the Jews for submitting to Rome after already submitting to God — took his followers and withdrew to Masada. There he broke open King Herod's armory, armed still more brigands besides the men of his own town, and, using these as his bodyguard, returned to Jerusalem like a king. Becoming leader of the revolt, he took charge of directing the siege. They lacked siege engines, and could not openly undermine the wall while missiles rained down from above; so from a distance they dug a tunnel to one of the towers, propped it up, then set fire to the supporting timber and withdrew. When the props had burned through, the tower suddenly collapsed — but another wall behind it came into view, already built up. For, sensing the plot beforehand — perhaps also because the tower had shifted as it was being undermined — the defenders had built themselves this second rampart. At the sight of it, those who had not expected it, and who were already convinced they had won, were struck with dismay.

Those inside sent word to Menahem and the leaders of the revolt, asking to withdraw under truce; and when this was granted only to the king's men and the local people, some went out. Despondency seized the Romans left behind alone; for they could neither overpower so great a multitude, nor would they stoop to ask for pledges of safety, thinking it a disgrace — and besides, they did not trust that such pledges, if given, would be honored. So, abandoning their camp as indefensible, they fled for refuge to the royal towers called Hippicus, Phasael, and Mariamme. Menahem's men, bursting in where the soldiers had escaped from, killed as many as they caught who had not managed to flee in time, plundered the baggage, and burned the camp. This took place on the sixth of the month Gorpiaeus. On the following day the high priest Ananias, who had been hiding near the drainage channel of the royal palace, was caught and killed by the brigands together with his brother Ezekias; and the rebels surrounded the towers and kept watch, so that no soldier might escape.

As for Menahem, the destruction of the fortified places and the death of the high priest Ananias swelled him with arrogance into cruelty; believing he had no rival in the conduct of affairs, he became an insufferable tyrant. Eleazar's followers rose up against him, agreeing among themselves that, having revolted from Rome out of desire for freedom, they must not now surrender that freedom to a fellow citizen and endure him as a master — even if he did nothing violent, he was, after all, of lower rank than themselves; and if anyone had to take overall command, it belonged to anyone rather than to him. Having agreed on this, they made their attempt against him at the temple, for he had gone up arrogantly to worship, adorned in royal robes and trailing armed zealots behind him. When Eleazar's men rushed at him, the rest of the people too, roused to anger, snatched up stones and pelted the teacher, believing that if he were destroyed the whole revolt would be turned aside.

Menahem's men held out for a little while, but when they saw the whole crowd rushing upon them, they fled each as best he could; those who were caught were killed, and a search was made for those in hiding. Only a few escaped safely, slipping off in secret to Masada, among them Eleazar son of Jairus, a kinsman of Menahem, who later became tyrant of Masada. As for Menahem himself, he fled to a place called Ophlas and was hiding there in disgrace; they took him alive, dragged him out into the open, tortured him with many torments, and killed him — and likewise his subordinate commanders, including Absalom, the most conspicuous agent of his tyranny.

The people, as I have said, had joined in this action hoping for some correction of the whole revolt; but those who killed Menahem had done so not to end the war, but so as to wage it more freely, now that they had nothing to fear from him. In fact, though the people repeatedly urged the soldiers to relax the siege, the rebels pressed on more fiercely, until at last Metilius and his men — Metilius was the Roman prefect — no longer able to hold out, sent word to Eleazar asking for their lives alone under truce, saying they would hand over their weapons and all their other property. Eleazar's men eagerly seized on this plea and sent back to them Gorion son of Nicomedes, Ananias son of Sadduk, and Judas son of Jonathan, to give pledges and oaths. When this had been done, Metilius led his soldiers down.

As long as they remained under arms, none of the rebels attacked them or showed any sign of treachery. But once, in accordance with the agreement, all of them had laid down their shields and swords and, no longer suspecting anything, were withdrawing, Eleazar's men rushed upon them, surrounded them, and cut them down as they neither defended themselves nor begged for mercy, but only cried out the terms of the treaty and the oaths sworn. All of them were thus savagely slaughtered, except Metilius; for he alone was spared, because he begged for his life and promised to become a Jew, even to the point of circumcision. To the Romans the loss was slight, since only a few had perished out of their vast forces, but to the Jews it seemed the prelude to their own destruction. And when they saw that the causes of the war were now beyond remedy, and that the city was stained with so great a pollution, from which it was reasonable to expect some divine vengeance, even if not...

against the vengeance that would come from the Romans, the people mourned in public. The city was filled with dejection, and every moderate citizen was in turmoil, expecting that he himself would pay the penalty for the rebels' act. And indeed the killing had happened to fall on a Sabbath, the day on which, out of reverence, they abstain even from acts of piety.

On that same day and hour, as though by some divine design, the people of Caesarea slaughtered the Jews living among them, so that within a single hour more than twenty thousand were butchered and the whole of Jewish Caesarea was emptied; for Florus seized those who escaped and led them off in chains to the dockyards.

At the blow struck at Caesarea the whole nation was driven wild, and splitting into bands they ravaged the villages of the Syrians and the neighboring cities: Philadelphia, Heshbon's territory, Gerasa, Pella, and Scythopolis. Then, falling on Gadara, Hippos, and the Gaulanitis, in some places they destroyed everything and in others set fires, and advanced on Kedasa belonging to Tyre, on Ptolemais, on Gaba, and on Caesarea. Neither Sebaste nor Ashkelon withstood their onslaught; after burning these they razed Anthedon and Gaza to the ground. Many villages around each of these cities were plundered, and the killing of the men who were caught was beyond counting.

Yet the Syrians killed no fewer Jews than they had lost; they too slaughtered those they seized in the cities, no longer only out of hatred, as before, but now also to forestall the danger they themselves faced. A terrible turmoil gripped the whole of Syria, and every city was split into two camps, since for each side safety lay in striking the other first. Days were spent in bloodshed, and nights, in fear, were harder still; for even when people thought they had cleared their towns of Jews, they still held those who merely lived like Jews under suspicion, and no one could bring himself to kill outright a person of mixed and doubtful loyalty, while they equally feared one who, though counted a foreigner among them, might in fact belong to the other side.

Even men who had long seemed the gentlest were provoked to murder their rivals by greed, for they plundered without fear the property of the slain and carried off the spoils of the dead to their own houses as if from a battlefield, and the man who profited most was honored as though he had triumphed over the greatest number of enemies. One could see the cities full of unburied bodies, corpses of the old lying together with infants, and women stripped even of the covering owed to modesty. The whole province was filled with indescribable disasters, and the dread of what might yet be threatened was greater than the outrages already dared.

Up to this point the assaults of the Jews had been against foreign peoples; but when they overran Scythopolis, they found the Jews living there arrayed against them as enemies. For those Jews, siding with the people of Scythopolis and putting their own safety above their kinship, had ranged themselves alongside their fellow citizens against their own countrymen.

Yet even their excessive zeal fell under suspicion: the Scythopolitans, fearing that these Jews might attack the city by night and, at great cost to themselves, have to answer to their own people for having broken faith, ordered them, if they wished to confirm their loyalty and demonstrate their good faith toward the foreign population, to move with their families into the sacred grove. They did as they were commanded, without suspecting anything. For two days the Scythopolitans held still, luring them into false confidence, but on the third night, watching for the moment when some were off guard and others asleep, they slaughtered them all, more than thirteen thousand in number, and plundered the possessions of every one of them.

It is worth relating also the fate of Simon, who was the son of a certain Saul, a man not without standing, and who, distinguished for strength of body and boldness, used both to the harm of his own people. Advancing day after day, he killed many of the Jews near Scythopolis, and often, single-handed, routing them all, he alone tipped the balance of the battle.

A fitting penalty overtook him for the slaughter of his kinsmen: when the Scythopolitans surrounded the Jews and were shooting them down with javelins throughout the grove, he drew his sword but charged at none of the enemy, for he saw their numbers were beyond reckoning, and instead cried out in great anguish, "Scythopolitans, I suffer what I deserve for what I have done against you, we who by so much slaughter of our own kin proved our loyalty to you. So then, since it is with good reason that we are found untrustworthy as foreigners, and since our own people have been wronged to the utmost, let us die, guilty as we are, by our own hands, for it is not fitting that we die by the hands of enemies."

"This same act would also serve me as a fitting penalty for my crime and as praise for my courage, so that none of my enemies may boast of having killed me or gloat over my fall." Having said this, with eyes full of both pity and rage he looked round upon his own family; he had a wife, children, and aged parents.

First he seized his father by his white hair and ran him through with the sword; after him, his unresisting mother, and then his wife and children, each all but stepping forward to meet the blade, eager to forestall the enemy. Having gone through his whole family, and standing conspicuous over the bodies, he raised his right hand for all to see,

and plunged the sword entirely into his own throat, a young man deserving of pity for the strength of his body and the steadfastness of his soul, though he suffered a fate to match his loyalty toward foreigners. After the disaster at Scythopolis, the rest of the cities rose up each against the Jews within them: the people of Ashkelon killed twenty-five hundred, the people of Ptolemais killed two thousand and imprisoned not a few.

The people of Tyre put many to death and kept most of the rest imprisoned; the people of Hippos and Gadara likewise disposed of the bolder ones and kept the more dangerous under guard, while the rest of the cities of Syria acted each according to the measure of their hatred or fear of the Jewish people. Only the people of Antioch, Sidon, and Apamea spared those living among them and would not consent to kill or imprison any Jews, perhaps in part because their own numbers made them indifferent to any unrest among so few, but more, in my judgment, out of pity for a people they saw attempting nothing revolutionary. The people of Gerasa likewise did no wrong to those who stayed and escorted those who wished to leave as far as the borders.

A plot against the Jews also arose in the kingdom of Agrippa. He himself had gone to Antioch to see Cestius Gallus, leaving one of his companions, named Noaros, a kinsman of King Soaemus, in charge of affairs. Seventy men arrived from Batanea, chosen among their fellow citizens for birth and judgment, asking for a garrison, so that if any disturbance should arise among them too, they would have an adequate force to prevent uprisings.

Noaros sent some of the royal soldiers out by night and had all of them killed, daring the deed against Agrippa's wishes and, driven by boundless greed, choosing to wrong his own countrymen and thereby ruining the kingdom's reputation. He continued to act lawlessly and cruelly against the nation until Agrippa, learning of it, was ashamed to have him killed for Soaemus's sake, but removed him from his post. Meanwhile the rebels, seizing a certain fortress called Cypros, which overlooks Jericho, slaughtered the garrison and razed the fortifications to the ground.

In those same days the mass of the Jews at Machaerus persuaded the Roman garrison to abandon the fortress and hand it over to them. Fearing to have it taken from them by force, the Romans agreed to withdraw under a truce, and having received pledges, they surrendered the fortress, which the men of Machaerus then took and held with a garrison of their own.

In Alexandria there had always been strife between the native population and the Jews, ever since Alexander, finding the Jews most eager to help him against the Egyptians, granted them as a reward for their alliance the right to dwell in the city on equal footing with the Greeks. This honor was maintained for them also by his successors, who even set apart for them a district of their own, so that they might keep a purer way of life with less mixing with foreigners, and allowed them to be styled Macedonians. And when the Romans took possession of Egypt, neither the first Caesar nor any of his successors would consent to diminish the honors the Jews had received from Alexander.

Yet there were constant clashes between them and the Greeks, and although the governors punished many on both sides every day, the strife was only further inflamed. But now, with disorder already stirred up everywhere else, matters among them blazed up all the more. When the Alexandrians held an assembly to decide on an embassy they intended to send to Nero, a great number of Jews streamed together with the Greeks into the amphitheater; and their opponents, catching sight of them, at once cried out that they were enemies and spies.

Then, leaping up, they laid hands on them. The rest fled and scattered, but three men were seized and dragged off to be burned alive. At this the whole Jewish population rose to their defense: at first they hurled stones at the Greeks, then, snatching up torches, rushed toward the amphitheater, threatening to burn the whole populace alive within it. And they would have accomplished this, had not Tiberius Alexander, the governor of the city, checked their fury.

He did not, however, begin by turning to arms for the restoration of order, but sent the leading men among them privately to urge them to stop and not provoke the Roman army against themselves. But the rebellious element mocked his appeal and heaped abuse on Tiberius. When he saw that they would not desist short of some great disaster, he unleashed against them the two Roman legions stationed in the city, together with two thousand soldiers who happened to be present, having arrived from Libya for the destruction of the Jews. He permitted them not only to kill but also to plunder their property and burn their houses.

The soldiers rushed into the quarter called Delta, where the Jewish population was concentrated, and carried out their orders, though not without bloodshed on their own side; for the Jews rallied together, put their best-armed men in front, and held out for a long while, but once they gave way they were destroyed without mercy. Every kind of death befell them, some caught in the open, others crowded into their houses, which the Romans set on fire after first plundering what was inside, sparing neither infants out of pity nor old men out of respect,

but cutting down every age, so that the whole district was flooded with blood and fifty thousand corpses lay piled up; even the remnant would not have survived had they not turned to supplication. Taking pity on them, Tiberius Alexander ordered the Romans to withdraw. The soldiers, accustomed to obey, ceased their killing at a single signal, but the Alexandrian populace, in the excess of their hatred, could barely be called off and were torn away from the bodies only with difficulty.

Such was the disaster that befell Alexandria. Cestius, seeing that the Jews everywhere were now roused to war and that quiet could no longer be expected, took from Antioch the Twelfth Legion at full strength, along with two thousand picked men from each of the other legions, six cohorts of infantry, and four squadrons of cavalry, in addition to the allied contingents supplied by the kings: two thousand cavalry and three thousand archers, all infantry, from Antiochus; from Agrippa an equal number of infantry and somewhat fewer than two thousand cavalry; and Soaemus followed with four thousand men, a third of them cavalry and most of the rest archers. He advanced to Ptolemais. A great many auxiliaries were also gathered from the cities, inferior to the regular soldiers in experience but making up for their lack of skill with zeal and hatred of the Jews.

Agrippa himself was present with Cestius, guiding him on the route and advising him on what would be useful. Taking part of his force, Cestius marched against a strong city of Galilee called Chabulon, which means "of men," and which marks the boundary between the region and Ptolemais. He found it empty of men, for the population had fled to the mountains, but full of goods of every kind. He allowed his soldiers to plunder what they found, and though he admired the beauty of the town, whose houses were built like those of Tyre, Sidon, and Berytus, he set it on fire. He then overran the countryside, plundering everything in his path and burning the surrounding villages, before returning to Ptolemais.

While the Syrians, and especially the men of Berytus, were still occupied with the plunder, the Jews, taking heart, and knowing that Cestius had withdrawn, fell unexpectedly upon those left behind and destroyed about two thousand of them. Cestius, breaking camp from Ptolemais, went himself to Caesarea, but sent part of his army ahead to Joppa, with orders that if they could seize the city they should garrison it, but if the inhabitants got word of their approach in advance, they should wait for him and the rest of the force.

Some of them, pressing on by sea and others by land, took the city easily from both sides at once; the inhabitants had no time even to flee, let alone prepare for battle, and the soldiers fell upon them and killed them all, families and all, then plundered the city and burned it. The number of those slain was eight thousand four hundred. In the same way he sent a considerable body of cavalry into the district of Narbata, bordering on Caesarea, which laid waste the land, killed a great number of the local people, plundered their property, and burned their villages.

Into Galilee he sent Caesennius Gallus, commander of the Twelfth Legion, giving him as large a force as he judged sufficient against the nation. The strongest city of Galilee, Sepphoris, received him with expressions of loyalty, and following its prudent example the other cities remained quiet. But all the rebellious and brigand element fled to the mountain lying at the very center of Galilee, opposite Sepphoris, called Asamon. Against these Gallus led his forces.

As long as they held the high ground, they easily beat off the advancing Romans and killed about two hundred of them; but once the Romans worked around and gained the higher positions, they were quickly overcome, for the light-armed men could not stand against heavy infantry at close quarters, nor escape the cavalry in flight, so that only a few slipped away through the rough terrain, while more than two thousand were killed. Gallus, seeing no further sign of unrest in Galilee,

withdrew with his army to Caesarea. Cestius, meanwhile, broke camp with his entire force and marched into Antipatris. Learning that a considerable body of Jews had gathered at a tower called Aphek, he sent men ahead to engage them. But before coming to blows, the Jews scattered in fear, and the Romans, finding the camp abandoned, burned it along with the surrounding villages. From Antipatris

Cestius advanced to Lydda and took the town empty of men, for the whole population had gone up to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles. He killed fifty of those who did appear, burned the town, and pressed on. Climbing through Bethoron, he pitched camp at a place called Gabao, fifty stadia from Jerusalem. The Jews, seeing the war already

drawing close to their mother city, abandoned the feast and rushed to arms. Trusting greatly in their numbers, they charged out to battle in disorder and with shouting, giving no thought even to the rest day, for the Sabbath was the thing they held most sacred. But the fury that shook them free of their piety made them the stronger in the fight as well; they fell on the Romans with such force

that they broke through their ranks and cut their way through the middle, killing as they went. Had not the cavalry wheeled round to help the part of the phalanx that was giving way, and the infantry that was not yet exhausted done the same, Cestius would have been in danger of losing his entire force. Five hundred and fifteen Romans died, four hundred of them infantry and the rest cavalry; of the Jews, twenty-two

fell. The most valiant of them proved to be the kinsmen of Monobazus, king of Adiabene, Monobazus and Kenedaeus, and after them Niger the Peraean and Silas the Babylonian, who had deserted to the Jews from King Agrippa, in whose service he had been a soldier. Checked in their frontal assault, the Jews withdrew toward the city, but Simon son of Gioras fell on the Romans from behind as they climbed toward Bethoron,

tore savagely into their rearguard, and seized many of their baggage animals, which he brought into the city. Cestius remained in his position for three days, while the Jews held the high ground, watched the passes, and made it clear they would not rest once the Romans began their march. Seeing this, and recognizing that even Rome's forces were not safe with such a countless enemy multitude

holding the mountains all around, Agrippa decided to test the Jews with words, hoping either to persuade the whole body to lay down the war or to detach the dissenters from those who would not agree. He sent, therefore, two men well known to them, Borcius and Phoebus, promising on Cestius's behalf a pledge of safety and on Rome's a secure pardon for what had been done, if they threw down their weapons and came over.

But the insurgents, fearing that the whole populace, hoping for amnesty, would go over to Agrippa, resolved to kill his envoys. Before they could even speak, they killed Phoebus outright; Borcius, though wounded, managed to escape. As for the citizens who protested, they drove them back into the city with stones and clubs. Cestius, seeing this discord among them as his opportunity,

brought his whole force to the assault, routed them, and pursued them all the way to Jerusalem. He encamped at the place called Scopus, seven stadia from the city, and for three days made no attempt on it, expecting perhaps that some within would surrender it to him; meanwhile he sent many of his soldiers out to plunder grain from the surrounding villages. On the fourth day, which

was the thirtieth of the month Hyperberetaeus, he drew up his army and led it into the city. The populace was held under guard by the insurgents, who, terrified by the Roman discipline, gave up the outer districts and withdrew into the inner city and the Temple. Cestius entered and set fire to the district called Bezetha, as well as the New City, and

the so-called Timber Market. He then advanced to the Upper City and pitched camp opposite the royal palace. Had he chosen at that very hour to force his way inside the walls, he would have taken the city on the spot and ended the war then and there. But the camp prefect Tyrannius Priscus and most of the cavalry commanders, bribed with money by Florus, turned him away from the

attempt. Because of this the war dragged on so long and the Jews came to be filled with such irreparable disasters. Meanwhile many of the notable citizens, persuaded by Ananus son of Jonathan, invited Cestius to enter, promising to open the gates to him. He, whether out of anger or distrust, hesitated and delayed, until the insurgents, becoming aware of the

betrayal, threw Ananus's party down from the wall, drove them with stones back into their houses, and themselves stood apart from the towers and hurled missiles at anyone who approached the wall. For five days the Romans made every kind of assault and could achieve nothing, but on the next day Cestius took a large number of picked men and his archers and attacked the Temple from

the north side. The Jews defended it from the portico, and repeatedly beat back those who approached the wall, but at last, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of missiles, they gave ground. The leading Romans then set their shields against the wall, and those behind them, and the ranks following in turn, formed what they call a tortoise, under

which the missiles hurtling down slid off harmlessly, and the soldiers, unharmed, began undermining the wall and preparing to set fire to the Temple gate. Terrible panic seized the insurgents, and already many were fleeing the city as though it were about to fall at once. The populace took heart at this, and wherever the rebels gave way, they themselves came forward to open the gates and

welcome Cestius as a benefactor. Had he pressed the siege a little longer, he would have taken the city immediately. But I think that God, already turned away from them because of the wicked and unwilling to let the Temple meet its end that day, held the war back. So Cestius, without grasping either the despair of the besieged or the mood of the populace, suddenly recalled his soldiers,

and, giving up hope despite having suffered no defeat, withdrew from the city in the most unaccountable fashion. Emboldened by his unexpected retreat, the rebels rushed out against his rear and destroyed a good number of his cavalry and infantry. That night Cestius camped at the position on Scopus, and the next day, moving further off, only drew the enemy on more, for they

pressed against his rear and destroyed them, while others ran along both sides of the road and hurled javelins into his flanks. The men at the rear did not dare turn to face those wounding them from behind, imagining they were pursued by an army beyond counting, and could not bring themselves to check those pressing on their flanks either, being themselves weighed down and afraid of breaking ranks, while they saw the Jews were light and quick in their charges. As a result

they suffered great harm without inflicting any in return. All along the road they were struck down and shaken loose from the column and fell, until many had perished, among them Priscus, commander of the Sixth Legion, Longinus the tribune, and Aemilius Jucundus, prefect of a cavalry squadron. They barely reached Gabao, their former camp, having lost much of their baggage. There

Cestius remained two days, at a loss what to do, but on the third, seeing the enemy grown far more numerous and the whole region around teeming with Jews, he realized that his delay had only worked against him and that staying longer would mean facing still more enemies. To make his flight swifter, he ordered everything that slowed the army's march to be cut loose. So the mules and pack animals were destroyed, all

except those carrying missiles and siege engines, which they kept for their usefulness and, above all, for fear these might fall into Jewish hands; and he led the army on toward Bethoron. The Jews pressed less hard on the open stretches, but once the Romans were funneled into the narrow descent, some blocked their way out ahead while others

drove the rearmost down into the ravine, and the whole mass, spread out along the ridge above the road, covered the column with missiles. There even the infantry found it hard to defend themselves, but the danger was still greater for the cavalry, who could neither ride down the road in formation under fire nor charge the enemy up the slope, while on

the other side lay cliffs and ravines, into which men, losing their footing, fell to their deaths. There was no place to flee to and no way to fight back; helpless, they turned to wailing and the cries of the despairing, answered by the war cries of the Jews, at once jubilant and enraged. They would have wiped out Cestius's entire force had not night intervened,

in which the Romans took refuge in Bethoron, while the Jews surrounded the whole area and kept watch on every way out. There Cestius, giving up any open route, planned a stealthy escape. He picked out about four hundred of his bravest soldiers and stationed them on the rooftops, ordering them to keep calling out the watch-signals used in camp, so that the Jews would believe the whole army was still there;

he himself, taking the rest, quietly advanced thirty stadia. At dawn the Jews, seeing the position empty, rushed upon the four hundred who had deceived them, quickly cut them down with javelins, and set off after Cestius. But he had already gained a good part of the night's start and fled all the more swiftly by day, so that in their fear and panic the soldiers abandoned their siege engines, catapults,

and most of their other equipment, which the Jews later seized and turned against the very men who had abandoned them. They pursued the Romans as far as Antipatris, and then, since they could not overtake them, turned back, carried off the engines, stripped the dead, gathered up whatever spoil remained, and returned to the mother city singing hymns of victory, having lost only a few of their own, but

having killed five thousand three hundred Roman and allied infantry, and four hundred and eighty cavalry. This took place on the eighth of the month Dius, in the twelfth year of Nero's reign. After Cestius's disaster, many prominent Jews abandoned the city like men swimming away from a sinking ship. Costobarus and Saul, brothers, together with Philip son of Jacimus, who was

the camp commander of King Agrippa, fled the city and went over to Cestius. What became of Antipas, who was besieged with them in the royal palace and disdained flight, only to be killed later by the insurgents, we shall relate. Cestius sent Saul and his companions, at their own request, on to Achaea to Nero, both to explain their situation and to lay the blame for the war on Florus,

hoping this would ease the anger directed at himself along with his own danger. Meanwhile the people of Damascus, learning of the Roman disaster, resolved to kill the Jews living among them. Since they had long kept them gathered in the gymnasium for this very purpose, out of suspicion, they thought the deed would be easy; but they were afraid of their own wives, who, with few exceptions, had all

been drawn to the Jewish religion. For this reason their great struggle was to keep the matter hidden from them. Falling upon the Jews, who numbered about ten thousand five hundred, all unarmed, in a confined space, they massacred them within a single hour without fear of resistance. Those who had pursued Cestius, once they returned to Jerusalem, brought over by force those who still favored Rome and by persuasion the rest, and, assembling in the Temple, appointed additional generals

for the war. Joseph son of Gorion and the high priest Ananus were chosen with full authority over affairs in the city, and charged especially with rebuilding its walls. As for Eleazar son of Simon, although he had in his own possession the Roman spoils, the money seized from Cestius, and much of the public treasury besides, they did not entrust him with any duties,

seeing that he was tyrannical by nature and that the Zealots under him behaved like a bodyguard. Yet little by little, through the people's need of the money and Eleazar's own cunning, he worked his way around the populace until they obeyed him in everything. For Idumaea they chose other generals, Jesus son of Sapphas, one of the chief priests, and Eleazar son of Neus, also a chief priest's son; and to

Niger, then governor of Idumaea, a man from Peraea beyond the Jordan, for which he was called the Peraean, they gave orders to submit to these generals. Nor did they neglect the rest of the country: Joseph son of Simon was sent to Jericho, Manasseh to Peraea, and John the Essene to command the toparchy of Thamna, to which Lydda, Joppa, and Emmaus were also assigned. Over

Gophna and Acrabatta, John son of Ananias was appointed governor, and over both parts of Galilee, Joseph son of Matthias, to whose command was also added Gamala, the strongest city in that region. All the other generals administered what had been entrusted to them each according to his own energy or judgment; but Joseph, on coming to Galilee, made it his first concern to win the goodwill of the local people, knowing

that this above all would bring him success, even if he failed in other respects. Recognizing that he would win over the powerful by letting them share in his authority, and the whole populace by having most matters handled through men of their own region whom they knew, he chose seventy of the oldest and most level-headed men from the nation and set them up as rulers over the whole of Galilee, and in each city seven judges for the lesser disputes; for

the more serious matters and capital cases he ordered referred to himself and the seventy. Having established these arrangements for order among the cities, he turned to securing them from outside attack. Knowing that the Romans would first invade Galilee, he fortified the most useful positions: Jotapata, Bersabe, and Salamis, as well as Caphareccho, Japha, and Sigoph, and

He fortified Mount Itabyrion, as it is called, Taricheae, and Tiberias, and in addition, in the district around Lake Gennesaret, the caves in what is called Lower Galilee. In Upper Galilee he fortified the so-called Rock of Achabara, along with Seph, Iamnith, and Meroth; in the Gaulanitis he secured Seleucia, Sogana, and Gamala. Only the people of Sepphoris he allowed to build their own wall unaided, since he saw they were wealthy and eager for the war even without being ordered to it.

In the same way John, son of Levi, fortified Gischala on his own initiative, at Josephus's command; in all the other strongholds Josephus himself was present, laboring alongside the builders and directing the work. He also raised from Galilee a force of more than a hundred thousand young men, whom he armed entirely with old weapons he had collected and refitted.

Then, recognizing that the invincibility of the Roman army rested above all on discipline and constant drill with arms, he gave up hope of achieving the same training, since it was pursued only out of practical need, but he saw that discipline arose from the multiplicity of officers, so in Roman fashion he divided his army and appointed more captains over units. He created ranks among the soldiers, placing them under decurions and centurions, then under tribunes, and above these, commanders of the larger divisions.

He taught them the transmission of signals, the trumpet-calls for advance and retreat, the assaults of the wings and the wheeling maneuvers, and how they must turn to support a wavering flank from the strength of the rest, and share in the suffering of a hard-pressed unit. Whatever contributed to steadiness of spirit or endurance of body, he explained to them; and above all he trained them for war

by describing to them at every turn the discipline of the Romans, and how they would be fighting against men who, through strength of body and steadiness of spirit, ruled almost the whole inhabited world. He said he would test their obedience in matters of war even before battle was joined, by seeing whether they would abstain from their habitual offenses -- theft, banditry, and plunder, and cheating their own countrymen, and

regarding harm done to their closest kin as personal gain. For wars are conducted best among those whose whole fighting force has a good conscience, while men corrupt at home treat not only the enemy attacking them but also God himself as their adversary. Such were the exhortations he continued to give. The force he had ready for battle amounted to sixty thousand infantry and three hundred fifty

cavalry; besides these, the mercenaries in whom he placed his greatest trust numbered about four thousand five hundred, and he kept about him a chosen bodyguard of six hundred men. The cities easily supported the rest of the army, apart from the mercenaries; for each of the enlisting towns, sending out half its recruits to serve, kept back the rest to supply provisions for those in the field,

so that some were assigned to arms and others to labor, and those who sent the grain received in return protection from the men under arms.

While Josephus was administering the affairs of Galilee in this way, a certain scheming man rose up against him from Gischala, son of Levi, named John -- the most cunning and deceitful of all men notorious for such wickedness, poor at first, and for a long time

kept from wrongdoing only by his lack of means, ready to lie, and skilled at winning belief for his lies, regarding deceit as a virtue and practicing it even against his closest friends, a hypocrite of benevolence and, for hope of gain, utterly murderous, always coveting great things, and nourishing his ambitions through petty crimes. He had been a bandit acting alone, and then found companions for his daring, at

first few, but ever increasing in number. He took care never to recruit anyone easily overpowered, but chose out those distinguished for soundness of body, steadiness of spirit, and experience in war, until he had gathered a band of as many as four hundred men, most of them fugitives from the territory of Tyre and its villages; with these he plundered the whole of Galilee and kept the great mass of people, already on edge

over the coming war, in continual turmoil. By now, aspiring to command and reaching for greater things, he was held back by lack of funds. But when he saw that Josephus took great delight in his energetic activity, he persuaded him first to entrust to him the rebuilding of his native city's wall, a task from which he made large profits from the wealthy; then, having devised a most cunning scheme, on the pretext that all the Jews throughout

Syria were careful to use oil not handled by gentiles, he requested permission to send it to them at the border. Buying up four jars for the price of one Tyrian coin -- worth four Attic drachmas -- he sold half a jar at the same price. Since Galilee was especially rich in olive oil, and had at that time produced an abundant crop, by sending large quantities to places in short supply he alone amassed an immense fortune, which he immediately turned against the very man

who had provided him the opportunity for this trade. Supposing that if he brought down Josephus he would himself take command of Galilee, he ordered the bandits under him to press their plundering more vigorously, so that with many disturbances stirred up throughout the country he might either ambush and kill the general when he came out to suppress them, or, if Josephus overlooked the bandits, might slander him to the local people as complicit. He also spread the rumor far and wide that Josephus was betraying affairs to the Romans, and

engineered many such schemes for the man's downfall.

At this time some young men from the village of Dabaritta, who were among the guards stationed in the great plain, ambushed Ptolemy, the steward of Agrippa and Bernice, and stripped him of all the baggage he was carrying, which included a great quantity of costly clothing and a large number of silver cups, and six hundred gold pieces. Unable to dispose of the plunder secretly, they

brought it all to Josephus at Taricheae. He reproached them for their violence against the royal officials, and deposited the goods with Annaeus, the most powerful man in Taricheae, intending to send them back to their owners at the right time -- a decision that brought him into the greatest danger. For those who had seized the plunder, resentful at receiving no share of what had been taken, and also having perceived

Josephus's intention, that he meant to hand over the fruit of their labor to the royal family, ran through the villages by night and denounced Josephus everywhere as a traitor. They filled the neighboring towns with turmoil as well, so that by dawn a hundred thousand armed men had rushed together against him. The crowd, gathered in the hippodrome at Taricheae, shouted out their fury and demanded to

stone him, while others cried out to burn the traitor. John incited the crowd further, and with him a certain Jesus, son of Sapphias, then the leader of Tiberias. Josephus's friends and bodyguards, terrified by the fury of the mob, all fled except for four; but he himself, though already asleep, rose as the fire was being brought near, and, though the four who remained urged him to flee, they

stayed by him. He, undaunted either by his own isolation or by the mass of men standing over him, sprang out before them, tore his clothing, sprinkled dust on his head, twisted his hands behind his back, and fastened his own sword to his neck by its strap. At this the people close to him, especially the Tarichaeans, were moved to pity, but those from the countryside and the neighboring

towns, to whom he seemed to be putting on a show, reviled him and demanded that he produce the public funds at once and confess to his treasonous compact; for from his posture they had already assumed he would deny nothing they suspected, but had done all this display of grief only to win pardon. But for him this show of humility was a preparation for a stratagem, and by his art he set those angry with him at odds with one another over the very charges they

had leveled. Then, when given leave to speak, he said, "I never intended either to send this money back to Agrippa or to keep it for my own profit -- may I never consider one of you an enemy, or gain that harms the common good, a friend to me. But seeing, men of Taricheae, that your city especially needed security and required money to build a wall, and fearing

the people of Tiberias and the other towns, who had their eyes on the plunder, I chose to hold the money quietly, so that I might build you a wall with it. If this does not please you, I will produce what was brought here and let you plunder it; but if my plan for you was a good one, then punish your own benefactor." At this the Tarichaeans applauded him, but those from Tiberias, along with the others, reviled and threatened him; and each

group, abandoning Josephus, fell to quarreling with each other. He, now trusting in those who had become attached to him -- the Tarichaeans numbered about forty thousand -- addressed the whole crowd rather more boldly. After reproaching them at length for their rashness, he said he would fortify Taricheae from the funds now at hand, and would likewise secure the other cities as well; for money would not be lacking, if they were of one mind about whom they should be raising it from, and were not provoked against the man raising it.

At this the rest of the deceived crowd withdrew, still angry, but two thousand rushed at him under arms, and, since he had already reached his lodging, stood before it uttering threats. Josephus now resorted to a second deception: going up onto the roof and quieting their uproar with a gesture of his hand, he said he did not know what they were demanding, since he could not make it out amid the confusion of their shouting; but he would do whatever they ordered, if they would send in a few representatives to confer with him quietly. Hearing this, the notables, along with their leaders, went in. He

dragged them into the innermost part of the house, locked the outer door, and had them flogged until their entrails were laid bare, while the crowd outside waited, supposing that those who had gone in were pleading their case at length. Then, suddenly throwing open the doors, he sent the men out covered in blood, striking such terror into those who had been making threats that they threw down their weapons and fled.

At this John's envy grew still sharper, and he prepared a second plot against Josephus. Feigning illness, he begged by letter that Josephus permit him to make use of the hot springs at Tiberias for his health. Josephus, not yet suspecting the plotter, wrote to the officials in the city

to provide John with lodging and provisions. Having enjoyed these for two days, he then set about the business for which he had really come, and by winning some over with deceit and others with bribes, he tried to persuade them to abandon Josephus. When Silas, whom Josephus had put in charge of guarding the city, learned of this, he wrote to him at once about the plot. Josephus,

on receiving the letter, traveled through the night at speed and arrived at Tiberias by dawn. The rest of the people came out to meet him, but John, though he suspected that Josephus's arrival was directed against him, nonetheless sent one of the notables to him and pretended to be sick, saying that being bedridden had prevented him from coming for his treatment. But when Josephus had gathered the Tiberians in the stadium and was trying to address them

about the matters in his letters, John sent in armed men secretly and ordered them to kill him. The crowd, seeing these men baring their swords, cried out; and Josephus, turning at the outcry and seeing the blade already at his throat, leapt down to the shore. He had been standing on a mound about six cubits high while addressing the people; and as a boat happened to be nearby, he jumped aboard it with two bodyguards and fled out into the middle of the lake.

His soldiers, quickly seizing their weapons, advanced against the plotters. There, fearing that if civil war broke out he would destroy the city for the grudge of a few men, Josephus sent word to his own men to look only to their own safety, and neither to kill anyone nor to expose those responsible. They obeyed the order and kept quiet, but those in the surrounding

countryside, on learning of the plot and the man who had contrived it, gathered against John; but he had already fled to his native Gischala ahead of them. The Galileans streamed in to Josephus from the towns, and, gathering in many tens of thousands under arms, cried out that they were present to move against John, the common enemy, and that they would burn down even the native city that had sheltered him along with him. Josephus, for his part, said he welcomed

their goodwill, but restrained their impulse, preferring to subdue his enemies by cunning rather than to kill them. Taking down by name those from each city who had joined John's revolt -- for the townspeople eagerly pointed out their own -- and threatening through heralds that within five days he would plunder the property and burn the houses, together with the families, of all who had not abandoned John, he detached three

thousand at once, who came and threw down their weapons at his feet; and with those who remained -- about two thousand fugitive Syrians -- John turned again from open schemes to secret plots. He sent messengers secretly to Jerusalem, slandering Josephus for the size of his forces and declaring that he would soon come as tyrant of the capital, unless

he were forestalled. The people, having anticipated this, paid no attention, but the powerful men, out of envy, and some of the magistrates too, secretly sent John money to gather mercenaries, so that he might make war on Josephus; and among themselves they also voted to recall him from his command. They did not, however, think the decree alone would suffice: they sent two thousand five hundred armed men and four distinguished

men -- Jozar son of Nomicus, Ananias son of Sadduki, Simon, and Judas son of Jonathan, all reputed to be most capable speakers -- so that these might turn the people's goodwill away from Josephus: if he came willingly, they were to let him give an account of himself, but if he tried by force to remain, they were to treat him as an enemy. His friends had already sent word to Josephus that an army was coming, but they did not disclose the reason,

since his enemies had planned it in secret. For that reason, since he had taken no precautions, four cities at once went over to those who had come against him -- Sepphoris, Gabara, Gischala, and Tiberias. But he quickly won these back too, without recourse to arms, and, having overcome the four commanders by stratagems, sent the most powerful of their soldiers up to Jerusalem. At this the people were greatly incensed and

rushed, together with these men, to kill those who had sent them, had they not escaped by fleeing in time. As for John, from then on the fear he felt of Josephus kept him confined within the walls of Gischala. A few days later Tiberias revolted again, its people having invited King Agrippa in; and when he failed to arrive by the appointed day, but a few Roman cavalrymen happened to appear that same day, Josephus

News of the revolt reached Tarichaeae at once. But Josephus had sent out all his soldiers to gather grain, and so he could bring himself neither to march out alone against the rebels nor to stay where he was, fearing that if he delayed, the king's men would get into the city first; for the following day, with the Sabbath beginning, would give him no chance to act. He therefore resolved to outmaneuver the rebels by a trick.

He ordered the gates of Tarichaeae closed, so that no one could carry word of his plan to the men he meant to move against, and had every boat on the lake gathered together — three hundred and thirty were found, with no more than four sailors in each — and rowed with all speed toward Tiberias. He kept far enough from the city that it was not easy to tell the boats were empty, and had them ride at anchor riding high on the water, while he himself, taking only seven of his bodyguard and no weapons, went in closer to be seen. His opponents, watching from the walls and still hurling abuse at him, were seized with panic, supposing every boat crammed with soldiers; they threw down their arms, and waving branches of supplication, begged him to spare the city.

Josephus, heaping threats and reproaches on them, said that first they had taken up the war against Rome, then squandered their strength on civil strife, doing exactly what their enemies most wished, and now they were in haste to destroy the very man responsible for their safety, and felt no shame in shutting the city against the one who had built its walls — yet he would nonetheless receive those who came to plead their case and offer pledges to secure the city. At once ten of the most powerful men of Tiberias came down to him.

These he took aboard one of the boats and had it rowed further out; then he ordered fifty more of the council, the best known among them, to come forward, as though he wanted some pledge of good faith from them as well. Then, contriving ever newer pretexts, he called out one group after another as if for the terms of an agreement, and instructed the boat captains, as each boat filled, to sail quickly for Tarichaeae and shut the men up in prison — until he had seized the whole council, six hundred strong, and about two thousand of the common people, and carried them all off by boat to Tarichaeae. The rest cried out that a certain Clitus bore the chief blame for the revolt, and urged him to vent his anger on that man alone. Josephus had resolved to kill no one, but ordered Levi, one of his own guards, to go out and cut off Clitus's hands. Clitus, afraid to go out alone into a crowd of enemies, refused. Then, seeing Josephus fuming aboard the boat and ready to leap out and carry out the punishment himself, Clitus begged from the shore to be allowed to keep one hand. Josephus agreed, on condition that Clitus cut off the other himself; and Clitus drew his sword with his right hand and cut off his left — to such terror had Josephus reduced him.

Thus, with empty boats and seven guards, Josephus took the populace captive and brought Tiberias back under his control. A few days later, finding that Sepphoris had joined in the revolt along with them, he allowed his soldiers to plunder it; but he then gathered up everything taken and gave it back to the townspeople, and did the same for the people of Sepphoris, for having subdued them too, he wanted the plundering to serve as a lesson, and then won them back to goodwill by restoring their property.

So the disturbances in Galilee came to an end, and once the factions had ceased their internal turmoil, they turned to preparations against Rome. In Jerusalem, meanwhile, Ananus the high priest and all the powerful men who were not pro-Roman were repairing the wall and building great numbers of siege engines. Throughout the whole city weapons and armor were being forged, the mass of young men was drilling without order or discipline, and everything was full of turmoil; the moderate citizens fell into deep despondency, and many, foreseeing the disasters to come, wept aloud. Prophetic utterances, unwelcome to those who loved peace, were extemporized to please those who had kindled the war instead, and the condition of the city, even before the Romans arrived, was already like a city doomed to perish.

Ananus, for his part, was concerned to draw the city back gradually from its preparations for war, and to turn the rebels and the folly of the men called Zealots toward what was truly advantageous; but he was overpowered by their violence, and what end he met we shall show later. In the toparchy of Acrabatene, Simon son of Gioras gathered a large following of revolutionaries and turned to plunder, ravaging not only the houses of the rich but torturing their owners as well, and it was already plain, even at this distance, that he was setting himself up as a tyrant. When an army was sent against him by Ananus and the other leaders, he fled with his men to the bandits at Masada, and stayed there, plundering Idumaea all the while, until the deaths of Ananus and his other enemies. As a result the leaders of the nation, because of the great number of the murdered and the ceaseless raids, gathered an army and kept the villages under garrison. Such, then, was the state of affairs in Idumaea.

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