Josephus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
How, after Agrippa's death, Claudius Caesar sent Fadus into Judea as procurator. The strife between the people of Philadelphia and the Jews living in Perea over the boundary of a village, and how, when many of the Philadelphians had been killed by them, Fadus in anger seized the three leading men of the Perean Jews and put them to death. How Tholomaeus the chief bandit, who had been raiding the Arabs, was captured and brought before Fadus and executed. How Fadus and Cassius Longinus, the governor of Syria, went up to Jerusalem and ordered the leading men of the Jews to deposit the high priest's robe and the sacred vestment in the Antonia, under Roman authority, as had been the case before. The Jews' appeal to Fadus and Longinus about this, asking them to allow an embassy to be sent to Claudius Caesar concerning it. How Fadus, having taken hostages, granted this. How Claudius Caesar, at the request of the younger Agrippa, granted the Jews their requests and wrote to Fadus about them. How Helena, queen of the Adiabenians, and her sons Monobazus and Izates, and their whole family, came to embrace the customs of the Jews. How, when Herod, king of Chalcis, died, the younger Agrippa received the kingdom, given to him by Claudius Caesar. How Tiberius Alexander, arriving in Judea as procurator, punished the sons of Judas the Galilean for deceiving the populace. Concerning the famine that occurred in the country. The arrival of Cumanus in Judea as procurator, sent by Caesar. How under him many of the Jews perished at the Temple. The conflict of the Jews with the Samaritans, and how many of the Samaritans were destroyed. How Ummidius Quadratus, governor of Syria, hearing of this and going up to Judea, ordered the leading men of the Jews and Samaritans to go up to Rome, and likewise Cumanus the procurator and Celer the tribune, to give account to Claudius Caesar of what had happened, while he himself punished some of the Jews. How Claudius, hearing them, acquitted the Jews of the charge at the request of King Agrippa, banished Cumanus, and punished Celer the tribune and the leading men of the Samaritans. How Felix, sent as procurator and finding the country ravaged by bandits, took care to bring peace to the land by destroying them, and sent the chief of the bandits, named Eleazar, bound to Rome. How, when a certain Egyptian charlatan appeared and many Jews were led astray by him, Felix went out against them and killed many. How Felix the procurator put an end to the strife between the leading Jews and the Syrians in Caesarea. How, when Claudius died, Nero succeeded to the rule. How, when Porcius Festus was sent to Judea as procurator, the country came to be afflicted by the sicarii. Concerning the portico of the inner Temple and how the Jews raised it higher. How Festus, angered at this, sent the leading Jews to Rome to Nero to make their case about what had been done. How, when Festus died in Judea, Albinus came as his successor. How under him the sicarii ceased to ravage the country. How Florus, coming as Albinus's successor, inflicted such evils on the Jews that he drove them to take up arms. Concerning Josephus, his family, and his standing. This book covers a period of twenty-six years.
When King Agrippa died, as we reported in the previous book, Claudius Caesar sent Cassius Longinus as successor to Marsus, granting this as a favor to the memory of the king, since Marsus, while Agrippa was still alive, had been asked many times by him in letters no longer to preside over affairs in Syria.
When Fadus arrived in Judea as procurator, he found the Jews living in Perea at war with the people of Philadelphia over the boundary of a village said to be full of hostile men. The Pereans, without consulting their own leading men, had taken up arms and killed many of the Philadelphians. Learning of this, Fadus was greatly angered that they had not left the judgment to him, if indeed they believed themselves wronged by the Philadelphians, but had instead resorted to arms. So he took the three leading men, who were also responsible for the uprising, ordered them bound, then put one of them to death — his name was Annibas — and sentenced the other two, Amaramus and Eleazar, to exile. Tholomaeus the chief bandit, too, was captured not long after and brought before him, a man who had inflicted the greatest harm on Idumea and the Arabs; and from that point all Judea was cleared of banditry through the foresight and care of Fadus.
He then summoned the chief priests and the leading men of Jerusalem and urged them to deposit the high priest's robe and the sacred vestment — which only the high priest is accustomed to wear — in the Antonia, a fortress, to be kept under Roman authority, as had indeed been the case before. They did not dare object, but nevertheless appealed to Fadus and to Longinus, who had also come to Jerusalem bringing a large force, for fear that the multitude of the Jews might be driven to revolt by Fadus's orders. They asked first to be allowed to send envoys to Caesar requesting that the sacred vestment be kept under their own authority, and then to wait until they learned what answer Claudius would give. Fadus and Longinus said they would allow the envoys to be sent if they received the sons of the leading men as hostages. The Jews readily agreed and handed over the hostages, and the envoys were sent off. When they arrived in Rome, the younger Agrippa, son of the king who had died, learning why they had come — he happened to be at the court of Claudius Caesar at the time, as we said before — urged Caesar to grant the Jews what they requested concerning the sacred vestment, and to write to Fadus about it. Claudius summoned the envoys and said he granted this, and told them to be grateful to Agrippa, since it was he who had asked it of him; and along with his answer he gave them the following letter.
Claudius Caesar Germanicus, holder of tribunician power for the fifth time, consul designate for the fourth time, acclaimed imperator for the tenth time, father of the country, to the magistrates, council, and people of Jerusalem, and to the whole nation of the Jews, greetings. Since my Agrippa, whom I have raised and who is with me, a most devout man, brought your envoys to me to give thanks for the care I have taken for your nation, and they earnestly and eagerly asked that the sacred robe and the crown be kept under your own authority, I grant this, just as the most excellent and most honored Vitellius did before me. I agreed to this decision first because of my own devotion and my wish that every people worship according to its ancestral customs, and also because I know that King Herod and the younger Aristobulus — whose devotion to me and zeal on your behalf I recognize, men to whom I owe the greatest debts of friendship, being most excellent and honored by me as well — were the ones who asked this of me. I have written about these matters also to Cuspius Fadus, my procurator. The bearers of this letter are Cornelius son of Ceron, Tryphon son of Theudion, Dorotheus son of Nathanael, and John son of John. Written four days before the Kalends, in the consulship of Rufus and Pompeius Silvanus.
Herod too, the brother of the Agrippa who had died, who at that time had been entrusted with the rule of Chalcis, asked Claudius Caesar for authority over the Temple, the sacred funds, and the appointment of the high priests, and obtained all of it. From that time this authority remained with all his descendants until the end of the war. And so Herod removed from the high priesthood the man called Cantheras, giving the succession to that honor instead to Joseph son of Camei.
At this time Helena, queen of the Adiabenians, and her son Izates, changed their way of life to the customs of the Jews, for the following reason. Monobazus, king of the Adiabenians, who also bore the name Bazaeus, fell in love with his sister Helena, took her in marriage, and made her pregnant. Once, as he lay beside his wife with his hand resting on her belly while she slept, he seemed to hear a voice commanding him to take his hand from her womb and not press upon the child within it, which, by God's providence, would attain rule and a happy end. Startled by the voice, he woke at once and told his wife what had happened, and named the son Izates. He also had an older son, Monobazus, by Helena, and other children by other wives; but he plainly showed all his affection toward Izates, as though he were an only child. From this, envy toward the boy grew among his half-brothers, and from that envy grew hatred, since all of them were grieved that their father favored Izates above them.
Although the father clearly perceived this, he forgave the others, since they suffered it not out of wickedness but because each wished to receive his father's favor for himself. But being greatly afraid for the young man, lest he suffer some harm at his brothers' hands out of their hatred, he sent him, with many gifts, to Abennerigus, king of Spasinou Charax, entrusting to him the young man's safety. Abennerigus received the young man gladly, treated him with great favor, gave him his daughter Samacho in marriage, and granted him a territory from which he would draw great revenues. Monobazus, now old and seeing that little time remained to him, wished to see his son face to face before he died. So he summoned him, greeted him most affectionately, and gave him the territory called Carrhae. This land is excellent for bearing quantities of amomum; and in it are also the remains of the ark in which, it is said, Noah was saved from the flood, and to this day these remains are shown to those who wish to see them. Izates remained in this territory until his father's death.
On the day Monobazus departed from life, Queen Helena summoned all the magnates, the satraps of the kingdom, and those entrusted with the forces. When they had assembled, she said: "That my husband wished Izates to succeed him in the kingdom, and judged him worthy of it, I do not think has escaped you either; yet I still await your judgment as well, for happy is not the man who receives rule from one person alone, but from many, and willing ones." She said this to test what those summoned were thinking. On hearing it, they first bowed before the queen, as is their custom, and then said they confirmed the king's decision and would gladly obey Izates, who had rightly been preferred by his father over his brothers in accordance with everyone's prayers. They also said they wished first to kill his brothers and kinsmen, so that Izates might hold the rule securely, for once these were destroyed, all the fear arising from their hatred and envy would be removed. To this Helena replied that she acknowledged their goodwill toward her and toward Izates, but urged them nevertheless to hold off their plan to destroy the brothers until Izates arrived and gave his own approval. Since they could not persuade her to allow the killing, they urged instead that the brothers be kept bound and under guard until his arrival, for the sake of their own safety, and they advised her meanwhile to appoint as regent of the kingdom someone she trusted greatly. Helena agreed, and appointed her eldest son Monobazus king, placing the diadem on him and giving him their father's signet ring and the ring called among them the samphera, urging him to administer the kingdom until his brother's arrival. This Monobazus, hearing quickly of his father's death, came at once and succeeded his brother, who stepped aside from the rule in his favor.
Now during the time Izates was staying at Spasinou Charax, a certain Jewish merchant named Ananias, visiting the king's wives, taught them to worship God according to the ancestral custom of the Jews; and through them he came to be known to Izates as well, and likewise persuaded him. When Izates was summoned back by his father to Adiabene, Ananias went along with him, yielding to his earnest request; and it happened that Helena too had been instructed by another Jew and had likewise adopted their laws. When Izates took over the kingdom and arrived in Adiabene, and saw his brothers and other kinsmen in bonds, he was distressed at what had happened. Considering it impious either to kill them or to keep them bound, but believing it dangerous to keep men who bore grudges at his side unbound, he sent those meant to serve as hostages, along with their children, to Rome to Claudius Caesar, and sent the others to Artabanus the Parthian on similar pretexts.
Learning that his mother took great delight in the customs of the Jews, he hastened to adopt them himself as well, believing that he could not be firmly a Jew unless he were circumcised, and he was ready to act on this. But his mother, learning of it, tried to prevent him, telling him it would bring danger upon him, for he was king, and would arouse great hostility among his subjects once they learned he desired foreign and alien customs, and that they would not tolerate a Jew ruling over them. She said this and used every means to prevent him. He reported her words to Ananias. Ananias agreed with the mother and threatened that, if the king did not obey him, he would leave and depart, for he said he feared that, if the matter became known to all, he might risk punishment as the one responsible, having taught the king improper practices; but he said the king could worship God even without circumcision, if indeed he had firmly resolved to emulate the ancestral customs of the Jews, for this was more essential than being circumcised, and God would forgive him for not performing the act out of necessity and fear of his subjects. At the time the king was persuaded by these words. But afterward — for he had not entirely abandoned his desire — another Jew, from Galilee, named Eleazar, reputed to be extremely strict about the
Since Eleazar was thought to be an exact observer of the ancestral customs, he urged Izates to do the deed. For when he came in to greet him and found him reading the law of Moses,
he said, "You fail to realize, O king, that you are doing the gravest wrong to the laws, and through them to God himself. You must not merely read them — you must first of all do what they command. How long will you remain uncircumcised? But if you have not yet read the law concerning this, read it now, so that you may know what impiety is."
On hearing this, the king did not put off the act any longer. He withdrew to another room, called in the physician, and had the prescribed thing done. Then he sent for his mother and his tutor Ananias and told them he had done it.
Astonishment seized them at once, and no small fear — that if the act became known, the king might risk losing his throne, since his subjects would not tolerate being ruled by a man who had become a zealot for foreign customs, and that they themselves might risk being blamed for it.
But it was God who kept their fears from coming to pass. For when Izates himself, and later his sons, fell into many dangers, God preserved them, providing a way to safety out of desperate straits, thereby showing that for those who look to him and trust in him alone, the fruit of piety is never lost. But these events we shall relate later.
Helena, the king's mother, seeing the kingdom at peace and her son blessed and admired by all — even by foreigners — through God's providence, conceived a desire to travel to Jerusalem, to worship at the temple of God renowned among all peoples and to offer thank-offerings; and she asked her son for leave to go.
He granted his mother's request very readily, made ample preparations for her journey, and gave her a great sum of money; and she went down to Jerusalem, her son escorting her a long way.
Her arrival proved very useful to the people of Jerusalem. A famine was pressing hard on the city at that time, and many were perishing for lack of provisions. Queen Helena sent some of her people, some to Alexandria to buy grain with a large sum of money, others to Cyprus to bring back a cargo of dried figs.
As soon as they returned with the supplies, she distributed food to those in need, and she has left behind the greatest memory of this benefaction throughout our whole nation.
When her son Izates too learned of the famine, he sent a great deal of money to the leading men of Jerusalem. But the good deeds these rulers did for our city we shall relate later.
Artabanus, king of the Parthians, learning that his satraps had formed a plot against him, and seeing that it was not safe to remain among them, resolved to set out for Izates, wishing to find through him a means of safety and, if possible, a way back to his throne.
So he arrived, bringing with him about a thousand relatives and servants, and met Izates on the road. Though he himself recognized Izates clearly, he was not recognized by Izates; drawing near, he first bowed before him in the traditional manner, then said,
"O king, do not overlook me, your suppliant, nor disdain me in my need. Brought low by a reversal of fortune, reduced from a king to a private citizen, I stand in need of your help. Look, then, at the instability of fortune, consider it something common to all, and take thought for yourself as well — for if I am left unavenged, many will grow bolder against other kings too."
He said this weeping, his head bowed low. But Izates, on hearing the name and seeing Artabanus standing before him as a suppliant, leapt down from his horse and said,
"Take courage, O king; do not let your present state overwhelm you as though it were beyond remedy, for the reversal of your grief will be swift. You will find me a friend and an ally beyond your hope — either I will restore you to the Parthian throne, or I will give up my own."
Having said this, he set Artabanus on his horse and himself walked alongside on foot, paying him this honor as though to a greater king. When Artabanus saw this, he was troubled, both by his present fortune and by the honor shown him, and swore he would get down unless Izates mounted again and rode ahead.
Persuaded, Izates leapt onto his horse, and having brought Artabanus into his kingdom, paid him every honor, both in councils and in the order of precedence at banquets, looking not at his present fortune but at his former rank — and giving some weight, too, to the thought that changes of fortune are common to all men.
He also wrote to the Parthians urging them to receive Artabanus back, offering as pledge of an amnesty for what had happened his own right hand, his oaths, and his mediation.
The Parthians, for their part, did not deny that they wished to receive him, but said they could not, since the throne had already been entrusted to another — Cinnamus was the name of the man who had taken it — and that they feared this might lead to civil strife among them. When Cinnamus learned of their intention, he himself wrote to Artabanus — for he had been raised by him, and was by nature a good and noble man — urging him to trust him and come to reclaim his own throne.
Artabanus trusted him and came. Cinnamus went out to meet him, bowed before him, hailed him as king, and set the diadem on his head, taking it off his own.
Thus, through Izates, Artabanus was restored to the throne he had earlier lost because of the nobles. Yet he did not forget the benefits done to him, but repaid Izates with the greatest honors current among the Parthians: he granted him the right to wear the upright tiara and to sleep on a golden couch, privileges and marks that belong only to Parthian kings.
He also gave him a large and fertile territory, cut off from the king of the Armenians — the land is called Nisibis, where the Macedonians had earlier founded a city, Antioch, which they named Epimygdonia. With these honors Izates was honored by the king of the Parthians.
Not long afterward, Artabanus died, leaving the kingdom to his son Vardanes. Vardanes came to Izates, intending to wage war on the Romans, and tried to persuade him to join the campaign and prepare an alliance. But he did not persuade him — Izates, knowing the power and the fortune of Rome, believed he was undertaking the impossible.
Moreover, since he had sent five young sons to learn our ancestral language and culture precisely, and his mother, as I said, to worship at the temple, he was all the more reluctant, and he kept restraining Vardanes, repeatedly describing to him the power and achievements of the Romans, thinking that by this he would frighten him and put a stop to his desire for the campaign against them.
Provoked by this, the Parthian at once declared war on Izates. But he gained no benefit from that campaign, for God cut short all his hopes: when the Parthians learned Vardanes's intention, and that he had resolved to march against the Romans, they killed him and handed the throne over to his brother Gotarzes.
He too, not long after, died as the result of a plot, and was succeeded by his brother Vologeses, who entrusted principalities to his two brothers by the same father — to Pacorus, the elder, the kingdom of the Medes, and to Tiridates, the younger, Armenia.
Monobazus, the king's brother, and his other relatives, seeing that Izates, through his piety toward God, had become admired by all men, likewise conceived a desire to abandon their ancestral customs and live by the customs of the Jews.
Their action became known to their subjects, and the nobles, angered at this, did not show their wrath openly, but, keeping it in mind, watched for a suitable opportunity, eager to exact punishment from them.
So they wrote to Abia, king of the Arabs, promising to pay him a great deal of money if he was willing to make war on their own king, and they promised also to abandon the king at the first engagement — for they wished to punish him for having come to hate their own customs. Binding their mutual pledge with oaths, they urged him to make haste.
The Arab was persuaded, and bringing a large force, marched against Izates. When the first engagement was about to begin, before the armies came to blows, all his men deserted Izates by prearranged signal, as though seized by a panic terror, turned their backs on the enemy, and fled.
Izates, however, was not thrown into confusion. Realizing that treachery had been committed by the nobles, he too withdrew to his camp; and when he inquired into the cause and learned they had conspired with the Arab, he put the guilty men to death. Engaging the enemy the next day, he killed a great many, forced the rest to flee, and, pursuing the king himself, drove him into a fortress called Arsamus.
Attacking it vigorously, he took the fortress, plundered all the booty inside it — and it was a great deal — and returned to Adiabene without finding Abia alive, for when he was on the point of being surrounded, he had killed himself.
Though the nobles of Adiabene had failed in their first attempt — God having delivered them into the king's hands — they did not remain quiet even so, but wrote again, this time to Vologeses, king of the Parthians, urging him to kill Izates and set up in his place another ruler, one of Parthian stock — for they said they hated their own king, who had abolished their ancestral customs and become a lover of foreign ones.
On hearing this, the Parthian was roused to war, and having no occasion for a just pretext, he sent demanding back the honors his father had given Izates; and when Izates refused, he declared war on him.
Izates was greatly troubled in soul when he heard this, thinking it would bring him condemnation if he seemed to give up the gifts out of fear by doing so. Yet knowing that even if the Parthian recovered the honors he would not remain at peace, he decided to entrust the danger to his life to God his protector; and considering that he had in him the greatest of allies, he placed his children and wives in the safest of his fortresses, burned all the grain stored in his strongholds along with the fodder and the pasture, and, having thus made ready, awaited the enemy.
When the Parthian arrived with a large force of infantry and cavalry sooner than expected — for he had marched swiftly — and was pitching camp by the river marking the boundary between Adiabene and Media, Izates too set his camp not far off, with about six thousand cavalry around him.
A messenger sent by the Parthian came to Izates and reported how great the Parthian power was, setting its borders from the Euphrates to Bactria and listing the kings subject to it. He threatened that Izates would pay the penalty for having proved ungrateful to his own masters, and that not even the god he worshiped would be able to rescue him from the king's hands.
When the messenger had said this, Izates replied that he knew the Parthian power far exceeded his own, but said he knew still better that God was mightier than all men.
Having given this answer, he turned to supplication of God: throwing himself on the ground and disfiguring his head with ashes, he fasted together with his wife and children, calling upon God and saying,
"If it was not in vain, Master and Lord, that I came to know your goodness, and if I have rightly held you alone, above all, as my Lord, come as my ally — not only to defend me against my enemies, but because they have dared to defy your power as well."
He cried out in prayer, weeping and lamenting, and God heard him: that very night Vologeses received letters reporting that a large force of Dahae and Sacae, scorning his absence from home, had marched out and were plundering Parthia; and so he withdrew, his campaign unaccomplished. Thus, by the providence of God, Izates escaped the threats of the Parthian.
Not long afterward, having completed his fifty-fifth year and having reigned for twenty-four years, he ended his life, leaving behind twenty-four sons and twenty-four daughters. He ordered that his brother Monobazus succeed to the throne, rewarding him because, during his absence after their father's death, he had faithfully kept the throne safe for him.
His mother Helena, on hearing of her son's death, bore it hard, as was natural for a mother deprived of a most pious son; yet she found some comfort on hearing that the succession had passed to her elder son, and she hastened to him. But once she arrived in Adiabene, she survived her son Izates only a short time.
Monobazus sent both her bones and his brother's to Jerusalem and ordered them buried in the three pyramids their mother had built, three stadia distant from the city of Jerusalem. But what King Monobazus did during his lifetime we shall relate later.
While Fadus was procurator of Judea, a charlatan named Theudas persuaded a very great crowd to take up their possessions and follow him to the Jordan river — for he claimed to be a prophet, and said that at his command he would split the river and provide them an easy crossing. By saying this he deceived many.
Fadus, however, did not let them enjoy the fruits of their folly, but sent out a squadron of cavalry against them, which fell upon them unexpectedly, killed many, took many alive, and, having captured Theudas himself, cut off his head and carried it to Jerusalem. Such were the events that befell the Jews during the procuratorship of Cuspius Fadus.
Fadus was succeeded by Tiberius Alexander, son of that Alexander who had served as alabarch in Alexandria and who was foremost there in his time, both in lineage and in wealth. He too was distinguished for piety toward God — that of the...
Alexander's son, for he did not remain faithful to his ancestral customs. It was under him that the great famine occurred in Judea, during which Queen Helena, having bought grain from Egypt at great expense, distributed it to those in want, as I said before. In addition, the sons of Judas the Galilean, who had led the people to revolt from the Romans in the days when Quirinius was assessing Judea, as we have shown in an earlier book, were brought up for trial — James and Simon — and Alexander ordered them crucified.
Herod, king of Chalcis, removed Joseph son of Camei from the high priesthood and gave the succession to that honor to Ananias son of Nebedaeus. Cumanus arrived as Tiberius Alexander's successor. And Herod, brother of the great King Agrippa, died in the eighth year of Claudius Caesar's reign, leaving three sons: Aristobulus, born to him by his first wife, and, by Berenice his brother's daughter, Berenicianus and Hyrcanus. Caesar Claudius gave Herod's kingdom to the younger Agrippa.
When sedition broke out in the city of Jerusalem while Cumanus was administering the affairs of Judea, many of the Jews perished in it. I will first relate the cause of what happened. When the feast called Passover was at hand, at which it is our custom to eat unleavened bread, and a great crowd had gathered from every quarter for the festival, Cumanus grew afraid that some disturbance might arise from them, and ordered one company of soldiers to take up arms and stand on the porticoes of the temple to suppress any uprising, should one occur — as those who had governed Judea before him had also done at the festivals.
On the fourth day of the feast, one of the soldiers exposed his genitals and displayed them to the crowd, and at the sight of this those watching were seized with rage and fury, saying that they themselves had not been insulted but that God had been blasphemed. Some of the bolder among them reviled Cumanus, saying that the soldier had acted at his instigation. When Cumanus heard this he too was provoked beyond measure by the abuse, but he urged them nonetheless to stop desiring revolution and not to kindle sedition at a festival. When he failed to persuade them — for they only pressed harder with their abuse — he ordered the whole army to take up their armor and come to the Antonia, a fortress, as we said before, that overlooked the temple.
When the crowd saw the soldiers arriving they were seized with fear and rushed to flee, but since the exits were narrow, they believed they were being pursued by enemies, and in the crush of the flight they crushed and destroyed many of one another in the narrow passages. Twenty thousand were counted among those who perished in that uprising. Mourning took the place of festival for the rest of the time, and everyone, forgetting prayers and sacrifices, turned to lamentation and weeping. Such were the sufferings brought about by the outrage of a single soldier.
Their first mourning had not yet ended when another disaster fell upon them: some of those in revolt, given to sedition, waylaid on the public road, about a hundred stades from the city, a slave of Caesar named Stephen as he was traveling, and plundered all his property. When Cumanus heard of what had been done, he immediately sent soldiers, ordering them to plunder the nearby villages and to bring their most prominent men to him in chains. In the course of this pillaging, one of the soldiers found a copy of the Laws of Moses lying in a certain village, brought it out into everyone's sight, tore it apart, and blasphemed it with much mockery. When the Jews heard of this, many of them ran together and went down to Caesarea, where Cumanus happened to be, begging him to avenge not themselves but God, whose laws had been so outraged — for they could not endure to go on living while their ancestral laws were so grossly insulted. Cumanus, fearing that the crowd might rise again, and on the advice of his friends, had the soldier who had insulted the laws beheaded, and so put an end to the sedition that was about to flare up a second time.
A hostility also arose between the Samaritans and the Jews for the following reason. It was the custom of the Galileans, when they came up to the holy city for the festivals, to travel through Samaritan territory. On this occasion, as they were on the road, near a village called Ginae, which lies on the border between Samaria and the great plain, some men joined battle with them and killed many of them. When the leading men among the Galileans learned of what had happened, they went to Cumanus and urged him to avenge the murder of those who had been killed. But he, having been bribed by the Samaritans, paid no heed. Indignant at this, the Galileans persuaded the mass of the Jews to take up arms and to hold fast to their freedom, saying that slavery was in itself bitter, but slavery joined to outrage was utterly unbearable.
When the men in authority tried to calm them and promised to persuade Cumanus to exact justice from those who had done the killing, they paid them no heed, but took up arms and, calling on Eleazar son of Dinaeus — a bandit who had spent many years living in the mountains — to help them, they burned and plundered a number of Samaritan villages. When word of this reached Cumanus, he took the cavalry unit of the Sebastenes and four infantry regiments, and having armed the Samaritans as well, marched out against the Jews. In the engagement he killed many of them and took even more alive. The leading men of Jerusalem in rank and family, when they saw the magnitude of the disaster they were facing, changed into sackcloth, covered their heads with ashes, and by every means begged those who had revolted
to consider, before their eyes, that their homeland would be razed, the temple burned to the ground, and they themselves, together with their wives and children, reduced to slavery — and so to change their minds, throw down their arms, and remain quiet henceforth, withdrawing to their own homes. By these arguments they persuaded them. The people dispersed, but the bandits went back once more to their strongholds. From that time on all Judea was filled with bands of robbers.
The leading men of the Samaritans went to Ummidius Quadratus, governor of Syria, who at that time happened to be in Tyre, and accused the Jews of having burned and plundered their villages. They said they were less indignant at what they themselves had suffered than at the fact that the Jews had shown contempt for the Romans — before whom, if they had really been wronged, they ought to have come as judges — and had instead, as though they had no Roman governors, taken to raiding on their own; they had therefore come to him to obtain redress. Such were the charges the Samaritans brought. The Jews, for their part, said that the Samaritans were responsible for both the sedition and the fighting, and above all that Cumanus had been corrupted by bribes from them and had suppressed the matter of the murdered men. Quadratus, on hearing this, deferred judgment, saying he would give his verdict once he had gone to Judea and learned the truth more precisely. So they departed without having achieved anything.
Not long after, Quadratus came to Samaria, where, after hearing both sides, he concluded that the Samaritans were responsible for the disturbance. Of the Samaritans and Jews whom he learned had taken part in the uprising, he crucified those whom Cumanus had taken captive. From there he went on to a village called Lydda, which was not smaller than a city, and, sitting on the tribunal, heard the Samaritans a second time; he learned from a certain Samaritan that a leading man among the Jews, named Doetus, together with four other revolutionaries, had persuaded the crowd to revolt from Rome. These men Quadratus ordered put to death, but Ananias the high priest and Ananus the commander he had bound and sent
to Rome to give an account of their conduct to Claudius Caesar. He also ordered the leading men of the Samaritans and of the Jews, together with Cumanus the procurator and Celer, a tribune, to go to Italy to be judged before the emperor concerning their disputes with one another. He himself, fearing that the Jewish crowd might rise again, went to the city of Jerusalem, and found it at peace, celebrating an ancestral festival to God. Satisfied, then, that no revolt would arise from them, he left them celebrating and returned to Antioch.
Cumanus and the leading men of the Samaritans, having been sent to Rome, were given a day by the emperor on which to plead their case against one another. Great effort was made on Cumanus's and the Samaritans' behalf by Caesar's freedmen and friends, and they would have prevailed over the Jews had not the younger Agrippa, who happened to be in Rome, seen the leading Jews being pressed hard and earnestly begged Agrippina, the emperor's wife, to persuade her husband to hear the case as befit his own sense of justice and to punish those responsible for the revolt.
Prompted by this request, Claudius heard the case and, finding that the Samaritans had been the instigators of the trouble, ordered those who had come up before him put to death, sentenced Cumanus to exile, and ordered that Celer the tribune be dragged through the whole city of Jerusalem in full view of everyone and then executed. He also sent Claudius Felix, brother of Pallas, to take charge of affairs in Judea.
Having now completed the twelfth year of his reign, Claudius bestowed on Agrippa the tetrarchy of Philip, adding to it Batanea together with Trachonitis and Abila — this last had been the tetrarchy of Lysanias — while taking from him Chalcis, which he had ruled for four years. Having received this gift from Caesar, Agrippa gave his sister Drusilla in marriage to Azizus, king of Emesa, who had consented to be circumcised.
Epiphanes, son of King Antiochus, had declined this marriage, being unwilling to adopt the customs of the Jews, though he had earlier promised her father he would do so. Agrippa also gave Mariamme in marriage to Archelaus, son of Helcias, to whom she had earlier been betrothed by their father Agrippa; from this marriage a daughter was born to them, named Berenice. Not long afterward, the marriage between Drusilla and Azizus was dissolved for the following reason.
At the time when Felix was procurator of Judea, he saw Drusilla — for she surpassed all women in beauty — and conceived a desire for her; he sent to her one of his friends, a Jew named Atomus, a Cypriot by birth, who claimed to be a magician, and through him urged her to leave her husband and marry him, promising to make her happy if she did not scorn him.
She, being in an unhappy situation and wishing to escape the envy she suffered from her sister Berenice on account of her beauty — for Berenice caused her no small harm through this — was persuaded to transgress her ancestral laws and marry Felix. She bore him a son whom she named Agrippa. But the manner in which this young man, together with his wife, perished in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the time of Titus Caesar, I will relate later.
As for Berenice, after the death of Herod, who had been both her husband and her uncle, she remained a widow for a long time; but when rumor arose that she was living with her own brother, she persuaded Polemon, king of Cilicia, to be circumcised and take her in marriage, thinking in this way to refute the false charges. Polemon consented, chiefly because of her wealth.
The marriage did not last long, however; Berenice, out of licentiousness, as it was said, left Polemon, who thereby was freed both from the marriage and from the obligation to keep the customs of the Jews. At the same time Mariamme left Archelaus and married Demetrius, a leading man among the Jews of Alexandria in birth and wealth, who at that time also held the office of alabarch.
A son was born to her by him, whom she named Agrippinus. But I shall report the details of each of these matters more precisely later on.
Claudius Caesar died after reigning thirteen years, eight months, and twenty days, and there was a rumor among some that he had been poisoned by his wife Agrippina. Her father was Germanicus, brother of Caesar, and her first husband was Domitius Ahenobarbus, one of the most distinguished men in the city of Rome. After his death, Claudius, finding her widowed for a long time, took her in marriage, along with her son Domitius, who bore the same name as his father.
Claudius had earlier put to death his wife Messalina out of jealousy; by her he had had children, Britannicus and Octavia — for she was of the Antonian line and the eldest of the sisters, whom he had by Petina, his first wife. He then married Octavia to Nero, for this was the name Caesar later gave him upon adopting him as his son.
Agrippina, fearing that Britannicus, once he came of age, might himself receive the empire from his father, and wishing to secure the succession beforehand for her own son, brought about the death of Claudius, as it was said, and immediately sent Burrus, the prefect of the troops, together with the tribunes and the most powerful of the freedmen, to bring Nero to the camp and hail him as emperor.
Nero, having thus taken power, first killed Britannicus by poison, in a manner concealed from most people, and not long afterward openly murdered his own mother, repaying her in this way not only for having given him birth but also for having, by her own schemes, secured for him the rule of the Romans. He also killed Octavia, whom he had married, and many distinguished men whom he accused of plotting against him.
But on these matters I will refrain from writing further, for many have composed histories concerning Nero, some of whom, out of gratitude for benefits received from him, neglected the truth, while others, out of hatred and enmity toward him, poured out shameless abuse in their falsehoods, so that they too deserve condemnation. Nor do I wonder that those who lied about Nero did so, since even those writing about men who lived before him have not kept to the truth of history, even though they bore those earlier men no such hatred, being far removed from them in time.
But let those who have no concern for the truth be free to write as they please, since that seems to be what pleases them; we, however, having set truth as our aim, shall give only brief mention to matters detached from the work before us, while setting forth in full what befell us Jews, shrinking from concealing neither our misfortunes nor our failings. I shall now return
Let me now turn back to the narrative of our own affairs. In the first year of Nero's reign, on the death of Azizus, ruler of Emesa, his brother Soaemus succeeded to the throne. The governorship of Lesser Armenia was granted by Nero to Aristobulus, son of Herod, king of Chalcis, and Caesar also presented Agrippa with a portion of Galilee, ordering Tiberias and Tarichaeae to obey him, and gave him besides the city of Julias in Perea and the fourteen villages around it.
Affairs in Judea meanwhile went from bad to worse, for the country was once again filled with brigands and impostors who deceived the populace. Felix arrested and put to death many of these every day, along with the brigands themselves. He also captured alive, through a trick, Eleazar son of Deinaeus, who had organized the brigand band: promising him immunity from harm, Felix persuaded him to come to him, then had him bound and sent to Rome.
Felix also harbored a grudge against the high priest Jonathan, because Jonathan had repeatedly urged him to govern the affairs of Judea more competently, so that Felix himself would not incur blame from the populace, since it was Jonathan who had asked that he be sent from Caesar as procurator of Judea. Felix therefore looked for a way to remove this man who was becoming a constant irritation to him — for continual admonition weighs heavily on those bent on wrongdoing. And so, for this reason, Felix persuaded Doras, a Jerusalemite and Jonathan's most trusted friend, promising him a large sum of money, to bring the brigands upon Jonathan to kill him. Doras agreed and arranged for the murder to be carried out by the brigands in this manner: some of them went up into the city as though to worship God, carrying daggers concealed under their garments, and mingling with Jonathan's company they killed him.
Since this murder went unavenged, the brigands from then on went up to the festivals with complete impunity, carrying their iron weapons likewise concealed, and mingling with the crowds they killed some who were their personal enemies, and others whom they were hired to kill for money — not only throughout the rest of the city but even within the temple itself, for they dared to slaughter there too, not even reckoning this an act of impiety. This, I believe, is why God, in hatred of their wickedness, turned away from our city and, no longer judging the temple a pure dwelling for himself, brought the Romans upon us and cast purifying fire upon the city, and laid slavery upon us together with our wives and children — wishing, by these calamities, to bring us to our senses.
Such were the works of impiety with which the brigands filled the city. Meanwhile impostors and deceivers persuaded the crowd to follow them out into the desert, promising to display clear wonders and signs wrought according to God's providence. Many who were persuaded paid the penalty for their folly, for Felix had them brought back and punished. At this same time a man arrived in Jerusalem from Egypt, claiming to be a prophet, and he advised the common people to accompany him to the mountain called the Mount of Olives, which lies opposite the city at a distance of five stadia. He declared that he wished to show them from there how, at his command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall, and through them he promised to provide them entry into the city. When Felix learned of this he ordered the soldiers to take up arms, and setting out from Jerusalem with a large force of cavalry and infantry he attacked the followers of the Egyptian, killing four hundred of them and taking two hundred alive. The Egyptian himself escaped from the battle and vanished.
Once again the brigands incited the populace to war against the Romans, telling them to obey them in nothing, and they burned and plundered the villages of those who would not comply. A conflict also arose between the Jews living in Caesarea and the Syrians there over equal civic rights. The Jews claimed precedence on the ground that Herod, the founder of Caesarea, had been a king of Jewish descent, while the Syrians, though conceding the point about Herod, maintained that the city had formerly been called Strato's Tower, and that at that time not a single Jew had lived there as a resident. On hearing this the governors of the province seized the leaders of the disturbance on both sides, had them scourged, and thereby suppressed the unrest for a while.
But the Jews of the city, emboldened by their wealth and consequently contemptuous of the Syrians, hurled abuse at them, expecting to provoke them. The Syrians, though inferior in wealth, took great pride in the fact that most of those serving in the Roman garrison there were Caesareans or Sebastenes; for a time they too merely insulted the Jews in words, but then they began throwing stones at each other, until many on both sides were wounded and fell — though the Jews had the better of it. When Felix saw that the rivalry had become a kind of open warfare, he rushed forward and urged the Jews to stop; when they would not obey, he armed the soldiers and set them loose upon them, killing many and taking still more alive, and he allowed the soldiers to plunder some houses in the city that were full of great wealth. The more moderate and prominent among the Jews, fearing for themselves, appealed to Felix to recall the soldiers by trumpet-signal, to spare the rest of them, and to grant them an opportunity to repent of what had happened. Felix was persuaded.
At this time King Agrippa gave the high priesthood to Ismael, son of Phabi. A quarrel then broke out between the chief priests on one side and the ordinary priests and the leading men of the Jerusalem populace on the other: each of them gathered a band of the boldest and most revolutionary men and set himself up as their leader, and in their clashes they reviled one another and threw stones. There was no one to check them, but as in a city with no one in charge these things were done with impunity. Such shamelessness and boldness overtook the chief priests that they even dared to send slaves to the threshing floors to seize the tithes owed to the ordinary priests, with the result that some of the priests who were in want died of starvation. So completely did the violence of these factions override all justice.
When Porcius Festus was sent by Nero to succeed Felix, the leading men among the Jews dwelling in Caesarea went up to Rome to accuse Felix, and he would certainly have paid the penalty for his crimes against the Jews had not Nero yielded to the earnest pleading of his brother Pallas, whom he held in the highest honor at that time. And the leading Syrians in Caesarea persuaded Beryllus — who was Nero's tutor and was entrusted with the office of secretary for Greek correspondence — with a large sum of money, to request from Nero a letter annulling the Jews' equal civic rights with them. Beryllus made his appeal to the emperor and succeeded in having the letter written. This letter became the source of the calamities that afterward befell our nation, for when the Jews of Caesarea learned of what had been written, they clung all the more fiercely to their quarrel with the Syrians, until at last they kindled the war.
On Festus's arrival in Judea, it happened that Judea was being ravaged by the brigands, all its villages being burned and plundered. And the so-called sicarii — for these too are brigands — multiplied especially at that time; they used daggers similar in size to the Persian akinakes, but curved, and resembling what the Romans call sicae, from which these brigands took their name, and they killed many people. For mingling with the crowds at the festivals, as I have said before, among the multitudes streaming into the city from every quarter for the sake of worship, they easily slaughtered whomever they wished, and often they even came armed to the villages of their enemies, plundering and setting them on fire. Festus sent a force of cavalry and infantry against those who had been deceived by a certain impostor promising them deliverance and an end to their troubles if they would follow him into the desert, and the soldiers sent destroyed both the deceiver himself and those who had followed him.
At this same time King Agrippa built, in the palace at Jerusalem near the Xystus, a chamber of extraordinary size. This palace had been built long before by the sons of Hasmonaeus, and being situated on high ground it afforded those who wished to look out from it a most delightful view of the city — a view the king desired, and from there, as he reclined, he could watch what was done in the temple. When the leading men of Jerusalem saw this, they were deeply angered, for it was not our ancestral custom for what took place in the temple, and especially the sacred rites, to be overlooked. They therefore built a high wall on the portico that stood within the inner temple, facing west. This wall not only cut off the view from the king's banquet hall, but also from the western portico of the outer temple, where the Romans used to keep watch during the festivals because of the temple. This angered both King Agrippa and, still more, Festus the procurator, and he ordered them to tear it down.
They, however, begged permission to send envoys to Nero about the matter, saying they could not endure to go on living if any part of the temple were demolished. Festus granted this, and they sent to Nero ten of their leading men, together with Ismael the high priest and Helcias the treasurer. Nero, after hearing them out, not only forgave what had been done but even permitted the structure to remain standing, granting this favor to his wife Poppaea, who was God-fearing and had interceded for the Jews; and she ordered the ten men to depart, but kept Helcias and Ismael with her as hostages. When the king learned of this, he gave the high priesthood to Joseph, son of the high priest Simon, called Cabi. Caesar then sent Albinus to Judea as procurator, on learning of the death of Festus, and the king took away the priesthood from Joseph and gave the succession to the office to Ananus, son of Ananus.
This elder Ananus, they say, was the most fortunate of men, for he had five sons, and all of them, as it happened, served as high priest to God — he himself having enjoyed that honor for the longest time before them, a thing that had never happened to any other of our high priests. But the younger Ananus, who as we have said had received the high priesthood, was of a bold and reckless disposition beyond others, and he followed the school of the Sadducees, who are more savage than all other Jews in judging offenders, as I have already shown. Being, then, a man of this sort, Ananus thought he had a favorable opportunity, since Festus had died and Albinus was still on his way. He convened a council of judges and brought before it the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, James by name, and certain others, and having accused them of transgressing the law, he handed them over to be stoned.
But those of the city who were considered the most fair-minded and strict in observance of the law were angered at this, and sent secretly to the king, urging him to write to Ananus that he should do no such thing again, since even this first action had not been proper. Some of them also went to meet Albinus, who was on his way from Alexandria, and explained to him that Ananus had had no right to convene a council without his consent. Albinus, persuaded by what they said, wrote to Ananus in anger, threatening to punish him. And King Agrippa, because of this, deposed him from the high priesthood, after he had held office for three months, and appointed Jesus, son of Damneus, in his place.
When Albinus arrived in Jerusalem, he exerted every effort and diligence to bring peace to the country, destroying most of the sicarii. The high priest Ananias, meanwhile, grew daily in reputation and was held in high honor and favor by the citizens, for he was skilled at amassing wealth; every day he cultivated Albinus and the high priest with gifts. But he had servants of a thoroughly wicked sort, who consorted with the boldest men and went to the threshing floors to seize by force the tithes belonging to the priests, not refraining from beating those who would not give them up. The chief priests behaved just like his servants, with no one able to stop them, and it came about that those priests who had of old been supported by the tithes now died for lack of food.
Once again the sicarii, during the festival then in progress, entered the city by night and seized alive the secretary of the captain Eleazar — this man being a son of the high priest Ananias — and bound him and led him away. They then sent word to Ananias that they would release the secretary to him if he could persuade Albinus to release ten of their comrades who had been captured. Ananias, under this compulsion, persuaded Albinus and obtained what he asked. This was the beginning of greater troubles, for the brigands now devised every scheme to seize members of Ananias's household, and, repeatedly seizing men alive, would not release them until they had recovered some of the sicarii in exchange; and being again numerous, they grew bold once more and ravaged the whole country.
At this same time King Agrippa, having enlarged the city called Caesarea Philippi, renamed it Neronias in honor of Nero, and he presented the people of Berytus with a theater built at great expense, along with the annual spectacles held there, spending vast sums on this — for he gave grain to the populace and distributed oil, and adorned the whole city with dedications of statues and copies of ancient images, transferring there almost the entire ornament of his kingdom. This aroused the hatred of his subjects against him, because their own possessions were being stripped away to adorn a foreign city.
Jesus, son of Gamaliel, then received the succession to the high priesthood from the king, who took it from Jesus, son of Damneus, and because of this a quarrel broke out between them, for each formed a faction of the boldest men, and often, from mutual abuse, they came close to throwing stones. Ananias surpassed the rest in wealth, winning over those ready to take bribes. Costobarus...
Saulus and his companions, meanwhile, gathered a rabble of ruffians on their own account. They were of royal blood, and enjoyed favor because of their kinship with Agrippa, but they were violent men, quite ready to plunder the property of the weak. From that time especially our city began to sicken, as everything went from bad to worse. When Albinus heard that his successor Gessius Florus was about to arrive, he wished to appear to have done the people of Jerusalem some service, so he brought out the prisoners and ordered the execution of all those manifestly deserving death, while those who had been thrown into jail on some slight or chance charge he released after taking money from them privately. In this way the prison was cleared of its inmates, but the countryside was filled with bandits.
As for the Levites — this is one of our tribes — those of them who were singers of hymns persuaded the king to convene the Sanhedrin and grant them permission to wear linen robes on equal terms with the priests, arguing that it would suit the years of his reign to be remembered for an innovation. Nor did they fail in their request: with the consent of those attending the Sanhedrin, the king allowed the hymn-singers to set aside their former dress and wear linen of whatever kind they wished. He also permitted a portion of that tribe who served in the Temple to learn the hymns, as they had requested. All of this ran contrary to the ancestral laws, and transgressing them could not go unpunished.
By this time the Temple had already been completed. The people, seeing that the workmen — more than eighteen thousand of them — were idle and would be left without wages, since they earned their living from work on the Temple, and the king unwilling to keep money in reserve for fear of the Romans but wishing to provide for the workmen and use the treasury funds for their benefit — for even a man who worked but one hour of the day received his wage for it at once — persuaded the king to rebuild the eastern portico. This portico stood outside the Temple proper, set in a deep ravine, four hundred cubits high, its walls built of squared, very white stone, each block twenty cubits long and six high — the work of King Solomon, who first built the whole Temple. The king, who had been entrusted by Claudius Caesar with the oversight of the Temple, considered that while any structure is easy to tear down, it is difficult to rebuild, and all the more so in the case of this portico, since it would require much time and much money for the work; he therefore refused those who asked for this, though he did not prevent the paving of the city with white stone. He also removed the high priesthood from Jesus son of Gamaliel and gave it to Matthias son of Theophilus, in whose term the war of the Jews against the Romans began.
I think it necessary, and fitting to this history, to give an account of the high priests — how they began, who is entitled to receive this honor, and how many there have been down to the end of the war. First of all, they say, Aaron the brother of Moses served as high priest to God, and after his death his sons succeeded him, and from them the honor passed down to their descendants without interruption. Hence it is our ancestral custom that no one may receive the high priesthood of God except one of the blood of Aaron, and no one of another family — not even a king, should he happen to be one — will obtain the high priesthood. In all, counting from Aaron, as we have said, the first to hold the office, down to Phanasus, who was appointed high priest by the rebels during the war, there were eighty-three.
Of these, thirteen served as high priests during the years in the wilderness under Moses, while the tent which Moses built for God was standing, down to the arrival in Judea, where King Solomon raised the temple to God. At first they held the high priesthood for life, but later they succeeded one another while the previous holder was still living. These thirteen, who were descendants of the two sons of Aaron, received the honor by succession. Their government was at first aristocratic, then monarchic, and thirdly royal. The number of years during which these thirteen ruled, from the day our fathers left Egypt under Moses down to the building of the temple which King Solomon raised in Jerusalem, is six hundred and twelve.
After those thirteen high priests, eighteen others held the high priesthood, succeeding to it from King Solomon in Jerusalem, until Nebuchadnezzar king of the Babylonians made war on the city, burned the temple, and carried our nation off to Babylon, taking the high priest Josadek captive. The period of their priesthood was four hundred sixty-six years, six months, and ten days, the Jews already being ruled by kings during this time. After the seventy years of captivity following the destruction by the Babylonians had passed, Cyrus king of the Persians released the Jews from Babylon to their own land again and permitted the rebuilding of the temple.
Then Jesus son of Josedek, one of those who returned from captivity, received the high priesthood. He himself held it, and his descendants after him, fifteen in all, down to King Antiochus Eupator, and their government was democratic for four hundred fourteen years. Antiochus, mentioned above, and his general Lysias were the first to depose Onias, surnamed Menelaus, from the high priesthood, putting him to death at Beroea, and they installed Jakimos as high priest, one of Aaron's line but not of that particular house. For this reason Onias, the cousin of the deceased Onias and bearing his father's name, went to Egypt, and by friendship with Ptolemy Philometor and his wife Cleopatra persuaded them to let him build a temple to God similar to the one in Jerusalem in the district of Heliopolis, and to install him as its high priest.
But of the temple built in Egypt we have often spoken. Jakimos held the high priesthood for three years and then died. No one succeeded him, and the city remained seven years without a high priest. Then the descendants of the sons of Hasmonaeus, entrusted with the leadership of the nation and having made war on the Macedonians, appointed Jonathan high priest, who ruled for seven years. When he died through the plot and ambush contrived by Trypho, as we have related earlier, his brother Simon received the high priesthood.
He too was treacherously destroyed at a banquet by his son-in-law, and was succeeded by his son, named Hyrcanus, who held the priesthood one year longer than his brother — thirty-one years — and, having enjoyed this honor, died in old age, leaving the succession to Judas, also called Aristobulus. His brother Alexander inherited it in turn, and though he died of disease, he had held the priesthood together with the kingship, for Judas had been the first to put on the diadem, for one year. Alexander, having reigned and served as priest for twenty-seven years, ended his life, entrusting to his wife Alexandra the appointment of the future high priest. She gave the high priesthood to Hyrcanus,
while she herself held the kingdom for nine years and then ended her life. Her son Hyrcanus held the high priesthood for the same length of time, for after her death his brother Aristobulus made war on him and, defeating him, took away his rule, while he himself both reigned as king and served as high priest of the nation. In the third year of his reign, and about as many months, Pompey came, took the city of Jerusalem by force, sent Aristobulus in chains to Rome with his children, and restored the high priesthood to Hyrcanus, entrusting him with the leadership of the nation but forbidding him to wear the diadem. Hyrcanus ruled twenty-four years in addition to the first nine. Then Barzapharnes and Pacorus,
the rulers of Parthia, crossed the Euphrates, made war on Hyrcanus, and took him captive, setting up Antigonus, son of Aristobulus, as king in his place. After he had ruled three years and three months, Sosius and Herod besieged and took him, and Antony had him put to death at Antioch. Herod, having received the kingdom from the Romans, no longer appointed high priests from the Hasmonean family,
but bestowed the honor on obscure men, only requiring that they be of priestly descent, with the single exception of Aristobulus. This Aristobulus, grandson of Hyrcanus who had been taken by the Parthians, he appointed high priest and married to his sister Mariamme, hoping thereby to win the goodwill of the people toward himself through the memory of Hyrcanus. Then, fearing that everyone would turn toward Aristobulus, he had him drowned at Jericho, contriving his death
while he was swimming, as we have already related. After him he no longer entrusted the high priesthood to the descendants of the sons of Hasmonaeus. His son Archelaus, and after him the Romans, who took over the government of the Jews, followed the same practice regarding the appointment of priests as Herod had. So those who served as high priests from the time of Herod down to the day on which Titus took and burned the temple and the city number twenty-eight in all, and the period of their tenure is one hundred seven years. Some of them held office while Herod was king and while his son Archelaus ruled, but after their deaths the government became an aristocracy, and the leadership of the nation was entrusted to the high priests. So much, then, for the high priests.
Gessius Florus, who was sent as Albinus's successor by Nero, filled the Jews with countless evils. He was by birth from Clazomenae, and had married a wife named Cleopatra, through whose friendship with Poppaea, Nero's wife — a woman whose wickedness matched his own — he obtained his position. He proved so wicked and violent in his exercise of power that, because of the extremity
of his crimes, the Jews came to praise Albinus as a benefactor by comparison. For Albinus at least concealed his wickedness and took care not to be caught out entirely, but Gessius Florus, as if he had been sent on display to exhibit wickedness, paraded his lawless acts against our nation openly, omitting no form of plunder nor of unjust punishment. He was unmoved by pity and insatiable for gain of every kind, so much so
that even the meanest sums were no different to him than the greatest, and he even took bandits into partnership; for many practiced banditry without fear, confident that they had guaranteed safety from him in exchange for a share of the spoils. Nor was even this the limit of the matter, for the unfortunate Jews, unable to endure the devastations caused by the bandits, were forced to abandon their own homes and flee, all of them thinking it better to go and live somewhere
among foreigners. What need is there to say more? It was Florus who forced us to take up war against the Romans, we judging it better to perish all at once than by degrees. And indeed the war took its beginning in the second year of Florus's administration, the twelfth of Nero's reign. But all that we were compelled to do, and all that we endured, may be learned in precise detail
by those who wish to consult the books I have written on the Jewish War. Here, then, I shall bring my Antiquities to a close, after which I began to write the War. This work covers the tradition from the first creation of man down to the twelfth year of Nero's reign, and all that befell us, the Jews, in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, all
that we suffered at the hands of the Assyrians and Babylonians, and what the Persians and Macedonians, and after them the Romans, did to us — for I believe I have set it all down with precision. I have also taken care to preserve the record of the high priests over a span of two thousand years, and I have made accurate the succession of the kings, reporting their deeds and their forms of government, whether monarchies
or dynasties, just as the sacred books record all these things; for this is what I promised to do at the beginning of my history. Now, having brought what I proposed to a conclusion, I may say with confidence that no one else, whether Jew or foreigner, could have wished to and been able to set forth this work in Greek with such precision. My own countrymen acknowledge that I surpass them by far in
our native learning, and I have also taken pains to share in Greek letters, acquiring a grasp of grammar, though long-standing native custom prevented precision in pronunciation. For among us, those who have mastered the languages of many nations are not admired, since this pursuit is considered common, open not only to free men of any station but even to slaves who wish it; only
those who know the laws accurately, and are able to interpret the meaning of the sacred writings, are credited with wisdom. That is why, though many have labored at this discipline, scarcely two or three have succeeded and reaped the fruit of their labors at once. Perhaps it will not seem invidious to give a brief account of my own family and of the events of my life,
while I still have those living who can either refute or bear witness to it. With this I shall end the Antiquities, comprised in twenty books and sixty thousand lines, and, if God permits, I will run once more in summary over the war and the events that have befallen us down to the present day, which is the thirteenth year of the reign of Domitian Caesar, and, in my own case, the fifty-sixth
year since my birth. I have also resolved to write, according to our Jewish beliefs, a work in four books concerning God and his essence, and concerning the laws — why by them some things are permitted to us and others forbidden.