On the Destruction of Jerusalem

The four books of Kingdoms contained in sacred Scripture I have myself already followed in a brief style, down to the captivity of the Jews, the destruction of the wall, and the triumphs of Babylon, and composed them in the manner of a history. The prophetic word also dealt in a few words with the deeds of the Maccabees. The rest, down to the burning of the temple and the spoils of Titus Caesar, Josephus recounted in the style of history, an excellent narrator—would that he had been as attentive to religion and truth as he was to the investigation of events and sobriety of speech! For he showed himself a sharer in the faithlessness of the Jews even in the very account he gave of their punishment; and though he deserted their arms, he did not desert their sacrileges. He lamented their misery with tears, but he did not recognize the cause of that misery. Hence it fell to us, relying not on the help of talent but on the purpose of faith, to go a little further into the history of the Jews beyond the sequence of sacred Scripture, so that, as if looking for a rose among thorns, amid the savage crimes of the ungodly, which were paid for at the price their ungodliness deserved, we may bring out some things either about reverence for the sacred law or about the wonder of the holy religion and its foundation—things which, even for their heirs, served rather as a spectacle in adversity or an honor in prosperity. At the same time (and this is a proof of their own wickedness) let it be clear to all that they themselves were the authors of their own disaster. First, because, while busy with other things, they turned the Romans against themselves and invited to knowledge of their kingdom those by whom it was better to be unknown. They asked for friendship, not intending to keep faith. They broke the peace, though unequal in strength. Finally, they made war, though all their hope lay in walls and not in strength, whereas of all things the most wretched is to be shut in by siege, which even when it goes well usually increases dangers more often than it lessens them. But lest anyone think we have taken up a task empty of faith and superfluous, let us therefore consider the whole Hebrew race as it was led through its rulers, so that it may be plainly seen whether the succession of his line “from the thighs of Judah” never faltered, or whether it did stumble in the series of rulers but remained in him for whom all things were kept in store: he was “the hope of the nations.” Here, then, I shall take my beginning.

In the war with the Parthians—long, frequent, and of varying victory between the Maccabean leaders and the nation of the Medes—the first spark was given by grief at sacrilege. King Antiochus, called the Illustrious, son of King Antiochus, when he had also added Egypt to his empire, was lifted up into pride because the uncertain chances of war had prospered for him, and he ordered the rites of the Hebrews to be abandoned and their services to be profaned; and he dared to impose this at the demand of a great many of the Jews. The priest Mattathias could not endure this. Not only did he himself keep from the sacrilege and refuse to obey the royal edict, but, finding one of his own countrymen offering sacrifices to the images, he ran him through with the sword. Then, having gathered a band and taken the Hasideans into alliance, he and his sons killed some of those who were violating the ancestral custom and the ordinances of the law, drove out very many, and was the author of fighting on the sabbath, so that they themselves might not be caught by the same trick by which many of them had already fallen: while they refused to take up battle on the sabbath, the enemy fell upon them. Success gave him strength, and zeal for defense and the vigor of piety gave the man perseverance to the very end of his life. But when he understood that his last day was at hand, he called the citizens together and, with his children standing by, urged them to defend their fatherland and the worship of the temple; and he left them as leader Judas Maccabeus, successor of his care and concern. How often this man—vigorous in war, good in counsel, and ready in faith beyond the rest—routed innumerable forces of the enemy with a small band, it is not the business of the present work to relate. Yet it can be summed up briefly. Often enjoying success, he provoked a great multitude of enemies against himself; surrounded by it on every side, and thinking it a disgrace to give way, he rushed into battle while his companions fled. Having cut down those against whom he had advanced, he was surrounded from the flank and was killed, yet not before he had avenged his own death. Jonathan succeeded him, his equal no less in likeness of courage than in brotherhood by nature. After many deeds in warfare, and services in sacred matters, seen and approved, concerning the purification of the temple, he was shut inside a city by the enemy under a treacherous pledge of friendship and not long after was killed. John too, the elder brother, and Eleazar, younger than the rest, did not refuse death for religion. After them Simon received the supreme command, coming to it not as a novice but already proved by the triumphs he had shared with his brothers. Would that he too had been as keen-sighted in guarding against fraud as he was strong of hand and well tried in the arts of war! For when by the help of his courage he had bound the Roman commanders and the kings of nations to him in a treaty of friendship, through the deceit of Ptolemy, his son-in-law, he was invited to a banquet and, amid tables and cups, together with the two sons who were with him, he was surrounded, stripped of his arms, and wickedly put to death. But John, Simon's son, whose name was Hyrcanus, forestalled the plot and hurried to the walls of the city, where the people were waiting for him because of his father's outstanding services and also from hatred of the enemy's crime. Hardly had he entered the city when Ptolemy arrived. But when he tried to come in by another gate, he was driven back and judged that he must yield to the multitude. At once Jonathan took up the office of his father's priesthood, and having turned to the worship of divine things, he immediately carried out the duties of piety and the care of preserving his family, wishing to rescue his mother and brothers from danger. Though he had the upper hand in the fighting, he was overcome by the feeling of a just grief, so that he did not take the fortress in which they were held shut up. For Ptolemy, when he saw himself hard pressed, placed his mother and brothers on the walls, to be thrown down at once unless Jonathan gave up the war he was waging. The young man who was winning by courage was being defeated by fear for his family, and pity for his own called back the anger he had roused against the enemy. His mother, however, ready for torture, stretched out her hands, begging not for the help of rescue but for the comfort of revenge. For she feared that her son would fear more for his mother than he would spend on avenging his father; for her, she said, that death would be in place of immortality, by which her husband would be avenged and her wicked son-in-law would pay the penalty for his monstrous crime. But the young man fought more within himself than against the enemy. Whenever he thought of his father, he was set on fire; again, when he saw his mother being scourged and made ready for death, he weakened: he called back his assault and withdrew his step, because feeling drew him back. Amid the delays of the siege there came the year of rest under the law, which was the seventh. Piety gave way to religion, and the siege was lifted; but Ptolemy's savagery was roused all the more, so that he ordered those by whose exposure he had escaped punishment to be slaughtered. He at once took himself out of reach of vengeance, fleeing to Zeno, called Cotylas, ruler of Philadelphia, to protect himself by his help. Nor did Antiochus rest, indignant that his armies had been made a mockery by Simon, Jonathan's father; and wishing to snuff out Jonathan's first beginnings while they were still rising, he came to Jerusalem with a great force and besieged Hyrcanus. Hyrcanus drove off with gold the man he could not drive off with iron: opening the tomb of David (as Josephus reports), he took out three thousand talents of gold. Of these he counted out three hundred to Antiochus, so that he would leave the siege and go away bought with a price. And to lessen the odium of the deed, Hyrcanus is said to have been the first to establish hostels with this money, in which to receive poor strangers who arrived. Watching also for Antiochus's moment of need, when he was making war on the Medes, he avenged his loss and joined very many cities of Syria to himself. Samaria too, where Sebaste was later founded, he surrounded with siege works, and he entrusted its storming to his sons Aristobulus and Antigonus. Their slow siege drove those shut inside to dire famine and to the horrible food of human corpses. Driven by this necessity, they decided to seek help from Antiochus (called Aspendius), and as he brought aid they entangled him in a share of their misery. For he was defeated in battle by the brothers and saved himself from death by flight. The Samaritans, when the siege had been renewed and the city taken and overthrown, were handed over to slavery. Roused by this course of success, Aristobulus and Antigonus did not let their drive cool, but thought they should make no secret of joining to themselves the neighbors whom war had forced; until envy arose and a monstrous war blazed up, the inhabitants of those places conspiring and gathering a strong force. Yet once these were defeated, they gave John deep peace and leisure for the rest of his life. Hyrcanus, having enjoyed the favor of long quiet for thirty-one years, ended his last day, leaving five children alive, which many count as happiness: an outstanding governor and admirably sober, who never left anything, even to chance events, by which his conduct might be darkened. He entrusted the affairs of state to his wife, thinking she would govern public affairs wisely, since by a kind of foresight of mind he held that his sons would not last long; nor did his opinion deceive him. For Aristobulus, the eldest of the brothers and the more forward in spirit, turned the leadership of the priesthood into the power of a kingdom and was the first to presume to put a diadem on himself, four hundred seventy-five years and three months after Israel, freed from slavery and returning from Babylon, took itself back into its own land. Proudly, then, not content to give the other brothers a share, he soothed Antigonus alone, whom he seemed to love, with a show of honor. His mother—because she had protested that she was shut out from power and cheated of her husband's decision—he bound with chains, and he went so far in savagery, fierce with a parricidal spirit, that he kept both her and his brothers bound in the same way in close custody, so that they were driven by extreme hunger almost to death, had not Aristobulus soon paid the penalty for his wicked parricide. And first his savage mind was embittered against Antigonus himself and turned from love to hatred, so that he killed before all others the one he had promised as the sole partner of his rule: so cheap is affection among the wicked that it is quickly wrested away by evil suggestions.

It is worth while, then, not to pass over the course of his cruelty, so that John's judgment may be proved even after his death: he thought the supreme power of the state should by no means be entrusted to his elder son, whom he foresaw would turn aside with such fury from the law of piety and the rule of justice. I do not know whether it was from regard to his character, or by a grace inborn in the chief priests, that some things that were to come were poured into them, even into the less worthy. It was a wretched crime that there were men who begrudged the brothers their natural love: from this arose the first stain of evil—envy; and the fabrications that followed were of this kind.

They had first made up other charges, which Aristobulus did not believe; for love's sake he softened the slander, ascribing the bitterness of the accusation to envy. So they mixed false things with true, so that with what they had taken up to look like the truth they might get round him despite his resistance.

Meanwhile the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was being celebrated in the land according to the law, a festal day full of reverence, on which the solemn sacrifice was offered. On that day Antigonus, famous for his deeds in war, came home, and it happened that on arrival he found his brother unwell. At once he went to the temple—for what would he put before religion?—girt as he was in martial dress and surrounded by an escort to match; there he prayed much to the Lord for his brother's health, and from there he hurried eagerly to his brother. Out of this a slander was composed from bitter gall and prepared with a still more bitter outcome.

For at once the most wicked of men go to the king and stir up envy: that Antigonus had led a parade of armed men more splendid than is the custom for private persons, to be shown off to the crowd so that no one would dare to oppose his attempts; by such a display nothing else was being aimed at but the king's murder and the power to seize his rule. Without difficulty the sick mind, worn out by a feeble body, was pushed into thinking credible what was asserted as true—especially since a day consecrated to religion shut out suspicion of a lie, the parade roused envy, illness added fear, and the armed company completed the belief that the crime would be carried out. So, before any attempt at the parricidal outrage was proved to him, he ordered his bodyguards with their weapons to be stationed in a dark underground passage, to kill Antigonus by stealth when he came, and not to wait for an order from the king but to slay him themselves. Indeed, when a message had been sent ahead by messengers that he should come unarmed, Aristobulus's wife turned the content of the message into its opposite: through conspirators she had it conveyed to Antigonus that his brother had been delighted by the beauty of the arms in which he had lately appeared, but because of his illness had not looked at them closely; now he asked him to bring his brother all the martial array he had put together; it would please the king if he came armed. Antigonus did not see the trick. He obeyed the word all the more eagerly because he wished to please the king and his brother alike. Aristobulus lay in the fortress first called Baris and afterwards Antonia, that is, after the triumvir Antony, by his gift and his name, along with the honor of the city. When Antigonus drew near and came to that dark passage, the king's bodyguards, seeing that he had come armed, suddenly attacked the young man, carried out their order, and cut him down unawares. That place was called Strato's Tower; and it is a common opinion that Judas, an Essene by race, was deceived by the name—an ancient history relates that, whether through the uprightness of his life or by mystical observation, he often foretold what was to come.

This man, as we have learned, on seeing Antigonus going by to visit his brother, said to those who were counted among his disciples: “Alas! Now it is good for me to die, since the truth has died for me. Antigonus is alive, who must be killed today, and the place decreed for his death is Strato's Tower, which is six hundred stadia from here; and it is already the fourth hour of the day. So the time rules out belief in the death that was foretold.” When he had said this, he began to turn over in his mind more intently how his belief had deceived him. Not long afterwards the news is brought that Antigonus has been killed in the underground passage at Strato's Tower—a place that used to be called by the same name as the one on the coast at Caesarea. When the crime had been done, Aristobulus, reflecting on what wickedness he had committed, fell ill himself. The parricide was before his eyes, turmoil in his mind, and nowhere did it leave any room for pretense. Grief was fixed in his inmost parts; his envy was turned into pity, that he had destroyed an innocent man against the right of brotherhood; the monstrousness of so great a crime ulcerated his mind. No sleep was given to his eyes, no rest to his soul. The wound crept on with hidden pain, his sick heart was seething, harsh anxieties wounded his feeble limbs, and deep sighs, with frequent groaning, pounded within him.

So, from his immoderate sorrow, the force of the disease broke out to such a point that, his inner organs torn, he vomited blood from his mouth. A page of the court, who served the royal needs, carried it out and, unaware of what had happened—it was done by chance rather than design—came to the place where Antigonus had been killed; there, on the stains of the brother's blood that were still wet, he poured out the blood of the murderer. At once there arose a cry and the groaning of those who saw it, because by some deep disposition of the Lord the blood of the most wicked parricide seemed to be poured out as an offering to the one he had slain. Roused by the noise, the king asked the cause; when they were silent, he drew it out by his eagerness to ask and their fear of his anger. When he was told, his eyes filled with tears, and groaning with what strength he had, he said: “The requital that fits my deserts is not being paid back to me; for I could not escape the eye of God, I, the contriver of so wicked a crime. The vengeance for my outrage is close at hand, and already I am being met with the fitting price of my parricide. Farewell, body! How long will you hold back a soul condemned to my brother and my mother? Why do I pour out my blood to them piece by piece? Let every hand, if there is any piety, hurl its spear at me, and let all sons and brothers, avengers of piety, run me through with the sword. Let the parricidal victim be slaughtered and sacrificed to the kinship he violated; let the guilty flesh vomit out all its blood at once. Let not the demon that drove me to such wicked daring in a savage crime be glutted with the torments of my bowels and a slow wasting.” With these words he made an end of his rule and of his life, having held royal power hardly a year, the power for which he had not shrunk from parricide.

At once his wife released the dead man's brothers from their chains and made Alexander king, who was thought to have both the advantage of age and moderation in his favor. As soon as he had obtained the kingdom, he immediately killed one brother whom he had noticed to be a rival for the throne. The remaining brother, who was more intent on life and safety than on a kingdom, he spared, free of public affairs; and at once (such is restlessness of character) he exchanged peace for war. In an encounter with Ptolemy Lathyrus he killed very many of the enemy, but the victory slipped to Lathyrus. Yet Cleopatra, his mother, took the fruit of that victory from him, for he was forced to withdraw into Egypt to escape the death that threatened him. Alexander, watching for his absence while he sought to invade parts of his kingdom, turned Theodorus also against himself, since he had taken over all the best of Theodorus's possessions. So with a sudden attack Theodorus seized the royal treasures and routed ten thousand Jews in battle; but Alexander, not broken by the blow, joined still more of the enemy's territories to his rule and reduced the peoples of the captured cities to slavery. A domestic uprising broke into these successes in war, and a quarrel that arose at banquets went on to war. Such is the inbred plague of the men of the Jews that they rouse themselves to arms from the play of a feast; and had foreign auxiliaries not been at hand for the king, the uprising would have won. But by the hired force it was suppressed, though with difficulty, about eight thousand Hebrews being killed. From there he marched into Arabia, and several of its cities were subdued; tribute was also imposed on the Moabites and the Gileadites by right of victory. Returning from there to Amathus, he found the fortress empty of defenders, since Theodorus was stunned by his great successes, and he stormed it without delay. Yet Obedas, king of the Arabs, was not altogether idle, nor did he long leave the losses of his kingdom unavenged. For with an ambush well placed he destroyed Alexander's whole army, trapped in a deep valley and crushed by a great column of camels. Alexander escaped, however, and, fleeing from the battle, made for the refuge of the city of Jerusalem, hated by his own people, since their hatred had broken out afresh on the occasion of his misfortune, because they had been held down by fear of so great a power. Nor was the discord of their minds covered by silence or waged only in words: the struggle was fought out not in one battle but in very many. In these some fifty thousand Jews perished, whom Alexander killed, more destructive to his own than to his enemies, and a victor at greater loss, since by conquering he had worn down the strength of his own kingdom. So not even he took pleasure in his victories any longer; turning away from battle, he handled his subjects by art, no longer crushing them with arms but pressing them with words, and trying to dissolve their grievances by speeches alone. It did him no good in winning favor, since his crimes outweighed his pretenses, and that very sudden turn to repentance and the unevenness of his character were held suspect as savage everywhere.

At last, since they thought they were being deceived by his pretended mildness, they roused King Demetrius to war, to help them against Alexander. Battle was joined without delay, although Alexander had to fight two armies with smaller numbers. With an escort of a thousand horse and six thousand foot, whom he had hired, and summoning to the war ten thousand Jews who were on his side, he met the enemy near the city of Shechem; they had three thousand horse and forty thousand foot. Each side tested the other's ranks: when Demetrius saw that the hired troops would not desert their loyalty, and Alexander learned that none of the Jews who had joined Demetrius had laid aside their hatred toward him, they decided to settle it by arms. Demetrius came off the better in the battle, though with great bloodshed of his own men; for those who had come on the other side as hired soldiers fought outstandingly, so that they contended with courage and loyalty to the death. So Alexander, seeing himself abandoned, his companies cut down, withdrew into the mountains. But contrary to the hopes of both, the appearance of victory came to one of them and its fruit to the other. For Demetrius was stripped bare by the departure of the Hebrews who had called him into alliance, and six thousand of them joined Alexander, by a kind of habit of human nature by which misfortune moves men to pity. So Demetrius gave way to the man he had beaten in war, seeing him already fit for battle as the Hebrews gradually flowed to him, and himself left with few. His victory stirred in men accustomed to freedom a fear of condemnation. Savagery returned to Alexander with security, and, the war having slipped past him, his rule over his own people was restored. When he asked them what he might do to win the people's hearts, the answer was: “If you were to die; for even with you dead, after suffering such grievous things, they would hardly return to favor and lay aside their hatred of the dead.” Provoked by this, and by their habit of rebellion, he killed many and drove the rest into a city called Bemeselis. Its storming brought a plague more bitter than usual, with so savage a course of cruelty that of that number he crucified eight hundred in the middle of the city, and in their sight he ordered their wives and children to be slaughtered.

He watched this, reclining among his concubines, merry amid food and cups, but drunk more with blood than with wine. By this one deed he terrified the people more than by war, so that the next night eight thousand of the Jews departed beyond Judea, and the end of their flight was to be Alexander's death; and the horror of so great an evil brought quiet to the kingdom. But when he was at rest from domestic battles, a cause of disquiet arose for him: the expedition of Antiochus against the Arabs, which he thought would be fearful and dangerous for himself. This is the Antiochus who is also called Dionysus, brother of Demetrius, the last of the line of Seleucus. Wishing to deny him passage, Alexander dug huge trenches between the city of Antipatris and the shore of Joppa, built a very high wall, and set wooden towers on it, but wasted the work, with great labor on his own side and no hindrance to the enemy. For the trenches were filled with little effort and the towers burned, and Alexander himself looked to his safety by flight—the safer because he was not thought important enough for the victor to pursue him in place of the chief enemy. For avenging the injury of the blocked road was kept for later. He marched straight against the Arabs, whose king had taken himself to ground suitable for battle. Then, suddenly wheeling their cavalry, the Arabs fell with great force and numbers on the enemy squadrons, which were spread out and rushing on without order. The fight was fierce as long as Antiochus held out (for he resisted), although his army was cut down almost like cattle. But when he himself fell (for he used to expose himself to dangers before the rest), all turned in flight; the greatest part of them, scattered in uncertain flight, was destroyed, and the rest were driven into a village called Cana and wasted away by lack of food, so that hardly a very few of them survived so great a disaster.

After this success Aretas too was called by the people of Damascus to reign, so that he might rule Coele-Syria and they might shut out Ptolemy, whom they pursued with very hostile hatred. Nor did he leave Judea free from invasion; though he defeated Alexander there, he departed by an agreement between the two sides and returned to his own land. Alexander, for his part, overthrew Pella and went against Gerasa, preparing once more to add to himself some of Theodorus's possessions, and he won it by war. Advancing from there into Syria, he overthrew Gaulana, Seleucia, and Gamala, avenging the disgrace of the earlier war, and he also pulled down the fortifications of Antiochus. From these places he turned back toward Judea and, beyond hope, was received with the joy of the whole nation for the wonderful success of his deeds. There, the rest from warfare he had won became the beginning of illness. Afflicted for some time by the recurring attacks of a quartan fever, when the trouble had eased a little he went back to military affairs and kept no moderation; stronger in spirit than in body, he broke down all the vigor of his health, used up his strength, and so died. He had held the kingdom twenty-six years, with varying success, against countless tumults of war, and he died leaving two children. Judging them unequal to the helm of the kingdom, he entrusted the supreme power to the care of his own wife, since he knew she was more acceptable to the people; and she had found favor with all because she had always thought she must keep herself apart from her husband's savagery, so that she not only shunned partnership in his outrages but, by resisting his iniquities, turned the goodwill of the whole people toward herself. Nor was her husband's judgment imprudent. For the woman exercised the right to reign without offense and without any hindrance from her sex, and she won the favor due to good government by observing the sacred law. While more attentive care was given to the temple and the instruments of fraud were dismissed, the strength of the rule grew; yet her desire for the kingdom was not broken by a mother's affection. For of her two sons one, Hyrcanus by name, the elder and milder in temper, was chosen for the hope of reigning but not its power; Aristobulus, who was keener in spirit, she kept from power and softened him with the lowliness of private life. The Pharisees attached themselves to the woman—a kind of men trained in the teaching of the law, cunning in the quality of their dispositions, eager for affairs, greedy for money. Laying hold of the elated little woman, they made her their own by extolling her according to their knowledge of divine law, so that she entrusted to them many even of the affairs of the kingdom: they brought in whom they wished, shut out whom they wished, and stripped them of their court office. In short, they so worked their way in that the fruits of all advantages came to them, while the expenses and troubles fell on the woman alone. Nor had the woman a small spirit: she dared the greatest things and ordered battles beyond the condition of her sex. For she raised a most excellent force from her own people and gathered huge forces of foreign troops, so that she was not only safe at home with every security for her reign but formidable to powerful foreigners. Yet while she was above all others, she obeyed the Pharisees as if she were their inferior. There was in her kingdom one Diogenes, who, as one of Alexander's most powerful friends, had been his close intimate. They attacked and killed him, saying that it was on his advice that those eight hundred had been crucified by Alexander in the middle of the city; and an order was given that vengeance should go on to all the others who had instigated the crime. So those whom the Pharisees directed were put to death, not those whom partnership in the crime had involved. Terrified by this, very many against whom such dangers were aimed, especially those most eminent in wealth or rank, begged Aristobulus to intercede, so that he might turn his mother from carrying out the harsher order toward better counsels. He, wishing to win favor for himself, did not refuse. The woman, though reluctantly, gave way to her son's plea, so that, in view of the offices they had held, the sentence of death on those who were being brought into such odium was softened, and she ordered only those whom she suspected as guilty, and as instigators of the crime, to leave the city. Having received security for their lives, they scattered through the countryside.

At the same time a reason arose for the young soldiers to be sent to Damascus, because Ptolemy was terrifying the inhabitants of that city with frequent raids; the needs of this business took up a strong force of Alexandra's army. Tigranes, too, who ruled the Armenians, had shut up Cleopatra under siege in the city called Ptolemais; Alexandra soothed him with gifts so that he would turn away from her. Lucullus, by breaking into the lands of the Armenians, forced him to go back with nothing done, judging it wiser to protect his own than to add another's. While Alexandra was occupied with such great affairs, she fell ill. Aristobulus seized this opportunity for his own schemes. Having gathered a band, with the support of those whom the heat of their nature had joined to him in his desire to dare every reckless thing, he seized the treasuries, and with their wealth he invited volunteers to service and bought them with pay, so that they would give him loyalty in everything he wished; and he put on the insignia of a king. Hyrcanus, troubled in mind, came to his mother in tears. She, breathing fury, shut up Aristobulus's sons and wife in the fortress first named Baris and afterwards called Antonia, of which we spoke above. Alexandra's undertakings were cut off by her swift death. Hyrcanus succeeded to the whole inheritance; even while his mother was alive he had assumed the dignity of the priesthood. Aristobulus excelled in courage and wisdom. Matters came to a contest and a clash. When battle was joined, most men left Hyrcanus and followed the other, who was better at war. Hyrcanus, with those who were left from the battle, fled to the Antonia, and having found there the sons and wife of Aristobulus, he found safety through the hostages, because Aristobulus, to prevent anything harsh being done to his family, sought terms. The agreement of the brothers was this: Hyrcanus would give up the kingdom, and all the right of rule would pass to Aristobulus; yet he would not leave Hyrcanus without honors, but, though without a share in the kingdom, would let him hold some other honor that he himself would grant. This settlement, sanctified also by the religion of the temple, held the willing assent of both. Then they parted on good terms and, greeting each other, Aristobulus went to the royal palace, and Hyrcanus calmly withdrew to Aristobulus's house.

But there were some whom fear and the change of affairs had seized, who remembered that they had worked against Aristobulus, and above the rest Antipater. He was an Idumean by race, distinguished among his people for his character, not poor in money and therefore very powerful, and by a wonderful skill he had trained himself to despise money for the sake of winning favor. He alarmed Hyrcanus with his counsels, saying that he, who had given up the rule, had no well-founded hope of safety unless he looked to himself by flight; and when he had bent him to his own designs, he worked his way in with King Aretas, saying that the man who had been tricked into giving up the kingdom should be supported with help; it would be honorable for a king to become the arbiter of restoring a rule, and much finer if he ordered what had been taken by fraud from the defrauded man, to whom the birthright of the kingdom belonged, to be restored. The one, he said, was crafty and cunning and therefore suspect to his neighbors; this one was mild and quiet, and would take as the greatest kindness whatever a foreigner gave him, since his brother had taken from him even the right to reign. So, announcing to Hyrcanus that King Aretas's favor had been prepared, he held out the hope of flight and showed him the way, so that he went with him to Petra, situated in the territory of Arabia, where they approached the king. Moved by Antipater's prayers and gifts, the king joined a very large force of fighting men to Hyrcanus to restore him to the kingdom. There were about fifty thousand foot and horse. Beaten by them in the first encounter, Aristobulus fled to Jerusalem, and there he was unsafe against so great a multitude of enemies, which would have stormed the city with him shut inside, had not Scaurus, commander of the Roman army, lifted the siege on the occasion of another war, the one being waged against Tigranes. He had been sent by Pompey, who was burning with heavy resentment because Mithridates had been received, and with the purpose of carrying the war against his father-in-law; for this reason he had ordered Syria to be harassed by Scaurus, while he himself pressed Tigranes and Armenia. So when Scaurus came to Damascus, which Metellus and Lollius had utterly overthrown, envoys of the brothers met him, each begging the help of Roman power for himself; and although Aristobulus was weaker in strength, he outweighed the other by an offer of money. The decision of the contest of battle was sold for three hundred talents, and justice in the claim was weighed by price. When this money had been counted out to him, Scaurus warned Hyrcanus and the king of Arabia to leave the siege, or, if they stayed, to know that they would have to fight a war against Pompey and the Romans. By this threat the siege was lifted: Aretas went to Philadelphia, and Scaurus returned to Damascus. Aristobulus, however, though scarcely fit to drive off danger, gathered a force, pursued the enemy, and at Papyron (that is the name of the place) routed six thousand of the enemy in battle, and with them Phallion, Antipater's brother. The hope of Hyrcanus and Antipater collapsed, for all their confidence was in the strength of Arabia.

But when Pompey the Great began to approach Syria and came to Damascus, the very men whose victory had slipped from their hands, broken by Roman help, asked the Romans for aid, and they went to Pompey as a just arbiter and the least greedy for money. So they began to rely on pleadings, not on gifts as before, since his upright mind, proof against the corruption of money, was not caught in the snares of greed, and he could hate freely a man who had plotted against his brother's honor. So they approached him with complaints by which odium would fall on Aristobulus, as one who unworthily had seized what was another's, and favor would be won for Hyrcanus, to whom the right to reign belonged both by the merit of his life and by the claim of age, supported above all by the authority of his mother, who had both the judgment to choose and the right to confer. Nor was Aristobulus long absent, although he saw nothing in that great breast that would serve his arts; yet he presumed on having bought Scaurus and boasted of his alliance. So he came arrayed in royal dress and attended by a retinue almost greater than usual, as one who, disagreeing about what was just, ruled out any presumption of acquiescing and denied any hope of obedience. But he could not long endure the loftiness of the Roman consul, whose custom it was to command kings of upstart kingdoms. So when they came to the city called Dium, he went off, scorning in the pride of kingship the haughtiness of Roman dignity. By this withdrawal of Aristobulus no small ground for offense was given, and the consul was so moved that at once the arms of the Romans were turned against Judea, with very many auxiliaries from Syria joined to them. When Aristobulus learned that he was approaching the city of Scythopolis and from there Coreae, where the territory of Judea began, he fled to the fortress of Alexandrium, very strongly fortified and set on a very high mountain. Learning this, Pompey ordered him to come down. But he, thinking it unbecoming to obey as if at a master's command, judged in his immoderate spirit that danger should be faced rather than an order obeyed. Yet looking down on the Roman camp crowded with peoples, and at the same time warned by his own men not to provoke those to whose name and power almost the whole world had yielded, he came down; and having used many arguments by which he tried to prove that the kingdom had been conferred on him by right—either as owed to his birth by kinship, or by the judgment of the army, which had followed the stronger and deserted the coward, or by the outcome of battle, or by the agreement of a pact—he went back to his stronghold. Again, when Hyrcanus had gone to the consul, Aristobulus was summoned to judgment and presented himself. But when he saw that the hearing was still being put off, he went back to the fortress. For, between hope and fear, he thought that by obeying Pompey's orders he might bend him to favor him; but so as not to be forced to yield to command a second time, he kept withdrawing into Alexandrium. Nor did the king's craftiness escape the Great: he ordered him to leave his strongholds and to bind himself to do so by giving letters to each of the commanders of the strongholds. He did obey the orders, which he did not dare refuse; yet at once he hid himself within the walls of Jerusalem and began to prepare war against the Romans. Pompey for his part pursued him as he fled, pressed him when shut in, and gave him no time to prepare what was needed for war. The news about Mithridates, that he had ended the war by his death, came to occupy the Great's attention. The city of Jericho held Pompey within its territory when the report of this came. Near the city is a place where balsam grows: it springs from shrubs which the farmers' boys cut with stones, and through these cuts the juice drips in beautifully dewy tears. From there the old soldier, having drawn up his ranks, moved camp toward evening, and at first dawn he stood before the walls of Jerusalem and unexpectedly poured in his armed lines.

Aristobulus, astonished at the appearance of the array, the strength of the men, and the eagerness of the soldiers, came out of his own accord and begged pardon, offering money, the city, and himself. With soft and suppliant words he had softened the consul's anger; but his prayer was in vain, because the fulfillment of his promise was lacking: not only was the money refused, but Gabinius, who had come to fetch what was offered, was even shut out of the city; and war came on. For the Great, having put guards on Aristobulus, began to survey the walls of the city and explore more carefully at which points to attempt an assault. But when he saw that the walls were strong and could not be stormed, and that the temple within the city was surrounded by fortifications no weaker, so that an entry would be doubly dangerous—both from the defenders of the temple and from those guarding the ramparts of the walls—he was in doubt for some time and uncertain of his decision, when suddenly an uprising broke out inside the city: Hyrcanus's partisans wanted to receive Pompey into the city, Aristobulus's champions resisted; the former wanted to open the gates to the Great, the latter to bar them and make war, so that the king would not be taken from them. But the weaker gave way to the more numerous, whose number the terror of Roman power had swollen, and they withdrew into the temple, breaking down the bridge that had linked the city and the temple between them with a passage. So the Roman army was received into the city, and the Jews opened the gates with their own hands to those who not long after would storm the city and the temple. And that word of David was fulfilled: “O God, the nations have come into your inheritance; they have defiled your holy temple.” So they handed over their royal palace of their own accord and gave up the court. Piso, a man distinguished among his people and practiced in military service, was charged with holding the royal palace and the rest of the city with a strong force; he saw to this carefully, as though he had led the Roman army to defend these places rather than to seize them. For the assault on the temple, since it was stubbornly defended, the Great made ready Jews—namely, partisans of Hyrcanus—so that, if possible, the Romans might not profane mysteries foreign to them, and at the same time so that the Jews might fill up the ditches with their own hands; by a wicked service and a shameful compliance their hands served with the basket, their minds with sacrilege. But the heaping up achieved nothing, since Aristobulus's supporters resisted from the walls and threw down obstacles from above; and Pompey's beginnings would have been in vain, had he not, when the sacred days of religion came round, on which an old observance required the Jews to rest from all work, ordered his men to press on with heaping up mounds of earth. For only the act of joining battle has become their custom: even on the sabbath, if battle is brought against them and their safety is threatened with extreme danger, the Jews think they must fight with the sword; other struggles they count against religion. Already the rampart had risen, already the engines had been moved up; the king's men fought back, fiercer for the height of the walls, and were not bent by the closer approach of the Great, though mixed in battle. Pompey was amazed at the fierce spirit of the men, at the beauty and size of the wall, and at the services of the priests, never relaxed amid the fury of war: as though there were deep peace, nothing was lacking in the solemnity of the sacrifices; the blood of victims was poured out amid the javelins and the deaths of the slain; the victim was placed on the altars, and men were struck down standing before the altar. The third month already held the struggle still undecided. First Faustus, son of Cornelius Sulla, and two centurions, one named Furius and the other Fabius, threw down the earth of the walls and broke into the temple, each followed by his own company; and surrounding the inner parts of the temple on every side, they ran through with swords whomever they found. Those who fled were cut down; others who resisted were slaughtered. There was no measure of sparing; yet even such savagery of the fighters did not hinder the service of the priests. The enemy stood over them with drawn swords, yet they carried out the turn of their customary duty without any disturbance. No kind of office was interrupted. Whatever could pertain to the solemnity of purification, whatever to the observance of sacred worship, was performed. So great was their care for the ministry—and would that it had been for the truth of devotion and faith! Greater dangers also arose from their own people than were brought on them by the Hebrews in turn, and the fighting inside was fiercer, and from the rebels came a nearer and doubtful danger: in front was the foreign enemy, behind and on the flanks the enemy at home.

So, shut in on every side, some threw themselves down, others were burned in the fires of their fatherland. The priests, however, persevered in their office to the very last, urging one another not to put the duty of religion after the protection of their lives: it would go well with them if they spent on piety what was owed to necessity, and it would be most beautiful if they might be buried in the bosom of their fatherland. What use would it be to escape and live on, surviving their religion? Rather, it was a glorious work to die in a pious office. If anyone deserted it for fear of danger, it was sacrilege; if anyone fulfilled it, it was a sacrifice and the victory of a pious death. So the priests in their headbands were slaughtered among their own victims, and, clothed in their priestly robes, they lay on the ground among the bodies of the slain. Twelve thousand of the Jews were killed there; of the Romans few were killed and more were wounded. Yet in that misery the Jews groaned at nothing more heavily than that the mysteries of the sanctuary, hidden before, were uncovered and exposed to the nations. In the end Pompey, turning aside from needless concerns of this kind while he sought rather the scorched trophies of a triumph, with very many of his men following him, saw the tabernacle—the inner one, which was open only to the high priest at his solemn entry—and inside he saw the lamp, the table, the incense, the tablets of the covenant and the cherubim above them, a quantity of spices scattered about, and two thousand talents of sacred money. Though there was a great deal of gold in these, he, untouched by any greed, ordered both it and whatever sacred vessels were found to be kept untouched; and on the day after the capture he ordered the temple attendants to cleanse the inner parts of the temple and to celebrate the customary sacrifices. To Hyrcanus he gave the high priesthood, having made use of his ready service in the needs of the siege: for though faithless to his own people, he was faithful to the Romans, so that his fatherland was stormed. But I think no one can be called faithful who has been hostile to his own. So he helped the enemies of his people in the very battle in no perfunctory way, especially in drawing away from alliance with Aristobulus the multitude of the people outside the walls who were striving for him. In everything, however—whether in forestalling Aristobulus, in leading him away by his authority, or in finishing the war quickly—Pompey was an outstanding commander. He added this glorious thing, that he kept moderation in victory: in the end he bound to himself those he had conquered by kindness rather than terror, and struck with the axe only the authors of the war. He also imposed tribute on the conquered, appointed a ruler, and fixed the boundaries of Judea. So Judea was confined within its own borders. He also restored Gadara, which the Jews had overthrown, at the request of Demetrius, who had asked his patron for this favor to his native city; in this matter and in very many others Demetrius stood high with the Great, beyond the usual standing of freedmen, to the point of envy. Aristobulus, with his sons and his father-in-law, he decided to take with him to Rome as captives. But one of the royal offspring slipped from his guards on the way and returned home; his name was Alexander, older than his brother; and there were two sisters. Antigonus, the younger in age, was brought to the City with his sisters, and Pompey went to Cilicia, then to Rome.

In Syria, Scaurus, who held the office of commander, recovered the cities the Jews had seized—inland, Scythopolis, Hippos, Pella, Samaria, Jamnia, Marisa, Azotus, Arethusa; on the coast, Gaza, Joppa, Dora, and the place once called Strato's Tower but afterwards named Caesarea under the rule of Herod, who both adorned it and changed its name. He then set about a war against the Arabs, restraining Judea between the Euphrates and Egypt, and Syria too, restored to its own borders, by his judgment, and by greed for plunder—which I think the more likely motive, rather than extending the empire. He wanted to attack Petra, the capital of the kingdom of Arabia, but, hindered by the difficulty of the ground, he could not break in. Yet he laid waste many places, either near the city or far off. While his army lingered in these places hunger came upon it, and a pitiable disaster would almost have happened had not Hyrcanus, through Antipater, supplied provisions to the struggling Romans; and Antipater also, on Scaurus's advice, urged Aretas to end the war with money. In the end the Arab rid himself of the enemy for three hundred talents and bought off Scaurus; this was the price of his withdrawal. This confirmed Hyrcanus's good faith with the Romans and fostered alliance and security in deep peace, because by his help, out of grievous want, the Roman army in hostile country was given plenty of grain, and aid was at hand.

But when Alexander, who had escaped from the Great's chains, at first secretly and for some time gathering a suitable force, then began openly to overrun Judea, Hyrcanus was harried and distracted in his affairs, while the Romans' concern was pressing, lest the war spread. Indeed Alexander had even decided to restore the wall at Jerusalem that the Great had destroyed, and he had almost begun the work, had not Gabinius, who succeeded Scaurus, having vigorously dealt with the other places through which he had spread the terror of his name, judged that Alexander's attempts must be met. Nor did Alexander think he should flee; daring to decide it in battle with ten thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse, he also repaired the fortresses of Alexandrium, Hyrcania, and Machaerus, to be a refuge for himself if need arose or a hindrance to the enemy, since Arabia, not very loyal to the Romans, was close by. Gabinius, to meet him the sooner, sent Mark Antony ahead with part of the army to block the enemy's march until he himself arrived with the whole column. Antipater, arriving with picked men, and Malichus and Peitholaus, supported by different companies of Jews, joined forces with Antony. When Alexander saw them massed together (for Gabinius too was already present), he changed his plan and withdrew. But when they were not far from Jerusalem, he was forced to join battle; he was defeated and fled, about three thousand of his men being killed and the rest captured or scattered. Hardly a few remained to Alexander, and these more as companions in flight than with daring to rebel. In the end, asking Gabinius for peace, he handed over even the fortresses to the Romans, so that they would have nothing to suspect. In that war Antony's courage shone out remarkably, though everywhere he gave glorious proof of his bravery. Gabinius divided Judea into five councils, to diminish the power from which the greater insolence in affairs arose. To Hyrcanus, because of the mildness of his character, the honor of the priesthood remained. The council of the whole region was entrusted by Gabinius not to one man but in common to the people of Jerusalem; and likewise the other councils were assigned in a similar way, divided among Gadara, Amathus, Jericho, and the people of Sepphoris—that is, the leading cities—so that nothing would be left to the power of individuals, and the administration of the regions, which awaited public care, would not waver. This was undertaken by the Romans to lift the fear of rebellion, and was received gratefully by the Jews as a means of laying aside resentment, since the Hebrew race would live not under a king but under the nobles, after the likeness of the Roman republic, in which not one man ruled but all the best men in turn, to whom magistracies had fallen by lot, administered it—without a share in kingship, but judges of kings. It was thought a provident measure against the restlessness of the nation.

But the flight of Aristobulus and his return to Judea had stirred up a great deal of turmoil among very many, as men flowed back to him whom the favor of old friendship had stirred, or desperate circumstances, for which a remedy was sought in public discord—men eager to throw everything into confusion, since their other hopes had collapsed. So Aristobulus, having returned, began to build fortifications and to restore Alexandrium. When Gabinius learned this, he sent Sisenna, Antony, and Servilius with part of the army and stopped the work. Abandoning the fortifications, Aristobulus prepared for battle; and because he was dragging along a column larger in numbers than in usefulness, he relieved the mass of the people of their arms and gathered only eight thousand armed men, adding also Peitholaus, who had come of his own will from Jerusalem with a thousand men. Then battle began (the Romans were pressing on his neck), and for some time there was a vigorous fight; yet Roman courage prevailed, and five thousand of the Jews were cut down. Aristobulus with a thousand men broke through the line and took refuge in the defenses of the fortress of Machaerus; two thousand scattered elsewhere. The Romans attacked the garrison, but were held off for about two days, since Aristobulus fought it out to the last danger with all his strength. But he could by no means hold out longer. He was captured with his son Antigonus, whom he had taken with him from captivity when he fled; they were sent to Gabinius and by him sent on to Rome. The senate thrust Aristobulus into custody but released his sons to Bithynia, as they say Gabinius had suggested in letters; this had been promised to Aristobulus's wife to reward her zeal in handing over the fortresses to him.

When these things had been done in Judea, Gabinius, thinking he should venture something, prepared an expedition against the Parthians; but the suspect state of King Ptolemy's party called him back after he had set out. For Gabinius turned his march from the Euphrates toward Egypt, using in everything the indispensable services of Antipater and Hyrcanus (but of Hyrcanus through Antipater), who helped the army with money, grain, arms, and auxiliaries; and the clashes around Pelusium in particular would easily have deterred Gabinius had not the Jews, who knew the places and the whole kind of warfare, provided everything. But again, while the army was delayed, Alexander, son of Aristobulus, was trying to plunge into Syria a second time as into an empty province, had not Gabinius, roused by the rumors, hastened his return and, sending Antipater ahead, called back very many of the Jews from alliance with Alexander. Relying on their numbers, Alexander was preparing to drive into exile all the Romans he had found in the region. In the end, though most of the Jews had slipped away through Antipater's negotiation, he did not lay aside his daring; he joined battle with thirty thousand men, but near Mount Tabor, ten thousand being routed, he fled; and with the scattering of the rest the war was ended. Gabinius, having settled the affairs of the Jerusalem state at Antipater's discretion, set out from there and subdued the Nabateans in battle; and Mithridates and Tigranes, fugitives from Persia, he secretly let go, though he declared openly to the soldiers that they had escaped by flight. Crassus succeeded Gabinius, and as he was about to set out for the Parthian war, he took away all the gold that was in the temple at Jerusalem, and in addition ordered the removal of the two thousand talents that Pompey had left untouched. Nor did he rejoice long: when he crossed the Euphrates he lost his army and was himself killed. Made happier by this success, the Parthians decided to cross into Syria. Cassius met them vigorously with ambushes and drove them from the borders of the province entrusted to him, not without heavy loss to the enemy: as they came on in loose order, thinking no one would dare to oppose them, he caught them in narrow places he had seized beforehand. In the end, with many of their men routed, they abandoned the war. Cassius, having driven off the enemy and being secure about his province, rushed into Judea, destroyed Tarichaeae, and sold thirty thousand Jews into slavery. Peitholaus too, suspected of a plot to support Aristobulus's party, he ordered to be put to death. Nor was Antipater without a share in that counsel, so as to remove as far as possible a rival to his power.

This Antipater married a wife named Cypros, born of a most distinguished family among the women of Arabia, and by her he had four sons and one daughter. The sons' names were these: the first was called Phasael, the next Herod, the third Joseph, the fourth Pheroras; and the daughter was Salome. For this reason the man, who was remarkably skilled at earning the partnership of the powerful by gifts and friendship, had won above all the favor of the king of the Arabs, since he put forward the kinship of a wife taken from the region of Arabia. In the end, when he was preparing to fight Aristobulus, he sent his sons to that king of the Arabs as pledges of mutual affection. He received them as an inviolable deposit, treated them with the same care with which he kept his own children at home, and afterwards, when they were asked for, gave them back to their father. But when Aristobulus, beaten in war, was being held in chains; when his son Alexander was keeping from battle in accordance with the terms of peace by which Cassius, on his way back to the Euphrates, had bound him; when the borders of Persia were not troubled by any suspected crossing of the Parthians, and a pleasant appearance of calm in the regions of the East relieved human anxieties—Caesar, pouring himself out of the Gallic lands beyond the Alps into Italy, drove Pompey and the senate across the Ionian Sea. Shut out of Italy, the Great went to Emathia, and ordered the Roman columns from various places to follow him there, because he was preparing war there. While he was occupied with these preparations, Caesar—who stood between the city of Rome and Pompey, since he was following the Great by short cuts from the Flaminian to the Appian Way, to catch either him or his army—freed from his chains Aristobulus, whom Pompey had left bound at Rome, and, giving him also detachments of soldiers, sent him into Syria, to win Judea for himself and to press Pompey from behind. But at the outset of his attempts, when he reached the place, he was killed by poison and left the business unfinished. Rumor ascribed his death to Pompey's supporters. So Caesar's plans were mocked and Aristobulus's desires thwarted by a strange variety of changes, so that he was safer as an exile among enemies and a captive in chains than as a citizen among his own, a master in his bedchamber, a king at his banquet. When he learned this, Pompey, because Aristobulus had tried to renew wars against him in Judea, ordered his son Alexander also to be put to death, as too suspect on account of the Caesarian party. Scipio, obeying Gnaeus's orders, set him as a defendant before the tribunal, so as to put forward a show of a trial, with accusers also brought in; and when sentence was passed against him as one who had disturbed the Roman state with arms, he was struck with the axe, in the manner of enemy commanders convicted of rebellion, so that it might be thought done by the authority of law rather than in execution of an order.

When the deaths of both were known, Ptolemy, who had taken in Aristobulus's brothers and Alexander's wife, sent his son Philippion to the city of Ascalon to fetch the brothers named. On arriving he took Antigonus and his sisters to bring them to his father. Through daily contact and familiarity a spark of love crept into the young man—one to be pardoned, surely, if tyrants knew how to pardon—and he took one of the sisters to himself in the partnership of marriage. His father Ptolemy did not bear this: he killed his son and openly joined his daughter-in-law to himself—a fine censor of morals, who condemned in his son an unlicensed union so that he himself could pollute himself with parricide and incest. When Pompey was killed—who, while fleeing Caesar's arms, offered his head to be cut off by an Egyptian eunuch—the situation changed. Yet he offered his head with the patience that befitted one who had several times conquered such great peoples: seeing in that lot of the vanquished and the state of an exile the mockery and changeableness of human affairs, he offered his neck to the sword, about to receive death in return for kindness from the one to whom he had given a kingdom. After his death a change took place, as very many of the Great's friends sought Caesar's friendship, and especially Antipater, who was gifted to an incredible degree for winning all whose friendship he desired. For resources are needed by all, especially in the preparations of war, where men are very often made dearer than before out of enemies and opponents. For Ptolemy, king of Egypt, since he had wronged him, was being pressed by Caesar himself with very heavy wars.

Mithridates of Pergamum, with the whole force he had brought with him, had been repulsed by the obstacles at Pelusium and had halted in the city of Ascalon. Despairing of a passage, his attempt having failed, he no longer dared to commit himself to battle, the ground being unfavorable and his strength unequal. Antipater first brought in the Arabs to help him, then led with him three thousand Jews, a strong and well-armed force. He also stirred the powerful men of Syria to his aid: Ptolemy, who lived in Lebanon, Iamblichus, and another Ptolemy. Encouraged by their alliance, other peoples too were roused to war. Relying on these added forces, Mithridates approached Pelusium, and when he was prevented from passing, he began a siege. There Antipater gave splendid proof of his soldiership: when the townsmen resisted and the fight was decided with the greatest force on both sides, he was the first, with his men, to break through the part of the walls where he himself was fighting, burst into the city, and take it. Nor was this the end of his labor and help. When the army was advancing inland and, around the district called Onias's, the Egyptian Jews wished to resist so as to block the route, Antipater again not only averted battle but even brought it about that the very men who had prepared arms against them supplied what was needed for the army's use. As a result the people of Memphis too called back their minds from battle and willingly gave themselves to alliance with Mithridates. He, having passed the suspected places, judged that he must engage the rest of the Egyptians, in more open ground indeed but against stronger men, and fought vigorously in the region called by the name of the camp of the Jews who lived there; so much so that he threw himself into headlong danger and would almost have been killed, had not Antipater, seeing that the whole right wing, where Mithridates was, was being pressed by a cohort and shut in on the other side by the river, with no way of escape for the men, charged from the left wing on those who were pursuing Mithridates as he gave way. He pursued them until the whole host of the enemy was destroyed. In that battle Antipater lost only eighty of his men, Mithridates over eight hundred, so that he himself escaped beyond hope; and this slaughter followed in a single moment. Antipater, having received many wounds in his body, found an outstanding testimony to his courage with Caesar, especially since Mithridates was not only the interpreter of his acquittal but the herald of his bravery. Caesar, greatly pleased by this, received Antipater, as was fitting, among his friends with honor. Then, when he had arranged what was to be settled in Egypt and had advanced into Syria, he bestowed on him the honors of the Roman state; he also conferred a talent and imparted the other pledges of his favor as to a man he had proved. At Antipater's suggestion he also willingly confirmed the high priesthood to Hyrcanus.

Antigonus too met Caesar in Syria. Though it would have befitted him to lament either his father's misery—killed by poison through Pompey's friends—or the punishment of his brother, whom Scipio with the utmost cruelty had struck with the axe as a criminal, he played the part of resentment rather than grief. With most bitter complaint he aggravated the charge that Hyrcanus and Antipater were sitting on what belonged to others, what had been snatched by crime from him and his brothers; that he had been made an exile from his father's home, and the land in which he was born was denied him; yet his own wrongs seemed more bearable, those by which the whole Jewish nation was afflicted by Hyrcanus and Antipater much more bitter. They claimed credit, he said, for good service in Egypt, though that duty of helping Mithridates had been rendered not from any zeal born of goodwill toward Caesar, but had been wrung from them by fear arising from awareness of their partnership with Pompey, to serve as a cover for their offense. Against this Antipater, returning not words for words but a proof in deeds, tore his garment, and, stripped of his clothes and full of wounds, his armor and cloak removed, showing to the eyes of the bystanders tested marks of courage, said: “See the evidence of my ill will toward Caesar! Let these defend the accused, which shine like the lights of the mind. These scars I give you, Caesar, as hostages of my inner will. These I lay down as pledges of my loyalty, and I bear the letters inscribed on my heart. If citizens are not believed, let enemies be asked for whom I received these wounds. What else were they pursuing in me but the loyalty I was bringing to you? But he reproaches me with Pompey's favor. I confess, Caesar, that I was a friend not to men but to the Roman name, and that I strove eagerly to spend my services on your republic. So I served not one but all. Pompey may have been dear to me, but he began to be my friend before he began to be Caesar's enemy. He was your son-in-law, and you his father-in-law. When he was in the region of Judea, I helped him as a Roman commander; yet I did not receive for him the wounds I received for you. For you I offered death as my surety, and I received the blows of hostile weapons. But what wonder if a captive does not know the glory of wounds, and a fugitive does not know what loyalty is? And what does a perpetual enemy reproach me with, except your friendship? It seems strange indeed that Antigonus should come to the Romans, whom he habitually attacks in war, to accuse anyone, and complain before them that he has been stripped of a rule whose use and business he desired not for his own power nor for the honor of his house, but to provoke Roman arms and avenge the deaths of his father and brother. Ungrateful for his life, he not only does not fear the Roman tribunal but even dares to attack it, though he knows that here his partner in rebellion paid the penalty.” When Antipater had finished speaking, Caesar declared that Hyrcanus seemed more worthy of the priesthood, and he gave Antipater the choice of his own power. Then he, asking that the same man be arbiter and regulator of his honor, and placing the measure of the honor in the one who gave it, cleverly and modestly enough won both distinction and an increase of power. For Antipater was made procurator of all Judea. Indeed he asked to rebuild the walls of Judea that had been destroyed in the war; and, secure in the trust given him, he both asked and obtained so great a matter. And, as was the custom of Roman commanders, the honors Caesar judged fit to confer on Antipater were inscribed at Caesar's direction on the Capitol, so that evidence of his justice and of the man's merits would remain for the knowledge of posterity too. Antipater, having escorted Caesar out of Syria, turned his march toward Judea. And first he restored to its former state the wall that Pompey had destroyed. Then he put down disturbances, meeting individuals with a parent's affection, now with gentler warnings, now with threats, so that they would think they must follow the ways of peace rather than of war and not exasperate the king's mind. If he remained unoffended, he would show himself a citizen; if provoked, a tyrant; and though Hyrcanus was gentle by nature, they should take care not to exasperate him by insult. He too, he said, was eager to take counsel for the common good, out of devoted concern, not for power; but if they tried to stir anything up, he would not lack the will to punish. They should try the Romans' friendship rather than their domination; for who could doubt that from friends they would burst into arms if they learned that the man whose kingdom they had confirmed had been stripped of it? At the same time, because he knew that Hyrcanus, through the mildness of his temper, was slow to carry out the demands of public duties, he thought the care of guarding the region should be divided among his own sons, since Hyrcanus was unequal to so great a burden and rule. So he made Phasael, the elder of his children, governor at Jerusalem and commander of the troops. Herod too, the younger and quite a youth, he set over Galilee with equal honor. As soon as Herod obtained power, being by nature keener in undertaking affairs, he at once found material for his talent.

For Syria was suffering from the raids of the brigand Ezekias. As leader of a band of plunderers he was troubling the whole province and was a menace everywhere. Herod seized him and ordered him to be put to death, and killed many of the robbers; this won him great glory for courage, so that he was in favor with the Syrians. Hence in the cities and villages he was celebrated in song, as if he had restored public peace and quiet after a long time. This talk, with the favorable rumor of the common people, stirred in Phasael a devoted rivalry with his brother's praise, so that he matched his younger brother by kindness of mind, drawing the more eminent into the place of leading men by goodwill, to temper severity with favor. Hence the greatest honor was paid to Antipater as to a public father; yet he changed nothing of the goodwill and loyalty with which he was accustomed to respect Hyrcanus. But it is hard to be free of envy in prosperity. At first Hyrcanus was silently stung by the young men's praises; yet he was more violently exasperated by the brilliant deeds reported in Herod's actions, seeing that he had gone beyond the laws of the Jews and the measure of a private man, so that, with his brother and father, he was claiming all power for himself, and they were stripping the king of all honor, so that nothing remained to him but the name, which, empty of power, displayed a hollow show. In the end, they said, very many had been put to death without consulting him, killed without royal orders, whom the law of the fathers would not allow to perish. So many said that Herod ought to be summoned to trial to give an account of why he had violated the law that forbade men to be condemned to death unheard; Hyrcanus ought to rise up, or at least test by this whether Herod was acting as a king or a private man. If, when summoned to trial, he did not appear, it would be plain to what his great insolence had aspired. By these and similar speeches of the royal attendants Hyrcanus was gradually inflamed through envy; they reproached him with the shame of a cowardice too much his own, that he had given up his right to royal affairs and transferred power to Antipater and his sons, whom he had made masters, his own freedom to reign diminished. Roused by this, he decided that Herod should not fail to appear at his trial to clear himself of the charges of usurpation against the laws. Herod, though indignant at being summoned to trial, still came, whether at his father's warnings or by a calmer counsel, having first secured the strongholds of Galilee; yet neither with a column that would arouse resentment, as if he seemed to threaten war, nor again without a safe guard, so as to betray his safety. He was supported also by the favor of Sextus Caesar, which breathed on him. Sextus, fearing that some plot might be laid against the young man, had prescribed to Hyrcanus with stern orders that he should keep back from the danger of a heavier judgment. Hence Herod credited his acquittal to Sextus rather than to Hyrcanus's will; although Hyrcanus, even though he had yielded to the accusers in summoning him to trial, willingly acquitted him then, since he preferred to save him rather than to pursue him. But Herod, resenting the injury with youthful heat and ungrateful for his acquittal, went to Sextus with the set intention of not obeying if summoned again, and gave the detractors ground for accusation. Although Hyrcanus did not rise to take vengeance, seeing that Herod was the stronger, still Herod, roused by the memory of the injury (which grows by being dwelt on), gathered an army and marched on Jerusalem to destroy all Hyrcanus's power. He would almost have done it, had not his attack been checked by his brother and father, who begged him to think it enough to have risen up and to set a limit to his threat of vengeance. He should keep from the ruin of the ruler under whom he had won no small favor, so that they had attained such power. He seemed wronged, indeed, in being summoned to trial, but again favored in being acquitted. It would be too harsh to pursue the injury and be ungrateful for his safety; and the outcome of wars was doubtful and uncertain; and there was the heavy burden of odium if he took up arms against his own ruler, a man who had cherished him with a father's affection, had often helped him, and had never harmed him—except that, using bad counselors, he had raised a shadow of injustice by which Herod thought himself mocked.

With these and similar words they broke the young man's impulse, and civil war was removed from Judea; but by the intervention of the Romans it was transferred and turned against them. For Sextus Caesar was killed by treachery by Caecilius Bassus; and afterwards Julius Caesar, having held perpetual power for three years and seven months, because he had gone beyond the bearing of a private citizen, paid a heavy penalty in the senate, Cassius and Brutus being the authors. So when the cities had been gathered, and Julius's adopted son, with Antony joined to him, had determined to avenge his father's death, because Herod was thought to have helped the greatest part of the war by sending aid, the care of ruling all Syria was entrusted to him. This was the cause of Antipater's deadly ruin.

For Malichus, fearing Antipater's power, which was being increased by Herod's courage, bribed one of the royal servants and prepared poison for Antipater. When he had drunk it, Antipater died at once after a banquet—a man of tireless ability in other matters, and above all vigorous in winning and establishing Hyrcanus's rule. Herod took his father's death hard and, setting his army in motion, promised to avenge him; but called back by his brother's advice, lest Judea be harassed by civil war between Herod and Malichus—Malichus being ready to resist and above all pretending that he had no knowledge of Antipater's murder—he was easily led to another kind of revenge. Having accepted Malichus's assurance that Antipater had not died through any fraud of his, Herod invited Hyrcanus and Malichus to dinner; and on the advice of Cassius, who had also given this task to his own men, sent to carry out the vengeance, centurions and officers of the Roman army were ready, met Hyrcanus and Malichus on the shore as they came, and surrounded both of them with drawn swords. Yet they slaughtered only Malichus, pierced and torn with many wounds, to his final death. Hyrcanus, stunned by that terror, lost his senses and collapsed, all strength of mind and body gone. But when he recovered a little and asked Herod who had ordered Malichus to be killed, and learned from the officers that he had been killed by order of Cassius, the Roman commander, he at once replied: “Then Cassius has been the salvation of me and of my country, for he has destroyed the man who plotted against both.” But whether Hyrcanus said this out of fear or meant it is not plainly clear, nor can it be decided by our judgment. Helix had risen up, wishing to avenge Malichus's death out of brotherly kinship; but because he did not dare to provoke Herod, he thought he should attack his brother Phasael. When Herod learned this, wishing to move, he was held back by bodily illness. Meanwhile Helix had seized certain strongholds, especially Masada, and put garrisons in them. But when vigor of health returned to Herod, everything was recovered, and Herod let Helix himself go from the stronghold of Masada at his entreaty. Antigonus, son of Aristobulus, had interrupted his power with the help of Ptolemy, his father-in-law; Herod routed them in battle, drove out Antigonus, and returned to Jerusalem a victor. He had great favor from his recent triumph, and especially from a new marriage. For first Doris had been joined to him as wife, by whom he had a son, Antipater; afterwards he had united to himself in a second marriage Mariamne, daughter of Alexander son of Aristobulus, the granddaughter of Hyrcanus, and therefore endowed with royal nobility. Yet he did not escape envy, for having aimed at snatching the kingdom from Hyrcanus. For when, in the Macedonian war, Caesar and Antony crushed Cassius and Brutus, and of the victors one hastened to return to Italy and the other thought he should hurry to Syria, as many embassies flowed in, all the leading men of the Jews came to Antony and went on into Bithynia, accusing Herod and his brother Phasael of having seized by violence the power over all affairs and having left Hyrcanus only the name, for a show of honor. But Herod's presence and favor prevailed, for he had bound Antony's mind to himself not only with no small sum of money but with rich gifts. So, not touched by a single word of reproach from Antony, he made void the odium of the embassy directed against him. Again about a hundred men of the Jews set out all the way to Antioch to accuse him with no less spirit, and found Antony at Daphne, already wholly given up to his love of Cleopatra and serving her lust; and there they began to charge the intolerable power of the brothers. Messala, standing by Hyrcanus, refuted them and rebuked the insolence of the nation, which, stirred up by the faction of a few, disparaged its own, sought outsiders, and pretended an injury to Hyrcanus, though Hyrcanus had preferred what suited the citizens. So, having heard the pleas of the parties, Antony asked Hyrcanus whom he judged more fit. Since his feeling agreed with Herod and his brother, and the answers matched Antony's own wish, Antony was very pleased, being bound to the brothers by the tie of their father's hospitality: when he came to Judea with Gabinius, Antipater had received him most kindly as a guest and honored him with many services. He appointed Herod and Phasael tetrarchs and charged them with administering all Judea. From this the number of complainants also multiplied. For although he had put some of the envoys under guard and treated others with insult, yet afterwards, when an uprising was raised at Jerusalem, a further embassy set out to Antony, who was staying in the city of Tyre, and the citizens' will did not fail them. And though the protesters had been severely punished, they dared to raise an uproar again. The governor of Tyre was sent by Antony to seize those guilty of insolence, while both he himself and Herod and Hyrcanus tried to keep the matter from producing there very heavy punishments, disturbances of the country, and causes of wars. When nothing was achieved, but everything began to be thrown into confusion by unreasoning contention, Antony sent armed men, by whom some were killed and others badly wounded. Yet from Hyrcanus the dead obtained the favor of burial and those who had been able to escape the favor of medical care; so they gave occasion for a double kindness, by which his goodwill toward the citizens was shown. The others who had fled so exasperated Antony by stirring up the city that he ordered the extreme penalty even for those he was holding in chains.

Insolence had given way to harshness; but after about two years the army of the Parthians poured into Syria, with Pacorus, the king's son, and Barzapharnes, the Persian satrap, leading the column of barbarians. Lysanias, son of Ptolemy, whose surname was Mennaeus, joined them as instigator after his father's death. Already holding power through that satrap, he solicited Pacorus with a promise of a thousand talents of silver and five hundred women, to give the kingdom to Antigonus and end Hyrcanus's priesthood. Pacorus gave part of the cavalry to the royal cupbearer (since he himself was detained by rebellions within Syria), to cross into Judea, act for Antigonus, and help his cause. But even this would have made little progress, had it not been proposed, on Antigonus's suggestion, while the Jews were fighting among themselves—Herod and Phasael leading on one side and Antigonus on the other—that they should receive Pacorus as a mediator of peace. Phasael, from an easy disposition, approved this at the time, against Herod's opposition, and soon found it fatal to himself; he learned that barbarians are faithless by nature. For he was sent to Barzapharnes as if to carry out a peace, and, setting out with Hyrcanus, met the satrap, who cleverly enough cloaked his plot under a show of kindness. In the end he gave them gifts as they were about to set out, and by his arrangements settled how they were to be trapped. Men escorted them more as guards than as companions in danger. Reports were brought that the Parthian had been bought with a thousand talents for the destruction of the men named. Ophellius too urged flight, because he had learned from Saramalla, the richest of the Syrians, that a plot had been prepared against them. But not even so was Phasael persuaded to leave Hyrcanus and look to himself; instead he attacked the satrap with heavy reproaches, that he was betraying his faith for a price and valued money more than justice; he himself would give more for his safety than Antigonus would count out for the kingdom. But the Persian, trying to win back by perjury the faith he had betrayed and to drive off all suspicion, carried out his treachery not long after. For when he had gone to Pacorus, those to whom they had given this task seized Phasael and Hyrcanus, who, since they could do nothing else, uttered curses, wishing vengeance on the perjury of the barbarians and the faithlessness of their betrayal. No less had the cupbearer, sent into Judea, put forward tricks to capture Herod; but heavy concern to be on guard occupied him, who had long suspected the barbarians' plots, and he kept himself within the fortifications. Nor, when orders were feigned from Pacorus that he should meet his brother about Phasael's insolence, did he think he should go outside the walls and trust himself to talks with the enemy. Learning that his brother and Hyrcanus were held, he sent his people ahead by night into Idumea, and he himself with his servants routed the barbarians who pursued. After killing many, he betook himself with hurried step to Masada; yet he found the Jews who pressed on him as he fled more troublesome than the Parthians, and having taken vengeance on his pursuers, he placed his people within the fortifications. He himself, leaving garrisons to protect his mother and younger brothers, hastened to Arabia Petraea. The Persians poured into Jerusalem, rushing into the houses of those who had fled; everything was turned to plunder, war, and tumult. Their injustice went so far that the kingdom was handed to Antigonus, and Phasael and Hyrcanus were consigned to his power to suffer whatever he pleased. He could not restrain himself long: at once he made an attack on Hyrcanus and cut off his ears with his teeth, so that by no turn of affairs would a way back to the priesthood ever be open to him. For the high priest must be unmutilated, and it is clear that the law does not allow anyone with a mutilated body to exercise the office of high priesthood. Phasael forestalled insult by the swiftness of a death he chose for himself, dashing his head against rocks that happened to be at hand, disdaining to be kept for mockery or to die at another's command when, though his hands were bound and a sword was denied him, he could find a way out of life. There was, however, another story about him: that Antigonus brought a physician to him when he was wounded, by whom poison was poured into the wound as if it were medicine. Whatever their end, it had its beginning in a fiercer spirit. It is said that in his last moments, as he was already breathing out his spirit, on learning that Herod was alive and had escaped the plot by flight, he added that he died gladly, because he left a survivor to avenge him. Herod hurried to Arabia, hoping to receive money—by which alone, he believed, barbarian greed could be bent—to ransom his brother from captivity; and if he found the Arab forgetful of his father's friendship or too tight-fisted in repaying favors, he would ask for a loan as the price of redemption, and for this he would pledge his son, a boy of seven whom he had brought with him for this purpose. But the devoted zeal of brotherhood was forestalled by Phasael's death, and Herod pursued so diligently the duties of brotherly service in vain. Yet before he learned of his brother's death, he found Malchus, king of Arabia, whom he believed a friend, estranged: for he changed his loyalty with the times and forbade Herod, already approaching the borders of Arabia, to enter, pretending that the Parthians' messengers had warned him not to think of receiving their fugitive into the kingdom of Arabia and so producing the cause of a very heavy war for himself. Offended by this, Herod at once replied what the pain of just indignation prompted, and from there turned toward Egypt. Soon, however, Malchus repented of the friendship he had violated and sent men to call Herod back, but Herod was ahead of them. When he entered the region where the people of Rhinocorura lived, the news was made plain to him, without any trickery, both of his brother's death and of the captivity of Hyrcanus, who had been led away in chains into Parthia; and he took on as much grief as he laid aside anxiety, so that he prepared flight instead of war. At last he made with all eagerness for Alexandria, and there he was received with honor by Cleopatra, because she thought a man of so great a name should be sought as a commander of troops for her side. Hence, setting aside the queen's requests, he sailed for Rome, thinking the storms of winter and the disturbances reported in Italy lesser than the waves of Cleopatra's fickleness, which he dreaded as worse than any shipwreck. In the end, setting out with unexpected winds, he fell into danger off Pamphylia, but escaped; and changing ship he came first to Brundisium and from there to Rome. There, by the privilege of his father's friendship, he went to Antony and lamented his own misfortunes and those of his family, besieged, for whom he had come to Rome to plead. He moved Antony, who took pity from so great a reversal of fortune: that a king lately most powerful, who had often brought help to the Roman state, should suddenly, like a shipwrecked man, lacking everything and without help, his own people in danger, humbly implore aid, having lost his seat. Antony was inclined toward him readily for the sake of the hospitality he had had with his father Antipater, and especially because, having made him tetrarch, he had left him destined for kingship.

Caesar, however, more generous by natural goodwill, held dearer both Antipater's service in Egypt, endured in all the battles of his father Caesar, and the bond of hospitality, as if the pledges of favor had been renewed; yet he suspected the king's crafty character, set perversely not on what was fair and good but on the advantage of his own affairs. When Herod was given leave to approach the senate, before which Messala and Atratinus set forth his father's good deeds and Herod's own services to the Roman state, it was decreed by the authority of the fathers that Herod's kingship seemed useful to the Roman empire, because—as Antony urged—it would be advantageous in waging the war against the Parthians for the alliance of that king to be joined to the Romans. When the senate was dismissed, Caesar and Antony and Herod went out of the senate house together and were escorted by the attending magistrates. On the first day after the kingdom had been conferred on Herod by decree of the senate, Antony prepared a banquet and invited the king. At about the same time Joseph, Herod's brother, had planned to flee by night for lack of water; but so great a force of rain suddenly poured on the earth that it filled all the water channels. So, calling off the flight he was preparing to the nation of the Arabs, he routed the forces of Antigonus, who was besieging him, partly by ambushes, partly by encounters and open battle; but he himself often withdrew into the fortress after an unsuccessful outcome. And now Herod had unexpectedly arrived from Italy at the Syrian city of Ptolemais; quickly leaving his ship, he went against Antigonus with a great force of citizens and foreigners, joined by Ventidius and Silo, commanders of the Roman army, whom Antony had ordered to assist in bringing Herod back. Dellius, sent by Antony for this purpose, though they were averse in zeal because Antigonus had bribed both of them, had persuaded them to make a show of coming nearby. For Ventidius was staying in the nearby cities to put down the disturbances of the Parthian war, and Silo, stationed within Judea, was making an open alliance with Antigonus for money. Yet Herod did not need help, for all except a few Galileans had joined him. And because his aim was to rescue his people from the siege at Masada as soon as possible, he took by fighting Joppa, which lay in between and was full of his opponents' troops, so as not to leave an enemy behind him as he advanced further. And though Antigonus wished to block his march, he recovered Masada with little trouble and freed his people from danger. Then he set out for Jerusalem, having done everything to avoid the necessity of fighting, declaring that he had taken up battle for the citizens against rebellion, not against his own people. Provoked by Antigonus's supporters, he forced those who were harassing him from the wall with arrows and light javelins to flee. Nor would there have been any delay to victory, had not Silo, commander of the Roman column, suborned soldiers to raise complaints about want, to plead that everything around the walls was laid waste, that supplies were hard to come by and food scarce, and that the time had already come when they ought to go into winter quarters; they threatened to break off obedience unless it was granted them. The mutiny would already have grown strong, had not Herod placed himself in the midst of the centurions and Roman soldiers alike and begged them not to desert one whom Caesar and Antony and the senate too had entrusted to their protection, promising especially that nothing needed would be lacking. Having finished his speech, he went out into the countryside and suddenly had an abundance of everything supplied to the army, so that Silo had no pretext left; and then, the spirits of all being raised, he recovered Idumea with two thousand foot and five hundred horse. While the Roman column was quiet and stationed in winter quarters, Joseph was chosen as commander for a lighter task, so that he should not think of attempting anything against Antigonus at greater risk. Herod himself, having brought his people from Masada and settled in Samaria, after providing what he believed would serve for defense and use, in a freezing winter with every place filled with snow, anticipating the news of his arrival, entered without any battle Sepphoris—called by that ancient name, but afterwards named Diocaesarea—and judged it suitable for refreshing those whom the winter frosts and roads made harsh by ice had worn out; for there was also a great store of food there. When they had been refreshed with food and a halt in quarters, he thought he should attack the brigands, who, overrunning the whole region, wore down the inhabitants with raids no less than those of war. So he first sent ahead part of his horse and foot to the village of Arbela, and he himself arrived with the rest of the force after forty days. The brigands were not terrified by the sight of an army, but, thinking they should meet it in arms, they displayed military discipline along with the daring of brigands. When battle was joined, Herod's left wing gave way; but Herod quickly restored it, brought up reinforcements, steadied his men, struck the pursuers, and broke their charge. They could not withstand Herod fighting hand to hand, and as they gave way he followed them to the Jordan and put them to death. All the rest scattered beyond the river, so that Galilee was freed from all fear of raids—except only those who, hiding themselves in lairs and as it were burying themselves in caves, delayed the victory. For in the steep places of the mountains there were bristling caverns, hollow in the sides of the rocks, among rugged cliffs, with an approach pathless on every side and impossible except to the local people. These men, by cross paths and narrow tracks by which alone the caves were usually reached, had made themselves safe, through experience of danger, against the danger of being caught. Inside, the recesses of the caves were dark; at their front a rock jutting out, as with a continuous ridge, down to deep gatherings of water, shut out hope of approach, the site being slippery on every side, with waters falling from the brow of the mountains and the crashing course of torrents, so that the downrush of the streams and the overhanging rock gave all the more terror. For some time the king remained uncertain, not finding how to conquer nature. Afterwards he used this device: in a defense constructed like chests he shut the strongest men, and lowered them armed with ropes to the very mouths of the caves. They easily began to kill those who were unarmed and yielded, with all their kin and offspring; and if any dared to resist, to burn them by throwing in fire. There was no room for mercy. Indeed, though Herod wished to snatch many from death and give them confidence to take refuge with him, he rather turned them away, so that no one joined Herod willingly; and if any were forced, they preferred death to captivity. In the end one of the old men, who had seven sons and a wife with him, whose safety he could have secured, killed them all in this way: ordering each to come forward one by one, he stood at the entrance and killed each of his sons as he came out. Herod, looking down on so sad and pitiable a deed, touched by a father's feeling, held out his hand and begged him in words to spare his children, promising impunity. But he, not bent at all by any words, and reviling the king besides, killed his wife as well as his sons, threw the bodies of his sons down from on high, and at last hurled himself headlong into the depths. Antigonus, terrified by this, because Herod had so easily overcome the multitude of brigands and the difficulty of the places, avoided his presence; but he turned against Ptolemy, whom Herod had placed in command of part of the army, and, being a man very well fitted for the stealth of war, through those whose custom it was to trouble Galilee he had Ptolemy killed in a sudden attack. Joseph too, Herod's brother, while Herod was occupied elsewhere, he destroyed as he fought back vigorously with Roman soldiers who had been rashly gathered and had come to help him. Not content with so great a triumph, he added to his victory a grave insult against the dead man, leaving him with his head cut off; for it Pheroras, the brother of the slain man, offered fifty talents, and did not obtain it. By this victory the support of very many in Galilee again turned to Antigonus, and the business of war was renewed. Herod had gone to Antioch, and was resting there in the quite pleasant place they call Daphne. When he received the news of his brother's death, he groaned a little, postponed his grief to his suffering, and prepared vengeance. Antigonus did not face him raging with grief, but hid within his fortifications. Herod broke in to pursue the authors of so great a crime and easily turned back the columns that met him. The slaughter of many was very great; the roads were blocked by the bodies of the fallen, so that the very routes were filled with the corpses of the slain. The war would have been finished, all being put to flight, had Herod thought he should march straight on Jerusalem. Antigonus had thrown away his spears, dreading the last punishment. All were confused with fear, so much so that when Herod, called back from pursuit by the harshness of winter, had laid down his arms and entered a bath accompanied by a single servant, three men with drawn swords met him, and then more, who had fled from the battle and were looking for hiding places. These, on seeing the king, were thrown into fear, ran past, and hurried to the exit of the bath to escape—men who could have killed the king and ended the war. In the end there was no one to seize them as they fled. From this Herod, guessing how great a fear was in the enemy, pressed on with the battle, killed Pappus himself, commander of the opposing column, and ordered his head to be cut off, because Joseph, the king's brother, had been killed by him.

Antigonus meanwhile put off the flight he had prepared. As he delayed, Herod surrounded him with his army and besieged him, pressing on that part which was in front of the temple, where Pompey too had broken through the wall. The king had now such confidence of victory that even after the siege had begun he turned aside to take as his wife the daughter of Alexander, exchanging the war trumpet for wedding songs and mingling marriage with war; and having seized the chance of the union on the occasion of battle, he returned from the festivities to the war. Sosius also arrived, sent by Antony to help the king. So, with forces joined—the Romans excelling in experience of war and military discipline, and striving eagerly to please the king—a breach was made in hardly the fifth month, Herod's men having dared to scale the wall. As the Roman centurions burst into the town, countless killings took place, and everything around the temple was laid waste. Some, fleeing to the temple, others, gathered in their houses, were slaughtered; there was no pity for old age, none for infancy or the weakness of women. Antigonus gave himself up and, forgetting his position, threw himself at Sosius's feet. But Sosius, whom so great a reversal of fortune should have moved to pity, mocked him as he lay there and called him Antigone; yet he did not spare him as though he were a woman, but had him bound and thrust into prison. Herod was in turmoil about how to rescue his country from the hands of the Romans and how to keep the temple undefiled by gentiles. For the Romans were hurrying to see the inner mysteries and to profane the holy of holies. But the king, now by entreaty, now by threats, kept them back one by one, thinking victory worse than flight if any of the sacred things were made public. The Romans pressed for plunder, Herod resisted, lest they leave him an empty city, and himself a king left over in a deserted kingdom. Sosius on the other hand insisted that the plunder of a captured city was owed to the soldiers. But the king promised to give money to the soldiers from his own resources, and so redeemed with money what remained of his country. To fulfill his promise, he treated the soldiers most generously, the commanders appropriately, and rewarded Sosius himself with royal liberality; no one went away ungrateful. Sosius offered a crown to God, and, departing, took Antigonus with him to Antony, who struck him with the axe as a man of degenerate spirit.

Herod lavished a great deal on his own people as well, and gave very many gifts to Antony and his friends; yet it was not possible to buy security for himself from Antony. For Antony was already enslaved by his love of Cleopatra and served her, and, given over to her, waited on her lust; but he could not satisfy the woman's greed, a woman especially practiced in murdering her relatives, after whose destruction she had added their possessions to her own like spoils. With the same greed and cruelty, if she heard by report of any wealthier men in Syria, she killed them; and with Antony already given over to her lusts, she thought that the kingdom of Judea and that of Arabia too could be added to her greed, once those ruling both nations were destroyed. But although drunk with lust and heavy with sleep, Antony came to his senses in this respect, that he refused to destroy such men and most powerful kings at the command of a most wanton woman. Yet, so as not to let them go unscathed, he struck at their friends: he took away the greatest part of their possessions, especially the land that produces balsam, and he awarded to Cleopatra's greed all the cities lying within the river Eleutherus, except Tyre and Sidon. Soothed by her husband with such a reward, she accompanied Antony as far as the Euphrates when he set out against the Parthians and returned through Judea, where Herod did not fail to win the queen's goodwill with gifts and very great presents. Her successes increased her pride, so that the woman's lack of self-control lifted her beyond all measure. For not long afterwards Artabazes, king of the Parthians, son of the most powerful king Tigranes, was given to her as a gift. Antony, holding him captive, and though he was owed to a triumph with all the Persian booty and spoils, handed him over to the woman like a cheap slave, so that the more glorious the victory had been, the more shameful the gift, which dishonored a king with such mockery. Yet he did not long enjoy his successes, since he did not know how to use them; through the woman's insolence he roused Augustus against himself. So the war of Actium was being prepared with great movements on both sides. The king was most eager to undergo the war with Antony, because Judea was free from hostile disturbance and he had recovered Hyrcania, long held by Antigonus's sister. But in this too Herod was most fortunate, since he was kept from mixing himself in others' dangers. For Cleopatra, wishing to estrange his mind from the kings and turn him away, persuaded her husband that Herod should make war on the Arabs: if he won, Arabia would fall to the queen; if he lost, Cleopatra's rule would be extended over Judea. Whichever won, he would destroy the other. This plan turned out in Herod's favor not by its design but in the event. As soon as he began the battle, he turned the enemy back, being stronger in cavalry; but in the end he was overcome by the multitude of the enemy and surrounded by numbers. When his opponents' forces were gathered at Canatha, he wished to close up his line against them; but his men, elated by their earlier success and therefore rushing on the enemy, left him in the lurch, especially through the fraud of Athenion, whom Cleopatra had attached as a commander, not to help Herod but to desert him in the very moment of need. In the end the Arabs attacked his abandoned army in rocky and pathless places, laid it low and routed it with heavy slaughter, and, following the fugitives to their refuges, destroyed them. Herod arrived, later indeed than necessity demanded; yet he avenged the misfortune and in later battles so afflicted the Arabs that they often lamented their single victory. There occurred also a heavy failure of spirits because of an earthquake, by which a great number of cattle and about thirty thousand people perished. The whole military force, however, since it lived under the open sky, remained unharmed. From this the enemy's spirits were raised, so that they thought they could more easily invade a deserted Judea and crush men struck by such portents. Therefore Herod thought he should rouse his men to defend themselves, especially because he had learned that the envoys he had sent to Arabia had been treacherously killed. So he addressed them in their alarm with this speech: “After so many successful battles of ours, the enemy's power has been broken, by their own confession—they who, driven by mad grief, have killed our envoys as if they were the defeated. It seems strange to me that an irrational fear has struck you so much that you prefer the chance events of the elements to the successes of your courage that you already know. There has been no encounter in which the Arabs did not at once give way, and, turned to flight, think they must yield; and, as is the way with the stealth of war, they have sought remedies in fraud and ambushes, not to win themselves but to delay our victory. When we ought to be confident because of this, alarm has followed as if at a fearful war, because the earth shook, although those who were waging battle alone were unharmed. Or if we wish to consider whom it harmed, we shall judge rather the Arabs, whom it brought back into war so that they would not withdraw by flight from the stronger. For I see that they have returned to the battle line relying not on arms or strength but on the loss of our cattle. Fragile is the hope that depends not on confidence in one's own courage but on another's misery, since on earth nothing is so changeable as prosperity or adversity. For in brief moments the state of human affairs is renewed; neither is prosperity lasting nor misfortune stubborn. So neither misery nor its opposite is permanent, but the turns of affairs often alternate and vary in the same people. We may take an example from ourselves. In the earlier clash we were stronger, but as the battle went on our lot changed, so that we were beaten by those whom we had beaten. So we too may hope that those who had beaten us will be beaten by us. For excessive presumption is always unwary and careless of itself, while fear warns one to look to the future and teaches diligence. In prosperity boldness creeps in, and ill-advised rashness does not know how to wait for the counsel of its leader. In the end, when you went forward against my judgment, Athenion's wickedness found room to do harm. Now your alarm pledges me a victory in advance. Lift up your spirits, then, and raise again the ancient greatness of soul of the Jews. Let not the commotions of senseless things terrify you, and do not think the earthquake a sign of another misfortune. The sufferings of the elements carry their own harm; fear nothing beyond what lies in those very blows. For the earthquake and the plague of living creatures are not signs of dangers but the dangers themselves. There is nothing for us to fear, as though we were about to suffer heavy things, we who have endured the heaviest. He who has punished can now be gracious, and milder than if he had not punished. What is kept in store after an earthquake and pestilence but mercy? For we have paid for our sins twice over. And yet what is useful for war we have intact; for the pestilence carried off those who were outside the war, while our victory took from the enemy what they had chosen as fit for war. Then, for us it was cattle that died; for them, good counsel—they who thought the envoys we sent should be slaughtered against all right and law. They have violated the law of all men, even of the barbarians themselves; for even among those who do not know humanity envoys are held inviolable, while heavenly vengeance is dreaded and God is feared as the avenger of so great a crime. Our adversaries have committed what neither human nor divine laws leave unpunished. Let us go out, then, to fight not for borders or spoils but for an injury done to God. Let not love of wife or offspring rouse us to war, but the protection of God that we count on. We are carrying out not our own decisions but the sacred precepts of divine right, so that we may demand vengeance for those whom religion commands to be inviolable. Amid enemy arms an embassy alone is the trustee of peace; he who performs an embassy puts off the enemy. Their blood now cries to God and demands vengeance. Let us hasten then to battle, while we have God as the avenger of the slain. They fight better for us, and, surrounded by legions of angels, they stand before us in the battle line.” Having urged his soldiers with such words, he rushed against the enemy, seeking every opportunity for battle. The Arabs were superior in number but weaker in spirit; so when battle was joined, about five thousand of them fell. The rest, retreating into a fortification, were worn down by lack of water, so that they sent an embassy and asked for peace for a price. But when they saw themselves being put off, and their thirst was inflamed further as the water failed, many came out and offered themselves to the enemy, preferring to die by a sword they chose rather than by thirst. Herod kept them in chains, lest there be any trick. So in five days about four thousand were taken; when others came out to fight, again about seven thousand men were cut down. Humbled by this blow, the Arabs, as much superior in counsel as they were inferior in courage, sought the king himself, whom they had as an adversary, as their defender and helper.

But a greater anxiety struck the victor, so that he who had subjected others dreaded a danger threatening not his borders now but his whole kingdom, since Antony, to whom he was bound in faithful friendship, had been defeated. For Augustus Caesar, victor in the contest at Actium, did not consider Antony fully overcome while Herod survived the victory. So the anxious king, having learned by a true report that Caesar had come to Rhodes, sailed to him, so that rumor would not outrun his journey by land. On arriving he laid aside his diadem and presented himself in private dress but with a kingly mind. Then, holding nothing back from the truth, he kept his firmness and preserved his dignity. “I confess, Augustus,” he said, “that I was a faithful ally to Antony, as one who received the kingdom from him, to whom I do not deny that I am still a devoted debtor. And I would have proved it by arms, had Cleopatra not begrudged it and the Arabs not hindered it. By that necessity I did not bear arms against you—not as a deserter of my friend or one afraid of battle, but as one occupied with affairs at home. Yet Antony did not find me ungrateful, since, though absent, I sent him reinforcements for his army and countless supplies of grain. And you too, Caesar, would have judged me not ungrateful for his kindnesses had I been present at the war of Actium. See how I hold nothing back. I fear more to seem ungrateful toward your enemy in your eyes than to seem an enemy toward you. Your judgment is heavier to me than war, for before you it is not merits of virtue but faults that are on trial. So I prefer to plead before you a case about loyalty rather than about treachery. See, Caesar, that I did not desert Antony when he was whole, nor flee him when he was defeated. You defeated Antony, Caesar, with your mighty legions, you defeated him by your counsels, you defeated him by the strength of the Roman empire, which he abandoned and which he denied; and truly he was defeated by your virtues, but more by his own vices. Cleopatra his wife defeated him, Egyptian love defeated him, the luxury of the canopy defeated him. He was defeated because he preferred to be defeated with Cleopatra rather than to win without her; a woman more hostile to her own than to her adversaries defeated him. I had urged the woman's death, if he wished to look to himself; I had promised help by which to restore him in his distress; I had promised forces by which to protect him in flight; I had offered myself as his partner in war. But Cleopatra's desires had bound his mind. He was defeated because he would not listen to me. I too was defeated with Antony, but with less disgrace, because Cleopatra defeated him, and Antony me. He did not abandon a barbarian woman, I did not abandon a friend. With him I laid down the diadem; but fearing to come to you because of my loyalty to a friend, I set aside the insignia of kingship, but not the consciousness of virtue. Judge as you will. Yet whatever the outcome of your judgment, I shall take with me this: that it will be judged what kind of friend I have been.”

To this Caesar replied: “Greetings,” he said, “and now enjoy your kingdom all the more, because we do not envy your virtues but delight in them. For you are worthy to rule more peoples, you who guard friendship in such a way that you do not deny a friend placed in adversity and are not ashamed to confess him your friend. But try to attach yourself to the more fortunate and to keep faith in prosperity; in adversity you have proved it enough. Antony may have conquered you, but I did not think you conquered, whom friendship made equal to the victors. That is why we seek you, because no outcome of war has changed you; for it was not you who deserted Antony, but Antony you, who trusted Cleopatra more than you. His folly has won you for us, because he chose for himself the most destructive woman and rejected the faithful man. No wonder if Antony, defeated, clings to Cleopatra, by whom he was captured while a victor. Why wonder if Cleopatra made you leave Antony, when she separated him from me and made him an enemy instead of a partner in empire? Therefore, since you were rejected along with us, reign also with us. Nor is this without benefit: while we were occupied with civil wars, you subdued the untamed nation of the Arabs; for we count the enemies of the Jews as ours. Those who attack you bring arms against us. So you fought for us while you were winning for yourself; and therefore we shall reward you, so that your kingdom may be confirmed by our gift. Meanwhile it is no small favor to have taken nothing away; for the rest we shall try to see that you do not miss Antony. For it is not fitting that one whom we have conquered in war we should not conquer by kindness.” When Caesar had said this, he put the diadem on Herod's head, adding warm attention to the gift. Invited by this esteem of Caesar's, Herod, wishing to draw away from Caesar's anger Alexas, one of Antony's friends, a man with whom Caesar was especially indignant, pleaded with many prayers; but excessive indignation left no room for pardon. When they set out from there for Egypt, Herod escorted Caesar on his march, supplying everything of use to him or his army, and won for himself the warmest regard of the commander, especially because in the drier places as far as Pelusium an abundance of water was provided by royal foresight. By these services he poured such love of himself into all that he seemed to have deserved more than he received, and the power of his kingdom was thought less than the generosity of his kindness. So Caesar, when affairs in Egypt had gone as he wished and Antony and Cleopatra were dead, not only gave back to Herod what had been taken from him, but besides what Cleopatra had diverted, he also granted him Gadara, Joppa, and Samaria. He also gave him the coastal cities of Gaza, Anthedon, Joppa, and Strato's Tower, and he granted the king for his bodyguard four hundred Gauls, by whom Cleopatra had been surrounded as she went about, and many other things. But he valued above all these the fact that he was loved by Caesar above all others, after Agrippa however, and by Agrippa after Caesar.

So in the fifteenth year of his reign, raised up by so great a run of success, he turned to piety, that he might respond to his good fortune and to grace; and to show himself grateful for the heavenly benefits flowing on him beyond measure, he adorned the temple. He enclosed the whole circuit of ground around the temple with a wall and took in a doubled space, at immense cost of building and with exquisite beauty. Proof of this were the great porticoes around the sanctuary, which he built from the foundations; nor was his concern for defense less than for adornment. For he fortified the fortress lying on the north, which he named for Antony's sake, in no way inferior to the upper palaces. He also added in the very citadel of the royal house twin residences of very great extent and wonderful beauty, to whose charm you would think nothing could be compared. One of them was called the Caesareum, the other the Agrippeum, so that the lasting memory of such great friends would be celebrated in his own buildings. The king not only built the city of Sebaste but also filled it with inhabitants. And not to go through the details, he hardly passed over any site of ancient cities without renewing it if it was falling, or adorning it with buildings that seemed lacking. He spread his liberality even to the five-yearly games, and so enriched that kind of men with poured-out wealth. He also founded a temple of white marble to Caesar at the sources of the Jordan, having become so forgetful of religion that he consecrated a temple to a man and brought the practice of the gentiles into Judea. The place is called Panium. There a mountain of great height stretches its summit aloft; in its side a shady cave opens, through which the depth of a foul-smelling chasm breathes out a savage stench. Inside is a gathering of waters, and a great mass of it lies without any motion, so that the measure of its depth cannot be grasped. Outside, around the roots of the cave itself, springs gush out; hence many have thought that the Jordan rises there. What the truth is, however, we think must be disclosed later. There was on the coast a city called Strato's Tower, already worn out by frequent wars and sinking into ruin from sheer age, yet outstanding in the advantage and charm of its site. He renewed it with white stone and adorned it with various buildings, and in it he expressed the power of his greatness of spirit and the elegance of his work. For it lies in the middle between two coastal cities, Dora and Joppa; on both sides it is skirted by a harborless shore, so that all who wish to sail past from Egypt to Phoenicia are tossed at sea, because the sea there is often stirred by winds, and especially by the African wind, by whose even moderate breath the waves are raised; then, dashed against the rocks that run out in front and thrown back with its force broken, the wild sea is made rougher by its falling. So the king, setting no limit to expense, conquered nature by greatness of spirit, and made a harbor larger than the Piraeus; and in it, cutting through the mass of the rocks, he made safe anchorages. Having measured the space suited to the size of the harbor, he threw huge stones into the sea, very many of them fifty feet long and others even greater. He marked the harbor itself with very great towers, one of which he called Drusion, to weave into the honors of his work the name of Drusus, who was of Caesar's family. He also placed shorter flights of steps at frequent points, by which ships could be drawn up without heavy labor. With three huge colossal statues he beautified the whole charm of that harbor. Again, he founded a temple of Caesar on higher ground, and in the middle of the temple he set up a colossus in the name of Augustus, as his image, no smaller than the statue of Olympian Jupiter or of Argive Juno. You would not know whether to admire more the beauty amid such difficulties or the strength of the work, and you might think that its solidity surpasses even such great beauty, since the work remains indissoluble against both sea and age. So manifold grace accrued from that work: a very great city was added to the province, a harbor to sailors, and honor to Caesar, from whose name it is called Caesarea at this time.

This power of the king, overflowing with successes, was brought low by seeking partnership with one woman, and broken by sorrowful griefs, since, against right and law, he thought a marriage should be measured by nobility of family rather than by love, after a certain royal custom. He had as his partner a woman of Jerusalem named Doris, joined to him earlier when he was a private man, who ought to have been the dearer to him because she had been fortunate for her husband: with her he had attained the height of royalty. But, forgetful of her goodness, he cast off Doris and married Mariamne, granddaughter of Aristobulus and daughter of Alexander. So while he pursued nobility, he fell into a turmoil in which his own house could not agree with him, though many peoples of different provinces obeyed him. And lest the eyes of the new bride be offended by the son Doris had borne, with a stepmother's hatred set up in the house, Antipater (for that was the young man's name) was driven not only from his father's house but from the whole city, and made room for the ill-omened marriage, which the father celebrated by the exile of his only son; he was hardly sent for even at the solemnities of the feast days. The woman, seeing her husband complying with her, turned even the reproach of his devotion into pride; and there was added a cause by which her mind was rightly inflamed: for she knew that her grandfather Hyrcanus had been killed by her husband's plotting, falsely suspected of desire for the kingdom. He is the one we mentioned above, whom Barzapharnes, ruler of the Persians, had carried off captive when he occupied Syria; he was first kept in Parthia, then, out of pity for his fallen lot, allowed to live among his countrymen, the Jews who lived beyond the Euphrates. Would that, as he had been granted to those who pleaded for him, he had also believed those who warned him not to stir up, through the restlessness of human nature, kinship with a powerful man by going over to Herod: that this would be dangerous to him, because desire to keep a kingdom harasses no one more than one's closest kin, and he should beware of his relatives. But he, weary of foreign life and longing for his own, crossed the Euphrates and returned to Judea. This sank deeper into Herod's breast than anyone had supposed—not that Hyrcanus aimed at the kingdom, but because it was thought uncertain whether a man of royal birth, long practiced in the privilege of power, could keep away from it. So the noose of death for Hyrcanus was the marriage of his granddaughter, for whose sake he had hurried to Herod, not knowing whether it was safer to live as a captive among enemies or as a kinsman with a king. So, with not even a slight suspicion of aiming at the kingdom, he was killed for this alone, that the kingdom seemed to belong to him. Meanwhile Herod loved Mariamne with lavish love and did not want her offended; and the woman had heaped up favor by numerous offspring. For she had borne him five children; but of the three males the youngest had died at Rome while being educated in liberal letters. The other two were honored with royal style beyond the measure of private persons. The young men were favored by their mother's nobility and by their own birth within the kingdom, since they had been born when their father was already reigning; but most of all by the love of Mariamne, by which the king was inflamed more and more every day, so that, although no return of love was paid him by his wife, he still took care not to sadden the woman's mind in anything. With equal balance the woman's hatred and the husband's love contended against each other. Yet Mariamne more justly hated the husband who loved her than Herod loved Mariamne who did not love him. The woman had hatred from his crime and confidence from his love: by the one she opposed him in grief for her grandfather, by the other she was lifted up through her lover's compliance. And so she did not refrain even from reproachful charges, that he had wickedly taken from her her grandfather Hyrcanus and her brother Jonathan, though one was his grandfather-in-law and the other his brother-in-law: the one ought to have been spared because of the weakness of old age, the other at least because of his youth. It was an outrageous deed: to the youth of seventeen to whom he had entrusted the high priesthood, he at once gave the honor and brought death—for no other reason, as we have learned, than that when, clothed in the priestly vestment, he first approached the altar on a sacred and festal day, the people suddenly burst into tears. This was so suspect to Herod that he believed the people had wept for joy and so had betrayed their affection toward the young man—those tears were signs of a wish, a dangerous devotion of his people, who had shown from their inmost hearts what zeal they had for the young man's service; and that noble royal grandson, son of an unruly woman and brother of a queen more insolent still, who scorned her royal husband, would break out into ruling unless he were removed from the scene in good time, since he had such beauty and such grace of comeliness that he would rightly be judged preferable to all. So he resolved to kill the young man. The young man's mother troubled him, keener to investigate and fiercer to avenge, who would let nothing remain hidden and nothing unpunished; and for that reason he considered recalling and restraining himself. But again he was troubled by the love of all for the young man, growing greater daily, and by the danger to the kingdom. So, roused by headlong fury, he decided to look to himself by any means.

The young man is sent at night to the city of Jericho, and there, since he used to enjoy swimming, he was drowned in a pool by very many men who came together as if in play, while he was being ducked without measure. His sister did not bear this in silence, but in her sisterly affection betrayed it in reproaches and charged her husband that her brother had been taken from her at his order. She was bereft of everyone, she said; her husband's house was deadly to her, he who first took away her grandfather and then killed her brother; she was wretched, the ruin of her family. She called down curses on her husband, her mother-in-law, and the king's sister—a crime common to them all—and begged God as avenger not to leave so great a deed unpunished. Herod bore all this, as one captivated by love and devoted to her nods. But the women's anger raged, and they could not bear the curses of the cursing woman and above all her indignant arrogance, especially because Herod, conquered by her, could not rise up against her even when slighted by her; and therefore, so that he might be roused the more as a lover, a drama of adultery is woven together, and a charge of this kind is composed against the woman: that she had sent her portrait to Antony in Egypt. How great an intemperance it would have been, to offer her beauty for sale to an absent man prone to lust, and moreover a powerful one who used power as law, so as to entice him by her beauty—that she, a woman, could have put herself up in the commerce of a new kind of auction, from love, or from hatred of her husband, whose danger she would have demanded as the price of adultery! By this invention of the women, then, Mariamne, the more she was loved by Herod, the more heavily she was attacked. Yet the accusation itself, though made by indignant women, was not altogether foreign to the truth. For it was more credible that her mother Alexandra, furious that another was preferred in the priesthood to her son Aristobulus (she preferred her son Jonathan to be called by this name, to recall that his grandfather had been a king), had asked Antony, through a certain musician who carried the letters, for the priesthood for her son. Then, when Dellius, Antony's friend, came to Judea, the young man had been noticed and marveled at for the grace of his most excellent beauty; and no less Mariamne, whose fame was the more brilliant the more distinguished her rank, had perhaps become known to him, by a certain habit of human nature by which men wish to show themselves dearer to their more intimate friends if they also admit them to hospitality in the presence of their families. There, too, Alexandra had been given the opportunity of talking with Sosius, being a widow and somewhat freer, and her guest could not lack the opportunity of learning other things, especially as he was inquiring into such matters and persons. Then, having consulted together, they had come to this decision, that the portraits of both should be sent to Antony. Struck by the brilliance of the portraits, and especially by the testimony of Sosius (who asserted that he had never seen anything like it on earth, and that a grace not human but divine was in them, acting the pander, so as to rouse the man's far from sober desires), Antony had written to Herod to send Aristobulus to him without delay; about Mariamne, because she was married, he said nothing—not that he used to cover his lusts even toward women who were with their husbands, for he could commit outrage without danger and without shame—but so as to avoid the anger of Cleopatra, who was offended by a rival of either sex, but more if she caught him with a woman joined to a husband, since she thought she surpassed all women in beauty. When the letter had been read, Herod excused himself, saying he could not tear the noble young man away from his people without an uprising of the people and disturbance of the whole nation; and to satisfy Alexandra he promised Aristobulus the priesthood. But when Alexandra saw delays being made in the promises and thought she was being toyed with, she prepared a ship; and when the very preparation for flight was discovered through Sabbion's information, she was brought back with her son. Moved by this, Herod concealed the injury for the time and hastened the conferral of the priesthood on Aristobulus, so as to veil under the appearance of honor the odium of the death he had prepared. When this was done, as we have said, he was shaken as if struck by lightning, and at the same time by the charge of attempted adultery invented by his family, since he knew Antony was prone to lusts, and unveiled ones, and inflamed his desires to every kind of love by having very great power. Dreading also the implacable pain and savagery of Cleopatra's rivalry—who had killed very many men whom she had found, as their elders, to be restraining their wives' intemperance—he feared that the danger threatening him was not only of losing his wife but also of undergoing death. So he himself proposed to go to Egypt, to turn aside Antony or Cleopatra, whom he feared most. Others say that he went there summoned by Mark Antony's letters, to give account of the reasons for the young man's death. Yet, as he was about to set out, he secretly told his kinsman Joseph, to whom Salome, the king's sister, had been joined in marriage, that he suspected he would be put to death because of Antony's desire for his wife's beauty, which the woman was accused of betraying by sending a likeness of her charms; and he entrusted this to him, as a kinsman, as a charge: that if he himself were killed by Antony, he should kill Mariamne, so that the prize of the crime would not survive. Joseph—not at all, I think, from a wish to betray, but to quiet the woman's complaints against her husband, in which she said that, afflicted, she burned with hatred of him—disclosed the order and interpreted it as the affection of a lover: that not even in death would Herod endure being separated from his wife's company. But the woman, very differently from what Joseph had supposed, took it as proof of a cruelty still wrapped around her, whose execution he had entrusted to his own kinsman to be carried out even after his death: he was hostile to her through injustice, she said, a man who did not test his suspicions by any proof of truth but pressed them with a headlong death; there would be no end to hatreds that stretched beyond the very loss of life and safety. But Joseph, forgetful of the evil in his own house, while he eagerly sought to reconcile another man's wife, inflamed his own wife's suspicions against himself, for she thought that her husband's conversations with Mariamne and his lingering in the royal palace were not to be borne lightly. In the end, when her brother returned, she did not delay her accusations, adding her own injury to the king's insults, that Mariamne had taken her husband from her too. But Herod, though struck, was at first by no means seriously moved, nor did he show himself hostile to his wife; indeed, broken by the force of love, one day he began to swear to the woman that he loved her with such affection that he had never burned with desire for another woman, and had so cast all of them from his mind as to keep faith with his wife. But she said: “You had shown your love for me well enough by the orders you gave Joseph, when you commanded him to kill me. How can he love who can kill?” At once the king, beside himself when he heard that his secret had been betrayed, began to think that Joseph would never have betrayed it unless, captured by love of the woman, he had sought the reward of his betrayal in illicit intercourse: what had long been hidden was made plain, the crime was in the open with undoubted corruption; his sister had not been roused for nothing, she who had detected the injury to the house before the rest. So, raging with excessive indignation and out of his mind, he leapt from the couch, fleeing the contagion of base corruption, and the palace could not hold him in his fury. His sister heard him shouting, and at once, seizing the moment as an argument for accusation and an occasion for harm, she confirmed the suspicions of the indignant man. So, driven by the pain of the injury and by his sister's accusation, he ordered both to be killed. Not long after came repentance for what was done; and when anger fell, love followed, and passion was revived; and such a fever of desire blazed up that he did not believe she was dead, and, out of his mind, spoke to her as if she were alive. And he would send servants to her as to a living woman, asking her to lay aside their quarrels, come to him, and give herself back to conjugal favor. At last, taught by a long interval of time, he hardly believed that she had died, whom, for love, he thought could not die, like a woman of immortal beauty. So great was his affection for the dead woman. In the end, they say, he became savage afterwards and, exasperated by hatred of those around him, was carried away into the murder of many; and he suffered not only from a sickness of the mind but also from a serious illness of the body, which they said he contracted from a pestilence of the air as well. For a more corrupt region of the sky produced plague for very many. So, on the advice of physicians, he hid himself in the secret places of the forests, and as his strength gradually returned, he recovered health of body and mind alike with the spring air.

He added this too to the wonders by which he looked up to the charm of the dead woman: that he had paid the penalty for an unjust outrage, and that the death of such beauty had been expiated by the sickness of the elements—the death of one avenged by the ruin of the world and the plague of peoples, though with unequal lot, since the earth refused its fruits and famine increased the pestilence. Such was the end Mariamne met: chaste toward her husband with sobriety, but insolent in the awareness of her beauty. She had greatness of spirit in abundance but lacked attentiveness, so that she scorned her husband's endearments, secure that she could suffer no ruin from one who loved her beyond measure. Nor did she find vengeance only for the present, but passed on inherited hatreds for the future. Her sons succeeded her as executors of their mother's grief, with devoted affection toward their mother but impious toward their father, though they ought to have paid the right of nature to both parents with equal duty. Nor did grief find them untrained: long educated at Rome in Latin and Greek letters alike, they had acquired no small cunning; they had learned of their mother's death while absent, and were embittered, very many urging them on to hatred of their father. When they returned, not even reverence at the sight of their father instilled attentiveness in them; their malice grew with age. Presumption came also from their marriages, for one had been joined in marriage to the daughter of Salome, Herod's niece, and the other to the daughter of Archelaus, who held the kingdom of Cappadocia; and the nobility of the union had given weight to their hatreds. So Herod was offended, even by the silent character of his sons, more spirited than a father's devotion could bear—a devotion that is often wounded even by a look. Goads were added by those who, as though anxious, frequently warned him to beware of his sons' plots, asserting that they were arming hands to avenge their mother's death. Frightened by this, Herod began to prefer Antipater, Doris's son, to his brothers, and to provoke them by showing him richer favor. The royal palace burned with greater hatreds and was shaken by the contest of brothers: they were indignant that the son of a private woman was preferred to themselves, born in the kingdom; he, skilled in flattery, the more he saw himself inferior on his mother's side, the more zealously he commended himself to his father, and he did not stop attacking his brothers with fabricated accusations until by himself and through others whom he had won over he shut them out from their father's affection. In the end he took from them all hope of reigning, so that by a publicly made will he was designated sole successor to the rule; and, sent to Caesar at Rome, he was furnished with every royal ornament and style except the badge of the diadem. Returning from there to Judea, with increased favor from Caesar and many illustrious men, within almost a short interval of time he gained such influence that he even restored his mother to his father's marriage; and with twin weapons, the art of flattery and the cunning of pretense, he began so to press his brothers before his father that the father prepared death for his son. At last, raging in mind, Herod went to Rome, taking Alexander with him, whom he set before Caesar as accused of a crime of sorcery against himself. Alexander, being given the opportunity of lamenting his calamity and all his miseries, and seeing that he had the authority of so great a judge, who could neither be won over by Herod through favor nor be got round by Antipater, thought nothing should be passed over, and touched on his father's crimes with a certain modesty, so that he neither seemed to press like an accuser nor allowed them to stay hidden, since it would greatly help his case if he showed that he was being attacked by his father's hatred because of his grief at his mother's death. For in such trials nothing burdens children more than the duty of nature and the authority of that duty; if these are somewhat discredited by an outrage, the presumption against the child is lessened and the father's privilege excluded. But when he came to his father's charges, refuting them with strong arguments, he first showed that his brother was free of the crime, the partner of his dangers, and he groaned that an innocent man was being called into the charge. A clear conscience gave him the right to plead, and he had skill in speaking: no honor had been left to him and his brother; everything had been taken away by the crime of their brother and their father's credulity. He lamented most bitterly that death was being inflicted on him, which his father sought so far as to add a charge and join a crime to it. With these words he drove all to tears, and brought the outcome of the trial to this: that the accusation was not proved to Caesar, and the father embraced reconciliation. This was very pleasing and most excellent to the Roman emperor: not only to have given a kingdom to a famous king but also to have given him back his children. So it was settled by a just examination that the reverence of a father's right should remain inviolate and the innocence of the sons safe: the children should obey their father, as was fitting; he should keep his natural affection toward his sons unoffended; yet he might leave the kingdom to whom he wished. Alexander returned from the city of Rome with his father, acquitted by the judgment rather than freed from suspicion. For Antipater did not allow Herod's mind to be free of hatred for his sons, since he himself was the material of the hatreds; yet he restrained his efforts in view of the reconciliation, so as not to betray the stage play of his feigned brotherhood or reveal his plots. When they came to Cilicia and, sailing, put in at Elaeusa, Archelaus received them with a rich banquet, giving thanks for the sake of Alexander, his son-in-law, that Caesar had thought him worthy of reconciliation as well as freed from danger. He himself had also asked his friends, by letters sent through his people, to support his son-in-law in his defense; and as they departed he gave thirty talents as a gift of hospitality and escorted the king as far as Zephyrium. On returning home the king at once summoned the people and addressed them in this way.

“A useful and fruitful reason, citizens of the Hebrews, took me recently to Rome: I went to Caesar so that Caesar might judge concerning my sons, so that I, who was angry, should not be the only one to hear the case; so that he who had given back the kingdom might pronounce on my successor. He added to his kindnesses that he restored to a father sons almost lost—a difficult thing—and gave back to brothers concord, which is above a kingdom. So I return richer than I set out. I have learned to be a better father, because my sons have learned to be better children, by Caesar's kindness. For he decided that the succession of my sons should depend on my decision, so that the privilege of succession would not breed pride: I myself should give myself a successor whom I chose, namely the one who had deserved it, the one who honored his father more. I shall imitate Caesar: for by acquitting my younger sons he made them equal to my elder son. So today I appoint my three children kings together: age supports the one, nobility the others; and let the number not trouble you—the greatness of the kingdom is enough even for more. God is first the arbiter of my decision; then you too must join in. Those whom Caesar has united and their father has appointed, attend with fitting honor, so that the honor be neither excessive nor too low: the one puffs up, the other embitters. Let each be given what the merits of his share warrant. For no one pleases the one he honors beyond measure as much as he hurts the one to whom he denies what is due; and both are offended where there is the flattery of preference. I am certainly father to all. The honor of sons is without doubt the father's glory. Yet if anyone courts my children beyond measure, he is guilty before me even on behalf of my children, for whom he is the cause of a fall; for excessive courting is the fuel of daring. Do I envy my children? Far from it; but I prefer them to have less power with favor than very much with sedition. For what comes from pride or plunder quickly slips away; what comes from favor is held long. So it will be my care to give my children, as sponsors of concord, relatives and friends by whose encouragement they may put on the affection of mutual love. For since every evil word easily infects the mind of the hearer, constant conversations and long familiarity especially pour plague into minds, so that by contagion it quickly passes, as it were, into the characters of those who live together. Even if character is tranquil, still, as a pond, however gentle, can rise into billows when winds stir it, so a good nature is tossed by wicked advisers. So I think that each of you ought to place his chief hope in me; for what accrues to my children is not lost to me. Each of the tribunes or soldiers ought to revere more the father of the commanders. It is I, I who will repay a reward to all, even for what you render to my sons. If I notice right efforts, I will reward them with deeds; ill will shall bring its own price, so that it will fall from favor even with the one it thought it should flatter. And you, good sons, consider first the bond of nature, by whose grace it binds even beasts and forces even wild animals into the love of kinship: mutual love remains among untamed beasts, and animals ransom their own by their own dangers. Revere also Caesar, who has made you friends instead of enemies. Third, revere me, who prefer to ask when I could command. Remain brothers; do not burn away what you were born. I give you the robe and imperial style; but more precious is what I urge, the unbroken seal of your love. If devotion remains, a kingdom delights; if favor is lacking, rule is cheap and often harmful. So while I test you, you will have meanwhile not the kingdom but the honor of the kingdom. If you love your father, the right will follow. Prove, however, your love for me: you will enjoy as princes all the things in which a kingdom usually delights. The burdens of rule and the weight of affairs will remain with me alone, even if I do not wish it. And therefore it profits you to want what I want, because what is yours I both want and consider mine.” With these words he kissed his sons, to bind them to one another with one kiss of love. When this was done, he dismissed the assembly.

Most went away glad, pleased by the concord of the brothers; but among the brothers dissension returned, and the more serious because their rank was higher, so that it was envied more and they had greater power to harm. Mariamne's sons resented being made equal to the son of a private woman who knew nothing of royal descent. Antipater, on the other hand, scorned having the hope of the kingdom shared with his brothers, and envied them, for whom, he thought, a place after him was hardly to be reserved, let alone the first. But he covered and veiled himself, putting forward favor as a screen for hatred, while they in every conversation offered their opinions openly, even unasked. Their tongues were readier and lavish with secrets; whatever was said in Alexander's company was at once with Antipater, and many things they had not said were invented. The go-between added most things with interest. The architect of all the attacks on the brothers was Antipater, whose life was nothing but a council chamber of tricks, a stage of wickedness, a plot of crimes, a service of outrages. He put up judges, suborned witnesses, feigned a defense, carrying his brother's part about as if in a theater, so as to shake off the lighter charges and give way on the heavier, the better to deceive his father and stir him more violently against his brothers. Above all he skillfully sharpened the odium of a murder prepared against the father in order to seize the kingdom, because to kings the fear of danger is more suspect. But so that the charges should not seem less likely to the king without anyone to rebut them, he first tried to refute them himself, then wished to seem bound by the plain evidence of the facts, so that, the case having been argued on both sides as if nothing further were lacking to the judgment, the father would be roused against his sons as if they were convicted. For nothing gave greater credence to the charges than that Antipater was thought to be his brothers' defender. By this fraud he won the favor of many and bent his father's mind toward himself. Whatever was taken away daily from the brothers was poured from the father's affection into him. He drew away the king's friends and relatives, and especially the king's brother Pheroras and his sister Salome he had estranged from their nephews, so that they not only did not defend them but even attacked and hated them. A further material of hatred was Alexander's wife Glaphyra, who, insolent enough as women are in present good fortune, had begun to exalt herself with haughty disdain, because she surpassed all in the brilliance of her descent. So she set herself above all who were in the royal palace as if their mistress, used to boasting of her father and grandfather, kings, and especially of Darius son of Hystaspes as the summit of her mother's line, and to insult with lowness of birth Salome, the king's sister, or Doris, his wife—which was a grief to them and brought hatred on her. She likewise provoked the other women, who had been joined to the king for their beauty rather than for nobility of birth. For Herod took pleasure in very many women beyond royal custom, by the usage of the Jews too, as by a kind of license of error—men who take the figures of their forefathers as a cover for their own vices. So Alexander was burdened by his wife's insolence; and Aristobulus too attacked his own wife with the same speeches as Glaphyra: she was of low rank, not to be compared with royal offspring, unequal to Glaphyra, and a disgrace to him, because his brother enjoyed a marriage of royal birth while he had degenerated by living with a wife of private rank—madman, troubling his own kin with reproach. Stung by these insults, Aristobulus's wife carried everything to her mother with tears; and Salome, having learned it through her daughter, reported it to King Herod. He, thinking it more expedient to warn his sons than to destroy them, summoned them and partly terrified them with a commander's sternness, partly urged them with a father's affection to love their brother and not to quarrel like enemies, granting pardon for the past and warning of correction in the future. But they lamented that they were being attacked by many fabricated accusations, and at once begged and promised to give proof of their own defense in deeds for the future; only let their father wait for the facts and not believe what he heard rashly; for wicked informers would not be lacking as long as a credulous listener was available. With these and similar words they softened their father; but although at that time they drove off the threatening fear, they heaped up sorrow, because they saw themselves pressed by Pheroras and Salome: one their uncle, the other their father's sister, who ought to have been their defense, were plotting against them. And grave fear was added, because these two had very great influence with their father. For on receiving the diadem Herod had shared almost all the power of the kingdom with his brother and had conferred no small wealth on both, and especially on Pheroras. Indeed he received an annual revenue of a hundred talents twice over, besides the region situated beyond the Euphrates, which multiplied his income. He had also been made tetrarch by Caesar at Herod's request, and had been given the bond of kinship with the royal wife, since he had taken as his wife the sister of the queen. After her death the king's elder daughter had been betrothed to him, and he would have succeeded to the favor of a son-in-law had he not, captivated by love of a slave girl, declined union with the royal maiden. Provoked by this insult, Herod gave the girl to his brother's son, who later died in the Parthian war. Yet Pheroras was accused before him of having sought his brother's life by poison. Not even while his wife was alive had he been free of this suspicion. After examining many, first, and at last his friends, he found him innocent of the crime he was charged with and willingly acquitted him; he even pardoned his plan of flight, since the confessions of his servants revealed the way in which, if the slave girl he loved were taken from him, he had arranged to flee to the Parthians. Alexander had breathed a little while Pheroras was being accused and attacked; and Pheroras himself attacked Salome for having promised marriage to Syllaeus, procurator of Obodas, king of Arabia, and Herod's bitterest enemy. But when the charge was dropped on both sides, the storm of the house fell on Alexander and involved him in grave danger. For Antipater, a savage plague and the tempest of the whole palace, was raging, and in every way, even in meetings of relatives, he so weighed down his brother that, the sober state of his mind disturbed, the father protested in loud cries that Alexander was standing over him with a sword. A drama of this kind had come into the open: Alexander had enticed with rich gifts to his favor and to partnership in a base outrage three eunuchs, one of whom used to serve the king's cups, another to bring in the dishes of his dinner, the third to watch the king's bed and never leave it when Herod had laid himself on his couch. When this was betrayed, the eunuchs, driven by tortures, disclosed the indecent sports of lust, unable to hide even the amorous promises, and revealed by what words they had been solicited and at what price of debauchery—so that a parricide wrapped in disgrace was believed: that he had the charm of youth, the beauty of form, the strength of age, against Herod, feeble and already weighed down by old age, who dyed his hair so as not to betray his years; that when he wished, he would transfer the right of ruling to himself; and he promised huge rewards; and therefore they ought to place their hope in the young man, not in a decrepit old man whose end nature itself was hastening. These things moved Herod heavily, but above all the fact that he had learned from the eunuchs' information that a body of soldiers, the commanders of the army, and centurions were conspiring with Alexander. In the end he was so harried that he thought no kind of cruelty should be omitted; he trusted no one and held everyone suspect. Punishments came faster than interrogations about the crimes, and the end of the accused forestalled the trial. Those whom any suspicion touched were dragged everywhere to execution. Slanders seethed: many, wishing to please the king, informed against the accused; but at once those who had informed against others were themselves informed against and were led to the place of punishment with the accused. So savage had Herod become toward all that whoever of them survived was suspect. The king did not think himself secure unless the human race failed—implacable toward the accused, distrustful of his friends, haughty toward his intimates, merciless to the defendants, fearful of everything, so that he often changed his residence and passed nights without sleep. Exasperated by everything, he suddenly had Alexander bound in chains and surrounded by guards, and called his friends to examinations. Those who denied died under torture; again, those who were silent, because they confessed nothing that agreed with his suspicions, were tortured to the point of death. Yet some, overcome by the force of the torments and the bitterness of the punishments, asserted that the young men had planned to kill their father while he was intent on hunting and to make for the city of Rome without delay, so as to escape punishment by flight. Although this was supported by no proof, the father drew it into a comfort for his fierce zeal, wishing to have just grounds for his son's chains. Alexander, considering his father's ears closed to every defense of himself, and that there was no way the matter could be brought to a point where he could rely on his innocence, attacked as he was by such great masses of slander, thought he should meet the most wicked informers by a like art, so as to trap the frauds and contrivers of slander by tricks and call to account for slander those by whose slanders he believed himself pressed. So he wrote four books in which he confessed a scheme of crime by which he had sought his father's life, and named as accomplices in such plots many of those by whom he himself was being attacked; and in the same books he inscribed especially Pheroras and Salome: that she too, in the dead of night, having broken into the young man's bedroom where he lived, had enticed him against his will and forced him, though he resisted, to commit incest. He sent the books to the king as if they were evidence of his own crimes, in which he had involved all the most powerful of the king's companions and friends. At that time Archelaus came hastily into Judea, to bring what help and aid he could to his son-in-law and daughter. But foreseeing that access was blocked to him with a most hostile father, he checked Herod's agitation by an art of legitimate defense. For as soon as he entered the royal palace, when he could already be heard and seen by Herod, he began to shout in a loud voice as if raging in mind: “Is that poisoner, my son-in-law, still alive and enjoying this light? Where is he, I ask? Where shall I find that parricidal head, to tear it out with my own hands? He ought to perish by parricide who wished to commit parricide. What will he do to his father-in-law who did not spare his father? Who will point him out? I shall first disembowel the criminal, then add my daughter to her good husband: even if she was not privy to the crime, she is not free from contagion, who enjoyed marriage to a parricide. I do not acknowledge my daughter, who did not detect her husband's arts and did not show herself such a daughter-in-law to her father-in-law as to return a submissive son to his father. I joined her not to a service of crime but to the partnership of marriage, to provide a co-heir of grace, not a helper of crime. I am astonished at you, Herod, if that Alexander, plotter against his father, is still alive. I thought he had already paid the just penalty, a man who should not even have been brought to trial. For why should such a self-confessed criminal or such a parricide be kept any longer? But perhaps this too was of divine providence, that he should be condemned by the judgment of both his parents, he who in harming you injured the devotion of both. I shall not deny that I am the avenger, I who was preparing to be the herald of a vengeance already exacted; but neither do I except my daughter, whom I myself betrothed in an ill-omened marriage, following you as guarantor: for I gave her not to the husband's character but to your good faith. Let her give account for having concealed what she pledged and having loved her husband. Now judgment on both lies with us: if you are a firm executor of so great a grief, gird yourself, father, set aside devotion—not a duty to be wished on fathers, but not one to be shirked. If devotion softens you and nature bends you, let us exchange roles, so that I in your son and you in my child may be the executors of each other's service.” Roaring out a speech of this kind, he won Herod over, and little by little softened his purpose from his fury of mind, so that Herod believed him a fellow sufferer of one mind with him, and gave him to read the books Alexander had composed. Archelaus, noting each point, when he understood that they had been heaped up from grief rather than supported by truth, began with deep design to lessen little by little the odium of the attempted parricide and to transfer the causes of the charges to those who had been named, and especially to Pheroras. So when he saw that the king was not averse to his view, he said: “We must consider whether perhaps the young man has been attacked by the plots of so many wicked men in your house, rather than you by the young man. For what reason had he to seek your life, to whom you had granted the honor of kingship and were reserving the right to reign and the hope of succession? Why would he seek what he had? Or how would he be ungrateful for such great gifts? And what else would he achieve by your death but to court his own danger? What he could not fear while you lived he would fear when you were dead—from those very men, at least, at whose hands, even under his father's protection, he dreaded the destruction of his own safety. That age lies open to deceit, is easily deceived, and is caught by the plots of frauds; even old age hardly resists tricks, and often even the prudence of old men is entangled in the crafty snares of deceivers. So if riper experience has often been overthrown, what wonder if a less mature age could not help itself when pressed by crowds of plotters? It is they, then, who are the disturbers of the royal house, the inciters of the young men, the sowers of discord, who have brought the young man to despair of his safety, so that he has indulged his anger and aimed at revenge rather than acquittal, and has also given something to his agitation.” By these words Herod began to be bent little by little and to soften his indignation toward Alexander, but to be moved more violently against Pheroras, because in those four books he himself was set out as the agent of all the crimes and the architect of the whole drama. Pheroras, seeing that the king had inclined his mind to Archelaus and that the favor of intimate friendship weighed with him more than with the others, betook himself to him, begging him to make the king's mind well disposed to him again. But Archelaus said that, entangled as he was in the many bonds of crimes by which he was clearly convicted of having prepared plots against the king and of having attacked the young man, he had no hope of pardon, unless, laying aside the craft of denial, he confessed the charges made against him to his brother, who loved him, and did not hesitate to ask indulgence of him; he himself would not fail such an action with whatever efforts he could. So, changing his clothes, in tears and with a pitiable appearance, Pheroras clung to his brother's feet, begged pardon, confessed his wickedness, did not deny any of the charges, but acknowledged that madness had been the cause of so great a fall, because an excessive frenzy had boiled up in him from love of the woman he loved. So, with Pheroras set up as accuser and witness of his own crimes—as though bought for this, because the argument fell to his own use—Archelaus entreated Herod to soften his anger in consideration of nature and to pardon his brother, setting the right of nature above vengeance. It was no wonder, he said, if in the greatest kingdoms, as in great bodies, some limbs are often inflamed which are not to be cut off but treated with gentler medicines. He too had suffered much heavier plots from his brother, but had remitted to kinship what was owed to grief. So, the more he lightened the punishment of the ungrateful man, the more he aggravated the case. When he had woven in these and other things of this kind, he softened Herod so that he pardoned his brother; but Archelaus himself remained as if inexorable toward his son-in-law. In the end he threatened that he would take his daughter away from him, and raged with such movements of indignation that Herod himself thought his son's crime against him sufficiently expiated, and asked the avenger of his own injuries to intercede for his son with his father-in-law, so that he might renew the marriage afresh. Archelaus persisted: Herod might join his daughter-in-law to anyone he wished except Alexander, for whose sake the wife was being disgraced. By this art he urged Herod far more, so that Herod thought another son would be restored to him if his son's marriage were not dissolved: for he loved his wife dearly, by whom he had also had children, sweet to their grandfather, dear to their parents; this would be the gift of a son restored to him, because a good wife in no small degree restrains her husband's errors or makes up by her services for the odium of his faults. If she were torn from him, there would be no remedy for the man to keep him from rushing headlong into every wickedness; for the presumptions of crime usually become milder when they are called back by domestic affections. At last, hardly bent, Archelaus was reconciled to his son-in-law and reconciled the father to him. By this plan he snatched his son-in-law from death, so that he received his acquittal as a reward while pretending to condemn him rather than intercede. Had he thought he should intercede for him, he would undoubtedly have obtained nothing. He added that Alexander ought to go to Rome cleared of what his father had suspected in him, since he himself had written everything to Caesar. This too, I think, was equally contrived, so that in this way Alexander, having cleared himself, would be commended to Caesar, and the plots prepared by Antipater for his brothers would be laid bare.

By this plan the faction was dissolved and the mood turned to gladness; a banquet was held as a sign of the reconciliation achieved, to whose author Archelaus were given seventy talents and a golden chair set with gems; chosen eunuchs too were bestowed with royal magnificence, and a concubine (whose name was Pannychis) was given as a gift and accepted. Likewise the relatives, at the king's prompting, rewarded Archelaus with most splendid gifts, and none of his household was without a present; and Herod bestowed very much on all of them according to each one's merits. He also escorted him with his nobles, as he returned to his kingdom, as far as the most splendid city of Syria, Antioch by name. Alexander would have escaped, had not a man far more practiced than Archelaus's arts plunged into Judea: a Laconian by race, Eurycles by name, exceedingly greedy for wealth, yet a despiser of it for business's sake whenever the hope of gaining more shone out. In the end, not content with Laconian resources, he had set his mind on royal outpourings; and being a craftsman at hunting, he approached Herod with rich gifts of old and prepared the way for the most ample recompense; and having obtained far more than he had offered, he was still not satisfied unless he could buy the king's favor with bloody and impious factions. So by flattering the king in a manner familiar to the Greeks and by praising all his deeds—not only those that did not deserve praise but even those wrapped in vices—he soon reached his intimate friendship, so that he was chosen among the first confidants of his secrets, helped too by the privilege of his country, because the Jews regard the Spartans, joined to them as a kindred race, as brothers. When he learned the faults of the royal house—the father's suspicious mind and the brothers' hatred for one another—by new arts he pretended to be dear to all and was held faithful by each; but he shaped his efforts to the king's character or the worth of the gifts, so as to be more attached to Antipater and to trap Alexander by tricks and plots, provoking both under a show of intimacy: telling the one that by the privilege of age the kingdom was owed to him; the other, that endowed with the nobility of his mother's line he was by right superior, and that there was no equal partnership for him with the pledge of a most vile corruption. Caught by this, Alexander, as being younger, delighting in what was said to him and not weighing what in turn was being composed about him with Antipater, poured himself out to Antipater's hireling and his own betrayer, and opened his mind with a slippery temper and incautious openness, complaining that his father was the author of his evils, who had snatched away his mother and stained the kingdom, which was owed to him from his grandfather and the insignia of an ancient line, and which his father wished to divert; that the legitimate heirs were cheated of the right of succession and a bastard, the price of debauchery, preferred; but the judgments of God would not long be quiet, so that he who had killed an innocent wife would soon be cheated himself of the rule he had gained through his wife. These things the Laconian carried without delay to Antipater—having also trapped Aristobulus so that he was caught in the snares of the same complaint—and, heaped up for a price, he slipped them to the king, saying that he could not keep silent about so monstrous a crime, and that in return for the gift of hospitality he was presenting him with the favor of life, which his sons were proceeding to snatch away; had he not called them back by pretending more faithful counsel, the father would long ago have been killed by Alexander's sword and the kingdom left empty for unworthy heirs. Nor did Alexander shrink from the atrocity of parricide, he said, for he counted it as the greatest crime that he still held unavenged the death of his grandfather and mother. He was being met and pressed, he said, by the complaints of the slain to avenge so atrocious an outrage; the funeral offerings of the slain were owed to him and must be exacted, and their succession must not be defiled by the kingdom passing to one who had killed their forebears; he would renew the judgment of Caesar, not with the same reverence as before, but so that Caesar himself would learn all the king's secrets, the wealth sought by blood, the province shaken; he would bring back his grandfather from the dead and expose his mother's most bitter death, by which a stranger had been substituted as successor in the royal kingdom. Eurycles had roused the king; yet Antipater, thinking little of one man's suggestion, suborned other accusers against his brothers too, to say that conversation had been entered into with Jucundus and Tyrannus, formerly commanders of the cavalry, and plots prepared against the king out of resentment at their dismissal; danger was at his throat unless he took care in time. Herod did not delay; he at once had them seized and examined severely, but they were found to have confessed none of the things they were charged with. And because such grave things were being invented with impunity before a man who professed himself an avenger of crimes and careless of slanders, there was no lack of men to contrive plots of this kind, which they believed would be more welcome to the father. For a letter was produced, as if given by Alexander and Aristobulus to the commander of a fortress, asking him, once the king was killed, to give them the means of refuge until they could fortify themselves by arms against their pursuers and prepare a defense by other aids. The commander of the fortress was tortured and confessed nothing. Nevertheless, though no evidence of the alleged crime existed, Alexander and Aristobulus were put into custody as guilty. Eurycles, given fifty talents, was regarded as the author of the king's safety and life. It is right not to pass over in silence the man, the most faithful of Alexander's friends, who had come over to Judea at the time of Eurycles, whom the king thought he should question as privy to Alexander's attempts, whether what the Spartan had reported about the young men agreed. But he gave assurance under oath that he had learned nothing of the kind about them; yet it did the young men no good. Herod put off the questioning of him, lest he lessen the odium of the accusation and make void Eurycles's fraud, if under severer questioning the man should deny. So he was shut out by Herod as unworthy of belief. For the good father gladly heard his sons accused and did not allow them to be defended; he was delighted when they were attacked and offended if they were cleared. In the end the Spartan, enriched with royal rewards, paid the price of his slanders when he reached Achaia. Salome, when she could not clear herself of having contracted marriage with Syllaeus the Arab, won pardon for her offense when she betrayed to her son-in-law a secret—he had warned her to look to herself so as to escape her brother's anger, since she was being summoned as suspected of reporting the king's counsels to the Arab in hope of the future union—and she turned the whole storm of royal savagery onto the young men, by which, sunk in a last and inescapable shipwreck, they paid the penalty. So they are bound, and—what was harder for them than chains—the brothers are separated from each other; and Volumnius, the military tribune, and Olympus, one of the king's friends, are sent to accuse them before Caesar. Caesar, though offended that a father should demand the punishment of his sons, still did not think he should deny a father power, and gave him license over his own children, but added advice: saying that he would act better if a council were gathered of the king's relatives and of those who governed the provinces, and the inquiry proceeded by common judgment, whether any plots had been prepared against the father by his sons; if they were convicted of attempted parricide, they should be put to death; but if they were charged with flight or a lighter fault, the punishment should be more moderate. Herod, granted power to commit parricide but warned by the condition of a trial also to be moderate, hurried at once to the city of Berytus, which Caesar had prescribed for holding the trial. The governors of the provinces assembled according to the letters sent them by the Roman emperor Caesar. Saturninus and the legates took their seats, among them the procurator Volumnius; then the king's relatives and friends, Salome too and Pheroras, and the leading men of Syria. Archelaus alone, from Cappadocia, was left out, being suspected of partiality toward his son-in-law, while the accusers of the young men and their plotters attended the trial. But what kind of trial was it where the accused were not allowed to be present and were accused in their absence? For Herod saw that if they were merely seen, they would at once be acquitted, men being by nature inclined to pity—especially where there was the privilege of natural favor; and then, if any opportunity of defense were allowed Alexander, he would easily refute the charges. So, having had them confined in a village of the Sidonians, the accusation was directed as if against men present. The father charged that plots had been prepared against him; no proof was offered, no evidence of the attempts; the accuser held firm, since no one refuted him. Against men abandoned on every side he heaped up odium—kinds of insults and injuries which those sitting there judged heavier than death. But no one discussed, no one dared to examine what was charged by a father and commanded by a king. The appearance of a father's devotion prejudged the case, the right of power terrified; he asked their opinions secure of victory, not knowing that in such a trial the one who won would be more wretched than those who were so bitterly condemned. Saturninus condemned the young men, because nothing else was allowed; but he moderated his sentence, saying they should beware lest, when two of three brothers were killed, the death of the two be ascribed to the third. He spoke timidly indeed, but he spoke the cause, that the other was the author of his brothers' danger. A few out of many followed him. But Volumnius muttered a deadly verdict, and after him all, as the king wished, weighing the sentence of death on such authority, declared it—with different feelings, indeed, but with equal result—some because flattery had wrung it from them, others because hatred had poured it in, either to court the king's favor, or so that the cruelty of the parricide might be punished with a heavier penalty, he who in his victory would carry off so bitter a triumph over himself. Yet no one shuddered at it as at a deed, nor pronounced it as one moved. For it was the appearance of a stage play, not the discipline of a trial, to condemn the absent, to condemn without witness, without informer, by the sole privilege of nature, which is usually turned to safety rather than to danger. All Syria and all Judea were stunned, and with astonished minds awaited the end of so great a tragedy. Although Herod's cruelty was known, no one could believe that he would persist to the point of parricide. But in him the savage force of his spirit was held back neither by sea nor by land. So, as if in the manner of men celebrating a triumph, dragging his sons from place to place, he went to the famous city of Tyre, from there crossed to Caesarea, carrying about by ship the wretched spectacle of parricide until some color could be found for the most bitter death of his sons. The whole army was moved, but suppressed its indignation from fear. There was in the royal army a veteran soldier named Tiro, who had a son close to Alexander; a most indulgent father, and therefore dear to his child, since there is a popular grace in devotion, especially an allurement of love toward one's own. Toward the young sons of the king too he was more warmly inclined, because his son was loved by them. Conceiving indignation beyond measure and disturbed in mind, he began to cry out that justice was being crushed, truth shut out, religion abolished, the rights of kinship and the grace of nature confounded, iniquities overflowing. At last, going right up to the king's face, he urged that he was a wretched man who thought the most wicked should be believed against his own sons, Pheroras and Salome, the king's counselors. What good faith could be expected from those who knew that they had very often been condemned to death by the king? Or what else were they doing but contriving vengeance, so that, deprived of fit successors, he would be inclined to the one who was weaker than the rest? He would easily be removed, since the royal army itself would pursue with hatred the man to whom the death of two brothers was owing. There was no one who was not touched by pity for their innocent age; and many of the commanders no longer suppressed their indignation but spread it abroad. When he had named them, he finished speaking. They were seized at once along with Tiro; and Trypho, one of the servants of the royal palace, who had the art and practice of shaving, suddenly, by some vanity of mind, informed against himself, asserting that a plot had been laid by Tiro, and that he had been persuaded, when he shaved Herod's beard as usual, to press the razor into his throat and so accomplish his death; and that this would be of the greatest profit to him, because they promised it from Alexander's gifts. Tiro is put on trial with his son; then the examination proceeds for both together. When they denied, and Trypho brought forward nothing more, since there was no clear proof of the facts, no argument, no evidence of documents, Tiro was ordered to be tortured with more violent torments. Then his son, pitying his father's tortures, promised to disclose everything if his father's life were granted him; and when the king had promised pardon, he suggested that his father, urged on by Alexander, had prepared the king's death. Many thought this was made up for the moment, so that Tiro might be spared by such an informing on the part of his child; others said it was declared as true. But Herod judged the doubtful as certain, as if afraid that the opportunity for parricide might slip away. So, summoning the people and gathering the commanders, he brought forth with the gravest emotion his complaint about the plots that had been detected, and roused the people to their deaths; and there Tiro with his son and the barber were killed with stones and clubs.

Alexander and Aristobulus, sent to the city of Sebaste, not far from the city of Caesarea, were strangled at their father's command. This was the end of Mariamne's sons. Antipater did not rejoice long at their death, though, with them removed, he no doubt flattered himself with the succession; but soon no light hatred of the whole nation blazed up against him, because it was plain to all that the brothers had fallen through his faction. No small fear also followed as he considered how numerous the offspring of the slain was growing day by day: for Alexander had left two sons born to him of Glaphyra, Tigranes and Alexander; and to Aristobulus, by Berenice, Salome's daughter, there survived Herod, Agrippa, and Aristobulus; and the daughters Herodias and Mariamne, whom their sex would not prevent from being stirred by desire for the kingdom. Terrified by this, Antipater placed his hope in fraud and cunning, and tried to pledge each one more and more to himself with gifts and presents, and even to entice with money Caesar's friends and household to favor him. But on the other side even the things at home sat against him. For the king, with the passage of time, was gradually softening toward his grandsons, the children of Alexander and Aristobulus, and showed repentance for what he had done, since he pitied those whose parents he had killed. In the end, gathering his friends and relatives one day, his face bathed in tears, he said to them: “I see that my age is advancing, and I cannot look without tears on these little ones, the offspring of unhappy fathers, to whom I am the author of grief, lest I leave them in a worse condition than the parents I took from them. But a certain misfortune snatched those from me; these nature and pity commend to me more and more—the one because they are my grandsons, the other because they are bereft of parents. The sons went wrong against their father; what have the grandsons done to their grandfather? I have been unhappy enough as a father; I ought to be a more careful grandfather. I shall try to provide for my grandsons after me—would that I had also provided for myself in my sons! But against them the fraudulence of a common foe and enemies crept in. We must also take care that the dangers of their fathers do not involve these, and that by one wound I do not lose my sons and destroy my grandsons together. Let us provide defenders for those from whom we have taken them. So I shall betroth your daughter, my Pheroras, to the elder of Alexander's sons, and I shall make you a father to him; and to your son, Antipater, the daughter of Aristobulus, so that in this way you become a father to the orphan girl. Her sister my Herod shall receive, the son I had by Mariamne, daughter of Hyrcanus. This,” he said, “is my decision: that the successions of my posterity be joined to one another by marriage bonds, so that no one may be suspect to another, and I myself may see my grandsons with calmer eyes than I saw their parents.” With these words he joined the right hands of those named and, kissing each, wept. Antipater took this so hard, while the others rejoiced, that he at once betrayed his grief even in his face, gripped by no small anxiety, because he saw that the support of King Archelaus and of Pheroras, who held a tetrarchy, was available to Alexander's sons and was stronger than the rest. He noticed that hatred of himself was growing and pity favored the grandsons. Nor could he receive Aristobulus's daughter into his house, lest he be offended by the constant sight of her as evidence of his crime. He did not dare approach his father, lest he stir up a man easily moved to every suspicion if he thought the arranged marriage contracts should be dissolved. Yet he subtly ventured to beg his father to provide for him, so that he would not be exposed, powerless with the bare name of kingship, against the resources of two powerful men, a king and a tetrarch; let him favor rather the honor of the one whom he judged fit to ally with his son, so that the appearance of kingship would not come to him and the power to them. Nor did he hold only the sons of Alexander and Aristobulus suspect; he thought all stood in his way—whoever, from Herod's various wives, seemed even silently to have a claim to succeed to the kingdom, and their number was large. For nine women enjoyed royal marriage, of whom only two were without children; the others had offspring. Antipater exalted Doris as his mother, Herod Mariamne; Antipas and Archelaus were sons of Malthace the Samaritan, as was a daughter Olympias, who was joined in marriage to Joseph. Cleopatra of Jerusalem had borne Herod and Philip to Herod; Pallas, Phasael. There were also other daughters of the king, Roxane and Salome, of whom Phaedra was mother to one and Elpis to the other. There also survived the full sisters of Alexander and Aristobulus, whom Mariamne had borne to Herod, as we mentioned above. Fearing Herod's numerous progeny, Antipater—though with difficulty, and with the king much moved at his first attempts, because he seemed to begrudge his grandsons, bereft of their father's help, the marriages arranged for them—at last achieved this much: that Aristobulus's daughter was joined to himself, and his son to the daughter of Pheroras; so much could flattery do that it even dissolved arranged marriages. Salome, on the other hand, when she wished to marry Syllaeus, could not obtain it from her brother even with the support of Livia, Caesar's wife, but against her will was married to Alexas, one of the king's friends. So, with the king's arrangements overturned, Antipater, as if he had provided for himself as he wished, exulted in spirit and surpassed everyone in cunning. Yet he could in no way suppress hatred, but inflamed it, since he aimed to build a defense for himself by terror. He had joined to himself as a fellow worker in his factions Pheroras, his father's brother, whom Herod not long after, when he refused, tried to separate from his own wife; Pheroras was held the more hostile because of the injuries this woman had done to Doris's sons' mother—Herod's wife—and Herod expelled him from the house. Pheroras, embracing the injury, withdrew to his own territories, over which he presided as tetrarch, with the firm intention of never returning to Herod while he lived. Indeed, not even when he learned that Herod was afflicted with a serious illness and was often begging him to come, because he thought certain things should be entrusted to him as one about to die, did he think he should visit him. Though stung by this injury, when the king, contrary to hope, had shaken off his illness, he nevertheless came to him with brotherly affection when he learned that he was ill, sympathized with him earnestly, brought him to Jerusalem when he died, and saw to his funeral with great weeping and a crowded procession. Yet by these signs of earnest love he did not shut out the opinion he had formed that his brother had sought his life by poison. So cruel was he even toward his own; nor was it hard to believe that one who had killed his sons could have killed his brother.

So this man, one of the slayers of Alexander and Aristobulus, found the end of his wickedness; and the punishment, beginning from him, passed on to Antipater, the author of the crime. For Herod, spurred on by the complaints of freedmen who asserted that their patron had been killed by poison, while he inquired more carefully, learned that the cup that was thought to be a love potion—Pheroras had received it from his wife, made from Arabian juices—had been poison, handed over through the efforts of Syllaeus and at once turned into a plague; and he proceeded to the interrogation of many. Hence one of the slave girls cried out under torture that God almighty should transfer all the torments onto Antipater's mother, the arbiter of all the crimes: through her, she said, the secret meetings of Antipater and Pheroras had been held, and drinking bouts day and night to the point of drunkenness, so that, when they withdrew from the king's banquet, they would drink whole nights through. This was justly suspected as neither idle nor free of conspiratorial attempts, especially as the slaves and servants were sent away; and to kings a great bond of connection and evidence of conspiracy is the long lingering in solitude, in secret and in the silence of the night. There it was agreed that Antipater should go to Rome and Pheroras to Petra; they were reported to have often discussed among themselves that after Alexander and Aristobulus, Herod would turn to their own deaths; they were wretched, they had said, to have thought that Herod hated parricidal thoughts in those sons, he who persecuted the heirs of the kingdom; those removed had not been rivals for power but partners in misery; the danger and hatred of all had passed onto themselves; he would not spare even the women, he who had not spared his beloved Mariamne and her sons. There was no other remedy for them but to withdraw somewhere far off, to escape by flight the fury of so great a beast. To this were added Antipater's frequent complaints before his mother, lamenting that he was burning with envy of the royal succession, since the savagery of the reign weighed especially on him, so that he could no longer bear it, given over to excessive services and pressed by extreme dangers. Not only had the right to reign perished for him, but the course of his life too had been rolled up in the passage of time. His age was riper, he had already gone gray; his father, on the other hand, was growing young again; it was vain to hope for the inheritance of one who might perhaps be kept so long as to survive his heir. And what profit would the succession be to a long-lived heir, against whom the numerous offspring of Alexander and Aristobulus would sprout again like a hydra, with heads reborn where they had been cut off? By his father's will the common right had already been taken away: having been given the hope of reigning, of which he would be a temporary substitute, he could not maintain any of his own sons in his rule, but must pour the kingdom back to Herod, Mariamne's son. So the hope of the kingdom had been given him not for enjoyment but for danger, that he might be suspect to his predecessor and burdensome to his successor. Finally, the king himself, vigorous in long old age and intent on killing his own people, would be the executor of his own will, so that no one would survive who could succeed; he was carried away by heavy hatred against his sons, and no less against his brother, who had given him a hundred talents—he must not even converse with his uncle. And when Pheroras answered, “In what have we harmed him? Am I too a successor?”, Antipater had replied that he had several causes for offense. Would that, losing everything, one might make one's peace with him! He was a wild beast that could not be sated even by deaths and could not bear any love to remain among his relatives. Would that, losing everything, we might escape him, naked, only alive—but that was impossible. Therefore their conversations were secret for the time; but the time would come when they must use manly vigor of mind, liveliness of counsel, and also the service of an avenging right hand. These things were answered by the slaves under torture, and Herod believed the slave, especially because he had spoken of the hundred talents to Antipater alone, and no one had been present to report his words. So, inflamed with indignation, he dragged many to punishment, even innocent ones, so that none of the guilty might be left. Antipater the Samaritan was brought to the tortures, because he was Antipater's steward, and was tormented in various ways. The examination revealed that poison had been sent from Egypt through a certain companion of Antiphilus, and given by him to Theudion, Antipater's friend, and handed on by him to Pheroras, to whom the king's son Antipater had entrusted its execution, so that his father Herod would be killed while he himself was staying in the city of Rome, at a time when there would be no suspicion of a murder prepared by the absent man. But since Pheroras had at the time entrusted the poison he had received to his own wife, the odium of the poison fell in turn on Pheroras's wife. The king at once ordered Pheroras's wife to bring the poison. The woman went out as if to bring what was asked, and threw herself down from the roof of the buildings, to escape the weight of a double charge and to forestall by death the evidence of the matter and the bitterness of the inquiry. But because the deadly vengeance for the parricide was being hastened for Antipater, she did not fall on the top of her head, by which she would easily have been killed, but fell on another part of her body, so that death was delayed. Yet the woman was stunned and dazed, because she had fallen from a high place. Herod ordered her to be revived a little until she came to herself; he promised pardon if she openly disclosed the course of events: it was not for nothing that she had thrown herself down, he said, but, conscious of a great crime, she had sought a short cut to punishment; all her crimes would go unpunished if she confessed; but if she denied, torments would be heaped up and even burial would be refused her. When she had recovered herself a little, she said: “For whom shall I still keep the silence of secrets, now that Pheroras is dead? For I ought to have kept faith in silence for him, for whom I would not refuse tortures if they were needed. But he is now free from torments, and, if the correction of an error deserves pardon, free from guilt. Why then should I think of wrapping the truth in lies to please Antipater? Shall I spare him and not spare myself? A fine reward we owe the man who has led us all into these torments by his crimes! Hear, O king, with God as witness, who alone is the judge of truth for me—for I have resolved to deceive in nothing. Hear, I say; but first recall how you sat in tears by your brother in his danger, how you fulfilled all the dutiful offices of brotherhood toward Pheroras. Moved by them, as soon as you had left, he called me to him at once and said: ‘Woman, I have strayed not a little from my brother's affection and devotion, I who so hated one who loves me and wished to kill one so unable to bear grief in my dangers. He cannot bear the chance misfortune, while I was pressing an undeserved one on him. I was trapped, I confess, by Antipater's tricks, but I bear the price of his designs. Bring me quickly the poison you have that he left, and pour it out before my eyes, so that I may not take a parricidal spirit even to the dead. Let it count as correction to have repented of having prepared what is criminal. Quickly, woman, I say, so that I may at least forestall death, since I could not forestall guilt.’ Then I brought the poison and emptied it out in his sight; yet I kept a little of it for myself, fearing you, so that I might have a remedy if the poison prepared for this purpose were betrayed.” With these words she produced the box with what was left of the poison. The mother of Antiphilus and his brothers were put to the question; they confessed that Antiphilus had brought from Egypt a box full of poison, which he had received from a brother living at Alexandria under a teacher of medicine. Mariamne, the high priest's daughter, was also detected as privy to the plots being prepared against her husband, and this was made plain when her brothers confessed under torture. Hence the younger Herod paid the price of his mother's daring: his father, who had substituted him for Antipater in the succession to the kingdom, thought he should strike him from the will. And here indeed was no small error of the elder Herod, that when one man had been caught in an outrage, another was punished. Yet the punishment of the younger Herod was not unjust: for it seems to have been divinely foreseen that, though not yet for any deed of his own, he should nevertheless be removed from the kingdom for the price of his future wickedness. For who could have endured as king one who as tetrarch was so insolent that he could not be tolerated? There was added another kind of poisoning, which Bathyllus, Antipater's freedman, brought to Pheroras and his wife, made from the juices of serpents and the venom of asps, so that if the first had not been strong enough for Herod's death, they could use the second.

Letters were also found that had been composed against the brothers Archelaus and Philip. These were sons of the king who were being educated at Rome, whom Antipater attacked above all because he saw that they were endowed with no small wisdom and that the king was resting a father's affection on them. In fact he had summoned them by letter to return home sooner. So Antipater thought they stood in the way of his interests, and he applied his arts so that, by a pretended concern for the young men, all the efforts of his faction would be overshadowed. He composed letters in the names of powerful men placed at Rome whom he had drawn into his friendship; from others too he extorted by bribery that they write that the young men were pressing their father with hostile hatred and lamenting with excessive complaint the death of Alexander and Aristobulus. And he pressed such letters on his father by secret arts through the courtiers who served his crime, with the same cunning with which he had earlier feigned to be his brothers' intercessor, so that under the pretext of a devoted patronage he wove in the parricide of impiety. When all these things had been brought into the open by the examinations, and it was most clearly laid bare that the father's life had been sought by the poison and the death of the brothers by the letters, the council decided that punishment should be taken of the author, who had betrayed by later slander that he had persecuted his brothers not as parricides but as rivals for the lawful succession—not to defend his father, but so as not to have a partner in the kingdom. Meanwhile, though seven months passed between the proofs of his crimes and Antipater's return, no evidence of what had been done became known to Antipater, so great was the hatred of all around him. Uncertain of everything, therefore, he wrote from the city of Rome that he would soon arrive, and that he had been dismissed by Caesar with the highest honor. Concealing what he knew, Herod wrote back that he should hurry, secure in his father's affection; not only had nothing been lessened by his absence, but so much favor was added that out of regard for him his mother's offense was lessened. For Herod had again caught her at home consenting to her son's arts, had stripped her of her share and banished her from the advantages of royal liberality; to her he made a show in his letters of remitting his indignation, fearing that if Antipater learned of his mother's expulsion, he would rouse his suspicions to be on guard. So on his way he first learned at Tarentum of Pheroras's death, and there made great mourning, which some attributed to an affection of devotion, as though he grieved impatiently at his uncle's death. But he was groaning that the agent of his parricidal attempt had been taken from him; and not only had the preparation of the crime not gone forward, but he was terrified that he had given the poison, lest in some way it come to the king's knowledge and he publish the drama of the crime. So he crossed to the port of Caesarea, by no means free of heavier care and anxiety, since his mother also gave no small presumption of the condemnation of her offspring. But his friends urged him on—men who thought everything should be put off that served Antipater's desire to return home—and, relying on his ingenuity, by which he was used to easily bending even a father turned against him back to favor by his counsels, they urged him to present himself quickly to his father and to the kingdom destined for him, since no one would dare to speak against him while he was present; the opportunity of his absence alone had kindled the hope that the king's mind could be turned from him. And so he must forestall it in good time, lest by delaying he either offend a father who longed for him or exasperate one who suspected him, by betraying his distrust. So he believed those who urged what was agreeable rather than what was necessary. But when he entered the port and saw no one coming to meet him, and felt his presence avoided like a plague—the greatest solitude amid the greatest crowd of the place, since no one dared to meet him, some fearing, others hostile, for at that time hatreds too had received the authority not to hide—he began to reckon with his crimes and to be harried by the goads of conscience: no place of flight or help of escape was left him; he was surrounded and held captive as if in nets. He took all his confidence from impudence, so that, concealing everything, he presented himself unexpectedly to his father, rushed into his embrace, and put forward the offices of devotion. But Herod, pushing him away as he pressed in with outstretched hands, and turning his head aside so as not to be touched by the kiss of a parricide, cried out: “This too belongs to the madness of a parricide, that you seek the embrace of one to whom you know you are hateful—to fill your father with horror of you, and by the touch of a guilty body to wring out the sweetness of living. Do not touch, do not defile, the man you have attacked by crime. Clear yourself first if you can; wash away what has been detected. I will not avoid a trial, nor let a hearing be denied you, nor take the inquiry upon myself, nor leave you an opportunity for argument. Varus is here at the right time; prepare your defense before him. There is no room for delay; tomorrow, however well furnished with tricks and frauds you are, you will have the opportunity to clear yourself.” He, stunned by fear of such agitation, dared not and could not reply; but going outside he wavered in mind, because he had learned nothing at all of what had been done and disclosed to his father. But afterwards his mother and wife came to him and revealed everything. When he learned it, he began to collect himself and to prepare in mind how to meet the accusation and weaken the confession. On the next day all the king's relatives and Antipater's friends assembled; all were present at the examination. Those who had reported various things about Antipater were ordered to be brought in. Letters of Antipater's mother were also read, in which she had written to her son to let him know that the drama of their crimes had been betrayed to his father; he should by no means come unless some force were summoned from Caesar to surround him with its protection; he should not commit himself to a trial, attacked as he was by the confessions of so many, but fortify himself with arms. When this had been added to the rest, Antipater came in and, throwing himself at his father's feet, begged him not to hold him condemned in advance: he was confident, if a hearing were granted, that he would be free of the charge, if his father wished. His father ordered him to be silent and forestalled him with this speech: “That the wickedness of Antipater cannot seem pardonable to any just man is certain enough; but I think I am the more burdened in your eyes, Varus. For I fear you may hate me too, who begot parricidal sons whom even a father could not spare—though in this I am the more to be pitied, that I loved even such sons. But of those I say nothing, whom I myself exasperated, and whose just pleas against this man I rejected. For they had no cause of grief against me except that Antipater was preferred to them and had received the privilege of royal partnership, though he was not born of royal stock. Yet I thought that the elder was being taken on as guardian for the younger. But I brought in an enemy to envy the nobler ones, rouse the boys, trap the weak, betray the unwary. I do not deny that they fell; but they ought rather to have been excused than pressed. This Antipater took them from me; this man made them plotters against me. I grieved, I confess, that those to whom I had given the hope of the kingdom, for whom I had reserved the succession, should contrive wickedness against me; but they hated not their father but Antipater. So they perished, to their father's grief and Antipater's profit. Do you ask, Varus, who killed them? Learn whom their death profited. The house was empty for the stepmother's son; the palace, which had many successors, lay open for one to succeed. Nor was his bloody mind and impious spirit filled by the death of his brothers. When he had no more brothers to hate, he persecuted his father. I reflect that I prepared for this man the security of his inheritance; I seemed to him, impatient for my departure, to be living too long myself. I taught him what he wanted, when I took away his rivals for the succession: he could not bear my delay, nor did he wait for the kingdom except to gain it by parricide. He repaid me in kind for having picked him up when cast off and preferred him to the nobler. To which of them did I give as much as to him? To him I yielded power while still alive; by an open will I named him heir, which is usually dangerous for kings—that someone should know he will succeed. I granted him fifty talents in revenues; I gave him three hundred when he set out for Rome; I commended him to Caesar as if my only son. I kept nothing for myself for which I should fear a parricide; but this armed him the more for parricide, that he saw himself raised above me by my kindnesses. What so great a crime did his brothers commit, whom he drove to death? Or what evidence of this kind was found against them, such as is found against him? But does the parricide dare to interrupt and shout and try to wrap the truth in tricks? Beware, Varus, I warn you; beware his feigned tears and groans composed by art and pressed out by no grief. This is the man who took from me my fatherly affection, when, with feigned fear, he warned me to beware of Alexander—saying that the minds of very many were agreeing with him, and that my presence should not be rashly entrusted to everyone. He pretended to look around at everything, to conduct me even to my bed, to sift and examine each person. He was the dispenser of my sleep and the servant of my security, in whom I placed my comfort, and by whose services I relieved my grief for those who were killed; I thought he was giving those back to me, taking away my sorrow, and pleasing my devotion. He was my protector, to whom I entrusted the guarding of my aged body. How I live I do not know, how I escaped so great a plotter, with what blandishments he had surrounded me, with what frauds he held me bound, so that I entrusted myself to this one man whom alone I should have guarded against. It is incredible to me that I escaped; I do not seem to be alive, I think it a dream. For who would believe either that he would be so ungrateful, to whom I had entrusted all power over myself, or that I could escape if Antipater did not wish it? Yet I thought I had been made safer by his favor. But what unhappiness—curse it!—makes those whom I loved most rise up against me? I lament the misfortune of my house, Varus; I weep for my loneliness; I groan at the force of so great a grief. Yet so great is the bitterness of the crime of parricide that I will let no one escape, whoever has thirsted for my blood, even if evidence of attempted parricide is brought forward against all my sons.” As he said this, the speaker's voice was cut off by indignation and grief alike. At once Antipater, raising his head—for he lay before his father's feet as if struck and wounded, not daring to rise—cried out and said: “You, father, accuse in anger; but I have no greater defense than the testimony of your accusation, because I was always the guardian of your safety. So you have supplied a defense for me in your role as accuser. For how am I a parricide, whom you yourself confess to have been your protector? Or how circumspect and astute, whom you charge as the contriver of parricide? It would be the height of folly to have thought of what is execrable among men and cannot go unpunished with God. Or I could have been taught by my brothers' example that there would be no escape from so great a crime, since a crime of this kind finds no hiding place and escapes no punishment—for they too paid the penalty for such great ill will toward you. And them, as you say, a certain envy drove to parricide, because they saw me preferred to themselves, to whom the nobility of their mother's line gave spirit to claim the kingdom as owed them by maternal succession, and to demand back what you had taken from them. What of that kind is there in me, who knew to hope for the kingdom only from you, to seek your judgment, to please you alone? What was there that would drive me to dare anything against your safety? Desire for the kingdom? But I was reigning. Suspicion of hatred? But I was loved. Pain at an injury? But I was preferred. If the mere fear of my preference armed them for parricide, I shall be acquitted; for those who are preferred do not know how to think of parricide, but only how to be hated. Unless perhaps some fear of you drove me. But I, as your own voice testifies, knew no fear but fear for you. For what should I fear, who was the servant of your security and the dispenser of your rest? Or did lack of money and need compel me, which usually urges robbery on the needy? But you had given me what would abound not only for the present but for all time, and had sent me rich to Rome, so that the kings of kings might declare that the leadership of rule, not of riches, was with them. Indeed I won for you Fabatus, administrator of Roman affairs and Caesar's intimate; and though he was driven by a huge sum from Syllaeus to attack you, I so changed him that he became your defender and the betrayer of the man who tempted him. Through whom, father, were the plotters against your safety discovered? How then am I a parricide, I who caught Corinthus, the guard of your body, lurking—removed the plotter, brought those who denied to confession? I could have refrained from thinking of parricide and still had the fruit of parricide, had I kept silent. But even if the savagery of beasts, the fury of fierce wild animals, were in me, I could have been tamed by such great kindnesses of yours, so as to place no help except in the protection of your safety, to return you for everything at least love alone, to shield you with my body, to enclose you, if it could be done, in my inmost heart. You had preferred to your nobler sons one less noble by his mother's stock; you had called my mother, an exile from the kingdom, back into the kingdom; and you held me no longer as successor to the rule but as a partner. Wretched me, on whom your liberality had poured so many goods that envy followed! Most foolish I, who left you, father, if room has been given to envy and power to the plotters! For while I lingered long for your safety, I betrayed my own; and yet I have nothing to blame myself for. You ordered me, father, to go away; for you I was abroad, father, so that Syllaeus would not circumvent your old age, would not drive you from the kingdom while you lived, would not attack your safety before Caesar. Rome is witness to my devotion; Caesar too, ruler of the world, censor of all and judge of my heart, who used to call me ‘the lover of my father.’ Bear witness, Caesar, to what I said about my father before you, before whom alone I could have done harm. Bear witness for me, I say, you who pronounced on others. You did not think a parricide should be concealed, but investigated. O, if only your presence might favor me! But you are absent and far away, and I am judged by my father without you. Yet be present, and you are present in your letters: I offer your writings, which parricides usually fear. I bring your letter, such as those bring out who wish a parricide not to be hidden. Take, father, Caesar's letter; let him instruct you, who once avenged you. Take Caesar's writings, stronger than all arguments. What you once used for vengeance, use now for safety. So I bring these lines as witnesses of my innocence: that right hand never deceived you; that right hand of Caesar set the diadem on you, did not take it away; that hand of Caesar restored to you the kingdom you had cast down. Caesar could earlier have hated me, had he found me like my brothers; but he came to know me and pronounced me the interpreter without whom, had I not been at Rome, Syllaeus would have won. To him I am today handed over; to him, wretched, I pay the penalty. Remember, father, that I did not sail of my own will. I saw the pits of the plotters already being prepared for me; yet I preferred, father, that I rather than you be endangered. Nor do I shudder at the danger to my life; but before you, father, I grieve to be endangered as if your enemy. Yet I am endangered if before you even Caesar's testimony is endangered. These, then, are the evidences of my defense I use. I do not appeal to Caesar as if to be heard, but I implore him as one to be acquitted. But if you think a trial must be held, see, my father, I came to you after Caesar; I hurried to you from Caesar. Would that I had never gone away from you! But you, father, without knowing it, exposed me to dangers when you ordered me to go. I am here, father, and I do not think the truth for your safety should be sought perfunctorily from lighter witnesses. Let those not prejudge who can fear torture, nor those who can despise it. ‘Every man is a liar,’ said Scripture. I bring the incorruptible testimony of the elements. I come to you over seas and lands, having suffered nothing anywhere. As a parricide I should not have escaped, were I guilty. Let heaven acquit me before you, father, which did not strike with lightning; the sea, which did not drown; the earth, which did not swallow. Through these I come to you safe, father—these from which even those escape not who are not parricides of their own fathers. The opening of the earth devoured Dathan and Abiram, yet they had not attacked their own father. As Absalom fled, the earth hung him on the branches of its tree, so that he would not reach his father; had he reached him, he would have escaped. I have come to you, and I am still in danger. David avenged his parricide because he could not save him; I do not ask to be avenged of my enemies and slanderers so as to call them to torture: let them pay the penalty of slander. One thing I ask, father: do not believe the tortures of others; seek tortures against me from myself. Hang up your defendant; let the inquiry of truth enter my entrails; let the cords of torture go down into my body and inmost parts; let the blood flow that usually cries out against parricide; let fire be brought to my guilty limbs. Why do you hesitate, father? If you spare me, you pronounce me innocent; if you refrain from torture, you acquit me of the charges. He is no parricide who is thought worthy of a simple death. Or if you spare me as a son and have compassion on limbs begotten of you, they are not your limbs that are instruments of cruelty.” When he had said this, he finished speaking with great weeping and lamentable groaning, and with the loudest wailing he moved Varus and everyone to pity. Herod alone was moved by no tears, and himself refrained from weeping, unbending toward pardon, intent on the inquiry, seeking vengeance.

After Antipater's speech, at the king's command, Nicolaus followed, to answer his tricks cleverly and to draw away from pity those who had been bent by it. He turned back on Antipater the odium of his brothers' death, pleading that if pity moved anyone, it was right to pity those who, destroyed by his frauds, demanded vengeance. If they acquitted one man, the whole royal house would be brought into danger: brothers, all the relatives, and the king himself, whose life he had not spared. So, turning to the tricks of orators, as in an epilogue designed to move pity, he raised from the dead the souls of the slain, to fill the benches with pitiable complaint: that they had died innocent, through grave witnesses suborned, letters composed, and a father deceived by fraudulent speeches, who believed a son he did not think capable of lying about his brothers. Now, he said, the man who had not believed his brothers' tortures offered his own—he who had loaded them with chains so that they could not attend the hearing, had a sentence passed against them in their absence, and had them killed while they were far away, so that their father should not pity them. So nothing would remain if he escaped—a man skilled in pouring parricidal poisons into the bowels of his own, in changing the minds of men, who had roused even Pheroras, always most loving toward his brother Herod, to a deadly parricide against him. When Nicolaus had added very many other things to these to rouse emotion and had finished speaking, Antipater was asked by Varus whether he wished to reply. He answered nothing but: “God is my witness that I have done no harm.” Then Varus ordered the poison to be brought and given to one of those who had already been condemned to death. When he had drunk it, he died at once. A report on this was sent to Caesar, and Antipater was put in chains by his father's command. Yet even then he was not free of plotting. For just then he was attempting to endanger Salome by trickery, through letters that Antipater had composed in Salome's name, full of insults against the king, and had ordered to be carried by a slave of Antiphilus to Acme, a maidservant of Julia, Caesar's wife, so that Acme would send them to the king as if they had been delivered to her. The fraud would almost have succeeded in destroying the woman, had not a letter of Acme to Antipater been found, which betrayed the trick, written in this way: “As you wished, I have written to your father and sent those letters; and I have no doubt that the king will rise up to endanger his sister. Repay my service once you have obtained the result you wished.” When this letter was discovered, the king was led to suspect that Alexander too had been attacked by his brother with letters composed by the same art; and, exasperated by excessive agitation, he contracted a serious illness. Seeing himself pressed by this danger, he wrote Antipas, one of his sons, as heir of the rule, preferring him to Archelaus and Philip, the elder sons, since Antipater by tricks and deceits had made them too suspect to their father. To Caesar he left a thousand talents, with gifts and presents added; to his wife and sons, freedmen and friends, he gave fifty; nor did he leave his sister Salome without a share in his gifts. The illness went from bad to worse and grew harsher with time, aggravated daily by the troubles of feeble old age. For he bore a body weighed down by no fewer than seventy years and afflicted too by frequent grief of mind, wounded by so many parricides, which it was the extreme of misery either to have detected in his sons or to have inflicted. Yet the fever of an incurable sickness was that Antipater, still alive, was feared. Contempt too grew daily, because the images of Caesar and the likenesses of animals placed in the temple against the law were pulled down, chiefly at the instigation of Judas and Matthias, teachers of the youth, who, when their plans were known and others had joined them, said that the time had come to avenge the injury of the violated law: let the sacrilegious man pay the penalty, who thought whatever was lawful for power was right, and who, not inclined by religion but lifted up by pride, had exercised his lust for doing what he wished in the inner parts of the temple as if it were a right. And although divine vengeance was hastening his death, still it seemed noble if they proved also the freedom of the holy temple by defending the observances of their fathers' law; nor should anyone be called back by fear of danger, since even to die for the ancestral law is a badge of immortality. Those who first set about pulling down the golden eagle fixed above the top of the gate were arrested and brought to the king. When they were asked whom they had wished to obey in undertaking so great a deed, they answered: the law of their fathers. When he asked again what they relied on to come so cheerfully when they were being called to the danger of death, they answered: the rewards of piety and devotion, whose recompense would be paid to those who sought death for their ancestral rite. He could no longer bear the constancy of their answer; but, his indignation rising above his illness so that he overcame his weakness, he went out to an assembly of the people, and there, bringing them before the people as guilty of sacrilege, he began to accuse them, saying that greater things were suspected from such deeds. Even if these were not proved, still all, each fearing for himself, begged that the authors who had been arrested should pay the penalty, and that he should not proceed against the rest, lest the inquiry disturb more people, strangers and innocent. So, being asked, he passed sentence on those present that they be burned alive. From this his trouble increased, and the force of a graver illness consumed his whole body with various sufferings. There was a violent fever, an unbearable itching, continual pains of the inner bowels without any intermission; he was tormented in the middle of his neck; his feet were weighed down with dropsy; the hidden parts of his body swarmed with worms, here and there over the whole body; his breathing was heavy and his sighs deadly. The matter was a sign that the penalty for an unjust parricide and a sacrilegious condemnation was being exacted. Yet he did not give way in spirit, and struggled against his sufferings from desire to live. He went beyond the Jordan to the heat of the hot springs, but they did no good. The Asphaltite lake, healing for many, held the sick man without any benefit. There, while he was being bathed with a great deal of oil, his body relaxed and loosened, he turned up his eyes like a dying man, his voice failed, and no sense remained; but roused by the noise of those crying out, he recovered, and wishing to return to his own, when he came to the district of the place called Jericho, harried by black bile and as it were threatening death itself, he devised a monstrous crime, by which the people would be sent down as offerings to the dead for him. For he had long before ordered all the more noble men from all Judea to be gathered from every village into one place; when the order had been obeyed, he ordered them to be shut up in the hippodrome. Summoning Salome and her husband Alexas, he entrusted them with a legacy of blood, saying that his death would be a joy to the peoples of the Jewish nation; and therefore he demanded of his own a device by which his epitaph would be most splendidly celebrated: that as soon as he had breathed his last, they should order all those who were held shut up to be killed at once. So there would be no one in all Judea and in every house to whom his death would not bring tears, since he would have left all households an inheritance of mourning; while they lamented the death of their own, they would seem to be paying the king his due rites, and so the joy of public wishes would be hindered by domestic griefs. And lest the execution of his wicked commands fail, he ordered fifty drachmas to be given to the soldiers, so that, with such a wage set on the crime, the soldiers would not refuse the deadly service, setting the profit of the reward against the horror of the execution. He was already almost yielding to his torments from the burden of so great a sickness, but he was awaiting the fateful reply of the embassy. It reported that punishment had been taken of Acme at Herod's complaint, and that Antipater, convicted of parricide, had been condemned to death; yet, if he were driven from his country and kingdom, his father might grant him leave to flee, if he wished, Caesar ordered—passing sentence on the crime and leaving the decision to devotion. Nature had nearly resolved the necessity of parricide; for when he had recovered a little, given power to punish as he wished, while he was considering the manner of death, racked by pains he had longed for the day of death to come quickly. So he asked for an apple and also a knife, as he used to cut fruit with it, to take some refreshment; and raising himself a little and leaning on his elbow, he lifted the knife, wishing to strike himself; but Achiab ran up and stopped the blow, and the whole house resounded with mourning, so that outside Herod was thought to have died. Antipater exulted at the sound of lamentation and asked the guards set over him to release him from his chains; but the officer in charge not only refused what was asked but reported it to the king. He, crying out that he was being insulted while still alive, sent executioners to kill Antipater, ordered him, once slain, to be buried in Hyrcania, and changed his will again, appointing Archelaus, the elder of the brothers, as king, and leaving the tetrarchy to Antipas. So he died five days after Antipater, having held the kingdom thirty-seven years from the time he was appointed to rule by the Romans, and thirty-four years from the time he removed Antigonus, his rival for the kingdom—would that he had been as happy in his household life as in public success! For abroad fortune favored him so that, a private man, he was taken up into the kingdom, enjoyed it through many courses of years, and—what is hard while keeping the use of power—he died leaving to his children the succession of the rule, which he himself had not received from his own. But within his house he was most unhappy, filling it with the bitter blood and grief of his own people. Yet his last cruelty found no execution: by this one deed Salome blotted out the earlier mockeries of her crimes, that she released all those whom the king had ordered to be struck down, saying that the king had afterwards repented of his deadly order, revoked his earlier commands, and ordered that all be released to their homes.

Afterwards, an assembly of the soldiers and the rest of the people having been gathered in the amphitheater, a declaration was made about the king's death. Ptolemy came forward, who had clung to the king's friendship among the most faithful to the very end, and, bringing the ring that he had taken from the dead man's finger, he praised the king and urged the people to calm; and he opened to them a letter in which the king, entreating the soldiers most faithful to him, urged them to show goodwill and favor to his successor. Then the tablets were opened and the will was read: Philip was named heir of the region of Trachonitis and the neighboring places; tetrarch, Antipas; king, Archelaus—on condition, however, that they carry his ring to Caesar and reserve to him the decision and confirmation of all his arrangements. His will would be valid only if Caesar approved; the rest he ordered to be kept according to his earlier wills. At once the soldiers raised a shout applauding Archelaus; he was immediately surrounded by a ring of guards; they promised goodwill and pledged loyalty. After this the funeral was arranged fittingly and magnificently, with all the display of royal wealth sent ahead to grace the funeral procession. The bier was all of gold and set with gems, gleaming with a covering of purple; the body was covered with a purple double cloak, fastened by a brooch flashing with precious stones; the diadem was on his head and a golden crown above it, a scepter in his right hand, so that you would think him alive. A Thracian column went in front; the Germans and Gauls of the royal bodyguard kept military order, girt with arms just as if they were going out to war, but with faces full of sorrow, and they followed like mourners. The rest of the force followed in its usual dress and accustomed array, the commanders and centurions accompanying alike. Five hundred of the slaves and freedmen of the royal house also scattered spices, so that the whole road was fragrant with a sweet scent; the king's sons and a very great crowd of relatives surrounded the bier. He was buried in Herodium (as he himself had ordered), which was two hundred stadia from the place where he ended his life, escorted with great deference by all over so great a distance—but not by all with equal feeling; for fear had wrung out the service, not desire; grief at least held its judgment free within itself. Such was Herod's end.

When Herod was buried, the people brought out their free judgments, as men usually do about the dead: he had been harsh and intolerable, had exercised unjust rule over the citizens, a tyrant and not a king of his people, a parricide at home, a plunderer of the public; he had left nobody anything; everything had been drained by taxes; foreigners had been enriched and Jews emptied out, because he had brought an enemy into the temple and polluted all sacred things with sacrilege. Blessed were those who had died, since tortures were not lacking to the living. Judea, they said, had suffered more evils in a few years under Herod's rule, after the captivity had been driven off, than it had endured under a barbarian enemy in the captivity itself, when the kings of the Babylonians ruled over them; under those, exile had been more bearable than one's own home under Herod; by those they had been sent back to their own, by this man driven out; he was harsher than Darius, prouder than Artaxerxes, more rapacious than the Medes. They had hoped for an end of evils, that they might come out of exile if he closed his last day; but to the misery of servitude Archelaus had been added, a self-appointed successor, who both brought back Herod and added new things. It was wretched in kingdoms that a master was chosen, more wretched that he was imposed on the unwilling. It seemed some comfort in servitude if they chose a master for themselves, because one becomes kinder if rule is conferred on him, prouder if it is usurped. So Archelaus would be far more intolerable than Herod, since this one had seized the kingdom, the other had received it. These things were said often not only in Judea but at Rome too, where, with Archelaus present and the accusers pleading their charges to his face before Caesar and the senate, there was long dispute about confirming or abrogating Archelaus's kingdom. In the end, when a place was given for the hearing in the temple of Apollo, which Caesar had founded and beautified with many ornaments, Antipater, Salome's son, a powerful speaker, went through what we said above and much else. He was amazed, he said, that Archelaus pretended to be asking Caesar for the kingdom when for a long time, by rash usurpation, he had acted as king in Judea without consulting Caesar. For what were the golden chair and the diadem brought out but insignia of kingship? With what spirit had he presumed to sit on the royal throne, to greet from the lofty seat the people crowding around, with soldiers' arms about him, in the manner and custom of emperors to bring out the diadem, which ought to have been reserved for Caesar's judgment—not only by the power of the Roman empire but by the right of the will? For Herod could not have snatched from Caesar or the senate what he himself had received from the senate; in an earlier will he had expressed clearly enough the judgment of his own will, by which he declared, in sound mind and with considered counsel, that Antipas should succeed him in the kingdom, and finally he had reserved everything to Caesar's judgment—although, his body already broken, anxious in his last danger and no longer capable of any sense or counsel, he had dictated not what he judged but what was pressed on him. So the one who seized the rule had pronounced on himself that, by your judgment, Caesar, he did not deserve to be substituted in the kingdom; for had he been conscious of his merits, he would have hastened to ask rather than to usurp. And not asking but usurping what lay in a petition is, even in money affairs, usually prejudicial, so that litigants who act out of order lose their case. Here, however, it was not a matter of money called into accusation, but the violated right of the Roman empire, reverence scorned, power despised—a man who thought unworthy the senate of the Roman curia, which was accustomed to give and take away kingdoms and to keep with Caesar the ancient prerogative of conferring rule. What would he do when he had begun to reign lawfully, who before reigning had most insolently killed very many who had asked for help in their exhausted condition and relief from taxes? To those asking for a remedy war was inflicted; nine thousand Jews were killed during the very festival of the Passover, venerable among them; men were sacrificed instead of beasts; the blood of the consecrated who had come together for the temple feasts was shed—a pitiable spectacle! If anyone counted the heaps of the slain, would he not think the Babylonians had returned? How much more cruel were things done by a fellow citizen which in a barbarian enemy would be thought full of monstrous savagery and impiety! This was the dole given to the citizens, this the sacrifice by which Archelaus had commended the beginnings of his reign. Caesar and the senate ought to pity the remnants of Judea, which, once supported by free peoples, would now wish for servitude, if only it could be borne tolerably under a just king—and he was far from the right to rule. For among the Jews the kingdom belongs to no one except one of the line of Judah, as the law said. But this man, an Idumean by race, whom no origin of royal descent touched, had crept into an undue honor. For although Antipater was the grandfather of both himself and Archelaus, outstanding in wealth and powerful in other arts, and especially in the friendship of the Romans, and tried in war by the elder Caesar, though he could have taken the kingdom for himself, he never aimed at it; indeed he preferred to defend it for others rather than acquire it for himself, and he was rightly held as the best of fathers, who vindicated Judea into freedom by his wounds and did not lead it into servitude. Herod had aspired to the kingdom on the testimony of Antony, his father's guest; from him the affairs of the Jews had been diminished; he had acted like an enemy, not a ruler. Since then he himself had been an adulterer to the kingdom, how could a lawful king be created by him? They did not refuse to be under a kingdom, but they asked to live under the Roman, whose favor they had won from the time of the Maccabees; afterwards they had degenerated through the usurpation of the kingdom, so as to be far inferior even to those against whom they had sought Roman alliance. Finally they begged that Judea might obtain from you a governor's jurisdiction on the same terms as Syria, so that proof might be given of our devotion, whether we who are called seditious and rebels can obey moderate judges. Against this Nicolaus, answering for Archelaus, asserted that a most restless nation had paid the penalty of its insolence; Archelaus should not be charged with the odium of an inexcusable crime on this account, if they had disturbed the peace by sedition and departed in spirit and arms from alliance with the Romans. As for the precedence of the will, who would doubt it, since later wills are usually preferred to earlier ones, and this one ought to seem much stronger than the rest, in which Caesar's prerogative of confirming the royal decision was reserved? By this the reverence of the Roman name was heaped up rather than diminished, if you, Caesar, do not snatch from kings what is allowed to private persons—that their wills should hold, and that they should write with their last pen whom they most wish to succeed them—and if, again, they reserve to you this honor, that confirmation of the decision is sought from you, and that the man succeeds whom the father has chosen and you have approved. When then was Herod wiser—when he kept your prerogative, Caesar, or when he passed it over? Where Antipas is substituted, Caesar is passed over; where Archelaus is put in his place, Caesar is called in. Without confirmation nothing is stable. So by divine judgment, where justice was lacking, confirmation was lacking either to pretense or to will; but where fairness was at hand for examination, strength was sought so that the decision might be confirmed. Consider then whether he did wrong who chose you, or whether what he left to be sanctioned by you as arbiter, the lord of all things, to whom even kings rightly yield in power, ought to be rescinded. For he who knew whom to choose to confirm surely knew whom to choose to rule; nor could he be deceived in his successor who was not deceived in his confirmer. For he who made you arbiter knew that he must appoint a successor such that the one you were to confirm would not displease you. Having heard the parties, Caesar put off his decision; then, having taken counsel with the senate, he set Archelaus over the nation to exercise the office of ruler, not the honor of king; yet he promised also to give him the kingdom if he behaved so as to be approved. For already attempts at dissension among the people of Israel were being reported. He appointed two of Herod's sons tetrarchs, Philip and Antipas, who had contended with Archelaus for the kingdom. To Herod's sister, whose name was Salome, he kept her legacy and added other things himself. He also judged that the thousand talents left to him should be divided between two daughters of Herod, added another six hundred thousand, and decided that they should be married to the children of Pheroras.

Meanwhile a certain young man, pretending to be Alexander and claiming that, out of pity, those to whom his father Herod had entrusted the task of killing had substituted others in his place and let him go with his brother Aristobulus, went to Miletus and from there to Rome, where he would be harder to recognize among strangers. There he would easily have stirred up the Jews, who are most ready for revolution, had not Caesar, learning of him, ordered him to be brought to him quickly by one Celadus, who had known Alexander well. When Celadus saw the young man, he hesitated, deceived by the likeness. But perceiving that the other marks did not agree, he asked where Aristobulus was. The young man asserted that he was living on the island of Cyprus, guarding against plots, because brothers together would more easily be killed. Then, brought to Caesar, he at once confessed, when impunity was promised, that relying on the appearance of likeness he had pretended to be Alexander, in order to obtain countless gifts from the Jews as if he were the king's son. Caesar laughed at the trick, ordered him to be let go unpunished, and declared that those who had paid him honors as if to a king beyond a private man's measure had been punished enough, because they had endured endless losses through superfluous expense. Archelaus, having gone to Judea and been accused before Caesar for the obscenity of his conduct and his insolence, after the case between the parties had been heard, was banished to Vienne, and his wealth was added to Caesar's treasury. He deservedly paid this price, since he did not restrain his desires even from his own brother's wife. For when Alexander died, put to death by his father's command, his wife Glaphyra, daughter of Archelaus king of the Cappadocians, as we mentioned above, was joined in a second marriage to Juba, king of Libya. When he died, she returned to her father. There Archelaus saw her, and, thinking by no means that the brother of her husband, the uncle of her children, should be piously avoided, began to love her so desperately that he put away his wife Mariamne and put Glaphyra in her place. Not long after, when the woman returned to Judea, she saw Alexander in her dreams and longed to embrace him. But he, like one indignant, recoiled from her embrace and seemed to say: “Is this, Glaphyra, the faith you promised? Is this how you have kept my love for you, of which you ought to have been mindful? But granted that as a young woman you did not shun a second marriage—ought you also to have sought a third, and the brother of your husband? Did my injury so delight you that you were not ashamed to come back into my house married to a third husband? But I shall see to it that my disgrace and your contamination do not last longer; nor will you long rejoice in the incestuous marriage with my brother.” The woman rose and told her household the dream, and two days later she herself died, and so gave proof that marriages of this kind are approved neither by the laws of the living nor by the will of the dead.

Archelaus himself also saw in his dreams nine ears of grain, full and large, being devoured by oxen. When he asked about it, the interpreter answered that the nine ears signified nine years in which he had enjoyed the greatest and most ample power; so in the ninth year of his rule a change would come to him, because oxen, which usually turn over the fields with the plough, signify a laborious change that devours and swallows up former merits. When this was known, on the fifth day a man came from Caesar to take him to Rome for trial; there he was condemned and driven into exile, and by his death too he fulfilled his dream. The principality of the nation that had belonged to Archelaus was turned into the name of a province—the name by which the Romans called the distant regions they brought under their law by conquest. The tetrarchies remained, however, as they were, Philip and Herod, the name having been changed, since he was earlier called Antipas. For Salome, at her death, had left the places she had held and the power over her people to Livia, Caesar's wife. This was the state of Judea when Caesar died, leaving as successor of the Roman empire Tiberius, his stepson, son of his wife Livia by her former husband; in whose honor Herod founded Tiberias. Philip also thought a city should be called Livias after the name of his mother. And because our purpose is to lay open the causes by which the people of the Jews fell away from the Roman empire and hastened their own destruction, the facts show that Pilate, governor of the province, gave the beginning of ruin, since he was the first of all who did not hesitate to bring images of Caesar into the buildings of Jerusalem. When the people, moved by this, resisted, and he decided that the images should be received, he drove very many to death. While these things were being done in Judea, Agrippa, son of Aristobulus, came to Rome, wishing to go to law against Herod the tetrarch before Tiberius. But, scorned by Tiberius while he was living at Rome, he gathered very many friends, and above all Gaius, son of Germanicus, whom—either because, thanks to his father's name, he was beloved by the people, or because he thought him close to the rule by nearness of royal birth, or by a kind of presentiment—he cultivated more zealously than either his age or his rank allowed, so that one day, raising his hands, he prayed that Tiberius might soon die and he might see Gaius emperor. When this was betrayed by his freedman Eutychus, Agrippa was put in chains by Tiberius's order and tormented grievously, and he was not released until Tiberius ended his days. Tiberius's times were foul with debaucheries—the retreats of the goats—and his sloth intolerable; yet they roused no man of effective action to kill him, out of reverence, I think, for the still recent Roman empire, or from terror of his most savage cruelty, since harshness is usually the safer the heavier it is.

During his reign a notorious scandal concerning Paulina, a woman of most distinguished family, became widely known at Rome. Though she had an excellent reputation for chastity among all, and was also of the most outstanding beauty and eminent charm, she was tempted by the solicitations of Mundus, a commander of the equestrian order; and though not bent, through the fault of excessive superstition she lay open to deception. For Mundus suborned priests of Isis to bring her a message as if from Anubis: that he invited her to the temple, that he was delighted with her devotion and chastity, that he asked for a night, that he had something he wished to entrust to her in secret. Receiving this gladly, she reported it to her husband: her god was answering her prayers, he was asking for her presence, she could not refuse obedience. So with her own and her husband's consent she went to the temple of Isis and spent the night there; and with witnesses removed far off, as if to receive knowledge of a sacred mystery, she settled herself on her couch, thinking that her god would come to her in dreams and show himself to her in a vision. But when some of the night had passed, so that the woman, full of sleep, might more easily be deceived, Mundus came wearing the face and dress of Anubis, lifted her coverings, and rushed into kisses. To the awakened woman he said that he was Anubis, and he showed her Anubis's face. She believed it was the god and declared herself blessed that her god had deigned to visit her. She did not refuse his embrace, though she asked whether a god could unite with a human. He brought out examples: that Alcmena had received Jupiter, highest of the gods; that Leda had enjoyed his embrace; and that very many other women had given birth to gods; and he persuaded her that a god would be born of her by him too. He lay with the woman. She returned to her husband rather glad, saying that she had united with a god and by his promise would bear a god. There was great joy of the woman and her husband in her defilement. Afterwards Mundus met her and said to the woman: “Blessed Paulina, in the embrace of a god! Great is the god Anubis, whose mysteries you have received. But learn not to refuse men as you do not refuse gods, for the gods grant to men what you had refused, since they do not disdain to give us their forms and names. See, the god Anubis called Mundus too to his rites, to join him to you. What did your hardness profit you, except to cheat yourself of the profit of the twenty thousand I had offered? Imitate the more indulgent gods, who grant us for nothing what could not be obtained from you at a great price. And if human names offend you, it pleased that one to be called Anubis, and by the grace of this name he helped his desire.” Struck by this speech, the woman understood that she had been mocked, and, grieving at the injury to her chastity, confessed the fraud to her husband. He, having nothing to be indignant at in his wife, since he himself had allowed her to sleep in the temple, and aware of her conjugal chastity, brought a complaint to the emperor. He, moved by the insult to a powerful man and the device of an atrocious outrage, seized the priests from the temple, put them to the question, killed them when they confessed, and sank the image of Isis in the Tiber. Mundus was allowed to flee, because, overcome by the force of love and the charm of beauty, he was thought deserving of a lighter penalty for his crimes.

I did not think the scandal that happened under Tiberius's rule should be passed over, so that from it the disgrace of the emperor might be gathered. For as the life of a good prince is a kind of prescription of uprightness and a pattern of living for all, so the filth of an emperor is a law of crimes. By him Pilate was sent into Judea, a wicked man; and, setting a lie on a small matter, he got round the Samaritans so that they went to the mountain called Gadir (for it was sacred to them), pretending he wished to learn their mysteries. And going up, he got ahead of the people with his cavalry and laid them low with his infantry, inventing the charge that they had prepared to break away from the Romans and seek a meeting place for themselves. For what would he not dare, who even crucified Christ the Lord, who came for the salvation of the human race, pouring out on men the grace of his mercy by many divine works, and teaching nothing else than to make the peoples obedient first to God and then to the emperors? Madman, who was the agent of a sacrilegious fury so as to kill the author of salvation! From that time the affairs of the Jews were betrayed, from that time destruction came to the nation and the overthrow of the temple was hastened. For if Herod, who put John to death, paid the price of his faithlessness and cruelty, cast down from his kingdom and sent into exile, how much more is it given to understand that he was driven by headlong furies who killed Christ! What the cause of John's death was, I shall explain briefly. We showed above that Philip and Herod, who was earlier called Antipas, were brothers. Philip's wife was Herodias, whom Herod united to himself by an unlawful and wicked right of marriage. John did not bear this, and said to him: “It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife.” Then he, provoked, thrust John into prison. Not long after he killed that just man, the steadfast executor of the divine law. For he rebuked the incest of his brother's bed not only as a preacher of the gospel, but also, as an executor of the law, he condemned the transgressor of the law who had taken the wife of a living brother, especially one who had offspring by his brother. From this the hatred of almost all the Jews was roused against Herod and his punishment hastened. Its author was Herodias: seeing that Agrippa had gained very great influence with Caesar, she drove Herod to go to Rome to win the emperor's favor for himself, reproaching him with the disgrace of sloth, that, shunning labors while he stayed at home, he let unworthy men be preferred to himself. For since Agrippa had been made king from a private man, how much more would Caesar not hesitate to confer a kingdom on him, long since a tetrarch? So, unable to bear the woman's reproaches, he set out for Rome; and while he was seeking the friendship of Gaius, he was accused by Agrippa and lost even the tetrarchy he had received from Julius Augustus; and fleeing to Spain together with his wife Herodias, he was consumed by grief of mind. When Tiberius died, Gaius succeeded, who, wishing to be seen and called lord and god, gave the Jews causes for a most serious revolt; and had he not closed his rule by a hastened end, he would have made an earlier end of the Jewish nation. For he not only did not call his men back from what was unlawful, but even threatened those he sent into Judea with the last punishments unless they carried out by arms everything against the right and law of religion. Agrippa had very great power under his rule; but when he wished to surround Jerusalem with a very great wall, so that it would be impregnable to the Romans (for he foresaw the coming ruin), he was cut off by death and left the work unfinished. Nor did he exercise less power under Claudius's rule, since he was present at its very beginnings: when Gaius was killed and Claudius was taken up by the soldiers into the rule while the senate resisted him, from weariness of kingship the senate sent Agrippa as envoy; with him as interpreter, the limits of a moderate rule were promised, favor defined, and peace agreed. In place of his father Agrippa, his son Agrippa was made king by Claudius Caesar.

Claudius himself, when after thirteen years he was failing, gave Nero as prince to the Roman empire, captured by the persuasions of his wife Agrippina, who was so strong in frauds that she made the emperor's son Britannicus, designated successor by the very right of nature, without a share in the principate. She soon repented of this art, because, while she provided an emperor born of herself, she denied him her own: not knowing that, lifted up by rule, he would not acknowledge his mother and would turn the reward of her kindness into her destruction. He also held Octavia, Claudius's daughter, in the place of a wife: in reverse order the son-in-law was preferred to the son, because the evils of the state outweighed, to which a parricide, a sacrilegious man, an incestuous man was owed, so that in that criminal no merits of good arts would reign. Under such an emperor—whether in view of his character and in contempt of his sloth, or because, for their grave sacrileges, the protection of the most high God having been turned away, the final destruction was being prepared for the Jews—Judea broke out into grave revolts, robberies, dissensions, through the insolence of those whom Eleazar, chief of the brigands, led as he most grievously laid waste for twenty years. At length, however, he was captured by Felix, who governed Judea, sent to Rome, and paid a heavy penalty. Not even by the great number of those slain was the people inhabiting Judea broken; but in Jerusalem itself another kind of brigand sprang up, who were called sicarii—no longer hidden in secret places nor lying in wait in the darkness of night for travelers without escort, but in the light of day and in the middle of the city and the crowded throng they struck whomever they came close to, carrying short swords in their hands, mingled with the packed people. When they had stabbed one close to them, he fell unawares by a hidden wound, so that death forestalled complaint; the corpse was in plain view, but the killer lay hidden; and if anyone was moved by another's wound, being nearer he was himself struck and became a part of the slain. So, whether from fear of danger or from concealment of the deed, the sicarius was not detected, so great was the speed of the plotters and their art of concealment. The priest Jonathan was killed; many were added every day, and the fear of the living was heavier than the misery of the slain. Each man went out every day as if to battle, yet under a harder condition, for an enemy is seen in advance, but the sicarius lay hidden: death was before their eyes, fear in their minds. No one believed he would return, nor was trust given to friends while the sicarius was feared. Terrified by this, very many—innocent of the crime of robbery and of fellowship with the sicarii, but though harmless in hand, weaker in counsel—went to the desert. But while they looked to themselves, their departures caused terror; from this arose first suspicion of war against the Romans, then it blazed up unconquerably. In fear of this the governor of the province sent cavalry and an infantry column and made a very great slaughter of the multitude.

An Egyptian false prophet also came, steeped in magic arts; while he boasted that by a prophetic spirit he announced heavenly oracles, he gathered to himself about thirty thousand Jews, and assembling them at the Mount of Olives, he burst into Jerusalem in frequent raids, so that he even attacked the Roman guards who were stationed before Jerusalem to keep the people from any movement. When this insolence too was suppressed, another part, as in a sick body, became more gravely inflamed. For very many cried out openly that they must break from the Romans and prefer freedom to servitude; and going out into the countryside, they took by force the food they lacked.

Finally, in the city of Caesarea a serious strife arose between Jews and gentiles, the Jews claiming possession of the whole city as founded by Herod, a Jew; the gentiles objecting that the founder was indeed a Jew but had named it for Caesar, and had moreover built a temple in it and set up statues, and that therefore it seemed rather to be made over to gentile uses. The strife of these contentions turned to blows, because the leading men of the Jews could not restrain their own people given over to sedition, and the gentiles thought it a disgrace if they had to give way to the Jews. So they roused Felix, so that, eager to restrain the multitude of both sides which would not be quiet, he took counsel by arms, especially, since he could do no otherwise. Festus succeeded him, who arrested very many brigands and gave not a few the last penalty. Albinus too, when the same power was entrusted to him by the Romans, omitted no kind of wickedness—a shameless plunderer of rapine, so that whoever had not given money was dragged to chains, though innocent, and whoever had given was acquitted even if guilty. Greed bred pride, so that he showed himself a tyrant to the poorer and a slave to the richer. Yet he, though he had surpassed the wickedness of his predecessors, was so far passed by and left behind by his successor Florus—by a long interval, though Florus came next—as if sluggish and slow in crimes, that by comparison with a worse man he was thought upright. And those who at first had complained, afflicted, later longed for Festus as a good judge. For Albinus drained individuals; Florus plundered cities—most polluted in obscenities, most cruel in savagery, disturbing everything by arms and sowing battles upon battles, who would neither pardon when entreated nor spare when glutted. In the sight of Berenice, sister of King Agrippa, who had come to the temple for the sake of religion, he raged against the people with most bitter slaughter; and he did not think he should defer to her as she entreated, though he saw her standing barefoot in the service of religion, and held her in contempt as she prayed. So she herself wrote to King Agrippa, and the people of the Jews sent to him begging help for their freedom. When he came out of Egypt, many went more than sixty stadia out from the city of Jerusalem to meet him; and when he had been led around the city and found their complaints true, they began to insist that envoys be sent to Nero. He, though he too pitied their grief as that of his fellow citizens, yet with deep prudence saw that attempts at war against the Romans were being stirred, and lest odium arise for himself and the final danger for the people, he gathered the people together in the place next to the temple, divided from it by a bridge, called the Xystus, and gave a speech of this kind.

“Although in very many grief, improvident in counsel and impatient of restraint, makes some boil over with grave complaints, yet when counsel is taken, the feeling of grief is set aside. For if I had found all of this people ready to avenge injuries and to bring war on the Roman empire, and not of the better and calmer opinion that prefers what belongs to peace and quiet, I would neither have dared to come to you nor to give counsel. For it is superfluous to urge what ought to be done when the assent of the hearers is for the worse. But since some have no experience of the evils of war; others have a superficial hope of freedom, very sweet to seek but usually heavy to obtain—for to many, while freedom is sought, servitude is heaped up, and often everything is snatched from those to whom at least the name of freedom had remained; others, displeased with present conditions for their own interest, are attracted by revolution and think it gain if affairs are thrown into confusion—therefore I thought I should take counsel with you, so that either the sobriety of the more prudent is not overridden by the daring of the more insolent, or those who do not know how to judge rightly may, warned at least by our speech, learn that they must yield to wiser counsels. So I ask that silence be granted, so that we may lay open what we think is to your advantage, and none of you be disturbed if he hears something against his wish. For no one can judge what is said unless he has first heard what he himself is to judge; whether he approves or rejects, it is vain to be agitated. Let him listen; for after counsel each may still think what he thinks, and, if dissent pleases, even after sober warning he may keep the opinion of an ill-advised will. But someone will say: why do they wish to be heard in vain, if those who hear do not agree? Because if they will not agree when they have heard, only part of the assembly, not all the people, will be endangered; but if they will not hear, even when a part is willing to hear, the disturbance takes from the whole people the profit of hearing. So my speech will arise among those who wish to hear, if silence is granted me even in part; for every speech is cut off and sinks as if into mud if it is weighed down by the hindrance of the crashing of the assembly and restless noise. There are, then, two things to which I think I must answer first, which carry the greatest weight among the complaints: that many cry out about the injuries done by the governors, and that many groan that their freedom has perished. These two propositions, it seems to me, must be separated. For if the governors are wicked, what need is there to exalt freedom? Lest you seem to accuse the governors not for their deserts but from disgust with servitude, as ministers of domination. Or if servitude is intolerable, then the complaint about the governors is superfluous; for even if it is milder in them, servitude is nonetheless shameful. Let us consider, then, whether in either of them there is no slight material for wars. For what is more foolish than to complain of injuries and to weave war upon them, and to exchange insults for dangers? While you flee a judge, you bring in an enemy, whereas an unjust judge is usually still the interpreter of law, but an enemy, even a just one, is always a seeker of your life. So it is fitting to soften a judge, not to exasperate him; to beware of an enemy, lest you embitter the one and summon the other, since the one becomes milder by soothing, and the other must be avoided so that he cannot harm. With judges, then, one must take care that the complaint is not greater than the injury, and the odium of accusations heavier than the penalties for what was committed. For often those who at first offended with some shame become more insolent when accused, and those who stole secretly before afterwards rob openly. Nothing so inflames the fever of a wound as impatience in bearing it. Indeed even on wild beasts the tightest bonds press harder if they struggle and loosen if they are still; and the heavy force of fevers is lessened by enduring and increased by restlessness. If wild creatures know how to provide for themselves so as to forget their nature to relieve their pain, how much more among men has frequent experience taught that the endurance of the injured has made the injurers ashamed, so that without an accuser they corrected what they would not have amended when accused! But granted that the insolence of the Roman judges has been intolerable: which is more tolerable, to endure all or one? And what justice is it, when one has done harm, to make war on all? Are all the Romans authors of the injury? Is Caesar himself? Or was a wicked man deliberately chosen to be sent to you? They cannot watch over things beyond the sea or turn their eyes east and west to see there what is done here; nor is it easy to hear, for even if concern demands it, distance makes proofs difficult. So the fault of one man will give birth to the breach of the Roman world, though even without your complaints correction is swift, with no odium of accusation and no labor of a journey. For the Roman magistrates are changed in yearly turns, so that the insolent does not remain long and a milder one soon succeeds. So it will do no harm to have kept quiet, since the remedy comes even to the quiet. But to weave causes of war is ruinous, because the condition of war is harsh against all and against the Romans the last. If you wish to flee them, since you cannot overcome them, you must leave the whole world. But you put forward the desire for freedom? That deliberation comes late. You should have fought earlier so as not to lose freedom, rather than to demand it back once lost. The practice of servitude is harsh, and therefore it should not have been accepted at the beginning, or, once accepted, borne with equanimity. Then you ought to have resisted, when you were called to servitude; that was the juster fight. But one who has once given himself into servitude, even if he wishes afterwards to withdraw, is not declared a lover of freedom but judged a contumacious slave. Where was this defense of freedom when Pompey burst into your regions and the master entered the city? Where were the arms for freedom then? Why were they laid down by our fathers? And surely they were stronger than we: they were vigorous in spirit, abounded in resources, and desired to resist; but they did not withstand a small portion of the Roman army. They were conquered, but, spared, they acknowledged the yoke of servitude so as not to endure the penalty of captivity. Why do you, their heirs, refuse what you owe by right of succession? The obligations of your fathers bind you. How can you shun obedience, you who are so inferior to those who obeyed? Or what will be left to you, who move against yourselves Caesar and all Roman might? How can you withstand those who have triumphed over all and are now helped by all who fight for them? The Athenians, for the freedom of all Greece, gave their country to the flames, exchanging their homes for exile, so that Xerxes would not rule them—Xerxes who sailed on land and walked on the waves, whom the seas could not hold nor the land sustain, since the spaces of all Europe could hardly contain the passage of his march, the lands being narrower than the supply train of his army; they so pursued him in flight that, fleeing with hardly a single ship and in need of help, he barely escaped captivity. Yet those very men who broke all Asia at little Salamis, and drove into flight Xerxes, who ruled the waves and subdued the seas, defeated most gloriously in the very element he thought subject to himself—now they serve the Romans, and the leaders of all Greece obey the commands of the Italians; and that Athens which gave laws to others now serves foreign laws. The Lacedaemonians too, after Thermopylae and the triumphs of the dead Leonidas, after Agesilaus, the searcher of Asia, now love their masters. Macedonia and Africa as well, which through their mightiest commanders had transferred the rule of the whole world into their own right and possession, do not resent the power transferred from them; content with so great a change of affairs, they wish for kindly masters, whom they once sought to enslave. Neither are the Macedonians roused by the riches of Philip nor by the triumphs of Alexander, whom they thought the most prudent of all commanders and, not undeservedly, unconquered—because the one kept himself against Greece, and the other, avoiding Roman arms, came as victor to the Caspian kingdoms and the farthest bounds of subdued Persia and the secret places of the Indians. He won the name of Great because he did not provoke the greatest of all. Though an early death withdrew him from a triumph of the Romans, yet he too serves in his descendants, for whom the spoils of the East were sought not as the support of dominion but as the price of servitude, so that the nobility of servants would come to the victor's wealth. Great was Alexander's valor. Yet what wonder? He extended victory as far as the ocean, the Romans beyond the ocean. Britain is witness, set outside the world but brought back into the world by Roman valor. Those whom an earlier age did not know, Roman victory came to know. Even they serve who did not know what servitude was—born only for themselves and always free for themselves, because, separated by the ocean between from the power of the stronger, they could not fear those they did not know. So it was more to have crossed to the Britons than to have triumphed over the Britons. For what were they to do, already subject to the merciful rule of the Romans? The ocean taught them the patience of servitude, after they too had come to know an unaccustomed servitude when the Romans crossed in their ships. And of Hannibal why should I tell again—the victor of so many regions, who himself served the Roman triumphs, for whom he opened the Alps, paved a road, and subdued cities that were to be acquired by the victors? He who was often the stronger, and yet never cut off from the vanquished the hope of victory, once beaten could not recover. He yielded of his own accord to the victors whom as victor he had not withstood, and, throwing away his victorious arms, betook himself to King Prusias—from a commander a mercenary, from a triumphant victor a fugitive. Let us come to the inhabitants of the Gauls, peoples fierce by nature and fiercer for their natural walls, guarded not by the masonry of walls but by the ridges of the Alps on the east, enclosed by the ocean on the west, on the south by the cliffs of the Pyrenees, on the north by the floods of the Rhine; and the savage Germans were thought to have made themselves unconquerable and inaccessible by the benefit of their barriers. Yet to the Romans, who traveled above the clouds and extended their rule beyond the Pillars of Hercules, nothing was pathless. With such good fortune the enemy who lay hidden was found, and he who resisted was conquered; at their unexpected coming Germany believed that the mountains had sunk and the Rhine dried up. They who were stronger than the rest in size of body and contempt of death, who once thought their Rhine a barrier, now think it a defense of their safety. So it is now filled not with the forces of the Germans but with the Liburnian galleys of the Romans, which, ranging over all the floods of the two-horned river as far as the sea, press with servitude once free nations, so that those which had once claimed the rule of the whole world for themselves now pay the price of their own servitude. What did the gold dug from the veins of their lands profit the Illyrians, which was not enough for the price of freedom? How much more precious is Roman iron, which the gold of the Pannonians serves! So Pannonia pays a tribute of gold, and willingly transfers its wealth to the Roman treasury, to be safer in servitude. Nor did the turbid wave of Pactolus lift its inhabitant into pride by its gold: he serves gladly those whom he sees empires serve. Nor does the Indian admire his gem or the Chinese his wool: these are worked for the use of their masters, not as the price of merchandise but as the duties of tribute. We hear of the proud empires of the Persians; but we have seen their hostages too, and though they rule many nations, they offer their children and their nobility. They rejoice to serve the Romans as a pledge of peace, and at the same time to learn by serving how to rule their own; they offer garments, necklaces, elephants too to the Romans, the one tribute kings impose on themselves. Let us add Egypt, abounding in its riches and needing no rain from heaven, which makes showers for itself and creates abundance of rains. In fact, though it is hotter than all regions, it alone does not complain of drought, and, what no other place has, it nourishes its harvests by irrigation. Ships sail over sands, sail through fields, where rain is unknown. Yet its new grace and natural fertility serve the Romans in war, so that it feeds its masters for four months. What shall I say of the city itself, named for a most valiant king, which, fenced by the wall of a river, knows no siege, because the greatest of all rivers, spreading its bed over wide lands, both removes the obstacles of a siege and supplies by transport what is necessary for use? What could more readily be roused to rebel than Egypt, which counts seven million five hundred thousand men, besides the inhabitants of Alexandria, enrolled as peoples under the Roman fasces? And though it has so great a multitude, it prefers to exercise itself in tributes to the Roman empire rather than fight at its own expense. I shall not pass over the people of Cyrene, a race of Lacedaemonians, who once contended with the Carthaginians over borders and rule, offering death as the end of the contest; conquered by that offer, but having avenged the injury, they conceded the victory to the brothers Philaeni. Nor do I pass over the Syrtes, terrible even to hear of, because they draw everything to themselves and whatever approaches sticks fast in the shallow sea—men expert in such things have asserted that the third part of the whole world is bounded from the Atlantic sea and the Pillars of Hercules as far as the Red Sea and the Ethiopians. Who could count the peoples of so many nations, supported by which Carthage did not withstand the right hand of Scipio, and preferred to feed Rome for two parts of the year against itself rather than rebel against the Romans relying on the resources of others? Crete too, famous for its hundred cities, displaying most fertile realms, surrounded on every side by the sea and accustomed to repel the enemy with the waves as with walls, fears one consular governor, and very many peoples bow in fear to the rods of six fasces. Asia, Pontus, the Heniochi, the Nomad Scythians, the Taurian Scythians, the kingdoms of Maeotis, and all the Bosporans are subject to the Roman empire; and that sea, once unnavigable, forty ships keep in peace. And what shall I say of Armenia, which not only keeps the quiet of its own frontier but, intent on guarding the gates, carefully watches lest anyone creep in to disturb the peace? So all eagerly serve the Romans: do you alone disdain to be subject to those to whom all are subject? Relying on what arms? Proud of what soldiers? Where is your fleet of ships to blockade the straits and scour the seas of the Romans? For even the elements have passed into the name of those to whom the whole world too has passed, which is enclosed and bounded by the Roman empire; indeed by very many it is called the Roman world. For if we seek the truth, as we said above, the earth itself is beneath the Roman empire, and Roman valor, advancing beyond it across the ocean, has sought another world for itself and found a new possession in Britain, remote from the edge of the lands. Indeed, those to whom not only the right of Roman citizenship but almost the right of human society is denied are sent there to live, like exiles from the world. The ocean has yielded its bounds; the Roman has learned to seek its inner secrets. You will have war with those against whom not even nature keeps her own right. That Euphrates, inaccessible before except to its own inhabitants, is now Roman on both banks, and shows that the whole East is under Roman rule. The Danube, flowing in the northern parts among savage and countless nations, receives hostages and restrains enemies. The southern region, as far as it can be inhabited, ploughs for the Romans and gathers its harvest for them; in the west the farthest shore of the lands, Gades, receives new guests to bring their tributes to the Roman empire; it too has somewhere to send its goods: where before it thought there was only shipwreck, there it now exchanges commerce. Since, then, all things belong to the Romans, where will you seek defenses against the Romans? From what uninhabitable part will you demand allies? For whoever are in the world are all Romans. Or will you send an embassy beyond the Euphrates to the Adiabenians? But they have no leisure to leave their own affairs, nor will the Parthian allow the peace he sought to be broken, lest he himself be charged with rebellion among his neighbors. Do not think this war is like one in which you must fight battles against Arabs and Egyptians: Roman arms are different, and their resources are sought from the whole world. Nor let the defenses of the walls of Jerusalem flatter you: the Romans broke through the stronger wall of the ocean. But do you presume on the help of religion, when the disciples of Jesus have already filled the Roman world? Or do we think that that religion grows without God's will, and that the city of Rome extends its rule above all religions? This religion of ours deserted us long ago, because we deserted faith and have repeatedly done what the heavenly commands forbade. From where did the Egyptian come upon us? How were we made captives of the Assyrians? Did not Scripture say these things would happen? Is it not written that all the sacred things of the temple were to be profaned? They have already been profaned so often that they no longer show their power and all the grace of the divine mysteries. The temple has been polluted with human blood, the sacred couches filled with corpses, the altars drenched with Roman gore; there has been fighting on the sabbath; transgression has been committed, while the temple was defended not by its own observance and the solemnity of the festivals but by bloody battle. And this will surely happen again. How then can we earn divine help as against enemies and adversaries of religion, when we ourselves bring transgression on our religion? What remedy is there, then, when neither human resources support us nor divine grace helps? One of these usually invites some to war; you lack both. What then remains but manifest destruction? Unless you avoid it while you may beware, you will do nothing else than burn your own country, set fire to the temple, and give over to death your wives and children, to whom you will be the authors of final loss; and the increase of all your offspring will be without consolation, since what we suffer must be ascribed to our own fault. Add this, that the wars of other cities are bounded by the destruction of their own inhabitants; your rebellion will be the destruction of the whole religion, which, spread through the whole world, has scattered its people everywhere, and in every city a portion of us lives. So all the Jews will be involved in your battle, and there will be no region without its share of our blood. Or if the Romans are such that they do not persecute the Jews even when provoked by war, how unjust it is to bring war here on those whose humanity you hope for! It is good, dearest friends, it is good, while the ship is still in harbor, to foresee the coming storm and not to throw oneself into threatening dangers, lest, when you have gone out into the deep, you can no longer avoid shipwreck. Often, indeed, a sudden storm rises and war is received even when it is not brought on; but it makes a difference whether one provokes the enemy or receives him. He spares more who has not been provoked, and necessity excuses insolence; but when anyone plunges himself into headlong danger, he is burdened also with reproach. This is not an enemy you can avoid by flight. Wherever you go, danger will follow; indeed you will find the enemy everywhere. For all are friends of the Romans, and whoever is outside the friendship of the Romans is the enemy of all. Let love of country come over you; let the thought of your children, of your wives, call you back; let the sight of the most holy temple call you back. Spare at least religion; spare the most holy priests, whom the Romans no longer spare, nor the temple itself, which they repent of having spared, since all nations have long wished to extinguish our religion—which Pompey nevertheless spared when he could have extinguished it. I have omitted nothing; I have warned you of everything that concerns your safety. I urge on you what you would choose for me; consider what is useful to you and to me. Wish for yourselves and for me peace with the Roman people. If you refuse, you yourselves take away my fellowship from you: either the favor will be common, or the danger will be without me.” Saying this, he wept, and Berenice his sister too, for she was in the upper part of the Xystus; and Agrippa had greatly moved them by his tears, so that the Jews said: “We are not making war on the Romans; we think war must be brought against Florus, who has done things deserving of war.” Agrippa answered: “But this is to bring war on the Romans: your deeds attack the Romans with injury. Tribute is being refused not to Florus but to the Romans, not to Florus but to Caesar. The soldier in the fortress called Antonia belongs not to Florus but to the Romans, and you have separated the temple from it by pulling down and dividing the porticoes, so as to cut off the guard. Restore what your predecessors established: let the tribute owed to Caesar be paid to Caesar, lest Florus report that not he but Caesar's rule has been repudiated by you.” The people had acquiesced in these words, so that, going up into the temple with Agrippa, they began to build the porticoes as they had been and to collect the tribute. In short, diligent collectors being sent out on such duties, forty talents were gathered, which were lacking for the payment of tribute. The whole tumult of war had been suppressed; but when Agrippa wished to add to this that they should obey Florus until a successor came to him from Caesar, he so exasperated the people that they did not refrain from insulting even him, but drove him from the city with some stones thrown—whether they hit him is uncertain. Moved by this injury, the king sent the authors, once arrested, to Florus, and himself withdrew to his kingdom.

When he had gone, the instigators of war, having laid a plot, seized the fortress of Masada, killed the Roman guards, and set their own men there. Eleazar too, son of the chief of the priests, a man of headlong daring, persuaded them that no gift or sacrifice of any foreigner should be received; this was the trumpet of war against the Romans and roused everyone into tumult. So all the most powerful men, seeing that this was the presumed cause of the dissension, argued with the people that not only was war being brought on Caesar but the institution of religion was being violated and the reverence of the temple diminished; the traditions of their fathers were being blamed and condemned, who had adorned the temple from the gifts of foreigners, to which much more wealth had come from the contributions of the nations and the gifts of diverse and countless peoples; the holy things of their forebears were being blotted out and the sacred rites altered. What would become of what had been contributed before, if the gifts of the nations were in the same way forbidden to be contributed in future? Or if what was allowed to all was forbidden to the Romans alone, what an incitement to war that would be! Finally, it was impious if among the Jews alone foreigners were permitted neither to sacrifice nor to bring gifts. They ought to consider how Caesar's peace would be broken; moved by such an offense, he would no doubt take away from the Jews all use of sacrifices; and since those who had rejected Caesar's sacrifice would not be able to sacrifice even for themselves, it must be forestalled in time. For if such decrees reached Florus, and from him no doubt Caesar, it would be a plague and loss to the Jewish nation. At the same time, wishing to support this with the testimony of the priests, they asked whether the sacrifices of gentiles had ever been renounced by their forebears. To keep this from being made clear, those ready for sedition raised an uproar; not even the ministers of the altar dared to involve themselves in so great a contention of quarreling men. One remedy seemed left: that Florus and King Agrippa should come with a military force, so that at least those whom counsel could not call back would desist from fear. But Florus, who wished the sedition to increase so that the Jews would have no room for pardon (for unless they were entangled in war, all opportunity of pressing his robberies and graver crimes would be extinguished), allowed the fury of war to grow and gave the envoys no reply. Agrippa, however, for the common good, especially as his relatives Saul, Antipas, and Costobar sought it in their embassy—to keep the Jews for the Romans, religion for the Jews, the temple for the fatherland, the city for the citizens, and for himself the honor of rule and the peace of the kingdom—sent three thousand horsemen under the squadron commanders Darius and Philip, so that, relying on this help, those who counseled the better side might strive more readily. From this confidence arose among the good and indignation among the wicked, and the war grew. Since the one side had the juster cause, yet no agreement of arms helped it, and fury and numbers inflamed the others, the lines of fighters were divided. The chiefs of the priests and the part of the people that desired peace occupied the upper part of the city with the king's horsemen; the others, placed in the lower part, claimed for themselves the temple and the places near the sacred precinct. First on both sides they provoked war with stones and rocks and the throwing of missiles, and fought it out with arrows. Afterwards, as the necessity of fighting chanced to arise, they came to close quarters; the king's men excelled in skill and experience, wishing to keep the instigators of war from access so that they would not defile the temple; on the other side Eleazar and his men were eager to attack also the upper city, which was called Zion. For seven days they fought without any break. The eighth day, the feast on which all used to bring wood to the altars so that the fire, which had to remain unquenched, would never fail, added fury, so that all ministers were shut out of the temple. As the sicarii burst out more boldly than usual, the king's men gave way and dared not hold even the upper parts. The houses of Agrippa and Berenice were burned, all the royal furniture plundered; fire was carried about so that the bonds of debtors, stored in the public archives, would be burned. So that the poor might rise up more insolently against their creditors, thinking themselves released from every obligation, they burned the city with their own hands; the sinews of the city were burned. The fortress called Antonia was stormed, all the guards found there were killed, and afterwards it was burned. Menahem too, son of Judas the Galilean, a fierce and skilled sophist, practiced in stirring up affairs, burst out to Masada, broke into the armories, and armed the unarmed. Returning to Jerusalem with guards attending him as if in royal fashion, he grew insolent to such a degree that, going beyond a private man's practice, he did not think he should refrain even from unlawful things that free peoples could not bear. When very many rose against him, charging that he, propped up by royal attire, had fallen upon the citizens' freedom as a tyrant and master, he paid a heavy penalty, dying after first being afflicted with tortures; yet the discord was not removed, for a much graver movement arose. In the end Metilius with the Roman soldiers asked to be allowed to depart; and when good faith had been given and oaths sworn, and they had laid down their arms according to the agreement, as they went away without fear, many were cut down by Eleazar and the partners of his faction—thinking they should not resist force but entreat, they only cried out against the violated faith and the perjury of the faithless. So all were killed. Metilius himself, commander of the soldiers, by asking and begging, and at the same time promising that he would become a Jew even to the point of circumcision, was alone spared.

All Judea was ablaze; the whole province of Syria too was roused to war. The people of Caesarea killed all the Jews they had; roused by grief at this, the Jews attacked and overthrew very many cities of Syria. Nowhere was there law, nowhere religion; he was nobler who had plundered more, as if heaping up the rewards of bravery. It was a pitiable spectacle, when unburied bodies lay everywhere in the cities, old men mixed with boys, women too, not even left the coverings to hide their nakedness out of shame for the onlookers; everything was foul and full of pitiable sights, which, though they exceeded the black horror of grave and wicked cruelty, still threatened each other with worse. There was monstrous brigandage between Jews and Syrians, since there was no hope of safety except to forestall each other. For what city was there that did not have Jews and Syrians mixed together? Days were spent in blood, nights in dread; there was no measure in hatred or in greed. For besides the difference of sects and worship, which had broken out into a public evil, so that each wished the other destroyed, greed of having and lust of seizing had so invaded their minds that they thought no one they had marked for death for the sake of plunder should be spared. Why should I speak of the smaller numbers of the slain? For apart from the people of Antioch, Sidon, and Apamea, hardly any people did not persecute the Jews living with them. The Gerasenes, however, escorted those who wished to leave as far as their own borders, so that they departed without any treachery. At Alexandria a contention arose between gentiles and Jews; while the Hebrews were demanding vengeance and, having seized torches, were threatening to burn the people of the gentiles gathered in the amphitheater, they turned against themselves Alexander Tiberius, the prefect of the place, who was busy with other things. At first he tried to restore public concord by peaceable words; but when he saw that they mocked what he earnestly urged, and that so great a sedition could be removed in no other way, he gave the soldiers power to attack them. They surrounded and attacked them and made a very great slaughter throughout the whole city, killing some who resisted, others who fled, others hiding in their houses; nor was there any pity for little children, reverence for old men, or modesty toward women. So about fifty thousand of the Jews were slaughtered: the streets swam with blood, everything was filled with corpses, the flames crackled through the city in a savage fire, which, carried into the houses of the Jews, devoured the neighboring ones too. At last Alexander relented and ordered the soldiers to stop and sound the retreat; but the anger of the mob, once advanced to the power of killing, was by no means appeased.

For they were paying the penalty of their crimes, who after they had crucified the Lord Jesus, the judge of divine things, afterwards persecuted his disciples too. Yet many of the Jews and very many of the gentiles believed in him, drawn by his moral precepts and by works flowing beyond human power; and not even his death put an end to their faith or to his grace—indeed it increased their devotion. So they laid parricidal hands on him and led the author of life to Pilate to be killed; they began to press the reluctant judge. In this Pilate was not excused, but the madness of the Jews was heaped up; for neither ought he to have condemned one whom he had found by no means guilty, nor ought they to have doubled sacrilege with parricide, so that he who had offered himself to redeem and heal them was slaughtered by them. About him the Jews themselves also bear witness, since Josephus, the writer of histories, says that there was at that time a wise man—“if indeed,” he says, “it is right to call him a man”—a worker of wonderful deeds, “who appeared to his disciples on the third day after his death, alive again, according to the writings of the prophets, who prophesied both these and countless other things full of miracles about him; from whom the community of Christians began,” and it penetrated every race of men, nor did any nation of the Roman world remain that was left without a share in his worship. If the Jews do not believe us, let them at least believe their own. Josephus said this, whom they think the greatest; and yet in the very thing in which he spoke truly he was so astray in mind that he did not believe his own words; but he spoke for the reliability of his history, because he thought it wrong to deceive. He did not believe, because of hardness of heart and a set purpose of unbelief. Yet his not believing did not prejudice the truth; rather it added to the testimony, that even an unbeliever, against his will, did not deny it. In this the eternal power of Christ Jesus shone out, that even the leaders of the synagogue, who had seized him to put him to death, confessed him God. And truly, as God, without respect of persons and without any fear of death, he spoke and announced also the future destruction of the temple; but it was not the injury to the temple that moved them, but, because they were rebuked by him for their crimes and sacrileges, their anger blazed up so that they killed him whom no ages had contained. For while others by praying earned the power to do what they did, he had it in his power to command everything he wished to be done. Before the death of Jesus, John the Baptist had been killed, a holy man, who had never set the truth of salvation in worldly things. In addition to all the things full of justice that he taught, by which he invited the Jews to the worship of God, he had also instituted baptism for the purification of soul and body. The cause of his death was his freedom of speech, because he could not bear that the rights of his brother's marriage had been violated by Herod and his brother's wife taken away. For when this Herod was going to Rome, he entered for hospitality the house of his brother, whose wife was Herodias, daughter of Aristobulus and sister of King Agrippa, and, forgetful of nature, he dared to solicit her to leave his brother and marry him. When he returned from the city of Rome, with the woman's consent the incestuous pact was made. Word of the matter reached the daughter of King Aretas, who was still in marriage with Herod. Indignant at her rival, she suggested to her returning husband that she be sent to the town of Machaerus, which was on the border between the king of Petra and Herod. He, suspecting nothing, and at the same time because he had already lessened all his affection for her, so as more easily to keep faith with Herodias in their pact if he sent his wife away, agreed to her suggestion. But she, when she came near her father's kingdom, betrayed what she knew to her father Aretas, who, provoking Herod by war, destroyed his whole army by ambush, betrayal having been made by those of the people of Philip the tetrarch who had attached themselves to Herod. Hence Herod brought a complaint to Caesar; but the wrath of God took away the vengeance Caesar ordered. For in the very preparation for war Caesar's death was announced. And we find that the Jews judged and believed (Josephus being a reliable witness against himself) that Herod lost his army not by the fraud of men but by the stirring of God, and justly, for the vengeance of John the Baptist, a just man, who had said to him: “It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife.” But we have woven these things in as though the Jews had at least kept their own lawful ordinances, among whom the law of the high priesthood had perished, intercepted either by greed or by the insolence of the powerful, who thought what they wished was lawful. For from the beginning Aaron was high priest, who by God's will passed on to his sons by lawful anointing the privilege of the priesthood; by them, in order of succession, those were appointed who held the leadership of the priesthood. Hence it became established by ancestral custom that no one should become chief of the priests unless he was of the blood of Aaron, to whom this right of priesthood was first given; a man of another family, not even a king, was allowed to succeed. Indeed Uzziah, because he usurped the office of priesthood, was covered with leprosy, cast out of the temple, and spent the rest of his life without rule; and he was certainly a very good king, but it was not lawful for him to usurp the office of religion.

From the time the fathers came out of Egypt until the building of the temple that Solomon founded, there were thirteen chiefs of the priests, over six hundred and twelve years, because at first whoever was chief of the priests continued until his death, and no one was substituted in the place of the living; later they were replaced even while alive. So these thirteen obtained the priesthood by succession; in their times there was both aristocracy and monarchy, the power of the Judges and of the Kings. Again, from Solomon until the time of the captivity, when the people migrated into Syria, the city having been taken and the temple burned, there were eighteen chiefs of the priests over four hundred and sixty years, six months, and ten days; and after that the people were in captivity seventy years. Afterwards, when Cyrus released the people of the fathers from the region of the Assyrians and gave them permission to build the temple, he also allowed the chief of the priests, Jozadak, who had been carried off with them, to return, so that the rites of the ancient solemnity might be restored through the knowledge of an experienced priest. He and his descendants, fifteen men in number, served in order of succession from the people's return until Antiochus Eupator, and represented the leadership of the priesthood for four hundred and fourteen years. First the Antiochus we mentioned above and his general Lysias, after killing Onias, chief of the priests, put Alcimus in his place in the priesthood. Though he was of the family of Aaron, he was not of that house. Hence Ananias, Onias's brother, going to Egypt, asked Ptolemy Philometor and Cleopatra, Philometor's wife—who had introduced into the worship of the city of Alexandria rites of observance after the likeness of the Jerusalem solemnity—that he be made chief of the priests there, since Alcimus did not have the lawful succession of the priesthood. And Alcimus died after three years and did not deserve to have a successor, he who had abolished the solemnity of lawful succession. So the city was without a chief priest for seven years. Up to this time the return of the fathers from the lands of the Assyrians had kept a democracy, because the people of the Jews recognized that it had been led into captivity through the iniquities of kings. Afterwards the Hasmoneans, having obtained power to govern the people, appointed Jonathan chief of the priests, who held the office he had taken up for seven years and ended his life through the plots of Trypho. In his place Simon, his brother, succeeded as by hereditary right, yet through election; we have learned that he was killed at a banquet by the plots of his son-in-law. From him the privilege of the priesthood passed to his son Hyrcanus, whom flight had rescued from danger. To Hyrcanus succeeded Aristobulus, who also joined the kingship to that office so as to share in both; and to Aristobulus, Alexander. With Alexander both kingship and priesthood remained to the last day of his life, that is, for twenty-seven years, though mostly in an uncertain state; for victory was doubtful between him and Demetrius, and the hatred of the citizens was monstrous. This Alexander, dying, seeing that the inheritance of his hatreds was dangerous for his sons, wished his wife Alexandra to preside over the royal helm—unpracticed in government and in the habit of public counsels, yet more pleasing to the people, because she had often been a protection to those endangered by her husband's savagery and a moderating influence on her husband—making her at the same time arbiter of which of her sons the high priesthood should chiefly be entrusted to. She put Hyrcanus in his father's place in the priesthood, either because of the privilege of greater age or because, being of a milder temper than his brother, he seemed unlikely to cause his mother any trouble about the affairs of the kingdom. To Aristobulus she entrusted no public office. But even while his mother was living, taking occasion of her illness, he acted as king in remote and well-fortified places. Offended by this and troubled by Hyrcanus's complaints, his mother fed the force of her illness, and, her rule not going beyond nine years, she left Hyrcanus heir of everything—not that she presumed he would keep it, but so as not to help the unworthy or inflame the usurper's insolence by a more favorable decision. But Alexandra's death took from Hyrcanus too both priesthood and kingdom. For, beaten in war, he betook himself to stronger places; and having held the wife and children of Aristobulus, whom he had found in the fortress, he accepted a change of condition, so that all power and the priesthood should pass to Aristobulus, and he himself should withdraw as a private man to Aristobulus's house. Yet he was not long content to have exchanged the royal palace for a private dwelling. For, roused by Antipater, he first went to Arabia, as if protesting the injustice of the agreement. Then, when he saw that the help of the Arab king was weak against the Romans, whom Aristobulus had drawn into alliance with himself through Scaurus, he brought his complaint to Pompey on his arrival. Pompey struck Aristobulus, who was mocking him, now in the third year of his rule, with war, took him by his authority, and put him under guard before the victory; and when his people had been overcome and the city taken, ordering him to be sent captive to Rome with his sons, he restored to Hyrcanus the dignity of the priesthood and set him as governor over the citizens, yet without the diadem and the insignia of kingship—generous with honor, but a counselor of quiet, so that peace would not be disturbed by the spirit of a brother's insolence. So Aristobulus, though captured, stripped Hyrcanus of the kingdom; Hyrcanus spent twenty-four years afterwards in power, more in use than in name. Yet the end of power was not Hyrcanus's end of life. For the remaining time turned to disgrace, as we mentioned above: beaten in battle when the Parthians crossed the Euphrates, captured, and given into the power of Antigonus, son of Aristobulus, his ears cut off, not even so did he fill up the bitterness of his pitiable misery. For after that, carried off into Parthia as well, an exile, crippled, an old man, he made himself a mockery to the barbarians; and later, learning that Herod was ruling, whose marriage his granddaughter Mariamne enjoyed, he returned to Judea. There at first he was received with the greatest show of honor, which was spread as a veil over a plot; not long after, a charge being invented that he wished to recover power, he was killed. So Herod, having obtained the kingdom, which he had received from the Romans as the price of a country attacked or betrayed, in the place of Antigonus, who had held the rule three years and three months, set successors in the priesthood not of the Hasmonean family, which we have learned was of the most illustrious descent, but low-born men, whom either whim or chance had supplied. Yet, worn out by the prayers of his mother-in-law Alexandra, or terrified by accusations, he made priest Jonathan, his wife's brother, then seventeen years old; whom he himself soon put to death, suspecting him of aiming at rule, because he saw the immense favor of the whole people growing around him day by day. So, setting aside Ananel, whom he had earlier appointed to the priesthood from among the low-born before Jonathan, he chose the rest in order of this kind, men about whom he had nothing to suspect. For what he could not bear in a kinsman, how would he not beware of similar things in strangers? In such appointments Archelaus, following the pattern of his father's custom, held to the judgment of a narrower mind, by a certain habit implanted in mortals, that with them the sloth of the duller is less suspect than the favor of the good—though a weak mind is more insolent in prosperity, while a prudent one knows how to return thanks for kindnesses. So from the reign of Herod to the Roman rule, which, after Archelaus was deposed, had joined Judea to the other provinces, and from then to the destruction of the temple and the triumph of Titus, there were twenty-eight chiefs of the priests over one hundred and seventy years. Indeed, with most of them there was only the exercise of the dignity; with few the right of power as well. It is clear, then, that among the chiefs of the priests the succession of the lawful family did not persist, because not all were from Aaron or from his sons who, having been put in his place, left to the rest the form of prescribed succession. So since the institutions of their forebears had been corrupted by the greed or faithlessness of their own, the rights of religion violated, the defenses of equity torn down, not undeservedly did divine help desert them; and it went so far, as against an empty people, with every kind of injury, that by domestic seditions they turned their hands against themselves, were afflicted with grievous brigandage, and received the foulest judges, so that worse men succeeded the wicked. In the end Albinus was held the worst of his predecessors; but when Florus succeeded, Albinus was counted among the good—Florus, who raised the torch of war and kindled the battle between Jews and Romans, which was the cause of the final destruction of the temple and the city.

For Cestius, who had received from the Romans the supreme military command in the region of Syria, when he learned that the Jews were burning with such fury, took up arms in the twelfth year of Nero's rule to avenge the slaughter of the Roman soldiers to whom the guard for restraining insolence and protecting the peace had been entrusted. Having gathered also the auxiliaries of the allies, he entered Judea and allowed the army to plunder the city called Chabulon, whose inhabitants had slipped away, full of riches that their owners, fleeing to the heights of the mountains, had been unable to carry off with them. Though he admired the beauty of its public buildings, he ordered it to be burned; and as if this were too little for vengeance, he sent his army ahead to Joppa, so that no one would escape destruction by flight; those appointed burst in by land and sea, and he took it; eight thousand four hundred men and more were killed, and when the plunder had given out, the city was burned. He also ravaged the district near Caesarea, plundered what was found, and burned the villages. Sepphoris broke his drive: all its people came out to meet Cestius, and, soothed by the goodwill and favor of the citizens, he left the city free of disaster. In these places a gathering of brigands was seething, but when the army arrived they had withdrawn into the mountains. They attacked Gallus, commander of the twelfth legion, as he advanced his standards, and harried him so fiercely that they killed about two hundred Romans. But when the Romans had seized the heights, the brigands could not withstand the infantry at close quarters, and as they fled they were easily surrounded and killed by the cavalry. So over two thousand were slain, and a few fled who were able to hide in the steep places of the mountains. The whole region being cleared of brigandage, Gallus returned to Caesarea. Cestius went with his whole force to Antipatris, against whom the Jews had gathered no small multitude. But before they joined battle, they slipped away in different directions and left the region and villages to plunder and fire. Lydda too was found empty of inhabitants and burned. Gibeon, which was fifty stadia from Jerusalem, where it received the Roman army set in full view, armed the Jews. They, setting aside the celebration of the sabbath (which they used to keep eagerly with ancient worship and solemn observance), leapt on the Romans with such force that they would have routed the whole army had not the cavalry come to the help of the struggling infantry. Five hundred and fifteen Romans were killed, but all were in grave danger; of the Jews, twenty-two were lost in battle. In that place the valor of Monobazus and Kenedaeus shone out: learning that the Jews were rising against the Roman lines, they attacked from the front, drove back very many, and forced them to return into the city.

Simon also stripped the Romans of their baggage as they went up toward the city nearby. As a result Cestius kept himself in that region for three days. During this delay the enemy, spread around and positioned on the heights, watched all the approaches so that no one could break in with impunity. Seeing that this could not be attempted without great slaughter on both sides, King Agrippa sent his men Borcius and Phoebus to tell the people that whatever outrage they had committed against the Romans would be pardoned, if only they laid down their arms and looked to themselves for the future—thinking either that all could be persuaded to renounce battle, or that a part could be torn away from the rest. But the seditious, afraid that one or the other would come about, attacked the envoys and killed Phoebus; Borcius, having received a wound, could barely escape. Cestius, seeing such contentions in the city, some rising against the envoys and others urging that the Romans be received into the city, tried to break in and drove back those who resisted as far as Jerusalem; he himself approached with his army to within three stadia of the city and spent three days there. On the fourth day he made an assault, entered Bezetha, and at once burned it and the New City. Climbing to the upper parts of the city, as the seditious fled into the inner parts, had he thought he should break into the city, the whole war would without doubt have been ended. Indeed Ananus, son of Jonathan, had posted very many to invite the Romans with their cries, as if about to open the gates. But while Cestius was called back by Priscus, or by very many centurions who, bribed by Florus, wished the war to grow, or because he did not trust them enough, Ananus and his men were thrown down from the wall. As they fled to their homes, the seditious took their place; and the Romans, for five days trying different approaches, when they saw that a breach was impossible, chose all the strongest men and archers and attacked the temple from the north side. The Jews too were not idle, fighting bravely and growing more elated as they repeatedly drove back the enemy. At last, however, some wounded by the multitude of arrows, others struck and terrified, gave way, while the Romans began to undermine the wall and set fire to the gate of the temple. Great fear had come upon the seditious and a kind of consternation of mind; in the end very many slipped away by flight as if the city were about to be destroyed at once; and, not daring to stand, they had given the people confidence, so that, with those by whose multitude it had been hemmed in departing, it poured itself around the gates as if already free and released from a kind of siege by the wicked, to open them and receive Cestius, as if he had come not to attack the city but to defend it. But a sudden stupor seized Cestius himself, so that he saw neither the despair of the wicked nor the zeal of the people. Had he pressed on a little with what he had begun, he would have driven off the war and taken the city. But the will of God, hostile to the Jews (so far as it is given to understand), postponed the imminent end of the war until the ruin of the Jewish nation should involve very many, almost all. It was being waited, I think, until all wickedness and the enormity of crimes should grow, and by the increase of impiety should match the measure of the final outrages. What was it that, when Cestius ought to have pressed on, he suddenly called back his army and raised the siege? By a sudden change of affairs against expectation, the spirits of the good were broken and those of the brigands raised; they took confidence and, turning back from flight to pursuit, fell on the rear of the column and slaughtered many horse and foot rushing in confusion. The day had already declined; so Cestius, fearing the convenience of night and the gloom of darkness, in which those who knew the ground would trust more, so as to press on every side men unfamiliar with the region, set up a vain camp before the city, and on the next day, when he was leaving the enemy, he armed them against himself, so that they judged the cause of his departure to be fear. So the brigands, spreading around on the flanks and behind, cut down the rearmost, harassed the marching army with javelins, and the force of missiles thrown into the packed ranks was hardly ever wasted. If anyone dared strike back, he was exposed to wounds; if anyone turned to face the attacker, he was abandoned by his own and shut in by the enemy. For the one who follows is always better protected than the one who goes ahead, because the one covers his breast, the other exposes his back to the enemy. So the Romans were pressed hard, as if besieged, who had come to besiege; nor could they hold out or endure any longer, heavy themselves with the weight of their arms, against swifter enemies whom it was not easy to overtake, and with the greatest fear that the line would be broken. So, under unequal conditions of combat, they could not harm the enemy while they themselves suffered heavily. Cestius hesitated, uncertain of counsel, seeing his men worn down even on a safe road; and with many of the leading officers of the army also struck, he halted for two days as if to restore the weary. But when he saw the number of the enemy growing more and more, and everything around filled with adversaries, and that delay was harming him because more gathered, on the third day, seeking a short cut to an easier passage, he ordered the baggage of the column to be removed: the pack animals were killed, most of the wagons broken up, and other things of the kind that were more a burden than a use in dangers were destroyed or thrown down, such as siege engines and kinds of missiles—by which they were the more terrified, lest they arm the enemy against themselves with their own equipment. When the Jews noticed that flight rather than war was being prepared by the Romans, they seized the narrower parts of the route, pressed them less in the open places, blocked them in front, hemmed them in on the flanks, pushed them from behind, and forced them toward the precipice, down which, shut in on every side or slipping, they were thrown. Very many covered the sky with javelins and the column with arrows, never relaxing their effort, but only the destruction of their adversaries. Now not even the infantry could stand firm; and for the cavalry the danger was greater, since their horses slipped and they rolled down over the steep and slippery rocks, and, hampered by the narrow path, they could not keep order. On one side the rocks, on the other the precipices denied both a place of flight and of defense. The Jews, on the other hand, were inflamed the more by the hope of victory: they overhung those who gave way, pressed those who were stuck, mocked those who despaired, and would almost have destroyed all the forces of the Roman army had not night come to the rescue. By its darkness the war was hindered, which the Romans spent in the nearest place, called Beth-horon, so that the Jews, spread around on every side, watched the exits of the place lest the Romans slip away. Cestius, distrusting an open route, attempted flight by a trick. He chose forty men, in whom despair of escape had instilled contempt of death; he stationed them in the fortifications with orders to make all night long the greatest noise around the rampart of men performing guard duty, so that the preparations of an army setting out would not be revealed to the Jews by any of the usual signs by which all who are disturbed usually betray themselves; but all the rest should go out in silence, the Jews suspecting nothing, since they would hear the customary noises of the watches, from which they would judge that all the Romans were staying in the place. By this trick Cestius led out his army, and had already covered thirty stadia, using in a doubtful situation the loyalty of a few, who, though about to die, preferred to do their comrades a service rather than to waste their own dangers. Night had covered the trick, but day betrayed it. For when the light spread and things were plain, and the whole place where the Romans had stayed appeared empty, the Jews made an attack; first they fell on those by whose feigned duties they had been deceived, and having destroyed the forty men with light effort, they pursued the army, which, having covered most of the distance in the night, pressed its march more hurriedly by day, so as not to be involved again in the dangers of night. The road was full of the baggage that the fleeing Romans had left behind, so that no one would be delayed under an unfair burden: everywhere lay vessels, implements, and even things needed for war, crossbows, rams, and the other instruments brought for the destruction of the city; the pursuing Jews passed these by so as not to be delayed, but on their return they collected them to use against those whose comrades had abandoned them. For they followed as far as the city of Antipatris; after they found that the whole Roman army had passed it and the hope of capturing it had slipped away, they turned back, and, seizing the spoils of the slain, returned to Jerusalem with triumph and hymns. So great was their joy that, with few of their own lost, five thousand foot and three hundred horse of the Roman army were killed. This happened in the twelfth year of Nero's rule, as we mentioned above.

But that exultation was not shared by all the Jews. For there were some who, after that—not battle of Cestius but disaster—were eager to save themselves as from the last danger of a sinking ship and to swim out of the shipwreck of the city; and above the rest Costobar and Saul his brother, with Philip, commander of King Agrippa's troops. These fled and betook themselves to Cestius, asking to be sent to Nero in Achaia. Cestius willingly accepted this and did not refuse their requests, so that through them Caesar might be informed that Florus had been the cause of the war; that the force of the greatest necessity had pressed upon him in the war, so that his army was surrounded by an unexpected multitude of conspirators—an army which he had rather rescued from danger by a commander's counsel than left entangled. Cestius had tried to calm the hatreds roused against Florus but could not; so he had met with war, not brought it on. These were the instructions, so that, with all Caesar's anger roused against Florus, he hoped Caesar's offense toward himself would be lessened, which he was rightly afraid of from awareness of a matter badly handled. So many were terrified by the disaster to the Roman army that the people of Damascus, fearing the contagion of a suspected alliance because of living together, killed the Jews who lived in the city with them, having gathered them in the gymnasium. They had arranged this long before, whether from suspicion or by trickery, so that the Jews would be separated from gentile gatherings, lest they attempt any revolution by night, or so that they would lie open to exile alone. They kept it a deep secret of silence, so that word of such an undertaking did not reach even their own wives, since these too, for the most part, were attached to the worship of the Jews.

So, attacking them all in a narrow place, they killed ten thousand of the Jews. This was easy, since the unarmed, caught beforehand by armed men, perished. A recent example of this savagery had gone even further at Scythopolis, by which, I think, the people of Damascus were incited. For when the Jews were ravaging all the neighboring places, they came to Scythopolis, and when they began to test the Jews who lived there, they found as adversaries those whom they thought loyal to them; because, by the way of human nature, concern for their safety outweighed kinship with them. Putting their fellow tribesmen in second place, they preferred alliance with the inhabitants and threatened their tribesmen with slaughter. This was suspect to the gentiles, because the execution of hatred against their own was being shown with too ready zeal—lest a trick be prepared under a show of pretense, and they attack the city by night when the inhabitants were less wary, and, having struck down all the gentiles, reconcile themselves with the Jews. So, if they wished to prove their good faith toward the gentiles also, they should leave the city with all their families and go to a neighboring grove. When this was done, the people of Scythopolis kept quiet for two days, so that this portion of the Jews would lay aside suspicion and put on security. On the third night, when the trust the gentiles had presumed had removed their anxiety, violence was brought on the unwary and sleeping, thirteen thousand people were killed, and whatever they had was plundered.

The bitter suffering of Simon demands an account, pitiable to see and hear, but memorable for the strangeness of the thing. He was among the people of the Jews, born of a father named Saul, not undistinguished, endowed with daring of spirit and strength of body. Both of these he used for the destruction of his fellow tribesmen, for by frequent attacks he killed very many of the Jewish people who came against the city; and if they happened to come in a body, he alone would hold the line, and, charging, usually turned them back; he was the knot and the delay of the whole war, and often the turning point when things were desperate. The inhabitants of Scythopolis had shown their citizens a soldier against his own; but the vengeance owed to kindred blood did not long fail. For when faith was broken and the Scythopolitans who had gone by agreement to the grove were surrounded, the attackers began to press and fall upon them in war. With the multitude of the rest destroyed, they assailed even Simon's children and parents, though from a distance, with missiles and javelins. Simon, seeing the countless multitude easily stronger, so that it could no longer be withstood, drew his sword and, turning against the enemy, cried out: “Men of Scythopolis, I receive what my deeds deserve, I who bore witness to my goodwill toward you by the slaughter of my kinsmen which I spent for you, and gave you the blood of my brothers as a hostage of my favor—men to whom faithlessness would more justly be ascribed. Now, while I keep faith with foreigners, I have lost it with my own. I have betrayed even my children and parents—whom you ought nonetheless to kill, if you value the reward of crime. So I shall die, angry with all, friend to none, who have betrayed my own; and I shall first exact vengeance on myself with my own hands. I killed partners in religion and sharers in faith; I acknowledge what my crime deserves. I shall pay a parricide worthy of so great a sacrilege, so that it may be both a penalty for the outrage and glory for courage—lest anyone else boast of my wound; my right hand will afterwards be turned against myself, so that it may seem to be fury that I die, not weakness; lest anyone insult me as I fall, let mercy be the avenger of parricide, and parricide of sacrilege.” Having said this, he turned his gaze on his children and parents, and with indignant eyes, pity now mixed with wrath succeeding, he seized his father from their midst and ran him through with the sword; after him his mother was drawn forward, so that there would be no one to intercede for the grandchildren. His wife offered herself willingly in order, so as not to outlive so great a husband once he had fallen. His sons ran up, lest they be judged degenerate from so great a father in death itself. He hurried with a swift blow to forestall the enemy. So, when his whole family was destroyed, he stood in the midst of his own dead; and as if triumphing over his domestic sufferings, because he saw none of his own perish by another's sword, he raised his right hand so that all might see, and, subjecting himself to a death fearful to all, as victor he ran himself through with his own blade. A memorable young man for outstanding strength of body and greatness of spirit; but because he kept faith with foreigners rather than with his own, he deserved such an end.

After this was reported to Nero, who was then in the region of Achaia and had been striving by practice of tragic songs to carry off the stage crown from several contests—you would not know which was more shameful, that an emperor came out on the stage or that he filled the stage with his own crimes, he who disgraced Orestes by singing him and represented him by his own parricide—grave fear seized him. Dreading not those imitations of games but the extremities of wars, he came to his senses at last from the obscenity of theatrical pleasures and the fury of parricidal madness, and, turning to the cares of the state, he raged and stormed within himself that the Roman state had received so great a disaster through the carelessness of a commander rather than the valor of its adversaries. He tried indeed to feign boldness, but fear refuted him; and he tried to put forward a show of greatness of spirit, as if his mind were above the troubles of affairs. But he was torn by anxiety of mind as to which commander he should choose to remove the disgrace and finish the war. The coming destruction of the final ruin was pressing on Judea, so that Nero put on a kingly character and with the voice of a provident counselor expressed a sound judgment: that Vespasian alone was the one to whom the supreme military command in the regions of the East should rightly be entrusted, a man grown old from youth in the service of triumphant warfare, who had settled with long peace the Gauls when, unpacified by the turmoil of the Germans and by the ferocity of native rashness, they had relapsed into war. He had also won by arms for the Roman empire Britain, still lying hidden among the waves; by the wealth of that conquered land Rome was thought richer, Claudius wiser, Nero braver. So they had celebrated trophies over subjugated nations whose wars they had not seen. Under this commander (I say it again) Nero was terrible, Nero to be feared, powerful abroad, safe at home, Vespasian's loyalty and courage being equal to each other. How great was this man, by whose arms the life of Nero was hidden among foreign nations, so that a mockery of human affairs, the disgrace of sworn impurity, was made illustrious even with triumphs! So when there was fighting to be done on the farthest borders of the Roman world, Vespasian was chosen out of all. When war had been laid aside, Vespasian was associated with him above the rest, so that neither a public enemy should survive nor a domestic plotter creep in. He was worthy to arrive at kingship by a soldier's service. He taught loyalty and showed courage. Nero sent him unwillingly, taking away his own protection; but he was hemmed in by the coming punishments of his crimes, so that, separated from so great a companion, he left himself unarmed. Never, surely, would Galba have taken up the ambition of aspiring to the empire had he not learned that Vespasian was absent. But God arranged this, that a man should be sent into Syria who would both shake the insolence of the Jews with the final destruction of their nation and the disgrace of captivity, and leave Nero without help—though no one's valor can bring any hindrance to heavenly decrees. Yet Nero, mad as he was, when he learned that a strong force of the Roman army had been stricken in the war with the Jews, rose against the Christians, so that the end owed to him drew near.

At that time Peter and Paul, teachers of the Christians, were at Rome, sublime in works and famous for their teaching. By the power of their works they had made Nero hostile, for he had been captured by the blandishments of Simon Magus, who had won his mind over to himself. Simon promised him by deadly arts help to victory, the subjection of nations, length of life, and protection of his safety; and Nero believed him, not knowing how to examine the reality of things. In the end Simon held the highest place of friendship with him, since he even regarded him as the guardian of his safety and the keeper of his life. But when Peter uncovered his vanities and crimes and showed that he made false appearances of things and accomplished nothing solid or true, he was held a laughingstock and was consumed with deserved grief. And although he had experienced Peter's power in other parts of the world, yet, getting to Rome first, he dared to boast that he could raise the dead. At that time at Rome a noble young man, a relative of Caesar, had died, to the grief of all. Many urged that it should be tried whether he could be raised. Peter was held most famous for such works; but among the gentiles no credence was given to a deed of this kind. Grief demanded a remedy: they went to Peter. There were some who thought Simon too should be summoned; both came. Peter said: let Simon, who boasted of his own power, take the first turn, to raise the dead man if he could. If he did not raise him, Peter would not fail to bring the help of Christ to the dead man so that he could rise. Simon, who thought his arts would have great power in a city of gentiles, proposed a condition: that if he himself raised the dead man, Peter should be killed, since by provoking the Great Power (for so Simon was called) he had done him injuries; but if Peter prevailed over Simon, he should be punished in the same way. Peter agreed. Simon began; he went up to the dead man's bier; when he began to chant and mutter dreadful spells, the dead man seemed to move his head. There was a great outcry of the gentiles that he was already alive, that he was speaking with Simon; anger and indignation against Peter, that he had dared to set himself against so great a power. The holy apostle asked for silence and said: “If the dead man is alive, let him speak; if he has been raised, let him rise, walk, and talk.” What seemed to be the movement of the head, he said, was a phantasm, not truth. “Finally,” he said, “let Simon be separated from the bier, and then not even that will be on show.” Simon is led away from the bier; the dead man remains without any appearance of movement. Peter stood farther off, and, intent on prayer within himself for a little while, said with a loud voice: “Young man, rise; the Lord Jesus heals you.” And at once the young man rose, spoke, walked, and took food; and Peter gave him to his mother. When she begged him not to leave him, he said: “He will not be abandoned by the one who made him rise, whose servants we are. Be at ease, mother, about your son; do not fear; he has his guardian.” And when the people rose up against Simon to stone him, Peter said: “It is punishment enough for him that he knows his arts have no power. Let him live and see the kingdom of Christ grow, even against his will.” The magician was tortured by the apostle's glory. He collected himself, and, rousing all the power of his spells, gathered the people and said he had been offended by the Galileans; he would leave the city he used to protect. He set a day and promised a flight by which he would be carried to the heavenly dwellings, since heaven lay open to him whenever he wished. On the appointed day he climbed the Capitoline hill, and, throwing himself from the rock, began to fly. The people marveled and worshiped, many saying that this was the power of God, not of a man, who flew with his body; that Christ had done nothing of the kind. Then Peter, standing in the middle, said: “Lord Jesus, show him that his arts are vain, so that this people, which is going to believe, may not be deceived by this show. Let him fall, Lord, yet so that, living, he may recognize that he could do nothing.” And at once, at Peter's word, the oars of the wings he had put on became entangled and he fell; he was not killed, but with his leg broken and crippled he withdrew to Aricia and died there. When he learned of this, Nero, grieving that he had been deceived and abandoned, at the fall of so great a friend, and indignant that a man useful and necessary to the state had been taken from him, began to look for reasons to kill Peter. And now the time had come when the holy apostles Peter and Paul were to be called. In the end, when an order had been given for them to be arrested, Peter was begged to go elsewhere. He resisted, saying he would by no means do so, as if terrified by fear of death he should give way; it was good to suffer for Christ, who had offered himself to death for all; that would not be death but immortality; it was unworthy that he himself should flee the suffering of his body, who by his teaching had driven many to offer themselves as victims for Christ; it was owed to him, according to the Lord's word, that he too in his suffering should give glory and honor to Christ. Peter put forward these and other things; but the people, complaining with tears that he would leave them and abandon them tossed among the storms of the gentiles, overcame him with their weeping, and Peter yielded; he promised he would leave the city. The next night, having said farewell to the brothers and having prayed, he began to set out alone. When he came to the gate, he saw Christ coming to meet him, and, worshiping him, said: “Lord, where are you going?” Christ said to him: “I am coming to be crucified again.” Peter understood that this was said of his own suffering, because Christ seemed about to suffer in it—he who suffers in each one, not indeed by bodily pain but by a kind of compassion of mercy, or by the celebration of glory. And turning back, he returned to the city; seized by the persecutors and condemned to the cross, he asked to be fixed to the cross with his feet turned upward, because he was unworthy to be crucified in the same way as the Son of God suffered. This was granted, either because it was so owed, as Christ had foretold, or because a persecutor does not unwillingly grant an increase of punishments. And both he and Paul were put to death, the one by the cross, the other by the sword.

But to return to our subject: Nero, troubled by the grave news that affairs in Judea had gone badly, put Vespasian, a man experienced in war, in command of all the forces in Syria. He hastened—no time for delay was given—and, sending his son Titus to Alexandria to bring from there part of the soldiers stationed there, he himself crossed the strait of the Hellespont and made his way by land to Syria. Meanwhile the Jews, elated by their success, chose leaders for the war. They distributed the places over which each should preside, what duties each should perform, what ranks, what tasks they should carry out. They put Joseph son of Gorion and Ananus, chief of the priests, in charge of the affairs of the city of Jerusalem, and especially of restoring the walls. Eleazar son of Simon was burning to have some public office entrusted to him. Although he had brought under his own power all the plunder they had taken from the Roman army—rich especially and abundant, heaped up by the greed and immoderate robberies of Cestius—they thought him more intent on gaining power for himself than inclined to the common use, and decided he should be passed over. But gradually, by canvassing individuals, giving and lavishing, he brought it about that the direction of all affairs was committed to his judgment. Idumea too was taken under their protection by Jesus, one of the priests, and Eleazar, son of a priest, appointed commanders—reserving all precedence in the highest matters, however, to Niger, governor of all Idumea. Jericho fell to Joseph son of Simon. To Manasseh was entrusted the region of Peraea, situated across the Euphrates, which gets its name from the fact that the Euphrates is crossed by those going to that region. John the Essene and another John, son of Ananias, and the rest were assigned to other districts to protect with their care. So each did not neglect the duties entrusted to him: they built walls and chose fighting men. Of these, Josephus, going down into Galilee, energetically took care to fortify fortresses, restore ramparts, and enlist all the strongest and readiest for war; to forbid brigandage; to keep watch daily in the camp; to train the soldiers in the manner of Roman service, divide them, arrange ranks, and put very many centurions in command, so that discipline might more easily be exacted from all and no one who had neglected his own duty could stay hidden. He also taught them to recognize the trumpet calls for advance and retreat, to follow order, to dress the line, to interlock their shields so that, like a wall, if a great force of enemies should fall upon them, they could defend themselves against the attackers; to help those in difficulty, to have compassion on the weary, to take others' dangers on themselves; and not only to teach the arts of war after the pattern of Roman service, but also, before war, to announce what would most help men in fighting: that the soldier should carry his own food and arms, fortify himself with rampart and ditch, forestall the enemy in pitching camp, obey orders, become used to abstaining from theft and plunder, and count it his own gain if no loss was inflicted on the farmers in the country. For what difference would there be from enemies if he himself took things away like an enemy?—except that it is worse to attack one's own than another's, and to rob allies than adversaries. A good conscience has great power in war, because he who knows himself guilty of no crime can presume more on divine help. But by these things he found that he soon harmed himself by envy among the wicked more than he profited by favor among the good. For when he had gathered about sixty thousand foot and very few horse, and about four thousand men who waged war for pay, and also six hundred picked bodyguards, he suffered so much from the Jews that he dreaded more dangers from his own before the war than from the Romans in the war itself. I pass over what sedition was raised because he was suspected of returning what had been seized by brigandage to those who had lost it, and especially to Agrippa and Berenice, to whom it would justly be restored, so as not to make the king more hostile. And yet, to soften the people's onslaught, he said the money had been kept for building the walls rather than for indemnifying the owners; and as for everything taken from Ptolemy, who had been carrying the royal gold, garments, and other gifts, the people of Taricheae ought to judge—for the matter was being handled among them—whether they thought it should be kept for restoring their own walls or brought out to be plundered by brigands. It certainly seemed unworthy that he should receive punishment for having taken the better counsel. So, turning them to favor him, he escaped both the odium and the danger. Again, when Tiberias sought the favor and alliance of King Agrippa, Josephus, hurrying out of that city, shut the gates of Taricheae so that no messenger should go to the city of Tiberias and report that Josephus lacked military help. He himself gathered from the lake the fishing boats he could find in the time, and made for Tiberias by rowing. But when he came to the place where the appearance of the boats would be visible to those in the city, yet it could not be made out whether they were empty of fighters, he ordered them to be spread over the whole extent of the lake, so that their number would be thought greater and no one would think them empty rather than filled with warriors. Terrified by this, because they thought themselves weak against so great a multitude, they threw away their arms, opened the gates, and poured out as suppliants to Josephus, who had come nearer as if commander of a military force. He asked by what madness they had put on the mind to defect, at whose instigation they had been driven to give themselves to the adversaries; and at the same time he ordered the steersmen to take those who came to meet him to Taricheae; and there he seized about three hundred councillors and very many of the common people and put them in chains. Clitus too, summoned as the leader of that deed, he ordered to pay the penalty by having his hands cut off; and when he begged that at least one hand be left him, Josephus ordered him to cut off whichever he wished himself. Then he, seizing a sword in his right hand, cut off his left. So Tiberias was recovered. Sepphoris too attempted defection, yet by Josephus's quickness it was kept among the allied cities of the Jews; for he preferred to defend his own by calmer counsels rather than attack others'.

But Niger the Peraite, Silas the Babylonian, and John the Essene, gathering all the strong youth there was in Judea, made for Ascalon, a large city supported by strong walls but in need of resources and help, separated from the city of Jerusalem by seven hundred and twenty stadia—and by great hatreds. For this reason the Jews, wishing to destroy a city hostile to them, gathered a force and rushed upon it. Antonius commanded the city with a smaller number of the Roman army than was thought able to resist the Jews. But being a man of keen mind and a prudent warrior as well, he led out his cavalry and let them, scattered and trusting more in numbers than in courage, cross toward the city; then, as they advanced in their charge, he wore out the pursuers, scattered those in close order, routed the disordered, and chased the stragglers over the whole plain. Some, in turn, were pressed back against the walls, the means of flight cut off; others made for different directions but were surrounded by the cavalry and cut down. Many rushed on one another and trampled each other in their own rush. So, being slaughtered until evening, they lost ten thousand of their men, John and Silas, their commanders, being killed together. Few Romans were wounded in that battle. Yet the rashness of the Jews was not checked but grew hotter, for grief kindled daring and disaster the desire for vengeance. So they armed themselves with far greater fury, and before the wounds of the wounded were healed, having gathered more than the first time, they rushed on. But Antonius, having laid ambushes, caught them before they came to close quarters, shut them in with his cavalry spread around them, and ordered them to be cut down once surrounded. Again nine thousand were killed, and the rest fled. Niger himself slipped away and betook himself to a stronghold. It was a tower enclosed on every side with strong stone, which the Romans, because they could not demolish it, surrounded with fires set against it. When it was burned, he crossed from the tower into a certain cave, hid from the enemy and escaped the fire; and while the Romans felt secure, thinking he had been consumed in the fire, on the third day, when his men were looking for his body to bury it, he was given back alive and well. So, preserved to the great joy of the Jews, he was restored as if from the enemy.

Vespasian meanwhile, having crossed the Hellespont and passed through Bithynia and Cilicia, when he reached Syria, led to Antioch the legions and other military forces he found there. That city is without question the first of Syria and is therefore held its metropolis; it was founded by those who followed Alexander the Great in his wars, and is named after its founder. The site of the city stretches out to an immense length; on the heights it is narrower, because it is hemmed in on the left by the steep of a mountain, so that the area of the city could not be extended farther. Necessity marked out the place: since the Parthians broke in through hidden and pathless ways, the higher mountain would give them a hiding place from which, by unexpected arrival and swifter attack, they could pour into an unprepared Syria, had not the city set itself before the mountain like a barrier and blocked the exits to those approaching, so that if any of the barbarians climbed up, he would at once be seen from the middle of the city's hollow. Indeed, they say that when stage plays were being performed in that city, a certain author of mimes, raising his eyes to the mountain, saw the Persians approaching and said at once: “Either I am dreaming, or there is great danger: look, the Persians!” So high does the mountain stand that not even the height of the theater hinders the view of it. A river divides it through the middle, which, rising in the east, sinks into the sea not far from the city; the ancients called it Orontes from the course of its source, so that it is commonly thought to have given its name to the places, though it received it from them. By its streams, cooler from their very force, and by the zephyrs constantly blowing through those places, the whole city is cooled at almost every moment, so that in the regions of the East it hides the East. Inside are sweet waters; outside is a neighboring grove interwoven with many cypresses, and springs rich in water. They call it Daphne, because it never lays aside its green. The people are numerous and rather merry, like most of the East, and wittier than almost all, but rather given to wantonness. The city was formerly reckoned third among all the cities of the Roman world, now fourth, since Constantinople has grown, the city of the Byzantines, once the head of the Persians—now of those who repel them; for first is Rome, second Alexandria, third Antioch, fourth Constantinople. I think enough has been said about the site of the city. Nor does it seem I should linger in describing its buildings: since I have said that the East lies at its back, it is clear enough that on the left it lies toward the south, in front Europe meets it, on the right the northern nations live and the Caspian kingdoms are held, which formerly were very ready to raid Syria. But after Alexander the Great set the Caspian gate on the cliff of Mount Taurus and shut off every route to the inner nations, he made that city quiet, except perhaps when it suspects Persian movements. In that city King Agrippa was awaiting Vespasian's arrival with all his forces; and since Vespasian did not delay long, he joined his company, and with their march united they began to make for Ptolemais. To that city the inhabitants of Sepphoris came to meet them, asking that the peace they had long ago made with Cestius Gallus be confirmed by Vespasian. He praised their prudence, in that they had provided for their own safety by not provoking the Romans; having received their pledge, he took them into friendship and, adding auxiliaries of foot and horse, protected them with security, lest perhaps, stung by resentment at being abandoned, the instigators of war rise against them—since, as the people of Sepphoris offered themselves to the Roman empire, a kind of barrier of Judea was being opened, so that a passable road would lie open to the enemy into a land that by a fortunate position faced the enemy as a guard of the whole nation. For it was beyond the expectation of the place the greatest and most fortified city of Galilee; which reminds us, since there are two Galilees, one upper and the other lower, connected and joined to each other, to distinguish the one from the other. But first something must be said about both.

Both Galilees border on Syria and Phoenicia. On the west they are bounded by Ptolemais with the limits of its territory and by Mount Carmel, which formerly belonged to the Galileans but is now joined to the territory of the Tyrians; joined to it is the city of Gaba, which was once the cause of grave destruction to the Jews. On the east Hippene and Gadara cut it off with their borders; the same bounds were also fixed in old times with the region of Gaulanitis and the kingdom of Agrippa. On the south Scythopolis and Samaria each take it up with their regions, and do not allow it to extend beyond the streams of the Jordan. Its northern parts on the right side are closed by Tyre and the whole region of the Tyrians, by whose position the spaces of Galilee are bounded. The two are distinguished from each other in this way: the one called Lower Galilee spreads in length from the city of Tiberias to the city called Chabulon, above the coast of Ptolemais; its breadth runs, without doubt, from the village of Xaloth, which is in the great plain, to Bersabe. From there too the beginning of Upper Galilee opens, as far as it reaches the borders of the village of Baca; and by this same village the borders of the Tyrian land are fixed. Its length begins at the village of Thella, and its end is Meroth, near the Jordan. From this it may be understood how far the spaces of Upper Galilee extend, whose beginning is the Jordan or its borders. By this estimate of their size, then, both Galilees are distinguished. The land is rich, grassy, gleaming with various kinds of cultivation, set with trees, so as to entice anyone to love it and to invite and rouse even one who shuns labor to the pursuits of farming. In short, not even a small portion of land lies idle there: it is crowded with very many inhabitants—frequent cities, numerous villages, a countless multitude of people, so that a small village in its district has twenty thousand inhabitants. Both Galilees are surrounded by foreign nations on every side, and therefore the race of men is warlike, trained from earliest age in the trials of battle, abounding in numbers, ready in daring, and prepared for all the arts of war. Peraea, however, is greater in size; whence it got its name we said above. This is larger, but Galilee is more useful, because it is all cultivated and no part of it is barren of fruits, but its whole land is rich and fertile. Peraea is more widespread, but for the most part desert and rugged, a land that does not know how to be tamed by ploughing nor to subdue its harsher juices easily. But again a portion of it is soft for cultivation, fertile for use, pleasing to the sight, mild to work, useful for grafted fruit trees, bearing everything, so that distinct trees border its fields in front and adorn them in the middle, and often protect the crops from excessive sun or cold; the land is especially clothed with olives, interwoven with vines, or marked with palms. It cannot be told how beautiful it is when the rows of palms, driven by the wind, rustle together and the sweet scent of dates is shaken out more than usual. No wonder all the charm of greenery is there, where the field, overflowed by the pleasant courses of rivers running down from the ridge of the mountains above, is watered, and, gushing with snowy springs, is possessed with envy and longed for with love. Its length is from Machaerus to Pella, that is, from the south to the north; its breadth from Philadelphia to the river Jordan, that is, it stretches from the east to Arabia; and on the west it is shown to extend to the river Jordan. The region of Samaria lies in the middle between Judea and Galilee, beginning from the village called Ginaea and ending in the land of the Acrabatenes, of a very similar nature and in no way differing from Judea. Both are mountainous and level by turns, according to the diversity of places; neither is all spread out in plains nor everywhere cut by the cliffs of mountains, but has the charm of both qualities; the soil is loose and soft for the work of cultivation and therefore useful for grain, and in the fertility of its ground second to none, certainly first of all in the ripening of its fruits. For while grain is still being sown elsewhere, here it is being reaped. The appearance and very nature of the grain is held nowhere more excellent. The water is sweet, beautiful to see, pleasant to drink, so that the Jews judged by the charm of the elements that the land promised to the fathers was flowing with milk and honey, though it had promised them the privilege of the resurrection. And divine goodness would have conferred both, had they kept faith; but from faithless minds both were taken away: the one by the yoke of captivity, the other by the bond of sin. The region is wooded and therefore rich in cattle and abounding in milk; indeed nowhere does the flock carry udders so swollen with milk. Wild and grafted fruits exceed the abundance of all regions. Both Judea and Samaria are filled with a multitude of people, so that the Jews seem to me to have interpreted from this what is written, that there will be no barren or unfruitful woman in those places, though the law prescribed this about the fruitfulness of merits and the fertility of virtues. The beginning of Samaria from the borders of Arabia is at a village called Jordan; its end to the north is the village of Dorea. The breadth of Judea runs from the river Jordan to Joppa. For it begins from the springs of the Jordan and from Mount Lebanon, and is extended as far as the lake of Tiberias. Its length begins at the village of Arpha and extends to the village of Julias, in which there is a common habitation of Jews and Tyrians alike. In the middle of Judea is the city of Jerusalem, called, as wise men have held, the navel of the whole region. The region abounds in inland resources and is not cheated of maritime ones, because it extends as far as Ptolemais and borders that whole sea with its shores. There are many cities, but among all Jerusalem stands out, so that, like the head in the body, it does not overshadow its limbs but rules them and is their protection and beauty. So concerning Judea and the neighboring regions we have not omitted, though in a suitable summary, what needed to be pointed out.

The people of Sepphoris, having received tribute and military reinforcements, were raiding the neighboring regions, claiming for themselves a free authority for brigandage under color of the war that the Jews were bringing on the Roman empire. So Josephus, eager to avenge the injury of the harshness he had suffered, gathered a great number of men and hastened to fall upon the city of Sepphoris, either to call them back into alliance with Judea or, if they resisted, to shake them with final destruction if he could. But both attempts failed of effect, because he could neither dissuade them from their choice of the Roman connection nor overthrow the city that he himself had strengthened with such fortifications that it could not be stormed even by the Romans, far stronger as they were. So he sounded the retreat, the attempted assault having had no result, and roused war throughout the whole region. The Romans laid everything waste, burning buildings day and night, plundering what they had seized, subjecting the weak to slavery. All Galilee was filled with fire, blood, and brigandage, free of no misery, and with a hideous appearance of everything, since whatever survived fire or slaughter was reserved for captivity. Those things which a little before were thought the bitterest were preferred to this evil.

This was a kind of prelude to the war, before Titus came. As soon as he crossed from Achaia to Alexandria and brought the soldiers according to his father's orders, he came to meet him at the city of Ptolemais; and there, having joined the fifth and tenth legions, with the fifteenth also added, which were the most excellent, and the army of Romans and allies having been gathered, they began a fierce and memorable war. For when, at the first beginnings, things that had gone well for a mild commander turned to adversity, Vespasian set out in harsher mood and plunged with his son from the borders of Ptolemais into Galilee. Learning that they refused peace—to whom he had offered the opportunity of condemning their dissension, if they chose to look to themselves—he utterly overthrew Gabara, which he found empty of fighters, because all the stronger men, distrusting its weaker fortifications, had gone to more fortified places. He spared none he found but ordered all to be killed, with no regard for age, no pity for weakness, which he carried out not so much by the law of war as from grief at Cestius's battle and from hatred poured out on the Jews. Indeed he ordered not only the city but also the villages and towns to be burned. Nor was his anger unjust, because after such great insolence he had given them the opportunity to amend their error, and he had not been obeyed. Josephus had crossed from that city to Tiberias before the Roman army approached; but his flight caused more fear than his presence gave confidence. For they were terrified by the very fact that Josephus judged himself unequal to waging war against the Romans. Nor did he expect anything else, unless the Jews should lay aside their eagerness for war. His earlier view was this: if they chose war, he preferred to keep faith with his fellow citizens by undergoing danger rather than to show himself a traitor by avoiding it. For he guarded against nothing more than disgracing the very honor of command entrusted to him. So he wrote to the city of Jerusalem that war was upon them, and that they should write back quickly whether they preferred peace or battle; counsel must be taken in good time. He indicated this briefly, inclining to neither side, so as not to be judged either a timid warrior or a stubborn rebel.

From the city of Tiberias he went again to Jotapata, either because it was more fortified than the rest and therefore very many of those readiest for war had gathered there, or because Vespasian had sent many of his men there to make a road, since the way through the mountains was difficult and rocky, hard for foot soldiers and impassable and insuperable for horsemen. In four days, so that the narrows would not hinder them, the paved roads were opened, a route laid out by which the whole army could more easily pass. On the fifth day Josephus crossed there and raised the downcast spirits of the Jews. When Vespasian was informed that Josephus had gone there, this added a spur to hasten his march, because he thought it a short cut to finishing the war if the commander and the people readiest for war were caught. So he arrived with his army, and on the first day he gave the soldiers time to refresh themselves with food, so that they would not come to the business of war tired from the march. On the next day he surrounded the city with a double line, and on the third with a line of cavalry. When the Jews saw themselves shut in and besieged on all sides, with no place of refuge, they took daring from despair itself. For nothing makes a soldier readier for war than the necessity of fighting and a headlong danger. Vespasian pressed with javelins, pressed with arrows; and many of the Jews who went out beyond the walls were wounded by the missiles of a practiced art of striking, yet they remained undaunted. Roman valor tried everything, and especially where it noticed the weaker defenses of the walls, there it pressed with a greater force. Shame armed the one side, final hope the other, as they longed to open a way to safety with the sword. The Jews endured heavy blows and returned attempts of daring no less. Skill with courage on the Roman side contended with fury and rashness on the Jewish side. So, when both were worn out, fighting all day—the one for their lives, the other for triumph—night broke off the battle. On the next day, and the third and fourth, and the fifth, they fought fiercely in the same way; but, as usually happens in such battles, more wounds than deaths were inflicted, though sallies were often attempted by the Jews and breakouts by the Romans. Shame inflamed the Romans to anger, because the conquerors of Hannibal and Antiochus and all nations were delayed by battles with Jews. So great was the constancy of Roman valor that not to win quickly was reckoned a kind of defeat. But their contests were more against nature than against the enemy. For the city was almost cut off on all sides by steep rocks, surrounded not by rampart and ditch like other cities but by deep precipices, which neither human sight could take in nor use explore, and horror more and more enveloped the anxious onlooker. Only on the north, where the mountain slopes down, was there a single approach to the city, open yet by a steep ascent. This Josephus closed with a wall and fenced with defenders, so that between the lower wall and the upper city an assault would be dangerous for the besiegers, and the upper parts could not be estimated by one looking at them. For the city itself, set on the brow of a mountain, was surrounded by the circle of neighboring mountains as by a natural rampart, hidden in an innate enclosure, so that no one would know there was a city there before he had entered the city itself.

Since Vespasian could not conquer nature, he called nature itself to his aid, so as to force the besieged to surrender by a long siege through want of food and drink. But a supply of grain gathered long before drove off the danger of famine. The difficulty of water was very great, because there was no spring in the city, and the usual drought, with rare rains in those places, had reduced the means of drinking. He had blocked all the water channels so that they would not flow into the city. Want increased desire; nature resisted. Josephus brought forward a device: soaked garments were hung on the wall, so that, as the water gradually dripped off, they would be thought to have no lack of drink, since they had plenty for washing clothes.

Disappointed by this, Vespasian was roused again to storm the city and gathered his whole army around it. He shook the wall with engines; the ram battered it. Its appearance gave it this name, because the head of a strong and knotty beam is clothed with iron, and, like the forehead of a ram, it is put forward, swelling with plates fastened over it and projecting; from its middle there comes out, as it were, a horn of more solid iron. The size of the beam is like a ship's mast, such as neither the storm of winds nor the swelling of sails can bend. Hung by ropes from the tops of strong beams bound together, it was driven powerfully against the wall by the hands of many. Then, drawn back and held by its ropes like a balance arm, it was aimed with greater force, so that the side of the wall, worn out by frequent blows, would give way and, hollowed by the force of the breaches, give a window through which a way into the inner parts of the city would lie open to the Roman enemy. At the first blow the wall was shaken and all of it trembled. At once there was a cry from all, alarmed as if the city had been stormed, lest the wall, struck again, should crack. But Josephus ordered sacks filled with chaff to be let down at the place where the ram was being driven by the Romans, so that every blow of the ram, landing in the loose folds of the sacks, would be softened. For solid things harm solid things they strike; against looser things they are spent. Indeed hard things give way to soft more easily than soft to hard. For rocks are dissolved by the washing of water, yet no harm is done to the waters by the fall of a rock; and when masses are thrown into the sea, the water keeps its own uses, but a rock among the waves cannot keep its own. Sand, too, is not broken by the fall of marble, but marble is crushed by the fall of sand. The Romans, however, also responded, to refute the Jews' devices, by binding sickles to poles with which to cut the sacks let down, so that, once the chaff was emptied, they could not avoid the blow of the ram. When the impact of the engine had been renewed and the Jews saw themselves pressed, one of them, Eleazar, lifting a stone of huge size, hurled it from the wall onto the ram with such force that he broke the head of the engine. Leaping out into the midst of the enemy, he seized it and carried it fearlessly to the wall in the sight of his adversaries, exposed to wounds. In the end he was pierced by five javelins; but, by no means turning to his wounds, he was intent on how he might bury the enemy in the fall of the stone. So he climbed the wall and stood, conqueror of pain, conspicuous for such daring; and he threw himself and the stone down onto the ram and fell with it—conquered indeed by death, but conqueror of the engine, since he alone departed from his country in his own person, while by breaking the engine he saved the whole city from destruction. Netiras and Philip too threw themselves into the middle of the column to turn back those they had attacked. And Josephus, having fires thrown, so as to burn all the engines, in a short time consumed very many; but what was consumed was repaired.

Vespasian pressed on and urged them so hard that he was struck in the heel by the shaft of an arrow. The Romans were thrown into confusion when they saw their commander's blood flowing. His son, alarmed, ran to his father. But he, bearing a courage of spirit greater than the force of the wound, forbade his son to be alarmed and fired the soldiers the more for battle, to avenge the injury to their commander. He himself, as standard-bearer, called back the army and drove it to the walls; he himself exhorted the others to battle; some pressed the enemy with arrows, others with missiles, others with ballistas. So great was the force of this engine by which stones were hurled at the enemy that one of Josephus's companions standing nearby was struck and fell with his head shattered, and the back of his head was flung as far as the third stadium; a pregnant woman too, struck in the womb, had her infant hurled out of the inmost seat of her womb more than half a stadium. At last, when the Roman soldier was already climbing the wall as victor, and at the very entrance there was fierce fighting with strong forces on both sides, Josephus ordered the Romans, locked in combat as they were, to be drenched with boiling oil, which easily ran down from head to the lowest step of the feet. The heat of the oil devoured all their limbs no less than the burning of a blazing flame. Yet others took their place, and with many the sweat pouring out even cooled the force of the oil. And although the nature of such oil is that it heats quickly and lets go of the heat it has taken in more slowly, yet in their eagerness for victory they hid the injury. They burned in spirit so that they felt no burning of the body, nor did they value the pain of the boiling punishment as highly as the loss of glory, if, as men without share in triumphs, they should leave the war, they who had been leaders in the dangers. So they strove to quench the burning of the oil even with their own blood.

During this delay of the siege, the people of the city of Japha, which was nearby, had also grown insolent, because the struggle at Jotapata was long drawn out. So Vespasian, moved by this, sent Trajan, who commanded the fifteenth legion, as commander with a thousand horsemen and two thousand foot soldiers. He set out without hesitation, a keen man skilled in the arts of war, and found an outcome of the war matching his efforts. For although the city was both enclosed by the nature of the place and surrounded by a double wall, its people, not content to protect themselves by its fortifications, thought they should go out to meet the Romans; but after daring to resist for a little while, as they wished to retreat within the outer wall, they took in the enemy along with them. For as they hurried in, the Romans too slipped in behind them; and as they fled to the inner wall, the gates were shut, so that the Romans would not burst in with them again. So, with God's help turned away from them, the Jews were fighting with that by which they used to conquer before; but they had offended by wicked crimes, and therefore the penalty owed was being exacted from them, so that their punishments were handed over to the nations. In fact more of them were destroyed almost by their own wars among themselves than by the enemy. An example is the people of Japha, who opened the gates to the Romans and shut them against themselves. For the first wall, so that the Romans might break in, they opened themselves; the second wall, so that Jews should not get in, Jews shut. So the enemy was received and the ally shut out—the one received so that there should be no lack of an executioner, the other shut out so that he could by no means escape. So between two walls the Jews were cut down, hand to hand at close quarters and from the wall at a distance. For many of the Roman soldiers, constricted by the narrow space, climbed the wall and from there hurled missiles on those below. So the Galileans, more hostile to their own than to the enemy, begged to be received into the entrance of the inner wall, but their own people resisted. There was fighting on the threshold of the gate, Jews fighting among themselves: these met the onrushing wedge with swords; those died resisting. Calling down savage curses on each other, they bore witness with their last words that they were suffering less from the enemy than from their own. So twelve thousand fighting men were killed. Trajan, thinking either that no one would now resist him or that the city would be easily stormed, a man of the old discipline, reserved the crowning victory for Vespasian and sent to him asking him to send his son Titus to bring the battle to an end. When Titus arrived, an assault was made and many people were killed; nor did victory come to the Romans without toil and danger. When they had entered the inner wall, all who were fit for war and in straits threw themselves in their way; they made the war doubtful for the victors, men and women fighting from above and often hurling stones and every kind of missile they happened to find even on their own people. For six hours they fought at the very end as if from the beginning. At last, when those who had made a stand to fight were killed, the Romans rushed on the rest without order, without measure, without mercy; old men were slaughtered with youths; women with little children were kept, not for pardon but for slavery; all the males were killed except those whom boyhood or infancy saved; two thousand one hundred and thirty were led away as booty, masters with their slaves, now of equal lot, since captivity had made them equals.

Nor were the Samaritans free of miseries. For according to their custom they had gone up Mount Gerizim, which was consecrated to them, where they used to worship—whence also in the Gospel the Samaritan woman says: “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain.” And the answer was given her: “The hour will come when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” For it was owed that superstition should cease and true religion succeed, that the shadow should be emptied and the truth come, so that no longer on a mountain, like the Samaritans, nor in Jerusalem three times a year, like the Jews, but in spirit, in every place, lifting up pure hands, every man should worship God and bend the knee in the name of Jesus. So when, as we said above, they had gathered on the mountain and were staying there according to their rites, and the very appearance of the gathering held out threats of war—or the mind of men who did not come to their senses even through their neighbors' evils, and were much more stirred by envy at the Romans' successes—and things were close to a tumult, it was thought wiser to forestall them, lest they break out into a greater plague. Vespasian summoned the commander of the fifth legion and sent him there with three thousand men of both services. He, thinking it dangerous to climb the mountain at the very start (for the multitude of the people was joined to the steepness of nature to cause terror), surrounded the foot of the mountain with his army and kept a guard there all day, so that no one could come down for water. So when thirst tormented so great a multitude of men, which blazed more and more in the heat, and very many preferred to offer themselves to slavery or even to death rather than perish by hunger or thirst, Cerealis (for that was the commander's name), judging from those who came down that all were exhausted, surrounded the mountain, and, in military fashion, promising safety if they laid down their arms, ordered those who refused to be struck down. So eleven thousand six hundred men were killed there.

At Jotapata too, on the forty-eighth day, an assault was made at first dawn, while they were resting, worn out by the great labor of the previous day; Titus, first of all, entered with Sabinus and opened the way for the rest. Having seized the higher places, they struck down men everywhere in the narrow streets, still unaware that the assault had been made. Some paid the penalty in their beds, others just awakened, others awake but undone by hunger and sleep. Yet the force of the evils still lay hidden from the whole city. But when the army had entered and roared with a military yell, they rose almost to nothing but the feeling of facing death. If any tried to make for the heights, they were driven back and cut down; and those who might have had strength for vengeance, the very crowding took vengeance from them; and if any prepared to resist, they were buried in the fighting by others rushing on top of them. Others, worn out by the long struggle, lowered their hands and offered themselves to wounds, to be snatched by death at least from such deadly spectacles of their evils. Deceived by this security of the dying, the centurion Antonius, asked by a man who had fled into a cave to give him his right hand as hostage of pardon and pledge of safety, held it out at once, careless of treachery and—woe to the wretch!—too secure in his triumph. But the man struck the unwary centurion with a spear and ran him through at once, so that the Romans' victory would not be completed without blood. On that very day all who were found were killed. On the following days they were dragged even from the underground passages and the other exhausted caves, or were killed there, except little children and women. Over all the days forty thousand were slain, so far as they were counted; twelve hundred were led into captivity. The city and all its forts were overthrown and burned, in the thirteenth year of Nero's rule. Josephus meanwhile was hiding among the ashes of the city in a certain pit, well aware that, as commander of the opposing force, he was being sought more eagerly. Coming out on the second day, when he saw everything surrounded, he went back into the pit. On the third day a certain woman was found who knew his hiding place and showed it to those searching (in the pit forty men who had fled there were hiding with him). When they noticed that Josephus was being called by Vespasian to hope of safety, first through Paulinus and Gallicanus, then through Nicanor—who was bound to Josephus by the grace of old friendship and was therefore sent, so that he would more readily carry out the duty of the charge given him to offer his right hand—they surrounded Josephus and attacked him with words like these:

“Now a greater ruin of the Jewish name is being attempted, now an uglier ash, to bury and hide the discipline of a most splendid race and undermine all its honor, when Josephus is ordered to be kept for a triumph among the captives. What do these sudden, eager enticements of the enemy mean? What are these spontaneous gifts of safety? They did not spare others who begged for life. Josephus is summoned, Josephus is begged to live. They fear, no doubt, to lose the pomp of a triumph, lest there be no captive for Rome to gaze at, no one for Vespasian to lead in chains before his chariot. Is it for this mockery that you wish to be kept? And how will they triumph if the commander of those over whom they triumph is missing? Or what triumph is it if friendship is given to the vanquished? Do not believe it, Josephus: life is promised you, but things worse than death are being prepared. Roman arms have conquered you; let not their fraudulence capture you. Their gifts are more cruel than their wounds: these threaten captivity, those preserve freedom. Will you, Josephus, broken by a kind of softness of spirit, wish to survive your country? Where is the teaching of Moses, who asked to be blotted out of the heavenly book so as not to outlive the Lord's people? Where is Aaron, who stood between the living and the dead so that death would not devour the living people with savage contagion? Where is that spirit of King Saul and Jonathan, devoted to their country, and that death undertaken for the citizens and sought bravely and gloriously? The son invited the father by his example; the father did not desert the son in his resolve to die. He, though he could have lived, preferred to be killed rather than be triumphed over by the enemy. He urged his armor-bearer, saying: ‘Strike me, lest these uncircumcised come and strike me and mock me’; because the armor-bearer was afraid, he ran himself through with the sword. He was worthy to be avenged by David in the prophetic spirit, because a degenerate Amalekite had falsely boasted of his death and thought to diminish the glory of a man who had removed himself from the enemy, by lying that he had killed him. He was worthy also to be praised by so great a prophet, saying: ‘Saul and Jonathan, beautiful and most dear, inseparable in their life, and in death they were not divided; lighter than eagles, mightier than lions.’ David himself too, when he saw the people being struck by the angel, wished the heavenly vengeance to be turned on himself, so as not to be kept alive while the people perished. Finally, where is the divine law, whose interpreter you have always been, which for this brief life has promised the just everlasting immortality? Where is the God of the Hebrews, who teaches the just to hold death in contempt, even to flee this earthly dwelling, to long for things above, for the region of paradise, where God himself keeps pious souls? Now at last you want to live, Josephus, when you ought not—indeed when it is not lawful—indeed, what is more, when it is not fitting; and you wish to enjoy that light, I dare say, of servitude, which is in another's power, so that the Roman may snatch it away when he wishes and cover it when he wishes with the darkness of a prison, so that you would long to flee from here and not be allowed to die. And with what shame will you go to those whom you persuaded to die for their country? What excuse will you have for having stayed so long? They are waiting to see what you do; they will surely say: ‘Why does Josephus delay, who ought to have gone before? Why does he follow so late? Why does he refuse to imitate his disciples, whom he persuaded to die for freedom?’ We shall certainly bear it that you, champion of the law and of freedom, have chosen to serve, that you have handed yourself as a slave to the Romans, that you have preferred captivity to freedom. But granted you wish to live, how will you obtain this from those against whom you have fought so often? How will they look at you? With what eyes? With what minds? How will you wish to live under angry masters, even if it is allowed? Or who will not believe you a traitor to your country, when he sees the price of betrayal paid to you? Choose which you prefer: one of these must be. Your life will be either the reward of betrayal or the punishment of servitude.” With these words they pointed their swords at him, adding: “If you agree to die, we render you the service of friends; if you refuse, we exact vengeance as men betrayed.”

To this Josephus replied: “And who would wish to survive so great a death? Who would choose to be the heir of such grief? Who would not wish his soul, if it were allowed, to be released from this very body of death? But it is not allowed to loose except to him who has bound. The soul is joined to the body by the bond of nature. Who is the author of nature but almighty God? Who would dare to break off and dissolve this companionship of our soul and body, pleasing to God? If someone, without his master's judgment, takes off the chains put on his hands at his master's command, will he not be condemned for having assailed his master with a grave injury? We are God's possession; we owe God service. As servants let us await his commands, as prisoners let us keep our chains, as faithful men let us guard the good deposit. Let us not refuse the gift of this life that he has given us; let us not flee a heavenly gift. If you reject a man's gifts, you are insulting; how much more ought we to keep what we have received from our God? From him, then, we have received what we are; it ought also to be his decision how long we are. For both are marks of an ungrateful man—to depart sooner than he wishes, and to live longer than the giver of life himself has willed. Did Abraham hurry to depart beforehand? Did Moses go up Abarim before it was said to him, ‘Go up into the mountain Abarim’? But it was said, ‘Go up,’ and he went up and died: like a good servant, he awaited the Lord's command. Job himself, who said, ‘Let the day perish in which I was born,’ yet, set in wounds and pains, did not break the bonds of this life, but asked to be freed, saying: ‘Why is light given in bitterness, and life to the bitter in soul?’ He praised death, saying, ‘Death is rest for a man’; yet he did not seize it beforehand but asked for it, as it is written: ‘I am shaken in all my limbs; and since I am ungodly, why am I not dead? Why did I not fall from my mother's womb into the grave? Is not the time of my life short? Let me alone, that I may rest a little.’ Another holy man also says: ‘Bring my soul out of prison.’ He asks to escape; he asks to be freed from this body as from a prison; yet none of the saints takes death to himself, none seizes it beforehand. If it is gain to die, it is theft to take it before it is awaited; if it is good to live, it is sacrilege to reject it before it is demanded back. But do you think it glorious to die in war? Nor do I deny that it is good to die in war for one's country, good for one's fellow citizens. But by the law of war I offer my throat if the enemy seeks it, if the Romans plunge the sword—to whom God has given victory over us, to whom he has adjudged us because of our sins. Nor do I flatter myself because they promise to spare me. Would that they deceive me! Either I shall carry off this gain, that they so feared me that they deceived me; or I shall take this revenge, that they break faith. I prefer to perish by their robbery than by my own. It is my robbery if I lay hands on myself; if enemies do it, it is a kindness. So, since they could have done that kindness by killing me, they thought they should keep what they had in their power; so that I might kill a captive, they would have played the robber. But you promise me the service of your hand: truly we lacked an executioner, so that we may perish by our own crime! I do not wish to perish by my crime, nor by yours, which is more than mine, nor by a mutual one. For this is for each of us to lay hands on himself, to pay the price of a substitute death, so that now each owes the crime not only for his own blood but also for another's. But the example of King Saul is brought forward—of one, surely, who was asked for as king against the divine will and earned the offense of God; hence he received a successor even while he lived. A fine example of a man who lacked the grace of God, and yet wished to die because he could no longer live! Yet he too wished his comrade to kill him; but the other thought it a crime and refused the service. So it was not by his own counsel but, abandoned by any service, that he turned the sword on himself. If he did it from fear of being mocked, why do you praise what belongs to fear? If he was not afraid, why did he first choose something else? I fear neither the Romans mocking nor the Romans lying. Saul alone killed himself—not Jonathan, nor anyone else in our Scriptures. What wonder if he could kill himself, who could also kill his son? Aaron stood between the living and the dead; and this belongs to courage, not rashness. For he did not bring death on himself, but he did not fear death—he who drove it back with his own body and was every obstacle to the serpent. I am not Aaron, yet not unworthy of him: I offer my hands; let them strike as they will. If I can fear their hands, I deserve to perish by my own. If they die at the hand of an adversary, why should I not die at my own? If you ask why they wish to spare me, they admire courage even in an enemy. So great is the grace of courage that it often delights even an enemy. You yourselves know what ruin I have brought on the Romans, how I turned the conquerors of all nations aside from the destruction of the city of Jerusalem by the long siege of the obscure city of Jotapata. At small cost I have played the dice of the whole war. The rest have learned by my danger to wish for peace. Perhaps we are being kept for this, that the rest may not be deterred but provoked. But you assert that it is sweet to die for freedom. Who denies that too? But it is also sweet to live for freedom. For he who offers friendship promises freedom. If he imposes servitude, then indeed the will to die will be more timely, if one must die. But now they offer life; they do not wish to kill. He is a coward both who does not wish to die when he should, and who wishes to when he should not. For who does not know that it belongs to womanly timidity and to a woman's courage to wish to die so as not to die? Indeed frightened women, when they learn that some danger threatens them, usually throw themselves down a precipice; for narrow souls cannot bear the weight of fear and the dread of death. But a patient man, who does not fear the present and thinks of the future, does not know how to tremble where there is no fear. Indeed it is written that the souls of the effeminate will hunger, since, having no food of virtue, they hunger; and therefore they hurry to death before their time. For one filled with the food of spiritual grace does not lay hands on himself, since it is written: ‘The mouth of the imprudent calls for death.’ And again Scripture says: ‘He who does not take care of himself in his works is brother of him who destroys himself.’ So he is condemned who strikes himself. For what is so against the law of nature? What is so against the nature of all living things? To all beasts, even wild ones, it is implanted to love themselves. For the law of nature is strong: to wish to live and not to take death to oneself. Indeed, not all kinds of living things can arm themselves with steel against themselves, even if they wished. Men invented the shapeless noose of death; beasts do not know it. But the bites of beasts are their weapons, their teeth their swords. Yet when has anyone heard that any beast took off its own limb with its own bite? Against others they use the weapons of their jaws, toward themselves kisses. And for us, what is so sweet as life? What so hostile as death? Indeed whoever protects a life is a patron; whoever tries to attack it is a plotter. What then we curse in others, are we ourselves willing to bring on ourselves? And what we exact from others as punishment, do we inflict on ourselves as a favor? A pilot who dashes the ship entrusted to him on a rock we prosecute; shall we destroy with steel the helm of our body entrusted to us and give it over to a voluntary shipwreck? But you hold up to me a timely death, since I shall be brought into the power of the enemy. What then shall I gain if I inflict on myself what I fear from the enemy, when it may happen that what you urge me to do, the enemy will not do? This is as if a pilot, seeing a storm coming, should sink his ship in the waves to avoid the storm. Or do you think it must be forestalled because the adversary will exact heavier punishments? Or because you think it vigorous that we use the sword on ourselves? But that is a refuge of weakness, not a trophy of courage—to grasp at the gain of punishments. So we cling to something that has neither the marks of courage nor the advantage of usefulness. And what shall I add about the religion of a violated deposit? Almighty God has given us a most excellent treasure and, having enclosed and sealed it in this earthen vessel, has entrusted it to us to guard until it pleases him to demand it back. Is there not a crime either way, whether to throw back the deposit when the giver does not demand it, or to deny it when he does? If to violate a man's deposit is punished with infamy, how much more to violate God's deposit! God's deposit is the soul in this body, a soul which is not capable of this death; for it is not bound and tied by any bond of death, but seems to await death when it is loosed from the body and separated from the companionship entrusted to it. Why then do we inflict death before the deposit is demanded back, and send away the soul as useless to us, shut it out of our house, and dissolve the body into earth without its beauty and grace? Why do we not wait for the command to go out from here? The soldier waits for the watchword, the slave for the order. If either goes out without an order, the one is a deserter, the other a runaway. He who flees a man is almost liable, even if he fled a wicked master; can we, fleeing the best of all, not be bound by the crime of impiety? Has this too escaped our mind, that God has set an angel round about those who fear him? There is, then, one who forbids, unless he has received an order; if there is no order, there are no provisions for the journey. And how shall we arrive without provisions? Who will receive us into that pure and secret place? Who will admit us to that fellowship of holy souls? Adam hid because he transgressed God's command; he was shut out of paradise because he did not keep the commandment. It is said to him: ‘Adam, where are you?’—as to one who had fled, as to one who was not present before God. Will it not be said to me too, ‘Where are you, who came without command, whom I did not release from the bonds of nature? Take him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth and pain’? We have learned that these things are forbidden not only by the customs of men but also by laws: for some order those who have thrown themselves on the sword to be cast out unburied. For it is fitting that those who did not wait for the father's command should be deprived, as it were, of the mother's bosom, the grave of the earth. Others cut off the right hand of such dead, so that it is separated from the members of its body, because it fought against its own body with mad fury. But this end is suffered by the sacrilegious, or by traitors or murderers of parents, who did not acknowledge their true father and do not know themselves. Therefore they are either forbidden burial altogether or are not buried whole. Their souls too are received not by paradise but by the darkness of the underworld and savage torments. As I reflect on these things, though everything has been taken from me, these alone cause me terror and fear: let me not inflict on myself what not even the enemy will be able to inflict, nor snatch from myself those things of paradise which the Roman has not yet been able to snatch. He could hasten them, he will not be able to take away the only things I long for impatiently. For no desire for this life holds me, in which I have found nothing to delight me either among citizens or among enemies: the one denied me peace, the other snatched away my country. Among so many evils, what sweetness can remain in this life? Only you, almighty Father, author and judge of nature, grant an honorable end; you break this natural bond; give back my soul to its secret places. Let the people be destroyed, right taken away, freedom broken: yet I will not transgress your law so as to die without your command. I wait for you to command; I wait for you to free me, willing as I am. You have many executors of your rule: from you I await the command, from the executor the service. It is good to die; but let me die as a Hebrew, not as a brigand, not as an executioner, not as an enemy. Though I be defeated in war, I shall remain what I was born, so as not to desert the inheritance of father Abraham. I will not pass into the number of enemies so as to be my own murderer. I can offer myself to the enemy to be struck without loss of piety; I cannot turn my hands against myself as against an enemy without crime. Or is the fear that we may not be allowed to live according to the law? Truly there is now great freedom for those to whom it is now allowed to die according to the law.”

Josephus pleaded these things to them, to empty their attachment to a voluntary death. But those who had once devoted themselves to death, since they could not resist his words, surrounded the man with swords as if to strike at once unless he thought he should agree. He, surrounded, called back one by the authority of a commander and the constancy of his courage, met another with a stern look; this one's right hand he held back, that one's anger he bound, soothing them with the soundness of his counsel. In various ways he wrested from each his irrational fury. For although the last lot of the defeated had wrested away his dignity, it had not wholly abolished reverence for him. So little by little hands were lowered and swords put away, yet their intention persisted. When he saw that he alone was held besieged by many, whether by some chance or by design, he devised a plan to lessen the number of those opposing him. “Let us entrust the order of dying to the lot,” he said, “so that no one may withdraw himself, since the lot will meet all. Let the condition of the lot be this: that the one who comes out by lot be killed by the one who follows him. So it will be the lot, not his own will, that condemns each to death. Let each, then, stand under the lot as judge, free from the crime and free from captivity, so that he neither hastens by another's will nor avoids by his own the coming death. No one will be able to refuse an outcome which either chance has brought or God's will has marked.” The offer won their trust, and the assent of all agreed to the lot. Each one marked by the lot offered himself ready to death at the hand of the next. So it happened that, when the rest had been killed, Josephus was left with one other to survive death. It remained of necessity that either he be condemned by the lot, or, if he survived destruction, he be defiled with his comrade's blood. He persuaded the other to renounce the lot. So he escaped a battle among his own and was led by Nicanor to Vespasian. People ran together to see him as he came, almost all the Romans flocking: some longed to see him cast down whom a little before they had seen placed in the fullest honor and in command of the whole; others vied to mock the captive; others marveled at the changes of human affairs, so varied and pliant. Many, more thoughtfully, groaned, reflecting that the same could happen to them in others' misfortunes. Titus above the rest was moved, by the inborn gentleness of his mind: that man, lately a proud warrior, suddenly made over to the power of enemies, awaiting the lot of another's will, the shipwreck of his life, an exile from hope, uncertain of his safety. So great was the power of the moments of fortune that by a brief chance they make men unlike themselves, when the powerful are cast down or the afflicted raised up. So the better part, that is, those who held honor, gave milder counsel; but the greatest share of Josephus's safety with his father was Titus. Vespasian ordered him to be kept under guard, lest perhaps he escape.

A few days later he made again for Ptolemais and from there went to Caesarea, the greatest city of Judea but filled more with gentile inhabitants. They therefore received the Roman army with applause and joy, not only because the favor of the Roman alliance was desired by them but also because of their inbred hatred of the Jewish people; and they cried out with the loudest shouts that Josephus, its leader, ought to be punished. Vespasian dissolved this by silence, as the anger of the mob conceived without judgment. And because both the season and the city were suitable for wintering, he stationed two legions in Caesarea, and the tenth and fifth in the city of Scythopolis, so that Caesarea would not be worn out by the burden of the whole army. That city was consecrated to the Scythian Diana, as if founded by Scythians, and called the city of the Scythians, as Massilia is of the Greeks. The site of the place shows the inborn hardness of its founder, who chose open plains rather than what was useful for habitation. For, being open and rough in winter and hot in summer, they have more toil than delight, since in winter they lie more open to the cold, and the burning of summer is heavier in those places, which receive the whole sun without any pleasantness of green fields. So the level and coastal region of that city was steamed the more by the heat of the sea.

Yet Vespasian was not free of the business of war. For he learned that very many from various places had gathered at the city of Joppa and, having repaired the buildings destroyed by Cestius, had restored it as a convenient base for raids of piracy, since, the region being laid waste, the means of food were sought by sea; he explored everything carefully. They, having built ships of the kind suited to the use of pirates, watched the passage of travelers and plundered almost all the commerce of Phoenicia and Egypt, so that by the terror of frequent plundering they closed that whole sea, and the practice of sailing was cut off by fear of undoubted danger. Learning this, he ordered a force of infantry and many horsemen to go and enter Joppa by night. This was easily done, since no guard was set over the city: for, the city having been overthrown, its name was thought unlikely to stir any concern in the Roman commander. The inhabitants were present, but did not dare resist or deny entry to the Romans as they came; they boarded their ships, went out beyond an arrow's shot, and spent the night at sea. The matter seems to call for a brief description of the site of the shore that borders Joppa, so that it may be plainly shown how a second disaster befell that city without any battle. The city is by nature without a harbor; its shore, from the edge of the sea, is rough and straight, but bent slightly at both ends into horns, on which there are deep rocks and huge stones projecting into the sea; and though they rise from the depths of the sea, they still run out into it. Hence the very color of the places and the appearance of things seem to show that Andromeda was there when she was exposed to the sea monster, giving no small credit to the old fables. So, when the north winds blow against them, the waves are raised to an immense height; dashed against the rocks, they raise a huge crash, and, falling back into the waves, they make that bay of the sea restless, so that there is more danger in the harbor than in the open sea. While the boats we mentioned above, brought out of the city of Joppa, were tossing there, toward morning a violent wind rushed upon them, which those sailing in those parts call the Black North Wind; and at once, with the waves driving them, it dashed the boats together and rolled them over. Some, their anchor cables broken, it drove onto the rock; for others, as they were violently lifted up against the sea, there came the danger of the rocky shore, or disaster at the hands of the Romans who had spread along the shore as the sailors swam toward it; and the towering wave rising above in the usual way overwhelmed and sank them. There was no place of refuge, no hope of staying, since the wind drove them from the sea and the Romans shut them out of the city. Heavy was the sound of the ships as they struck each other; intolerable the groaning of men as they were broken. When they saw the sea bursting in through the reeling hulls, some threw themselves overboard, skilled at swimming; others, while they leapt into the approaching boats, fell into the sea and were crushed by the clash of the hulls; very many, whom confidence in swimming out had failed, sank to the bottom with the very galleys—yet with less torture those who lacked the skill, or whom death transfixed before any hope of trying. But those who set out to swim were battered by frequent blows from the torn fragments of ships, and, dashed against the sides, their wretched limbs were foully mutilated; or, driven onto the rocks amid their very prayers to embrace the shore, death followed them, though they had some comfort of a kind in having perished on land. It was a pitiable sight when the rocks were spattered with the dashed-out brains of the unfortunate and the shores were wet with blood. You could see the sea stained with gore and everything filled with corpses. And if any happened to escape, they were killed as they approached the shore, the Romans judging that the storm was raging not from the roughness of the places and the habit of the winds there, but that, by divine wrath, the sea was being rolled over by winds conspiring beyond the usual so that the Jews should not escape; and therefore they were afraid to spare those whom God had not spared. Some killed themselves with the sword, thinking it more bearable to perish by the sword than by shipwreck; others, wishing to push off with poles, holed the ships; some, if those who had fallen into the sea happened to beg to be lifted up by those sailing, drove them off with oars or struck them with a weapon. I have not passed over this so that it may be clear that there was greater danger to the people of the Jews from themselves than from the enemy, since they killed one another—as if it were too little for their destruction that everything at once was hostile: sky, enemy, sea, rocks. So four thousand five hundred bodies of the dead were counted, which the sea had cast up. The city was taken without war and destroyed from its foundations. So in a short time the Roman force overthrew Joppa a second time. Vespasian rightly thought this must be ordered, so that pirate dwellings would not be built there again. So, though he himself set out from there, he left horsemen in that place with a few foot soldiers, so that the foot might stay in the place lest the band of pirates, used to robbery, dare anything, while the horse ranged over the neighboring parts of the region and the villages and towns, so that everything might be thoroughly destroyed, lest they conspire in any daring venture.

While these things were being done at Joppa, the people of Jerusalem, though they lived far off, were not free even so from a share in the disaster. For when they heard what had been done by the Romans in Judea, and especially when they learned that Josephus had been killed, at first they did not believe it, because no informant had come to them from those places; then they thought so great a commander had not rashly fallen into the hands of the enemy. And in fact no messenger of so great a disaster had survived, and this very thing confirmed the report of final destruction: because no informant survived, it was asserted that everything had perished and nothing had remained even to report what had been done. An opinion persisted greater than any report, because, while silence held them uncertain, all that was feared was believed; and so far was it from anything being reported more truly that even things that had not been done were added. For rumor asserted that Josephus too had been killed, and this was the greatest grief to all. But when it was learned that he was living among the Romans, they pursued him with such hatred that the man whose death they at first lamented, they now cursed for his life, as evidence either of cowardice or of treachery. Hence greater agitation against the Romans, to avenge themselves for Josephus. And the more their affairs declined, the more they were inflamed to war. Where there ought to have been an end, from there the beginning of evils was taken. For to the wise, adverse outcomes are rather a lesson to take care, lest the same things that have already turned out badly happen again; but to the imprudent they are an incitement to miseries. So the danger of their allies ought to have been to the people of Jerusalem a reason for sobriety; but because they would not understand so as to act well, it turned to destruction.

Vespasian, however, so that he might use the delay itself to his advantage and the army might rest a little from its labor, yielded to Agrippa's request to spend about twenty days in Caesarea Philippi, a city of his kingdom, and at the same time so that the sick parts of his realm might come to their senses from the fury of agitation and discord, since they ought to recognize that they could be received through the king's intervention if they turned back, so earnest were the bonds of service between the king and the Romans. Indeed Tiberias, nearest to Caesarea, did not refuse the remedy and the soundness it offered; for it too was boiling with the grave disease of a people at odds with itself. So Vespasian decided to summon the three stronger legions and make for Scythopolis, sending his son on the business. This was the largest of the ten cities, a neighbor of Tiberias. From there he ordered Valerian to approach the walls with fifty horsemen, to urge peaceable counsels and call those shut in to the good faith of alliance, so that the terror of the assembled army would strike the hostile and the message of peace would invite the willing. Valerian leapt from his horse near the walls; those who had come closer with him did the same. Jesus, leader of a band of plunderers, thinking them contemptible for their number, dared to attack them with his men, drove them from the place by a sudden sally, and, cutting them down, seized the horses they had led. Madmen, who did not notice that Valerian had more wisely given way to their insolence than they had taken spoils from men offering peace! In the end the elders, offended by the bitterness of the deed, left the city and came to Vespasian to beg that the insolence of a few should not be ascribed to the whole people. Vespasian at once sent Trajan to the city to find out whether the people opposed the rashness of the plotters. He, reporting that the people's attitude agreed with the elders' prayers, confirmed the credibility of the embassy. So pardon was given to those who asked, especially because Vespasian saw the king anxious for the condition of the whole city; on his pledge that they would dare nothing of the kind afterwards, he willingly granted pardon for the offense.

From there he made for Taricheae with a watchful and well-ordered column, because a very great multitude had flowed into that city on account of the strength of the place; and because Josephus had fenced it with a wall, except where, impassable for infantry, it was washed by the waves of the lake of Gennesaret, and they had therefore gathered ships, a twofold war was rumbling: if the land battle turned against them, they would flee to the ships; if they gave way in a naval contest, they would go back to the city and defend themselves with the walls around them. The defenses were very similar in both places, the city of Tiberias and Taricheae; but at Taricheae the temper was more ruinous, while Tiberias was stronger in walls. And the fury of the people of Taricheae was readier, so that, if necessary, they would mix everything: naval battles with land, land battles with naval. In the end, surrounded, with the line set against them, though they dared more than their strength allowed, and their rashness achieved nothing against the management of Roman order and the courage of a veteran army, before suffering any loss they turned to flight and flew to the ships. Packed in these, they fought as if in close-ordered line, as though the matter were being fought hand to hand on land. On the plain, too, a countless multitude was waiting for the enemy. Learning this, Vespasian sent his son with picked horsemen. When he saw himself surrounded by huge forces, he reported to his father that the multitude of the enemy was greater than had been thought; but, calling together those he had brought with him, he poured into them an incitement to battle with an address of this kind.

“Men of Rome,” he said, “it befits you to fight remembering your name and race, from whose hands no one in the Roman world has escaped. For how did you give this name to all lands except by conquering? You ought also to remember the place where you now are, and against whom you are waging a Roman war. For we stand at the farthest part of the world. Crossing such spaces of land, you have seen nothing foreign. For what is foreign to you, in whose possession the world is? Whatever is anywhere is your right; whatever the habitation of all holds is your possession. He ran well who set your triumphs running through the whole world—triumphs which neither Hasdrubal the Carthaginian, nor Pyrrhus son of Aeacus, nor Brennus pressing on the entrance of the Capitol, nor the bands of the Persians, nor the phalanxes of Egypt could halt. Rebellious Judea has halted them, displaying an untaught rashness in war, fitter for a brawl than a battle. Not that there is anything I fear; but I think it full of shame that you are wearied by conquering. They, however, as often as they are conquered, have taken on daring: you are wearied by success, while they are hardened by adversity. Lift up your spirits, then, men of Rome, and, relying on your ancestral courage, rise against the bands of the enemy. Let not the number of the Jewish people move you, since so many marks of your courage, far stronger than numbers, do not deter them. For among the Hebrews there is no knowledge of military matters, no skill in fighting, no grace of command, no practice of discipline, no patience in endurance. They bring into battle only contempt of death; but no one ever conquered an enemy by dying, but by killing. They know arms only in war; we are exercised in arms in peace, so that in war we do not feel the doubtful chances of war. For the inexperienced, outcomes are doubtful; for veterans, triumph is customary. What else do we do every day but see to it that battles are never in vain for us? Each one is exercised at home as in battle, so that in battle there is a kind of rehearsal of combat. Indeed no one would be wrong to assert that our exercises are bloodless wars and our wars are exercises. We go out to war protected: the head is covered on all sides with the helmet, the breast with the breastplate, the whole body with the shield; the enemy cannot find where to strike the Roman soldier, whom he sees fenced with iron. To others such arms are a burden, to us a covering, because use makes them light. Our battle, then, is against the unarmed and naked. Or are we afraid of being surrounded by numbers? First, cavalry is free in battle; by giving way and pursuing it plays at war; and however great the lines, it rides around them and withdraws to whatever spaces it pleases. Then, in the infantry contest itself, it is not so much the number of the many that decides the fight as the courage of the few. A multitude unused to discipline is its own hindrance—in success to victory, in adversity to flight. But patient courage grows strong in success and does not slip all the way in adversity. Add to this that the habit of victories is an incitement for us to fight. For though they fight for their country and children, that is no reason they should be readier than we. For it is no less—indeed I do not know whether it is not even more—for us to contend for ourselves than for our own. We fight for ourselves, and when we fight we fight for glory, so as not to be less than what we are. Who then would doubt that it is more to contend for glory than for safety? For us this war is a danger to our reputation, lest a right that has been won be lost. We are in danger, too, conquerors of nations and leaders of the world, of seeming equal to the Jews, whom we have set up as adversaries on equal terms if we engage them only with equal numbers. Our ancestors often routed great forces of the enemy with a small band. And what do daily exercises give us, what long labor, if we come to battle as equals? We reported the numbers to my father, since nothing else was allowed; but let him note that we did not fear the danger but reserved the honor of the battle for the commander. We may taste the war first, hold the enemy, and seize victory while help is coming, so that those who come may not boast that the adversaries were overcome by common strength as much as that we were protected by their courage. With what face, then, shall we come into my father's sight if we are afraid to begin the battle? With what shame shall I, a degenerate son, come under the eyes of so great a man, who does not know how to see his soldier except as victor? How shall I prove myself his soldier and his son, when he is always a triumpher, and I am conquered even by my own judgment—what is worse—having given way to a Jewish enemy? What will be left to you with your commander condemned, whom my father has confidently entrusted to you? But I prefer that you plead about the courage of your commander rather than about cowardice. Let us rush on the adversaries, then; let us hurry; let us trample the enemy. I will run out first into the danger; you follow, so that you may guard my father's deposit and keep what my father has entrusted. But I do not demand companions in danger, but partners in victory. Take care, however, that you do not seem to have reserved for others the palm of triumph offered to you, and to have snatched it from yourselves. Surely, if things turn out otherwise, I prefer that my father should recognize his son in my wounds, if he does not recognize him in his soldiers. Let us suppose, however, that my father will be offended by our attacking. Which then is more tolerable, to have seized victory beforehand, or to have deserted it? In seizing beforehand there is the haste of bravery; in deserting, the guilt of cowardice. Let my father condemn the victors: I do not dread a charge of that kind; I prefer to be guilty while the state triumphs than innocent while it is harmed. Would that I might imitate the son of Manlius Torquatus, if only in his danger, whom his father ordered to be struck with the axe because he had led the army against the enemy contrary to his father's command. The young man stood, the enemy slain, clothed in triumphal honors, secure of death under the executioner, because he thought it most blessed to die in victory. For what is more illustrious than to close one's life with a triumph and not be kept for uncertain things after a certain victory? O crime of victory, to be sought by the wise! Would that this too might be charged against us, that we conquered! Surely, by that example, I alone shall be in danger; you will triumph. And yet my father did not forbid us to fight, but commanded it, since he sent us to the fight. So I think he will be more indignant that we gave way to the Jews when we could have conquered than that we fought.”

Saying this, he drove his horse first against the enemy, and the rest followed with a great shout; they were stretched out over the whole plain, so that they were thought to be more. Trajan too, sent by Vespasian with three hundred horsemen, arrived as Titus was already advancing. Nor could the Jews resist long, being thrown into confusion by the men's lances and the snorting of the horses. So, turning in different directions, some fled, most made for the city. Titus darted forward and overwhelmed some fleeing from behind, cut down others, drove back all the stragglers from the walls by getting ahead of them on the way, and, meeting those who ran back, cut off their flight. Again some were laid low and others slipped away, to whom the city was a refuge; but among them too there was a fiercer battle. For those who had flowed in from the neighboring places preferred peace from the beginning, but the people of the city, coming upon them, had wrung from the unwilling an eagerness for fighting. Hence within the city there was dissension and a grave tumult. Roused by the noise, Titus turned to his soldiers: “This,” he said, “most holy comrades, is the moment I was looking for. The enemy are sowing tumult among themselves within the city; outside they are cut down, inside they fight each other. Let us hurry, then, while they still disagree, lest perhaps from fear of danger they come back into accord.” So he mounted the horse from which he had leapt down, close to the walls; and, turning to the lake, he made for the city through the waves of the water, and was first to burst into the city, and afterwards the rest. At once all who were inside scattered in flight; some were laid low, others, boarding ships, were sunk in the lake; many people were slain inside. Those who were from the countryside, indeed, offered themselves to the Romans, asserting that they had no part in the guilt; Titus, with devoted moderation, thought they should be spared, pressing only the authors of the rebellion. So he sent a horseman to his father to report the outcome of the victory. Vespasian, delighted at this, and especially at the triumph of his son, who had accomplished the greatest part of the whole war being waged against Judea, hurried there and ordered the city to be watched more carefully, so that no one would slip away, since all were owed punishment. On another day, however, because of those who had betaken themselves to boats, he ordered rafts to be made; they were made without delay, since both the neighboring woods and many workmen gave the means of speeding the work.

For the lake itself, like a very broad gulf with a kind of seacoast around it, extends a hundred and forty stadia in length and spreads forty in breadth, raising a breeze for itself from its own rippling waters. Hence it is called Gennesar by a Greek word, as if “generating a breeze for itself.” Its water is sweet and fit for drinking, since it takes in nothing thick or turbid from marshy slime, being surrounded on every side by a sandy shore, and it is more temperate than the coldness of a river or spring. Yet it is colder than the surface of a placid marsh, because the water does not lie flat like a pond but, over the wider spaces of the lake, is more often stirred by breezes blowing; hence its draught is purer and softer for drinking; and if anyone wishes to add effort to nature's gift, as when, in the manner of the inhabitants, it is set out for drinking, hung up to the breezes on summer nights, he would think it in no way different from snow. The kinds of fish too are more excellent in taste and appearance than in any other lake. The matter seems to require that we disclose the source of the Jordan, which we promised elsewhere. For in an earlier age there was doubt whether the river called the Jordan rose from the lake of Gennesar; Philip, tetrarch of the region of Trachonitis, refuted the false opinion and resolved the error by throwing chaff into Phiala, which the stream cast up at Panium. From this it is clear that Panium is not the beginning of the Jordan but its flowing: its spring is not there, as though it began from that place in the manner of other rivers; rather, conducted from Phiala in Trachonitis by underground channels, it gushes out there again as if from a spring and emerges into view. Phiala is in the land of Trachonitis, with a hundred and twenty stadia lying between it and the city of Caesarea. Its shape gave Phiala its name, expressing the character of a wheel [or bowl], because it is so continually full of water that it neither overflows nor is seen to be lessened by any drawing off. So the water glides below by a certain measure and bubbles up again where Panium is, as was shown by the chaff rising again. So the Jordan was shown to have risen again where men of earlier times thought it was born. Nor was Panium from the beginning anything but natural charm; but we have learned that, adorned by the royal munificence of Agrippa, the place received a richer and more splendid approach, by which the cave through which the Jordan raises itself was built up and beautified with wonderful adornment. From there, no longer hidden or concealed in the hollow passages of the earth, but beginning visibly across the land and openly, it pours itself into the lake Semechonitis and cuts through its marshes. From there too, directing its course, it goes on a hundred and twenty stadia without any interruption to the city called Julias; afterwards it passes with its stream through the middle of this lake called Gennesar; from these places, having wandered through much desert, it is received by the Asphaltite lake and buried in it. So, having come out of two lakes as victor, it sticks fast in the third. The region of Gennesar borders the lake of the same name, from which it too takes its name, with wonderful grace of nature and beauty of appearance. For the richness of the soil supplies fruits of its own accord, and, fertile in groves, it raises itself spontaneously in every kind; and the skill of cultivation, imitating nature, has turned the grace of rich fruitfulness of fruit-bearing trees to whatever uses it wished, so that there is nothing there that nature has denied, nothing that cultivation has passed over—so suited is it to all fruits and so alien to none. Its climate is so temperate that it suits the diversity of all things that grow. There things nourished by cold pour themselves out abundantly, and things fostered by heat; there you would see summer things mixed with winter ones, northern nuts and dates, which do not know how to grow except in the hottest places. Why should I speak of figs or olives, which a milder tract of sky nourishes? Yet these are not equal to those just mentioned: those are the chief and native fruits of Palestine and therefore more abundant; these nearly equal, and though at a long interval, yet close behind—you might call it a pleasant contest of nature and seasons. The one, like a fruitful mother, produces everything; the other's temperate climate, like a good nurse, rears all with soft care. So not only are the varieties of fruits produced abundantly, they are also preserved, so that some kinds do not fail for most of the year, and all the rest last through the whole year to its end. For the grapes and figs among the grafted trees, of a kind of royal grace, abound ten months without any failing; and the other fruits of the branches, whether the fields have produced them of their own accord or human industry has grafted them, do not know how to give up their service, by a kind of habit of those who tend them, except when new ones succeed. To this fertility of nature and temperateness of air is added the grace of a spring, which waters that region with a kind of life-giving flow; its name is Capharnaum, and some have thought, not idly, that it is a vein of the river Nile—not only because the fields are rich with its waters, but also because it produces a fish such that you would think it the coracinus, which is found in the lake of Alexandria from the flow of the Nile. The place too is named from the lake. It extends thirty stadia in length and twenty in breadth. Since we have spoken of the nature of the place, let us return to the conclusion of the battle. The rafts being prepared according to his order, Vespasian put on board a military force to pursue those who had escaped the plague by fleeing in ships. They could not find what to do. There was no place of safety on land, everything being surrounded by the enemy; no power of flight on the water, since the lake was closed and surrounded on every side by Romans; no confidence of resisting in their small skiffs. For what could a few do against very many, as the rafts approached? The approach of the rafts was slower, indeed, and the sallies of the boats more effective, but without any wound to the Romans; only the clatter of the shields was heard as the darts rebounded. The Jews did not dare to approach; nor did anyone come closer in a boat with impunity, since at close range he was easily pierced by the blows of missiles or sunk by the rafts. And if anyone tried to swim out or surface, pierced by the shot of an arrow he laid down a wretched life in the waves. Nor could they resist long, being diminished in various ways. For gradually, with very many rafts converging, the Romans drove the greatest number of the boats toward the shore. Those hemmed in either leapt onto land and were killed there by the Romans, or were cut down by those pressing from the rafts, or were crushed by the clash of the rafts, or threw themselves into the lake when the enemy leapt into their skiffs. You could see the waters mixed with blood, the lake full of corpses. No one who came in their way was spared. Heavy was the smell, most foul the stench of the place. Six thousand seven hundred Jews (counting, however, the earlier ones) were killed in that battle. The victorious Vespasian returned to Taricheae; there he was preparing to separate the people of the region from those of the city, so that those who had not been authors of the sedition might be spared. But on the counsel of very many, who judged that so great a multitude survived as could revive renewed battles, hostile to peace and useless to the places (for where would they stay, driven from their country? With what food would they support themselves, without share in anything, unless they lived by plunder?), he changed his view, and, with pardon of death held out as a hope, he ordered them to go out by the part that faced Tiberias and to make for that city. They easily believed what they longed for. They began to go out; but the route being occupied beforehand, the columns closed off all the passage of the Jews and led them into the stadium of the city. So Vespasian entered, and, having looked over the age and strength of all whom he had ordered to be set before him, he chose six thousand of the stronger young men and sent them to Nero at the Isthmus; the old and the weak, twelve hundred, he ordered to be killed; of the rest he sold thirty thousand four hundred; and all who were found to be from the parts of Agrippa's kingdom he gave to the king, who likewise, having received a price, sent them into the service of slavery. Besides these, the other people of the region of Trachonitis and Gaulanitis, of Joppa and Gadara, as instigators of war and disturbers of concord, abandoning their own and attacking others' lands, who had taken up arms and violated the peace, paid the just and due penalties for the merits of their crimes.

When Tarichaeae had been for the most part destroyed, the Romans were masters of the cities and territory of Galilee, except that Gamala, a city of the region of Gaulanitis, still nourished the spirit of a stubborn people, relying on very rugged ground. For it is set on a mountain, cut off right and left by sheer cliffs; it narrows toward the top, is severed in front by a deep chasm, and spreads out somewhat toward the rear. On that side too the approach for those going to the city is narrow and difficult, so that you would judge the path like a tail. From the summit it stretches out a neck to a great length, so that it carries the citadel before it like a head and lifts it to a lofty height: slender at the start, the ground as it were winding in steep bends and sunk into the depth; then in the middle of the neck it raises something like a mountain; the rest is sheer and impassable. Hence many earlier writers think it was called Camala because it has the shape of a camel, and that through the corrupt usage of the inhabitants the name Gamala stuck to the city. If you look at its buildings packed together, you would think the city hung in the air, and you would suppose that its northern part above all was suspended, while the southern part bends back a little. Josephus had also added fortifications to this city; relying on them, and on the number of the multitude that had flocked there, they had made sport of King Agrippa's siege for seven months. For Sogane and Seleucia also were portions of his kingdom. Seleucia lies near that most pleasant and famous grove of Daphne in Syria, interwoven with cypress trees and teeming with springs, which pour nourishment, as from milky breasts, into the river that flows past, which the people of the place call the Lesser Jordan. And that city and Sogane belong to Upper Gaulanitis; Gamala to the lower part. Hence, with differing inclinations, those cities had chosen alliance with Rome. This one rebelled so obstinately that when the king came nearer the walls and wished to address them, he was wounded by a sling and a javelin. Angered by this injury, the Romans began to press the siege more vehemently, and the fighting was fierce on both sides, since the Jews too contended with all their strength, thinking that they would receive no pardon, if the enemy won, for having assaulted their own king when he urged them to what was in their interest. Agrippa, then, struck on the right elbow by a stone, withdrew from the battle; the Romans burst into the city. For the enemy gave way before the missiles and the wall before the rams. Those who were hindering the engines could hold out no longer, and the wall, shaken by three rams, opened a path for the besiegers into the besieged. But through impatient haste this success brought no small disaster on the victors. For when they poured into the houses, searching them or hurrying to seize the spoil before they were ordered, the narrow houses gave way under the weight, their foundations tottered, and they collapsed; and each, dashed against the next, brought it down to ruin. Many of the Romans, caught in these falls, met disaster in the midst of victory. Many were pinned as they lay under the fallen buildings; others, their bodies mangled, were saved barely half alive. Many were killed by the dust; hemmed in by the narrow ways, they were cut down; from above too women and feeble old men, and those of the young men who had fled, hurled stones on those below, or whatever kinds of weapons came to hand. Darkness had covered everything, had taken away their sight and confused their minds, and in their ignorance they could find no way out. So, withdrawing with difficulty, they got clear of the dangers of the city. Vespasian meanwhile, while pressing the enemy, had gone on into the inner parts of the city, and in the middle of the enemy ranks that surrounded him he kept the fight burning. For it was neither fitting for so great a man to turn his back on the enemy, nor did he think it safe. He had sent his son Titus to Syria. He roused his well-known steadfast courage and, gathering himself in his armor, with the few he had with him, their shields locked together, he stood undaunted, as though considering on whom to throw himself. Fearing his charge, the Jews began to press with less force, and each, fearing for himself, they loosened their line. So Vespasian, facing the enemy, gave ground step by step, looking more like a man fighting than one retreating. There Brutius fell with ten of the foremost men, a man proved in earlier wars and known among the Jews as a man of experience and stout courage. A centurion too, with ten other Syrians, did an outstanding and memorable deed. For in the very tumult, seeing the Romans hard pressed, he hid himself in the inner part of a certain house; and there, in the dead of night, while the Jews over their supper were talking of what they had plotted against the Romans, he killed them all, and with his soldiers presented himself to the Roman army.

But when Vespasian saw that the army was downcast at the loss of so many and above all at the shame of having deserted their general, because they had left him alone inside the enemy's city, he consoled them with the greatest kindness, saying: “If the lot of my danger shames you, I too had not gone into battle in order to avoid dangers but to overcome them. But if it is because many of our men have been killed, that is no cause for wonder: for when is any victory without blood? Battles have their own outcomes. Although proven valor is wont to stand out in war, still chance is wont to have some power too. But it is the mark of a wise man to correct a fall in adversity and to keep moderation in prosperity. On the other hand, it belongs to a raw and untrained mind always to take good success for granted, as though the contest were not against men; and to a weak mind, after some fall, to despair of the whole cause, when everything that is done in war can suddenly tilt at the slightest moments. He therefore is the most excellent who in adversity meets misfortune soberly and trips up the stronger, and seeks to restore himself and to correct his own slips. But the careless man often falls by his own movements, and as he rushes in unwarily he is laid low, overthrown by his own charge. And if this often happens where courage is bare, how much more in war, where battle lines of different kinds clash together, and there is neither one plan nor one shared mind? An unfavorable position, difficult rough ground, the unfair condition of fighting in a narrow place, many against a few: for the very multitude becomes a burden to itself, while the few among the many are less often foiled. But these things often creep in at a given moment; they do not come from courage but happen by chance. So there is nothing that ought to distress you, fellow soldiers: for things were not turned by any weakness of your hands, nor by the courage of the Jews; it was the difficulty of the ground that hindered our victory and gave them delay. Nor is there anything that could be blamed except a rash and ill-considered charge. For when you followed them up into the higher parts of the city and broke into their houses, you entangled yourselves in dangers. You entered their dwellings and you took on their perils. You held the city; who forced you to go farther in? The enemy ought to have come down to you, not you, unrestrained in the pursuit of victory, to press on forgetful of life and safety. So take heart again, and from your own valor look not only for consolation but, what is more, for vengeance: you will certainly have me at your head in the fight. Be ready in arms and in spirit: let dangers make you braver, not more fearful. It is easy to repay an injury if courage recognizes itself.”

With these words he kindled the courage of the soldiers. As they were repairing the rampart, many slipped away from the siege down the cliffs. For lack of food was already pressing them, and they thought the broken walls would yield to the engines. Then there was only one spring within the city, and that too was close to the wall; this put them in the greatest fear, so that very many slipped away. But those who thought they should remain fought stubbornly. Meanwhile the Romans undermined a very high tower and overthrew it with great force. Shaken by this fall, the city was thrown into confusion, everyone dreading the ruin of the whole city. Hence Chares too, who was sick in body, was so terrified by the noise that he lost his senses and died. Yet the Romans, though the city lay open, held back from entering until Titus came in; roused by grief at his father's danger, he burst into the city with a few men and inflicted a very great slaughter on the Jews. Only those who were in the upper parts kept the Romans from approaching by rolling down stones; they hurled spears and shot arrows. Stones pushed by the Jews rolled easily down the slope, their missiles reached their mark, the arrows descended not without danger to those they struck. For the Romans, throwing against the higher parts of the mountain was ineffective, their efforts vain and dangerous to themselves; when suddenly a storm of wind arose, turned back the arrows of the Jews and drove back their spears, while what the Roman army hurled it carried on against the enemy. So, overwhelmed by the barriers of the very elements and the whirlwinds of the winds, all who were found there perished in the final destruction of the captured city. Only four thousand, we are told, were killed by the Romans; five thousand perished by throwing themselves down the precipice. No age was spared.

Gischala alone, of the regions of Galilee, had not yet drawn the enemy upon itself, since its inhabitants were of a quieter temper, being a rustic people content with their crops, and contributed nothing to the war. But through the coming together of many who made their living by robbery, the inclinations even of the more moderate were corrupted by bad morals. There was moreover a man of no weight named John, a native, the plague of the people, second to none of the crafty in tricks, knowing no equal in wickedness, who never lacked the will to do harm, though for some time poverty had hindered him from practicing his iniquity. Yet I do not clearly know what I should decide: whether need restrained him or held him back. Clever at deceit, a master of fraud, schooled in lies, he would seek others' trust and then bring cruelty on the very men he had won over; he counted falsehood a virtue and thought it elegance to entrap even his dearest friends; quick to conspire, bold to dare, keen to carry through; a troublemaker in peace, a deserter in danger, accustomed to robbery, unused to war; one who, though he could not pursue tyranny, nevertheless sowed the causes for gaining it. He had a restless spirit and ready daring, which his successes and his means fed for gathering a band of desperate men. Hence when Vespasian learned that the people of that city were being roused to war by his faction, so as not to tire out the whole army he sent his son Titus with a thousand horsemen, and with them Titus approached the city. But when he saw the walls packed with people, he said he wondered that they were following in rebellion the example of those whose destruction ought to have brought them to their senses. Granted that at first their attempts had some hope behind them: what hope did the destruction of all the others offer? The hope of liberty might well have been pardonable in the beginning; but persistence in the last and desperate extremity is beyond pardon. For against those who are not moved by the example of clemency nor by earnest warning in words, not words but arms are needed. “You trust your walls, as though they had protected those others against the might of the Romans. What else can men shut in display, what else can men surrounded put forward, except that they are bold in captivity?” No one had the opportunity to speak: for the robber band had taken over the whole circuit of the walls, and John took care that no one should invite the Romans to a friendly parley. So he himself seized the right of answering, saying that he gladly accepted the discussion of their common affairs and did not refuse to try it, in case Titus should persuade them of what was in their interest, or what he proposed should be agreed to; but that he was forbidden by the law of their fathers, since the day of the sacred week still remained, to discuss conditions of peace. For as it was forbidden to take up arms, so it was unlawful to deliberate about peace on holy days. Indeed, even to decide business in words was sacrilege for those who were forced to it, and not unpunished for those who forced them. He asked for the respite of a single day; so short a delay would be no hindrance at all. For with the enemy all around, the besieged had no free way of escape; the choice of peace was offered to them, and with so fair an option fear stood in the way; meanwhile they ought not to be pressed to deliberate on peace, since for them it was a matter of religion not to transgress the law of their fathers; and it suited so generous an offer of peace that one who, beyond hope, freely offered peace so that no one should be endangered, should also leave their laws intact to those who were to be saved. Titus, judging that these pleas were made without guile, sounded the retreat and called back from the walls those he had brought with him. So John, having gained the chance to flee, departed in the dead of night with many others; women too followed him as he went. But the farther the men advanced, the more women and little children were left behind, and the women, deserted by their own, watched the road in terror. And when they had lost sight of their own husbands, they thought the enemy was at hand, trembling at every sound. If anyone ran up, they turned about wretchedly, fearing that they were being hunted and that chains were being cast on them, as though those they feared were already there. Titus, then, according to the agreement, as soon as the sun was up, marched with the army to the city. The gates are opened; the people come out exulting and receive the Romans with joy and eagerness, glad that the pestilent man was gone, that he had fled by night, and that they had been given their freedom; they begged pardon, that his flight might not be held against them, since they could not have held him without their own destruction. Titus, consoled for the delay of vengeance by the speed with which the business had been finished, at once sent very many men to seize John, in case they could overtake him. He himself entered the city and, content to have struck the disturbers of the peace with threats rather than punishment, pardoned everyone, so that no one, moved by hatred or by private disputes, should bring the innocent into ill will and attack them with the charge of the gravest crime. For it is far more tolerable to leave what is uncertain to the fear of a guilty conscience than to condemn an innocent man. Fear often corrects the guilty, but the punishment of the innocent has no remedy of correction. John, then, was not found by those whom Titus had sent; but of those who were following him, little children and women, about two thousand were killed, and three thousand of the weaker age and sex, once the killers had had their fill of slaughter, were assigned to captivity. Titus gave the city a military garrison. So all Galilee was brought under Roman power. For Mount Tabor too, whose height is thirty stadia, while its flat summit extends twenty-three stadia, was abandoned by some for lack of water and handed over by others to the Romans after they had asked for pardon; although it was also through the courage and skill of Placidus, to whom Vespasian had entrusted this task, that the whole crowd of refugees, while they pursued him as he gave way and pressed on him as he skillfully drew back, were surrounded in the middle of the plain, lost their refuge, and found destruction.

Thus far we have been allowed to wander about, occupying our pen with other cities while shrinking from the contagions of the holy temple founded by our forefathers and of the sacred law. But it is now time to undertake what was done at Jerusalem, not relying on talent, but so that we may not seem to have refused the service of our grief to the law of our fathers and the ancient worship. Granted that in these there was a shadow, not the truth; yet the shadow marks out the traces of the truth. For a shadow has the outlines of a picture, but not its brilliance, nor is it finished by the final hand; yet to those who look carefully it expresses what is to come; and therefore the figure delights less but draws more by grace. Hence it pleased the arbiter of all things to abolish the old and found the new, so that those who did not follow the images through the narrow ways of unbelief might follow the truth.

John, fleeing from the parts of Galilee, as we said above, made his way to the city of Jerusalem; and like a kind of plague he infected the minds of many, the ringleaders of crimes who had flowed there from different regions as into a sewer. For this was a greater cause of destruction for that city: that what the desperate men gave to their own crimes, gathering many in one place where they believed they would be either safer or freer to heap up crimes, was thought to be given to faith. So they were received everywhere, as though they had come out of devout love for the temple to defend it. This was the first stain of the evils. From this the gentleness of the few was crushed by the insolence of the many; from this they went on to murders, since a stranger spared less; from this they conspired that the solemn rites of the law should be neglected and the priesthoods transferred from the good to the wicked, because what was holy was unknown to men who were strangers not only to devout worship but to the very knowledge of the law. First men of royal family who resisted were put in chains, so that the rest would yield out of fear; then they were killed; and to cover up the outrage, they falsely claimed that those they had put to death without trial, by sending assassins into the prison, had been killed on a trumped-up charge of treason. So everyone was carried away by fear, because powerful and innocent men, Antipas, Levias and Sophas, had been crushed so easily, so that no one dared to resist any longer. From there it went so far that they appointed base and unworthy men as chief priests, so that men whom no claim of merit to the honor supported, having obtained the priesthood against their deserts, would be subject to every crime at the will of the conspirators. But when the priestly men opposed this, and especially Ananus, the eldest of the rest, they demanded, so that the prerogative of the highest title should not be granted by favor, that a high priest be created by lot, in which nothing would be thought due to favor, but the outcome of the lot would be thought committed to divine judgment. And in truth they pretended an old custom, by which it was the practice that those to be appointed to the high priesthood should be called to the lot; but in fact they were bringing about the dissolution of the law. For whereas the law of priestly succession chose men by lot, they, for appearance' sake, set up one man from the priestly tribes, named Enachus, as present, and ordered the lot to be cast. Then a certain Phannias, son of Samuel, came out by lot, a rustic man, to whom not only no succession descending through the chief priests gave a claim, but not even any knowledge of the priestly office, since he spent his time in the country; and therefore he did not even know what being high priest was. At length he was dragged from the fields and, against his will, as though on a stage another character was put on him; he was also dressed in the robe of the sacred vestments in the ancient manner, and was taught on the spot what he was to do. So the wickedness of the rebels was exposed by the outcome of the lot, so that the office of so great a priesthood was brought down to an unskilled peasant. But to them the cheating of the ancient solemnity was a joke; to the priests it was a grief, and they groaned to see the law mocked by desperate men. Yet relying on the authority of piety and on the indignation of good men, they gathered themselves together and fell upon the disturbers. But since these were outmatched both in their cause and in numbers, they fled to the temple as to a citadel and made it a kind of fortress for themselves, to repel the multitude of the people who were attacking. And at first, posted before the doors of the temple and in the forecourt itself, they fought against the people; if anyone was wounded, he made for the inner parts of the temple, shedding his blood there on the inner threshold, and wiping his more severely wounded sores, bloody from the pavements, and the flesh of the open wound, they nursed them with the garments they were not permitted to touch. There was war within the city, war between citizens, war before the temple. Not even this did the robbers respect: when the people pressed them harder, they withdrew into the temple itself and at once shut the doors. By this barrier Ananus was held back; so as not to seem to make war on the temple and break open the doors of the temple consecrated by the religion of our forefathers, he turned back the attack of the people, and stationed six thousand men in the porticoes, armed, to stand guard and keep watchful custody. Little by little, however, he softened his mind toward seeking peace, chiefly out of zeal that the blood of citizens should not defile the temple; he also urged that an embassy be sent as mediator of peace, so that the civil war might be laid aside. John was taken on to carry out the embassy, a man of suspect loyalty, burning with the desire to seize power. An oath was demanded of him; he did not refuse, lest he suffer harm by refusing, though at the cost of perjury. He pretended to favor the people so as to deceive them. What more? He goes, says a little about peace by way of preface, and adds much more to incite war, saying that war was wrapped up in the name of peace, that a plot lay hidden, that Ananus was handing the city over to the Romans so that the solemn rites of the ancients would be dissolved and the precepts of the law abrogated, inventing everything in the opposite sense, and turning onto the chief priest the odium of what he himself was planning. Cunningly too he incited those he knew to be the leaders and heads of the faction among the men shut in, working on their fear of death and asserting that Ananus had planned destruction for them in particular; he had come, he said, to expose the fraud. Help must be sought quickly, before the penalty was exacted from them by the others. What more? In the midst of peace he kindled war. Men are chosen to ask the Idumaeans to battle: a fickle, restless, insolent race, ready for discord, glad of revolution, heedless of danger, headlong to battle. And so, won over without delay, they come; twenty thousand men are gathered, since they were not occupied with farming the land but ready for robbery. The coming of the Idumaeans could not escape Ananus. So he ordered the gate to be shut, so that they would not enter with tumult, but, if possible, would learn the truth and renounce war.

So the chief priests climbed the wall and addressed the Idumaeans from a tower: it was a very great wonder to them, they said, that they had so quickly been entangled by lies and were taking up arms over matters they did not yet understand, when they ought first to be judges of the matters in dispute rather than fighters in battles, and before all else to learn the merits of the case rather than take up arms; and arms against men of their own race, their own worship, their own solemnities, who had done no more wrong to the Idumaeans than that the Idumaeans were being stirred to share in grave crimes. For what else was being asked of them but parricide against their fellow citizens and sacrilege against the temple? Different pursuits and different characters are not wont to agree with one another; likeness of character makes a fellowship of wills, and kindred pursuits bind themselves together. Most wicked men, who made their living by robbery, had presumed to summon the Idumaeans as their allies: so far apart from the purpose of those by whom they were asked that “they made war on their own people, but begged you to come and defend a city not your own, as it were. You have nothing in common, innocent men, with robbers; nothing in common, sober men, with those who make themselves drunk. Would that their drunkenness were of wine and not of madness! When they have gorged themselves on crimes, squandering their own inheritances, they plunder what belongs to others, and what they have wickedly got they squander more wickedly still, and pour it out in their madness. There is no end to their plundering, because there is no limit to their gluttony. When they have filled themselves with wine and are full of drunkenness, they belch out the surfeit of public affairs, so as to get drunk again on our blood and to mock the sacred religion that has always been an object of veneration and reverence for you. Flee therefore these parricidal gatherings, abandon these sacrilegious games, forsake the assemblies of robbers. You were called to a partnership in crime; you have come as a remedy for your homeland. We see a most distinguished people whom it would have been fitting to come at the request of the public council, to help against the enemy the most eminent city of the Jews, which is held to be the mother city of the whole nation. But even if we failed to ask you while we hoped for peace, and were unwilling to trouble you in haste, since we were offering peace to those who were stirring up war, nevertheless, since you have come as if by divine decision, consider the matter openly and show yourselves judges for both sides. Ask where the beginnings of the uproar came from; who sounded the trumpet to a quiet city; who shed the blood of the most eminent citizens; on whose authority punishment was exacted from men uncondemned; who were our ruin before the Romans. We were preparing war against the Romans, and we were already suffering these men as enemies. Whose friendship with the Romans, then, is suspect? That of those who avenge the Romans, or of those who drive the Romans back? These things are certainly heavier to us than the battles of the Romans: by the Romans we are killed for liberty; by these men we are butchered as if for a crime. Innocent men are falsely charged with treason, and the slander is invented after their death, when a hearing is wont to come before the penalty, not the penalty before the hearing. For what does it profit a dead man to be acquitted, when he owes nothing any longer to the court? Yet we have accepted even this kind of lot, that the question of innocence is raised after the murder; and we gladly plead before you too the cause of our own integrity and that of the dead, before you who stand in arms for our adversaries: so little evidence do the slanderers have that before you too they may have a heavier case, because you believed so quickly. For a good judge grieves to have been surrounded by lies, and is the more hostile to the deceiver the more he was eager, because he thinks he must avenge the fact that he was rashly driven to believe falsehoods. Keep, then, a full hearing for us, and gather the truth not from a heap of words but from the course of events. First of all, why should we betray our homeland to the Romans, when we could have avoided provoking them, and perhaps it ought to have been so, that we did not arouse the conquerors of all nations? But it is not for the present parties to deliberate about this. It belonged to an earlier time to choose what course we would follow; now we must die for liberty, for it is better to die for one's homeland. It would have been more advantageous to prefer peace to war and death; but since war is upon our necks, many of our brothers already captured, others killed, grief for the dead, groaning for those in chains, a free death is rather to be chosen than a life of captivity. Yet it is still open to those about to die to wipe out the disgrace of a false charge of treason. Before you, before you, Idumaeans, we plead our cause: let the accomplices be produced; let the messengers who carried the news be brought forward. If they hold them, let the avengers produce them; if those who accuse do not hold them, and invent charges out of empty suspicions which they have made up for themselves, they ought not to charge what they cannot prove. But since they do not dare to accuse, they want to spread it among the people; and therefore they leap into war so as not to be called to judgment. For in war fury is content; in peace there is examination of the truth. Here we are: see, we offer ourselves of our own accord for the first punishments, if only some accuser comes forward; or if ill will is being stirred against the people, inquire more carefully what was decided in the public assembly. Was it not that armies be prepared and equipped for war, or that each man help his homeland for the sake of liberty? Against these very robbers, certainly, what had been decided except that peace should be agreed? The grief of individuals had sharpened public indignation: the blood of the innocent, the groaning of women, the transgression of the statutes of our fathers. The groaning of all rang out, because each feared the same for himself. The priesthoods were being given to the most unworthy; people began to protest aloud; those men began to strike the people with stones and kill them with weapons; public grief blazed up; they made the temple a den of robbers. So the place of peace, revered even by the Gentiles, the dwelling of holiness, has become a meeting place of bandits; and where men flocked from every part of the earth to the worship of the festal celebration, there now are, as it were, dens of wild beasts, wet with human blood. Granted that it is not for us to inquire into these things, nor for armed men to be without law; yet there has often been judgment amid arms, and justice has laid down the instruments of war, and the sentence of equity has calmed the mobs. You can turn these arms to the defense of the city, which you took up for its overthrow. You may even come in without arms, hear and inquire into everything: if you find anything slackened against the enemy, consider it treason. But if you wish to show yourselves neither avengers nor judges, why do you wonder that the gates are not opened to armed men? They are shut not against kinsmen but against arms. Lay down arms, and the gates will be open.”

When the priests had said these things, and especially Jesus, the eldest of the rest after Ananus, who held the second place, the Idumaeans were indignant that they had not at once been received into the city; and Simon, one of the leaders of the Idumaeans, said: “It is no wonder at all if citizens rage and keep shut in the men who have shut the gates against an allied nation and do not allow their own partners and associates to enter. They speak to us from the wall, and drive back with walls, as if adversaries, those whom they used to have as friends. Who would doubt that they are preparing to receive the Romans, and perhaps to garland the gates when they enter? What greater injury is there? This city is surely wont to stand open to all men for the sake of worship and religious observance; to us alone it is closed, as if to enemies; we alone are disowned, we alone are driven back. They pretend to ask for our judgment, though they did not think us worthy even of the threshold of the city. Let what they have done against those men remain hidden; of our own injury we are witnesses and judges. We perceive what those shut in suffer, when we are ordered to lay down our arms. And can it be believed that the verdict is awaited of men whose loyalty is suspect? Let us hasten, then, to rescue those shut in, for whom the temple has been made a prison, so that they are not kept until the coming of the Roman army and handed over as captives to Vespasian. Let us remove the siege from the temple, let us remove the foulest of guards, who do not allow anyone to go out even to relieve his bowels. If anyone wishes to bring food in to those shut up, he is prevented; if anyone wishes to go out, he is dragged off to death: the practice of religion has become a crime.”

Hearing this, John gave way, considering that it was useless to struggle against the adverse will of God, since hostile armies were roaring at home and abroad, and the city was being attacked from two sides. The Idumaeans chafed at being shut out. Those stationed in the temple were scheming how they might join the Idumaeans; they were tormented by fear that the Idumaeans might leave before the deed was done, while shame wrung from the Idumaeans their intention of going back. And distrust had almost crept in, when suddenly in the night an unbearable storm arose: black tempest, roaring winds, the sky bristling, a great force of rain pouring down, terrible flashes of lightning, monstrous thunder, the earth bellowing, so that it was thought the world was being dissolved. Who would believe that this did more harm to those inside the city than to those staying outside? For the former were everywhere protected by roofs, the latter exposed to the rain; but the fear of harm frightened more than the harm itself. Indeed those who had no shelter of roofs covered themselves with their shields, staying at their posts and not slipping away; while the others, scattered each around his own house, gave room for the gates to be opened by those who were in the temple. Yet the people's opinion was divided and uncertain. Some thought that the most high God, angry with the Idumaeans, had stirred up the storms, because they had come armed against their own kin; Ananus and the deeper minds of the elders conjectured that the Idumaeans would be stirred the more by their hardship to the destruction of their allies. In the end Ananus, more anxious than on other nights, was overcome that night not by bodily weariness but rather by despair of mind; he gave way to affairs that were surging against him and to the storms of the world fighting for his ruin, and did not think he should inspect the guards, as though giving leave to slip away wherever each man pleased. Seizing this opportunity, those who had taken refuge in the temple rose and sawed through the bars of the gates. The crashing of the sky worked with them, so that the sound of the bolts and the noise of men going out was not heard. Then coming to the wall, they unbarred the gate next to the bands of the Idumaeans. That would have been the last day for the whole people, if they had not thought they must make first for the temple rather than for the city. But because those who were kept shut up within the temple feared for themselves, lest, when the entry of the Idumaeans was known, the attack of the people surrounding them should fall on them, and the vengeance of men about to die should demand them, they asked that they themselves first be rescued from destruction, and then, once freed and with forces joined, they would pour out upon the people. The Idumaeans turned aside to those who had sent envoys to beg help for their safety, so that they might repay the authors of this unhoped-for irruption above all with this service. When this went according to plan, all of them together poured out of the temple as from a kind of fortress, and with their line extended cut down whomever they found in all the streets, some asleep, some terrified. Prayers did nothing, tears did nothing, nor badges of honor, nor the regard due to any merit; all were butchered everywhere. At last, seeing the beastly savagery of the pursuers, since no one was spared, some strangled themselves, by a more miserable end, as it seems to me, than if they had been killed by the enemy: for a voluntary death is ascribed to savagery, and the ugly knot of the noose is also counted a disgrace. But what room was there for deliberation, where the fear of torments was so great, when each man feared not death but tortures before death, from which death would be a relief? Blood overflowed everywhere, and above all around the temple, because those who had been guarding the men shut in were gathered there. On that day eight thousand five hundred men were found slain. Then turning to the city, they killed whatever men they met, like a flock of cattle. It was a pitiable sight: war waged inside the city once revered by all, unjust ruin brought on the poor and the weak. The young and the stronger, indeed, whom they thought fit for their faction, were thrust into prison; but many, with great courage, preferred to undergo every torment rather than join the desperate men. There was no limit, no shame: so raged the madness of savagery. Later, when in course of time victims ran short, they began to invent grounds for putting men to death, so as to bring the accused to trial, not that justice might be sought but that cruelty might be stirred up.

There was in the city a certain Zacharias, who hated the wicked and did not mix with criminals, rich in means, whose abundance they thought would either be effective in breaking up their faction or a rich plunder for themselves. They decided to summon him on a charge of treason. But he, with a conscience clear of such things, began to defend himself with freedom, so that he not only refuted the charges but also proved his accusers themselves guilty of the greatest crimes. The case was pleaded before seventy men. They all acquitted him, because nothing akin to a crime was brought forward. But the Zealots rushed in, threw him down into the depth, and threw the judges into confusion, not only with insult but also with danger, so that by their example the rest would beware in future of showing firmness in judging against their will. Again, so that no one would be acquitted, they themselves became the executors of their own anger and killed without trial whomever they pleased. Gorion was slain, a man pleasing and beloved; Niger of Peraea, who had been chosen among the defenders of Judea to guard the whole cause, a warrior who even bore the marks of his valor in the scars of his wounds, was dragged off to death. And when he saw that he was being led out of the city, he began to plead no longer for his life but for burial. And not even to this so pitiable a request did he receive an answer befitting mercy. False charges were invented: if a man bought himself off, he was innocent; whoever did not offer money was struck down as guilty.

While these things were being done at Jerusalem, Vespasian meanwhile was subduing other parts of the Jewish nation. News reached him of the sedition at Jerusalem, of the slaughters they had inflicted on themselves in civil battles, of the punishments exacted from citizens by citizens. Many urged him to go there, so that nothing might be taken away from the Roman triumph and his own glory. But he, a moderate and far-sighted man, who judged not by what the crowd thought convenient but by what, on deeper counsel, would benefit the whole cause, began to answer those who urged this: the state is not always served by battles, but often it is in the end secured when arms are laid down, and the debt to the homeland is paid. “What difference does it make how the enemy is conquered, by our sword or by his own? Except that by his own he is laid low without any odium against Rome. For they cannot complain of us, since they have wounded one another; at the same time they show how just the wars are that they have stirred against us, when they do not spare even themselves. Vengeance seems to come from heaven, so that those who have provoked the Romans rave in madness. But if anyone asserts that something is taken from our glory, let him know that a remedy with silence often outweighs a battle with danger. Indeed our Maximus broke Hannibal more by delaying than by fighting. Although the Scipios subdued Africa, still victory in wars is shared with many; to Maximus alone was it given that by delaying he restored the state. It is greater, therefore, to have preserved the Roman empire than to have extended it. Yet let us weigh the merits of the virtues equally: in war itself the devices of wisdom are certainly no less than the marks of courage. So let them perish by their own arms: nothing is taken from our praise, and very much is added to our victory. Those whom we spare do not know how to spare their own. What if, when we begin to bear down on them, they perhaps come to their senses among themselves and are reconciled? I do not fear it, but I put it forward against your opinion. Or if the sedition continues, they will seem to have conquered themselves, the Roman army to have done nothing, our hands to have been idle, and the victory to have been won not by our valor but by the enemy's mutual slaughter. So this is the wiser plan: that in our absence they rage to their own destruction, so that no one may think they were worn down by our forces rather than by their own factions. Then we shall do better to approach, when a victor survives to add to our triumph. Certainly let those who flee their own come to us; let those whom the plague of their own people has driven out find safety with us.”

Nor was Vespasian mistaken in his opinion: for those who could buy themselves off so as to be let go fled to the Romans. All the paved roads and all the paths were full of people slipping away; the rich were released, the poor were killed, since they lacked money for their ransom. Many also feared ambushes and robbers outside the city, especially the poor, who had no escort. So, with an equal danger set before them abroad and at home, deadly in both places, many nonetheless, in the hope of their fathers' tomb, judged death among their own people more bearable.

When, by the very great slaughter of the people, fear had spread to all and made everyone subject to the faction, John, not content to exercise power in common with the leaders of the faction, began to aim at tyranny and would not bear an equal. So he overturned the decrees of others; he held nothing valid except what pleased him; little by little he gathered bodyguards about him: skilled in guile at entrapping whom he wished by fraud, binding them with money, terrifying them with power, by which arts he had attached very many to himself. On the other hand there were not lacking those who refused servitude even at the cost of danger, especially since, being accustomed to domination, they could not endure slavery. So in one city three kinds of deadly calamity were contending: tyranny, war, and sedition, each of which could destroy not one city but very many. Of the three, however, war was the lightest, and a lawful enemy seemed more bearable than a tyrant or a faction. To these was added a fourth kind, that of the sicarii, who, seeing the city taken up with tyrannical upheavals and the tumults of sedition, laid waste everything nearby and carried off everything. Women and little children, who could not endure the toil of the journey through the weakness of sex or age, they put to death. So seven hundred were killed; grain was carried off into their fortresses; they fell upon fields, towns and temples and drove off plunder; no opportunity of killing was passed over. Under the appearance of an army they carried on robbery, more of them than the practice of brigandage had ever had. By the savagery of their brigandage they made the war more bitter, with no pardon for surrender and no leniency in receiving it.

So Vespasian is asked to come as a remedy, he from whom destruction had been feared. He hastened to Gadara, where there were very many rich men who, because of their property, feared more and more the plots and raids of the robbers; and therefore they had secretly sent to Vespasian to approach them, so that the city might be rescued from the robbers. The Roman army arrived; seeing it, the people of Gadara wished to flee to it, but they could not find a way to do it without destruction, for fear that the faction would rise against them as they left and destroy them all. Yet it did not escape the faction that Vespasian had been invited by an embassy of the Gadarenes; they seized a man privy to that embassy, one of the leading men of the city, named Dolesus, and killed him; and having avenged their injury, they left the city and betook themselves to hidden and better-fortified places. Gadara was handed over to the Romans, and Vespasian was received with great applause. He at once sent Placidus to pursue those who had fled; he himself returned to Caesarea.

Placidus sent five hundred horsemen ahead and, pursuing the fugitives, forced them to withdraw into the nearest village; there they found a body of chosen young men and took courage to rise against the Romans. This proved their ruin. For with the horsemen surrounding them they were shut out of the village and cut down without any hindrance. And while others crowded together tried to get back in, they were slaughtered before the thresholds of the gates. The heap of corpses of the slain rose to the height of the walls. The Romans pierced some with arrows and wounded others with various missiles; at last they stormed the stronghold, and there all were killed, except those who had the chance to slip away. Others in their flight magnified with their talk the great fame of Roman valor: the bodies they had seen were greater than men's, no one could have any confidence of resisting the invincible. Hence everyone was terrified and fled at once; and not only the neighboring and bordering places, but even the city of Jericho, which nourished the hope of the rest because of the throngs of its numerous inhabitants, was abandoned. Placidus, with matters flowing as he wished, pursued them too with his horsemen and laid them low, some crowded together, others scattered, all the way to the river Jordan. He also found a very great number at the river's bank, hindered from crossing, because the river, as it happened, was then swollen with heavy rains or with melted snow. When they saw the Romans at hand, they made ready and crowded together at the river's edge. Necessity, now that the help of flight was cut off, put the remedy into their hands; they charged, many against fewer horsemen. But the horsemen, with their known skill and in the old manner of warfare, riding among them, began to cut through the enemy's wedge, break up their clusters, press the weary, and follow those who gave way. So some were killed by the enemy's sword, others by their own, because, crowded into one mass, they had dashed against one another. Others rushed into the river, and by their very fall, entangled one with another, were drowned. Many too, thinking they could get across, gave themselves to the river; when they had gone a little way the force of the whirlpools swallowed them or the stream's blow swept them away. And if any, by skill in swimming, had got out over the water, they either hung on the current that drew them under, or were caught in the branches of trees carried down by the river, or crushed by the very trunks, and gave up their lives in the river. Often too one who did not know how to swim, when he had seized a swimmer, held on so that he might escape with him, and wore him out, clasped in his arms, until both went under and each was the other's ruin. And if anyone running down with the current seemed about to escape, he was set upon with arrows and, suddenly falling on his back as his rowing arms ceased, he perished. There were also some who could not swim and, seeking a death without pain, threw themselves of their own will into the river from the high place of the banks. Others, going in by the sandy shore, were sucked down as their footing sank; many too, striking against round stones or shallows, staggering with unsteady step, were overwhelmed by the following current. Thirteen thousand were slain by the sword; an innumerable multitude was consumed by the river; great booty was taken from flocks of sheep and from camels, asses and oxen. Great as the slaughter of men was, it was thought even greater, because not only was the whole region full of human corpses (since those who had been caught scattered and straggling anywhere were killed), but even the Jordan itself was so choked with the bodies of the dead that it could not keep its own course. The lake Asphaltites too changed the appearance of its nature with the blood and entrails of the dead, since everything the Jordan had swept along was carried into it. In all, ninety-two thousand two hundred Jews were reckoned to have perished that day, at the hands of only five hundred horsemen and three thousand foot soldiers. Placidus, advancing further, restored Abila, Julias, Besimoth and all the villages of that district as far as the lake Asphaltites to Roman rule. He also put soldiers in boats, by whom all who had fled onto that lake were wiped out.

So all this as far as Machaerus was recovered. Vespasian, however, was waiting for the time for battle, when he might attack the mother city of Judea with the Roman army more safely. Meanwhile, while he was occupied with the affairs entrusted to him, news came of new disturbances in the regions of Gaul, because certain powerful men of the Roman army had revolted from Nero. On learning this, wishing to relieve the civil wars and the danger to the whole state and the entire Roman empire by finishing the turmoil of the wars in the East, so that by the news of success he might either suppress or forestall all the disturbances of Italy, as soon as the harsh winter was softened by the beginning of spring he set out from Caesarea with the greater part of his army. He was received by a city called Antipatris. Advancing from there, he burned villages and killed those he found to be hostile; and above all he laid waste everything near the Idumaeans, whatever he found even quiet, because that restless race of men was friendlier to wars than to leisure and quiet. Two villages of Idumaea too, Betaris and Caphartoba, and their inhabitants, he seized and broke with very great slaughter. For he killed over ten thousand men, led away a thousand captives, and drove out the rest of the common people, so as to station a body of his own men there, because the mountain parts of that region were infested with robbery. He himself with the army went back to Emmaus, which took its name from its hot waters, because the steam of waters is said to be called Amathus in the Syrian language; hence in Greek it is called Thermae, because it has a hot spring within its walls. Then he hastened through Samaria, past Neapolis, to Jericho, where Trajan met him, bringing a large force from those peoples of the region of Peraea, beyond the Jordan, who had been conquered and returned under Roman rule. At the news of the Roman army's approach, many from the city of Jericho, seeing that it was unsafe, had betaken themselves to the mountain country of the region of Jerusalem. The whole crowd of those who stayed was destroyed. For it was not difficult for the city to be taken quickly, since it was neither strengthened by natural fortification and had been deserted and abandoned by its own people slipping away. The city was founded on a plain, over which rises a widespread mountain, bare of growth. For on the northern side it extends to the land of the city of Scythopolis, and on the southern side it stretches to the region of Sodom and the borders of Asphaltites. Its soil is sickly and barren, and therefore abandoned by inhabitants, because by its natural sterility it is of no use to farmers. Opposite it is a mountain beyond the Jordan, which rises from Julias and the northern quarter, and stretches southward as far as Somora, bordering Arabia Petraea, where there is also a mountain called by the ancients the Iron Mountain. Between these two mountains lies a plain which, because of its size, since it stretches over great distances, the inhabitants by ancient usage have called the Great Plain; its length is two hundred thirty stadia, its breadth one hundred twenty. It begins at the village of Ginnabris and ends at the lake Asphaltites. The Jordan cuts through the middle of the plain, not only harmlessly but with added charm, as the river's flood makes its banks green; and Asphaltites and Tiberias follow, fed by one source and each of a different quality in its place. For the water of the one is salty in taste and barren in use, while that of Tiberias is sweet and fruitful. In the days of summer an excessive heat boils across the plain, and from the growing harm of the extreme dryness, the air, made more corrupt by the dry mud, produces pitiable diseases in the inhabitants. For everything is dry except the banks of the river. Indeed, in the more remote parts even the fruit of the trees grows sickly; the abundance is richer and the fruit of the palms fatter that grows on the banks of the river Jordan; elsewhere it is far thinner.

There is also near the city of Jericho an abundant spring, very rich for drinking and very fertile for watering, which Joshua son of Nun, a Hebrew, a man strong in hand, first took from the race of the Canaanites. At the beginning it was regarded as rather foul and barren for bringing forth, and not very wholesome for those who drank it or used it. Hence the prophet Elisha, the disciple of Elijah and a successor by no means unworthy of so great a master, was asked by the inhabitants, so that he might leave to the places he had visited a reward for their hospitality and relieve the foulness of the waters; and he gave a remedy, as the ancient Scripture of the Kingdoms teaches, ordering a clay vessel with salt to be brought to him. Receiving it, he threw the salt into the spring and said: “I have healed these waters, and there shall not be in them one who dies, nor one who is barren from them”; and the waters were healed, it says, according to the word of Elisha the prophet. So from that pouring of blessed salt the waters were tempered, the mouth of the source was opened, and the channels of the waters were sanctified, so that the gushing of the springs poured out sweeter drink, all that bitterness of the waters turned sweet, and the earth gave richer fruit. In the bringing forth of offspring, too, the best succession supplied an abundant number of descendants, and the life-giving water did not fail, since divine grace, in answer to the faithful zeal of the righteous, had breathed upon it through the blessings of so great a prophet. So the echo of the heavenly oracle changed the nature of the waters at the prophet's prayers, and at once drove away barrenness and poured in fruitfulness. There the generations of men began to multiply, and the fruits of the earth; and the juice of the waters, which before was hungry and bitter, wont to kill what was sown and to twist the sad mouths of those who drank, began to pour fertility into the soil and sweetness into those who drank, so that where it touches briefly it does more good than where it has watered longer. For there is this novel grace, that the yield is more abundant where the use is less, and where anyone has used it more, there the fruit is less; and so it waters more than other springs, because even a little of it abounds to fruitfulness. Indeed a plain spreads around it, seventy stadia in length and twenty in breadth. In it you may see a wonderful charm of gardens, various kinds of palms, and such sweetness of dates that you would think honey was flowing, in no way inferior to others. There are also there the finest swarms of bees; no wonder, where, breathing on such diverse flowers, they give out the sweet scents of paradise. There opobalsam is produced. We mention it with this addition because the farmers cut the twigs on which the balsam grows down to the bark, so that the sap, dripping little by little, may collect through those openings. An opening is called opē by a Greek name. There, they say, cypress and myrobalan grow, and other such things that are not found at all in other places. The water, like everything else, is better there: cold in summer, warm in winter. The air is milder, so that in the depth of winter the inhabitants wear linen garments.

Now let us consider the nature of the lake Asphaltites. For it is better to occupy the pen with descriptions of ancient places, or with the wonder of the other elements, than with the seditions of the Jews. For those crimes exasperate the mind, while these things soothe the spirit as they are recounted, and call it back to the knowledge of ancient history. And to us, whose talent is rather unpolished, it is dear to retrace the footsteps of the fathers returning from Egypt into the land of promise, so that if our work should perhaps come into anyone's hands, he may read not our words but read again those of the fathers. For it is sweet to linger among the dwellings of our forefathers, to recount in memory the sayings and deeds of the ancients, and to cling to their grace. But now let us describe the nature or the quality of its waters, lest our pen too be cast into that place, from which, it is believed, whatever you think should be sunk, if it is living, nevertheless springs back, and however violently it is thrown in, is at once cast out. The water itself is bitter and barren, receiving no kind of living thing. Indeed it endures neither fish nor the birds that are used to water and delight in diving. They say that a lighted lamp floats on the waters, and only when the light is put out does it sink without any turning over; and that what lives, even if sunk by art, can hardly stay in the depth. Indeed they say that Vespasian ordered men who could not swim to be thrown into the depth with their hands bound, and that all of them at once floated up, as though lifted by some breath of wind, and sprang back, driven up with great force. Many have held many fabulous things about this lake, which, not having tested the truth of the matter, it has never been our purpose to put forward. That the water also changes color three times a day and gleams variously in the rays of the sun we did not see fit to set down as true, since the water of the lake is darker than other waters and looks as if scorched. Certainly if it too shines in the sun's rays, that is nothing new and nothing to be put forward as a wonder, since this is common to all waters. It is certain that lumps of bitumen float on the waters in a black liquid; those whose task this is approach in boats and collect them. The bitumen is said to cling so to itself that it can in no way be cut with iron or any other sharp kind of metal. It does yield, however, to the blood of women, by which those in their monthly courses are said to loosen it; and by its touch, or by urine, as those who have had experience of it allege, it is reported to be broken apart. It is said to be useful for joining ships, and healthful to men's bodies when mixed in medicines. The length of that lake extends as far as Zoara of Arabia, five hundred eighty stadia; its breadth is one hundred fifty stadia, as far as the neighborhood of the Sodomites, who once inhabited a most fertile region, abounding in fruits and marked out with most splendid cities. But now those places are deserted and burned up with fire. For although God had bestowed all things on them by his gift, fields fruitful in grain and countryside planted with vines and other fruitful trees, they were ungrateful, and did not keep before their eyes the power of the most high God, as though he did not see everything and observe every crime, and there were nothing that could escape or pass him by. So they began to confound and pollute everything with the shameful deeds of their intemperance, by which they drew on themselves the divine displeasure; and as the price of their crimes fire came down from heaven to burn up that region. So five cities were burned, of which a kind of shadow and appearance is seen in the ashes. The lands burned, the waters burn, in which the remains of the heavenly fire are recognized and still remain. You may see there fruits green to the eye and clusters of grapes well formed, so that they arouse in the onlookers a desire to eat; if you pick them, they crumble and dissolve into ash and give off smoke, as though they were still burning. These things, found in the territory of Sodom on account of the punishment of the wicked, ought not to be covered in silence. For when these are considered, there can be no doubt that there will be a reward for the godly.

So Vespasian, distributing the forces of the Roman army or of the allies, took back all the strongholds and fortified towns nearest to the city of Jerusalem, so that the Jews would find hostile to them everything they had earlier thought would conspire with them in waging war against the Romans. Likewise, Lucius Annius having been sent to Gerasa, he took the city by stratagem; he also killed a thousand young men, who, having been forestalled, were cut off from flight. Very many captives were led away, and all their property was seized by the soldiers. By the general's order the dwellings that were found were burned, and plunder was carried on without restraint. The Romans laid waste the hills and the plains by which the city of Jerusalem was surrounded, so that everywhere it was burning with war. Nor were the people of Jerusalem free from the sense of their own dangers, since every way out was shut to them, so that no one could escape danger by flight. Within was civil evil, outside everything was closed; there was neither the will to stay nor the chance to flee. And if any had hoped for pardon from the Romans by deserting, they were prevented by their own people from going out.

Vespasian had returned to the city of Caesarea, so as to gather all his forces from there and undertake the siege of the city of Jerusalem. And news came that Nero had been slain when the thirteenth year of his reign was complete and he was passing the eighth day of the following year: a man worthy of that punishment, who had violated not only faith by sacrilege, piety by parricide, chastity by incest, but also the very power of the Roman empire, whose offices and business he had entrusted to the most wicked of his freedmen. For since he himself kept faith with no one, he held everyone suspect; and therefore he thought the most worthless men, Nymphidius and Tigellinus above all, were to be trusted, whom their base condition had made dependent on him. But even they at length shuddered at the example of his cruelty. And because he had killed all those dearest to him, thinking they must look out for themselves, they wished to forestall what they feared. So, having made a conspiracy with the others, they deserted the parricide. For whom would he be thought likely to spare, who had not spared his mother? Deserted, then, by all his own, he fled from the city with four of his freedmen. And when he saw himself pressed by the conspirators close upon him and a hostile troop, he slipped secretly into a country estate near the city, torn and lacerated by thorns while he feared to be seen by anyone, lest he be betrayed. Then, when he realized that he was surrounded, so that heavy punishments would not be exacted from him, he prepared for himself a kind of handle of wood and fitted with his own hands the means by which to kill himself. And turning to his freedmen he said: “What an artist dies!” So the most bitter parricide met an end of life worthy of his deserts, so that he who had killed his mother and his own did not spare himself either. Truly a good artist of his own death, who contrived to perish in such a way that even his death should not be free of his own crime.

The report of Nero's killing had run ahead, as is the way of human nature: once it has received what it desired, it is content not to inquire about the rest but at once to spread abroad, and send out to the crowd unexamined, whatever has pleased it. Not long afterward, however, it became known that Galba was at the head of the Roman empire. Hence it was Vespasian's plan to inquire the new emperor's view on the war of the Jews, and he sent his son Titus and King Agrippa. Titus turned back from Achaia on learning that Galba too, in the seventh month and day after taking power, had been stripped of his insignia and had paid the penalty in the very heart of the city, that is, the Roman forum, and that Otho was in possession of fortune and imperial succession. Agrippa hastened to Rome to establish himself in the favor of the new emperor. To Titus reverence for his father's affection seemed of more account than for the emperor's power, because if he put himself forward without consulting his father, he thought it would not please even the emperor. Certainly the outcome showed that he did well to return to his father, since affairs were new and it was uncertain which way they would turn. In the end Vespasian too, anxious about the state of the whole Roman empire and of his homeland, suspended the war and held his command, setting aside what was being done in Judea, out of concern for the whole state and devoted care for his homeland.

But Judea had no rest, for it was waging a heavier war among its own people than against outsiders. For when John's faction was already unbearable, Simon rose up besides, inferior indeed in wickedness of character, but relying more on his bodily strength to dare every crime, and through robbery accustomed to the practice and attempt of outrages. He was a citizen of Gerasa, a strong young man, whom the chief priest Ananus had struck down because of his wicked schemes and, driving him from the place where he lived, had forced to withdraw into other regions. But he, for whom there was no place among the quiet and modest, betook himself to the company of robbers, at first suspected even by them, lest he entrap them by faction; afterward he easily poured himself into the fellowship of their ways. With them he laid waste the places bordering on their stronghold, because they did not dare to go farther; but lurking as it were in pits, they lay in wait for those who passed by, without any sally, content as it were with robbery at home. Simon, immoderate in spirit, could not long endure this, and in a short time he gathered a band of many, promising freedom to slaves, rewards to free men, recompense to the desperate. So, with very many flocking to the license of plunder, he dared to storm strongholds and seize the peoples of towns, and he was terrible to all; he prepared a refuge for himself in a village whose name is the Wall of Ajax. And already he was going about guarded by twenty thousand armed men, when suddenly the people of Jerusalem, fearing his daily advances and thinking that his men would be turned against them if they grew any longer, judged that they must be cut down, and in a sudden sally they attacked Simon in arms. But he was not caught off guard and unprepared for the ambush; he received them as they came, routed many, and forced the others, put to flight, to retreat into the city.

He also engaged the Idumaeans on equal terms and withdrew, and he was tormented as if conquered, because he had not conquered. When he had to engage again, he judged it more advantageous to try guile, and found a willing agent of fraud. For when it was understood what he was aiming at, James, one of the leaders of the Idumaeans, crafty and clever at such business, came secretly to Simon and offered to betray his homeland. To give assurance that he would deceive all the Idumaeans, and having asked as his reward in the future alliance that he should be the most powerful and the most trusted with Simon, he promised the betrayal of them all. Their friendship was sealed with a banquet, and the pact between the two was confirmed by Simon's great promises. When James returned to his own people, he began first to boast to a few that he had gone out to reconnoitre the forces of the enemy, had seen a strong band, men experienced in war, a very great multitude, and invincible in battle; little by little he brought such talk to the leaders; finally he instilled the idea that Simon himself was very vigorous, had organized his army in royal fashion, kept ranks, had his units distributed and had set capable commanders over them; the Idumaeans ought to look to their own interest, so as to find such a man a friend rather than an enemy. Certainly, if they saw him superior in an engagement, they should yield without danger and avoid battle. When he saw that the inclinations of very many had been bent to his view, he informed Simon that he should advance into battle, assured of the Idumaeans' coming dispersal. Simon did not delay. James, as if a standard-bearer with his men and readier for battle, when he saw the fight begun by the skirmishers, before they came to blows turned his horse and took to flight; his men did the same. So he turned and scattered all the battle lines and handed Simon victory without a contest of war. Simon, having gained a triumph over so great a nation, became more insolent toward the rest. He took Hebron, an ancient city, famous for its people and rich in wealth, sooner than expected, found much plunder in it, and seized very rich crops. For it is said to be the most ancient not only of the cities of Palestine but also of all those founded long ago in Egypt, so that many judge even Memphis, which is held to be very ancient, to be later. There have also been those who said that father Abraham lived in it after he set out from Mesopotamia of Syria and went to Egypt, and that his sons have their tomb there, built of very beautiful marble and of most elegant workmanship, at the seventh stadium from the city. A great terebinth tree there is asserted to have stood from the founding of the world. Whether it still remains, however, is uncertain to us. Advancing from there, he laid waste territories, stormed towns, gathered peoples; guarded by forty thousand armed men, he emptied everything wherever he came, even as a friend and ally. For what place could supply food for so many? By the mere tread of their feet everything was trampled flat like a pavement where so great a number of fighters had halted. Not only was whatever crop there was carried off, as if eaten up by locusts, but the trampled ground also refused crops for the future. It terrified John that Simon's power was growing, and the partners of his faction were shaken. They wanted him destroyed but did not dare to provoke him to war. Again they prepared an ambush and, beset the roads, seized his wife with all her retinue of women and a few men escorting them. They boasted as though they had won complete victory, and as if they held Simon himself captive they thought he would come begging to them. But he, hard and harsh, moved by no affection, holding nothing sacred or dear, was inflamed as if by an injury received rather than a favor taken away; and much more savage and severe, he tortured with severe torments those he found. He cut off the hands of many and sent them back to the enemy with mutilated bodies, to report his cruelty and to make known his threat that he would overthrow the walls and destroy the city unless his own wife was quickly restored to him; likewise that he would cut off the hands and entrails of all who lived within the city unless they took counsel quickly. So, thoroughly terrified, they sent his wife to him; by this his fury was softened, and he gave those shut in some opportunity of rest, so that he did not press the civil siege.

Not only had Galba been killed, but Otho too was destroyed, when the generals of Vitellius, whom the army in Gaul had made emperor, engaged him. In the first contest, indeed, Otho seemed superior; but when the battle was renewed the next day and Otho learned that victory had gone to Valens and Caecina, Vitellius's commanders, and that very many of his own men had been killed, he, stationed at Brixellum, saved himself from mockery by a voluntary death, having held power only three months and two days. So Vitellius, the victor, hastened to Rome with the army that remained on both sides.

At that time Vespasian set out from the city of Caesarea and laid waste Judea, all the bordering hill country, and subdued the strongholds. He killed those who resisted, granted the pardon of safety to those who begged it, put his adversaries to flight, and set up his own men. Cerealis too, a commander of the Roman army, overran everything with the cavalry, destroying some, subjugating others, and driving together columns of captives; everything around Jerusalem was burned, so that the Jews might have no refuge. Thus every way out was shut to the Jews before the siege. But they not only took no thought for themselves but even fought it out among themselves in civil strife. John was the tyrant within; Simon the enemy outside the walls, who, having recovered his wife and made a short raid, laid waste Idumaea and returned stronger, and made the walls of the city of Jerusalem ring all around with arms. John, placed within, trained his men for war by vices, granting them license for crimes. Zeal for plunder raged, desire for shameful deeds, outpourings of luxury, scents of perfumes; they curled their hair with curling irons, painted their eyes with antimony, and put on women's dress. They affected not only the adornment of women but also womanly softness and the passions of unlawful lusts: men practicing the ways of women, making their voices effeminate and dissolving their sex by the looseness of their bodies, growing their hair long, whitening their faces, smoothing their cheeks with pumice, plucking their little beards; and in this dissoluteness they practiced unbearable savagery and cruelty. Indeed they walked with mincing gait, and suddenly becoming warriors of the moment, hiding swords under purple cloaks, when they suddenly bared them, they stripped of their armor whomever they found. Whoever had escaped Simon was killed by John if he took refuge within the city; whoever had fled John was caught by Simon and slaughtered before the walls. The dissension was grievous. The Idumaeans sought to destroy John's tyranny: they envied his power and hated his cruelty. They engaged the henchmen of the tyranny, turned them back, and pursued them as far as the royal palace that a near kinswoman of the king of Adiabene had built; they burst in, the defenders having been shut out, and seized the temple, plundering the spoils of the tyranny, because John had established there the storehouse of his wealth. A grave fear had come on the people that the Idumaeans might enter the city from the temple by night and kill the people with the sword and destroy the city with fire. Terrified by this fear, by decision of the council, being unable to bear one tyrant, they brought in another. John had crept into tyranny by fraud; Simon, invited here as though he would bring a remedy of safety, brought domination upon the citizens and a tyrant upon the city. Matthias the chief priest was sent to beg him to enter. Haughtily enough, as one intent on ruling, he refused, and as though reluctantly, he granted their solicitation, so that he might pour himself into the city with all his strength. With their own hands they opened the gates, to bring in the more destructive man while they cursed the weaker. So Simon, entering as he wished, showed himself equally an enemy to all, so that he pursued with a common hatred both those who had called him and those against whom his help had been sought. John pressed on with his frauds; the city tossed to and fro. The contest between John and Simon was which of them could do more harm to his own people.

At that time the rumor of civil wars grew strong in the Roman army, made known by the deaths of Galba and Otho and the rule of Vitellius, who was more worthless than the former, as if the dregs had settled. The men of long service began to confer among themselves and to resent that the Praetorian legions at Rome should usurp so much that, although they had long since given up experiencing the dangers of wars and did not know the names of the nations that were making war, they nevertheless appointed the commander of the war, and set in their own hands the choice of the arbiter of Roman affairs. Then, by such an example, the soldiers stationed in Gaul had aspired to give the empire to Vitellius without consulting the senate and the Roman people; meanwhile they themselves were treated as mercenaries who followed the decisions of others: first in danger, last in honor; waging war for so long, with triumphs growing daily, they received masters from inferiors, and not even useful ones, but all the laziest, or men given over to the belly and to shame. They must go to meet this and remove the injury. They had in Vespasian a vigorous man, whom it would have been fitting for all to choose as emperor; mature in age for counsel, stronger than younger men for fighting. They must hasten the sooner, lest he be chosen first by others, and they be despised by the men with whom he had grown old in service as he triumphed. When would there be a more opportune time for a worthy reward to be paid for his labors? “That Vitellian abyss, the disgrace even of private men (I will not say of emperors), neither the senate nor the Roman people will tolerate any longer, that the reproach of drunkards should remain longer at the summit of an empire whose resources are not enough for his expenses. For who would bear a tyrant to reign, when he has in the army a governor worthy of the Roman empire? And what nations would submit themselves to luxury and give themselves up to vices, when the cowardice of an emperor is an incitement to war, and on the other hand firmness is the strength of peace, courage against the enemy, sobriety in the ruler of the state! Who does not look up to Vespasian, still a private man, as having the glory of rule and the authority of the Roman empire, to whom so many military units are at hand, and all the stronger force of the Roman army? What are we waiting for? That, raised up by our valor, he should owe it to others that he is emperor, and we should yield to others what is within the right of our power? Certainly, if we do not wish to honor him, let us not belittle him. Nor let us do him this injury, that by our judgment he be rejected as unworthy of the empire of which Vitellius is held worthy. Finally, since his brother and his son Domitian are in Italy, we must surely fear that he who ought long since to have been an ornament to his own may become their danger; or if they, as we think, begin to press the tyrant, it may be held against him that his brother and son rebelled, and we may begin to look upon as a defendant the man we did not wish to see as emperor.” Shouting these things among themselves, the soldiers approached Vespasian and asked him to take up the helm of the Roman empire. But he refused and said he was unworthy: there was already an established emperor, civil war must be avoided. They pressed more urgently, he resisted more persistently. At last, as he struggled against it, they surrounded him in arms, threatening death with their swords, since they perceived that a charge would remain against them, and grave danger, if he refused. So he yielded to their pressure rather than accepted of his own will what others are wont to canvass for. The soldiers urged, the commanders persuaded: he put on the care before the honor. He hastened to Egypt, for he knew that the greatest resources of the Roman state were there, from which food was supplied: he must seek support there for himself if he won, or a check on Vitellius if he thought the war would have to be drawn out longer. He knew also that there were two legions there, which he hastened to attach to himself, so that the greatest city, surrounded by very many natural defenses, should remain in his own control rather than another's, useful enough for either outcome of the war. And therefore we have thought we should say something, even briefly, about the situation of the places, and especially about the chief city itself.

The city of Alexandria was founded by Alexander, to whom for his valor was given the surname of the Great general. It lies like a barrier between Egypt and the sea, a city without harbors, as are almost all the places of Egypt, and difficult of access from outside, since it lies in the more remote parts of Asia. Toward Europe, because Egypt itself borders on the dry lands of Libya; its southern upper parts are separated from the Ethiopians by Syene and by the unnavigable cataracts of the river Nile. On the east the Red Sea pours back, as far as Clysma, a place that is the last on the edge of the earth and opens a passage to the Indians for those who sail. So, fenced on one side by the burning fires of the sun, on the other by the Indian and Egyptian seas, it rests on land only by one northern wall, which leads into Syria. Everything else is shut off on all sides and fortified by the help of nature; yet the same defense of the northern quarter is divided and open by a double boundary, by which either foreign supplies are brought across the seas into Egypt or freer use is spread over the lands. The land lies of boundless extent. For between Syene and Pelusium the whole length is two thousand stadia, if what is asserted is to be trusted; and from Plinthine to Pelusium likewise three thousand six hundred stadia. It is a region unaccustomed to rain, yet not in want of rains, since the waterings of the Nile supply it with rains of their own accord. On both sides it has the Nile: the bounty of heaven, the fruitfulness of the earth; it tempers the fields, enriches the soil, is useful alike to sailors and farmers: the former sail, the latter sow; the former travel around their own countryside in boats, the latter cultivate with the plough, sowing, travelling without a cart. You may see the land marked out by streams and as it were raised up with walls of boats: whole homes travel over the lands that the Nile flows around. For it is navigable as far as the city of the Elephantines, as they call it; farther the cataracts we mentioned do not allow a ship to go, not for lack of depth, but because of the precipitous falls of the whole river and a certain collapse of the waters. The harbor of the city, like most entrances of seaside places, is difficult of access, and far more difficult than the rest; as if in the shape of a human body, it is more capacious in the head itself and in the anchorage, narrower in the throat, where it receives the passage of the sea and of ships, through which some breathing help is supplied to the harbor; when one has escaped the narrows and the mouth of the harbor, as in the rest of the body's shape, so the sea extends far and wide. On the right of the harbor is a small island, and on it a very great tower, which Greeks and Latins alike have called Pharos from the use of the thing itself, because it is seen from far off by those sailing, so that before they approach the harbor, especially at night, they may know from the blaze of the flames that land is near them, lest, deceived by the darkness, they run onto the rocks or be unable to make out the limit of the entrance. So there are attendants there, by whom, with torches and other piles of wood set beneath, the fire is kindled as a herald of land and a sign of the harbor's throat, showing the narrows of the entrance, the bays of the waves, the windings of the entrance, so that a thin keel may not graze the reefs and strike at the very entrance among rocks covered by the waves. So the straight course must be bent little by little, lest the ship run into danger, dashed against the hidden rocks, in the very place where escape from danger is hoped for. For the approach to the harbor is narrower, because on the right side it is confined by the flank, on the left by rocks with which the left side of the harbor is obstructed. Around the island too great masses of huge size are thrown down, lest by the constant force of the rising sea the foundations of the island give way and be loosened by too great a force. Hence it happens that as the waves dash against part of the island and run against each other between the rough rocks and the built moles, that middle channel is always restless, and with its passage made rough the entry becomes dangerous for ships. The extent of the harbor is thirty stadia, a safe anchorage, of very great calm in any storm: because by the narrows of that mouth and the barrier of the island it drives back the waves of the sea, and within it becomes a very safe harbor, a kind of compensation for the dangerous entry; for by the same narrows of the harbor's mouth the bay of the whole harbor is defended and kept away from the storms, and is calmed against the cold winds by which the entries are made rough. Not without reason is the safety or the size of such a harbor so great, since it is necessary that what serves the use of the whole world be brought into it. For the innumerable peoples of those places seek the commerce of the whole world for their use, and the region, fertile in grain and abounding in the other gifts and goods of the earth, feeds the whole world with grain and furnishes it with necessary wares.

So when Vespasian had settled affairs at Alexandria in his favor, and the inclinations of all who were serving in the army were united in support of his rule, secure about his absence, he hastened his return to Syria, having first given instructions to Tiberius Alexander, who then governed Egypt, to win for him the favor of his army, which was then in the upper parts, and also himself to aid the needs of the Roman empire with whatever forces he could. Tiberius made known by letter to the provincials and soldiers what had been laid on him, and it was received by all with joy: loyalty was promised, favor poured out. Caesarea received Vespasian; from there he went to Berytus, as embassies from the cities flocked to him with the greatest joy. There too Josephus was ordered by the emperor's command to be released from his chains. Titus urged that the chains be broken rather than unfastened: for if they were broken, it would be as if he had never been bound. His father approved; he ordered an axe to be brought and the chains to be broken, so that the Jews might perceive that pardon would not be denied to them either if they turned and asked for peace; at the same time, because he now kept Josephus not at another's discretion, since the decision of all things had been brought to himself.

They came to Antioch; there it was discussed by what route he should cross to Italy, since he had judged that everything in Egypt and Alexandria was safe. Speed was the aim. So he sent Mucianus with a large part of the cavalry and infantry, to reach Italy before the emperor's arrival. Mucianus, deterred by fear of a long voyage, directed his march through Cappadocia and Phrygia. Vespasian also ordered Antonius, commander of the Third Legion, which was in Moesia, to pour into Italy, now under command, before the Vitellians made a move. For Vitellius, as if drunk and sunk in sleep, thinking it was a banquet and not an empire that was being managed, slept in the midst of such great affairs. At length, barely roused by the news of Antonius's approach, he sent Caecina with part of the army, and committed the whole of his danger to another's discretion, relying on the strength of Caecina, because he had routed Otho's force. Caecina met Antonius as he came near the city of Cremona; he examined everything and learned that a very strong force was approaching from different quarters, vigorous in war, trained by triumphs; that he could not fight against stronger men, being neither equal in strength nor in number. Having called the centurions together, he urged them to give up the war, since they were inferior in number and the emperor's glory weighed heavily: “the reputation of a general who directs the whole cause is powerful enough in war. Vespasian has shone in the regions of Gaul and in the victories over the Britains; Vespasian is girt with the laurels of the East, with the great prestige of his name. Vitellius, on the other hand, is nothing but a man dissolved by wine and always belching the feasts of yesterday's banquets, who expects nothing but that, when the enemy comes, he will perish drunk without feeling pain. From the one the soldiers' spirits are raised by the glory of so great an emperor; by the other they are cast down through his reproaches and shameful deeds. We must take care not to lose the fame of the earlier war. Although we conquered Otho, who was a match for Vitellius, now our business is against one who has girded the whole world with his triumphs. We must forestall necessity by favor, so that we choose Vespasian as a fellow citizen rather than try him as an enemy. It is wretched to conquer in civil war; how much more wretched to be conquered, so that you seem the enemy of your own! To the victor the homeland remains; for the vanquished it perishes; or if it remains, it will remain to the odium of the crime, so that we seem to have made war on our fellow citizens for a tyrant. For he who is conquered is no longer a citizen but a tyrant. Why do we join guilty hands? Let it be enough to have conquered once, quickly, so that we are ashamed of the one for whom we conquered. We thought that the rule would either be sober, or, roused by the weight of affairs, would renounce perpetual sleep. Why do we wait any longer? Our dangers are thankless to all our fellow soldiers; our judgments are blamed and condemned by all peoples because of the shameful deeds of the one we chose. Consider what sort of man he is who, even as victor, has been repudiated. Certainly one must deliberate first about the outcome of the war, and then fight. If dangers have come first, you will deliberate in vain; when a plan has been approved, you will begin rightly.” This was the part of a careful general, he said: he had examined everything, and it was clear to him. Vespasian's army was stronger; his own loyalty to Vitellius had long since been proved when he had confidence in the outcome of the war; victory was secure for the other side now that he distrusted it; what would happen was obvious. Nor was his own death a thing he feared, but the danger of the Roman army, and, what grieves men more, the loss of praise already won, so that those who are wont to conquer should seem conquered. He must certainly beware lest it be judged that his victory in the earlier war was due not to courage but to chance, and that his later defeat was due to cowardice.

By these and similar speeches he drew the soldiers over to his view, so that they would go with him to Antonius of their own will and surrender to him. But such is the fickleness of the crowd, above all of soldiers, that many were pricked in conscience during the night in their beds, and, now that they had deserted, were seized with remorse toward Vitellius, lest, if he came out on top, no place of pardon should remain for them who had abandoned their own emperor. And rising, they began to confer, first with whomever they met, then with all, about how to correct their error; and drawing their swords they leapt upon Caecina, wishing to avenge the injury of their lapse. But when the centurions and tribunes intervened, they thought they should refrain from killing him, but they prepared to send him in chains to Vitellius. On learning this, Antonius set in motion those he had brought with him and fell in arms on the defectors. They, seeing the column of the opposing side, prepared for battle; but after daring to resist for a little while, when they turned to flee to Cremona, Antonius met them with the cavalry and blocked every approach, so that the fugitives should not be received, and killed them shut out before the city. A very great multitude was slain there; the rest he pursued into the city itself and destroyed. Everything was plundered; very many inhabitants were killed for the sake of booty while they defended their own. Thirty thousand two hundred men of Vitellius's army who were present were destroyed. And Primus (for that was Antonius's surname) lost four thousand five hundred of the soldiers from Moesia, since the Vitellians, despairing of safety and wishing to avenge themselves, when they saw themselves surrounded, yielded the victory not without bloodshed even to the Antonians. Caecina, released from his chains, was sent by Antonius to Vespasian; and there he was consoled for the stain of treachery not only by the security of his safety but also by the payment of rewards.

Elated by the news of this victory, Sabinus, wishing himself too to win favor with the emperor if he could forestall the arriving Antonius by the destruction or expulsion of Vitellius, or, if Vitellius resisted, Antonius would come up, who was heard to be on the point of arriving, gathered a band of soldiers from those units stationed at Rome that took care of the duties of the watch, and by night seized the Capitol. Very many of the nobles flocked to him during the day, among them Domitian too, born of Vespasian's line, who feared that Vitellius's vengeance would be turned on him as Vespasian's kin. Vitellius, placed between two enemies, attacked the nearer, less anxious about the more distant (for nearer dangers terrify more). In anger he sent the Germans against the Capitol; they, very fierce with the savagery of their race and at the same time stronger in numbers, surrounded Sabinus's rebellious band; almost all were killed. Domitian, however, with many of the nobles, while the Germans were struggling toward the upper parts of the Capitol and being driven back from the place by Sabinus and his companions, found an opportunity to flee, or perhaps because he too was being kept for a public evil, the tyrant he was to become. Vitellius tortured Sabinus and killed him; all the gifts offered on the Capitol were plundered, and the temple was set on fire.

The next day Antonius arrived. He was met by the opposing side, and three engagements were fought around the walls of the city: all the Vitellians were routed and cut down. Meanwhile Vitellius was feasting, so as not to lose his lunch though about to die, and, as is usual in last extremities, he was stuffing himself with more abundant dishes at his last table. He drowned himself in more frequent cups of wine, so as to lose the sense of the coming disgrace or danger. He was dragged from the banquet, hauled through the crowd, mocked as he was about to die; injuries were heaped on him which in his drunkenness he did not feel. He was killed in the middle of the city, pouring out wine and blood together, belching his surfeit; had he lived longer, he would have devoured the wealth of the Roman empire in the costs of luxury and the price of his tables. In all he reigned eight months and five days. And already Rome had been drained by his gluttony. Over fifty thousand others were counted among the slain.

On the following day Mucianus and Antonius entered together with the army, and barely put an end to the killing by the raging soldiers, because they were pursuing the Vitellians as those who had presumed to set up an emperor, and searched private houses, roused by such indignation that when they tracked down some of the people hiding out of fear, they struck them down as Vitellians before inquiry could make the truth plain, so that more often the fury of the victors forestalled questioning. And because Vespasian was absent, Mucianus put Domitian in charge of public affairs as a kind of regent, so that nothing of his should be lacking to his good fortune. As yet, however, the lust for crimes had not fully poured itself into Domitian: he was still raw in vices, and a novice in crimes as in power. Vespasian, held back by winter, with the sea closed by the winds, returned with his son to Alexandria. There, learning the news of the victory and the favor of the Roman people toward him, he decided to hasten his departure, lest anything new be attempted in his absence. Yet he did not leave the Jewish war neglected; he thought it should be entrusted to his son as the partner of his works and his successor, so that he himself should not be lacking to the Romans, nor Vespasian to the Jews, since his son would represent him. So Titus, chosen as the one to carry out his father's triumph, set out with a chosen band; he went out on foot and made for Nicopolis. That city is twenty stadia from Alexandria. From there, putting the soldiers on a fleet of larger ships, he went down the Nile as far as the city of Thmuis. Proceeding from there, he lodged in a city whose name is Tanis. The second station for travellers is the city of Heracleopolis, the third Pelusium. Having spent two days at Pelusium for the sake of rest, he made his way through the desert and came to the temple of Jupiter Casius. The next station is Ostracine, a place lacking water; yet the inhabitants by diligence had provided themselves a supply by constructing aqueducts. The people of Rhinocorura received the advancing army, not without welcome refreshment. Next came the city of Raphia, which is the beginning of Syria for those coming from Egypt. They came to Gaza, which was the fifth city on the way. From there to Ascalon, then to Jamnia, from which they passed to Joppa, and came to Caesarea, where it was necessary to stay a little while and also to gather a band of soldiers, which was still in winter quarters, and the harshness of winter was already ending.

In the first year of Vespasian's reign, Judea was torn by harsh wars and civil seditions, and had no truce from evils even through the winter, when the savagery of wars usually rests. Indeed, a third tyrant, Eleazar, had been added to it, as though to correct the vices of the earlier ones. With Judas and Simon son of Ezron, and Hezekiah, a young man of some note, conspiring with him, whom very many others accompanied, they seized the inner parts of the temple and its whole circuit, and set their arms above the gates on the front of the porch itself. John, however, was superior in the number of his fellow conspirators and the multitude of his faction, but inferior in position: though he was by no means idle but fought against those above him, still he was oppressed by having enemies over his head. Simon, whom the people had brought in as a tyrant over themselves, held the upper parts of the city; the lower parts too were filled with his people. The city labored within itself with a threefold battle: no interruption, no rest, no truce; they fought at every moment. Many fell, countless were butchered, blood flowed and fouled everything, it filled the very thresholds of the temple, corpses fell everywhere; some were struck with arrows, others with missiles. John was in the middle among the three, lower than Eleazar, higher than Simon: the more he was overtopped by Eleazar, the more he overtopped Simon; for he held the middle place between the two, so that the more he was pressed by one, the more he harmed the other. Better equipped than the rest with the support of engines, he made the war even by the kind of his weapons; so that, besides those who were waging the war, many of the priests were also killed and sacrificed among the very victims they had slaughtered. For although a thick crop of weapons fell on everyone and battles raged everywhere, the priests still solemnly performed the ministry of sacrifice and did not rest from the office entrusted to them; and the farther inside the temple they were, the more heavily they were killed, because the blows driven by engines struck harder. Many too who had come from the farthest parts of the world to pray, hoping for remedies of salvation, were caught up in greater dangers the more closely they kept to the temple. You might have seen foreigners lying with citizens, priests together with the profane, the grave with the shameful, the luxurious with the abstinent; and with the blood of all mingled indiscriminately and running down as if in a flood, the very inner recesses of the temple were pooled with it; everything around swelled with gore, so that many, while they attacked the champions of the opposing parties, slipped and, shaken by their fury, sank in blood. Not even so were the henchmen of the tyrants frightened by the danger into abstaining from battle; and the greater the danger, the more the storm of fury raged. If destruction had fallen more heavily on some, others were spurred on more vehemently as if to victory, so as to carry off the disordered. Eleazar and Simon at least had the possibility of drawing back, so as to restore themselves with truces, as it were, of a few hours; but John was always under arms, at every moment in combat: if those above had rested, those below from Simon's side pressed him; if he had thrown them into disorder, Eleazar harassed him. Nor did he himself allow them to be quiet: when he had driven off one, he leapt upon the others, sleepless in combat and tireless in cruelty itself. When they spared their weapons, they hurled fire, which, catching on the tops of the roofs, consumed the houses; and these, filled with grain and other stores of food for enduring a longer war, were burned up together, and gave greater fodder to the fire; the burnt timbers fell, the roofs of lofty buildings came rolling down. So by blood, fire, collapse and famine the sinews of the whole city were cut. No place was free of danger, no time of consolation was found, there was no hope of change, no chance of flight. Everything was mournful, full of horror, full of savagery: everywhere grief, everywhere dread, everywhere the cry of women, the wailing of old men, the groaning of the dying, the despair of the living, so that you would call wretched those who remained, blessed those who had died.

How have you been deceived, city, by your own peoples, among whom you once seemed blessed? How have you been conquered by your own arms, and your own hands turned against you, you who used to conquer without arms and strike the enemy without any battle, when angels fought for you, and the waves of the sea, the openings of the earth, and the crashings of the sky campaigned for you? Rise up now, Moses, and see your nation and the inheritance of the people entrusted to you perishing by their own hands. Look on that people of God, for whom the sea lay open as a path when they walked, for whom heaven supplied food when they were hungry, now shut in without a sea, besieged without a Pharaoh, starving without barrenness of the land. Rise up, Aaron, priest of the Almighty, who, when on account of an offense against almighty God death was devouring very many of the people, stood between the living and the dead, and death stood still, and by the barrier of your body the plague stopped and could not pass over to infect the living. Rouse yourself too, Joshua son of Nun, who leveled the impregnable walls of Jericho as the priests sounded the trumpet, and see the people to whom you subjected foreigners now themselves subjected and crushed. Rouse yourself, David, who used to drive out the troubling spirit by the sweetness of the lyre, and see how fury rules and has blotted out all the sweetness of your psalms from the minds of desperate men, and each of the leaders offers the whole people to death so as to wring liberty from them, as you used to offer yourself to death for the people. Rouse yourself, Elisha, who led the enemy into Samaria and made him a friend; through you the crash of chariots, the sound of horsemen and the sound of a mighty army resounded in the camp of Syria: the enemy fled, the Jew escaped the siege. Where now are those merits, where now those works of the saints? No wonder if they have lost the works of the prophets who denied the Lord of the prophets; and therefore, Judea, your arms are turned against you, and your prayers profit you nothing, because your faith accomplishes nothing; therefore your people has become hostile to you, because your faithlessness has been turned against you. What remedy is sought, when the author of the remedy is not reconciled? What did you think would happen, when with your own hands you crucified your Savior, when with your own hands you extinguished your life, when with your own voices you drove out your advocate, with your own testimonies killed your helper? Only that you would lay hands on yourself as well. You have what you asked for: you snatched from yourself the guardian of peace; you asked that the judge of life be killed and that Barabbas be granted to you, “who had been thrown into prison for a sedition made in the city and for murder” (Luke 23:19, 25). Therefore salvation has departed from you, peace has gone, quiet has ceased; sedition has been given you, destruction has been given you. Recognize that today Barabbas lives for you, Jesus is dead. Therefore sedition reigns in you, peace is buried, so that you perish more cruelly at the hands of your own than if you perished at the hands of strangers. What so great evil has the Roman brought on you by his arms, wretched city, as your own people have? That you should fight with the Romans was your own people's doing: the Romans wanted peace, you declared war. What reason was there to provoke the stronger? Hard it is indeed that a Gentile entered the temple against the sacred law; but you were no longer the temple of God, you were no longer the city of God, nor could you be, because you were a tomb of the dead, and especially of the dead whom you yourself had killed, not those whom the enemy had struck down. For how could you be a dwelling of life, when you were a habitation of death, a lodging of crimes, a cave of robbers? Ananus and Jesus, chiefs of the priests, lay in you unburied; and those who not long before were clothed in priestly robes, who had been revered even by foreigners, lay as disfigured corpses, food for birds, devoured by dogs, their torn limbs scattered through the whole city, so that the very appearance of ancient holiness seemed to lament such an insult to the sacred name and the disfigurement of an office once so splendid. But you yourself made the beginning of this outrage, you who killed the prophets in your very bosom, who stoned the saints of the Lord. Zechariah lay lifeless before the temple; he lay unburied: so this blood washes him. And what was the cause of Ananus's death except that he rebuked your people for not rising in defense of the temple, because he protested at liberty betrayed, courage deserted, the remains of the ancient rites trampled, the altars defiled? He declared that a people that now felt nothing must be left to the use of senseless idols and marble statues. For many animals are wont to repay in turn, or seek vengeance, to feel an injury, to be roused by a goad, to avoid blows; whoever then is not roused, and does not know how to avoid what harms him, is like things without feeling. And in truth, where is that liberty of yours, for the love of which you once judged that you must not yield to the Egyptians, nor the Philistines, nor the Assyrians, and later not the Medes? Where is that faith of the Maccabees, which once in a few routed the Babylonians, put the Persians to flight, struck down Demetrius, and at last in little children and women overcame the arms, swords and fires of Antiochus, and chose to die for the observance of the law of their fathers rather than obey the king's commands? Where is that most beautiful devotion of the fathers in all their sufferings, by which they offered themselves to death not for their children, not for their wives, more than for the temple of God? Formerly the priestly rod of Aaron flowered, though cut from its woodland root; now faith is withered, piety is buried, and all emulation of virtue is gone. No wonder if the people has departed from God and follows the wicked spirit of contradiction, and is divided against itself. For how could he keep his peace who rejected the peace of God? The peace of God is Christ, “who has made both one.” Rightly then, out of one people many have become set against themselves, because when divided they would not follow Jesus who unites, but united they followed the spirit of fury that divides. So you were paying, Jerusalem, the wage of your faithlessness, when with your own hands you destroyed your own defenses, when with your own swords you pierced your own entrails, so that the enemy pitied and you killed, he spared and you raged. For you saw that God was fighting against you and acting on the side of the Romans, so that you inflicted voluntary betrayal on yourself. And therefore the Romans preferred to be spectators rather than slayers, lest, while your entrails were boiling among themselves, they be thought to lay a hand of contagion rather than of courage. To these punishments of abominable slaughter was added the monstrousness of impious cruelty, that they denied burial to all who had been killed, whether in the temple or around the streets of the city; nor did anyone have leisure to bury, while they were busy with war among themselves, and the care of striking rather than of burying held everyone. So by a kind of fury the duties of piety had died, the ministries of impiety grew savage, and nothing had perished more in such calamities than mercy, which alone is wont to relieve miseries and console afflictions. For those who had lost their own did not dare to bury them for fear, since grave terror came upon them from the leaders of the opposing faction; and those who had killed others took care that no one should snatch them away for burial. So everyone had to fear lest what they wished to give another they should take for themselves, or, what is worse, that the use of a tomb they had provided for others they should not obtain themselves. In the temple itself, then, instead of sweet-smelling ointments, instead of fragrant incense, instead of the scents of various flowers, there was the heavy stench of unburied corpses, which the rain had dissolved, the flame had burned, the sun had heated; all the limbs of the slain citizens reeked with a dreadful odor: here the rot of decomposing entrails, there the reek of the burned filled all the senses and mouths of the living, so that they themselves not long after were consumed by a heavier sickness and groaned that they had survived, to perish by a harsher penalty; and that they had been kept alive to see, together with their homeland, even the laws of nature dissolved, right denied to the living, peace to the citizens, burial to the dead; human and divine things alike stained and polluted, everything confounded, mercy a crime, cruelty held in place of religion. A fortress in the temple, war on the threshold, smoke on the altars: they saw with their own eyes what they had not believed would happen when the prophets announced it. Had not David said of them: “They have defiled your holy temple; they have given the dead bodies of your servants as food to the birds of heaven; they have poured out their blood like water around Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them” (Ps 78:1, 3 Vulg.)? For then at the same time the Gentiles came into the inheritance of God to carry everything off, and the temple was defiled by the deaths of its own, and the corpses of the slain lay unburied as food for birds and the voracity of beasts; and blood was poured out so that it pooled in the temple, and there was no one to bury, because fury was transferred from the living to the dead, and from the dead to those still living. Did someone wish to bury a dead man? He himself was killed; and he who had killed the dead man turned his anger on the burier, so as to deny the one burial, he killed the other; again, he who had killed the burier practiced greater cruelty on the dead, so as to strip of the last debt of nature a man who no longer owed anything to hatred and felt no punishment. What else could befall those who did not receive the divine oracles? They laughed at the announcements of the prophets, they trampled on all that is right; they did not believe what was to come, which they themselves hastened to bring about. For there was an old and frequent saying that the city of Jerusalem would perish and its holy places be burned when sedition and war came upon the law and hands of its own defiled the temple of God; but not even this did they understand. For how often was the house of God destroyed, how often sedition, how often siege, how often war! And never did that city perish except when they crucified the true temple of God with hands of their own. And what temple is that? Let them hear: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” For what else was it but sacrilege, when they stretched out impious hands against the author of salvation, when they stoned, when they scourged, when they seized, when they killed? Then truly the divine fire consumed their holy things: for burned by the Babylonians, they were restored afterward; destroyed by Pompey, they were restored again; but they were utterly burned when Jesus came, and, dissolved by the heat of the divine Spirit, they vanished. It would have been fitting for us to go before with a fuller lament, as at a kind of funeral of our ancestral solemnity, and to follow it as with funeral rites, and to discharge them according to the customs of our forefathers; but let us come to the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem.

Titus had returned to Judea, and after a few days had passed, so that the ranks of the military units from which a chosen band had been sent to Italy might be filled up, he was kindling the war, hastening to join his father so that he would not leave him to face dangers alone, as he was about to clash with the arms of Vitellius. So he set out with the great splendor of an army: solitude everywhere, and with his column ready he suspected ambushes, because he saw he was superior in strength. He came through the region of Samaria; Gophna received him, which had long since gone over to the Romans. They came to the Valley of Thorns, from which Jerusalem was no more than thirty stadia away. From there, taking six hundred horsemen, he led the cavalry forward before the city, to reconnoitre the lie of the place, the nature of the fortifications, the height of the walls, and the inclinations of the people, who were said to be oppressed by the arms of the robbers and hemmed in by the throng of the factions, so that they submitted to the siege unwillingly, rather than betray their goodwill toward the Romans if freedom were given. So with a few men he rode in fine array along the public causeway that led to the city walls, and no one was seen to come out. But when he turned his horse sideways to go around the circuit of the walls, while the rest of the troop followed their general, many suddenly burst out from the place called opposite the tomb of Helena, and leaping out they occupied the road, so as to cut off the greater part of the horsemen who were following Titus. He himself had passed on with a few men, by the design of those lying in wait, so that, cut off from the rest, he might be more easily overwhelmed; for it was neither easy to go back to his own because of the pressing multitude of the enemy, nor did the ditch or rampart and the other obstacles of the ground allow him to go farther, by which a double danger was brought on him.

So Titus, seeing that the remedy of his safety lay in his own courage, and that a way must be opened only by the sword (for others had already turned their horses and gone off, though they hoped that they themselves would be followed by the emperor's son), turned his horse and, urging the rest with a shout to follow, charged upon the enemy. This would seem impossible, how he could escape, were it not known that in war daring can do very much, and that it alone is a wall to itself; then also because, with others following behind, the worthless crowd thought it should look to itself in danger rather than pursue the enemy; and if anyone stretched out a hand to seize his horse, he was struck down. In the end only two of Titus's companions were killed; with the rest the emperor's son returned to his own. Nor does it seem there can be any doubt that, with his head uncovered and otherwise unprotected, since he had gone out on a reconnaissance, not prepared for battle, and had put on neither helmet nor breastplate, he received no wound, though weapons were hurled above all at him, because so great a man was being kept for the destruction of that city. Truly, truly “the heart of the king is in the hand of God” (Prov 21:1). So, lest the Jews' daring grow from the success of their fraud and guile, he set out for the city with the army after the night and, from a lookout from which the city and the vast size of the temple could be seen, he showed his men with what a city they would have war: they must be energetic and more cautious, because they would have to storm a countless people, ready for fraud. He arranged the ranks that were to approach the walls; those he knew to be still tired from the night march he placed at a distance as a reserve. They advanced little by little. When they came to the Mount of Olives, a valley lay below it, between it and the city, whose name is Kidron. There, seeing from the walls the army drawn up (for it was six stadia away), they laid aside for the time their zeal for sedition, and with foreign enemies approaching the contests of civil war were set aside by a domestic truce. For fear often suppresses even bitter hatreds. Indeed, the men of the factions urged one another to defend their homeland with united zeal, lest their discord give the Romans a bloodless victory; trusting in their numbers, they thought the enemy should be attacked suddenly, and by an unexpected sally they threw the foremost into confusion. But when the Romans, trained by long experience and by battles of various kinds, steadied their minds, bound to their ranks, they began to cut down those who rushed at them, to drive them back with their shields, to repel them with volleys of weapons, though not at all without loss on both sides. And the Jews had almost overwhelmed them, and the Roman line was wavering, had not Titus come up on learning what was happening and, meeting the adversaries and strengthening his own, renewed the battle and raised the soldiers' spirits, reproaching the Roman lines for yielding victory to a disordered multitude, not without the reproach of the greatest cowardice. Having driven back the Jews, who were pursuing even those separated from them by the valley, he returned victorious to his own. And secure in the help that the higher ground gave against those below, if they tried to engage, the Roman army turned to another part. As Caesar departed, the Jews poured down from the walls and fell upon the enemy in a huge column, so that the soldiers fled before the onrush of a countless multitude and betook themselves to the higher parts of the hills; their flank being exposed, the rest too who were holding the battle fled. Meanwhile Caesar, placed in the middle of the people, when many begged him not to expose himself to dangers and, with the army scattered, undergo alone the full weight of the danger, since he was lord of the world (for he should not, as before, fight in the role of a soldier but of an emperor, in whose danger lay the ruin of all), did not agree; but, setting the honor of soldiering before safety, as one for whom a glorious death outweighed a life of disgrace, he turned his breast to face the enemy, and having terrified those he had gone against, he swung round upon others. For by the mere expectation of him and the glory of his well-known and eager courage he threw the enemy into confusion. Those he approached gave way, but from other parts the Jews poured in more and more; and they had almost shut Titus in, were it not that many of the soldiers, seeing Caesar in the midst of the battle, shouted out, signaling to the rest that the emperor's son must not be left in danger. So shame recalled them all and fear armed them, lest they be branded with the disgrace of having deserted Caesar. Turning on the Jews with every effort and courage, they pressed the disorderly multitude into the valley, and it was not hard to make them slide back as they climbed. So Titus twice recalled the fleeing soldiers from flight and stripped them alike of danger and disgrace, using courage equally and, in the end, shame. While they avoided cowardice, he brought in courage: first so that Caesar would not be abandoned; afterward also so that the enemy would be driven back.

After this, when the battle outside had rested a little, a battle within followed. For on the coming of the feast of Passover, John suborned many to enter the temple as if for the sake of the observance; and, since leave to enter was given to them as to allies, he carried out his trick. For they went in looking like citizens but armed underneath; throwing off their outer garments, they raised their swords, with breastplates on their chests, girded with protection for fighting. Struck with terror at this, those who were unarmed within the temple, busy with the celebration, leapt out and left the temple empty. While the men followed these and butchered whom they could seize, and pursued others beyond the circuit of the temple, John and his companions had the opportunity to break in. Many people were slain there, so that even those who had not resisted were butchered on account of private grudges: calm and quiet did not help, nor silence the silent, nor patience those who gave way. Having seized the inner parts of the temple, John harassed Simon as well, Eleazar and the other leaders of the third faction having been brought into second place under him.

Titus advanced against the enemy a third time and brought out the army. On arriving he found a crowd of Jews massed before the city, looking as if they wished to surrender to the Romans but were afraid. Suspecting a trick, especially since he had just seen them united among themselves and stubborn, and not thinking it credible that they had suddenly changed, he warned the soldiers to beware of fraud, and not to approach the walls rashly except according to his orders and in close column, lest they be surrounded from behind by those who had gone out of the city. Suddenly a noise rang out from the city, and a kind of sedition resounded madly: some pretending a voluntary departure, others resisting, the former demanding that the gates be opened to them, the latter ordering them kept shut; some wanting war, others peace. The mass of the soldiers rushed out to help those who had begged from the walls to be helped; many went out headlong, without order, in no single manner, as if to meet them as they came and bring help, so that by a nearer remedy more might be given confidence to break out, or fear be given to those resisting, or a chance to break out amid those struggling against it. Those who were standing outside began to surround them from behind and press them hard once surrounded; they fled as if toward the wall, suspecting nothing from those who were pretending peace. From there too stones and weapons were thrown, and suddenly the feigned peace was turned into battle. Roused by this, they ran back against the enemy, who, although they had tried to surround the advancing Roman soldiers, were themselves afraid of being surrounded by the whole army. So, while they guarded against them all, though many wounds had been inflicted on these, and they themselves for the most part wounded, they almost let slip from their hands those they thought already captured. Yet they followed as far as the tomb of Helena and, as is the custom of those who mock, clashed their shields, jeering at the Romans because they had now twice caught them in an ambush.

Caesar, much moved, forbade those returning to mix with the rest and called an assembly, saying: “Although Roman valor is great, outstanding above the peoples of all nations, yet it excels above all in the order of its arrangements and obedience to commands: for this is the safeguard of military discipline. Nor is it any wonder if the Jews weave tricks and contrive frauds, since they judge themselves unequal in strength. But as it is for inferiors to rely on ambushes, so it is for the stronger to beware lest guile mock their valor.” He wondered, he said, that the Jews were of one mind in their desperation, while the Romans could not agree in the progress of their success; and so it came about that for them the effect of fraud was assured, for us the effort of valor uncertain. “If the enemy's strength were stronger than their fraud, being conquered would be less disgraceful. For to be conquered by equals or by the stronger is free of reproach. But since nothing in us gives offense except our immoderation in fighting and a certain intemperance of our own hands, what can be more wicked than to reject military discipline in the presence of Caesar? I think the very laws of soldiering groan greatly at the disgrace of such slackness; and so will the emperor, when he learns of it, who always preferred to be obeyed by his soldiers rather than feared by the enemy. For the soldier's obedience hastens the outcome; fear of the enemy delays victory. What do you think the father will judge of his son, whose command counts for so little with the army? For judgment is passed on a general whose order is set aside; and there is no doubt that punishment has more often been inflicted on those who fought the enemy against orders than on those who advanced according to orders and gave way before courage. For death is prescribed by the laws for one who leaves his rank. What then will happen when not one man but the army everywhere leaves its rank and neglects the general's order? Know that you are soldiers of the Roman empire, of the people and senate, among whom even to have conquered without the authority of a command is a crime.” With such a speech he terrified not only the officers but the whole army. For since he attacked the commanders of the ranks themselves sharply, he seemed about to punish everyone. So they all crowded around him and begged that the fault of the few who had first left their post be pardoned for the sake of all. Although Caesar was not quick to pardon the offense, he was nevertheless open to entreaty for indulgence. He granted it with the greatest gravity, saying that he pardoned them all, and that punishment enough had been exacted on all by the authority of his rebuke, since punishment of individuals ought to go as far as the deed, that of a multitude only as far as words; the one as far as penalty, the other as far as correction. For often in good armies lapses in battle have given causes for future valor.

After this Titus turned his anger against the enemy and, considering how dangerous the siege was amid so many precipices and so many sheer places, since the soldiers, forestalled by sudden sallies, had nowhere to step back, and would rush unprotected upon the enemy where they set up the engines, he ordered the precipices before the city to be filled in. While this was being done, not even so were the Jews free of present dangers. They were afflicted by civil battle while the Romans were busy filling in the precipices. Nor was the force of either side small: ten thousand were with Simon and fifty of their leaders; the Idumaeans too, about five thousand, supported Simon's side, commanded by James and Simon the younger. John, having seized the inner parts of the temple by the trick we described above, surrounded by six thousand armed men, kept the war burning. There were added to him also two thousand four hundred men, after they began to come together with harmonious zeal for the defense of the city, under Eleazar and Simon son of Arinus, whom they had also had as leaders before. While these contended with one another, the people lay in the middle as the prey of whoever won, and, as the prize of the contest, was shifted this way and that according to the varying outcome. For a little while they had come to an agreement among themselves in the manner of a truce, and, roused by the first attack of the Romans, they relapsed into the old disease of the internal fever in their sick entrails whenever the onset of the outward diseases was slackened. Outside there was mostly war, within sedition, all the more grievous because sedition itself was nourished by war and nourished war. Two contended for power; the people between them were anxious not about slavery, but lest they come to a worse master.

The city of Jerusalem was founded by a certain powerful man of the Canaanites, who in the language of his fathers was called the Righteous King; he first named it Solyma; afterward he added a temple, from which the city was called Hierosolyma. From the beginning it had its own inhabitants of the race of the Canaanites. David, the first Hebrew, expelled the Canaanites and settled his own people, and made himself a royal house in it. He wished also to build a temple to God, but, forbidden by an oracle, he left Solomon as his heir to build the temple he himself had wished for. So Solomon founded the temple; the other kings too added much to the adornment of the city. Envy arose from its magnificence; yet among all the works the temple excelled in its vast structure and gleaming marble. In it was a walkway, and a precious and very great curtain, woven of scarlet, blue, fine linen and purple. Not idle was the material of such variety, but its appearance signified the substance of hidden things: because the temple belonged to him who, as creator of the elements, rules over heaven and air, earth and sea, and alone directs and governs all things. For by the scarlet the fire of the heavens is figured, by the blue the air, by the fine linen the earth, because it grows in it, by the purple the sea, because it is dyed by sea shellfish; so that you may gather two from their color, two from their origin. Indeed the chief priest was accustomed to express these four in his vestment when there was the greatest celebration of feast days, as if putting on the whole world when about to pray for the people, in the figure of him who was to come as chief priest, Jesus, who would take away the sin of the world. The chief priest covered his loins with an inner covering of linen, because above all else in a priest faith of mind is sought, and chastity of body, which ought to gird up the intemperance of the flesh. There were two sacred tabernacles, one inner and the other outer: into this the priests always entered; into the inner one, which was called the second, the chief priest alone entered once only, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sin of the people, the Holy Spirit signifying by this that Jesus would come, who alone would truly enter the inner sanctuaries of the divine mysteries and the secrets of the heavenly substance, he who knew all things. He alone too would reconcile the whole world to the Father by his blood, so as to have mercy on things in heaven and things on earth. Indeed after he came, he made peace through the blood of his cross for all things, whether in heaven or on earth. Inside was the altar of incense, inside the table, inside the lamp: the altar of incense, because the prayer of the great high priest is directed to God the Father like incense (Ps 140:2 Vulg.); the table, because on it is the passion of Christ and the mysteries of the sacraments, whence David too says: “You have prepared a table in my sight”; its twelve loaves, as it were, are the twelve apostles, witnesses of his passion and of his resurrection. The lamp, which is placed on the lampstand, was before under a bushel, that is, under the measure of the law; now it is under the fullness of grace, pouring out abundant light from its seven branches, because the Holy Spirit would illuminate the temple of God with the powers of the seven greatest graces. The knowledge of the Trinity, then, was in the inner parts of the temple, which were called the Holy of Holies, where Aaron's rod that blossomed was once laid up, because the priestly grace in Christ would work more fully after his death, by which he redeemed the world. Before the temple were fourteen steps, up which in the time of King Hezekiah the shadow had ascended, signifying to him that the end of his life was to come. But, warned by an oracle, he prayed and obtained a delay of death by this sign, that the sun was turned back on those same steps, signifying that a furlough of life had been given back to him by just so many years.

Since, then, the city was fortified on all sides by the works of many kings, and above all of Herod, who fortified the castle named Antonia to the magnificence of a supreme work and adorned it with the most ample decoration, Caesar went around seeking from what side he could more easily pour himself into the city; and having inspected the whole circuit of the wall, he judged that the siege should be undertaken near the monument in which the chief priest John lay buried. As he was reconnoitring more carefully, one of his friends, Nicanor, who stayed close to him and attended eagerly to his task, was struck by an arrow and fell. For he had come rather close, thinking there would be some progress toward a future peace if he were given an opportunity to converse, since he was regarded as able and strong at swaying the minds of his hearers. Caesar, moved because they had inflicted death by an unexpected wound on a man who was urging what was for their safety, drove the columns into battle, and the war was kindled with varied throwing of weapons, above all missiles; rams were brought up, with which the strong parts of the walls were struck. Thrown into confusion by this, all who before had contended among themselves out of zeal for domination came together in concord, and, granting impunity for the past, formed one body and, united by the pressure of danger, defended the city. Going out beyond the mounds too, they hurled fire on the engines, to destroy the earthworks, burn the sheds, and set the rams on fire; and they had burned almost every kind of engine, had not chosen men, and very many soldiers and allies, especially from the region of the city of Alexandria, fought back vigorously. As these resisted strongly, Caesar added the help of the stronger cavalry. He himself, fighting fiercely, laid low twelve champions of the opposing column. So the force of the remaining multitude, avoiding destruction, returned into the city, and the Roman works were saved from the fire. In that battle fell John, the leader of the Idumaeans: while he was talking before the walls with a Roman soldier he knew, he was struck by an arrow wound and at once fell. They say that the author of his death was a most skilful Arab among the archers; and the Idumaeans were stricken with heavy grief because they had lost a man both ready of hand and good in counsel.

The following night it happened that three towers which Titus had ordered to be raised on the earthwork, so that he could shoot the Jews with spears on an equal or higher level, suddenly fell with no force of the enemy. At the sound the whole Roman army was thrown into confusion, thinking that the earthworks had been destroyed by the enemy and the towers undermined, which in falling had caused great havoc far and wide. And a pitiable thing had almost been done, that the victors gave way in flight before enemies of whom they were uncertain in the night, except that the darkness and the collapse itself, raising dust, took away their view, so that they were uncertain where to flee. Each asked his neighbor what had happened, and could not learn the truth, because such a mishap was equally unknown to all, until Caesar, having learned the facts, ordered it made known that what had happened was a sudden accident, not any irruption of the enemy. So the panic was calmed, and every help for storming the city was placed in their strength. For since the walls were very high, and many of them covered with iron or bronze, and the enemy were protected from missiles by the very height, the Romans brought up the engines of the rams, by whose frequent blows the strong parts of the wall were loosened; they began to rely on lighter spears and arrows, so as to turn back the defenders and divert the obstacles of those who were hindering them. So little by little the wall gave way to those shaking it; hence the Jews called the largest ram itself the city-breaker. When part of the walls had been loosened, the Jews abandoned the battlements of that wall, secure because they had two other inner walls, and withdrew to the second wall. As they fled, the Romans entered through the breaches of the wall and opened the gates. So the whole army was let in and almost demolished the outer wall, so that it would not be a hindrance to those fighting, or, if things went badly, a barrier to those retreating.

John and Simon, now in league, divided the positions around the second wall between them. John with his men fought at the castle named Antonia; near it was the portico of the temple that faced north. For that very place, in which the castle was afterward built and named after Antonius, lying between the two northern porticoes, was called Baris. Simon had undertaken the defense of the city at the tomb of John. For the one side the contest was for safety, for the Romans for victory. Although the Romans had the stronger valor for engaging, they had the lower ground for the siege, since the fighting from the wall weighed on them; the rashness of the Jews was more insolent, the courage of the Romans keener. The leaders were present with their sides, and so the greater rivalry arose, as each was eager to prove his dangers to his own commanders. Simon drove his men by terror and fear; Titus moved the Romans above all by their shame, since they thought it worse than death not to display their dangers to Caesar, when he himself had so often not hesitated to expose himself to dangers for the army. They were armed by the habit of conquering and ignorance of yielding, and above all by the presence of Titus as judge of each man's valor, from whom the reward of courage was not what was expected, but, above all, the fruit of the greatest prize was to have done something vigorously while he looked on that did not displease him. Spurred by this, Longinus, a man of the cavalry, seeing the opposing bands of Jews before the walls, as though indignant that they should provoke the Romans to battle and dare to come out on equal terms, leapt from his horse and threw himself into the midst of the enemy. And one who was preparing to meet him in the same manner he struck with his spear, and seized his voice and his life at once. Into another he drove the spear snatched from the body of the fallen man, and returned victorious to his own. We speak of the outstanding; besides these there were many imitators on both sides, but of different kinds: desperation gave the Jews daring, desire for glory added courage to the Romans. Yet contempt of death was equal in unequal spirits: the Jews thought it a consolation to die with the enemy. Titus hastened to finish the war, but without loss of his own, he who would even rather save the enemy themselves, if he could, than destroy them. Nor did he warn his soldiers of anything except that they must fight with forethought: that alone was true courage which has prudence as its companion; for courage without counsel seems rashness, and nowhere must one be more careful than in victory. For that the superior should perish together with the inferior is a triumph for the vanquished. One must take care, therefore, lest it seem chance that he conquered, and cowardice that he did not escape a share of the danger. So he ordered the ram to be brought up to the middle of the northern wall.

There was there Castor, crafty and ready for fraud, who, when the others had been driven off by the archers' shots, held out with other partners in a new fraud. When he noticed that a tower was being overturned by the blows of the ram and that the wall was slipping and would easily fall if the strokes of the engine were repeated, he stretched out his hands and with a pitiable voice begged Caesar to spare the city now about to perish, and not to think it should be overthrown in a final destruction. Caesar thought he was earnestly begging pardon: ready to give his hand so that surrender might come first, he ordered the blows of the engines to stop and the archers to refrain from battle. He gave Castor the opportunity to speak. Castor pretended to come down, then, as it were, to persuade his men: some were willing, others resisted, and suddenly, as though indignant at being compelled, striking themselves on the breastplate, they fell. A great wonder, since the fraud was hidden; so they drew out the time. Meanwhile one of the Roman soldiers struck Castor's nose with an arrow shot. He lamented and complained to Caesar, asking him to order someone to give him his right hand, so that he might take refuge with him. Caesar entrusted the business to Josephus; but he, being on guard against the plots of the Jews, replied that he perceived nothing sincere in it. Aeneas, however, went up nearer the wall and ran forward to receive him as he came. Castor, shouting to him to open his lap and receive gold, let a rock fall. Aeneas with watchful eyes foresaw the stone and by a quick leap of his body escaped its fall; but the huge falling rock struck another man standing nearby. Seeing this, Caesar pressed more fiercely on the overthrow of the walls, ordering that they be driven with greater force of the engines. On the other side fires were thrown to burn the engines. But when the wall was loosened, Castor with his men cast himself as it were into the fire, using guile to make a show of greatness of mind in contempt of death, when by shameful guile he was seeking ways of escape for his life.

Now only one wall, that is, the third, remained, two having been overthrown; still Caesar kept his patience, as he had perceived that whatever perished now perished for him. While he spared them and invited them to surrender, without waiting for the column he rushed with a few men onto the second wall; the Jews, having gathered a band in the narrow streets, wounded very many, and many on both sides were killed. Then Caesar from a distance shot down with arrows those who resisted; among men crowded together the weapons never missed, no shot was without a wound. So the Jews began to withdraw, and Titus took back his men. And famine had already fallen heavily on the city. The Jews, however, as if victors, because they had retreated within the second wall, boasted as though the Romans had been driven out; but they could neither repair what had fallen nor defend what was about to fall. Yet they held out a little while. There was fighting for three days at the second wall. On the fourth day, unable to withstand Roman valor, they fled back within the third wall. Caesar ordered that there be no assault meanwhile, but commanded that the second wall be pulled down. And because the greatest part of the war remained, he decided that the soldiers should bring in food for themselves, so that want would not press the victors or afflict them with need. For four days the soldiers brought in grain; at the same time it seemed a suitable time for the Jews to change their minds, if they took thought for themselves. And the people indeed would have preferred it, but the leaders of the sedition, reckoning the grave crimes they had committed against the people, since they hoped for no place of pardon, thought it lighter to perish with everyone than for the authors alone to perish. So on the fifth day, because nothing peaceable was offered by the Jews, Caesar attacked the walls with a double column, and ordered two earthworks to be raised, one against the Antonia, the other against the wall opposite the tomb of John. By the latter he sought the destruction of the upper city; by the other, if he stormed the castle, he would easily gain the temple too. Unless he brought it into his power, he could not hold even the city without danger. Titus had divided the army into two units. On the other side John and Simon had distributed the duties of defense between them. John defended the Antonia; Simon with his armed men and the people of the Idumaeans kept watch at the tomb of John, and from the higher ground frustrated all the efforts of the besiegers. And now, trained by practice, they had learned how to meet the engines with whatever means they could, and were more stubborn in their misfortunes; they too had acquired several kinds of engines, with which to destroy the works of the Romans and hinder what was begun. Caesar, noticing their headlong stubbornness from despair of pardon, wished to add persuasion to his works, in case they might give way and, through hope of what was promised, desist. So he began to urge them not to involve themselves in the ruin of a captured city, but to yield it to his power, since it was already held by arms and, ringed by siege works, was being pressed toward final destruction; he would give pardon to them if only they took thought for themselves or for their homeland, so that the whole city should not be destroyed. He also instructed Josephus to address his fellow citizens in their native language, so that they might perhaps renounce their plans. Although he knew the hatred of the Jews poured out against him, still, keeping as far from the walls as he could, beyond the reach of an arrow shot, yet so that he could be heard, he pursued in an address familiar to them what would be of profit to his fellow citizens.

“It was, Hebrews, a mark of human nature to contend stubbornly before matters came to the last extremity, while you thought you would be superior through the advantages of the place and of a region you knew; although it would have been fitting that the Romans, invincible in war, should not be provoked to arms, since those who had conquered you have often been conquered by them. But the improvident mind of men has this failing in prosperity, and at the same time the outcome of war is often doubtful; and so each one, though inferior in courage, entrusts himself to fortune. Finally, now that the walls have been overcome, do not think that you must go on even to the overthrow of the temple. Spare the altars, spare the sanctuaries, spare what was once a heavenly dwelling. For God himself has already deserted you, because you have deserted the worship of piety toward him. We have endured war in the middle of the temple; fires poured around it wander over the temple, but not such as used to; armed men stand round it. Yet the Romans, whose hands are still clean of sacrilege, wish to spare it, and neither to defile the sacred doorposts nor to abolish the ancient rites, if you allow it. What more is waited for? Two walls are overthrown; the third remains, and it is weaker now that two have fallen. Or is divine protection hoped for, and help from the sanctuary? But he who defended us has gone over to the enemy; for him whom we used to worship the Romans revere, and we offend. And who does not know that God is with those who have subjected all things to themselves, except what is impassable through excessive heat or cold? And therefore, leaving aside what lies beyond the Roman empire and beyond human use, no one denies that God has given power to different peoples in turn: that he was the helper first of the Egyptians, then of the Jews, of the Assyrians too and the Persians; afterward he turned to the Romans and remains with them; in short, all kingdoms have yielded to them, the whole earth has been given into their possession. What have you to do with the victors of the whole earth, whom the secret places of the ocean and the farthest parts of India obey? Why should I add the Britains, divided from the whole world by the sea between, and brought by the Romans into the world? Scotia, which owes nothing to the lands, trembles at them; Saxony trembles, inaccessible in its marshes and fenced by trackless regions. Though it may seem to increase the care of war, it too has often been added as a captive to Roman triumphs; it is said to be the strongest race of men, surpassing the rest, yet it relies on pirate skiffs, not on strength, readier for flight than for war. But you reply that it is better to die than to lose liberty. When did this opinion come to you, Jews? Or when among the Hebrews was useful servitude not preferred to useless liberty? Jacob the patriarch himself led the Hebrews down into Egypt so that they would not perish of famine. The patriarchs went down, his twelve sons together, those glorious beginnings of our race. There was Judah, that noble ancestor of the Jews, who gave his name to the people. There Joseph, lifted high in a chariot and with horses, preferred to submit himself to another's power so as to feed his own, rather than return to the liberty of his own origin. There Benjamin, held back by his brother's loving trick, consented to the deceit, because it was no crime to serve the more powerful. There their inheritance, even when called by Moses, still wished to cling. So even hard servitude did not displease your fathers, so that they preferred it to dangers. You served the Egyptians, then, and would that it had been only once! But you served not only then, when you preferred the food of the last servitude to the rains of heavenly food, but even afterward, conquered and captive, you went down into Egypt, fleeing the Assyrians. You served the Assyrians too for many courses of years, and that servitude was sweet. You served the Macedonians, the Persians, the Seleucids, the Philistines; do you think only the Romans heavy to you, whom even those whom you served serve? Do you owe hatred, then, or gratitude to those who have made you equal to your masters? I think this is your vengeance, not an insult, because they have avenged you on those to whom you were subject. The Assyrian, who ruled over all Asia, is pressed by servitude. The Egyptian ploughs for the Romans, and what he sows the other reaps. Macedonia, which had spread its empire as far as the Indians after conquering Persia, acknowledges masters it did not know, and remembers that it gave its kings the name of the Aeacidae in vain; certainly it yielded to no others than to the triumph of the Romans, to whom even Pyrrhus himself, bearing both the descent and the name of Achilles's offspring, when conquered in arms, so submitted himself out of eagerness to win peace that he asked for pardon. And what shall I say of the Philistines, whom the power of one governor restrains? Ungrateful men, is it not your nobility to serve together with the Persians? For this is to have kings serving with you, and the greatest kingdom as a partner in subjection. But I ask: when were you free, you who now refuse servitude? When, then, were you free? Or when did you rule over others, you who were under a king? You had God as king; you rejected his kingdom, under which alone you were free; you wished to serve men. Why do you tear up the testaments of the fathers? The inheritance is stubborn even against the fathers. You chose a king whose name was Saul. When he was killed, the Philistine people ruled over you; after a time David succeeded to the kingdom of the whole people, gentler indeed than a master, but still a master; before David came to rest, he too nevertheless set a king over the nation. Under Solomon's successor the kingdom was again split in two, and the inheritance was divided through a long series of dominations. To pass over the captivities, Cyrus restored most of the Jews to their lands and their rites. But your fathers, when they were being worn down by heavy wars with the Persians, though ennobled by the triumphs of the Maccabees, chose alliance with Rome for themselves. Divine Scripture holds the treaties of many embassies. You became friends of the Romans, you who had been slaves of the Persians. But again you preferred to have a king rather than a chief priest whom the people would obey; when the cruelty of your kings was unbearable, after Herod died and Archelaus was driven out, you asked to be under the Roman Caesar. You handed yourselves over to Caesar, whom you all served, so as to change your servitude for the better. For to serve in the common condition of all is a kind of liberty, because the obedience of servants is honored by the dignity of their masters; although the Romans, authors of liberty, do not exact servitude, since they not only killed a cruel king but also did not endure a proud one; and therefore among them the name of empire is august, because it increases its own, not because it oppresses others. But grant that it is useful for you not to obey the Roman empire: let us see whether it is free, whether it is not fatal. The Roman lines press you, the ruins of your homeland press you, the destruction of the temple presses you: weigh not what is useful but what is possible. For it is not the appearance of wishes but the reckoning of possibility that must be weighed. Surely the law of nature, poured into all men, birds, wild beasts and beasts alike, is the same: that each one yields to the stronger: the bull to the lion, the stag to the bear, the roe to the leopard, the hawk to the eagle, the dove to the hawk; the young bullocks are inferior to the bull itself, the flocks of sheep to the ram, the goat to the he-goat; so that there may seem to be no distinction even of different kinds, you to the stronger. Yet the Romans drive no one out; you have driven out; indeed they see to it that no one, even when conquered, should go out from his own lands: they preserved part of his kingdom for Antiochus. And now what else does Caesar labor for, but that your land not be deserted, your region not be emptied, the city not be overthrown, the temple not be burned? Victory is not given to all. Nature has given it to few to rule, to many to obey. Bulls stand out in the herds, rams in the flocks. Pre-eminence lies with the few, gentleness with the many. Put on gentleness yourselves, accept subjection, which even the wild beasts put on.” While Josephus was saying this, they hurled abuse from the wall. They cursed him as he urged what was useful. Many also shot arrows, to see whether they could strike him dead. But he, since he could not bend the untamed by his speech, thought they should also be confronted with the testimonies of the Scriptures, especially because they said that God would not fail to protect his temple.

“Rash men, do you now at last hope that divine help will be with you, when you have thrown everything into confusion with war, violated the altars, and torn down the defenses of the whole city? Rash men, I say, and forgetful of your own helps, you have prepared shields and swords, and that against the Romans. You were not wont to conquer with such arms. For when was the victory of the Hebrews in spear and sword? Remember where you sprang from and from whom you have come, and how your fathers conquered their enemies. Rash men, what helper have you torn away from yourselves, while you demand the support of others? Not in the multitude of a people but in the fear of God did father Abraham go into Egypt; and when he saw the chastity of his wife, who had been carried off, held captive, he still abstained from war, took up the arms of devout prayer, and enlisted a defender who would conquer while he slept and, having overcome the enemy, would restore his wife to him undefiled. Sarah returned without arms, bringing back to her husband a triumphant victory. Abraham slept, and Pharaoh was tormented. Sarah was afraid, and Pharaoh denied the crime. He sent away another man's wife, and, the crime condemned, honored the chastity he had wished to despoil. Gold and silver were added to Sarah's honor, so that he might condemn a will that had had no share in the deed. He begged father Abraham to pray to the Lord for his household, for his house was barren. Sarah returned richer with her honor safe; Abraham returned holier, having repaid the reward of conjugal chastity with the remedy of barrenness. What shall I say of his son Isaac? He too, relying on his father's protection, did not lead out armed ranks against the insolence of a powerful neighbor; and certainly he had a strong band of three hundred eighteen servants born in the household, which had overcome five kings in war, stripped them of their spoils, and restored the captive Lot to his uncle Abraham. He did not draw his sword from its sheath, but against those who envied him he put on patience alone and brought back simplicity: those came begging who had announced that he must be driven out; they asked for friendship who could not bear him as a neighbor. I tremble to recount such great wonders of the fathers. Holy Jacob, when his brother Esau threatened fratricide, left his homeland and deserted his parents, carrying with him only the provision of prayer; and deservedly, in foreign places, when he feared his brother's plots and lacked the company and help of men, he found the counsel of angels: brought, as it says, to the camp of God, he wrestled with the Lord; and, as Scripture says, “he prevailed with God,” he who thought himself unequal to men. What else did Moses raise against the king of the Egyptians and his army and his serpents but a rod alone? O mighty rod, which covered the sky with darkness, flooded the earth with rains, and dried up the waves of the sea! The Egyptians had surrounded the Hebrews; Moses prayed and did not fight: the sea was divided, and the people went in; Pharaoh followed. Moses, placed amid the waves, prayed: Pharaoh was drowned with his men; Moses sang (Exod 15:4). Who, considering these and similar things, would not wonder and understand that our arms are better in prayer than in strength? For the one brings divine help to itself, the other bodily help. These arms, which are not carnal but mighty through God, were learned by Moses's disciple and also his successor, Joshua son of Nun, who, an imitator nearly equal to his master, turned back the waters of the Jordan; and when he saw the impregnable walls of the city of Jericho, he ordered the priests to sound the trumpet and the people to shout; when this was done, the walls suddenly fell, the city was burned, and all were killed, except those whom the faith of Rahab, the good harlot, defended from the destruction of that city. Gideon too chose three hundred men for war, and ordered them to bear not arms but mysteries: to hold in the left hand jars full of water, in the right torches; struck by this sight the enemy at once fled, and victory came to the Hebrews. The care of sacred religion had been neglected through the negligence of Eli the priest, and the divine commands were deserted; war was brought on by the Philistines, the Hebrews were conquered, even the ark of God was captured, and it was returned to them without arms. By this judgment it became clear that arms do not conquer without religion, and that religion conquers without arms. King Hezekiah, when the Assyrian people had poured into the nation of Judah, and he had fully learned from the voice of the Rabshakeh, by the command of King Sennacherib, what insults were hurled against God, what final destruction was announced to the people, did not, when this was reported to him, think that words should be answered with words or arms with arms; but rising, he put on sackcloth as a shield; instead of a helmet he covered his head with ashes; instead of javelins he hurled prayer. Prayer went up, an angel came down: we counted a hundred eighty-five thousand corpses of Assyrians slain in the night; we did not see the slayer. I had passed over the five kings who, having undertaken war without consulting the Lord, as they travelled through the desert began to be sorely afflicted by lack of water, and thirst tormented them and their horses. Necessity compelled them to repair the neglected duty. For the king of Israel was negligent of the worship of God; yet, advised by others to seek out a prophet of the Lord, he learned that Elisha was not far from the places where they were. They sent to beg the help of his prayer and a remedy for their need. Although he was offended with the king of Israel, because in his faithlessness he did not believe, he nevertheless promised both abundance of water and speed of victory. Water began to flow through the desert, and streams poured themselves over the land of their own accord without any rains. The adversaries, rising up, whom a deeper sleep had held down, secure of victory and with their anxiety relaxed, suddenly saw the waters glowing red as the sun spread over them; some thought that there had been fighting among the peoples of the kings, with whose blood the earth was soaked. So, hurrying to the plunder everywhere, without order, without measure, they ran, one getting ahead of another; thus, advancing headlong into the middle of the enemy, they were surrounded and killed, and gave a huge slaughter of their own. So the prophet, entreated by our fathers, drove away thirst and fear alike, and the same man brought help against famine. For when Samaria was besieged and the king of Israel remained shut up in it, a grave famine pressed them, so that they did not abstain even from abominable food. The prophet, approached about the hideousness of such misery and at the same time by the king's messenger, who thought the famine had grown through the prophet's neglect, answered: “Tomorrow you will see both abundance of grain and cheapness.” To the messenger, who did not believe, he said that he himself, because he did not believe, would see it, yet he promised that the fulfillment would not fail. And suddenly in the night in the camp of Syria the neighing of horses, the crash of chariots, the roar of four-horse teams running, the sound of arms struck fear by their hearing into the victors, as though many strong nations had come to help the Hebrews; and they hastened to rescue themselves by flight from what they thought was impending danger. Night hastened their decision and increased their terror. So, with the Assyrians fleeing, all the supplies they had seized were found in the camp the next day. Abundance created cheapness, cheapness fulfilled the promise; death took the fruit away from the unbeliever himself, but did not hinder the public remedy. It is clear, then, that very many leaders of the fathers gained victory when they did not fight at all; others too were superior in war when, on their consulting, the right of waging war was permitted them by an oracle. Indeed Amalek was conquered, but when Moses raised his hands; Joshua son of Nun conquered, when he made the sun stand still; Gideon conquered, when he had tested those who were to fight at the water; Samson too, while he still kept his hair undefiled; Samuel conquered as well, but when he had resolved to set up the stone of help. David triumphed, when he had joined Bathsheba (that is, the daughter of the sabbath) to himself in marriage by the ministries of the prophets; he conquered also in civil war, which he shrank from when it was brought against him: he did not bring it (for nothing is fouler than civil war), the only one who could have brought it. Asa too conquered in battle, but only after, when his men despaired because they were fewer in number, he said that it made no difference whether they were few or many, since God makes the few who fear him stronger than the many. Good indeed in faith, had he persevered to the end. A woman too conquered by arms, which she kept for God. But Saul was conquered, because he did not keep the command of God. Josiah was wounded, because he went out against the enemy contrary to the command: holy otherwise, and therefore taken away so that he should not see the captivity due to our sins. Necho cried out, “I am not sent against you,” bearing witness to his faith; but there entangled him, as earlier Amaziah, the fellowship of a degenerate alliance. Indeed Amaziah had been warned by a man of God to dismiss those whom he had hired for an alliance in war for a hundred talents of silver, if he wished to conquer. When he hesitated because he would lose so great a price, the prophet answered that the Lord had more, from which he could restore the silver to him too. Relying on this, he renounced the hired auxiliaries and conquered with fewer; yet he did not pay God the wage of so great a victory, but at once offered sacrifices to the very idols that he had captured as victor, as though he had conquered by the favor of the things he had reduced to the plunder of captivity. Zedekiah himself, when the ruins of his homeland were already bearing down and he was pressed by the enemy's siege, was told by Jeremiah the prophet not to fear to go out of the city, that he would be the victor if he obeyed the heavenly commands, or a captive if he thought it should be defended; by his unbelief he deceived himself and his own. The people of the Jews had been carried off by the Assyrians into Babylonia; the rest who had remained were deliberating about moving to the Egyptians. The Lord commanded through Jeremiah the prophet and the others that they be content with the rule of one nation, lest a double captivity increase their misery. But they, setting the oracles of God aside, became captives of two nations, they who had impatiently wished to escape the yoke of one nation. So they remained exiles in Egypt. But those who were led away to the Assyrians, when the time of captivity that the Lord had fixed for the sins of the people was complete, afterward, under the rule of Cyrus, gained the opportunity to go back and returned with favor. The temple of God was renewed by the wealth of the kings Cyrus and Darius and the gifts of the other Persians: so those who had overthrown it gave the cost of repairing it; they also restored the right of the priests and helped the worship of religion. But our own people, while they compete among themselves for the priesthood and canvass among the Parthians to have that honor conferred on them, have made a traffic of religion. Why do we complain of the Babylonians? We have found our own worse. They gave us back every right of religion, they restored the creation of priests, and our own people have poured it back to the Persians. They left the priestly fillets in our power; our people made them tributary to the Babylonians. What shall I add: the sanctuary bloodied with blood, the sacred thresholds dripping, the roofs of the temple still standing half-ruined? God's anger toward us is less than our own strife: the one made us captives, the other sacrilegious; the one scattered the Jews, the other destroyed them. Compare, if you please, what difference there is between our captivity and our sedition. Our captivity spread among the Gentiles a share in our religion; our sedition has taken away even from the Jews the grace of religion. And who brought the Romans into Judea but the quarrel of Hyrcanus and Aristobulus? Who brought Sosius but Herod? Who brought Antony but Sosius? Who begged Caesar for a king for themselves but you? Who but you drove Antipater from the kingdom, and liberty with Antipater? And yet I do not blame or deny that Florus took wicked counsel against you. But a complaint should have been carried to the Romans, not arms brought against them. You scorned Nero, but Vespasian had succeeded, who, kind by nature, could be even kinder by inclination, because he had assumed the empire in Judea; or if kindness did not move you, his valor at least ought to have driven you to take thought for yourselves. But how would he not spare you, who spared Josephus? For to whom ought he to have been more hostile than to me? Who built greater fortifications against the Romans? Who thought it his duty to fight more zealously for the homeland? After the course of war pleased you, I did not approve the beginnings of the wars, but once they were undertaken I did not desert them. The ashes of the city of Jotapata, which sheltered me while I was still fighting, bear witness that I did not stop fighting except after the ruin of that city; that I hid as long as I could in that tomb of the overthrown city; that I endured hunger so as not to hand myself over to the Romans; that I sought ways of escape to come to you; but that, caught, not coming out of my own accord, I would have preferred to perish with my own, but Caesar spared me; that I chose rather to share danger with you, not because I approved the plan, but because I chose a share of danger with you. Yet thanks be to God that I did not fall into the fellowship of so great a crime, so as to be thought an inciter of seditions; or, because I could not mix with these men, to commit the parricide that I could avoid by my hand, or die. Certainly I have been spared seeing my most holy mother torn to pieces for my sake, and the entrails of my family scattered; which things are pitiable indeed, but it is more bearable to suffer them than to have done them. What then are you still waiting for? The signs of our forefathers? We have not those merits, nor those duties toward the worship of God. Nor is the faithlessness of the Romans like that of the Assyrians, who, having received the price of withdrawal, broke faith, and thought they should not withdraw but attack more fiercely. Indeed, so that we may gather from what has happened that the judgment of God has been moved, it is certain that God is opposed to the Jews. For Siloam, which before the war had been dry, and all the veins of the springs outside the city, which had long ceased to flow, so that water was lacking for our use unless bought at a price, now return to their use and pour themselves out for Titus at his coming. The veins gush abundantly, and everything is so filled with overflowing waters that they abound generously not only for the army's drink but also for the horses, the war-horses and pack animals and all the cattle, and there is no lack of abundant water even for watering gardens; so that you would think the channels poured more generously for the Roman victory, as though the elements were striving for it. We recognize the earlier portents, which then too preceded the captivity of our city: the water failed the Jews and poured itself out for the enemy, so that the siege should not be hindered by thirst. Nor is it any wonder if divine grace has departed from the Jews, whom such crimes have surrounded. Does not a good man flee a lodging full of horror? And does he not desert his own house if he learns that some crime has been committed in it? He avoids the fellowship of an unworthy dwelling and curses the iniquities of those who live there; and do we doubt that the most high and spotless God shrinks from the contagion of such great crimes, turns away from the atrocity of deadly wickedness, and does not linger in the gatherings of parricides, he who commanded that Dathan and Abiram, because they had provoked Moses and Aaron by trying to snatch the office of priesthood, be separated from the innocent, lest from their fellowship with the guilty either the stain defile the godly or the punishment involve them? But why do I linger longer on words, when everything around is full of horror and groaning, and the destruction of the temple is being hastened? What eyes can look on this, what senses endure it, what mind tolerate it? O you harder than stones, more rigid than iron, who amid such portents of human affairs still contend among yourselves in crime as if in rivalry of virtue; and, what is graver, you yourselves destroy your homeland and increase its ruin! Turn at last, come to your senses at last, judge, and see the beauty of the homeland you have betrayed: what a city, what a temple, what dwellings of the saints and sanctuaries of holy things, what works of the prophets are being torn apart by your hands? Does anyone lead flames against these, scatter fires and supply burning, and is moved by no feeling? The hardness of rocks, if it could feel, would melt. Certainly even things without feeling often, in the greatest bitterness of affairs, take on the appearance of feeling, so that rocks tremble and drops wet with blood flow; but you remain unmoved, as though something better remained after this, something worthier to keep. Finally, if these things do not move you, because with the godly they are more precious, at least have pity on your kindred: set before your eyes the deaths of your sons, by sword or by famine, and, more bitter than these, the slavery of your wives and daughters, for whom liberty will be safe by a pact of surrender, or captive slavery by the overthrow of the city. Take counsel while you may, lest you leave behind after death worse things than you have done before death. Nor am I free of such danger. I know myself that together with yours my most holy mother is in danger, and my dear wife, a family not undistinguished, and a house once famous. And perhaps you think I am urging this for the sake of my own: kill them, and take my blood besides as wages: I will gladly pay this wage for your salvation, if after me you can come to your senses.”

When Josephus had cried out these things with tears, he swayed many of the people to flee to the Romans after selling what they possessed. Titus sent them wherever each one wished, so that the rest too might be encouraged to hand themselves over to the Romans without fear. So they flocked out once a way of going out was found, secure of their safety if they came over to the Romans, and not anxious about slavery, since liberty was reserved for them. But those who followed John and Simon, the arbiters and instigators of the sedition, feared the punishment of their crimes more than the adversities of war, and therefore thought refuges unsafe for themselves. Not only did they not dare to go out themselves, but they also set ambushes, so that none of the people would be allowed to leave the city. And they took greater care to prevent the departure of their own people than the entry of the Romans. So people were kept in against their will; and if anyone was caught, he paid heavy penalties. A slight suspicion was the cause of a most grievous death. Truth was sought not by evidence but by tortures. If any were wealthy, they were dragged to death on a trumped-up charge of sedition; if any were poor, because they had nothing with which to ransom themselves, they lay open to death.

And now a heavy famine had begun to rage, and the sedition to run riot more widely with fury and madness. Grain could not be found; there was no bread in public use. Wherever it had been discovered to be, the house was at once stormed. The owner of the house was butchered, as the hoarder of grain, for having hidden it. Again, if no grain was found, as though it had been hidden more carefully, tortures were applied. Many longed for the shortcut of death, since either famine wasted them or cruelty tormented them. In fact they disdained to kill those who were older, begrudging them the benefit of death, whom famine, already a fiercer executioner, had left with bare bones covered by thin skin, their insides eaten away by pitiable wasting. Half-dead, they still breathed only by their breath, and dragged sick corpses about. Wherever they saw scraps of vegetables, either dropped by chance or thrown away as dried up, they licked them weakly as they lay on the ground. Or wherever grass was seen growing in walls, they snatched it and comforted their wretched hunger with its miserable juice. The richer bought a measure of wheat with their whole fortune: for why should I keep what will be of no use? The poorer bought a measure of barley, in such a way that no one saw the seller or the buyer. For this was punished more heavily than any crime. Nor did they wait to bake bread, lest death forestall them or the delay summon an informer. Hidden in secret places, those who had any supply of grain, however small, chewed the wheat uncooked. No table, no seat, no light, lest anyone come in and catch them unawares. If there was any sound, the food was hidden. Solitude was suspect, company murderous; among their own a sad contest. For famine shuts out every affection, and above all shame; for to the hungry, shame is a loss of life and a damage to safety. If a man who had a wife or sons or grandsons had any food, he scarcely admitted it; likewise the women. And if someone of gentler spirit had set food before them, it was wrung from his hands. Pitiable was the food, tearful the meal: children snatched it from their parents, parents from their children, and it was pulled out of their very throats. For many the vomit of others was food. Nor was there any horror at eating what was rotten, nor shame at taking from their own the last drops of life. And the form of so unhappy a calamity was this: the fear of being caught. So it was done behind closed doors, lest anyone come upon them who would seek food from another's mouth and, like dogs, lick up others' vomit with his tongue. But not even this went unpunished: for wherever doors were bolted, a hiding of food was suspected. The servants of the seditions leapt out, broke into what was closed, and exacted unbearable punishments of a new cruelty. Not even the private parts of the body were spared; the punishment passed through these too, because in them the sense of pain is sharper. Many, when they saw the slayers breaking in, snatched up the food they had prepared, so that they would not be cheated of their last provision for the journey, or at least so as to avenge the death to come. And what made the cruelty seem graver, those who snatched food from the starving were not themselves hungry. For by plunder they had heaped up others' wealth for themselves and fed on others' stores, while those who had gathered it starved and wasted away with hunger. If any woman, moved by a mother's affection and pitying the cries of her infant, wished to pour the juice of food into it from her own mouth, she paid the penalty for a loving act, and with the child hanging at her neck or clinging to her breasts, they were pierced through together. Many too, thinking it a benefit to die, went out of the city to pluck grasses, or graze on roots, or strip the bark of trees, in case the green in these could supply some comfort of food; the Romans killed them when they found them. And whoever escaped the enemy fell on the very threshold of the gate, wasted by famine and weak in the mouth, whom even the work of chewing had already failed. Those who returned were met by a deadlier band, which with the most bitter wickedness would wrest from the laps of the wretched what had been sought at the greatest danger, and would not leave a share even as the wage of the danger. So they died more by the attack of their own than of the enemy. For what even the enemy had allowed, the citizen snatched away; nor did it profit them to have seized such food, since not long afterward, their bodies green and their middles swelling, they were shaken by pain of the inmost entrails, or, with loosened bowels, they failed as their strength was drained, so that they repented of their wish: what was for a time a comfort was afterward a punishment. Then, cooking green lizards and other kinds of serpents in their skins, they added a plague. For if they happened to find the corpses of horses, dragging them among themselves, they fought it out in fierce battle; nor were they free even from the destructions heaped on them by the enemy. For when very many, going out of the city with their sons and wives, had gone to the part that the depth of sheer precipices had hollowed out, the Romans led them off like captive slaves, striking especially those of younger age as if stronger, lest anyone should dare to creep up on the fighting men. They watched, so that if anyone, in eagerness to seek food, went out to the farther spaces while hunting for roots of wild plants, he would be intercepted. Yet, though the enemy was all around, those to whom hunger gave daring could not restrain themselves, since the affection of parents could not bear to see their little children consumed by wasting and their mouths, opened by hunger, stretched out in vain; they had taken these with them as partners in danger, lest the authors of the sedition kill them in their place, as hostages for their flight. Hunger forced them to go out, for whom it was a benefit to perish by the sword in comparison with fasting. The Romans, on the other hand, because they thought them despisers of death, pressed every kind of punishment, first scourging, then also afflicting with the gibbet of the cross whomever they came upon, so that by the sight of tortures the rashness of the rest might be called back from the insolence of attacking. So the bitterness of such calamities seemed a pitiable suffering to Titus. Innumerable were taken; about five hundred a day were tortured, and they lined the plains before the city in the order of a pitiable procession, so that they could be seen from the walls. The Romans pitied, the Jews were not moved; the enemies felt compassion, the allies were not bent; mercy was found more easily among adversaries than among allies. Yet many were inflamed with indignation, because in such evils they became worse: you would have seen men afflicted in different ways, and various kinds of penalties and forms of punishment for so innumerable a multitude, that there was now no room for the crosses, nor crosses for the bodies. Within, Simon raged, John roared; they laid ambushes for individuals through their servants: if anyone tried to flee, he was dragged along the ground and torn apart. The relatives of those who had gone away were tortured too, or the corpses of many fixed to the cross were shown to their kin who had escaped. On the other side they themselves had lined the wall with a kind of crop of crosses, as if triumphing over adversaries, if they caught any of their own wishing to flee to the Romans, so that fear of going over might come upon the rest. No place was free of bitterness: outside captivity, within famine, dread on both sides; yet arms were less feared than tortures, and it was lighter to be destroyed by the enemy's tumult than by parricide. Yet Caesar did not cease inviting the leaders of the factions to hope of surrender. For with the earthworks built, he announced that the completion of the work was not far off, that destruction hung over the city; they should take thought for themselves, so that they might gain safety and the temple might be snatched from the fire. That they might believe this more easily, many Jews were sent back with their hands cut off, so that they would not be thought to have gone over to the Romans by voluntary desertion and, as deserters, carry nothing back, or be killed by their own. But to his earnest warning they returned grave insults: Caesar's humanity seemed to them more deadly than cruelty, because the one took away liberty, the other life; they would rather die free than live as slaves; they had devoted their lives in the temple. Immortality would follow if they died burned with the temple, among their altars and ancestral hearths. Titus had achieved nothing; he had taken away little and given more: instead of the temple, paradise would come to them, and those who had fought for the temple of God would be transferred there; only let them not see the Roman triumphs with their own eyes and put their captive necks under the yoke. Their little children were being consecrated, not killed, whose parents had been champions of the heavenly mysteries. More moved by this, Titus ordered the engines to be brought up, so that he might at least rescue those who were held against their will.

There was in the army the son of Antiochus of Commagene, who had come to share in the war, an energetic young man indeed and ready of hand, but not very far-sighted in counsel, who, thinking the moderation of the Roman army too slow and not considering the difficulty of the task, hinted to Caesar that he wondered why the Romans delayed to undermine the wall. Titus smiled and said: “The work is common to all.” At that word the young man rushed out with those whom he had, armed in the Macedonian fashion, readier for fighting; for he had come supported by others as well. The cohort called the Macedonians, however, was thought to excel both in bodily strength and in stature itself. As they approached, the battle grew. On the other side, those on the wall fought the more eagerly, since extreme dangers pressed them and the success of the present contest encouraged them; while those below were more often pierced by those above, not all the spears reached those above. Yet the king's son, eager in his youth, better protected with arms, better girt with an escort, dodged some blows and warded off others, and was instructed by his companions, who prompted him to beware of them; and therefore he remained unhurt by wounds. But many of the cohort of the Macedonians, since they thought it shameful to yield even to nature or to fortifications, fought more stubbornly and were wounded. So, their attempt vain, they yielded to those above, having learned that Macedonian men, if they wish to conquer, need both Alexander's eagerness for fighting and the fortune of victory. For he, when besieging a city while the others delayed and the army lingered around the customary engines, set up ladders and nimbly climbed the wall; and having routed those present who were fighting back from the wall, he leapt down alone into the city. Nor was there time for him to open the gates for himself without a companion, since dangers pressed; but his spirit, boundless and greedy for victory, leapt out upon the enemy. The ranks gave way, but how many could he lay low alone? Then the enemy poured round through the various streets of the city; if Alexander bore down on one part, he gave others the chance to surround him from behind. So the victor turned back on his entry, lest he be surrounded by the people. But they, crowded together, began to press him; a very great force of weapons bristled above him; his helmet rang with the clanging, his shield with the crash of stones. And had not the Macedonians, fearing for their leader, burst in, the conqueror of innumerable nations would have been crushed within a small city. It was a mark of eagerness, then, that he leapt onto the wall, threw down the enemy, rushed alone into the city with a triumphant leap, and put peoples to flight by his charge; but it was also fortune, which is most necessary to a leader, that with so many peoples bearing down, so many darts of arrows, so many spears falling, there was no place for a mortal wound. So courage had brought danger, and eagerness would have brought death, had fortune deserted the fighter. The Macedonians entered by a gate they had burst open; so rashness found victory, and fortune turned danger into glory. Our own David too, when he was fighting against the giants, as he charged the enemy had a slayer behind him; but Abishai, the king's companion, forestalled him as he poised his blows. But fortune preserved Alexander; grace preserved the prophet.

So the son of King Antiochus of Commagene gave way, recognizing that the carefully weighed moderation of the Roman army was a matter not of fear but of caution, so that they attacked the wall with earthworks and sheds, rams too and other machines. Earthworks were built, the work divided among the units; four principal ones rose up, of which one, opposite the fortress named Antonia, had been carried through the middle of the pool they called Struthion. Another earthwork, thirty cubits high, the fifth legion had made near the tomb of John. Against these John, the leader of the seditions, dug a mine and undermined the Roman works. The Romans did not know what the Jews had contrived in the hidden mine; because they had supported the upper parts of the mines on props of timber placed beneath them, the whole fraud lay hidden. So when the opportunity seemed right, they set fire to it; the fire, fed by sulphur and pitch with which the timber that propped the mine had been smeared, easily consumed all the wood, and the collapse of what was above followed. So the Roman works suddenly fell with a tremendous noise. Everything was filled with dust and smoke, which had brought on great darkness, and the hidden cause had brought on greater terror. Then, when the fire, having consumed the other fuel by which it was at first covered, afterward broke out freely, it betrayed the trick; and for the Romans the fear of danger was indeed lessened for the moment, but a heavy weariness at their labor emptied followed; at the same time no small shame tormented them because the Jews were jeering, and for the future the hope of preparing an assault grew cold. But in another part, two days later, when the wall was already being shaken by the ram, Tephthaeus of Galilee, Megassarus, and Abdinadabus, and Aras snatched up torches and leapt out against the siege engines at the wall. Nothing more daring than these men, nothing more terrible, came out of the city against the enemy in that war. For rushing into the middle of the enemy they did not tremble, they did not draw back, but as though lingering in the company of their friends, they did not think they should return, although javelins, arrows and spears were hurled at them from all sides, before they had set fire to the instruments of the siege engines. There was a great rush of the Roman army to put out the fire, and the Jews too shouted and strove to put obstacles in the way, so that the Romans could not be helped. The Romans hastened to draw the rams away from the flames; the Jews kept scattering fires. Hence, with everything that could burn caught, the flames would have surrounded the Romans had they not taken counsel in time. For the Jews pressed fiercely, and the very fact that their attempts had not been in vain in that part fed their daring with success. Indeed, no longer content with the wall defenses, they went farther and attacked the very guards of the Romans, and had advanced as far as the fort where the Romans were stationed, to overthrow it. And had not the glory of the Roman name and the ancient discipline of soldiering, which by fear of severer punishment forbade the deserting of such posts, resisted those raging men, the stormers of cities would themselves have yielded their own fortifications. So the appearance of the war and the practice of the siege were reversed: the Romans defended themselves with catapults and swifter kinds of missiles, to drive back the Jews, by the same kind by which they had before been resisted. Meanwhile Titus arrived, roused by the clamor and summoned to remedy it; at once strength was added to the Romans by Caesar's presence, and shame fed their daring. Titus cried out that it would be a grave reproach to the Roman name if, the tables turned, they lost their own walls, they for whom the enemy's walls to be torn down had run out; the Jews, distrusting their fortifications, relied on rashness alone; if only the Romans stood firm, victory would not fail. So by encouraging as well as fighting Titus steadied his men and turned back the Jews, who were not only ready for death in spirit but bore down with the very effort of their bodies to move the Romans from their ground. Nor was Caesar's danger small amid the general confusion, when ally could not be told from enemy; yet Titus moved about in the midst, daring in youth and keener to fight through desire for glory, setting the care of his safety, so that victory might be completed more quickly, after the triumph.

When the enemy had been driven back, however, the counsel was divided: some thought the earthworks should be rebuilt and the wall engines repaired; others suggested that the dangers of the siege should be given up, that material for repairing was lacking, that the danger was shared with many; they judged it more advisable to shut the city in with a wall, so that famine would finish them, once the supplies of food had been cut off. This opinion prevailed: that they should be shut in, so that they would have no free sallies, and would be worn down the more both by despair of flight and by lack of food. So, with portions divided among the units, a wall quickly rose, by which the city was enclosed along its whole circuit. Caesar distributed duties to his men, so that they would not neglect their turns of guard even at night. The first watch he himself took charge of, the duty of going round each line of guards; the second watch he assigned to Alexander; then in order to the tribunes, as each one's skill was known, the turns were entrusted. Along the wall forts were set at intervals, in which a band of soldiers stood guard; the watchmen drew lots fairly among themselves for sleep and times of watch. At every moment they went around the wall, each over the stretch assigned to his duty, from fort to fort; the night was kept busy in order and in turns of duty. The hope of the Jews was cut off on every side; famine had poured itself in on those shut in and had sunk into the very marrow of the people. Everything resounded with the groans of those lamenting the torments of a pitiable death. Everything was full of half-dead bodies and corpses; if you waited a little, those you had found alive died within a moment. Even those who still breathed, wasted by emaciation, bore the image of death. Exhausted by hunger and livid with decay, they could not easily even raise their eyes, because their substance, consumed by fasting, gave no vigor of natural movement. Only the figure of a man remained; the use had perished. You would have seen images; you would have looked in vain for functions. Dry skin clung to dry bones. If a slight movement betrayed a living man, the stench refuted it: thin limbs and a color so black that you would think it a shadow. Nor did the wretched have strength for the duties of burial, since all were first exhausted and soon about to die. And if a fresher bit of food gave anyone some strength, the heap of corpses had taken away hope and struck him with impossibility. Many even died while burying their own, and by their own death left unfinished the duties of the last office. They fell on the dead whom they had taken up to bury, so that the one who had come to lighten the burden himself added to the burden, needing the same ministry that he was bringing to another. Nor was there any room for grief in the common calamity of all, except that the authors of so great a misery survived; nor time for complaint, even with voices now free, had they been able to speak. For what could the dying still fear for themselves? Yet with senses already mute they looked to the temple, as though vengeance for so dreadful an end were being demanded from there. The tears of the last duties had dried up, because the force of evil had shut off all feeling. The mind had grown stiff, every sense was stuck fast in those enduring more than can be wept. There was no more earth for graves, every place within the city that could give the use of a tomb having been dug up. Some tried to go out in the silence of the night between the two walls, the new and the old of the city; though dangerous, pious thefts persuaded them. So instead of one, more lay unburied, and they were cheated of the very office of honor they had longed to bring to one; and even where the enemy was absent, famine did its work. The burier often died before the one to be buried, and, suddenly lifeless, was shut in the tomb he had prepared for another; and when he fell as he dug, he claimed the right to it as if by a kind of zeal for his own work. And where earth was lacking, planks were fastened together so that the bodies of the dead might be shut in coffins. Many prepared these for themselves with their own hands, lest such a ministry fail them; and they often laid themselves in them of their own accord, fearing that death would forestall them and there would be no one to bury them. All was silent with fear; starvation had taken away voice; the city was full of death, and there was no wailing at the funeral of a whole city; and though the sense of grief had perished, the injury did not cease. Even in such great evils there were not lacking men worse than all, violators even of tombs. What shall I say, that they did not shudder when they mocked the dead and tested the edge of their swords on the corpses of the dead? Some even tested on the bodies of the still living whether their weapons were sharp; and yet this service was refused to many who begged for it, so that famine might feed on the wretched for greater torments. Yet vengeance did not fail the dying: for what they could not do alive, the dead avenged themselves, creating the stench as their avenger, by which they took vengeance on the robbers. Those men, raging grievously and seeking a remedy, put on a certain appearance of piety, even those who were robbing, so as to order them to be buried at the expense of the public treasury. But when that could not keep pace, they threw the remains of the dead from the wall into the deep ravines. So Titus, seeing the steep hollows full of corpses and the putrid matter from the torn entrails floating on top, groaned deeply and, raising his hands to heaven, called to witness that this was by no means to be ascribed to him, who had wished to grant pardon if surrender went forward; he had waited for them to ask for peace; he was ready to keep them unharmed if they had laid down the war. So he ordered the earthworks to be thrown up again, even though the woods were no longer near, because all the forest groves near the city had been cut down. The soldiers carried the material, consoling their labor with the hope of victory. Yet the leaders of the sedition were not broken in spirit. Simon raged, and, not sated with the deaths of so many, did not yield; and because enemies had begun to run short, he turned on his allies.

In the end he did not even spare Matthias, on whose authority he had been received into the city, but tortured and killed him, a man convicted before him of no crime, but accused of treason and suspected for counsel which he had earnestly and without any guile believed should be urged, as to a friend, for the good of the people. Simon kept this deeply impressed for some time, and no longer trusted him as a friend, but nursed his indignation, concealing his opinion. So, having had him accused before him of agreeing and colluding with the Romans, he ordered him to be seized with his sons. He was summoned, and no opportunity of defense was given: he was sentenced to punishment before any examination, nor were his offspring spared; they were joined to the penalty. He asked not for the enjoyment of life but for speed of death, the order of nature: that he should be killed first, so that he would not watch the murders of his sons nor survive the funerals of his children, he who was himself about to become a funeral. He did not obtain what piety itself would choose even if he had not asked. He asked that this be given him in return for the service of having opened the city to him: guilty indeed toward his homeland, but Simon's benefactor. He might owe this punishment to the citizens, but Simon owed him gratitude. The crueler, then, he who neither spared a friend nor remitted the penalty for the patron of his reception. The father was led to punishment with three sons; for the fourth had escaped by flight. He was set in sight of the Roman army by way of insult, so that those to whom he had wished to go out might see his punishment: “So let your friends free you, if they can.” His sons were led out too, and he was not permitted to give his children last kisses nor to receive his sons in a final embrace; yet he was not cheated of the freedom of a father's voice, and he addressed his sons with a pitiable speech: “It was I, my sons, who brought the enemy in upon you; I who called in the executioners, when I asked Simon to enter the city. That day was the cause of this death for us, the cause of this murderous spectacle. I deserved it, I confess, nor do I excuse the fault: while I was eager to restrain one, I summoned a worse. Simon was sought for help, and was turned to the murder of his homeland; he turned earnest counsels into a crime. We were guilty toward our homeland, we who sought a defender. And rightly do we pay the penalty for imprudence, but not for treachery. Simon himself acquits us while he kills us, he who declares that it was not given him by me as a gift but asked for in view of the homeland, that he should come as soon as possible to help against John's savagery and bring in the Idumaeans. We thought that, with the two contending against each other, the people would be free. Who would believe me that I did not bring this to you out of zeal for you, but judged it more bearable than evils, unless you were killing me? But why do I speak so, as if excusing a crime? I could certainly have done nothing graver by my counsel than to set you on our necks. But in that I was guilty toward the homeland, not toward you. I owed death to the citizens, but you owed me gratitude. I owed the homeland the penalty of treason for having brought you in. When did I begin to be a traitor to you? If I had thought I should flee, I would have looked to myself; I would not have violated the bond of my homeland. For who does not flee an enemy, and an enemy within? But we thought you a citizen and found you an enemy. Sought for help, what did you repay? What did you promise beforehand, and to what did you turn afterward? You had come in to drive out an enemy, not to play the enemy; to restrain his fierce attack, not to provoke war; to prevent the murders of citizens, not to add to them yourself; to drive back robbery, not to rob yourself, but to come to the help of an innocent people. Why have you turned your arms against it? Before, people were attacked by robbery; you brought war. Before, fewer were dragged to death; you made a slaughter of peoples. Who is the traitor of the homeland, who has helped Roman arms more, than the one who destroyed the champions of the homeland? Than the one who took away the defense of so many citizens? Than the one who turned the sword from the enemy against allies? The enemy outside the walls offered peace; you fought inside the walls. He wished to raise the siege; you hastened the storming. He forbade the burning of our city; you hurled flames on the very roofs of the temple. He gave truces out of regard for our sacred rites; you, on the very days of the holy rites, quenched the altars of God with the final destruction of the city, even with the blood of priests. He besieged the walls, you the temple. I will heap up my own crimes: I laid hands on my homeland, I armed your fury, I set the beginning of all this through a kind of senile madness. I acknowledge the imprudence of a foolish age. Let us lighten the shame by confession, since we cannot shed the sin by denial. We two above the rest hastened the destruction of the homeland: I by an error of counsel, you by a purpose of parricide. So I pay you, my homeland, the penalties due; and for this very thing I give thanks to Simon, that I shall not survive your ashes. And would that I were not surviving my children! But, to the bitterness of your crime, Simon, I stand by as a spectator of my sons' murder. I deserved it, I confess, because I could not bear to see John painted, and chose you armed. O headlong old age! We feared an image; we sought a tyrant. I was your surety, I your advocate; I carried the embassy. I begged you as master; I brought in a murderer. Let us look, then, at what we have done: John's wax terrified us, Simon's robberies delighted us. So let the funeral procession be hastened: let the executioner come, let him cut down the sons before their father's face, and the father on the corpses of his sons. Let me, a pitiable old man, take the executioner's stroke over the bodies of my children as he swings the axe. Than this spectacle nothing is more deadly, except the one who orders it. Cruel, wicked man, I do what you command; I will do it, but unwillingly. Yet I have a consolation in so great a calamity. I suffer whatever is most wretched since you have ordered it; whatever is most monstrous I undergo gladly, with you as judge. You have filled up the measure of the most savage crimes: let it at least be allowed to address my children, to say a last farewell to my dear ones. Let there be a last place for kisses, which we share even with wild beasts. Let the pitiable embrace of nature not be forbidden, which chance can grant even to the dead. What you have commanded for punishment, then, let it serve me for piety. I will fall upon my dead and cover them, still unburied, as if with a sod of my own body, so that birds may not tear them nor beasts devour them. I will lick with a father's tongue the blood of my children and wash away my own, so that beasts may not lick it; and perhaps piety and the pity of nature itself will add this, that dying I may clasp my children in the tightest embrace, so that you cannot separate us when you wish. Certainly, if you separate our bodies, you will not separate our souls. But we have taken enough provision of tears for the journey. Go before, my sons, and prepare the way for your father who will follow. If I can catch up, I will go with you, and there old age will be a hindrance, so that I shall be less able to keep up with you, living youths. Go ahead to the lodging, so that you may receive your weary father for a long stay. I wished indeed to go first myself, and asked, but did not obtain it; yet because you are innocent, better lodgings will be given you than if I, the one who summoned Simon, had gone before. That embassy weighs on me, though entrusted to me by the citizens, at the people's request, suspect as it was. So go before, my sons, treading the upward road with cleaner step. The sons of the Maccabean mother too went before her: but they to reward, you to punishment. Yet that devout mother watched her sons dying and, rolling herself in the blood of her own, saw the brothers embracing one another in the bond of nature; and she rejoiced in her triumph and could complain of the tyrant. The merits of the sufferers differ indeed, but the savagery of each who commanded is the same. Antiochus devised this with Persian savagery, for among them are the inventions of new punishments; you have carried it out. Yet he kept the mother for last to persuade her to the king's will; you have ordered the father kept to torture him with a father's grief. Take comfort, my dearest sons: we suffer what the martyrs suffered. Simon has decreed what a barbarian persecutor invented, what a tyrant commanded. Let us set out, then, willingly, and flee the assembly of robbers. Indeed, when we have departed to that everlasting home, if any come to us who ask what that once people of God is doing, what shall we answer them? Especially if Jonathan, unblemished in age, meets you, being younger, and Saul meets me, being a sinner. What, I say, shall we say, except that that people of Judah, the newly beloved, from whom the sea fled, for whom the sun stood still, before whom the Jordan gave way; that people, I say, for whom the deep became a path, the air fruitful, the earth heavenly, which did not, like this land of yours, put on the appearance of corruption but took on the grace of resurrection, now serves the Idumaeans and is subject to Simon, the chief of robbers, and has neither secure servitude nor danger with liberty? What do we think they will answer to this, who chose to perish in war rather than outlive the liberty of their homeland? What will Mattathias, the founder of the Maccabees, answer, who chose to keep the law and die resting on the sabbath rather than fight and live, if he hears how Simon not only carried out countless murders of citizens on the sabbath but compelled the very priests of the Lord to be butchered on the new moons and all the holy days of festal celebration? How much will Jeconiah groan when he hears that Simon, who first overthrew the city by seditions and violated the ancient religion of the temple by the slaughter of citizens, though so often entreated to save the city from fire by his surrender, prefers that everything perish in destruction, the city and temple be burned, the whole people be killed, rather than bend the summit of the domination he has seized! How much, I say, will Jeconiah grieve, who, though less fortunate in his reign in a time of pressing evils, was better than his son? For the father, though wretchedly, yet devotedly, preferred to be less fortunate for himself than for his homeland. So, going out of the city with his family, he gave himself into servitude to the besieging Babylonians, so as not to see his homeland overthrown nor the people of God captive. But the son, equal in misfortune but unequal in affection, while he feared for himself, led both himself into exile and the city into destruction. This one, then, was unhappy for his homeland and not happy for himself, who lost both his children and his eyes; but the other was wiser, who redeemed the captivity of the citizens by his own captivity. In the end the outcome showed it: the one, older, failed in his kingdom; the other, younger, in servitude, although afterward the Babylonian king set up a royal throne for him beside his own and granted him the privilege of counsel, as a consolation for his wretched calamity. Indeed my lot is now more bearable, to die after the murder of my children than to live: so that you may know how cruel is he who butchers sons before their father's face, whose royal gifts are worse than the wounds of piety. For either he ought not to have inflicted such impious things in the first place, or not to have substituted such honors afterward, as if any dignity could be bought by the loss of sons, or the murder of offspring made up for by any use of honor. No dignity, surely, none, relieves so great a grief. No honor heals this wound, except death alone, which takes away feeling and removes memory. Hasten then, slayer; yet wait, while I see my children, while I look on them before they die, lest one of them, perhaps troubled by the immaturity of his age, fear death when he is escaping a crueler tyrant. It is a benefit, my sons, to die, so that we may not see the captivity of our homeland: wounds of the body are more bearable than wounds of the mind. Now I look more bearably on your deaths, which I was shrinking from, so that I may not see the deaths of all in common, may not see the grief of the homeland and the whole city their tomb. Yet happier is he who has died than he who is kept alive. Most high God, let Simon not be laid low with his children among the flocks of the innocent; let him see, a captive, what he has brought on others. Nay, not so, not so, I say; for what he can think of, he can bear, and yet I do not call these things down on him. Let him consider how great a crime it is, which he who suffers it cannot turn back even by a prayer; how bitter the vengeance, how savage the monstrousness of the crime committed, which a captive surviving his homeland desires, because the mockeries of life are worse than the punishments of death. But now let there be an end of words. Hasten, executioner, while you hold the sword bloodied with my sons' blood; strike the father, so that no one may let it cool. This alone is a medicine for one about to die; by this alone the blow of the blade, the pain of the wound, is not felt. Strike in the sight of the Roman army, as has been ordered, so that those who will avenge may watch. Let the enemy pity, since the ally does not; let the Romans judge whom Simon has killed without judgment. They themselves are witnesses, who saw me fighting, not deserting, that I was not a traitor to the homeland but its defender. For my children I would, if I could, have turned the enemy away, not summoned an enemy: and would that I had not summoned Simon!” Nor was any end put to such great cruelty. The sons still lay unburied with their father; sacrilege was added to the murderous spectacle. Ananias the priest was slain, born of a famous family, though no one is more famous by the splendor of his family than by the office of religion. For nobility is affected by the one; by the other it is not desired. Let ancient lineage have for itself the fasces of various honors; priesthoods too have their fasces, which are raised not on the shoulders but by conduct, and lifted not by the length of rods but by the perseverance of labors, the height of faith, the summit of piety. Aristeus the scribe too was struck down, himself of famous origin, and with them fifteen others of the people, more eminent than the rest; though it is not nobility but innocence that makes a death unjust. Eleven men too were forestalled, who had conspired together because of the atrocity of his crimes; each feared for himself what he saw done to others, since Simon was faithless even to friends, and hope had been taken away, with famine ravaging all and the Romans now on the point of breaking in. Simon was distracted from the work of defense and running riot in the workshop of cruelty, and the lure of betrayal was easy, because Judas, one of them, had taken on the guarding of a tower. So when he called the Romans, promising to hand over the tower, some disdained it because the betrayal came so late, others doubted because he had often prepared a trick after promising surrender; Simon forestalled them and exacted the penalty from all the partners in the conspiracy; their bodies too were thrown down from the wall.

Josephus's father was kept shut up, and no access to him lay open to anyone. All the more eagerly did Josephus invite the Jews to surrender, and he went up to the wall rather incautiously, so as to free his homeland together with his father. There, struck on the head by a stone, he fell, and would almost have been overwhelmed by weapons hurled from above, had not men been sent at Caesar's order to protect him with shields and snatch him from death. His mother, learning of her son's wound and dismayed by the jeering voices of the robbers, put on both fear and belief in his death, and began to lament pitiably: that she had been kept for these fruits of her fruitfulness, that she could neither enjoy the service of a living son nor bury him dead. It had been her own prayer that he should rather give burial to his mother, that she should breathe her last spirit in his hands, that he should warm the cold limbs of her as she failed, he gather her last breaths with his mouth, he close the eyes of the dying, he compose her mouth while it still breathed. But since she had fallen short of her prayer, it would have been a comfort if she could at least have been present at the last moments of her dying son: a pitiable lot indeed, but still bearable, that she should hold the funeral of him whom she had wished to survive her. “Yet let me at least,” she said, “watch my dead from the wall; and if I may not touch him, would that no one prevented me! But whom should I fear, bereft of such a son? What should I dread, for whom it is a benefit to die? Would that all would hurl their weapons at me, all pierce me with the sword! What I could not do living, dead at least I would cover my son's body with my garment. One person's garment is enough for the burial of two; and perhaps some one of the enemy will have pity, so as to cover the mother's eyes with the son's cloak, and join eyes to eyes, hands to hands, mouth to mouth.” So rushing to the walls, she filled heaven itself with her pitiable complaint. Her own people jeered, the Romans wept: cruelty among the allies, mercy among the enemies. “Pierce me,” she said, “if there is any pity: I bore him whom you think must be hunted down. I gave him my unhappy breasts: destroy me, if you seek vengeance on him.”

While she lamented, behold, at his mother's voice Josephus came forward and began to grieve that he had escaped, he for whom it would have been sweet to die before his homeland and to fall for his homeland while urging what was for its safety. But now, he said, he was not contending for the safety of his parents, who, worn out with age, were spending the last end of their life in prison and would be set free if they died; but he was trembling for the altar, for the temple, for the still half-ruined walls of the city. He had offered himself to wounds so as not to see his homeland overthrown. Roused by this complaint, many, thinking they should go over to the Romans by whatever way they could, slipped out from the ambushes of the robbers and the guard of the sentries. To these Titus kept the mercy he had promised, but another, heavier misfortune befell them. For when a supply of food was given, the food that before had been a help began to be a burden, and, unused to the work of eating, the ministry of the body was idle. There was no strength in the teeth to chew food, no firmness in the gullet; they could in no way gnaw bread. If indeed they had swallowed any softer nourishment, they were choked, the passages of the throat being already shut. The inner parts of the entrails had stiffened; the ducts of food were blocked. The veins of the liver, which draw in food, had dried up. The use had perished, the greed was heaped up; the strength had failed, the appetite remained. The wretches fell upon the food and practiced feeble bites like infants. Many, at the sight of food, fainted from sheer joy and died amid the food they had longed for, comforting their misery that they had fulfilled their wish. But it was a tearful procession, since more rose from food to danger than to safety, so that even nourishment did harm. For their bodies were swollen by the unaccustomed food rather than refreshed, and as though by a kind of dropsy they paid the penalty with distended skin. And if any still had some strength for eating, greed knowing no measure crammed in beyond measure what they could not bear, and, stuffed with sudden food, they burst. For what was not heavy to those for whom even feeling alone was heavy, so that it did harm to have seen what they had desired? For, incapable of feelings through long famine, even the sense of nature oppressed them, and the very motion of joy weighed on them. It is no wonder, then, if food is a danger to the exhausted. Indeed after a two days' fast, if you take something too greedily, it at once turns crude in the stomach. Hence it is the custom of many to pour the juice of milk into weak entrails and, mixing it with honey, to temper the imbalance of humors made sharp by fasting, and to nourish the weakness of the body with softer food, as in a kind of infancy. In this way, then, some of the Jews who had fled to the Romans could escape, weighing the measure of their food with a certain skill, until the flesh, unused to eating, returned to its own functions. Yet even this did not profit the wretches, but became the cause of a greater destruction. For when many of them, having taken food, relieved their bowels, some had passed gold coins which they had swallowed when they were preparing their flight, lest, if caught, since the lurking men searched everything, they should suffer not only loss but also danger: for it was counted a crime for anyone but the robbers to have gold. So afterward the Jews, a pitiable sight, gathered gold among the filth of their bowels. A certain Syrian found this out, and from one the opinion spread to all. That race of men is headlong to avarice and ready for craftiness, so that nothing is so atrocious that they shrink from it, nothing so shameful that they blush at it, out of zeal for money. From the Syrians the report spread to the Arabs, whose avarice is no less and whose fierceness is nearer to barbaric savagery, that the Jews were stuffed with gold. They tore apart whomever they met as they came, against right, against the laws of surrender, against Caesar's promise that it was not lawful to kill them; they cut them open while still alive, and with bloody hands disemboweled the secret parts of the belly. They searched the bowels and looked for gold among its flowing filth, no less shamefully than those whom hunger drove, and with savage cruelty besides. Many bitter things were done in that war; nothing more bitter than this one thing. In one night about two thousand men were torn apart by such an outrage, and with their entrails divided, Syria counted its gains, Arabia reckoned the profits of its trade, which, without the dangers of crossing the sea, they had turned to the use of gain by a new invention of cruelty, and thought it merchandise. This is found even now in this kind of men, and often in some of the Egyptians, who make a trade of caring for funerals and sell the duties of humanity for the profits of commerce. Wretched hunger for gold! It thinks nothing worth pursuing except what is profitable for the moment, nothing honorable that is empty of money. Heavy long since, heavy has grown in human hearts the desire of gain, and the life of men has become a trade: men live by selling and buying. So the vice has crept into countless people, so that now an exchange of goods is more tolerable than an exchange of morals and minds. The avarice of the Syrians infected even the Roman army. For nothing passes more easily into another than the love of money and the desire of having, especially wealth close at hand, with which a neighbor has abounded. Nor is there any passion that more unmans the strength of the mind than the desire of riches. Indeed craftiness is praised, poverty held a disgrace. This hindered the severity of punishment, because countless men were found guilty of such madness; and therefore Titus, who had proposed to surround the Syrians and Arabs with his army, revoked his decision in view of their number, so as to pardon the earlier offense, and threatened punishment so that it would not be committed afterward. And with graver severity of words he rebuked his own men, because, girt with gold and silver and shining in precious weapons, they did not blush for their arms and dishonor themselves with such disgrace. But he upbraided the Syrians and Arabs because, forgetful of the Roman name, they had devised things horrible even to speak of: they had come to share in the war, not to practice crimes. In the Roman army not only strength of body but also of mind was required, and not only courage against the enemy but also the rule of discipline was looked for: that the soldier should not be cruel, nor impious, nor insolent, nor intent on plunder rather than victory. These were held grave crimes of soldiering and were punished severely. Even amid arms laws prevailed: wars were better waged with good faith, which is kept even with enemies. If, then, it is owed even to armed men, how much more to suppliants! Therefore let them beware of such crimes, lest they become shut out from both victory and safety. Nor would he suffer any longer that their wicked crimes be ascribed to the Romans, who were more a burden than a help. So he restrained the avarice of the Syrians a little; he did not cut it out, so that they fled the judge but did not cherish the command. Indeed, having first made sure whether the presence of a Roman soldier was lacking, they drew out accursed gain from the entrails of the wretched; and yet the result of plunder did not follow in all, but in few, which made the savagery crueler, because very many were killed not only for their wealth but for the hope of gain, whereas even robbers themselves, and pirates more savage than robbers, refrain from robbery where they have sensed no plunder. For it belongs to barbaric savagery alone to do harm for nothing. Even the wild beasts kill in pursuit of prey. So outside there were bitter punishments, and inside a more savage John.

In the end, although such things were done by the Syrians, and although others were held back once the matter became known, still others did not cease to desert. Among them was Mannaeus son of Lazarus, who declared that through the one gate entrusted to him one hundred fifteen thousand eight hundred eighty dead had been carried out, because he himself had taken over the charge of that duty; and that this was reckoned from the number only of those who had been buried at public expense, apart from those whom their own families had buried. And what tombs were these, except that the corpses were thrown down from the wall? After him many men of some note, fleeing to Titus, related that there had been six hundred thousand dead counted as they were carried out through the gates; but the number of the corpses that could not be carried out because of the infinite multitude of the poor, and were heaped up in the largest houses and in the spaces of various buildings, was beyond reckoning. And still the evils went on, which had already surpassed belief in all that went before. Still the siege was savage, the war heavy; yet the Jews' spirit was now greater than their strength. Above all the famine was more horrible, which lay in wait for beasts of burden relieving their bowels and rummaged in old cattle dung, so that what was horrible to see became food for the starving. Pitiable was the heap of unburied bodies, and over a long circuit the very ground was covered with corpses; everything before the walls was filled: a terrible sight, a heavy horror, a pestilent smell, which did not distinguish victors from vanquished, harmful to both alike, and a greater hindrance to the Romans, who had to trample the remains lying there with bloodied foot. The land itself lay uncultivated, everything having been cut down that had necessarily to be brought for the use of the soldiers and the engines. For about thirteen miles around the city the ground was laid waste far and wide, and the soil bare of growth. That whole orchard country, in which before green groves, gardens breathing with flowers, various orchards and suburban estates had given a pleasing appearance, any stranger who saw it afterward groaned; the native did not recognize it, and returning to his birthplace, though present there, looked for his homeland.

So when the earthworks and sheds and the other siege engines had been repaired, the fury of war was renewed, as though both sides had united their zeal for the final touch of the work. For the issue was decided with the danger of the whole contest: the Romans would have to raise the siege if the earthworks and rams were burned, since through lack of woods they had no means of repair; and destruction of their homeland hung over the Jews if they gave way in the fight, since the shaken walls were being loosened by the repeated blows of the rams. So the Jews came out with torches, so fierce that, as if the Roman army would give way to them, they scattered fire on the engines and tried to raise the siege. But their strength, now exhausted by famine, and their broken fortunes denied them their former successes; their substance had failed, their daring remained. On the other hand, the Romans felt the greater shame if victory were snatched from their hands by those who were drawing their last breath from hunger. So battle was joined, and the leaders of the sedition, driven back, ran back to the protection of the walls, unequal to the war. But when the walls had become doubtful from the repeated blows of the rams, John, not careless of a last defense, looked about and drew an inner wall, as if in the shape of the letter C. So the next day, when part of the wall had been torn down, the crash of the falling structure and the shout of the Roman army rang out together, as though the destruction had been accomplished by the fall of the wall. But when the sound of the city's doom rang out, the tables were turned: the sight of a new wall checked the unforeseen joy of the Romans, and the daring of the Jews took its place, because the danger was postponed. Then Caesar began to exhort the army to think that new wall must be attacked without any delay, since its recent construction showed it to be weak and easily broken down; let them only dare to advance in spirit; the fragments of the wall would give an easy ascent, so that the Romans in fighting would be put on a level with the Jews fighting from higher ground. And because he saw them hesitating at the difficulty of the task, gathering all the strongest men around him, he kindled them for battle with this speech:

“It is unknown to no one, bravest fellow soldiers, that the end of every undertaking has more trouble than its beginning, because the completion of a task undertaken requires greater labor. For a ship runs free over the whole sea; even if the breezes of the winds do not always blow from the stern, still the helmsman slants the bellying sails, and the strait is cut without resistance. But when one comes to harbor, a favorable temper of the breezes is needed, and the entry of ships is confined within a narrow limit. So the care of danger is greater where hope is near. For builders too the beginnings of the foundations are level, but the works of the lofty roofs are steep; and often, at the very end of finishing the work, the pitiable workman is cheated of the reward of his wage, either buried by the fall of the roof or deceived by an unsteady footing so that he falls to the bottom. What shall I say of the farmer, whose equipment is more laborious for the harvest than for the sowing, for the vintage than for the pruning, and for whom, when the fruits are grown, heavier dangers are always to be feared? It is nothing new, then, if danger still awaits us in the very harbor of completing our course: because we must climb to the Antonia by the narrower ways; so that, having thrown down our adversaries from there and seized the higher place, set above the enemy's heads, we may, as it were, shut off their very breath. But this seems difficult to us, fellow soldiers, as though we had come together for a game and not for war, in which one must either conquer or die like men. You should have made your excuses then, when you were coming to battle, to avenge the disaster of the Roman army and wash away the disgrace of a stained soldiering. If in Nero's time you thought the injury to the Roman name must be avenged, what ought you to wish under Vespasian as emperor? Let us wash away the stain of the earlier reign, lest it cling to ours: the stain which Nero was thought likely to remove through Vespasian, Vespasian will have transferred through Titus to himself, unless we conquer. Our father has left us only the finishing touches of victory to carry out. Shall we, then, after pouring out such labors in vain, retreat disgraced and unavenged, leaving victory behind? As though it were not a lesser crime to leave military service than to desert victory: for the one is of fear, the other of treachery. But you think it dangerous to go down against the enemy and make the wall ring with arms; as though nature itself asked of us the works of women and not of men, nature which poured the breath of life into us so that we might gladly pour it back for glory. To what, then, should a warrior be exhorted by his general, if not to all the greatest things? For exhortation to an ordinary task brings shame not only on those addressed but on those who come together, that you should demand what is owed of one's own accord: for that the soldier ought to supply from himself. And yet what immoderate thing do I demand of you? Is it not better to die by valor than to live for disgrace? Does not the Jew often run out into the middle of the Roman lines and pour himself fearlessly into the enemy's wedges, not in hope of victory, but as a proof of courage and a display of glory? Are you, whom no one by land or sea has yet resisted unpunished, for whom it is not new to conquer and a crime not to have conquered, when you have such supports for conquering, not ashamed never once to have rushed upon the enemy? But to keep leisure in arms and, girt for battle, to wait with holiday minds for famine to fight for us, and for them, overthrown by their own starvation rather than by our swords, to turn triumphs into a reproach for us that we must blush at? Are you not ashamed, I say, vigorous fellow soldiers, conquerors of all nations, to hope nothing from arms, nothing from strength, but from the siege alone, and to wait until the enemy grows old with disease and dies in his own bed? And what victory can there be without war? Everything is full of corpses; ugly remains lie about, the bloodless remnants of the dead, except those whom they themselves have butchered with their own hands among themselves. Why do we fear those whom famine, fire, robbery and sedition have already destroyed? Why do we forsake the divine favors? By whose nod but God's have they been dashed against their own arms? They are also bereft of supplies of food, and there is no end to their domestic fury. I fear we may already seem rebels against religion, who have so long preserved men faithless both to our religion and to their own. But grant that the war is atrocious and fearful. For why should I soothe you with the ease of war? Let victory be uncertain, danger certain. Am I not speaking to men who know by human prudence that the courage of all living things is readier in dangers than in milder contests? Wild beasts themselves, when they see themselves surrounded by arms, rush upon them with greater force, to open a way for themselves by violence. And a serpent driven from its lair pours out more deadly venom. There are also creatures, harmless by nature, which in their own dangers are stronger to do harm. Stags have their own weapons if anyone meets them, and repel death with their horns. Even little bees, when hurt, have their stings. And what shall I say of fighting men among the Romans? When the famous Leonidas, born at Lacedaemon, about to fight against the innumerable army of the Persians, said: ‘Let us lunch on earth, since we shall dine among the dead.’ This saying had such power among the Greeks that not only of the three hundred Lacedaemonian men whom he commanded did no one withdraw except one alone, whom afterward no one received as a survivor, but also of the others who had gone out to fight together with them, none withdrew except those whom Leonidas rejected as unworthy of so great a war. What shall I say of whole legions of the Romans, of whom Cato, the champion of Roman eloquence and a sincere interpreter of truth, declared that they went out exultantly to war to a place from which they thought they would not return, and that all fell gladly, so as not to change their resolve? Blessed are they of whom none announced the enemy's victory to his own by flight. Of the three hundred Lacedaemonians, however, one man slipped away; they fought in a narrow pass so as not to be surrounded. Of the Roman legions no one chose life, but all the inheritance of death, whose descendants you are, if, by contempt of dangers, as of a glorious nature, you do not deny the lineage of courage. For who among brave men does not know that he is mortal, and that an end of living is set for all? How much better, then, to spend on the homeland what you owe to nature, and to exchange necessity for glory; not to cast away a life subject to the panting sighs of old age, nor to dread the chances of burning sickness, when those worn out with age have daily weariness! Of those who waste away in languor, their strength and their senses failing together, it is the opinion of many that their souls are consigned to the tomb together with the body. But of warriors and the most vigorous men, who have devoted themselves to death for their homeland, for their children, for religion, no one doubts that their souls, released by the sword from the bonds of this body, are received by that pure ethereal element, shining with the light of the stars, in heavenly dwellings, in a kind of lodging of supernal rest; and that on earth too there remains some mark of favor or of injury, so that oblivion hides those worn out by languor, while glory follows those who bear their breast against the enemy, if death comes. To these rewards I invite you, fellow soldiers: that we go against the enemy, whom we hold shut in; let us climb the wall by the ruin of the stronger wall, which offers us as it were an earthwork and is level with the lower wall. Whoever, carrying the banner of valor, climbs the wall first, or second, or third, or as a companion of more, shall by no means go away from me without a rich reward; though there is no greater recompense than the glory of courage, which is often safer. For as soon as someone most confident in spirit and strength has climbed up, those who were resisting will flee, either taking themselves to the lower parts or hiding in lurking places; so that what is now of the greatest danger, if we seek them in the lower places, will follow without great labor, so that with the enemy thrown down the war is finished.”

Titus had scarcely ended his speech when Sabinus, one of the men from Syria, an outstanding warrior, offered himself and, standing before Caesar, said that he obeyed his commands and was ready for the ascent: if success attended him, so as to please Caesar; if he were destroyed amid success, nothing would happen to him beyond his hope, since by his own judgment he had chosen to die for Caesar. With these words, stretching out his left hand, he raised his shield over his head, and brandishing his sword in his right, he rose up in arms to an astonishing degree, so that anyone would not have recognized him whom a little before he had thought contemptible for the appearance of his slight body, when he suddenly saw him advance against the enemy and stretch himself out, threatening the enemy and the walls alike, as though, grown taller, he were fighting against those below him and shaking the wall with his hand. Eleven men followed him, eager to imitate him but unequal to keeping up. The Jews fought back from the wall with spears, stones and arrows, and whatever weapon each man's hand had found was hurled down on Sabinus. But he, undaunted, with a swift run leapt onto the heap of rubble and, placed on the top, turned back the enemy, while each man nearest him feared the danger. But while he was poising himself to rise onto the wall and, sure of victory, was bearing down on the enemy, he slipped and fell on his face with a very great noise. Called back by this, the Jews began to press him with missiles as he lay. He, propped on his knee and protecting himself with his shield as long as he could, kept off wounds, and left no one unscathed whom he found nearest. At last, however, covered with wounds, he laid down his breath before he laid down the fight; he was neither thrown from his position nor cast off the wall except in death. Three others were also killed, and eight half dead, though they were rescued from destruction by the rest.

Nor was Sabinus's death a terror to the rest; it was rather a spur. For the Roman men who were keeping the duties of the watch, eager to make up by the effect of their work for having been forestalled by Sabinus's zeal, twenty in number, formed a great and memorable plan: having called the standard-bearer of the fifth legion, and two men of the cavalry whom they thought readier, and one trumpeter, at the fifth hour of the night they climbed in silence up over the heaps of the broken wall to the higher parts and, having killed the guards, seized the wall of the Antonia. When this was done, the trumpet sounded more terribly than usual, so that the Jews, tired with labor and relaxed in sleep, were thrown into confusion unexpectedly, believing that everything was full of enemies. So they began to flee before the truth was plain. For the hazard of the danger and the darkness of the gloomy night did not allow it to be known how many there were. And Caesar, hearing the blast of the trumpet, ordered the army to arm; he himself with chosen men was the first to climb the wall, a help to his own and a hindrance to the enemy. Day dawned, and now Caesar, conspicuous on the wall, was encouraging his men: some were lifted onto the wall by the hands of their comrades, others let themselves down into the city through the mine that John had dug to undermine the Romans' earthworks. Their own defenses were turned to the ruin of the faithless; shut out on every side, they betook themselves into the temple. The Romans, wishing to break in there too, were held back by the narrow ways and driven back by arms. A heavy battle took place in the forecourt, no longer waged with spears or arrows but with swords at close quarters: hand to wound, sword upon sword, blow upon blow; the slayer was drenched with the blood of the slain, so that he himself was rather thought to be the one struck. In the temple itself the fury of war ruled. The pavements swam with blood; the groans of the dying and the shouts of the victors resounded without order or measure. Hope of finishing the contest had kindled the Romans; the final destruction of their homeland had taken away from the Jews the fear of death. The former fed their courage with the reward of glory; the latter, in despair of safety, poured out every provision of courage and kept nothing back.

A most splendid deed too was attempted by Julianus, a centurion, a man very great in arms, who came from the province of Bithynia but was accustomed to Roman discipline, trained in wars and distinguished by the campaigns of an honored service. As he stood near Caesar, when he saw the Romans in difficulty, because the Jews were superior in number and the Romans present were still fewer, he suddenly rushed out from the Antonia and turned back those who were pursuing; nor did they dare to resist, at the very sight of a most excellent man and a kind of proud authority of courage beyond human measure, so that Caesar himself was amazed. O varied and uncertain throw of the dice, as it were, of wars! Which, as by a throw, so by a kind of chance rather than by courage, often plays with unexpected outcomes, supplying new ends. For there too are throws, not indeed of dice, but of arrows and many weapons and stones too, by which the victor is often laid low by another's wound; and while he seizes others' spoils, he is himself despoiled. So it was with this Julianus, who was pressing on the backs of the enemy; while he killed some and hemmed them in their enclosure, made more careless by his very eagerness, wearing shoes fixed with nails, as is the custom of military men, he did not consider that the ground was paved with polished stone, which he should beware of; but as if fighting securely in a field, he slipped and made a great noise in his fall. Nor could he rise, thrown down on the slippery ground; yet, holding himself up on his knee, he drove back the enemy who had returned, so as to cut down those who approached and guard as much as he could against those throwing weapons. But, worn out and overwhelmed by the multitude, alone though he was, because no one dared to put himself in such danger, yet not contemptible nor unavenged, he fell vigorously. Not indeed, as I think, was he worthy of such an end, that the great courage of the man should be so cheated. But in war prudence is of very great value, which, always cautious and clear-sighted, foresees the chances of uncertain things. Alone he rushed out from the Antonia, alone he charged into the enemy's columns, alone he mixed with armed men, alone he forced the Jews back into the temple. I fear that this was rather what harmed him: because those unfaithful to God had to be driven out of the temple, therefore his fall found no remedy. Titus watched him with joy as he conquered, with great grief as he was in danger; he wished to help him, but he was far away. He was held back by his own men, because in a soldier the lot of one is at stake, in a general the danger of all; the example taught what Caesar ought rather to beware of than to follow. In the end the allies were so dismayed, and the adversaries so elated, that Julianus's body came into the power of the enemy, as though they still feared him even dead if he were given back to the Romans. When Julianus was slain, the rest easily gave way. For they had not yet come up in numbers, and the occasion of his death had increased the courage of the Jews. Most ready in that battle to repel the Romans were Alexas and Gyphthaeus of John's sworn band, who were champions of his faction; of Simon's side, Malachias and James, the leader of the Idumaeans, outstanding warriors; and the sons of Ari, and Judas, men of the third faction, striving together, who with joined forces drove the Romans back and shut them within the Antonia.

Titus, on the other hand, judging the narrow spaces of the Antonia not a protection but a hindrance to himself, ordered its fortification to be razed to the ground, so that a way against the enemy would be opened for those about to engage. And learning that the solemnity of the Jews' feast days was approaching, he ordered Josephus to interpret in the Hebrew language what he himself would say: What reason, curse it, persuaded John to provoke the Romans? If he had confidence in his courage, let him choose another place for battle and go there, provided he spared the city; let him not defile the temple, nor hinder the sacrifices of the feast days; let him leave those he judged suitable for the ministry of the sacrifices; let him give proof of his courage wherever he wished, apart from the city and the temple; Caesar's soldiers would not be lacking for an engagement; he was being forced unwillingly to the overthrow of the whole city, whose remains he wished to preserve if John would allow it; torches hung over the temple, not because the Romans were hastening to burn the temple, but to lead the instigators of war out of the temple. If they believed themselves conquered, let them surrender; but if they hoped to be victors, let them not withdraw within their barriers but defend themselves in the open field, so that the temple, with the fires now creeping on, might be snatched away and be free for its purifications. And when Josephus interpreted this to the Jews, it was heard in silence; the common people approved it silently but were afraid to reveal their opinion. John answered them that no sacrifice was more acceptable to God than for men consecrated to God to lay down their lives for the altars, for the hearths, for the temple; and therefore, if necessary, they would gladly fall for liberty; yet he hoped that the city of God could not suffer destruction. Titus to this: “Is it rightly, then, that you keep the city pure for God and the sanctuary unstained, by killing citizens, murdering the innocent, destroying priests? By such crimes divine things are not appeased but offended. You have deprived your God of the rites of sacrifices. If someone denied you food, John, you would complain of it: to your God his victims are not offered, his gifts are not rendered, men are butchered, and do you still think God helps you? Truly the deeds themselves teach it; the heap of the slain and the mounds of your calamities bear witness. Who, seeing these things, would not groan? Nor would I blame you for fighting for your homeland, if I did not wish to spare, if I did not wish to preserve your homeland or the temple. For Carthage was not so worthy, nor is a Hebrew to be feared like Hannibal, who had subdued the middle part of the Roman world; and yet Carthage too was restored, which bore the rebellious spirits of its citizens up to its own destruction. On my word, I pledge that all these things will be safe for you; I promise you pardon and safety, not as a reward for crime, but for the redemption of the city, so that I may redeem from you the standing of roofs that are about to perish. I warn you to cease disturbing the purpose of Roman mercy with your robberies. Jerusalem will not be feared so as to be destroyed, when Antioch, superior in strength, was preserved. Certainly your Jeconiah trusted even the Persians and, going out of the city, committed himself with his nearest kin to barbarian fury, so that the city would not be overthrown on his account. His memory is celebrated by you, as your own people assert; that is, Josephus vouches for him and is witness of the celebration by which you honor the man who offered himself to captivity for his homeland. Even the barbarian Persian preserved him, and I promise you impunity. Certainly Josephus too bore arms against the Romans: believe a promise of which we have already given an example. We give you Josephus as surety of our pledge; indeed we have already given him, since we preserved him. Let him speak to you in your native language, let him bind himself by the rite you are accustomed to: I am not ashamed to seek a surety and to give a guarantor, so as not to show myself a destroyer when I wish to spare.” At this Josephus wept, entreated John, lamented the state of the homeland, implored him with tearful words, called on him as a citizen, though more stubborn than the rest; he called to witness the grace of almighty God that he would be safe with his own, if only he would stop rousing the Roman soldiers to the overthrow of the city. When he could not bind him, he said: “It is no wonder, John, if you persist to the destruction of the homeland, since the divine protections have already left it. But it is a wonder that you do not believe it will perish, though you have read the prophetic books, in which the destruction of our homeland was announced to us, and that the restored buildings must again be torn down by a Roman army. For what else does Daniel cry out? For he prophesied not what had already happened but what was to come afterward: what is the abomination of desolation, which he proclaimed would come when the Romans came, if not this which now hangs over us? What is that oracle, often recalled by us, announced by the most high God: that the city would perish utterly when a fellow tribesman of theirs had been put to death by the hands of the citizens, if not what we now see fulfilled? And perhaps, since it no longer pleases God that the temple be defended, stained with forbidden blood, it pleases him that it be purified by fire.”

Josephus finished his speech, but John was moved by no tears and bent by no promises. God had long been pressing on those faithless minds, from the time they stained themselves with impious parricide, nailing Christ Jesus to the cross. This is he whose death is the destruction of the Jews: born of Mary, who “came to his own, and his own did not receive him” (John 1:11). For when have the Jews not killed their own? Did not his own people kill the son of Saul? Naboth the prophet was certainly stoned by his own people; Jezebel was a Jewess, who gave orders to the Jews, and the elders carried out the command; Ahab was a Jew, who became the cause of his death. How many other citizens were slain by citizens! And yet the city remained whole for a long time; even if it was destroyed by the Babylonians after countless years, it was restored afterward. This is the final destruction, after which the temple cannot be restored, because by their crimes they turned away the guardian of the temple, the arbiter of its restoration.

By such an address of Caesar and the repeated speech, the minds of some were bent, those who were able to slip away, so that they came over to the Romans. The rest were held back by fear of the danger threatened by the robbers (and perhaps there was a certain inclination of minds against more being rescued from the coming overthrow). Caesar received with good grace those who fled to him, since among them were priestly men with their sons and other men of more distinguished family, promising them security of safety and the right to their possessions; and he sent them to the town named Gophna, so that no offense might arise from differing rites and diversity of worship. This was turned by those who were resisting in the city (whether because such a suspicion had arisen, or someone had contrived it by guile, so that more would not slip away) into a proof that they had been killed, so that they might be thrown up as slain. On learning this, Titus had them recalled and ordered them to go around near the walls with Josephus, so that they might be recognized by their own. With tears and great groaning they lamented not their own fate but the destruction of the homeland and the temple; they begged the citizens to follow Caesar's good faith and to snatch the temple from the prepared fire: nothing had been commanded them against the law, nothing taken from their liberty. Let them too consent and experience the clemency of the Romans, whose invincible valor they had experienced.

While they were pitiably lamenting such things, they were driven off by their own, and war was kindled. The Jews leapt in and burst rashly into the very sanctuary. They occupied all the recesses, all the secret places, which were inaccessible to men who had no share in the sacred rites. The Romans too prepared for battle. The prohibitions of the fathers were violated by the necessity of war, yet with greater reverence on the part of the Romans than of their own people. For the Gentiles looked upon the temple with fear; the Jews approached it with fury and rashness, and with hands wet with human blood they handled the very altars. Titus, however, still keeping to his purpose, addressed John and protested that he was being led against his will to the destruction of the city and the temple, saying to him: “What do those letters engraved before the doors of the temple mean, John? Do they not signify that no one but the consecrated ought to approach the temple? What do those barriers before the temple mean? Is it not that they keep away the gaze of all, so that the knowledge of the secret things may be open only to the initiated, and free sight may belong to those who have lawful entry? You shut out the gaze of foreigners and forbid their approach. You write that no stranger is to enter, no foreigner to come in; and you pour out foreign blood within the temple, and stain your altars with the gore of strangers and citizens together. I testify that it is not by our assault but by your transgression that you violate what is your own. I, a stranger, do not compel; nay, I solemnly pledge that if you will depart, the temple will be unharmed: no Roman will lay hostile hands on it; nothing of your sacrifices will be violated. I will preserve the temple for you and for proselytes; for the worship of the sacred rites is different, but the use of the building is common. What was worship has departed from you; what is the building has remained to the victors.”

When Caesar saw that they could not be called back even by these words conveyed through Josephus (for the leaders of the faction thought that such frequent invitations to desist came from distrust rather than mercy), he returned to battle unwillingly from necessity and ordered the Romans to be at hand. But because the narrow space was a hindrance to so great a multitude, he chose thirty men and assigned to each a thousand warriors. For such dense obstacles of buildings would not take in the whole army. He himself, wishing to go down with them, was held back by his men, lest in a narrow place, often at night too, when they had to meet the fraud of ambushers, he should stir up some danger for himself, when he would do more good if he were present as a spectator of the battle, since each man would think he must fight more readily when about to fight under Caesar's eyes. For everything that was being done around the temple could be seen from above from the place of the Antonia, as in a kind of theater. Caesar, persuaded to this view, entrusted the business to Cerealis, to come upon the Jews keeping guard around the temple at the ninth hour of the night; and he urged the rest to throw themselves eagerly into the contest: he too would not fail to reward the merits of those who fought, since from above he would examine the fight as witness of each man's cowardice or judge of his valor. Cerealis was promptly present at the appointed time, but found the guards awake: battle was joined. For those stationed within the temple were not asleep, and as those who were keeping watch engaged, the rest easily prepared themselves for battle. The Romans pressed on in close column; the Jews, while they relied on barriers and narrow places so as not to be surrounded, ran about in different directions, so that the danger to them came more often from their own, since in the darkness they could not be recognized, and they were often pierced by their allies while thought to be enemies. For who at night could tell whether he was meeting an ally or an enemy? To ask was too late, to be cautious useful, to strike first prudent; and it was a more tolerable outcome of the fault to err by wounding another than to incur one's own danger where an enemy is feared. So through the night the Jews labored under a double danger, either what the enemy inflicted or where an ally erred. Nor was the Roman less vehement by day, urged on, even silently, by Titus, the spectator of the whole contest. Until the fifth hour there was fierce fighting, the Jews too resisting vigorously, so that neither side gave ground.

While they were fighting these battles with one another, over a space of seven days everything was pulled down to the foundations of the ground that Herod had fortified in the castle named Antonia, and the road that led to the temple was made wider, so that not only did the soldiers have the means of running across, but also as much ground as was needed lay open for setting up fortifications and heaping up earthworks, by which even the tops of the temple's roofs might be battered. While the Romans were intently busy with this, the Jews, pressed more unbearably by famine, began to lie in wait for the Romans' beasts of burden: if any soldier had let his horse loose to graze, or a mule needed to carry loads, they seized it and drove it off; and food was sought by them not only at the cost of the Romans but also through their disgrace. Caesar removed the reproach of this carelessness at once, from the very beginning, by prescribing the penalty of death; but he checked the fraud, not the stubbornness. For, shut out from such plunder necessary to the starving, seizing the help of grasses, they thought of destroying the wall that Titus had drawn around the orchard country, so that they might have a freer sally for roaming and seeking roots of trees and fodder, they whom the circuit of the wall had shut in like a kind of prison, and there was now nothing with which to relieve their hunger. So they crept out and in a sudden sally fell upon those keeping guard on the Mount of Olives. These did not fail in the duty entrusted to them, and by the trumpet's call they summoned others from the rest of the camps or the fortifications of the towers to join the battle. The fight was fiercer at the beginning, while shame drove the one side and hunger, with its savage and compelling command, the other; but as the Romans flocked together the Jews were driven back and turned back to the walls of their city. Then one of a troop of horsemen, named Pedanius, spurring his horse, stretched out his right hand and, leaning over a little, lifted up one of the fleeing Jews and, carrying him as a captive to Caesar, the victor in a glorious seizure, he threw him down alive before Caesar's feet, as an eagle a little hare or a hawk a coot. Titus, greatly delighted by this, praised and honored him and dismissed him.

Now the porticoes around the temple were burning: everywhere grief, everywhere death; outside war, inside, beyond war, fire as well. Nor were the Jews broken in spirit: they thought that whatever they did without fraud or insolence was lost to vengeance. When they could do nothing else, they provoked the Romans to hasten the destruction. A certain Jonathan, small in body and rather deserving of contempt, near the tomb of John, challenged the Romans to fight him hand to hand, whoever wished. Some despised the man's smallness; others disdained to fight with one whom they would soon have as a captive; others considered that the contest was dangerous to wage with men who, in the last extremity of safety, sought vengeance not by any courage but by mere rashness: there would be no praise if one who was on the verge of destruction were conquered, and very great disgrace if someone stained the common victory by some slip. He boasted most insolently and taunted the victors with fear, uttering insults that the Romans relied not on their own strength but on the help of others, and that the Jews were afflicted not by the enemy's war but by domestic seditions. There was among the Roman soldiers one named Pudens, who, stung by these empty insults, while he rashly looked to his honor, neglected his safety, and made more careless by his very indignation, lay open to a wound; and falling to the ground, he brought shame on his comrades, and left Jonathan cause both for insolence and for death. For Jonathan, glad at the success of the contest and raising the pomp of a triumph, while he danced and exulted and made sport by clashing his shield and sword together, roused against his own wounds the centurion Priscus, who did not bear his proud and swollen boasting, and pierced him, careless in victory, with the stroke of an arrow. Laid low by this, Jonathan taught that in battle no one ought to exult unreasonably, where the condition of victor and vanquished is uncertain until the war is closed.

But in the inner city, when they saw the enemy within the walls, towering on the highest earthworks and hanging over all the walls, and feared that the danger would go deeper, like a wound in the body, they cut through the northern portico on the side where it joined the Antonia, so that the enemy should not climb through it to the upper parts of the temple, or, as the higher party, press them in the lower parts; and they cut down everything nearest, lest, as the fires ravaged the parts next to the temple, the fire should feed on the temple itself; and they burned what they had cut through. So what they feared from the enemy, they began first themselves. They also prepared the portico of Solomon for a trick: they filled the inner parts of the roof with pitch and bitumen, which lay hidden within the vaulting of the top of the roof, and, pretending that they wished to defend it, and frequently attacking the enemy, they provoked the Romans and drew them on against themselves. The Romans brought up ladders and made for the top of the portico; the Jews gave ground little by little, because more Romans had climbed up. These crept up in rivalry; the more prudent, however, suspecting a trick, were wary; but the crowd, intent on victory, hastened ahead. When the matter seemed free of fraud, with very many placed as it were within the nets, fire was put to the inner vaults, and, with pitch and bitumen and the other fuels of burning added, it spread through the whole portico. The flames surrounded the victorious Romans, so that they had neither the means to resist nor the chance to flee; they could not find what to do. Titus watched his men in danger, indignant indeed that they had climbed without orders, but pitying them because they were perishing as victors. Many threw themselves down headlong; but when they had escaped the fire, they died with broken legs and crushed bodies; it was more wretched if they survived crippled. Caesar wished to help but could not; still he urged those nearest and shouted that they should help their comrades. These cries, this grief of Caesar, they held as their last comfort. This was the provision of the dying; consoling themselves with this as with a lofty tomb, they hastened to death, that they would be laid up in Caesar's heart; nor would the life of those perish whose glory lived, who died for Caesar, leaving a triumph as their inheritance. So some were surrounded by fires, others overtaken; nor was the enemy far away, to strike the one fleeing the flames.

Longinus, however, a man of outstanding courage, when he was invited by the Jews to entrust himself to them with a promise of safety, preferred to pierce himself alone with the sword rather than stain the courage of the Roman character with disgrace. But Artorius, cleverly enough, called out in a loud voice to Lucius, saying: “You will be my heir if you catch me as I fall.” And the poor man ran to meet him as he fell and transferred to himself the death of the man who should have died. Truly a soldier's will, written not in ink but in blood, not on paper but on the sword's point. That he promised him as heir was plainly great ingenuity, so as to find a voluntary substitute for death. So the portico was burned as far as the tower which John, when he was waging war against Simon, had built over the gates of the royal palace that King Hezekiah built for himself to live in; the rest of it the Jews themselves had pulled down. On the following day the whole northern portico was burned by the Romans as far as the eastern portico. For by laying hands on their own buildings, they taught the Romans not to spare them. The face of the temple was now bare, and the famine of men savage. They lay in wait for one another, to see who could snatch food from whom. Wherever there was suspicion of food, there was war among kinsfolk. They fought for food; the dearest were killed; the dead were searched lest some food lie hidden in their clothing. Some were thought to be feigning death, so that while alive they should not be suspected of having any food; but not even the living could either perform the function of life or feign death. But with open mouths, like rabid dogs, snatching at the breath of the air, they were carried about this way and that with want as their guide. Often too, as if drunk, they went back into the same houses to search again what they had left empty. And when they found no other comfort for their hunger, they stripped the leather from their shields, so that what could not be their protection might be their food. They chewed shoes; nor was there shame to take into the mouth what had been loosed from the feet and to lick it with the tongue. Old straw too, which had long since been thrown away, was sought with no small zeal; and if anyone found any, he sold it at a great price.

How shall I undertake to tell the deed of Mary, at which the mind of any barbarian and impious man would shudder? She was one of the wealthier women of the region of Peraea, which lies beyond the Jordan. When the horror of war arose, she had betaken herself with the others to the city of Jerusalem, because it was safer; there too she had carried her wealth, which the leaders of the factions seized in rivalry. Even if she had obtained any food at a price, it was torn from her hands. She was harassed by the faithless; she called down dreadful curses; she wished to die, but found no one to strike her. They preferred to mock her longer and afflict her more heavily rather than quickly destroy her. They thought that as long as she lived she would be plunder. Everything had now run out, and, accustomed to delicacies, she could not soften the harshness of straw or the toughness of leather. Savage hunger poured itself into her inmost marrow, sharpened her humors, harassed her mind. The woman had a little infant whom she had borne. Roused by its crying, when she saw herself and the little one wasting away, overcome by such monstrous evils and unequal to so atrocious a calamity, she lost her affection; and with the practice of a parent's love blotted out, she swallowed her grief and took on fury. So, turning to the little one, now forgetful that she was a mother and raging in mind, she spoke thus: “What shall I do for you, little one, what shall I do for you? Savage things surround you on every side: war, famine, fires, robbers, ruins. To whom shall I, who am about to die, entrust you, or to whom shall I leave you, so small? I had hoped that if you grew up you would feed your mother, or bury her when she died. Certainly, if you died first, I would shut you with my own hands in a costly tomb. What shall I do, wretched woman? I see no means of living for you or for me. Everything has been taken from us; for whom shall I keep you? And in what tomb shall I bury you, so that you may not be prey to dogs or birds or beasts? Everything, I say, has been taken from us. Yet you can, my sweet one, feed your mother even so: your hands are fit for food. O your entrails, sweet to me, your pleasant limbs, before hunger utterly consumes you, give back to your mother what you received: go back, my son, into that natural hidden place, the dwelling in which you received your breath; let a tomb be prepared for you there when you are dead. I myself will embrace him whom I bore, I myself will kiss him; and what the impatience of love has, let the force of necessity have, that I myself devour my own limbs, not with feigned but with real bites. So be food for me, a fury to the robbers, and a tale for life, the only thing lacking to our calamities. What would you do, my son, if you too had a son? We have done what love required; let us do what hunger urges. Yet your case is better, and a kind of love, because it is more bearable that you should give your mother food from your own body than that your mother should be able either to kill you or to devour you.” Saying this, with her face turned away she plunged the sword in and, cutting her son into pieces, put him on the fire; part she ate, part she covered, lest anyone come upon her. But the smell of the roasting reached the leaders of the sedition, and at once, following the odor, they entered the woman's lodging, threatening death because she had dared to eat while they themselves were fasting and to keep them without a share of the food she had found. But she said: “I have kept your share for you. I have not been greedy or inhuman. Do not be angry: you have something to eat too. I have prepared food for you from my own body. Sit down quickly; I will set the table. You have something to wonder at; and judge my service, that you have found such affection in no woman, who would not cheat you even of the delight of her sweet son.” Saying this, she uncovered the burned limbs and offered them to be eaten, with an exhortation of this kind: “This is my lunch, this your portion: look carefully, lest I have cheated you. See, one hand of the boy; see, one of his feet; see, half of the rest of his body. And lest you think it another's, it is my son; lest you think it someone else's work, I did it, I carefully divided what I would eat for myself and what I would keep for you. Never were you sweeter to me, my son: I owe it to you that I am still alive. Your sweetness held my soul and put off the day of death for your wretched mother. You came to my help in famine; you are the last gift of my old age, the restrainer of the slayers. They came to kill, they have become guests; they too will have something to owe you when they have taken my meal. But why do you step back, why do you shudder in mind, why do you not feast on what I, a mother, have made? These can delight you too, which have filled a mother. I am no longer hungry, since my son has fed me; I am abundantly satisfied; I do not know hunger. Taste and see that my son is sweet. Do not be softer than a mother, weaker than a woman. But if you are merciful at my wound and do not accept my victim, and turn away from my burnt offering, I will finish my sacrifice: I will eat what is left. See that it is not a reproach to you that a woman has been found stronger than you, to consume the feasts of men. I indeed prepared such feasts, but you made a mother feast thus: passion held me, but necessity conquered.”

At once the abomination of so great a crime filled the whole city, and, as though the ministry of the parricidal banquet were set before the eyes of both, it shuddered. Afterward even the instigators of the sedition began to examine what food they seized, lest they find similar fare and take it unawares. All began to fear to live long and to wish to die. The monstrousness of this deed reached the Romans too. For many, terrified by this horror, fled to the enemy. On learning this, Caesar cursed the contagion of the unhappy land and, raising his hands to heaven, protested thus: “We have come to war indeed, but we are not fighting with men; we are contending against all the madness of monsters and wild beasts, and why do I speak of things with feeling? against all the savagery of rocks. Wild beasts love their young, whom they nourish even in famine; and those that feed on others' bodies abstain from the corpses of beasts like themselves. This is beyond all bitterness: that a mother should devour the limbs she bore. I am clean of this contagion. I absolve myself before you, whatever power you are in heaven. You know, you surely know, that with heartfelt affection I often offered peace, and, what I am not ashamed to say, as victor I entreated; that I wished to spare even the authors of such crimes and portents, to spare the people, to preserve the city. But what could I do with men who resisted, what could I do against men raging against their own? Often, after laying down arms, because they did not cease from the slaughter of their own, I returned to war, to free the besieged, not to destroy them; they themselves from the walls often urged us to fight, so that they might not perish more grievously at the hands of their own. What kind of citizens are these, for whom the enemy is a remedy? I had heard indeed of the unbearable fierceness of this people, who rouse themselves to every insolence by incredible beliefs: that they draw their race from heaven, that there they first put on the form of a body, that they were inhabitants of heaven and came down to cultivate the earth, and from the earth return to heaven; that they crossed the seas with dry feet, that the waves of the sea fled before them, that the streams of the Jordan turned and ran back to their source; that the sun stood still, so that they might conquer their enemies and night not hinder them; that their own were carried up to heaven in fiery chariots, that the powers of heaven fought for them, and in their absence all the forces of the enemy were routed, and victory was won while they slept. I had learned these things, but I thought that they boasted of divine favors toward themselves, not that they stretched their daring so far as to think they could not be conquered even by the Romans. So I recognize that our battle is with men who believe themselves invincible, since they boast themselves survivors of the flood, heirs of rivers, guests of lands, travellers of the sea, climbers of the sky; for whom the wave is a wall, the air a road, heaven a dwelling; to whom flames yield and chains do not hold. For the thirsty a rock is dissolved and pours itself out as drink. For the hungry heaven is opened, food is sent, the camp is filled with the flesh of birds, and man eats the bread of angels. Flowing waters are made firm, bitter things grow sweet, the sun stands still, darkness gives light. Finally, what more can there be, when how can daring be lacking to them? Who, as they say, live when dead and are raised when buried. There is also a common report that these men conspired even against divine things, and their punishment is the proof. Even today the lands burn because of the impiety of their inhabitants; many of them too a gaping of the ground has swallowed. How long then shall we stay in these places, where there is ruin of lands? We have seen even a dead sea; we have seen even the dead growths of the earth, dry ground, empty shadows of green fruits, grace outside, ash inside. Who can doubt that we are among the dead, among whom even the elements die? And indeed among them the very thing that usually lives after death has died, the love of nature, and the religion that survives the dead. For who does not love his parents even when dead? Who does not love the sons he has lost and keep them in the place of his dear ones? Affection remains, even if the dear one has died; the name of nature persists; its grace does not perish. But among these a mother does not recognize her living son, nor hear him calling, nor pity him crying; and for the sake of one hour's accursed food she laid parricidal hands on her child. But why do I reproach this as new, when they count the beginnings of their race from a brother's murder? When of Abraham himself, whom they call father and author of their discipline and founder of their worship, they proclaim his faith above all in this, that he thought he should not spare even his son, and brought him to the altar like a victim, and did not hesitate to offer him as a burnt offering? I do not condemn the devotion, but I look for the love. They say too that another of their people vowed as victor that whatever first met him as he returned home he would sacrifice to his God; and when he returned his daughter met him, and he laid hands on his daughter. And there are many other examples of this kind. What sort of nation is this, which ascribes the killing of a human being to religion and thinks parricide a sacrifice? What God could demand this, or what kind of priest could offer it? Indeed they say that the old one did not do it, as being more prudent, but wished to; that this one, as being more resolute, went through with it. Let these men have their own rites of hardness, among whom it is a discipline to kill sons. Unhappy city, in which there is such a workshop, such a mystery! Let its own ruins cover it, and let them, in their envy, hide its contagion, lest the sun see it, lest the globe of the stars look on it, lest the breaths of the air be stained; that purifying fire too will burn it. We think the banquet of Thyestes a fable; we see the crime, we behold a truth more atrocious than tragedies. There it was the stronger sex and another's offspring; here a woman for whom her own offspring was food. There another's fraud, here her own will. He grieved, she exulted: food worthy of such men, who by stubbornly fighting had brought their women to such a banquet. Indeed I think that, afflicted by such bitterness of evils, they are already mad and have lost their minds, since they do not feel these things. Therefore let us finish the war sooner, because they cannot be corrected; let us press on more urgently, so that we may flee the dying waters and the burning land of these regions.”

With these words he ordered the rams to be brought up to the temple, but the strong blows achieved nothing. Many, however, terrified, even of the leaders of the seditions themselves, fled to Caesar; Titus hesitated to receive them, as men driven by necessity and not following his promise, but good faith tempered his anger. Yet he did not hold the later deserters in the same place as the earlier ones, and he began to press his men more intently, so that all the enemy might leave, struck with fear. But when they saw the walls remain unharmed by the blows of the rams, to their own harm, they nourished their daring. Caesar, forestalling them by ingenuity, ordered the doors covered with silver to be set on fire; when the fire was put to them, the silver melted away, and then little by little the wood too burned; so an entry to the inner portico lay open. But Caesar, out of pity, lest the temple be burned if the porticoes adjoining the inner forecourt caught fire, called the commanders of the army to council, saying that his contest was not with senseless things, nor his war with buildings, which would benefit the victors if they were preserved unburned. The commanders, however, maintained that the strength of the walls and the fortification of the temple would be an incitement to the Jews in the future too, since they delighted in insolence; the roots of rebellion must be dug out completely, lest rashness break out again. Caesar nevertheless put off the discussion of the council to the next day. But the Jews thought they should pour out upon them; the Romans, with shields locked, though fewer, withstood the first attack. Yet the line was wavering under the onrush of an innumerable multitude. Hence Caesar quickly came with the cavalry, easily trampling down those he found, and turned back the enemy column, relying on the fact that part of the forecourts already lay open. He arranged to break in on the enemy the next day with a greater force of his men and to set fire to the temple. That deed would have rescued the city from the fire, had not the perverse mind of the people provoked the enemy's flames against itself. For Caesar ordered the balls of fire to be put out, so that they would not hinder those about to break in. Seeing this, the Jews, while they lay in wait for those who wished to put out the fires of the temple, killed some and inflamed the enemy. One of the Romans, finding a half-burned piece of timber that had fallen from the roof, fed the fire and brought it to the gate called the Golden, because it had doors covered with gold. At once the stiffness of the gold, melted by the flames, laid bare the wood, which, as if with its side uncovered, lay open to the fire. So, with the doors burned, the fire made its way into the inner sanctuaries of the temple. And now the forecourts of its gate were blazing. All who had been defending themselves with the protection of the temple were thrown into confusion and at once trembled; and there was already a certain inclination of minds that that day was fated for the destruction of the temple, because on that very day it had once been burned when the Babylonians attacked, since it was the tenth day of the month of Loos, which they had long counted among the days of ill omen. The fire, rising to the upper parts by the breath of the winds, brought joy to the victors and grief worthy of such a disaster to the vanquished. A shout of everyone also arose, and not long after a messenger made the enemy's destruction plain to Caesar. He, rushing out, ordered with all the voice he could that the fires be put out. But amid the tumult there was neither the opportunity of being heard nor the will to spare, since the Roman soldiers were burning with zeal for vengeance, and Caesar's known clemency took away from his men the fear of disobedience, as nothing would be held against his own when even enemies were pardoned. Yet Titus by nod and hand called back those he could, and ordered some to restrain the soldiers' attacks. But with anger as guide the burning grew; they pressed on the enemy in despair of safety, now prodigal of himself and spending himself freely in dangers. The common crowd above all was struck down wherever it was met, because it was protected by no arms and was fit neither to ward off a wound nor to return one.

Wearied with shouting, Caesar drew back, while the flame was still devouring the chambers of the temple. When these had been consumed, it carried itself raging into the very shrine. At that sight many lost heart; others, wretchedly, threw themselves into the very fires whose sight their eyes could not bear, so as not to be kept as survivors of the temple. Again Titus ran up, wishing to look around and see what kind of shrine it was. Moved by its grace, he confessed that it had surpassed all temples in its works. He admired the size of the stones, the gleam of the metal, the elegance of the work, the grace of its beauty. And not without reason, he declared, had the fame of the place been so great that people came together to it from all places, because it was believed to be the dwelling of none but the most high God. Honor added the faith of religion, through which even the nations of the barbarians revered that temple, and even robbers brought gifts of religion; yet these its own people were then plundering, and robbers were squandering them, breaking in on everything that had been deposited by widows or orphans, as if it were taken back from the victors if anything of the plunder was lessened for the Romans. Seeing the temple too burning, they themselves set fire to the rest, so that no building should survive the destruction of the temple, counting it as religion if everything perished with the temple. Yet not even so did the Jews lay aside their faithlessness, which was the cause of a greater destruction. For when the minds of many were inclined to form a body and hand themselves over to the Romans, a certain false prophet began to declare, in the ecstasy of his mind, that the divine protection would not fail the temple, and to call the people to himself as if by some oracle: that God still remained in his temple and would at once drive back the enemy's wedges and the burning of the flames. So the wretches, while they unhappily believed false deceptions, were butchered like cattle, disgraced and unavenged. Had they been willing to believe, they had clear signs of the impending destruction, by which they were warned with loud voices long beforehand that their end was at hand.

For for nearly a year a comet over the temple itself, displaying here and there a likeness of fire and sword, announced that the devastation of the nation and the kingdom and the city itself would come by iron and fire. For what did the likeness of a sword announce but war? What did fire announce but burning? It was seen before the people separated themselves from the Romans. And on the very days of Passover, on the eighth day of the month Xanthicus, and every night at about the ninth hour, the temple and its altar shone with such light as if it were day, remaining about half an hour each day. The common people interpreted this as a sign that the nation's fortunes would be heaped up, and they were driven on by it as though the time had come for recovering liberty. The more prudent, on the contrary, thought that that kind of star usually announces war. Nor let anyone think that we have spoken things foreign to our worship and discipline. First, because we do not assert what seems so to us, but what happened, and what opinions there were at that time, what the prudent thought and what the imprudent. Nor, when something is said about the sect of the Jews, should it seem written by us as though we were weaving it into the truth of their worship, and not into what was sent before in shadow and figure, so that they might follow what is more perfect. For about signs of the stars we are taught even in the Gospel, that “there will be signs in the sun, and the moon, and the stars.” They also asserted that a heifer, when it stood at the altars to be sacrificed, gave birth to a lamb in the middle of the temple, at those very celebrations of the rites which we mentioned above. And that the inner eastern gate, heavy with solid bronze, which used to be closed in the evening with great labor by twenty men, bolted with iron bars, opened of its own accord for several nights, and was afterward closed by the guards with difficulty. This too many thought a sign of good things to come, for whom, as they were about to enter, the gate was opened. But the wiser said that the guard of the temple seemed to be loosed, so that whatever was inside might be plundered by enemies: worship would go out, devastation come in, the celebration be emptied, the sacrifice destroyed. That this was clearly signified even before they crucified Christ Jesus, the reading teaches. After many days too a certain figure of inestimable size appeared, which very many saw, as the books of the Jews have made known; and before sunset there were suddenly seen in the clouds chariots and armed battle lines, by which the cities of all Judea and its region were overrun. At the very feast of Pentecost, the priests, entering the inner parts of the temple at night to celebrate the customary sacrifices, declared that they first felt a kind of movement and a sound, and afterward also heard a sudden voice crying: “Let us go hence.” Jesus too, the son of Ananias, a countryman, four years before the people of the Jews undertook the war, in the deepest peace and plenty of the city, when the Feast of Tabernacles was being celebrated with solemn sacrifices, went up to the temple and began to cry out: “A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and against the temple, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, a voice against all the people.” This he shouted night and day. Disturbed by this, the leading men of the place seized him, dreading the terrible sign of his voice, and inflicted very many punishments on him, so that, afflicted at least by pain, he might cease to announce terrible things full of portents. But he, frightened neither by any fear nor by beatings or heavier threats, did not change his manner or his voice; with the same persistence of announcement and the same sequence of words, with no interruption of entreaty, he remained in the same, heedless of injury, unmoved in feeling. Thinking this by no means a passing thing, but uttered in ecstasy of mind, as it was, they brought him to the judge of the place, who at that time was managing public affairs in those parts for the Romans. He, for the sake of searching out the truth, tore him with the most savage punishments, ordering the man to be scourged the more vehemently the more he persisted, so that if he had learned any more secret signs of the coming upheaval he would reveal them. But he neither wept nor begged, but at each stroke tearfully lamented not his own destruction but his homeland's, saying: “Woe to Jerusalem.” Nor, when asked who he was or where he was from or why he said these things, did he give any answer, but only continued that lament for his homeland with a pitiable complaint. So Albinus (for that was the man's name), wearied, let him go, as one who in a mad frenzy did not know what he was saying. But he had no conversation with anyone, nor was he known to say anything else for the rest of the time, but singing this as a mournful and funereal song, he kept sounding it continually day and night: “Woe to Jerusalem.” He did not curse the one who beat him, nor thank the one who gave him food. His answer to all was one and the same, full of funeral wailing, and above all at the celebrations of the sacrifices. So for seven years and five months the same series of words, the same sound of voice remained. Untiring for so long a time, when the siege began he stopped crying out those things, as though it were fitting that the announcement should cease when the things announced were present. But when the flame began to engulf city and temple together, going around the wall he began to cry again: “Woe to the city, to the people and to the temple.” And at last he added: “Woe to me too”; and struck by a sling, he breathed out his spirit with that very cry. It was also written in ancient writings that the city itself with the temple would perish when the temple had been made four-square. So, whether forgetful or stunned by the pressure of the evils bearing down on them, when the Antonia was taken they made the circuit of the temple four-square. Among these things that most outstanding one, which remained impressed in writings equally ancient which they call sacred: that about that time there would be a man from their region who would take rule over the whole world. This put them into such frenzy that they promised themselves not only liberty but kingship. Some thought this should be referred to Vespasian; the more prudent to the Lord Jesus, who, born of Mary according to the flesh in their land, spread his kingdom through all the spaces of the earth. So, though such great things were coming upon them, they could not grasp what was being decreed by God.

So, as the authors of the seditions fled while the temple was burning, the Romans set up their standards within the circuit of the temple itself and sacrificed opposite the eastern gate, proclaiming Titus emperor with loud voices. Meanwhile a certain boy, in the place where the priests also were, whom both lack of water and the heat of the nearby fire were wasting with thirst, asked one of the Roman guards to give him his right hand and offer him a drink. The guard at once held it out, pitying both his age and his need. The little boy drank; and because trust had been readily given to an innocent age, he snatched the water vessel and rushed off at a run, so as to supply the priests too with something to drink. The soldier wished to follow but could not catch him. The boy, at his own risk, relieved the priests' thirst. A good fraud, which harmed no one and relieved necessity. In fact the soldier himself admired the boy's affection more than he cursed his trick, because at that age, amid the destruction of the whole city and the common danger, he did not leave unperformed the service he could render of the reverence due to the priests. Not long after, the priests, worn out by hunger and thirst, begged for their lives. Titus ordered them to be killed, answering that it was the mark of a degenerate spirit to wish to survive the temple and their office.

When John and Simon and the other leaders of the seditions asked that he order the throwing of weapons and the uproar to cease for a little while, and give them the opportunity to speak, he did not refuse indulgence; and when silence was made he answered thus: “It is a late time for mercy, most wicked men, when nothing is left to be preserved. I offered it to you, and you despised it, and thought it distrust, not indulgence. But I groaned that innocent buildings were perishing by your crime; I grieved that the common crowd was being driven to death. I wished to spare; you did not allow it. I suspended battles; you rushed on. I offered peace; you did not accept it. I addressed you often, I met with you frequently. I am not ashamed to say it: I made you more insolent by asking. What did you think? That the Roman lines would yield to you, and that you would surround with your multitude the army that conquered all lands? What fraction of the world has fought, since neither your region could hold the whole of it, nor did necessity allow it? For we care more to guard the world than to extend it. Wherever we go nothing is new, nothing foreign to us, for whom every land is a possession. This robbery, like a mole on the body, we thought should be overlooked for a long time; at last we believed it should be removed for its cruelty, lest your disobedience, like some darkness, should mar the brightness of the Roman empire. You have felt Roman valor not by fighting but by dying. For we did not see your columns in the field, but on the wall, since not even your barriers were of any use to you for the protection of your safety. For what wall could resist those whom the ocean did not resist? Or what city, fenced with the protection of walls, would be impregnable to our siege, when Roman arms have penetrated even the Britains, walled round by a roaring element? That sheer mountain of water has been laid beneath us. Your fathers, as the Jewish tales relate, were walled round by the wave of the Red Sea as they crossed, in the appearance of a wall; Roman courage broke through the wall of Ocean. I do not grudge you others' favors. Let the sea have seen you and fled, so that you, shut in by the enemy, might flee, because you could neither break through the enemy nor withstand him. For us the Ocean's flight would have been a loss, if it had fled. We waged war with the waves before the war; we overcame the raging sea before we reached the enemy. Britain received us as conquerors of the elements. What they trusted in, we subdued, so that Ocean itself was added to the heap of our triumph. But perhaps you presumed on bodily strength. Are you stronger than the Germans, whom, fenced by the wall of the Alps, Roman courage brought into servitude? Nor are those Alps like the steep hills of Mount Taurus or the Canopic bands of the Egyptians, with whom you have been used to fight. We climbed above the clouds and, coming down from the cloud, conquered peoples; we opened a road through the air for all. We do not grudge you the road through the sea, provided that the one was the road of triumphers, the other of fugitives. So mountains have sat down before Roman courage; rivers have dried up, losing the course that nature had directed and taking the one the victors commanded. Let your Jordan have turned, as you say, and gone back to its source to open a way for you: Cloelia, a Roman maiden, needed no such thing, who broke her bonds, escaped the enemy, and, running down the river, came into the Roman camp. Nor do we wonder at your fires, from which you are wont to sing loudly that the Hebrew boys escaped. Our Mucius, with no one compelling him, put his hand to the fire and did not withdraw it until, victor over the burning, he struck into his enemies wonder at a courage that did not feel the flames. In the end those who hoped for a triumph asked for peace. Or did that heavenly food and the meal of rains lift you up against Roman courage? But you ought to have considered that Africa itself, the nurse of the world, is subject to Roman might. She who feeds all serves us; the hunger of all and the food of all are in our power. What nature gave to all, Roman courage has made its own right. It struck down Hannibal himself and drove him into exile, whom the world could not contain. Africa was too narrow for its citizens; the Spains seemed unfit for him to linger in; Gaul was cramped for him as he travelled; Italy unworthy of a treaty of friendship and a partnership of alliance. Let you boast that rivers fought for you and heavenly powers battled: we conquered Hannibal as he rode over rivers and thundered on the waves. The world was shaken by his storms; and he battered our walls with arms. Nor was it necessary that our enemies, like your Assyrians, be destroyed while sleeping, but while fighting. For victory is not sought in sleep but in battle; there is no glory of courage where there is chance favor. Our enemies were not deceived by the redness of the waters shining at the rising of the sun and did not fall rashly into our hands, thinking us destroyed by the appearance of shed blood; but knowing and ready for war, they covered the plains of the earth with their bodies and filled them with their own blood. What courage set you in such insolence? Did you not see that those who ruled over you serve us? Egypt, which used to afflict you, pays us an annual tribute and offers a way as far as the Indian regions, to go out beyond the world and seek another world, the secrets of the sea, the farthest bounds of the sun and the ocean, and to join the inhabitants of another world to our empire. What of the kingdom of Antiochus, who afflicted you with grievous punishments? The very right of your religion, which was taken from you, we ourselves restored to you, thinking it more glorious to rule over kings than to take away a kingdom. Antioch itself, the seat of your masters, did it not eagerly reject its own and choose us as masters? Did you yourselves not flee to us, so as to escape those masters? Did we not receive you and defend you against them? We served you, so that you might live by your own laws; we gave you the power to serve your own worship. We did not wish to know your rites, but we honored them. Afterward you thought you should rebel. Pompey took the temple, but did not destroy it; he occupied the city, but preserved all the offerings intact. For these things, O grateful allies, you have repaid us this return, that you rebelled a third time! Granted that Nero was to be despised; but Roman courage was not reckoned in one man: it had the soldier Vespasian, who had already brought the Gauls back to peace; so brave in battle that through him even Nero conquered, through him Nero was formidable to his enemies; so faithful to his lord the emperor that he alone did not seek the empire that he alone deserved. But Cestius had wronged you: a complaint should have been brought, not arms imposed. My father Vespasian was sent, who could have poured himself unexpectedly on the unprepared: he went around Galilee and burned the distant parts, so that you might lay aside your insolence and ask for pardon. He showed his courage, and when he held you all shut in, he made for Egypt, so as to give you a truce for coming to your senses. Our absence made you more insolent, because you thought us occupied. But we are never so occupied as to be absent from the world. For even when absent we are present, and to those far off we stand nearer. For as the soul in the body gives life to all its members, so Roman providence is present to all parts of its empire and governs the whole Roman world as if present. For if that divine force has given each soul the power of ruling the body, how much more has it supplied a kind of vital substance for guarding it to the Roman vigor, by which, as it were, the one body of our whole empire is animated! So you renewed the suspended war. My father, about to set out for the city of Rome to recover it from tyrants, separated me from his company, so that you would not lack an executor of his kindness. I came to the war with the appearance of one who terrifies, with the feeling of one who entreats. How often did I call the army back from your walls! How often afterward did I draw it back from the inner parts of the temple! How often did I put out the fires! How often did I warn you! But you never listened. Now at last you ask me, as though anything were left, as though what has already been consumed were still there; and yet I have kept the soldiers from slaughter, fire and plunder. What do you want? Why do you still stand armed, as though about to give laws and not receive them? If you seek surrender, lay down your arms, which are no longer to be feared by the victors but are proud for the vanquished and full of insolence, that you should beg in arms; as though you had to doubt our good faith, or do you still provoke our courage, threatening war? The people is destroyed, the temple burns, we hold the city. What do you hope is left, except that life be granted you? So lay down your arms as conquered men; I will grant you to live, even if you do not deserve it, because you were unwilling to preserve what was yours.” Then they began to ask that, since they were bound by an oath never to hand themselves over to the Romans, he would give them leave to go out through the wall, so that they might go with their families into the desert, yielding the city to the Romans. Titus, the more moved: “Do you even impose conditions on us?” he said. “Rather defend your homeland, stand by the temple, rise up with all your courage, keep your oath of death, since you have refused that of life.” And at the same time he ordered the Romans to rise up for the slaughter of the enemy. Very many began to be overthrown by the heavier indignation of the victors; yet the sons of King Izates and his brothers surrendered, and very many of the people with them. Nor did Titus, though roused to anger, abandon his purpose, out of regard for royal dignity, but received those who fled to him: from mercy alone (which is the greatest thing) did he make his profit. For all the plunder of the royal palace the authors of the sedition carried off, so that none of it reached the Romans.

At the same time, when they made an attack and broke into the palace, they killed one infantryman among the Roman soldiers who were attacking; but a horseman demanded to be led to Simon, claiming that he had things to make known to that leader of the seditions. But when he was brought to him and alleged some empty things, he was ordered to be killed. While the executioner delayed, with his eyes already bound with a cloth, he rushed off to the Romans. They, fighting at close quarters, received him as he fled; and when he was brought before him, Titus, as though one who could be taken alive by the enemy seemed unworthy of death, ordered him to be stripped of his arms and dismissed: leaving him what he had not lost through the enemy's cowardice, and taking from him the military oath, which he had betrayed by being captured and dishonored by being a fugitive. This was a greater punishment to him: for among men the disgraces of military service are heavier than the wounds of death. The Jews, at once driven back, betook themselves to the upper parts of the city, abandoning the defense of the temple and the city. A great slaughter was carried out on those who remained, and the streets were filled with half-dead corpses. Caesar ordered the engines to be brought up to the upper parts too. Seeing this, the Idumaeans chose men to send to Titus to ask for surrender. Learning this, Simon forestalled them and intercepted the men chosen to ask for surrender. But the Idumaeans not long after, though bereft of the help of their leaders, since they could no longer withstand the force, surrendered to the Roman army. So first famine and at last despair of resisting brought about the surrender. Nor did the Romans, now weary from much slaughter, refuse the indulgence of life; and out of eagerness to sell captive slaves they were readier to preserve safety. Very many were for sale, but buyers were few, because the Romans disdained to have Jews in servitude, and there were no Jews left to ransom their own, since each one congratulated himself on having escaped, even if destitute. So they surrendered everywhere, their fear removed, since the robbers were gone and the Romans were pardoning.

In the end Jesus too, one of the priests, the son of Thebuthi, surrendered, and, having received a pledge of safety, willingly handed over the vessels of the priestly ministries: two lamps, tables, mixing bowls, bowls, all vessels of gold, and also the curtains and the vestments of the chief priests, with the stones. Phineas too, the keeper of the treasury, when he was seized, pointed out much purple of the priests, and scarlet, and many other things that were kept for use; with them cinnamon and cassia and very many spices and incenses, and many vessels of the sacred rites: he also himself handed over the sacred vestment, but compelled by fear, whence his crime was pardonable among his own. Yet where the will was lacking, courage ought not to have been lacking. Although we often judge more severely than we could guard against ourselves if we found ourselves in such necessity, still we ought to shun the service of theft and the judgment of betrayal.

And now the earthworks had risen, and the rams had begun to strike the upper wall, on the seventh day of the month they call Gorpiaeus: the end had come. Confused and terrified, even the leaders of the factions, who had jeered at extreme dangers, threw themselves at the knees of individuals, begging for help. One could see how pitiable that change was, from that terrible and proud height to this humble and common abasement, to tears, weeping and dread. The wall of the upper city had not yet given way, yet they were already running to individuals, groaning that no protection remained; they thought the enemy had entered. Many, as if already fighting from the higher places, seemed to themselves to see the Romans: what they feared in mind they pictured to their eyes, and the dread of the mind became an image of sight. In the end, believing for certain that the enemy was already bearing down on their necks, though three towers still remained to them, Mariamne, Phasael and the Horseman, stronger than the rest, they abandoned the upper parts and fled to underground passages or hidden caves. John, however, not long after, wasted by hunger and worn out by fasting, surrendered to Caesar; he was kept for the triumph, but, bound in perpetual chains until his death, dragging out the breath of life rather than experiencing the pleasure of living, he escaped the axe. But Simon hid even within the ruins of the burned city, concealing himself in the underground passages with a few of the most faithful. Caesar had already departed, the city having been burned, thinking that Simon too had either been burned by the fire, or crushed by a collapse, or killed by someone. But as long as food lasted, Simon dug further inward in the excavated caves; but when the food failed and no way of escape opened, he suddenly crept up to the surface, dressed in a white garment with a purple cloak over it, so as to strike a kind of terror into those who saw him. At first, while the Roman soldiers were astonished, he ordered them to lead him to their commander. There was in that place Terentius Rufus, whom Titus had left in charge of the soldiers there. When he arrived and asked who he was, Simon at first said other things, then confessed that he was Simon. From there he was sent to Caesar, and he too was kept for the triumph; but because he had practiced cruelty against the citizens and had not surrendered himself to Caesar, after the procession of the triumph he was condemned to death. On the eighth day of the month Gorpiaeus the city was burned. Innumerable thousands were slain over the whole time of the siege: a million (eleven hundred thousand, as many assert), all of them Jews, but not all of the same region and place, since they had come together from everywhere at that time for the festival of Passover. Captives were led away to the number of ninety-seven thousand. The robbers were almost all killed at once; the stronger were led in the triumph, afterward thrown to beasts and given over to other punishments, in almost every city through which Titus travelled, so as to spread through all, by the punishment, fear of rebellions.

About the same time the Alans, a fierce people long unknown to us, because by the difficulty of the inner regions and the barrier of the iron gate which Alexander the Great set on the steep ridge of Mount Taurus they were shut in together with the other wild and untamed peoples of the interior. They inhabited the Scythian Tanais and its neighborhood and the Maeotic marshes, shut in as if in a kind of prison by the ingenuity of that king, so that they might work their own lands and not raid others'. But whether because of the barrenness of the places, since the hoped-for fruitfulness of cultivation did not answer the wishes of greedy farmers, or out of desire for plunder, they solicited the king of the Hyrcanians, who ruled those places, whether by a bribe or by a promise of defense is uncertain, to open the gate and give them the chance to break out. Having obtained this, they poured into the nation of the Medes; and having quickly procured swift horses, and others likewise tied on the right, onto which they leapt in turn when they pleased, they overran almost the whole region, so as first to throw everything into confusion and give the appearance of a greater multitude, against which no place of flight was free; then, having surrounded everyone and made as great a slaughter as they wished, they carried off plunder. For the region was populous and abounding in cattle, and with no one resisting it lay easily open to plunder. Indeed Pacorus himself, king of the Medes, betook himself to remote places, looking to his safety rather than his kingdom, so that his wife, children and concubines, captured by the Alans, were afterward ransomed for a hundred talents. Nor was Tiridates, king of Armenia, free from danger; but, made cautious by another's misfortune, he foresaw the plague and wished to meet it manfully, so as to turn the enemy from his borders. While fighting, however, he was caught in a noose and would have passed alive into the enemy's power had he not quickly cut the ugly knot with a sharp sword. For, out of a certain insolence in their own strength and proud contempt for others, and at the same time to cover by such a trick their habit of fighting at a distance and their means of flight, it is the art and the custom of war of the Alans to throw nooses and entangle the enemy.

So Tiridates fled, for whom it was enough to have escaped; but he left his kingdom to be plundered. For, as though they had received an injury because he had dared to engage them, they laid waste Armenia more vehemently than the kingdom of Media. So, rich with the spoils of both kingdoms, they went back to their own lands. On learning of their incursion, Titus hastened to Antioch, yet gradually, as befitted a triumphant general, and concealing the reason, celebrating the procession of victory through each city. Jews were killed in the arena wherever he went, and, torn by beasts, paid the price of rebellion. At Antioch too the Gentile people attacked them out of old hatreds, because the kings of Persia had given to the synagogues the offerings they had claimed from the city of Jerusalem by right of victory, and had also bestowed other gifts of their own on the Jews of Antioch. So the heaped-up wealth easily stirred up envy. For, to pass over now what the rivals for the priesthood did against the Maccabees, and how great a disaster ambition was to the citizens, as we recorded above: afterward one Antiochus, born of no mean family but abandoned in character, having invented the charge that the Jews had conspired to burn the city of Antioch, drove to death his own father, who was among the leading men of the Jews, and many others accused by the attack of the Gentile multitude. Nor was he sated with that parricide and the slaughter of many and at rest, but afterward too, finding the opportunity, because by an accidental fire the porticoes of the same city and the square marketplace and the greatest part of the buildings had happened to burn, he began again to press and attack the Jews on the pretext of the aforesaid conspiracy, and he would quickly have made a slaughter of them all, had not the inquiry been reserved for Titus on his arrival, out of fear that Caesar would be moved by the presumptuous punishment of so many. This was the safety of the Jews.

At Masada too very many of the Jews gathered, relying on the strength of the place. Titus thought the task of storming it unworthy of occupying an emperor and entrusted it to Silva, to whom he had committed the chief command of the Roman forces in those parts and the duty of guarding against any new rebellion arising. He himself hastened to Alexandria and from there crossed by ship to Rome. Silva, pressing vigorously on the task entrusted to him, broke down the wall of Masada with a ram. They built an inner one of timber, because material of that kind does not easily give way to the blows of engines. But the Romans, changing their manner of fighting, threw fire, which both easily took hold of the wood and grew without any delay. So, as the fire grew, a great roar of flame was carried along, which at first was driven back from the parts of the fortification by the blast of the north wind and rather burned the Romans' sheds. Then, when the south wind arose, it turned back upon the fortress, so that that whole wooden barrier of the wall blazed and its material was consumed. The Romans, since night had come on, withdrew to their camp, sure of victory, so as to subdue them the next day, now stripped and bereft of all protection. But so that no one should slip away, they surrounded the fortress with a ring of guards.

So, the situation being desperate, Eleazar, the author of the disturbances, seeing that no protection remained, began a speech which we have not passed over, but have given in rhetorical fashion as a kind of lamentable epilogue to close the work. “What are we to do, children of Abraham, royal race of men, invincible in the strength of priestly grace? For courage is seen not from the outcome of victory, which is often uncertain, but from constancy of purpose. Hence one may plainly gather that to subdue the enemy is a matter of fortune, not to change one's mind is a matter of courage. Rightly, then, would I call you invincible, if no fear of death has yet conquered you. But not so did father Abraham teach you: what he taught in his only son was not his death but the immortality to come if he were sacrificed for religion. Why should I proclaim Josiah, than whom no one was a better interpreter of religion, a despiser of death, a champion of liberty? For he, set on that royal throne where he might put off death, nevertheless, because he saw that the captivity of the people of Israel would come for their grave sins, involved himself in another's war and fled from life. Necho cried out: ‘I have not been sent against you, but against the king of Israel’; yet he did not withdraw until he felt the deadly stroke of an arrow. Laid low by this wound, he is a proof to us whether merit or chance weighs more in war. Josiah, the restorer of the ancient rites, was conquered; Necho, the most wicked of all, conquered; but the one, conquered, is now with the angels; the other, victor, is in torments. For who does not know that reward is not laid up for men in this life, but after the completion of this contest? For here we run, so that there we may reach the palm: here is the contest, there the prize. So there is no favor here in a long age. Indeed Abel was killed early, Cain survived: so death belonged to innocence, and life to misery. From that time we have succeeded to the same lot, that to live has become most wretched and to die blessed. For what is life but a prison of the soul, which is shut within this workhouse and clings to the fellowship of the flesh? By its weaknesses it is shaken, by labor afflicted, by anger worn down, kindled by desires, harassed by fury; nor can it easily raise itself up, bound to the ground, clotted with dust, held fast by a chain, entangled in sinews. Yet its power is no small one, that it gives life to the body and pours the vigor of sense into insensible matter; and this each person's soul confers on him invisibly, and governs the whole man, and carries him beyond mortal frailty, so that he gains knowledge of heavenly secrets and turns his mind to the future. So, in the image and likeness of its Prince, it is not seen, though it is placed in the body; it is not discerned by bodily eyes; neither its entrance nor its exit is caught by any sight, representing a kind of likeness of the divine gift. When it enters, it pours in life; when it departs from the body, it brings about death. Where the soul is, there is life; where it is lacking, there is death. Whatever it visits it rouses; whatever it leaves at once falls apart and immediately withers: by the inpouring of the soul the dead rises again; by its departure the living is left lifeless. Who then would doubt that a working of immortality seems to be in that which has the power to turn death away? Yet it is a burden to itself, though it overflows in usefulness to others; and what it gives to the body it takes from itself: for it is weighed down and as it were bent toward the earth with this mortal body. So the life of the body is the death of the soul, and again the death of the body seems the freedom of the soul: for while we are in this body, our soul serves, and with a wretched servitude, by which it is exiled from paradise and is a pilgrim away from its Prince. But when it has been released from the chains of this flesh, it flies back to that pure and bright and higher place, and is present with the Lord its God, and enjoys the dwellings of the saints and rejoices in the fellowship of the blessed: because it no longer has any partnership with what is dead and has left the companionship of corpses, heavenly grace breathes upon it, and no disturbance of human cares troubles it. Sleep is a proof to us of how great a grace the soul regains through the death of the body: for when the body is asleep, and its desires and all its movements as it were dead, we often converse with the saints; we receive back those we have lost, so that the absent are present to us, the dead live, and all grief rests. Let us draw near and talk with God; let us know the future. Let there be rest for the afflicted, freedom for slaves. What, then, we dream when asleep, this we obtain when dead; and what in sleep is an image, in death is the experience of truth and the grace of freedom. Hence it is the custom of some nations to attend the births of men with weeping and their deaths with rejoicing, because they grieve that the former are born to misery and congratulate the latter on having returned to blessedness; they groan that the souls of the former have come into servitude and rejoice that those of the latter have been sent back to freedom. The wise men of the Indians too are said, when they have taken on the desire to die, to declare that they wish to depart, and that no one should hinder them. Then, when the preparation for death has gone forward, they leap joyfully onto the burning pyre and bid farewell to those standing by; the women grieve as if bereft of support, or because little children are left behind; others bless them and do not begrudge them that they hasten to better inhabitants, to brighter places and purer company. What else, then, can I say of you, when even for barbarian nations death is the means of pursuing freedom? I have long known you very well, and ready to answer to the institutions of our fathers, in that you think one must serve neither the Romans nor any nation, but God alone, who alone is the just and true Lord of all. The day has come which demands that we prove our will by deeds, and not dishonor the renown of our ancient nature, so that, born in freedom, you should subject yourselves to the domination of men; especially since you could formerly have served even without danger, but now it is necessary to undergo harsh punishments together with servitude. If we offer ourselves to serve the rule of the Romans, whom we first of all provoked in war and last of all still hold off in arms, shall we, who did not give our hands to the emperor when he offered peace, give them to Silva when he threatens bitterness? O wretched men, for what hope of this life have we kept ourselves? Grant that the enemy pardons: what good will it do, when God's displeasure is plain? The fires the enemy turned against us; the wind changed course, the flames were turned back, so that our defenses were burned. Who will be able to live with God against him? No place of pardon remains, but a manifest command of voluntary death. For why did night come between, except that the enemy should not forestall us, nor, the protection of the wall having been burned, break in at once; but that time might be kept for us to carry out our mutual death, and that we might be allowed to die with our children and kin, so that we should not see breathless old men and old women dragged off by the Romans, our dearest wives seized for the victor's lust? Let us die together with our homeland, so that we may not survive the reproach of such disgrace. Where then shall we flee from the face of God, or where shall we go when the Lord of heaven is hostile to us? If the mountains fall upon us and hide us in hollow caves, how could we still escape the indignation of so great a power? For where shall we go where God is not, since he is everywhere? Are the examples small by which we are taught that he who formerly protected us has long been hostile to our nation because of our sins? Who would doubt it, when he sees that our hands have been turned against ourselves, and that domestic sedition has destroyed more than war? I will not grant the Romans that they conquered, nor do they claim it themselves, who know that almost all of us perished by our own arms rather than by others'. What Roman arms did the Jews living in Caesarea see? On the sabbath day, when they were at rest, amid the solemn worship of our rites, the multitude of the Gentiles of Caesarea, in a sudden attack, inflamed by a fury sent from above, destroyed twenty thousand and put all to flight, so as to empty the whole city of them. Did not madness fill the whole of Syria, so that Jews and Gentiles living in the same cities, and formerly bound to one another by the bond of common residence, afterward clashed with one another in arms, so that a ford for future victory was laid down for the Romans? For what shall I say of Scythopolis, where the Jews had first contended to forestall the Gentile people, lest they should plot anything against our own after the example of the other cities? So those whom it would have been right to join forces against foreigners and fight it out in war, the Jews on the contrary decided this against themselves, that part of them should fight against their kinsmen and neighbors; then they themselves, as the price of their labor and the blood they had spent, were killed by the Gentiles, because they had themselves prevented this from being done to the Gentiles. The people of Damascus, with no cause existing, laid low eight thousand Jews; the people of Ascalon two thousand five hundred; in the city named Ptolemais two thousand were slain. At Alexandria there was an old hatred between the Jews and the Gentile peoples, from the time Alexander the Great used the zeal of the Jews to subdue the Egyptians; hence, when the city was founded, privileges were assigned equally to Jews and Egyptians, and separate dwellings, so that their worship should not be mixed, since the Jews wished to keep their purifications without any contamination. From this there were frequent conflicts between them; quarrels arose; judgment was sought. Yet it is clear that nothing of so great a king's favors was violated, but that afterward, when a tumult arose among the Gentiles, and some of the Jews were killed and others held for punishment, the people of the Jews, moved by the injury, rose up against the authors of the injury; and when they wished more stubbornly to avenge themselves on the citizens, the Roman army was brought in, which cut down sixty thousand Jews within the city. But why do I linger on lighter things, when we must lament the destruction of the whole world in the ruin of one city? Where is that greatest city Jerusalem? Where is the beautiful Zion, where the wonderful temple, where that second tabernacle, the sanctuary of holiness, into which once a year the chief priest alone used to enter, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sin of the people? It has been profaned by the Gentiles; those who destroyed it live in the remains of the city. Where are you, I say, city filled with peoples, venerable to kings, acceptable to God, seat of grace? Your pavements were of marble, your walls shining with marble, your roofs gleamed with precious marble, your gates flashing with gold, others shining with silver. All are slain, both those who dwelt in you continually and those who came to you from all parts of the world, so that there is no doubt that the whole world perished in you. Everything is laid bare, burned from the roofs, torn down from the foundations: your habitation has become desolate, and there is no one to dwell in your tents. And does anyone still wish to live, and not regret having lived? Hard are the eyes that can see these things; cruel the minds that can wish it, so that something stands proud amid such griefs: not because disasters have failed, but because there is now no rest. For where shall we turn our eyes, or what shall we delight to see? The whole city is a tomb of the dead; only ashes meet the onlookers; the streets are empty of the living and full of corpses. Wretched old men, their white hair ashen and their clothing torn, sit upon the remains of the dead, covering bare bones, to protect them from birds and beasts. A few women unharmed, whom the impious soldier has kept for shame, not for life. Who, seeing these things and thinking of a postponement of living, would dare to lift his eyes to heaven? Who is so forgetful of his homeland, so hostile to his own, so estranged from piety, so devoid of sweetness, whose spirit is so soft and half a man's? Who so timid as not to be ashamed to be kept alive for this? Would that we had died long ago, or, if life remained, that the light of our eyes had perished, before we saw the holy city destroyed by the hands of enemies, and the temple consecrated to God by our forefathers so impiously burned with flames, or saw the priests lying slain in the temple! Let us then make amends for having survived these evils, so that we may seem to have put off death not from love of life but from the aim of virtue. The enemy has surrounded the whole fortification; nothing is left except either ourselves or our wives. Already they are putting our sons up for auction among themselves and contending with one another over who shall carry off whose wife: whether they are to be distributed by the merits of rank or the orders of persons, or the wretched women made to submit to lots. For us too prodigies of punishment are being prepared, the most exquisite tortures; not only burning flames or various deaths by the stroke of the victor's axe (a harsh punishment indeed, after chains, after prison, after the yoke, but more bearable to men if it is free of mockery), but also limbs torn from the living, and above all hands cut off. And not without reason, because they failed their duty when they could have helped themselves. We must undergo also the bites of beasts for the spectacle of the victors, which is already celebrated in the various arenas of the cities: it ought to be shameful to us even as an example, or pitiable as a mockery, that men be kept either for beasts or to fight against their brothers. Why then do we delay? It is no longer open to us to escape what we fear. If we do not wish to kill our children out of mercy, or ourselves out of courage, it will be necessary for us to be killed by brother or kin through a crime: affection urges the one, the victors demand the other. If we will not carry out the ministry of love, we shall be forced to undergo the mockery of a parricidal procession. Let us undertake, then, what will benefit our children and wives: if we are the weaker, let us take them away from the tortures to come; if we are the stronger, let us conquer the compassion of parents and the affections of kinship, and in this let us conquer the enemy, when we take away his plunder. Courage demands this; shame urges it. Not to fear death is courage. For we are all born to death, and we beget children to death; their death is assigned to nature, their captivity counted a disgrace. Those, then, whom we could not snatch from danger, let us snatch from mockery. Have pity, then, fathers, on your children, husbands on your wives; let us all have pity on the little ones, which is our chief concern, while we have the power to show pity; let us show pity from what is ours, so that we may not seem to have been born and kept for disgrace. For who could endure that fathers be killed before the faces of their sons, sons in the sight of their parents? That weary old men be dragged by their white hair, either to death or, what is worse, to slavery; that women with loosened hair be led in the sight of their husbands and violently dragged to shame? To hear the voice of a little child wailing and calling his father to help him in his plea, when you would hear it in vain, your hands bound, and your neck put under the yoke of captivity? So, while our hands are still free, while we grasp the sword, let us undertake a work which the victorious enemy will wonder at. Let our wives receive the last gift of conjugal love as a dowry inheritance. We return these keys to them with a new testimony of blood, so that they may be the heirs of our freedom. They themselves urge it; certainly they deserve it, those who wish it; those who shrink must be compelled; nor will the little ones fear the sword, which by their age they do not know, which they ought to receive from loving parents, so that they may truly become free. For us too, what will be more excellent? If we strip the fortress first, let us nevertheless keep the grain, lest they think we were driven by hunger rather than invited by zeal for virtue to seize the ministry of mutual death. Let us give them food full of blood; and if the flames burn it up, the very smell of the burned grain will be proof to the besiegers that the besieged perished though they had abundance. After this let each man offer himself to the wound, and, about to die, cover his homeland and die in a last embrace. Let the homeland, which was the dwelling of dignity, become for us the tomb of freedom: this mound befits our deaths, that we may be covered by the enclosure of virtue.” Kindled by such a speech, the rest held their swords drawn, gave kisses to their wives, took up their children in their arms, weeping and at the same time hastening, so that the enemy would be forestalled. “These, unhappy pledges of love, we give you as the rewards of last necessity”; and, manfully suppressing affection, they shut out emotion and carried out the deed: the women offered themselves fearlessly to the wound for the preservation of their chastity, and had themselves put on the mind of their husbands. So, having slain their kin and their children too, they chose vigorous men to carry out the rest of the slaughter. So all fell, nine hundred sixty with the little children and women: one woman alone survived, who hid five children in an aqueduct while the rest were intent on their last necessities; roused by the shouting when the Romans arrived at dawn, she revealed what had been done. Their wealth the fire they themselves had set beforehand had consumed.