and continued to respect me to the end of his life, without any abatement of his kindness to me; which very thing made me envied, and brought me into danger; for a certain Jew, whose name was Jonathan, who had raised a tumult in Cyrene, and had persuaded two thousand men of that country to join with him, was the occasion of their ruin. But when he was bound by the governor of that country, and sent to the emperor, he told him that I had sent him both weapons and money. However, he could not conceal his being a liar from Vespasian, who condemned him to die; according to which sentence he was put to death. Nay, after that, when those that envied my good fortune did frequently bring accusations against me, by God's providence I escaped them all. I also received from Vespasian no small quantity of land, as a free gift in Judea; about which time I divorced my wife also, as not pleased with her behaviour, though not till she had been the mother of three children, two of which are dead, and one, whom I named Hyrcanus, is alive. After this I married a wife who had lived at Crete, but a Jew by birth: a woman she was of eminent parents, and such as were the most illustrious in all the country, and whose character was beyond that of most other women, as her future life did demonstrate. By her I had two sons, the elder's name was Justus, and the next Simonides, who was also named Agrippa. And these were the circumstances of my domestic affairs. However, the kindness of the emperor to me continued still the same; for when Vespasian was dead, Titus, who succeeded him in the government, kept up the same respect for me which I had from his father; and when I had frequent accusations laid against me, he would not believe them. And Domitian, who succeeded, still augmented his respects to me; for he punished those Jews that were my accusers, and gave command that a servant of mine, whe was an eunuch, and my accuser, should be punished. He also made that country I had in Judea tax-free, which is a mark of the greatest honour to him who hath it; nay, Domitia, the wife of Caesar, continued to do me kindnesses. And this is the account of the actions of my whole life; and let others judge of my character by them as they please. But to thee, O Epaphroditus,* thou most excellent of men, do I dedicate all this treatise of our Antiquities; and so, for the present, I here conclude the whole.

* Of this Epaphroditus, see the note on the Preface to the Antiquities.

THE

JEWISH WAR:

OR, THE

HISTORY

OF

THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.

PREFACE.

§ 1. WHEREAS the war which the Jews made with the Romans, hath been the greatest of all those, not only that have been in our times, but, in a manner, of those that ever were heard of; both of those wherein cities have fought against cities, or nations against nations; while some men, who were not concerned in the affairs themselves, have gotten together vain and contradictory stories by hearsay, and have written them down after a sophistical manner; and while those that were there present have given a false account of things, and this either out of a humour of flattery to the Romans, or of hatred towards the Jews; and while their writings contain

* I have already observed more than once, that this history of the Jewish war was Josephus's first work, and published about A.D. 75, when he was but 38 years of age; and that when he wrote it he was not thoroughly acquainted with several circumstances of history from the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, with which it begins, till near his own times, contained in the first and former part of the second book, and so committed many involuntary errors therein. That he published his Antiquities 18 years afterward, perused those most authentic histories, the first book of Maccabees, in the 13th year of Domitian, A. D. 93, when he was much more com. pletely acquainted with those ancient times, and after he had wrote the chronicles of the priesthood of John Hyrcanus, &c. That accordingly he then reviewed those parts of this work, and gave the public a more faithful, complete, and accurate account of the facts therein related; and honestly corrected the errors he had before run into.

sometimes accusations, and sometimes encomiums, but no where the accurate truth of the facts; I have proposed to myself, for the sake of such as live under the government of the Romans, to translate those books into the Greek tongue, which I formerly composed in the language of our country, and sent to the Upper Barbarians:* I, Joseph, the son of Matthias, by birth an Hebrew, a priest also, and one who at first fought against the Romans myself, and was forced to be present at what was done afterwards, [am the author of this work.]

2. Now at the time when this great concussion of affairs happened, the affairs of the Romans were themselves in great disorder. Those Jews also, who were for innovations, then arose when the times were disturbed; they were also in a flourishing condition for strength and riches, insomuch that the affairs of the east were then exceeding tumultuous, while some hoped for gain, and others were afraid of loss in such troubles; for the Jews hoped that all of their nation which were beyond Euphrates would have raised an insurrection. together with them. The Gauls also, in the neighbourhood of the Romans, were in motion, and the Celta were not quiet; but all was in disorder, after the death of Nero. And the opportunity now offered induced many to aim at the royal power; and the soldiery affected change, out of the hopes of getting money. I thought it, therefore, an absurd thing to see the truth falsified in affairs of such great consequence, and to take no notice of it; but to suffer those Greeks and Romans that were not in the wars to be ignorant of these things, and to read either flatteries or fictions, while the Parthians, and the Babylonians, and the remotest Arabians, and those of our nation beyond Euphrates, with the Adiabeni, by my means, knew accurately both whence the war begun, what miseries it brought upon us, and after what manner it ended.

3. It is true, these writers have the confidence to call

Who these Upper Barbarians, remote from the sea, were, Josephus himself will inform us, § 2. viz. the Parthians, and Babylonians, and remotest Arabians [or the Jews among them]; besides the Jews beyond Euphrates, and the Adiabeni, or Assyrians, whence we learn that these Parthians, Babylonians, the remotest Arabians, [or at least the Jews among them,] as also the Jews be yond Euphrates, and the Adiabeni, or Assyrians, understood Josephus's Hebrew, or rather Chaldaic books of the Jewish war, before they were put into the Greek language.

their accounts histories; wherein yet they seem to me to fail of their own purpose, as well as to relate nothing that is sound. For they have a mind to demonstrate the greatness of the Romans, while they still diminish and lessen the actions of the Jews; as not discerning how it cannot be that those must appear to be great, who have only conquered those that were little. Nor are they ashamed to overlook the length of the war, the multitude of the Roman forces who so greatly suffered in it, or the might of the commanders, whose great labours about Jerusalem will be deemed inglorious, if what they achieved be reckoned but a small matter. 4. However, I will not go into the other extreme, out of opposition to these men who extol the Romans, nor will I determine to raise the actions of my countrymen too high; but I will prosecute the actions of both parties with accuracy. Yet shall I suit my language to the passions I am under, as to the affairs I describe: and must be allowed to indulge some lamentations upon the miseries undergone by my own country. For that it was a seditious temper of our own that destroyed it, and that they were the tyrants among the Jews who brought the Roman power upon us, who unwillingly attacked us, and occasioned the burning of our holy temple, Titus Cæsar, who destroyed it, is himself a witness; who, ,during the entire war, pitied the people who were kept under by the seditious, and did often voluntarily delay the taking of the city, and allowed time to the siege, in order to let the authors have opportunity for repentance. But if any -one makes an unjust accusation against us, when we speak so passionately about the tyrants, or the robbers, or sorely bewail the misfortunes of our country, let him indulge my affections herein, though it be contrary to the rules for writing history; because it had so come to pass that our city Jerusalem had arrived at an higher degree of felicity than any other city under the Roman government, and yet at last fell into the sorest of calamities again. Accordingly, it appears to me, that the misfortunes of all men, from the beginning of the world, if they be compared to these of the Jews,

*

That these calamities of the Jews, who were our Saviour's murderers, were to be the greatest that had ever been since the beginning of the world, our Saviour had directly foretold, Matt. xxiv. 21. Mark, xiii. 19 Luke, xxi. 23, 24. and that they proved to be such accordingly, Josephus is here a most authentic witness.

are not so considerable as they were; while the authors of them were not foreigners neither. This makes it impossible for me to contain any lamentations. But if any one be inflexible in his censures to me, let him attribute the facts themselves to the historical part; and the lamentations to the writer himself only.

5. However, I may justly blame the learned men among the Greeks, who, when such great actions have been done in their own times, which, upon the comparison, quite eclipse the old wars, do yet sit as judges of those affairs, and pass bitter censures upon the labours of the best writers of antiquity; which moderns, although they may be superior to the old writers in eloquence, yet are they inferior to them in the execution of what they intended to do. While these also write new histories about the Assyrians and Medes, as if the ancient writers had not described their affairs as they ought to have done; although these be as far inferior to them in abilities, as they are different in their notions from them. For of old, every one took upon them to write what happened in their own time; where their immediate concern in the actions made their promises of value; and where it must be reproachful to write lies, when they must be known by the readers to be such But then, an undertaking to preserve the memory of what hath not been before recorded, and to represent the affairs of one's own time to those that came afterwards, is really worthy of praise and commendation. Now he is to be esteemed to have taken good pains in earnest; nor who does no more than change the disposition and order of other men's works, but he who not only relates what had not been related before, but composes an entire body of history of his own; accordingly, I have been at great charges, and have taken very great pains [about this history,] though I be a foreigner; and do dedicate this work, as a memorial of great actions, both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians. But for some of our own principal men, their mouths are wide open, and their tongues loosed presently, for gain and law-suits, but quite muzzled up when they are to write history, where they must speak truth, and gather facts together with a great deal of pains; and so they leave the writing such histories to weaker people, and to such as are not acquainted with the acts of princes. Yet shall the real truth of historical facts be preferred by us, how much soever it be neglected among the Greek historians.