leans; for I could not deny that those of Ti- | incursions upon them; and at the last they berias had written to the king, and invited him did prevail with Gallus to send them a consito come to them; for his letters to them, in derable army, both of horse and foot, which answer thereto, would fully prove the truth of came in the night-time, and which they adthat. So I sat a long time musing with my-mitted into the city. But when the country self, and then said to them, "I know well round about it was harassed by the Roman enough that the people of Tiberias have of- army, I took those soldiers that were about fended; nor shall I forbid you to plunder the me, and came to Garisme, where I cast up a city. However, such things ought to be done bank, a good way off the city Sepphoris; and with discretion; for they of Tiberias have not when I was at twenty furlongs distance, I been the only betrayers of our liberty, but came upon it by night, and made an assault many of the most eminent patriots of the upon its walls with my forces: and when I Galileans, as they pretended to be, have done had ordered a considerable number of my solthe same. Tarry therefore till I shall thor-diers to scale them with ladders, I became oughly find out those authors of our danger, master of the greatest part of the city. But and then you shall have them all at once under soon after, our unacquaintedness with the your power, with all such as you shall your- places forced us to retire, after we had killed selves bring in also." Upon my saying this, twelve of the Roman footmen, and two horseI pacified the multitude, and they left off their men, and a few of the people of Sepphoris, anger, and went their ways; and I gave or- with the loss of only a single man of our own. ders that he who brought the king's letters And when it afterwards came to a battle in should be put into bonds; but in a few days the plain against the horsemen, and we had I pretended that I was obliged, by a necessary undergone the dangers of it courageously for affair of my own, to go out of the kingdom. a long time, we were beaten; for upon the I then called Crispus privately, and ordered Romans encompassing me about, my soldiers him to make the soldier that kept him drunk, were afraid, and fled back. There fell in that and to run away to the king. So when Ti- battle one of those that had been intrusted to berias was in danger of being utterly destroyed guard my body; his name was Justus, who a second time, it escaped the danger by my at this time had the same post with the king. skilful management, and the care that I had At the same time also there came forces, both for its preservation. horsemen and footmen, from the king, and Sylla their commander, who was the captain of his guard; this Sylla pitched his camp at five furlongs distance from Julias, and set a guard upon the roads, both that which led to Cana, and that which led to the fortress Gamala, that he might hinder their inhabitants from getting provisions out of Galilee. 70. About this time it was that Justus, the son of Pistus, without my knowledge, ran away to the king; the occasion of which I will here relate. Upon the beginning of the war between the Jews and the Romans, the people of Tiberias resolved to submit to the king, and not to revolt from the Romans; while Justus tried to persuade them to betake themselves to their arms, as being himself desirous of innovations, and having hopes of obtaining the government of Galilee, as well as of his own country [Tiberias] also. Yet did he not obtain what he hoped for, because the Galileans bore ill-will to those of Tiberias, and this on account of their anger at what miseries they had suffered from them before the war; thence it was that they would not endure that Justus should be their governor. I myself also, who had been intrusted by the community of Jerusalem with the government of Galilee, did frequently come to that degree of rage at Justus, that I had almost resolved to kill him, as not able to bear his mischievous disposition. He was therefore much afraid of me, lest at length my passion should come to extremity; so he went to the king, as supposing that he would dwell better and more safely with him, 71. Now when the people of Sepphoris bad, in so surprising a manner, escaped their first danger, they sent to Cestius Gallus, and desired him to come to them immediately, and take possession of their city, or else to send forces sufficient to repress all their enemies' 72. As soon as I had got intelligence of this, I sent two thousand armed men, and a captain over them, whose name was Jeremiah, who raised a bank a furlong off Julias, near to the river Jordan, and did no more than skirmish with the enemy; till I took three thousand soldiers myself, and came to them. But on the next day, when I had laid an ambush in a certain valley, not far from the banks, I provoked those that belonged to the king to come to a battle, and gave orders to my own soldiers to turn their backs upon them, until they should have drawn the enemy away from their camp, and brought them out into the field, which was done accordingly; for Sylla, supposing that our party did really run away, was ready to pursue them, when our soldiers that lay in ambush took them on their backs, and put them all into great disorder. I also immediately made a sudden turn with my own forces, and met those of the king's party, and put them to flight. And I had performed great things that day, if a certain fate had not been my hinderance; for the horse on which I rode, and upon whose back I fought, fell into a quagmire, and threw me on the ground; and I was bruised on my wrist, and carried into a | have accurately related them in the books village named Cepharnome, or Capernaum. concerning the War of the Jews. However, When my soldiers heard of this, they were it will, I think, be fit for me to add now an afraid I had been worse hurt than I was; account of those actions of my life which I and so they did not go on with their pursuit have not related in that book of the Jewish any farther, but returned in very great concern for me. I therefore sent for the physicians, and while I was under their hands, I continued feverish that day; and as the physicians directed, I was that night removed to Taricheæ. 73. When Sylla and his party were informed what happened to me, they took courage again; and understanding that the watch was negligently kept in our camp, they by night placed a body of horsemen in ambush beyond Jordan, and when it was day they provoked us to fight; and as we did not refuse it, but came into the plain, their horsemen appeared out of that ambush in which they had lain, and put our men into disorder, and made them run away; so they slew six men of our side. Yet did they not go off with the victory at last; for when they heard that some armed men were sailed from Tariches to Julias, they were afraid, and retired. 74. It was not now long before Vespasian came to Tyre, and king Agrippa with him; but the Tyrians began to speak reproachfully of the king, and called him an enemy to the Romans; for they said that Philip, the general of his army, had betrayed the royal palace and the Roman forces that were in Jerusalem, and that it was done by his command. When Vespasian heard of this report, he rebuked the Tyrians for abusing a man who was both a king and a friend to the Romans; but he exhorted the king to send Philip to Rome, to answer for what he had done before Nero. But when Philip was sent thither, be did not come into the sight of Nero, for he found him very near death, on account of the troubles that then happened, and a civil war; and so he returned to the king. But when Vespasian was come to Ptolemais, the chief men of Decapolis of Syria made a clamour against Justus of Tiberias, because he had set their villages on fire: so Vespasian delivered him to the king, to be put to death by those under the king's jurisdiction; yet did the king [only] put him into bonds, and concealed what he had done from Vespasian, as I have before related. But the people of Sepphoris met Vespasian, and saluted him, and had forces sent him, with Placidus their commander: be also went up with them, as I also followed them, till Vespasian came into Galilee. As to which coming of his, and after what manner it was ordered, and how he fought his first battle with me near the village Tarichea, and how from thence they went to Jotapata, and how I was taken alive, and bound, and how I was afterwards loosed, with all that was done by me in the Jewish War, and during the siege of Jerusalem, I war. 75. For, when the siege of Jotapata was over, and I was among the Romans, I was kept with much care, by means of the great respect that Vespasian showed me. Moreover, at his command, I married a virgin, who was from among the captives of that country;* yet did she not live with me long, but was divorced, upon my being freed from my bonds, and my going to Alexandria. However, I married another wife at Alexandria, and was then sent, together with Titus, to the siege of Jerusalem, and was frequently in danger of being put to death, while both the Jews were very desirous to get me under their power, in order to have me punished; and the Romans also, whenever they were beaten, supposed that it was occasioned by my treachery, and made continual clamours to the emperors, and desired that they would bring me to punishment, as a traitor to them: but Titus Cæsar was well acquainted with the uncertain fortune of war, and returned no answer to the soldiers' vehement solicitations against me. Moreover, when the city Jerusalem was taken by force, Titus Cæsar persuaded me frequently to take whatsoever I would of the ruins of my country, and said that he gave me leave so to do; but when my country was destroyed, I thought nothing else to be of any value which I could take and keep as a comfort under my calamities; so I made this request to Titus, that my family might have their liberty: I had also the holy books† by Titus's concession; nor was it long after, that I asked of him the life of my brother, and of fifty friends with him; and was not denied. When I also went once to the temple, by the permission of Titus, where there were a great multitude of captive women and children, I got all those that I remembered as among my own friends and acquaintances, to be set free, being in number about one hundred and ninety; and so I delivered them, without their paying any price of redemption, and restored them to their former fortune; and when I was sent by Titus Cæsar with Cerealius, and a thousand horsemen, to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it was a place fit for a camp, as I came back, I saw many captives crucified; + Here Josephus, a priest, honestly confesses that he did that at the command of Vespasian, which he had before told us was not lawful for a priest to do by the law of Moses, Antiq. b. iii. chap. xii. sect. 2. I mean, the taking a captive woman to wife. See also Against Appion, b. i. sect. 7. But he seems to have been quickly emperor would not excuse him, for he soon put her sensible that his compliance with the commands of an away, as Reland justly observes here. tant consequences, see Essay on the Old Testament, + Of this most remarkable clause, and its most impor page 193-195. and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician's hands, while the third recovered. 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 whom are dead, and one, whom I named Hyrcanus, is alive. After this I married a wife who had lived at Crete, but a Jewess by birth; a woman she was of eminent 76. But when Titus had composed the parents, and such as were the most illustrious troubles in Judea, and conjectured that the in all the country, and whose character was lands which I had in Judea would bring me beyond that of most other women, as ber funo profit, because a garrison to guard the ture life did demonstrate. By her I had two country was afterward to pitch there, he gave sons; the elder's name was Justus, and the me another country in the plain; and, when next Simonides, who was also named Agrippa: he was going away to Rome, he made choice and these were the circumstances of my doof me to sail along with him, and paid me | mestic affairs. However, the kindness of the great respect; and when we were come to emperor to me continued still the same; for Rome, I had great care taken of me by Ves- when Vespasian was dead, Titus, who sucpasian; for he gave me an apartment in his ceeded him in the government, kept up the own house, which he lived in before he came same respect for me which I had from his to the empire. He also honoured me with father; and when I had frequent accusations the privilege of a Roman citizen, and gave laid against me, he would not believe them: me an annual pension; and continued to and Domitian, who succeeded, still augmented respect me to the end of his life, without any his respects to me; for he punished those abatement of his kindness to me; which very Jews that were my accusers; and gave comthing made me envied, and brought me into mand that a servant of mine, who was a danger; for a certain Jew, whose name was eunuch, and my accuser, should be punished. Jonathan, who had raised a tumult in Cyrene, He also made that country I had in Judea and had persuaded two thousand men of that tax free, which is a mark of the greatest bocountry to join with him, was the occasion of nour to him who hath it; nay, Domitia, the their ruin; but when he was bound by the wife of Cæsar, continued to do me kindnesses: governor of that country, and sent to the em- And this is the account of the actions of my peror, he told him that I had sent him both whole life; and let others judge of my chaweapons and money. However, he could not | racter by them as they please; but to thee, O conceal his being a liar from Vespasian, who Epaphroditus, thou most excellent of men! condemned him to die; according to which do I dedicate all this treatise of our Antiquisentence he was put to death. Nay, after ties; and so, for the present, I here conclude that, when those that envied my good fortune the whole. did frequently bring accusations against me, by God's providence I escaped them all. I *Of this Epaphroditus, see the note on the Preface to the Antiquities. THE ANTIQUITIES OF THE JEWS. PREFACE.* piety, and the exercise of other virtues,— what wars also they had made in remote ages, till they were unwillingly engaged in this last with the Romans; but because this work would take up a great compass, I separated it into a set treatise by itself, with a beginning of its own, and its own conclusion; but in process of time, as usually happens to such as undertake great things, I grew weary, and went on slowly, it being a large subject, and §1. THOSE who undertake to write histories, | what legislator they had been instructed in do not, I perceive, take that trouble on one and the same account, but for many reasons, and those such as are very different one from another; for some of them apply themselves to this part of learning to show their skill in composition, and that they may therein acquire areputation for speaking finely; others of them there are who write histories, in order to gratify those that happened to be concerned in them, and on that account have spared no pains, but rather gone beyond their own abi-a difficult thing to translate our history into lities in the performance; but others there are, a foreign, and to us unaccustomed language. who, of necessity and by force, are driven to However, some persons there were who dewrite history, because they were concerned in sired to know our history, and so exhorted the facts, and so cannot excuse themselves me to go on with it; and, above all the rest, from committing them to writing, for the ad- Epaphroditus, § a man who is a lover of all vantage of posterity: nay, there are not a few kind of learning, but is principally delighted who are induced to draw their historical facts with the knowledge of history; and this on out of darkness into light, and to produce account of his having been himself concerned them for the benefit of the public, on account in great affairs, and many turns of fortune, of the great importance of the facts them- and having shown a wonderful vigour of an selves with which they have been concerned. excellent nature, and an immoveable virtuous Now of these several reasons for writing his-resolution in them all. I yielded to this man's tory, I must profess the two last were my own reasons also; for since I was myself interested in that war which we Jews had with the Romans, and knew myself its particular actions, and what conclusion it had, I was forced to give the history of it, because I saw that others perverted the truth of those actions in their writings. 2. Now I have undertaken the present work, as thinking it will appear to all the Greekst worthy of their study; for it will contain all our antiquities, and the constitution of our government, as interpreted out of the Hebrew Scriptures; and indeed I did formerly intend, when I wrote of the war, to explain who the Jews originally were, what fortunes they had been subject to, and by This preface of Josephus is excellent in its kind, and highly worthy the repeated perusal of the reader, before he set about the perusal of the work itself. That is, all the Gentiles, both Greeks and Romans. We may seasonably note here, that Josephus wrote bis Seven Books of the Jewish War, long before he wrote these his Antiquities. Those books of the War were published about A. D. 75; and these Antiquities. A. D, about eighteen years later. persuasions, who always excites such as have abilities in what is useful and acceptable, to join their endeavours with his. I was also ashamed myself to permit any laziness of disposition to have a greater influence upon me than the delight of taking pains in such studies as were very useful: I thereupon stirred up myself, and went on with my work more cheerfully. Besides the foregoing motives, I had others which I greatly reflected on; and these were, that our forefathers were willing to, communicate such things to others; and that some of the Greeks took considerable pains to know the affairs of our nation. 3. I found, therefore, that the second of the Ptolemies was a king who was extraordinarily diligent in what concerned learning and the collection of books; that he was also This Epaphroditus was certainly alive in the third year of Trajan, A. D. 100. See the note on the first book Against Apion, sect. 1. Who he was we do not know; for as to Epaphroditus, the freed-man of Nero, and afterwards Domitian's secretary, who was put to death by Domitian, in the 14th or 15th year of his reign, he could not be alive in the third of Trajan. peculiarly ambitious to procure a translation | ly; I mean, because otherwise those that read my book may wonder how it comes to pass of our law, and of the constitution of our government therein contained, into the Greek tongue. Now Eleazar, the high priest, one not inferior to any other of that dignity among us, did not envy the forenained king the participation of that advantage, which otherwise he would for certain have denied him, but that he knew the custom of our nation was, to hinder nothing of what we esteemed ourselves from being communicated to others. Accordingly, I thought it became me both to imitate the generosity of our high priest, and to suppose there might even now be many lovers of learning like the king; for he did not obtain all our writings at that time; but those who were sent to Alexandria as interpreters, gave him only the books of the law, while there were a vast number of other matters in our sacred books. They indeed contain in them the history of five thousand years; in which time happened many strange accidents, many chances of war, and great actions of the commanders, and mutations of the form of our government. Upon the whole, a man that will peruse this history, may principally learn from it, that all events succeed well, even to an incredible degree, and the reward of felicity is proposed by God; but then it is to those that follow his will, and do not venture to break his excellent laws; and that so far as men any way apostatize from the accurate observation of them, what was practicable before, becomes impractica-gion, he easily persuaded them to submit in ble; and whatsoever they set about as a good all other things; for, as to other legislators, thing is converted into an incurable calamity: they followed fables, and, by their discourses, --and now I exhort all those that peruse these transferred the most reproachful of human books to apply their minds to God; and to vices unto the gods, and so afforded wicked examine the mind of our legislator, whether men the most plausible excuses for their he hath not understood his nature in a man-crimes: but, as for our legislator, when be had ner worthy of him; and hath not ever ascrib- once demonstrated that God was possessed of ed to him such operations as become his power, and hath not preserved his writings from those indecent fables which others have framed, although, by the great distance of time when he lived, he might have securely forged such lies; for he lived two thousand years ago; at which vast distance of ages the poets themselves have not been so hardy as to fix even the generations of their gods, much less the actions of their men, or their own laws. As I proceed, therefore, I shall accurately describe what is contained in our records, in the order of time that belongs to them; for I have already promised so to do throughout this undertaking, and this without adding any thing to what is therein contained, or taking away any thing therefrom. 4. But because almost all our constitution depends on the wisdom of Moses, our legislator, I cannot avoid saying somewhat concerning him beforehand, though I shall do it brief perfect virtue, he supposed that men also + As to this intended work of Josephus, concerning * Josephus here plainly alludes to the famous Greek the reasons of many of the Jewish laws, and what phiproverb: If God be with us, every thing that is impossi-losophical or allegorical sense they would bear, the loss ble becomes possible. f which work is by some of the learned not much re |