upon his giving them his right hand for their preservation. There were besides disorders and civil wars in every city, and all those that were at quiet from the Romans turned their hands one against another. There was also a bitter contest between those that were fond of war and those that were desirous of peace. At the first, this quarrelsome temper caught hold of private families, who could not agree among themselves; after which those people that were the dearest to one another brake through all restraints with regard to each other, and every one associated with those of his own opinion, and began already to stand in opposition one to another; so that seditions arose every where, while those that were for innovations, and were desirous of war, by their youth and boldness, were too hard for the aged and prudent men. And, in the first place, all the people of every place betook themselves to rapine; after which they got together in bodies, in order to rob the people of the country, insomuch that for barbarity and iniquity those of the same nation did no way differ from the Romans; nay, it seemed to be a much lighter thing to be ruined by the Romans than by themselves.

3. Now the Roman garrisons which guarded the cities, partly out of their uneasiness to take such trouble upon them, and partly out of the hatred they bare to the Jewish nation, did little or nothing towards relieving the miserable, till the captains of these troops of robbers, being satiated with rapines in the country, got all together from all parts, and became a band of wickedness, and all together crept into Jerusalem, which was now become a city without a governor, and, as the ancient custom was, received without distinction all that belonged to their nation; and these they then received, because all men supposed that those who came so fast into the city, came out of kindness, and for their assistance, although these very men, besides the seditions they raised, were otherwise the direct cause of the city's destruction also; for as they were an unprofitable and a useless multitude, they spent those provisions beforehand which might otherwise have been sufficient for the fighting-men. Moreover, besides the

bringing on of the war, they were the occasions of sedition and famine therein.

4. There were besides these other robbers that came out of the country, and came into the city, and joining to them those that were worse than themselves, omitted no kind of barbarity; for they did not measure their courage by their rapines and plunderings only, but proceeded as far as murdering men; and this not in the night-time or privately, or with regard to ordinary men, but did it openly in the day-time, and began with the most eminent persons in the city: for the first man they meddled with was Antipas, one of the royal lineage, and the most potent man in the whole city, insomuch that the public treasures were committed to his care: him they took and confined, as they did in the next place to Levias a person of great note, with Sophas the son of Raguel; both which were of royal lineage also. And besides these they did the same to the principal men of the country. This caused a terrible consternation among the people, and every one contented himself with taking care of his own safety, as they would do if the city had been taken in war.

5. But these were not satisfied with the bonds into which they had put the men forementioned; nor did they think it safe for them to keep them thus in custody long, since they were men very powerful and had numerous families of their own that were able to avenge them. Nay, they thought the very people would, perhaps, be so moved at these unjust proceedings, as to rise in a body against them: it was, therefore, resolved to have them slain. Accordingly, they sent one John, who was the most bloody-minded of them all, to do that execution: this man was also called the son of Dorcas, in the language of our country. Ten more men went along with him into the prison, with their swords drawn, and so they cut the throats of those that were in custody there. The grand

1 This name Dorcas in Greek was Tabitha in Hebrew or Syriac, as Acts, ix. 36. Accordingly, some of the manuscripts set it down here Tabetha, or Tabeta. Nor can the context in Josephus be made out by supposing the reading to have been this, the son of Tabitha, which in the language of our country denotes Dorcas [or a doe.]

lying pretence these men made for so flagrant an enormity was this, that these men had had conferences with the Romans for a surrender of Jerusalem to them; and so they said they had slain only such as were traitors to their common liberty. Upon the whole, they grew the more insolent upon this bold. prank of theirs, as though they had been the benefactors and saviors of the city.

6. Now the people were come to that degree of meanness and fear, and these robbers to that degree of madness, that these last took upon them to appoint high-priests. So when they had disannulled the succession, according to those families out of which the high-priests used to be made, they ordained certain unknown and ignoble persons for that office, that they might have their assistance in their wicked undertakings; for such as obtained this highest of all honors, without any desert, were forced to comply with those that bestowed it on them. They also set the principal men at variance one with another, by several sorts of contrivances and tricks, and gained the opportunity of doing what they pleased, by the mutual quarrels of those who might have obstructed their measures; till at length, when they were satiated with the unjust actions they had done toward men, they transferred their contumelious behavior to God himself, and came into the sanctuary with polluted feet.

7. And now the multitude were going to rise against them already; for Ananus, the ancientest of the high-priests, persuaded them to it. He was a very prudent man, and had, perhaps, saved the city, if he could but have escaped the hands of those that plotted against him. Those men made

1 Here we may discover the utter disgrace and ruin of the high-priesthood among the Jews, when undeserving, ignoble, and vile persons were advanced to that noble office by the seditious; which sort of high-priests, as Josephus well remarks here, were thereupon obliged to comply with and assist those that advanced them in their impious practices. The names of these high-priests, or rather ridiculous and profane persons, were Jesus, the son of Damneus, Jesus, the son of Gamaliel, Matthias, the son of Theophilus, and that prodigious ignoramus Phannias, the son of Samuel; all which we shall meet with in Josephus's future history of this war; nor do we meet with any other so much as pretended high-priest after Phannias, till Jerusalem was taken and destroyed.

the temple of God a strong-hold for them, and a place whither they might resort, in order to avoid the troubles they feared from the people: the sanctuary was now become a refuge and a shop of tyranny. They also mixed jesting among the miseries they introduced, which was more intolerable than what they did; for, in order to try what surprise the people would be under, and how far their own power extended, they undertook to dispose of the priesthood by casting lots for it, whereas, as we have said already, it was to descend by suc cession in a family. The pretence they made for this strange. attempt was an ancient practice, while they said that of old. it was determined by lot; but, in truth, it was no better than the dissolution of an undeniable law, and a cunning contrivance to seize upon the government, derived from those that presumed to appoint governors as they themselves pleased.

8. Hereupon they sent for one of the pontifical tribes, which is called Eniachim,' and cast lots which of it should. be the high-priest. By fortune the lot so fell as to demonstrate their iniquity after the plainest manner; for it fel upon one whose name was Phannias, the son of Samuel, of the village Aphtha. He was a man not only unworthy of the high-priesthood, but that did not well know what the high-priesthood was, such a mere rustic was he; yet did they hale this man, without his own consent, out of the country, as if they were acting a play upon the stage, and adorned him with a counterfeit face: they also put upon him the sacred garments, and upon every occasion instructed him what he was to do. This horrid piece of wickedness was sport and pastime with them, but occasioned the other priests, who, at a distance, saw their law made a jest of, to shed tears, and sorely to lament the dissolution of such a sacred dignity.

9. And now the people could no longer bear the insolence of this procedure, but did all together run zealously in order to overthrow that tyranny: and, indeed, they were Gorion

1 This tribe or course of the high-priests here called Eniakim, seems to the learned Mr. Lowth, one well versed in Josephus, to be that 1 Chron. xxiv. 12, the course of Jakim, where some copies have the course of Eliakim; and I think this to be by no means an improbable conjecture.

the son of Josephus, and Symeon' the son of Gamaliel, who encouraged them, by going up and down when they were assembled together in crowds, and as they saw them alone, to bear no longer, but to inflict punishment upon these pests and plagues of their freedom, and to purge the temple of these bloody polluters of it. The best esteemed also of the high-priests, Jesus the son of Gamala, and Ananus the son of Ananus, when they were at their assemblies, bitterly reproached the people for their sloth, and excited them against the zealots; for that was the name they went by, as if they were zealous in good undertakings, and were not rather zealous in the worst actions, and extravagant in them beyond the example of others.

10. And now, when the multitude were gotten together to an assembly, and every one was in indignation at these men's seizing upon the sanctuary, at their rapine and murders, but had not yet begun their attacks upon them (the reason of which was this, that they imagined it to be a difficult thing to suppress these zealots, as, indeed, the case was,) Ananus stood in the midst of them, and casting his eyes frequently at the temple, and having a flood of tears in his eyes, he said, "Certainly it had been good for me to die before I had seen the house of God full of so many abominations, or these sacred places, that ought not to be trodden upon at random, filled with the feet of these blood-shedding villains; yet do I, who am clothed with the vestments of high-priesthood, and am called by that most venerable name [of high-priest,] still live, and am but too fond of living, and cannot endure to undergo a death which would be the glory of my old age; and if I were the only person concerned, and as it were in a desert, I would give up my life, and that alone for God's sake; for to what purpose is it to live among a people insen

1 This Symeon, the son of Gamaliel, is mentioned as the president of the Jewish sanhedrim, and one that perished in the destruction of Jerusalem, by the Jewish rabbins, as Reland observes on this place. He also tells us, that those rabbins mention one Jesus, the son of Gamala, as once a high-priest, but this long before the destruction of Jerusalem; so that if he were the same person with this Jesus, the son of Gamala, in Josephus, he must have lived to be very old, or they have been very bad chronologers.