hortation, who cried out to them to save themselves, and fly away, prevailed. He said also, that if the Romans should seize upon those whom they left behind, they would be revenged on them for it. So this multitude that ran thus away was dispersed abroad, according as each of them was able to run, one faster or slower than another.

5. Now on the next day Titus came to the wall, to make the agreement; whereupon the people opened their gates to him, and came out to him, with their children and wives, and made acclamations of joy to him, as to one that had been their benefactor, and had delivered the city out of custody; they also informed him of John's flight, and besought him to spare them, and to come in, and bring the rest of those that were for innovations to punishment. But Titus, not so much regarding the supplications of the people, sent part of his horsemen to pursue after John, but they could not overtake him, for he was gotten to Jerusalem before; they also slew six thousand of the women and children who went out with him, but returned back and brought with them almost three thousand. However, Titus was greatly displeased that he had not been able to bring this John, who had deluded him, to punishment; yet he had captives enough, as well as the corrupted part of the city, to satisfy his anger, when it missed of John. So he entered the city in the midst of acclamations of joy; and when he had given orders to the soldiers to pull down a small part of the wall, as of a city taken in war, he repressed those that had disturbed the city rather by threatenings than by executions; for he thought that many would accuse innocent persons, out of their own private animosities and quarrels, if he should attempt to distinguish those that were worthy of punishment from the rest; and that it was better to let a guilty person alone in his fears, than to destroy with him any one that did not deserve it; for that probably such an one might be taught prudence, by the fear of the punishment he had deserved, and have a shame upon him for his former offences, when he had been forgiven; but that the punishment of such as have been once put to death could never be retrieved. However, he placed a garrison in the city for its security, by which means he should restrain those that were for innovations, and should leave those that were peaceably disposed in greater security. And thus was all Galilee taken, but this not till after it had cost the Romans much pains before it could be taken by them.

CHA P. III.

Concerning John of Gischala. Concerning the zealots, and the high-priest Ananus; as also how the Jews raised sedi- . tions one against another in [Jerusalem.]

§ 1. Now, upon John's entry into Jerusalem, the whole body of the people were in an uproar, and ten thousand of them crowded about every one of the fugitives that were come to them, and enquired of them what miseries had happened abroad, when their breath was so short, and hot, and quick, that of itself it declared the great distress they were in; yet did they talk big under their misfortunes, and pretended to say, that they had not fled away from the Romans, but came thither in order to fight them with less hazard; for that it would be an unreasonable and a fruitless thing for them to expose themselves to desperate hazards about Gischala, and such weak cities; whereas they ought to lay up their weapons and their zeal, and reserve it for their metropolis. But when they related to them the taking of Gischala, and their decent departure, as they pretended, from that place, many of the people understood it to be no better than a flight; and especially when the people were told of those that were made captives, they were in great confusion, and guessed those things to be plain indications that they should be taken also. But for John, he was very little concerned for those whom he had left behind him, but went about among the people, and persuaded them to go to war, by the hopes he gave them. He affirmed that the affairs of the Romans were in a weak condition, and extolled his own power. He also jested upon the ignorance of the unskilful, as if those Romans, although they should take to themselves wings, could never fly over the wall of Jerusalem, who found such great difficulties in taking the villages of Galilee, and had broken their engines of war against their walls.

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2. These harangues of John's corrupted a great part of the young men, and puffed them up for the war; but as to the more prudent part, and those in years, there was not a man of them but foresaw what was coming, and made lamentation on that account, as if the city was already undone and in this confusion were the people. But then it must be observed, that the multitude that came out of the country were at discord before the Jerusalem sedition began; for Titus went from Gischala to Cæsarea, and Vespasian from Cæsarea to Jamnia and Azotus, and took them both; and, when he had put garrisons into them, he came back with a great number

of the people, who were come over to him, 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 the 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 before-hand, 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 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 fore-mentioned; 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 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 saviours 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 fami

*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 but by supposing the reading to have been this, The son of Tabitha, which in the language of our country denotes Dorcas [or a doe]

+ 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.

lies 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 honours, 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 contrivance 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 towards men, they transferred their contumelious behaviour 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 bad perhaps saved the city if he could but have escaped the hands of those that plotted against him. Those men made 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 high-priesthood by casting lots for it; whereas, as we have said already, it was to descend by succession 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 fell 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 highpriesthood was, such a mere rustic was he; yet did they hale this man, without his own consent, out of the country, as if

*This tribe or course of the high-priests or 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.