On the Destruction of Jerusalem 2.12–2.18

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.