On the Destruction of Jerusalem 4.4–4.14

Gischala alone, of the regions of Galilee, had not yet drawn the enemy upon itself, since its inhabitants were of a quieter temper, being a rustic people content with their crops, and contributed nothing to the war. But through the coming together of many who made their living by robbery, the inclinations even of the more moderate were corrupted by bad morals. There was moreover a man of no weight named John, a native, the plague of the people, second to none of the crafty in tricks, knowing no equal in wickedness, who never lacked the will to do harm, though for some time poverty had hindered him from practicing his iniquity. Yet I do not clearly know what I should decide: whether need restrained him or held him back. Clever at deceit, a master of fraud, schooled in lies, he would seek others' trust and then bring cruelty on the very men he had won over; he counted falsehood a virtue and thought it elegance to entrap even his dearest friends; quick to conspire, bold to dare, keen to carry through; a troublemaker in peace, a deserter in danger, accustomed to robbery, unused to war; one who, though he could not pursue tyranny, nevertheless sowed the causes for gaining it. He had a restless spirit and ready daring, which his successes and his means fed for gathering a band of desperate men. Hence when Vespasian learned that the people of that city were being roused to war by his faction, so as not to tire out the whole army he sent his son Titus with a thousand horsemen, and with them Titus approached the city. But when he saw the walls packed with people, he said he wondered that they were following in rebellion the example of those whose destruction ought to have brought them to their senses. Granted that at first their attempts had some hope behind them: what hope did the destruction of all the others offer? The hope of liberty might well have been pardonable in the beginning; but persistence in the last and desperate extremity is beyond pardon. For against those who are not moved by the example of clemency nor by earnest warning in words, not words but arms are needed. “You trust your walls, as though they had protected those others against the might of the Romans. What else can men shut in display, what else can men surrounded put forward, except that they are bold in captivity?” No one had the opportunity to speak: for the robber band had taken over the whole circuit of the walls, and John took care that no one should invite the Romans to a friendly parley. So he himself seized the right of answering, saying that he gladly accepted the discussion of their common affairs and did not refuse to try it, in case Titus should persuade them of what was in their interest, or what he proposed should be agreed to; but that he was forbidden by the law of their fathers, since the day of the sacred week still remained, to discuss conditions of peace. For as it was forbidden to take up arms, so it was unlawful to deliberate about peace on holy days. Indeed, even to decide business in words was sacrilege for those who were forced to it, and not unpunished for those who forced them. He asked for the respite of a single day; so short a delay would be no hindrance at all. For with the enemy all around, the besieged had no free way of escape; the choice of peace was offered to them, and with so fair an option fear stood in the way; meanwhile they ought not to be pressed to deliberate on peace, since for them it was a matter of religion not to transgress the law of their fathers; and it suited so generous an offer of peace that one who, beyond hope, freely offered peace so that no one should be endangered, should also leave their laws intact to those who were to be saved. Titus, judging that these pleas were made without guile, sounded the retreat and called back from the walls those he had brought with him. So John, having gained the chance to flee, departed in the dead of night with many others; women too followed him as he went. But the farther the men advanced, the more women and little children were left behind, and the women, deserted by their own, watched the road in terror. And when they had lost sight of their own husbands, they thought the enemy was at hand, trembling at every sound. If anyone ran up, they turned about wretchedly, fearing that they were being hunted and that chains were being cast on them, as though those they feared were already there. Titus, then, according to the agreement, as soon as the sun was up, marched with the army to the city. The gates are opened; the people come out exulting and receive the Romans with joy and eagerness, glad that the pestilent man was gone, that he had fled by night, and that they had been given their freedom; they begged pardon, that his flight might not be held against them, since they could not have held him without their own destruction. Titus, consoled for the delay of vengeance by the speed with which the business had been finished, at once sent very many men to seize John, in case they could overtake him. He himself entered the city and, content to have struck the disturbers of the peace with threats rather than punishment, pardoned everyone, so that no one, moved by hatred or by private disputes, should bring the innocent into ill will and attack them with the charge of the gravest crime. For it is far more tolerable to leave what is uncertain to the fear of a guilty conscience than to condemn an innocent man. Fear often corrects the guilty, but the punishment of the innocent has no remedy of correction. John, then, was not found by those whom Titus had sent; but of those who were following him, little children and women, about two thousand were killed, and three thousand of the weaker age and sex, once the killers had had their fill of slaughter, were assigned to captivity. Titus gave the city a military garrison. So all Galilee was brought under Roman power. For Mount Tabor too, whose height is thirty stadia, while its flat summit extends twenty-three stadia, was abandoned by some for lack of water and handed over by others to the Romans after they had asked for pardon; although it was also through the courage and skill of Placidus, to whom Vespasian had entrusted this task, that the whole crowd of refugees, while they pursued him as he gave way and pressed on him as he skillfully drew back, were surrounded in the middle of the plain, lost their refuge, and found destruction.

Thus far we have been allowed to wander about, occupying our pen with other cities while shrinking from the contagions of the holy temple founded by our forefathers and of the sacred law. But it is now time to undertake what was done at Jerusalem, not relying on talent, but so that we may not seem to have refused the service of our grief to the law of our fathers and the ancient worship. Granted that in these there was a shadow, not the truth; yet the shadow marks out the traces of the truth. For a shadow has the outlines of a picture, but not its brilliance, nor is it finished by the final hand; yet to those who look carefully it expresses what is to come; and therefore the figure delights less but draws more by grace. Hence it pleased the arbiter of all things to abolish the old and found the new, so that those who did not follow the images through the narrow ways of unbelief might follow the truth.

John, fleeing from the parts of Galilee, as we said above, made his way to the city of Jerusalem; and like a kind of plague he infected the minds of many, the ringleaders of crimes who had flowed there from different regions as into a sewer. For this was a greater cause of destruction for that city: that what the desperate men gave to their own crimes, gathering many in one place where they believed they would be either safer or freer to heap up crimes, was thought to be given to faith. So they were received everywhere, as though they had come out of devout love for the temple to defend it. This was the first stain of the evils. From this the gentleness of the few was crushed by the insolence of the many; from this they went on to murders, since a stranger spared less; from this they conspired that the solemn rites of the law should be neglected and the priesthoods transferred from the good to the wicked, because what was holy was unknown to men who were strangers not only to devout worship but to the very knowledge of the law. First men of royal family who resisted were put in chains, so that the rest would yield out of fear; then they were killed; and to cover up the outrage, they falsely claimed that those they had put to death without trial, by sending assassins into the prison, had been killed on a trumped-up charge of treason. So everyone was carried away by fear, because powerful and innocent men, Antipas, Levias and Sophas, had been crushed so easily, so that no one dared to resist any longer. From there it went so far that they appointed base and unworthy men as chief priests, so that men whom no claim of merit to the honor supported, having obtained the priesthood against their deserts, would be subject to every crime at the will of the conspirators. But when the priestly men opposed this, and especially Ananus, the eldest of the rest, they demanded, so that the prerogative of the highest title should not be granted by favor, that a high priest be created by lot, in which nothing would be thought due to favor, but the outcome of the lot would be thought committed to divine judgment. And in truth they pretended an old custom, by which it was the practice that those to be appointed to the high priesthood should be called to the lot; but in fact they were bringing about the dissolution of the law. For whereas the law of priestly succession chose men by lot, they, for appearance' sake, set up one man from the priestly tribes, named Enachus, as present, and ordered the lot to be cast. Then a certain Phannias, son of Samuel, came out by lot, a rustic man, to whom not only no succession descending through the chief priests gave a claim, but not even any knowledge of the priestly office, since he spent his time in the country; and therefore he did not even know what being high priest was. At length he was dragged from the fields and, against his will, as though on a stage another character was put on him; he was also dressed in the robe of the sacred vestments in the ancient manner, and was taught on the spot what he was to do. So the wickedness of the rebels was exposed by the outcome of the lot, so that the office of so great a priesthood was brought down to an unskilled peasant. But to them the cheating of the ancient solemnity was a joke; to the priests it was a grief, and they groaned to see the law mocked by desperate men. Yet relying on the authority of piety and on the indignation of good men, they gathered themselves together and fell upon the disturbers. But since these were outmatched both in their cause and in numbers, they fled to the temple as to a citadel and made it a kind of fortress for themselves, to repel the multitude of the people who were attacking. And at first, posted before the doors of the temple and in the forecourt itself, they fought against the people; if anyone was wounded, he made for the inner parts of the temple, shedding his blood there on the inner threshold, and wiping his more severely wounded sores, bloody from the pavements, and the flesh of the open wound, they nursed them with the garments they were not permitted to touch. There was war within the city, war between citizens, war before the temple. Not even this did the robbers respect: when the people pressed them harder, they withdrew into the temple itself and at once shut the doors. By this barrier Ananus was held back; so as not to seem to make war on the temple and break open the doors of the temple consecrated by the religion of our forefathers, he turned back the attack of the people, and stationed six thousand men in the porticoes, armed, to stand guard and keep watchful custody. Little by little, however, he softened his mind toward seeking peace, chiefly out of zeal that the blood of citizens should not defile the temple; he also urged that an embassy be sent as mediator of peace, so that the civil war might be laid aside. John was taken on to carry out the embassy, a man of suspect loyalty, burning with the desire to seize power. An oath was demanded of him; he did not refuse, lest he suffer harm by refusing, though at the cost of perjury. He pretended to favor the people so as to deceive them. What more? He goes, says a little about peace by way of preface, and adds much more to incite war, saying that war was wrapped up in the name of peace, that a plot lay hidden, that Ananus was handing the city over to the Romans so that the solemn rites of the ancients would be dissolved and the precepts of the law abrogated, inventing everything in the opposite sense, and turning onto the chief priest the odium of what he himself was planning. Cunningly too he incited those he knew to be the leaders and heads of the faction among the men shut in, working on their fear of death and asserting that Ananus had planned destruction for them in particular; he had come, he said, to expose the fraud. Help must be sought quickly, before the penalty was exacted from them by the others. What more? In the midst of peace he kindled war. Men are chosen to ask the Idumaeans to battle: a fickle, restless, insolent race, ready for discord, glad of revolution, heedless of danger, headlong to battle. And so, won over without delay, they come; twenty thousand men are gathered, since they were not occupied with farming the land but ready for robbery. The coming of the Idumaeans could not escape Ananus. So he ordered the gate to be shut, so that they would not enter with tumult, but, if possible, would learn the truth and renounce war.

So the chief priests climbed the wall and addressed the Idumaeans from a tower: it was a very great wonder to them, they said, that they had so quickly been entangled by lies and were taking up arms over matters they did not yet understand, when they ought first to be judges of the matters in dispute rather than fighters in battles, and before all else to learn the merits of the case rather than take up arms; and arms against men of their own race, their own worship, their own solemnities, who had done no more wrong to the Idumaeans than that the Idumaeans were being stirred to share in grave crimes. For what else was being asked of them but parricide against their fellow citizens and sacrilege against the temple? Different pursuits and different characters are not wont to agree with one another; likeness of character makes a fellowship of wills, and kindred pursuits bind themselves together. Most wicked men, who made their living by robbery, had presumed to summon the Idumaeans as their allies: so far apart from the purpose of those by whom they were asked that “they made war on their own people, but begged you to come and defend a city not your own, as it were. You have nothing in common, innocent men, with robbers; nothing in common, sober men, with those who make themselves drunk. Would that their drunkenness were of wine and not of madness! When they have gorged themselves on crimes, squandering their own inheritances, they plunder what belongs to others, and what they have wickedly got they squander more wickedly still, and pour it out in their madness. There is no end to their plundering, because there is no limit to their gluttony. When they have filled themselves with wine and are full of drunkenness, they belch out the surfeit of public affairs, so as to get drunk again on our blood and to mock the sacred religion that has always been an object of veneration and reverence for you. Flee therefore these parricidal gatherings, abandon these sacrilegious games, forsake the assemblies of robbers. You were called to a partnership in crime; you have come as a remedy for your homeland. We see a most distinguished people whom it would have been fitting to come at the request of the public council, to help against the enemy the most eminent city of the Jews, which is held to be the mother city of the whole nation. But even if we failed to ask you while we hoped for peace, and were unwilling to trouble you in haste, since we were offering peace to those who were stirring up war, nevertheless, since you have come as if by divine decision, consider the matter openly and show yourselves judges for both sides. Ask where the beginnings of the uproar came from; who sounded the trumpet to a quiet city; who shed the blood of the most eminent citizens; on whose authority punishment was exacted from men uncondemned; who were our ruin before the Romans. We were preparing war against the Romans, and we were already suffering these men as enemies. Whose friendship with the Romans, then, is suspect? That of those who avenge the Romans, or of those who drive the Romans back? These things are certainly heavier to us than the battles of the Romans: by the Romans we are killed for liberty; by these men we are butchered as if for a crime. Innocent men are falsely charged with treason, and the slander is invented after their death, when a hearing is wont to come before the penalty, not the penalty before the hearing. For what does it profit a dead man to be acquitted, when he owes nothing any longer to the court? Yet we have accepted even this kind of lot, that the question of innocence is raised after the murder; and we gladly plead before you too the cause of our own integrity and that of the dead, before you who stand in arms for our adversaries: so little evidence do the slanderers have that before you too they may have a heavier case, because you believed so quickly. For a good judge grieves to have been surrounded by lies, and is the more hostile to the deceiver the more he was eager, because he thinks he must avenge the fact that he was rashly driven to believe falsehoods. Keep, then, a full hearing for us, and gather the truth not from a heap of words but from the course of events. First of all, why should we betray our homeland to the Romans, when we could have avoided provoking them, and perhaps it ought to have been so, that we did not arouse the conquerors of all nations? But it is not for the present parties to deliberate about this. It belonged to an earlier time to choose what course we would follow; now we must die for liberty, for it is better to die for one's homeland. It would have been more advantageous to prefer peace to war and death; but since war is upon our necks, many of our brothers already captured, others killed, grief for the dead, groaning for those in chains, a free death is rather to be chosen than a life of captivity. Yet it is still open to those about to die to wipe out the disgrace of a false charge of treason. Before you, before you, Idumaeans, we plead our cause: let the accomplices be produced; let the messengers who carried the news be brought forward. If they hold them, let the avengers produce them; if those who accuse do not hold them, and invent charges out of empty suspicions which they have made up for themselves, they ought not to charge what they cannot prove. But since they do not dare to accuse, they want to spread it among the people; and therefore they leap into war so as not to be called to judgment. For in war fury is content; in peace there is examination of the truth. Here we are: see, we offer ourselves of our own accord for the first punishments, if only some accuser comes forward; or if ill will is being stirred against the people, inquire more carefully what was decided in the public assembly. Was it not that armies be prepared and equipped for war, or that each man help his homeland for the sake of liberty? Against these very robbers, certainly, what had been decided except that peace should be agreed? The grief of individuals had sharpened public indignation: the blood of the innocent, the groaning of women, the transgression of the statutes of our fathers. The groaning of all rang out, because each feared the same for himself. The priesthoods were being given to the most unworthy; people began to protest aloud; those men began to strike the people with stones and kill them with weapons; public grief blazed up; they made the temple a den of robbers. So the place of peace, revered even by the Gentiles, the dwelling of holiness, has become a meeting place of bandits; and where men flocked from every part of the earth to the worship of the festal celebration, there now are, as it were, dens of wild beasts, wet with human blood. Granted that it is not for us to inquire into these things, nor for armed men to be without law; yet there has often been judgment amid arms, and justice has laid down the instruments of war, and the sentence of equity has calmed the mobs. You can turn these arms to the defense of the city, which you took up for its overthrow. You may even come in without arms, hear and inquire into everything: if you find anything slackened against the enemy, consider it treason. But if you wish to show yourselves neither avengers nor judges, why do you wonder that the gates are not opened to armed men? They are shut not against kinsmen but against arms. Lay down arms, and the gates will be open.”

When the priests had said these things, and especially Jesus, the eldest of the rest after Ananus, who held the second place, the Idumaeans were indignant that they had not at once been received into the city; and Simon, one of the leaders of the Idumaeans, said: “It is no wonder at all if citizens rage and keep shut in the men who have shut the gates against an allied nation and do not allow their own partners and associates to enter. They speak to us from the wall, and drive back with walls, as if adversaries, those whom they used to have as friends. Who would doubt that they are preparing to receive the Romans, and perhaps to garland the gates when they enter? What greater injury is there? This city is surely wont to stand open to all men for the sake of worship and religious observance; to us alone it is closed, as if to enemies; we alone are disowned, we alone are driven back. They pretend to ask for our judgment, though they did not think us worthy even of the threshold of the city. Let what they have done against those men remain hidden; of our own injury we are witnesses and judges. We perceive what those shut in suffer, when we are ordered to lay down our arms. And can it be believed that the verdict is awaited of men whose loyalty is suspect? Let us hasten, then, to rescue those shut in, for whom the temple has been made a prison, so that they are not kept until the coming of the Roman army and handed over as captives to Vespasian. Let us remove the siege from the temple, let us remove the foulest of guards, who do not allow anyone to go out even to relieve his bowels. If anyone wishes to bring food in to those shut up, he is prevented; if anyone wishes to go out, he is dragged off to death: the practice of religion has become a crime.”

Hearing this, John gave way, considering that it was useless to struggle against the adverse will of God, since hostile armies were roaring at home and abroad, and the city was being attacked from two sides. The Idumaeans chafed at being shut out. Those stationed in the temple were scheming how they might join the Idumaeans; they were tormented by fear that the Idumaeans might leave before the deed was done, while shame wrung from the Idumaeans their intention of going back. And distrust had almost crept in, when suddenly in the night an unbearable storm arose: black tempest, roaring winds, the sky bristling, a great force of rain pouring down, terrible flashes of lightning, monstrous thunder, the earth bellowing, so that it was thought the world was being dissolved. Who would believe that this did more harm to those inside the city than to those staying outside? For the former were everywhere protected by roofs, the latter exposed to the rain; but the fear of harm frightened more than the harm itself. Indeed those who had no shelter of roofs covered themselves with their shields, staying at their posts and not slipping away; while the others, scattered each around his own house, gave room for the gates to be opened by those who were in the temple. Yet the people's opinion was divided and uncertain. Some thought that the most high God, angry with the Idumaeans, had stirred up the storms, because they had come armed against their own kin; Ananus and the deeper minds of the elders conjectured that the Idumaeans would be stirred the more by their hardship to the destruction of their allies. In the end Ananus, more anxious than on other nights, was overcome that night not by bodily weariness but rather by despair of mind; he gave way to affairs that were surging against him and to the storms of the world fighting for his ruin, and did not think he should inspect the guards, as though giving leave to slip away wherever each man pleased. Seizing this opportunity, those who had taken refuge in the temple rose and sawed through the bars of the gates. The crashing of the sky worked with them, so that the sound of the bolts and the noise of men going out was not heard. Then coming to the wall, they unbarred the gate next to the bands of the Idumaeans. That would have been the last day for the whole people, if they had not thought they must make first for the temple rather than for the city. But because those who were kept shut up within the temple feared for themselves, lest, when the entry of the Idumaeans was known, the attack of the people surrounding them should fall on them, and the vengeance of men about to die should demand them, they asked that they themselves first be rescued from destruction, and then, once freed and with forces joined, they would pour out upon the people. The Idumaeans turned aside to those who had sent envoys to beg help for their safety, so that they might repay the authors of this unhoped-for irruption above all with this service. When this went according to plan, all of them together poured out of the temple as from a kind of fortress, and with their line extended cut down whomever they found in all the streets, some asleep, some terrified. Prayers did nothing, tears did nothing, nor badges of honor, nor the regard due to any merit; all were butchered everywhere. At last, seeing the beastly savagery of the pursuers, since no one was spared, some strangled themselves, by a more miserable end, as it seems to me, than if they had been killed by the enemy: for a voluntary death is ascribed to savagery, and the ugly knot of the noose is also counted a disgrace. But what room was there for deliberation, where the fear of torments was so great, when each man feared not death but tortures before death, from which death would be a relief? Blood overflowed everywhere, and above all around the temple, because those who had been guarding the men shut in were gathered there. On that day eight thousand five hundred men were found slain. Then turning to the city, they killed whatever men they met, like a flock of cattle. It was a pitiable sight: war waged inside the city once revered by all, unjust ruin brought on the poor and the weak. The young and the stronger, indeed, whom they thought fit for their faction, were thrust into prison; but many, with great courage, preferred to undergo every torment rather than join the desperate men. There was no limit, no shame: so raged the madness of savagery. Later, when in course of time victims ran short, they began to invent grounds for putting men to death, so as to bring the accused to trial, not that justice might be sought but that cruelty might be stirred up.

There was in the city a certain Zacharias, who hated the wicked and did not mix with criminals, rich in means, whose abundance they thought would either be effective in breaking up their faction or a rich plunder for themselves. They decided to summon him on a charge of treason. But he, with a conscience clear of such things, began to defend himself with freedom, so that he not only refuted the charges but also proved his accusers themselves guilty of the greatest crimes. The case was pleaded before seventy men. They all acquitted him, because nothing akin to a crime was brought forward. But the Zealots rushed in, threw him down into the depth, and threw the judges into confusion, not only with insult but also with danger, so that by their example the rest would beware in future of showing firmness in judging against their will. Again, so that no one would be acquitted, they themselves became the executors of their own anger and killed without trial whomever they pleased. Gorion was slain, a man pleasing and beloved; Niger of Peraea, who had been chosen among the defenders of Judea to guard the whole cause, a warrior who even bore the marks of his valor in the scars of his wounds, was dragged off to death. And when he saw that he was being led out of the city, he began to plead no longer for his life but for burial. And not even to this so pitiable a request did he receive an answer befitting mercy. False charges were invented: if a man bought himself off, he was innocent; whoever did not offer money was struck down as guilty.

While these things were being done at Jerusalem, Vespasian meanwhile was subduing other parts of the Jewish nation. News reached him of the sedition at Jerusalem, of the slaughters they had inflicted on themselves in civil battles, of the punishments exacted from citizens by citizens. Many urged him to go there, so that nothing might be taken away from the Roman triumph and his own glory. But he, a moderate and far-sighted man, who judged not by what the crowd thought convenient but by what, on deeper counsel, would benefit the whole cause, began to answer those who urged this: the state is not always served by battles, but often it is in the end secured when arms are laid down, and the debt to the homeland is paid. “What difference does it make how the enemy is conquered, by our sword or by his own? Except that by his own he is laid low without any odium against Rome. For they cannot complain of us, since they have wounded one another; at the same time they show how just the wars are that they have stirred against us, when they do not spare even themselves. Vengeance seems to come from heaven, so that those who have provoked the Romans rave in madness. But if anyone asserts that something is taken from our glory, let him know that a remedy with silence often outweighs a battle with danger. Indeed our Maximus broke Hannibal more by delaying than by fighting. Although the Scipios subdued Africa, still victory in wars is shared with many; to Maximus alone was it given that by delaying he restored the state. It is greater, therefore, to have preserved the Roman empire than to have extended it. Yet let us weigh the merits of the virtues equally: in war itself the devices of wisdom are certainly no less than the marks of courage. So let them perish by their own arms: nothing is taken from our praise, and very much is added to our victory. Those whom we spare do not know how to spare their own. What if, when we begin to bear down on them, they perhaps come to their senses among themselves and are reconciled? I do not fear it, but I put it forward against your opinion. Or if the sedition continues, they will seem to have conquered themselves, the Roman army to have done nothing, our hands to have been idle, and the victory to have been won not by our valor but by the enemy's mutual slaughter. So this is the wiser plan: that in our absence they rage to their own destruction, so that no one may think they were worn down by our forces rather than by their own factions. Then we shall do better to approach, when a victor survives to add to our triumph. Certainly let those who flee their own come to us; let those whom the plague of their own people has driven out find safety with us.”

Nor was Vespasian mistaken in his opinion: for those who could buy themselves off so as to be let go fled to the Romans. All the paved roads and all the paths were full of people slipping away; the rich were released, the poor were killed, since they lacked money for their ransom. Many also feared ambushes and robbers outside the city, especially the poor, who had no escort. So, with an equal danger set before them abroad and at home, deadly in both places, many nonetheless, in the hope of their fathers' tomb, judged death among their own people more bearable.

When, by the very great slaughter of the people, fear had spread to all and made everyone subject to the faction, John, not content to exercise power in common with the leaders of the faction, began to aim at tyranny and would not bear an equal. So he overturned the decrees of others; he held nothing valid except what pleased him; little by little he gathered bodyguards about him: skilled in guile at entrapping whom he wished by fraud, binding them with money, terrifying them with power, by which arts he had attached very many to himself. On the other hand there were not lacking those who refused servitude even at the cost of danger, especially since, being accustomed to domination, they could not endure slavery. So in one city three kinds of deadly calamity were contending: tyranny, war, and sedition, each of which could destroy not one city but very many. Of the three, however, war was the lightest, and a lawful enemy seemed more bearable than a tyrant or a faction. To these was added a fourth kind, that of the sicarii, who, seeing the city taken up with tyrannical upheavals and the tumults of sedition, laid waste everything nearby and carried off everything. Women and little children, who could not endure the toil of the journey through the weakness of sex or age, they put to death. So seven hundred were killed; grain was carried off into their fortresses; they fell upon fields, towns and temples and drove off plunder; no opportunity of killing was passed over. Under the appearance of an army they carried on robbery, more of them than the practice of brigandage had ever had. By the savagery of their brigandage they made the war more bitter, with no pardon for surrender and no leniency in receiving it.

So Vespasian is asked to come as a remedy, he from whom destruction had been feared. He hastened to Gadara, where there were very many rich men who, because of their property, feared more and more the plots and raids of the robbers; and therefore they had secretly sent to Vespasian to approach them, so that the city might be rescued from the robbers. The Roman army arrived; seeing it, the people of Gadara wished to flee to it, but they could not find a way to do it without destruction, for fear that the faction would rise against them as they left and destroy them all. Yet it did not escape the faction that Vespasian had been invited by an embassy of the Gadarenes; they seized a man privy to that embassy, one of the leading men of the city, named Dolesus, and killed him; and having avenged their injury, they left the city and betook themselves to hidden and better-fortified places. Gadara was handed over to the Romans, and Vespasian was received with great applause. He at once sent Placidus to pursue those who had fled; he himself returned to Caesarea.