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1. However, Florus contrived another way to oblige the Jews to
begin the war, and sent to Cestius, and accused the Jews falsely
of revolting [from the Roman government], and imputed the
beginning of the former fight to them, and pretended they had
been the authors of that disturbance, wherein they were only the
sufferers. Yet were not the governors of Jerusalem silent upon
this occasion, but did themselves write to Cestius, as did
Bernice also, about the illegal practices of which Florus had
been guilty against the city; who, upon reading both accounts,
consulted with his captains [what he should do]. Now some of them
thought it best for Cestius to go up with his army, either to
punish the revolt, if it was real, or to settle the Roman affairs
on a surer foundation, if the Jews continued quiet under them;
but he thought it best himself to send one of his intimate
friends beforehand, to see the state of affairs, and to give him
a faithful account of the intentions of the Jews. Accordingly, he
sent one of his tribunes, whose name was Neopolitanus, who met
with king Agrippa as he was returning from Alexandria, at Jamnia,
and told him who it was that sent him, and on what errands he was
sent.
2. And here it was that the high priests, and men of power among
the Jews, as well as the sanhedrim, came to congratulate the king
[upon his safe return]; and after they had paid him their
respects, they lamented their own calamities, and related to him
what barbarous treatment they had met with from Florus. At which
barbarity Agrippa had great indignation, but transferred, after a
subtle manner, his anger towards those Jews whom he really
pitied, that he might beat down their high thoughts of
themselves, and would have them believe that they had not been so
unjustly treated, in order to dissuade them from avenging
themselves. So these great men, as of better understanding than
the rest, and desirous of peace, because of the possessions they
had, understood that this rebuke which the king gave them was
intended for their good; but as to the people, they came sixty
furlongs out of Jerusalem, and congratulated both Agrippa and
Neopolitanus; but the wives of those that had been slain came
running first of all and lamenting. The people also, when they
heard their mourning, fell into lamentations also, and besought
Agrippa to assist them: they also cried out to Neopolitanus, and
complained of the many miseries they had endured under Florus;
and they showed them, when they were come into the city, how the
market-place was made desolate, and the houses plundered. They
then persuaded Neopolitanus, by the means of Agrippa, that he
would walk round the city, with one only servant, as far as
Siloam, that he might inform himself that the Jews submitted to
all the rest of the Romans, and were only displeased at Florus,
by reason of his exceeding barbarity to them. So he walked round,
and had sufficient experience of the good temper the people were
in, and then went up to the temple, where he called the multitude
together, and highly commended them for their fidelity to the
Romans, and earnestly exhorted them to keep the peace; and having
performed such parts of Divine worship at the temple as he was
allowed to do, he returned to Cestius.
3. But as for the multitude of the Jews, they addressed
themselves to the king, and to the high priests, and desired they
might have leave to send ambassadors to Nero against Florus, and
not by their silence afford a suspicion that they had been the
occasions of such great slaughters as had been made, and were
disposed to revolt, alleging that they should seem to have been
the first beginners of the war, if they did not prevent the
report by showing who it was that began it; and it appeared
openly that they would not be quiet, if any body should hinder
them from sending such an embassage. But Agrippa, although he
thought it too dangerous a thing for them to appoint men to go as
the accusers of Florus, yet did he not think it fit for him to
overlook them, as they were in a disposition for war. He
therefore called the multitude together into a large gallery, and
placed his sister Bernice in the house of the Asamoneans, that
she might be seen by them, (which house was over the gallery, at
the passage to the upper city, where the bridge joined the temple
to the gallery,) and spake to them as follows:
4. " Had I perceived that you were all zealously disposed to
go to war with the Romans, and that the purer and more sincere
part of the people did not propose to live in peace, I had not
come out to you, nor been so bold as to give you counsel; for all
discourses that tend to persuade men to do what they ought to do
are superfluous, when the hearers are agreed to do the contrary.
But because some are earnest to go to war because they are young,
and without experience of the miseries it brings, and because
some are for it out of an unreasonable expectation of regaining
their liberty, and because others hope to get by it, and are
therefore earnestly bent upon it, that in the confusion of your
affairs they may gain what belongs to those that are too weak to
resist them, I have thought proper to get you all together, and
to say to you what I think to be for your advantage; that so the
former may grow wiser, and change their minds, and that the best
men may come to no harm by the ill conduct of some others. And
let not any one be tumultuous against me, in case what they hear
me say do not please them; for as to those that admit of no cure,
but are resolved upon a revolt, it will still be in their power
to retain the same sentiments after my exhortation is over; but
still my discourse will fall to the ground, even with a relation
to those that have a mind to hear me, unless you will all keep
silence. I am well aware that many make a tragical exclamation
concerning the injuries that have been offered you by your
procurators, and concerning the glorious advantages of liberty;
but before I begin the inquiry, who you are that must go to war,
and who they are against whom you must fight, I shall first
separate those pretenses that are by some connected together; for
if you aim at avenging yourselves on those that have done you
injury, why do you pretend this to be a war for recovering your
liberty? but if you think all servitude intolerable, to what
purpose serve your complaint against your particular governors?
for if they treated you with moderation, it would still be
equally an unworthy thing to be in servitude. Consider now the
several cases that may be supposed, how little occasion there is
for your going to war. Your first occasion is the accusations you
have to make against your procurators; now here you ought to be
submissive to those in authority, and not give them any
provocation; but when you reproach men greatly for small
offenses, you excite those whom you reproach to be your
adversaries; for this will only make them leave off hurting you
privately, and with some degree of modesty, and to lay what you
have waste openly. Now nothing so much damps the force of strokes
as bearing them with patience; and the quietness of those who are
injured diverts the injurious persons from afflicting. But let us
take it for granted that the Roman ministers are injurious to
you, and are incurably severe; yet are they not all the Romans
who thus injure you; nor hath Caesar, against whom you are going
to make war, injured you: it is not by their command that any
wicked governor is sent to you; for they who are in the west
cannot see those that are in the east; nor indeed is it easy for
them there even to hear what is done in these parts. Now it is
absurd to make war with a great many for the sake of one, to do
so with such mighty people for a small cause; and this when these
people are not able to know of what you complain: nay, such
crimes as we complain of may soon be corrected, for the same
procurator will not continue for ever; and probable it is that
the successors will come with more moderate inclinations. But as
for war, if it be once begun, it is not easily laid down again,
nor borne without calamities coming therewith. However, as to the
desire of recovering your liberty, it is unseasonable to indulge
it so late; whereas you ought to have labored earnestly in old
time that you might never have lost it; for the first experience
of slavery was hard to be endured, and the struggle that you
might never have been subject to it would have been just; but
that slave who hath been once brought into subjection, and then
runs away, is rather a refractory slave than a lover of liberty;
for it was then the proper time for doing all that was possible,
that you might never have admitted the Romans [into your city],
when Pompey came first into the country. But so it was, that our
ancestors and their kings, who were in much better circumstances
than we are, both as to money, and strong bodies, and [valiant]
souls, did not bear the onset of a small body of the Roman army.
And yet you, who have now accustomed yourselves to obedience from
one generation to another, and who are so much inferior to those
who first submitted, in your circumstances will venture to oppose
the entire empire of the Romans. While those Athenians, who, in
order to preserve the liberty of Greece, did once set fire to
their own city; who pursued Xerxes, that proud prince, when he
sailed upon the land, and walked upon the sea, and could not be
contained by the seas, but conducted such an army as was too
broad for Europe; and made him run away like a fugitive in a
single ship, and brake so great a part of Asia at the Lesser
Salamis; are yet at this time servants to the Romans; and those
injunctions which are sent from Italy become laws to the
principal governing city of Greece. Those Lacedemonians also who
got the great victories at Thermopylae. and Platea, and had
Agesilaus [for their king], and searched every corner of Asia,
are contented to admit the same lords. Those Macedonians also,
who still fancy what great men their Philip and Alexander were,
and see that the latter had promised them the empire over the
world, these bear so great a change, and pay their obedience to
those whom fortune hath advanced in their stead. Moreover, ten
thousand ether nations there are who had greater reason than we
to claim their entire liberty, and yet do submit. You are the
only people who think it a disgrace to be servants to those to
whom all the world hath submitted. What sort of an army do you
rely on? What are the arms you depend on? Where is your fleet,
that may seize upon the Roman seas? and where are those treasures
which may be sufficient for your undertakings? Do you suppose, I
pray you, that you are to make war with the Egyptians, and with
the Arabians? Will you not carefully reflect upon the Roman
empire? Will you not estimate your own weakness? Hath not your
army been often beaten even by your neighboring nations, while
the power of the Romans is invincible in all parts of the
habitable earth? nay, rather they seek for somewhat still beyond
that; for all Euphrates is not a sufficient boundary for them on
the east side, nor the Danube on the north; and for their
southern limit, Libya hath been searched over by them, as far as
countries uninhabited, as is Cadiz their limit on the west; nay,
indeed, they have sought for another habitable earth beyond the
ocean, and have carried their arms as far as such British islands
as were never known before. What therefore do you pretend to? Are
you richer than the Gauls, stronger than the Germans, wiser than
the Greeks, more numerous than all men upon the habitable earth?
What confidence is it that elevates you to oppose the Romans?
Perhaps it will be said, It is hard to endure slavery. Yes; but
how much harder is this to the Greeks, who were esteemed the
noblest of all people under the sun! These, though they inhabit
in a large country, are in subjection to six bundles of Roman
rods. It is the same case with the Macedonians, who have juster
reason to claim their liberty than you have. What is the case of
five hundred cities of Asia? Do they not submit to a single
governor, and to the consular bundle of rods? What need I speak
of the Henlochi, and Colchi and the nation of Tauri, those that
inhabit the Bosphorus, and the nations about Pontus, and Meotis,
who formerly knew not so much as a lord of their own, but arc now
subject to three thousand armed men, and where forty long ships
keep the sea in peace, which before was not navigable, and very
tempestuous? How strong a plea may Bithynia, and Cappadocia, and
the people of Pamphylia, the Lycians, and Cilicians, put in for
liberty! But they are made tributary without an army. What are
the circumstances of the Thracians, whose country extends in
breadth five days' journey, and in length seven, and is of a much
more harsh constitution, and much more defensible, than yours,
and by the rigor of its cold sufficient to keep off armies from
attacking them? do not they submit to two thousand men of the
Roman garrisons? Are not the Illyrlans, who inhabit the country
adjoining, as far as Dalmatia and the Danube, governed by barely
two legions? by which also they put a stop to the incursions of
the Daeians. And for the Dalmatians, who have made such frequent
insurrections in order to regain their liberty, and who could
never before be so thoroughly subdued, but that they always
gathered their forces together again, revolted, yet are they now
very quiet under one Roman legion. Moreover, if eat advantages
might provoke any people to revolt, the Gauls might do it best of
all, as being so thoroughly walled round by nature; on the east
side by the Alps, on the north by the river Rhine, on the south
by the Pyrenean mountains, and on the west by the ocean. Now
although these Gauls have such obstacles before them to prevent
any attack upon them, and have no fewer than three hundred and
five nations among them, nay have, as one may say, the fountains
of domestic happiness within themselves, and send out plentiful
streams of happiness over almost the whole world, these bear to
be tributary to the Romans, and derive their prosperous condition
from them; and they undergo this, not because they are of
effeminate minds, or because they are of an ignoble stock, as
having borne a war of eighty years in order to preserve their
liberty; but by reason of the great regard they have to the power
of the Romans, and their good fortune, which is of greater
efficacy than their arms. These Gauls, therefore, are kept in
servitude by twelve hundred soldiers, which are hardly so many as
are their cities; nor hath the gold dug out of the mines of Spain
been sufficient for the support of a war to preserve their
liberty, nor could their vast distance from the Romans by land
and by sea do it; nor could the martial tribes of the Lusitanians
and Spaniards escape; no more could the ocean, with its tide,
which yet was terrible to the ancient inhabitants. Nay, the
Romans have extended their arms beyond the pillars of Hercules,
and have walked among the clouds, upon the Pyrenean mountains,
and have subdued these nations. And one legion is a sufficient
guard for these people, although they were so hard to be
conquered, and at a distance so remote from Rome. Who is there
among you that hath not heard of the great number of the Germans?
You have, to be sure, yourselves seen them to be strong and tall,
and that frequently, since the Romans have them among their
captives every where; yet these Germans, who dwell in an immense
country, who have minds greater than their bodies, and a soul
that despises death, and who are in rage more fierce than wild
beasts, have the Rhine for the boundary of their enterprises, and
are tamed by eight Roman legions. Such of them as were taken
captive became their servants; and the rest of the entire nation
were obliged to save themselves by flight. Do you also, who
depend on the walls of Jerusalem, consider what a wall the
Britons had; for the Romans sailed away to them, an subdued them
while they were encompassed by the ocean, and inhabited an island
that is not less than the [continent of this] habitable earth;
and four legions are a sufficient guard to so large all island
And why should I speak much more about this matter, while the
Parthians, that most warlike body of men, and lords of so many
nations, and encompassed with such mighty forces, send hostages
to the Romans? whereby you may see, if you please, even in Italy,
the noblest nation of the East, under the notion of peace,
submitting to serve them. Now when almost all people under the
sun submit to the Roman arms, will you be the only people that
make war against them? and this without regarding the fate of the
Carthaginians, who, in the midst of their brags of the great
Hannibal, and the nobility of their Phoenician original, fell by
the hand of Scipio. Nor indeed have the Cyrenians, derived from
the Lacedemonians, nor the Marmaridite, a nation extended as far
as the regions uninhabitable for want of water, nor have the
Syrtes, a place terrible to such as barely hear it described, the
Nasamons and Moors, and the immense multitude of the Numidians,
been able to put a stop to the Roman valor. And as for the third
part of the habitable earth, [Akica,] whose nations are so many
that it is not easy to number them, and which is bounded by the
Atlantic Sea and the pillars of Hercules, and feeds an
innumerable multitude of Ethiopians, as far as the Red Sea, these
have the Romans subdued entirely. And besides the annual fruits
of the earth, which maintain the multitude of the Romans for
eight months in the year, this, over and above, pays all sorts of
tribute, and affords revenues suitable to the necessities of the
government. Nor do they, like you, esteem such injunctions a
disgrace to them, although they have but one Roman legion that
abides among them. And indeed what occasion is there for showing
you the power of the Romans over remote countries, when it is so
easy to learn it from Egypt, in your neighborhood? This country
is extended as far as the Ethiopians, and Arabia the Happy, and
borders upon India; it hath seven millions five hundred thousand
men, besides the inhabitants of Alexandria, as may be learned
from the revenue of the poll tax; yet it is not ashamed to submit
to the Roman government, although it hath Alexandria as a grand
temptation to a revolt, by reason it is so full of people and of
riches, and is besides exceeding large, its length being thirty
furlongs, and its breadth no less than ten; and it pays more
tribute to the Romans in one month than you do in a year; nay,
besides what it pays in money, it sends corn to Rome that
supports it for four months [in the year]: it is also walled
round on all sides, either by almost impassable deserts, or seas
that have no havens, or by rivers, or by lakes; yet have none of
these things been found too strong for the Roman good fortune;
however, two legions that lie in that city are a bridle both for
the remoter parts of Egypt, and for the parts inhabited by the
more noble Macedonians. Where then are those people whom you are
to have for your auxiliaries? Must they come from the parts of
the world that are uninhabited? for all that are in the habitable
earth are [under the] Romans. Unless any of you extend his hopes
as far as beyond the Euphrates, and suppose that those of your
own nation that dwell in Adiabene will come to your assistance;
but certainly these will not embarrass themselves with an
unjustifiable war, nor, if they should follow such ill advice,
will the Parthians permit them so to do; for it is their concern
to maintain the truce that is between them and the Romans, and
they will be supposed to break the covenants between them, if any
under their government march against the Romans. What remains,
therefore, is this, that you have recourse to Divine assistance;
but this is already on the side of the Romans; for it is
impossible that so vast an empire should be settled without God's
providence. Reflect upon it, how impossible it is for your
zealous observations of your religious customs to be here
preserved, which are hard to be observed even when you fight with
those whom you are able to conquer; and how can you then most of
all hope for God's assistance, when, by being forced to
transgress his law, you will make him turn his face from you? and
if you do observe the custom of the sabbath days, and will not be
revealed on to do any thing thereon, you will easily be taken, as
were your forefathers by Pompey, who was the busiest in his siege
on those days on which the besieged rested. But if in time of war
you transgress the law of your country, I cannot tell on whose
account you will afterward go to war; for your concern is but
one, that you do nothing against any of your forefathers; and how
will you call upon God to assist you, when you are voluntarily
transgressing against his religion? Now all men that go to war do
it either as depending on Divine or on human assistance; but
since your going to war will cut off both those assistances,
those that are for going to war choose evident destruction. What
hinders you from slaying your children and wives with your own
hands, and burning this most excellent native city of yours? for
by this mad prank you will, however, escape the reproach of being
beaten. But it were best, O my friends, it were best, while the
vessel is still in the haven, to foresee the impending storm, and
not to set sail out of the port into the middle of the
hurricanes; for we justly pity those who fall into great
misfortunes without fore-seeing them; but for him who rushes into
manifest ruin, he gains reproaches [instead of commiseration].
But certainly no one can imagine that you can enter into a war as
by agreement, or that when the Romans have got you under their
power, they will use you with moderation, or will not rather, for
an example to other nations, burn your holy city, and utterly
destroy your whole nation; for those of you who shall survive the
war will not be able to find a place whither to flee, since all
men have the Romans for their lords already, or are afraid they
shall have hereafter. Nay, indeed, the danger concerns not those
Jews that dwell here only, but those of them which dwell in other
cities also; for there is no people upon the habitable earth
which have not some portion of you among them, whom your enemies
will slay, in case you go to war, and on that account also; and
so every city which hath Jews in it will be filled with slaughter
for the sake of a few men, and they who slay them will be
pardoned; but if that slaughter be not made by them, consider how
wicked a thing it is to take arms against those that are so kind
to you. Have pity, therefore, if not on your children and wives,
yet upon this your metropolis, and its sacred walls; spare the
temple, and preserve the holy house, with its holy furniture, for
yourselves; for if the Romans get you under their power, they
will no longer abstain from them, when their former abstinence
shall have been so ungratefully requited. I call to witness your
sanctuary, and the holy angels of God, and this country common to
us all, that I have not kept back any thing that is for your
preservation; and if you will follow that advice which you ought
to do, you will have that peace which will be common to you and
to me; but if you indulge four passions, you will run those
hazards which I shall be free
from."
5. When Agrippa had spoken thus, both he and his sister wept, and
by their tears repressed a great deal of the violence of the
people; but still they cried out, that they would not fight
against the Romans, but against Florus, on account of what they
had suffered by his means. To which Agrippa replied, that what
they had already done was like such as make war against the
Romans; "for you have not paid the tribute which is due to Caesar
and you have cut off the cloisters [of the temple] from
joining to the tower Antonia. You will therefore prevent any
occasion of revolt if you will but join these together again, and
if you will but pay your tribute; for the citadel does not now
belong to Florus, nor are you to pay the tribute money to
Florus."
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