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There were some bold young men of the village of Dabaritta,
who observed that the wife of Ptolemy, the king's procurator, was
to make a progress over the great plain with a mighty attendance,
and with some horsemen that followed as a guard to them, and this
out of a country that was subject to the king and queen, into the
jurisdiction of the Romans; and fell upon them on a sudden, and
obliged the wife of Ptolemy to fly away, and plundered all the
carriages. They also came to me to Tarichese, with four mules'
loading of garments, and other furniture; and the weight of the
silver they brought was not small, and there were five hundred
pieces of gold also. Now I had a mind to preserve these spoils
for Ptolemy, who was my countryman; and it is prohibited by
our laws even to spoil our enemies; so I said to those that
brought these spoils, that they ought to be kept, in order to
rebuild the walls of Jerusalem with them when they came to be
sold. But the young men took it very ill that they did not
receive a part of those spoils for themselves, as they expected
to have done; so they went among the villages in the neighborhood
of Tiberias, and told the people that I was going to betray their
country to the Romans, and that I used deceitful language to
them, when I said, that what had been thus gotten by rapine
should be kept for the rebuilding of the walls of the city of
Jerusalem; although I had resolved to restore these spoils again
to their former owner. And indeed they were herein not mistaken
as to my intentions; for when I had gotten clear of them, I sent
for two of the principal men, Dassion, and Janneus the son of
Levi, persons that were among the chief friends of the king, and
commanded them to take the furniture that had been plundered, and
to send it to him; and I threatened that I would order them to be
put to death by way of punishment, if they discovered this my
command to any other person.
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