ht not seem to deliver what is so portentous to posterity, but that I
have innumerable witnesses to it in my own age; and besides, my country
would have had little reason to thank me for suppressing the miseries
that she underwent at this time.

There was a certain woman that dwelt beyond Jordan, her name was Mary;
her father was Eleazar, of the village Bethezob, which signifies "the
House of Hyssop." She was eminent for her family and her wealth, and had
fled away to Jerusalem with the rest of the multitude, and was with them
besieged therein at this time. The other effects of this woman had been
already seized upon, such I mean as she had brought with her out of
Perea, and removed to the city. What she had treasured up besides, as
also what food she had contrived to save, had been also carried off by
the rapacious guards, who came every day running into her house for that
purpose. This put the poor woman into a very great passion, and by the
frequent reproaches and imprecations she cast at these rapacious
villains she had provoked them to anger against her; but none of them,
either out of the indignation she had raised against herself, or out of
commiseration of her case, would take away her life; and if she found
any food, she perceived her labors were for others, and not for herself;
and it was now become impossible for her any way to find any more food,
while the famine pierced through her very bowels and marrow, when also
her passion was fired to a degree beyond the famine itself; nor did she
consult with anything but with her passion and the necessity she was in.
She then attempted a most unnatural thing; and snatching up her son, who
was a child sucking at her breast, she said: "O thou miserable infant!
for whom shall I preserve thee in this war, this famine, and this
sedition? As to the war with the Romans, if they preserve our lives we
must be slaves. This famine also will destroy us even before that
slavery comes upon us. Yet are these seditious rogues more terrible than
both the other. Come on: be thou my food, and be thou a fury to these
seditious varlets, and a by-word to the world, which is all that is now
wanting to complete the calamities of us Jews."

As soon as she had said this she slew her son, and then roasted him, and
eat the one half of him, and kept the other half by her concealed. Upon
this the seditious came in presently, and smelling the horrid scent of
this food, they threatened her that the