See the note on the War. B. I. ch. 33. sect. 2.

[15] This famine for two years that affected Judea and Syria, the
thirteenth mid fourteenth years of Herod, which are the twenty-third and
twenty-fourth years before the Christian era, seems to have been more
terrible during this time than was that in the days of Jacob, Genesis
41., 42. And what makes the comparison the more remarkable is this, that
now, as well as then, the relief they had was from Egypt also; then from
Joseph the governor of Egypt, under Pharaoh king of Egypt; and now from
Petronius the prefect of Egypt, under Augustus the Roman emperor. See
almost the like case, Antiq. B. XX. ch. 2. sect. 6. It is also well
worth our observation here, that these two years were a Sabbatic year,
and a year of jubilee, for which Providence, during the theocracy, used
to provide a triple crop beforehand; but became now, when the Jews had
forfeited that blessing, the greatest years of famine to them ever since
the days of Ahab, 1 Kings 17., 18.

[16] This Aelius Gallus seems to be no other than that Aelius Lagus whom
Dio speaks of as conducting an expedition that was about this time made
into Arabia Felix, according to Betarius, who is here cited by Spanheim.
See a full account of this expedition in Prideaux, at the years 23 and
24.

[17] One may here take notice, that how tyrannical and extravagant
soever Herod were in himself, and in his Grecian cities, as to those
plays, and shows, and temples for idolatry, mentioned above, ch. 8.
sect. 1, and here also; yet durst even he introduce very few of them
into the cities of the Jews, who, as Josephus here notes, would not even
then have borne them, so zealous were they still for many of the laws
of Moses, even under so tyrannical a government as this was of Herod
the Great; which tyrannical government puts me naturally in mind of
Dean Prideaux's honest reflection upon the like ambition after such
tyrannical power in Pompey and Caesar: "One of these [says he, at the
year 60] could not bear an equal, nor the other a superior; and through
this ambitions humor and thirst after more power in these two men, the
whole Roman empire being divided into two opposite factions, there was
produced hereby the most destructive war that ever afflicted it; and the
like folly too much reigns in all other places. Could about thirty men
be persuaded to live at home in peace, without enterprising upon
the rights of each other, for the vain glory o