for its confirmation. We often meet with the like use of it in
Josephus.

[36] This custom of the Mesopotamians to carry their household gods
along with them wherever they traveled is as old as the days of Jacob,
when Rachel his wife did the same, Genesis 31:19, 30-35; nor is it to
pass here unobserved, what great miseries came on these Jews, because
they suffered one of their leaders to marry an idolatrous wife, contrary
to the law of Moses. Of which matter see the note on B. XIX. ch. 5.
sect. 3.

[37] This custom, in Syria and Mesopotamia, of setting men upon an ass,
by way of disgrace, is still kept up at Damascus in Syria; where, in
order to show their despite against the Christians, the Turks will not
suffer them to hire horses, but asses only, when they go abroad to see
the country, as Mr. Maundrell assures us, p. 128.

BOOK 19 FOOTNOTES

[1] In this and the three next chapters we have, I think, a larger and
more distinct account of the slaughter of Caius, and the succession of
Claudius, than we have of any such ancient facts whatsoever elsewhere.
Some of the occasions of which probably were, Josephus's bitter hatred
against tyranny, and the pleasure he took in giving the history of the
slaughter of such a barbarous tyrant as was this Caius Caligula, as also
the deliverance his own nation had by that slaughter, of which he speaks
sect. 2, together with the great intimacy he had with Agrippa, junior,
whose father was deeply concerned in the advancement of Claudius, upon
the death of Caius; from which Agrippa, junior, Josephus might be fully
informed Of his history.

[2] Called Caligula by the Romans.

[3] Just such a voice as this is related to be came, and from an unknown
original also, to the famous Polycarp, as he was going to martyrdom,
bidding him "play the man;" as the church of Smyrna assures us in their
account of that his martyrdom, sect. 9.

[4] Here Josephus supposes that it was Augustus, and not Julius Caesar,
who first changed the Roman commonwealth into a monarchy; for these
shows were in honor of Augustus, as we shall learn in the next section.

[5] Suetonius says Caius was slain about the seventh hour of the day,
the ninth. The series of the narration favors Josephus.

[6] The rewards proposed by the Roman laws to informers was sometimes an
eighth part as Spanheim assures us, from the criminal's goods, as here,
and sometimes a fourth part.

[7] These consuls are named in the War of