aul. Cyrenaicus, a Roman senator and
magistrate, was sent by Caesar to make taxation in Syria and Judea, and
Caponius was made procurator of Judea. Philip, a son of Herod, built
cities in honour of Tiberius Caesar. When Pontius Pilate became
procurator he removed the army from Cassarea to Jerusalem, abolished
Jewish laws, and in the night introduced Caesar's effigies on ensigns.

About this time Jesus, a wise man, a doer of wonderful works, drew over
to him many Jews and Gentiles. He was Christ; and when Pilate, at the
suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the
cross, those that loved him did not forsake him, for he appeared to them
again alive at the third day, as the prophets had foretold; and the
tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.
John, who was called the Baptist, was slain by Herod the tetrarch at his
castle at Machserus, by the Dead Sea. The destruction of his army by
Aretas, king of Arabia, was ascribed by the Jews to God's anger for this
crime.

Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great, became the most famous of his
descendants. On him Claudius Caesar bestowed all the dominions of his
grandfather with the title of king. But pride overcame him. Seated on a
throne at a great festival at Caesarea, arrayed in a magnificent robe, he
was stricken by a disease, and died.

He was succeeded by his son Agrippa, during whose time Felix and Festus
were procurators in Judea, while Nero was Roman emperor. This Agrippa
finished the Temple by the work of 18,000 men. The war of the Jews and
Romans began through the oppression by Gessius Florus, who secured the
procuratorship by the friendship of his wife Cleopatra with Poppea, wife
of Nero. Florus filled Judea with intolerable cruelties, and the war
began in the second year of his rule and the twelfth of the reign of
Nero. What happened will be known by those who peruse the books I have
written about the Jewish war.

* * * * *

The Wars of the Jews

Josephus, in his "Wars of the Jews," gives the only full and
reliable account of the tragic siege and destruction of
Jerusalem by the Romans under Titus. Excepting in the opening,
he writes throughout in the third person, although he was
present in the Roman camp as a prisoner during the siege, and
before then had been, as governor of Galilee, the brave and
energetic antagonist of the Romans. Becoming