bune,
Nicanor, a personal friend of Josephus, to assure him of his
safety, if he would surrender. In the account Josephus gives of the
transaction, he says that at this moment he suddenly remembered a
dream--in which it was revealed to him that all these calamities
should fall upon the Jews, that he himself should be saved, and
that Vespasian should become emperor--and that, therefore, if he
passed over to the Romans he would do so not as a renegade, but in
obedience to the voice of God.

It was certainly a happy coincidence that the dream should have
occurred to him, at this moment. He at once announced his readiness
to surrender; but his forty companions did not see the matter in
the same light. The moment Josephus left them, the Roman soldiers
would throw combustibles down the well, and suffocate them, if they
did not come out and submit to slaughter.

They urged upon Josephus that he was their leader; that they had
all followed his orders, and cast in their lot with his; and that
it would be treacherous and base, in the extreme, for him now to
save his life by going over to the Romans, when all the inferior
people had slain themselves, or had submitted to slaughter, rather
than beg their lives of the Romans. Josephus argued with them, at
length, but they were not convinced and, drawing their swords,
threatened to kill him, if he tried to leave them. They would all
die together, they said.

Josephus then proposed that, in order to avoid the sin of suicide,
they should draw lots which should kill each other. To this they
assented; and they continued to draw lots as to which should slay
the other, until only Josephus and one other remained alive.

This is the story that Josephus tells. He was, of course,
endeavoring to put his own case in the best light, and to endeavor
to prove that he was not--as the Jews universally regarded him--a
traitor to his country. It need hardly be said that the story is
improbable, in the extreme; and that, had any one of the forty men
survived and written the history, he would probably have told a
very different tale.

The conduct of Josephus, from the first outbreak of the trouble,
showed that he was entirely adverse to the rising against the
Romans. He himself, having been to Rome, had seen her power and
might; and had been received with great favor by Poppaea, the wife
of Nero, and had made many friends there. He had, therefore, at the
outset, opposed as far as he was able, with