, or adding any thing to the known
truth of things.

11. After this, I shall relate the barbarity of the tyrants towards the
people of their own nation, as well as the indulgence of the Romans in
sparing foreigners; and how often Titus, out of his desire to preserve
the city and the temple, invited the seditious to come to terms of
accommodation. I shall also distinguish the sufferings of the people,
and their calamities; how far they were afflicted by the sedition, and
how far by the famine, and at length were taken. Nor shall I omit to
mention the misfortunes of the deserters, nor the punishments inflicted
on the captives; as also how the temple was burnt, against the consent
of Caesar; and how many sacred things that had been laid up in the
temple were snatched out of the fire; the destruction also of the entire
city, with the signs and wonders that went before it; and the taking the
tyrants captives, and the multitude of those that were made slaves,
and into what different misfortunes they were every one distributed.
Moreover, what the Romans did to the remains of the wall; and how they
demolished the strong holds that were in the country; and how Titus
went over the whole country, and settled its affairs; together with his
return into Italy, and his triumph.

12. I have comprehended all these things in seven books, and have left
no occasion for complaint or accusation to such as have been acquainted
with this war; and I have written it down for the sake of those that
love truth, but not for those that please themselves [with fictitious
relations]. And I will begin my account of these things with what I call
my First Chapter.

WAR PREFACE FOOTNOTES

[1] I have already observed more than once, that this History of the
Jewish War was Josephus's first work, and published about A.D. 75, when
he was but thirty-eight years of age; and that when he wrote it, he was
not thoroughly acquainted with several circumstances of history from
the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, with which it begins, till near his own
times, contained in the first and former part of the second book, and
so committed many involuntary errors therein. That he published
his Antiquities eighteen years afterward, in the thirteenth year of
Domitian, A.D. 93, when he was much more completely acquainted with
those ancient times, and after he had perused those most authentic
histories, the First Book of Maccabees, and the Chronicles of the
Priesthood of John