aster of that passage
which king Alexander [the Great] shut up with iron gates. This king gave
them leave to come through them; so they came in great multitudes, and
fell upon the Medes unexpectedly, and plundered their country, which
they found full of people, and replenished with abundance of cattle,
while nobody durst make any resistance against them; for Paeorus, the
king of the country, had fled away for fear into places where they could
not easily come at him, and had yielded up every thing he had to them,
and had only saved his wife and his concubines from them, and that with
difficulty also, after they had been made captives, by giving them a
hundred talents for their ransom. These Alans therefore plundered the
country without opposition, and with great ease, and proceeded as far
as Armenia, laying all waste before them. Now Tiridates was king of that
country, who met them, and fought them, but had like to have been taken
alive in the battle; for a certain man threw a net over him from a great
distance, and had soon drawn him to him, unless he had immediately cut
the cord with his sword, and ran away, and prevented it. So the Alans,
being still more provoked by this sight, laid waste the country, and
drove a great multitude of the men, and a great quantity of the other
prey they had gotten out of both kingdoms, along with them, and then
retreated back to their own country.

CHAPTER 8.

Concerning Masada And Those Sicarii Who Kept It; And How
Silva Betook Himself To Form The Siege Of That Citadel.
Eleazar's Speeches To The Besieged.

1. When Bassus was dead in Judea, Flavius Silva succeeded him as
procurator there; who, when he saw that all the rest of the country was
subdued in this war, and that there was but one only strong hold
that was still in rebellion, he got all his army together that lay in
different places, and made an expedition against it. This fortress was
called Masada. It was one Eleazar, a potent man, and the commander of
these Sicarii, that had seized upon it. He was a descendant from that
Judas who had persuaded abundance of the Jews, as we have formerly
related, not to submit to the taxation when Cyrenius was sent into Judea
to make one; for then it was that the Sicarii got together against
those that were willing to submit to the Romans, and treated them in all
respects as if they had been their enemies, both by plundering them
of what they had, by driving away their cat