s's permission, to plead for the
liberty of their country; those that came were fifty in number, but
there were more than eight thousand of the Jews at Rome who supported
them. And when Caesar had assembled a council of the principal Romans
in Apollo's [2] temple, that was in the palace, [this was what he had
himself built and adorned, at a vast expense,] the multitude of the Jews
stood with the ambassadors, and on the other side stood Archelaus, with
his friends; but as for the kindred of Archelaus, they stood on neither
side; for to stand on Archelaus's side, their hatred to him, and envy at
him, would not give them leave, while yet they were afraid to be seen by
Caesar with his accusers. Besides these, there were present Archelaus's
brother Philip, being sent thither beforehand, out of kindness by
Varus, for two reasons: the one was this, that he might be assisting
to Archelaus; and the other was this, that in case Caesar should make
a distribution of what Herod possessed among his posterity, he might
obtain some share of it.

2. And now, upon the permission that was given the accusers to speak,
they, in the first place, went over Herod's breaches of their law, and
said that he was not a king, but the most barbarous of all tyrants, and
that they had found him to be such by the sufferings they underwent from
him; that when a very great number had been slain by him, those that
were left had endured such miseries, that they called those that
were dead happy men; that he had not only tortured the bodies of his
subjects, but entire cities, and had done much harm to the cities of his
own country, while he adorned those that belonged to foreigners; and he
shed the blood of Jews, in order to do kindnesses to those people that
were out of their bounds; that he had filled the nation full of poverty,
and of the greatest iniquity, instead of that happiness and those laws
which they had anciently enjoyed; that, in short, the Jews had borne
more calamities from Herod, in a few years, than had their forefathers
during all that interval of time that had passed since they had come out
of Babylon, and returned home, in the reign of Xerxes [3] that, however,
the nation was come to so low a condition, by being inured to hardships,
that they submitted to his successor of their own accord, though he
brought them into bitter slavery; that accordingly they readily called
Archelaus, though he was the son of so great a tyrant, king, after the