kind
of hatchet is given them when they are first admitted among them]; and
covering themselves round with their garment, that they may not affront
the Divine rays of light, they ease themselves into that pit, after
which they put the earth that was dug out again into the pit; and even
this they do only in the more lonely places, which they choose out for
this purpose; and although this easement of the body be natural, yet
it is a rule with them to wash themselves after it, as if it were a
defilement to them.

10. Now after the time of their preparatory trial is over, they are
parted into four classes; and so far are the juniors inferior to the
seniors, that if the seniors should be touched by the juniors, they must
wash themselves, as if they had intermixed themselves with the company
of a foreigner. They are long-lived also, insomuch that many of them
live above a hundred years, by means of the simplicity of their diet;
nay, as I think, by means of the regular course of life they observe
also. They contemn the miseries of life, and are above pain, by the
generosity of their mind. And as for death, if it will be for their
glory, they esteem it better than living always; and indeed our war with
the Romans gave abundant evidence what great souls they had in their
trials, wherein, although they were tortured and distorted, burnt and
torn to pieces, and went through all kinds of instruments of torment,
that they might be forced either to blaspheme their legislator, or to
eat what was forbidden them, yet could they not be made to do either of
them, no, nor once to flatter their tormentors, or to shed a tear;
but they smiled in their very pains, and laughed those to scorn who
inflicted the torments upon them, and resigned up their souls with great
alacrity, as expecting to receive them again.

11. For their doctrine is this: That bodies are corruptible, and that
the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that the souls are
immortal, and continue for ever; and that they come out of the most
subtile air, and are united to their bodies as to prisons, into which
they are drawn by a certain natural enticement; but that when they are
set free from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long
bondage, rejoice and mount upward. And this is like the opinions of the
Greeks, that good souls have their habitations beyond the ocean, in a
region that is neither oppressed with storms of rain or snow, or with
intense