treat them in
a more gentle manner, returned to Antioch. Florus also conducted him
as far as Cesarea, and deluded him, though he had at that very time the
purpose of showing his anger at the nation, and procuring a war upon
them, by which means alone it was that he supposed he might conceal his
enormities; for he expected that if the peace continued, he should have
the Jews for his accusers before Caesar; but that if he could procure
them to make a revolt, he should divert their laying lesser crimes to
his charge, by a misery that was so much greater; he therefore did every
day augment their calamities, in order to induce them to a rebellion.

4. Now at this time it happened that the Grecians at Cesarea had been
too hard for the Jews, and had obtained of Nero the government of the
city, and had brought the judicial determination: at the same time began
the war, in the twelfth year of the reign of Nero, and the seventeenth
of the reign of Agrippa, in the month of Artemisins [Jyar.] Now the
occasion of this war was by no means proportionable to those heavy
calamities which it brought upon us. For the Jews that dwelt at Cesarea
had a synagogue near the place, whose owner was a certain Cesarean
Greek: the Jews had endeavored frequently to have purchased the
possession of the place, and had offered many times its value for its
price; but as the owner overlooked their offers, so did he raise
other buildings upon the place, in way of affront to them, and made
working-shops of them, and left them but a narrow passage, and such as
was very troublesome for them to go along to their synagogue. Whereupon
the warmer part of the Jewish youth went hastily to the workmen, and
forbade them to build there; but as Florus would not permit them to use
force, the great men of the Jews, with John the publican, being in the
utmost distress what to do, persuaded Florus, with the offer of eight
talents, to hinder the work. He then, being intent upon nothing but
getting money, promised he would do for them all they desired of him,
and then went away from Cesarea to Sebaste, and left the sedition to
take its full course, as if he had sold a license to the Jews to fight
it out.

5. Now on the next day, which was the seventh day of the week, when the
Jews were crowding apace to their synagogue, a certain man of Cesarea,
of a seditious temper, got an earthen vessel, and set it with the bottom
upward, at the entrance of that synagogue, and sacrificed