y commended them for
their fidelity to the Romans, and earnestly exhorted them to keep the
peace; and having performed such parts of Divine worship at the temple
as he was allowed to do, he returned to Cestius.

3. But as for the multitude of the Jews, they addressed themselves to
the king, and to the high priests, and desired they might have leave to
send ambassadors to Nero against Florus, and not by their silence afford
a suspicion that they had been the occasions of such great slaughters
as had been made, and were disposed to revolt, alleging that they
should seem to have been the first beginners of the war, if they did not
prevent the report by showing who it was that began it; and it appeared
openly that they would not be quiet, if any body should hinder them
from sending such an embassage. But Agrippa, although he thought it
too dangerous a thing for them to appoint men to go as the accusers of
Florus, yet did he not think it fit for him to overlook them, as
they were in a disposition for war. He therefore called the multitude
together into a large gallery, and placed his sister Bernice in the
house of the Asamoneans, that she might be seen by them, [which house
was over the gallery, at the passage to the upper city, where the bridge
joined the temple to the gallery,] and spake to them as follows:

4.[24] "Had I perceived that you were all zealously disposed to go to
war with the Romans, and that the purer and more sincere part of the
people did not propose to live in peace, I had not come out to you, nor
been so bold as to give you counsel; for all discourses that tend to
persuade men to do what they ought to do are superfluous, when the
hearers are agreed to do the contrary. But because some are earnest to
go to war because they are young, and without experience of the
miseries it brings, and because some are for it out of an unreasonable
expectation of regaining their liberty, and because others hope to get
by it, and are therefore earnestly bent upon it, that in the confusion
of your affairs they may gain what belongs to those that are too weak to
resist them, I have thought proper to get you all together, and to say
to you what I think to be for your advantage; that so the former may
grow wiser, and change their minds, and that the best men may come to
no harm by the ill conduct of some others. And let not any one be
tumultuous against me, in case what they hear me say do not please them;
for as to those th