voluntarily delay the taking of the city, and allowed time to
the siege, in order to let the authors have opportunity for repentance.
But if any one makes an unjust accusation against us, when we speak so
passionately about the tyrants, or the robbers, or sorely bewail the
misfortunes of our country, let him indulge my affections herein, though
it be contrary to the rules for writing history; because it had so
come to pass, that our city Jerusalem had arrived at a higher degree of
felicity than any other city under the Roman government, and yet at last
fell into the sorest of calamities again. Accordingly, it appears to
me that the misfortunes of all men, from the beginning of the world,
if they be compared to these of the Jews [3] are not so considerable as
they were; while the authors of them were not foreigners neither. This
makes it impossible for me to contain my lamentations. But if any one be
inflexible in his censures of me, let him attribute the facts themselves
to the historical part, and the lamentations to the writer himself only.

5. However, I may justly blame the learned men among the Greeks, who,
when such great actions have been done in their own times, which, upon
the comparison, quite eclipse the old wars, do yet sit as judges of
those affairs, and pass bitter censures upon the labors of the best
writers of antiquity; which moderns, although they may be superior
to the old writers in eloquence, yet are they inferior to them in
the execution of what they intended to do. While these also write new
histories about the Assyrians and Medes, as if the ancient writers had
not described their affairs as they ought to have done; although these
be as far inferior to them in abilities as they are different in their
notions from them. For of old every one took upon them to write what
happened in his own time; where their immediate concern in the actions
made their promises of value; and where it must be reproachful to write
lies, when they must be known by the readers to be such. But then,
an undertaking to preserve the memory Of what hath not been before
recorded, and to represent the affairs of one's own time to those that
come afterwards, is really worthy of praise and commendation. Now he is
to be esteemed to have taken good pains in earnest, not who does no more
than change the disposition and order of other men's works, but he
who not only relates what had not been related before, but composes an
entire bod