e another brake through all restraints with regard to each
other, and every one associated with those of his own opinion, and began
already to stand in opposition one to another; so that seditions arose
every where, while those that were for innovations, and were desirous of
war, by their youth and boldness, were too hard for the aged and prudent
men. And, in the first place, all the people of every place betook
themselves to rapine; after which they got together in bodies, in
order to rob the people of the country, insomuch that for barbarity and
iniquity those of the same nation did no way differ from the Romans;
nay, it seemed to be a much lighter thing to be ruined by the Romans
than by themselves.

3. Now the Roman garrisons, which guarded the cities, partly out of
their uneasiness to take such trouble upon them, and partly out of the
hatred they bare to the Jewish nation, did little or nothing towards
relieving the miserable, till the captains of these troops of robbers,
being satiated with rapines in the country, got all together from all
parts, and became a band of wickedness, and all together crept into
Jerusalem, which was now become a city without a governor, and, as the
ancient custom was, received without distinction all that belonged to
their nation; and these they then received, because all men supposed
that those who came so fast into the city came out of kindness, and for
their assistance, although these very men, besides the seditions they
raised, were otherwise the direct cause of the city's destruction also;
for as they were an unprofitable and a useless multitude, they spent
those provisions beforehand which might otherwise have been sufficient
for the fighting men. Moreover, besides the bringing on of the war, they
were the occasions of sedition and famine therein.

4. There were besides these other robbers that came out of the country,
and came into the city, and joining to them those that were worse than
themselves, omitted no kind of barbarity; for they did not measure their
courage by their rapines and plunderings only, but preceded as far as
murdering men; and this not in the night time or privately, or with
regard to ordinary men, but did it openly in the day time, and began
with the most eminent persons in the city; for the first man they
meddled with was Antipas, one of the royal lineage, and the most potent
man in the whole city, insomuch that the public treasures were committed
to his ca