This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
View text chunked by:
[356]
So when Alexander was delivered from the fear he was in of Ptolemy,
he presently made an expedition against Coelesyria. He also took Gadara,
after a siege of ten months. He took also Areathus, a very strong fortress
belonging to the inhabitants above Jordan, where Theodorus, the son of
Zeno, had his chief treasure, and what he esteemed most precious. This
Zeno fell unexpectedly upon the Jews, and slew ten thousand of them, and
seized upon Alexander's baggage. Yet did not this misfortune terrify Alexander;
but he made an expedition upon the maritime parts of the country, Raphia
and Anthedon, (the name of which king Herod afterwards changed to Agrippias,)
and took even that by force. But when Alexander saw that Ptolemy was retired
from Gaza to Cyprus, and his mother Cleopatra was returned to Egypt, he
grew angry at the people of Gaza, because they had invited Ptolemy to assist
them, and besieged their city, and ravaged their country. But as Apollodotus,
the general of the army of Gaza, fell upon the camp of the Jews by night,
with two thousand foreign and ten thousand of his own forces, while the
night lasted, those of Gaza prevailed, because the enemy was made to believe
that it was Ptolemy who attacked them; but when day was come on, and that
mistake was corrected, and the Jews knew the truth of the matter, they
came back again, and fell upon those of Gaza, and slew of them about a
thousand. But as those of Gaza stoutly resisted them, and would not yield
for either their want of any thing, nor for the great multitude that were
slain, (for they would rather suffer any hardship whatever than come under
the power of their enemies,) Aretas, king of the Arabians, a person then
very illustrious, encouraged them to go on with alacrity, and promised
them that he would come to their assistance; but it happened that before
he came Apollodotus was slain; for his brother Lysimachus envying him for
the great reputation he had gained among the citizens, slew him, and got
the army together, and delivered up the city to Alexander, who, when he
came in at first, lay quiet, but afterward set his army upon the inhabitants
of Gaza, and gave them leave to punish them; so some went one way, and
some went another, and slew the inhabitants of Gaza; yet were not they
of cowardly hearts, but opposed those that came to slay them, and slew
as many of the Jews; and some of them, when they saw themselves deserted,
burnt their own houses, that the enemy might get none of their spoils;
nay, some of them, with their own hands, slew their children and their
wives, having no other way but this of avoiding slavery for them; but the
senators, who were in all five hundred, fled to Apollo's temple, (for this
attack happened to be made as they were sitting,) whom Alexander slew;
and when he had utterly overthrown their city, he returned to Jerusalem,
having spent a year in that siege.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.