Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:
book:
whiston chapter:
whiston section:
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
View text chunked by:
Table of Contents:
book 1
book 2
book 3
book 6
book 7
book 8
book 10
book 12
book 13
book 14
book 15
book 16
book 18
[26]
When Cambyses had read the epistle, being naturally wicked, he was
irritated at what they told him, and wrote back to them as follows: "Cambyses
the king, to Rathumus the historiographer, to Beeltethmus, to Semellius
the scribe, and the rest that are in commission, and dwelling in Samaria
and Phoenicia, after this manner: I have read the epistle that was sent
from you; and I gave order that the books of my forefathers should be searched
into, and it is there found that this city hath always been an enemy to
kings, and its inhabitants have raised seditions and wars. We also are
sensible that their kings have been powerful and tyrannical, and have exacted
tribute of Celesyria and Phoenicia. Wherefore I gave order, that the Jews
shall not be permitted to build that city, lest such mischief as they used
to bring upon kings be greatly augmented." When this epistle was read,
Rathumus, and Semellius the scribe, and their associates, got suddenly
on horseback, and made haste to Jerusalem; they also brought a great company
with them, and forbade the Jews to build the city and the temple. Accordingly,
these works were hindered from going on till the second year of the reign
of Darius, for nine years more; for Cambyses reigned six years, and within
that time overthrew Egypt, and when he was come back, he died at Damascus.
Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
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.
show
Browse Bar
hide
Places (automatically extracted)
View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.
Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.
hide
Search
hideStable Identifiers
hide
Display Preferences