[236]
But Cumanus took one troop of horsemen, called the troop of Sebaste,
out of Cesarea, and came to the assistance of those that were spoiled;
he also seized upon a great number of those that followed Eleazar, and
slew more of them. And as for the rest of the multitude of those that went
so zealously to fight with the Samaritans, the rulers of Jerusalem ran
out clothed with sackcloth, and having ashes on their head, and begged
of them to go their ways, lest by their attempt to revenge themselves upon
the Samaritans they should provoke the Romans to come against Jerusalem;
to have compassion upon their country and temple, their children and their
wives, and not bring the utmost dangers of destruction upon them, in order
to avenge themselves upon one Galilean only. The Jews complied with these
persuasions of theirs, and dispersed themselves; but still there were a
great number who betook themselves to robbing, in hopes of impunity; and
rapines and insurrections of the bolder sort happened over the whole country.
And the men of power among the Samaritans came to Tyre, to Ummidius Quadratus,
1 the
president of Syria, and desired that they that had laid waste the country
might be punished: the great men also of the Jews, and Jonathan the son
of Ananus the high priest, came thither, and said that the Samaritans were
the beginners of the disturbance, on account of that murder they had committed;
and that Cumanus had given occasion to what had happened, by his unwillingness
to punish the original authors of that murder.
1 This Ummidius, or Numidius, or, as Tacitus calls him, Vinidius Quadratus, is mentioned in an ancient inscription, still preserved, as Spanhelm here informs us, which calls him Urnmidius Quadratus.
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.