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[403]
Now on the north side [of the temple] was built a citadel, whose
walls were square, and strong, and of extraordinary firmness. This citadel
was built by the kings of the Asamonean race, who were also high priests
before Herod, and they called it the Tower, in which were reposited the
vestments of the high priest, which the high priest only put on at the
time when he was to offer sacrifice. These vestments king Herod kept in
that place; and after his death they were under the power of the Romans,
until the time of Tiberius Caesar; under whose reign Vitellius, the president
of Syria, when he once came to Jerusalem, and had been most magnificently
received by the multitude, he had a mind to make them some requital for
the kindness they had shewn him; so, upon their petition to have those
holy vestments in their own power, he wrote about them to Tiberius Caesar,
who granted his request: and this their power over the sacerdotal vestments
continued with the Jews till the death of king Agrippa; but after that,
Cassius Longinus, who was president of Syria, and Cuspius Fadus, who was
procurator of Judea, enjoined the Jews to reposit those vestments in the
tower of Antonia, for that they ought to have them in their power, as they
formerly had. However, the Jews sent ambassadors to Claudius Caesar, to
intercede with him for them; upon whose coming, king Agrippa, junior, being
then at Rome, asked for and obtained the power over them from the emperor,
who gave command to Vitellius, who was then commander in Syria, to give
it them accordingly. Before that time they were kept under the seal of
the high priest, and of the treasurers of the temple; which treasurers,
the day before a festival, went up to the Roman captain of the temple guards,
and viewed their own seal, and received the vestments; and again, when
the festival was over, they brought it to the same place, and showed the
captain of the temple guards their seal, which corresponded with his seal,
and reposited them there. And that these things were so, the afflictions
that happened to us afterwards [about them] are sufficient evidence. But
for the tower itself, when Herod the king of the Jews had fortified it
more firmly than before, in order to secure and guard the temple, he gratified
Antonius, who was his friend, and the Roman ruler, and then gave it the
name of the Tower of Antonia.
Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
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- LSJ, ἐχυ^ρ-ότης
- LSJ, εὐερκ-ής
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