In modern times his reputation as a trustworthy authority has depreciated considerably, and it is still depreciating. More accurate study and wider knowledge have exposed his grave defects as an historian, and the critical standpoint has dissipated the halo with which his supposed Christian sympathies had invested him, and laid bare his weakness and his essential unreliability. Yet with all his glaring faults and unlovable qualities he has certain solid merits. The greatest certainly is that his works so appealed to later generations as to have been preserved, and thereby posterity has been enabled to get some knowledge, however inadequate, of the history of the Jewish polity during its last two hundred years--between the time of the Maccabees and the fall of the nation--which would otherwise have been buried in almost unrelieved darkness. And at the same time he has preserved a record of some interesting pieces of Egyptian, Syrian, and Roman history. Just because he was so little original, he has a special usefulness; for he reproduces the statements of more capable writers than himself, who have disappeared, and he has embodied an aspect of the Hellenistic-Jewish literature which had otherwise been lost. We can estimate his value to us as an historian from our ignorance of what was happening in Judea during the fifty years after his account comes to an end. It is true that he brings before us, for the most part, but the external facts and the court scandals in place of the vital movements and the underlying principles; and in dealing with contemporary events he has a perverted view, borrowed largely from Roman foes and feebly corrected. But it is something to have preserved even these facts, and in the account of the _Wars_ he often draws a vivid picture. The siege of Jerusalem has passed into the roll of the world's heroic events, and it owes its place there largely to the narrative of Josephus. Moreover, in spite of his pusillanimity and his subservience to his Roman patrons, Josephus did possess a distinct pride of race and a love of his people. It led him at times to glorify them in a gross way, but notably in the books _Against Apion_ it could inspire a certain eloquence; and many hostile outsiders must have learnt from his pages to appreciate some of the great qualities of the Jewish people.