Aretas seized this occasion for hostilities and also for raising the question of frontiers in the region of Gamala;[184] the two belligerents mustered their armies and opened war, sending their generals as their representatives in the field. A battle took place in which the whole of Herod’s army was cut to pieces as the result of the defection of a contingent from Philip’s tetrarchy which enlisted with Herod’s forces and then deserted. Herod reported the matter to Tiberius, who was indignant at the aggression of Aretas and wrote instructions to Vitellius to go to war with him and either to take him alive and bring him a prisoner to Rome or to kill him and send him his head. Such were the injunctions of Tiberius to the governor of Syria. * * * * * Some of the Jews, however, regarded the destruction of Herod’s army as the work of God, who thus exacted very just retribution for John, surnamed the Baptist, Herod’s victim. John was a good man who bade the Jews first cultivate virtue by justice[185] towards each other and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for immersion,[186] he said, would only appear acceptable to God if practised, not as an expiation for specific offences, but for the purification of the body, when the soul had been already thoroughly cleansed by righteousness. Now when all men[187] listened to his words with the greatest delight and flocked to him, Herod feared that the powerful influence which he exercised over men’s minds—for they seemed ready for any action which he advised—might lead to some form of revolt. He therefore decided to put him to death before any revolution arose through him. To forestall events appeared far better policy than a belated repentance when plunged in the turmoil of an insurrection. And so, through Herod’s suspicions, John was sent as a prisoner to Machærus, the fortress already mentioned, and there put to death. The Jews supposed that the destruction of Herod’s army was the penalty expressly inflicted upon him by God to avenge John.... The following extract supplies the name of “the daughter of Herodias” who appears in Mark vi. 22 ff. Now Herodias their sister married Herod, the son of Herod the Great by Mariamne the daughter of Simon the high priest. They had a daughter Salome, after whose birth Herodias, in defiance of our country’s laws, married Herod, the Tetrarch of Galilee and half-brother of her husband, during the lifetime of her husband, whom she divorced. Her daughter Salome married Philip, the Tetrarch of Trachonitis and son of Herod.—_Ant._ XVIII. 5. 1 f., 4 (109-119, 136 f.). Footnote 179: See Appendix, Note III. Footnote 180: Or “(Arabia) Petræa.” Footnote 181: Herod Agrippa I. Footnote 182: Slight emendation (τότε) of the MS reading τῷ τε (“and to him who was subject...”). Footnote 183: Or “governor.” Footnote 184: Possibly a lacuna in the text. Footnote 185: Or “righteousness.”