“§ 9. In their verdicts they are most exact and just, and never give sentence if there are less than a hundred of the brotherhood present: but what is then decreed is irrevocable. Next to God they have the highest veneration for the name of the lawgiver, Moses, and punish with death any one who blasphemes it. To submit to the elders and to the majority they regard as a duty: hence, when ten of them sit together, no one will speak if the other nine do not agree to it. They avoid spitting before the face, or to the right hand, [60] and are also stricter than all other Jews not to touch any labour on the Sabbath day—for they not only prepare their Sabbath-day’s food the day before, that they may not kindle a fire on that day, but they will not move a vessel out of its place [61] nor go to ease nature. On all other days they dig a pit of a foot deep with the spade (such an one being given to the novice), and having covered it all round with a cover, that it may not offend the Divine rays, they set themselves over it, and then put the earth, that was dug out again into the pit; and do this, after having chosen the most lonely places. And although the voiding of bodily excrements is natural, yet it is their custom to bathe after it, as if they had been defiled. [62] “§ 10. They are divided, according to the time of leading this mode of life, into four different classes, and the juniors are so much inferior to the seniors, that the latter must wash themselves when they happen to touch the former, as if they had been defiled by a stranger. [63] They live to a great age, so that many of them live to above a hundred years—arising from the simplicity of their diet, as it appears to me, and from their order. They despise suffering, and overcome pain by fortitude. Death, if connected with honour, they look upon as better than long life. Of the firmness of their minds in all cases the war with the Romans has given ample proof; in which, though they were tortured, racked, burned, squeezed, and subjected to all the instruments of torment, that they might be forced to blaspheme the lawgiver or eat what was forbidden, yet they could not be made to do either of them; nor would they even once flatter their tormentors or shed a tear, but, smiling through their torments and mocking their tormentors, they cheerfully yielded up their souls, as those who would soon receive them back again. [64]