The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 02 : $b Israel, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Minor Nations of Western Asia
History
The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 02 : $b Israel, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Minor Nations of Western Asia
World history
The insurgents, who were masters of the temple, refused entrance to the
partisans of peace, made their way into the upper city, and set fire to
the palace of Agrippa and Berenice. They also burnt the archives, in
order to destroy all vouchers of credit and so bring over the debtors
to their side. They were commanded by Manahem, the son of Judas the
Gaulonite, and by Eleazar, the son of the high priest Ananias, who
was one of the principal leaders of the opposite party, for civil war
had set division even between members of the same family. The tower
of Antonia was taken and burnt by the revolutionaries, who allowed
Agrippa’s horsemen to depart unmolested. The Romans, for their part,
took refuge in the three towers of the old wall. Ananias, who, with
his brother Hezekiah, was found hidden in an aqueduct, was slaughtered
by Manahem. Then Eleazar, enraged at the assassination of his father
and uncle, stirred up the people against Manahem, who now gave himself
the airs of a tyrant. “It was not worth while,” he said to them, “to
cast off the yoke of Rome in order to stoop to that of the least among
yourselves.” Manahem was stoned in the court of the temple. Such of his
partisans as could make their escape took refuge in the fortress of
Masada. The Romans asked for terms of capitulation. They were promised
their lives, but they had no sooner given up their arms than Eleazar
and the Zealots fell upon them and slew them all but one, who consented
to be circumcised. The rest died, to a man, without asking for mercy,
only crying out upon the sanctity of their oaths. These imprecations
filled the people with dire forebodings, all the more so because this
perjury had been committed on the Sabbath day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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