The war, which resulted in the fall of Jerusalem, was in the eyes of Josephus (Wars, Preface, § 1) the greatest war in recorded history. The words he uses are very much like those of Livy when he is about to describe the Second Punic War (Livy, XXI. i.), where, it must be admitted, the statement seems somewhat more fitting. The Roman historians naturally enough do not attach quite the same importance to a rebellion in a border province, however dangerous or desperate. But no one regarded it as an insignificant episode in the maintenance of the imperial frontier. There were many accounts of it, most of them written “sophistically” (_ibid._ I. i. 1), _i.e._ with a definite purpose that was quite apart from that of presenting a true version of the facts. These men, we are told by the author, wrote from hate or for favor. They desired to flatter the Romans or to vent their spleen on the Jews. The accurate truth was, of course, to be found only in the austerely veridical account written by Josephus in Aramaic, and translated by him into Greek. It is, accordingly, strange that in the one narrative which we have from a source independent of Josephus, there should appear details which suggest that flattery of the Roman conqueror was not wholly absent from Josephus’ own narrative. In the Roman History of Cassius Dio (known principally by the Greek form of his name, Dion Cassius), who wrote about 225 C.E., we find a version of the siege of Jerusalem in which Titus is something less than a demi-god, and the Jews something different from the wretched and besotted fanatics Josephus makes of them. Dio has little sympathy for the Jews in general, and finds their institutions repellent on the whole, but his account is simpler and actually more favorable to the Jews than the one presented in the pages of the Wars. Such details as the wound received by Titus (Dio, lxvi. 5), which Josephus omits or modifies (Wars, V. vi. 2), are of minor significance, although even they indicate the strain Josephus was put to in his attempt to make Titus move in the midst of dangers like a present divinity. But there are other matters that Josephus does not mention, _e.g._ the desertion of Roman soldiers to the Jews in the very midst of the siege, the awe of the Romans toward the temple, so that they had to be actually forced to enter upon the forbidden precinct even when the building was in flames. But especially it is the Asiatic Roman, and not the Jew, who lays stress upon the heroic pride which the Jews displayed in the moment of their utmost extremity. “All believed it was not destruction, but victory, safety, happiness, to die with their temple” (Dio, lxvi. 6).