In much the same way, only still more fully, _Josephus_[105] relates the circumstance. Licentiousness had laid hold of almost the entire host, and ancestral institutions were in danger of being abandoned altogether. Consequently, Josephus says, Moses appointed an assemblage of the People and in a speech drew attention to the perils that threatened. Sambrias (Simri) however made a defence, maintaining that they had long enough obeyed tyrannous laws and would fain live free henceforth. Hereupon he quitted the assembly, and was assassinated in his tent by the enraged Phinehas. Josephus (§ 12.) proceeds: “Iuvenes autem omnes, qui virtutis aliquid sibi vindicarent et honestatis studio tenerentur, Phineesis fortitudinis exemplo accensi, eiusdem cum Zambria criminis reos interfecerunt. Multi itaque illorum, qui leges patrias violarant, horum egregia virtute perempti sunt. Peste autem reliqui omnes perierunt, deo hunc illis morbum immittente. Et quotquot e cognatis, qui cum prohibere debuerint, eos ad haec impulerant, a deo pro sceleris sociis habiti, pariter sublati erant.”[106] (But all the younger men who laid any claim to manly virtue and tried to live honorably, fired by the example of Phinehas’ bold deed, slew all that were guilty of the same crime as Sambrias. And so by their singular courage and patriotism numbers of the men who had broken their ancestral laws were destroyed. But all that survived perished by a plague, that God sent upon them. Moreover such of their kinsfolk as ought to have hindered them, but instead had urged them to these courses, these God deemed accomplices in the wickedness, and they also were cut off.) Philo and Josephus are not indeed to be regarded as authentic eye-witnesses of what they record; still the passages quoted from them prove this much, that in their time the opinions they express were generally held. The Jews were thus led astray by the daughters of the Moabites, and both practised fornication with them and made sacrifice in their temples to the god of the country, whose priestesses, as Balaam declared, were conspicuous above other women for their beauty. The _consequence_ of these excesses was an infectious disease, (according to _Josephus_ it communicated itself, but, he says, only to kinsmen!), which cost many[107] their lives. The number however fell far short of 24000, for these perished mainly by the sword of their brethren, as _Philo_ and _Josephus_ expressly remark, and the author of the Pentateuch intimates, when he says (Numbers Ch. 26. v. 5.), “And Moses said unto the judges of Israel, Slay ye every one his men that have joined themselves unto Baal-Peor.” The narrator declares that by this slaughter the plague was stayed for the sons of Israel; but it certainly cannot have ceased altogether, as is manifest from the passages quoted from Joshua, where Phinehas asserts: that to that day the people was not yet cleansed from the misdoing of Peor.