patent; and among them we should rank first an inordinate egotism and a concern, above all other considerations, for his personal interests. His life was constantly in danger; like St. Paul, he encountered perils in the sea, perils from his own countrymen, perils from the Gentiles; but his instinct for self-preservation, aided by ready tact and resourcefulness, carried him safely through the most desperate situations. In his account of the shipwreck[1] we read that "I and certain others, about eighty in all [out of a crew of six hundred], outstripped the others and were taken on board." There is no thought of the unfortunate swimmers who were left behind; nothing corresponding to the Apostle's words of encouragement in similar circumstances, and to his biographer's joy in recording that "all escaped safe to the land." In Galilee, before the siege of Jotapata, he narrates with evident self-satisfaction the various stratagems by which he outwitted his enemies who plotted against his life. During the siege he meditated flight; "Josephus, dissembling his anxiety for his own safety, said that it was for their sakes that he proposed to retire"—such is his own naïve statement of his reply to the remonstrances of the besieged citizens (B.J. III. 7. 15 f. [197]). Then there is the final scene in the cave; we cannot but admire the dexterity with which he eluded death at the hands of his fellow-prisoners and the vividness of his description; but by what ruse ("should one say by fortune or by the providence of God?" are his own words) he managed to be, with one companion, the last survivor in the drawing of the lots, remains a mystery.[2] Later, as Roman prisoner and Roman citizen, he always steered a safe course and retained the favour of a succession of imperial patrons. He was, it seems, a man of the world with a thoroughly secular disposition.
