Page:Selections. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray (1919).djvu/82

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(The Jews resisted with no lack of spirit)[1]; and so, caught, as they were, unarmed by assailants equipped for the purpose, many of them fell and were left to die on the spot, while others escaped with wounds. Thus ended the insurrection—Ant. XVIII. 3. 1 f. (55-62). [(26) Jesus Christ[2] Now about this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed he should be called a man. For he was a doer of marvellous acts, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure; and he won over to himself many Jews and many also of the Greek nation. He was the Christ.[3] And when, on the indictment of the principal men among us, Pilate had sentenced him to the cross, yet did not those who had loved him at the first cease (to do so); for he appeared to them alive again on the third day, as the divine prophets had declared—these and ten thousand other wonderful things—concerning him. And even now the race[4] of Christians, so named from him, is not extinct.—Ant. XVIII. 3. 3 (63 f.)]. (27) Tiberius expels all Jews from Rome


A precedent for the similar action of Claudius, which brought Aquila and Priscilla to Corinth (Acts xviii. 2). Suetonius alludes to this order of Tiberius: "He repressed foreign religious ceremonies—Egyptian and Jewish rites—compelling their devotees to burn their sacred vestments with all their paraphernalia. Under pretext of their military oath, he distributed the younger Jews over provinces with an insalubrious climate; others of the same race, or followers of kindred religions, he removed from the city, under penalty for disobedience of servitude for life" (Tiberius, § 36).


I revert to the story, which I promised to tell, of what befell the Jews in Rome at this time.; with Niese's conjecture [Greek: oud'] we should translate, in the previous sentence, "indiscriminately and relentlessly," and omit the bracketed words.]).]

  1. With the MS reading [Greek: hoi d'
  2. On the authenticity of this passage see Appendix, Note II.
  3. Or "the Messiah."
  4. Or "tribe" ([Greek: phylon