t, if he had
stayed, the rest would never have fled for it. Thus were they
encompassed on every side by a kind of panic fear, and some dispersed
themselves one way, and some another, till certain of them saw their
general in the very midst of an action, and being under great concern
for him, they loudly proclaimed the danger he was in to the entire
legion; and now shame made them turn back, and they reproached one
another that they did worse than run away, by deserting Caesar. So they
used their utmost force against the Jews, and declining from the
straight declivity, they drove them on heaps into the bottom of the
valley. Then did the Jews turn about and fight them; but as they were
themselves retiring, and now, because the Romans had the advantage of
the ground and were above the Jews, they drove them all into the valley.

As now the war abroad ceased for a while, the sedition within was
revived; and on the feast of unleavened bread, which was now come, it
being the fourteenth day of the month Xanthicus [Nisan], when it is
believed the Jews were first freed from the Egyptians, Eleazar and his
party opened the gates of this [inmost court of the] Temple, and
admitted such of the people as were desirous to worship God into it. But
John made use of this festival as a cloak for his treacherous designs,
and armed the most inconsiderable of his own party, the greater part of
whom were not purified, with weapons concealed under their garments, and
sent them with great zeal into the Temple, in order to seize upon it,
which armed men, when they were gotten in, threw their garments away,
and presently appeared in their armor. Upon which there was a very great
disorder and disturbance about the holy house, while the people, who had
no concern in the sedition, supposed that this assault was made against
all without distinction, as the Zealots thought it was made against
themselves only. So these left off guarding the gates any longer and
leaped down from their battlements before they came to an engagement,
and fled away into the subterranean caverns of the Temple, while the
people that stood trembling at the altar and about the holy house were
rolled on heaps together and trampled upon, and were beaten both with
wooden and with iron weapons without mercy. Such also as had differences
with others slew many persons that were quiet, out of their own private
enmity and hatred, as if they were opposite to the seditious; and all
those t