l that he had said about the
actions of Herod were falsities. When Nicolaus was come to this topic,
Caesar stopped him from going on, and desired him only to speak to this
affair of Herod, and to show that he had not led an army into Arabia,
nor slain two thousand five hundred men there, nor taken prisoners,
nor pillaged the country. To which Nicolaus made this answer: "I shall
principally demonstrate, that either nothing at all, or but a very
little, of those imputations are true, of which thou hast been informed;
for had they been true, thou mightest justly have been still more angry
at Herod." At this strange assertion Caesar was very attentive; and
Nicolaus said that there was a debt due to Herod of five hundred
talents, and a bond, wherein it was written, that if the time appointed
be lapsed, it should be lawful to make a seizure out of any part of his
country. "As for the pretended army," he said, "it was no army, but a
party sent out to require the just payment of the money; that this was
not sent immediately, nor so soon as the bond allowed, but that Sylleus
had frequently come before Saturninus and Volumnius, the presidents of
Syria; and that at last he had sworn at Berytus, by thy fortune, [13]
that he would certainly pay the money within thirty days, and deliver
up the fugitives that were under his dominion. And that when Sylleus had
performed nothing of this, Herod came again before the presidents;
and upon their permission to make a seizure for his money, he, with
difficulty, went out of his country with a party of soldiers for that
purpose. And this is all the war which these men so tragically describe;
and this is the affair of the expedition into Arabia. And how can this
be called a war, when thy presidents permitted it, the covenants allowed
it, and it was not executed till thy name, O Caesar, as well as that of
the other gods, had been profaned? And now I must speak in order about
the captives. There were robbers that dwelt in Trachonitis; at first
their number was no more than forty, but they became more afterwards,
and they escaped the punishment Herod would have inflicted on them, by
making Arabia their refuge. Sylleus received them, and supported them
with food, that they might be mischievous to all mankind, and gave
them a country to inhabit, and himself received the gains they made by
robbery; yet did he promise that he would deliver up these men, and that
by the same oaths and same time that he sw