r an embassage of the Jews was come to Rome, Varus having
permitted the nation to send it, that they might petition for the
liberty of living by their own laws. [17] Now the number of the
ambassadors that were sent by the authority of the nation were fifty,
to which they joined above eight thousand of the Jews that were at Rome
already. Hereupon Caesar assembled his friends, and the chief men among
the Romans, in the temple of Apollo, [18] which he had built at a vast
charge; whither the ambassadors came, and a multitude of the Jews
that were there already came with them, as did also Archelaus and his
friends; but as for the several kinsmen which Archelaus had, they would
not join themselves with him, out of their hatred to him; and yet they
thought it too gross a thing for them to assist the ambassadors [against
him], as supposing it would be a disgrace to them in Caesar's opinion to
think of thus acting in opposition to a man of their own kindred. Philip
[19] also was come hither out of Syria, by the persuasion of Varus, with
this principal intention to assist his brother [Archelaus]; for Varus
was his great friend: but still so, that if there should any change
happen in the form of government, [which Varus suspected there would,]
and if any distribution should be made on account of the number that
desired the liberty of living by their own laws, that he might not be
disappointed, but might have his share in it.

2. Now upon the liberty that was given to the Jewish ambassadors to
speak, they who hoped to obtain a dissolution of kingly government
betook themselves to accuse Herod of his iniquities; and they declared
that he was indeed in name a king, but that he had taken to himself that
uncontrollable authority which tyrants exercise over their subjects, and
had made use of that authority for the destruction of the Jews, and did
not abstain from making many innovations among them besides, according
to his own inclinations; and that whereas there were a great many who
perished by that destruction he brought upon them, so many indeed as no
other history relates, they that survived were far more miserable than
those that suffered under him; not only by the anxiety they were in
from his looks and disposition towards them, but from the danger their
estates were in of being taken away by him. That he did never leave off
adorning these cities that lay in their neighborhood, but were inhabited
by foreigners; but so that the ci