time left off the
tilling of their ground, and that while the season of the year required
them to sow it. [31] Thus they continued firm in their resolution,
and proposed to themselves to die willingly, rather than to see the
dedication of the statue.

4. When matters were in this state, Aristobulus, king Agrippa's brother,
and Heleias the Great, and the other principal men of that family with
them, went in unto Petronius, and besought him, that since he saw the
resolution of the multitude, he would not make any alteration, and
thereby drive them to despair; but would write to Caius, that the Jews
had an insuperable aversion to the reception of the statue, and how they
continued with him, and left of the tillage off their ground: that they
were not willing to go to war with him, because they were not able to do
it, but were ready to die with pleasure, rather than suffer their
laws to be transgressed: and how, upon the land's continuing unsown,
robberies would grow up, on the inability they would be under of paying
their tributes; and that Caius might be thereby moved to pity, and not
order any barbarous action to be done to them, nor think of destroying
the nation: that if he continues inflexible in his former opinion to
bring a war upon them, he may then set about it himself. And thus did
Aristobulus, and the rest with him, supplicate Petronius. So Petronius,
[32] partly on account of the pressing instances which Aristobulus and
the rest with him made, and because of the great consequence of
what they desired, and the earnestness wherewith they made their
supplication,--partly on account of the firmness of the opposition made
by the Jews, which he saw, while he thought it a terrible thing for
him to be such a slave to the madness of Caius, as to slay so many ten
thousand men, only because of their religious disposition towards God,
and after that to pass his life in expectation of punishment; Petronius,
I say, thought it much better to send to Caius, and to let him know how
intolerable it was to him to bear the anger he might have against
him for not serving him sooner, in obedience to his epistle, for
that perhaps he might persuade him; and that if this mad resolution
continued, he might then begin the war against them; nay, that in case
he should turn his hatred against himself, it was fit for virtuous
persons even to die for the sake of such vast multitudes of men.
Accordingly, he determined to hearken to the petitio