ng their own habitations,
and of flying away, as hoping to dwell more easily any where else in the
world among foreigners [than in their own country]. And what need I say
any more upon this head? since it was this Florus who necessitated us
to take up arms against the Romans, while we thought it better to be
destroyed at once, than by little and little. Now this war began in the
second year of the government of Florus, and the twelfth year of the
reign of Nero. But then what actions we were forced to do, or what
miseries we were enabled to suffer, may be accurately known by such as
will peruse those books which I have written about the Jewish war.

2. I shall now, therefore, make an end here of my Antiquities; after the
conclusion of which events, I began to write that account of the war;
and these Antiquities contain what hath been delivered down to us from
the original creation of man, until the twelfth year of the reign of
Nero, as to what hath befallen the Jews, as well in Egypt as in Syria
and in Palestine, and what we have suffered from the Assyrians and
Babylonians, and what afflictions the Persians and Macedonians, and
after them the Romans, have brought upon us; for I think I may say that
I have composed this history with sufficient accuracy in all things. I
have attempted to enumerate those high priests that we have had during
the interval of two thousand years; I have also carried down the
succession of our kings, and related their actions, and political
administration, without [considerable] errors, as also the power of our
monarchs; and all according to what is written in our sacred books; for
this it was that I promised to do in the beginning of this history. And
I am so bold as to say, now I have so completely perfected the work I
proposed to myself to do, that no other person, whether he were a Jew
or foreigner, had he ever so great an inclination to it, could so
accurately deliver these accounts to the Greeks as is done in these
books. For those of my own nation freely acknowledge that I far exceed
them in the learning belonging to Jews; I have also taken a great
deal of pains to obtain the learning of the Greeks, and understand
the elements of the Greek language, although I have so long accustomed
myself to speak our own tongue, that I cannot pronounce Greek with
sufficient exactness; for our nation does not encourage those that learn
the languages of many nations, and so adorn their discourses with
th