y rules of
gentleness and common affection towards men. Again, therefore, what
mischief was there which Simon the son of Gioras did not do? or what
kind of abuses did he abstain from as to those very free-men who had set
him up for a tyrant? What friendship or kindred were there that did not
make him more bold in his daily murders? for they looked upon the doing
of mischief to strangers only as a work beneath their courage, but
thought their barbarity towards their nearest relations would be a
glorious demonstration thereof. The Idumeans also strove with these
men who should be guilty of the greatest madness! for they [all], vile
wretches as they were, cut the throats of the high priests, that so
no part of a religious regard to God might be preserved; they
thence proceeded to destroy utterly the least remains of a political
government, and introduced the most complete scene of iniquity in all
instances that were practicable; under which scene that sort of people
that were called zealots grew up, and who indeed corresponded to
the name; for they imitated every wicked work; nor, if their memory
suggested any evil thing that had formerly been done, did they avoid
zealously to pursue the same; and although they gave themselves that
name from their zeal for what was good, yet did it agree to them only
by way of irony, on account of those they had unjustly treated by their
wild and brutish disposition, or as thinking the greatest mischiefs to
be the greatest good. Accordingly, they all met with such ends as God
deservedly brought upon them in way of punishment; for all such miseries
have been sent upon them as man's nature is capable of undergoing,
till the utmost period of their lives, and till death came upon them
in various ways of torment; yet might one say justly that they suffered
less than they had done, because it was impossible they could be
punished according to their deserving. But to make a lamentation
according to the deserts of those who fell under these men's barbarity,
this is not a proper place for it;--I therefore now return again to the
remaining part of the present narration.

2. For now it was that the Roman general came, and led his army against
Eleazar and those Sicarii who held the fortress Masada together with
him; and for the whole country adjoining, he presently gained it, and
put garrisons into the most proper places of it; he also built a wall
quite round the entire fortress, that none of the bes