, and
gave command that a servant of mine, who was a eunuch, and my accuser,
should be punished. He also made that country I had in Judea tax free,
which is a mark of the greatest honor to him who hath it; nay, Domitia,
the wife of Caesar, continued to do me kindnesses. And this is the
account of the actions of my whole life; and let others judge of my
character by them as they please. But to thee, O Epaphroditus, [28]
thou most excellent of men! do I dedicate all this treatise of our
Antiquities; and so, for the present, I here conclude the whole.

Footnotes

[Footnote 1: We may hence correct the error of the Latin copy of the
second book Against Apion, sect. 8, [for the Greek is there lost,]
which says, there were then only four tribes or courses of the priests,
instead of twenty-four. Nor is this testimony to be disregarded, as if
Josephus there contradicted what he had affirmed here; because even the
account there given better agrees to twenty-four than to four courses,
while he says that each of those courses contained above 5000 men,
which, multiplied by only four, will make not more than 20,000 priests;
whereas the number 120,000, as multiplied by 24, seems much the most
probable, they being about one-tenth of the whole people, even after the
captivity. See Ezra 2:36-39; Nehemiah 7:39-42; 1 Esdras 5:24, 25, with
Ezra 2;64; Nehemiah 7:66; 1 Esdras 5:41. Nor will this common reading or
notion of but four courses of priests, agree with Josephus's own further
assertion elsewhere, Antiq. B. VII. ch. 14. sect. 7, that David's
partition of the priests into twenty-four courses had continued to that
day.]

[Footnote 2: An eminent example of the care of the Jews about their
genealogies, especially as to the priests. See Against Ap. B. 1 sect.
7.]

[Footnote 3: When Josephus here says, that from sixteen to nineteen, or
for three years, he made trial of the three Jewish sects, the Pharisees,
the Sadducees, and the Essens, and yet says presently, in all our
copies, that he stayed besides with one particular ascetic, called
Banus, with him, and this still before he was nineteen, there is little
room left for his trial of the three other sects. I suppose, therefore,
that for, with him, the old reading might be, with them; which is a very
small emendation, and takes away the difficulty before us. Nor is
Dr. Hudson's conjecture, hinted at by Mr. Hall in his preface to the
Doctor's edition of Josephus, at all improbab