Jonathan the Weaver of Cyrene

The madness of the Sicarii also took hold, like a disease, of the cities around Cyrene. A most wicked man named Jonathan, a weaver by trade, slipped into the city and persuaded not a few of the poor to follow him. He led them out into the desert, promising to show them signs and apparitions. The rest did not notice what he was doing or how he was deceiving people, but the Jews of highest standing in Cyrene reported his expedition and his preparations to Catullus, governor of the Libyan Pentapolis. Catullus sent out cavalry and infantry and easily overpowered the unarmed men. Most of them were killed in the fighting, but some were taken alive and brought to Catullus. Jonathan, the leader of the plot, escaped for the time, but after a long and very careful search through the whole country he was caught. When he was brought before the governor, he contrived a way to escape punishment himself and gave Catullus an opening for wrongdoing: he falsely claimed that the wealthiest of the Jews had been his teachers in the plot. [a]

Catullus eagerly welcomed these slanders and blew the affair up to a great size, with much tragic exaggeration, so that he too might seem to have won a Jewish war. What was still worse, besides believing readily, he even taught the Sicarii how to lie. He ordered Jonathan to name a Jew called Alexander, with whom he had long been at odds and against whom he had openly shown his hatred, and he entangled Alexander’s wife Berenice in the charges as well. These two he put to death first, and after them he murdered all who stood out for their wealth, about a thousand men in all. He thought he could do this safely because he took their property into Caesar’s revenues. [b]

So that no Jews elsewhere could expose his wrongdoing, he spread the lie further and persuaded Jonathan and some of those arrested with him to bring a charge of revolution against the most respected Jews both at Alexandria and at Rome. One of those charged through this plot was Josephus, the writer of this history. But the scheme did not go as Catullus hoped. He came to Rome bringing Jonathan and his companions in chains, thinking the inquiry would end with the lies told before him and through him. Vespasian, however, suspected the affair and looked into the truth. When he learned that the charge brought against the men was unjust, he acquitted them of the accusations, at the urging of Titus, and inflicted on Jonathan the punishment he deserved: he was first tortured and then burned alive. [c]

As for Catullus, the mildness of the emperors meant that for the time being he suffered nothing more than a reprimand. But before long he was seized by a complicated disease that was hard to cure and died in misery. He was punished not only in his body; the sickness of his mind weighed on him more heavily still. He was shaken by terrors and kept crying out that he saw the ghosts of those he had murdered standing over him, and, unable to control himself, he would leap out of his bed as if tortures and fire were being brought against him. The evil kept growing worse and worse, until his bowels were eaten away and fell out of him, and so he died. He became as clear a proof as anyone of the providence of God, that he punishes the wicked. [d]

Here we bring our history to an end. We promised to deliver it with complete accuracy to those who wish to learn how this war of the Romans against the Jews was fought. How well it has been expressed must be left to its readers to judge. But as for its truth, I would not hesitate to say boldly that truth alone has been my aim throughout the whole of the account.