Florus Provokes the War

Festus, who succeeded Felix as procurator, went after what was doing the country most harm: he captured a great many of the robbers and put not a few of them to death. But Albinus, who came after Festus, did not conduct affairs in the same way; there was no kind of villainy he left untried. Not only did he steal and plunder everyone’s property in the course of his public business, and burden the whole nation with levies; he also let the relatives of men imprisoned for robbery, whether by their local councils or by earlier procurators, ransom them, and the only man left in prison as a criminal was the one who paid nothing. At that time, too, those in Jerusalem who wanted revolution grew bolder in their daring. The powerful among them bought Albinus over with money, so that he let them stir up strife unhindered, while the part of the common people that had no taste for quiet went over to Albinus’s partners. Each of these villains had his own gang around him, and he himself stood out over his band like a robber chief or a tyrant, using his bodyguards to plunder the moderate citizens. The result was that those who had been robbed kept silent when they had every reason to be indignant, while those who had escaped the blows even flattered the man who deserved punishment, for fear of suffering the same. In short, no one could speak freely any longer; tyranny was in the hands of many, and from that time the seeds of the city’s coming fall were sown. [a]

Bad as Albinus was, Gessius Florus, who came after him, made him look by comparison like the best of men. Albinus had done most of his evil in secret and with some concealment; Gessius paraded his crimes against the nation, and as though he had been sent as an executioner to punish condemned criminals, he left out no form of robbery or abuse. Where pity was called for he was the most savage of men, and where shame was called for, the most shameless. No one ever poured more discredit on the truth, and no one devised craftier ways of doing wrong. He thought it a small thing to make his profit out of individuals; he stripped whole cities and ruined entire communities at once, and all but proclaimed through the country that anyone might turn robber, on condition that he himself got a share of the spoils. Through his greed all the cities were left desolate, and many people abandoned their ancestral homes and fled to foreign provinces. [b]

As long as Cestius Gallus was governing the province of Syria, no one dared even to send envoys to him against Florus. But when Cestius came to Jerusalem at the time of the feast of unleavened bread, the people surrounded him, no fewer than three million of them, and begged him to pity the nation’s misfortunes, crying out that Florus was the ruin of the country. Florus was there, standing beside Cestius, and he mocked their cries. Cestius calmed the excitement of the crowd and gave them to understand that he would make Florus more moderate toward them in future; then he went back to Antioch. Florus escorted him as far as Caesarea, deceiving him all the while, for he was already planning war against the nation, the one thing by which he thought he could hide his own crimes. If there was peace, he expected to have the Jews as his accusers before Caesar; but if he could bring about their revolt, he hoped the greater evil would turn the inquiry away from the lesser. So, to make the nation break away, he made their misfortunes worse every day. [d]

Meanwhile the Greeks of Caesarea had won their case before Nero for control of the city, and brought back the written decision. And now the war began, in the twelfth year of Nero’s reign and the seventeenth of Agrippa’s, in the month of Artemisius. Its pretext was out of all proportion to the disasters that came of it. The Jews at Caesarea had a synagogue beside a plot of ground owned by a Greek of Caesarea. They had often tried to buy the place, offering many times its value. But the owner disdained their requests, and to insult them further he built on the plot, putting up workshops and leaving them only a narrow passage that was altogether awkward to get through. At first the hotter of the young men rushed out and tried to stop the building. When Florus prevented them from using force, the leading Jews, John the tax collector among them, not knowing what else to do, persuaded Florus with eight talents of silver to stop the work. Florus, with his eye only on getting the money, promised to do everything for them; but once he had it he left Caesarea for Sebaste and let the strife take its own course, as though he had sold the Jews a license to fight it out. [e]

The next day was the Sabbath. When the Jews gathered at the synagogue, one of the troublemakers of Caesarea set a pot upside down beside their entrance and sacrificed birds on it. This enraged the Jews past all remedy, for their laws had been insulted and the place defiled. The steady and gentle part of them thought they should appeal again to the authorities, but the factious, and those burning with youth, were fired up for a fight. The troublemakers of Caesarea stood ready, for they had sent the man ahead to sacrifice by arrangement, and they soon came to blows. Jucundus, the cavalry commander assigned to prevent trouble, came up, took away the pot, and tried to stop the strife. When he was overpowered by the violence of the Caesareans, the Jews snatched up their books of the law and withdrew to Narbata, a district of theirs about seven and a half miles from Caesarea. John and the twelve leading men with him went to Florus at Sebaste, lamented what had been done, and begged him to help them, tactfully reminding him of the eight talents. Florus had the men arrested and put in chains, charging them with carrying the books of the law out of Caesarea. [g]

The people of Jerusalem were indignant at this, but they still held their anger in check. Florus, though, as if he had been hired to fan the war into flame, sent to the temple treasury and took out seventeen talents, claiming that Caesar needed them. At once the people were thrown into confusion. They ran together to the temple with piercing cries, called on Caesar by name, and begged him to free them from Florus’s tyranny. Some of the rebels shouted the most shameful insults at Florus, and carried a basket around begging coppers for him, as for a destitute wretch. This did not turn him from his love of money; it only angered him into getting more. He ought to have gone to Caesarea to put out the fire of war that was starting there and remove the causes of the trouble, since he had been paid to do it. Instead he set out for Jerusalem with an army of cavalry and infantry, to do his business with Roman arms and to strip the city bare by fear and threats. [i]

The people wanted to shame him out of his attack before it began, so they went out to meet the soldiers with acclamations and prepared to receive Florus with every deference. But he sent ahead Capito, a centurion, with fifty horsemen, and ordered them to go back, and not to put on a show of friendliness now toward a man they had so shamefully abused. If they were brave and outspoken, he said, they ought to jeer at him to his face, and show their love of liberty not only in words but with weapons too. The crowd was dismayed at this, and as Capito’s horsemen rode into their midst they scattered before they could greet Florus or show the soldiers their obedience. They went back to their houses and spent the night in fear and dejection. [j]

Florus lodged that night in the palace. The next day he had his tribunal set up in front of it and took his seat, and the high priests, the powerful men and the most notable citizens came and stood before it. Florus ordered them to hand over the men who had insulted him, and said they would bear the punishment themselves if they did not produce the guilty. They answered that the people were peaceably disposed, and asked pardon for those who had spoken out of turn. It was no wonder, they said, that in so great a crowd there were some too bold and, because of their youth, foolish; and it was impossible to pick out the offenders, since every one of them was sorry and, because of what he had done, would deny it. If Florus cared for the peace of the nation and wished to keep the city safe for the Romans, he ought rather to pardon the few offenders for the sake of the many innocent, than throw so large and so good a people into turmoil for the sake of a few villains.

This provoked Florus all the more, and he shouted to the soldiers to plunder the Upper Market, as it was called, and to kill anyone they met. With a commander’s order now added to their greed for gain, they not only plundered the place they had been sent to, but burst into every house and slaughtered those inside. People fled out of the narrow streets, those who were caught were killed, and no form of plunder was left out. The soldiers also seized many of the peaceable citizens and brought them to Florus, who had them scourged first and then crucified. The whole number of those killed that day, with women and children — for they did not spare even infants — came to about six hundred and thirty. What made the disaster heavier was a new kind of Roman cruelty. Florus dared that day what no one had ever done before: he had men of equestrian rank scourged before his tribunal and nailed to crosses, men who, though Jews by birth, held Roman rank. [k]