Massacres in Syria and Alexandria

On the very same day and at the very same hour, as if by the direction of some divine providence, the people of Caesarea slaughtered the Jews who lived among them. In a single hour more than twenty thousand were butchered, and all Caesarea was emptied of Jews, for Florus seized those who escaped and took them down in chains to the dockyards. At this blow at Caesarea the whole nation went wild with rage. They divided into bands and laid waste the villages of the Syrians and the cities near them: Philadelphia, the district of Heshbon, Gerasa, Pella and Scythopolis. Then they fell on Gadara and Hippos and the Gaulanitis, destroying some places and setting fire to others, and went on to Kadasa, a town of the Tyrians, and to Ptolemais, Gaba and Caesarea. Neither Sebaste nor Ashkelon could withstand their attacks. After burning these, they razed Anthedon and Gaza. Many villages around each of these cities were plundered, and the slaughter of the men caught in them was beyond counting. [a]

The Syrians, however, killed no fewer Jews. They too slaughtered those they caught in their cities, not only out of hatred, as before, but now to forestall the danger to themselves. A dreadful confusion gripped all Syria. Every city was divided into two camps, and the safety of one side lay in striking first at the other. They passed the days in blood and the nights in a terror that was worse still. Even when they believed they had got rid of the Jews, each city held the Judaizers under suspicion. No one could bring himself to kill the doubtful element among them out of hand, and yet they feared it, mixed in among them, as though it were truly foreign. Greed, too, drove to the slaughter of their opponents even men who had long seemed the very gentlest, for they plundered the property of the slain without fear and carried the spoils of their victims home as if from a pitched battle. The man who gained the most was honored, as though he had overcome the most enemies. One could see cities full of unburied bodies, old men lying dead with infants, women stripped of the last covering for their modesty. The whole province was full of horrors beyond telling, and the dread of what was threatened was greater than all the outrages already committed. [c]

Up to this point the Jews had been attacking foreigners. But when they made their raid on Scythopolis, they found the Jews of that city acting as enemies. These ranged themselves with the people of Scythopolis, put their own safety before their kinship, and met their own countrymen in battle. But their very eagerness was suspected. The people of Scythopolis were afraid that they might make an attempt on the city by night and, to the great ruin of the Scythopolitans, make up with their own people for having deserted them. So they ordered them, if they wanted to confirm the agreement and show their loyalty to those of another nation, to move out with their families into the grove. The Jews did as they were told, suspecting nothing. For two days the people of Scythopolis kept quiet, to lull them into trusting them. Then, on the third night, they watched their chance and cut the throats of all of them, some as they lay unguarded and some as they slept. There were more than thirteen thousand of them, and they plundered everything they had.

The fate of Simon also deserves to be told. He was the son of Saul, a man of some standing. He excelled in strength of body and in daring, and he used both to the harm of his own countrymen. Day after day he went out and killed many of the Jews who were attacking Scythopolis; often he put them all to flight, and he alone turned the scale of the battle. But a fitting punishment overtook him for the murder of his kin. When the people of Scythopolis had surrounded the grove and were shooting them down with javelins, he drew his sword. He rushed at none of the enemy, for he saw that their numbers were too great to overcome, but he cried out with deep emotion: “I suffer what I deserve for what I have done, men of Scythopolis, I and all of us who pledged our loyalty to you by so great a slaughter of our own kin. So then, since we have rightly found foreigners faithless, and have sinned to the utmost against our own people, let us die, as polluted men, by our own hands. It is not fitting to die at the hands of our enemies. The same act will be at once a fitting punishment for my crime and a praise of my courage, so that none of my enemies may boast that he killed me, or exult over me as I fall.” When he had said this, he looked around at his family with eyes full of pity and of rage. He had a wife and children, and aged parents. First he seized his father by his gray hair and ran him through with the sword; after him his mother, who did not resist; and after them his wife and children. Each of them all but ran to meet the sword, hurrying to be ahead of the enemy. When he had gone through his whole family, he stood over their bodies where all could see him, stretched out his right hand so that no one would miss it, and plunged the whole sword into his own throat. This young man deserved pity for his strength of body and his firmness of soul; but because he had pledged his loyalty to foreigners, he suffered the consequences. [d]

After the slaughter at Scythopolis, the other cities each rose against the Jews within their own walls. The people of Ashkelon killed two thousand five hundred, and those of Ptolemais two thousand, besides putting many in chains. The Tyrians put many to death too, but kept most of them prisoner in chains. Hippos and Gadara likewise got rid of the bolder ones and kept those they feared under guard, and so did the rest of the cities of Syria, each according to its hatred or fear of the Jews. Only the people of Antioch, Sidon and Apamea spared the Jews who lived among them, and would not bring themselves to kill or imprison any of them. Perhaps this was because their own numbers were so great that they despised any rising the Jews might attempt; but most of all, it seems to me, it was out of pity for people they saw attempting no revolt. The people of Gerasa, too, did no wrong to the Jews who stayed with them, and escorted those who wished to leave as far as their borders.

A plot against the Jews was formed in Agrippa’s kingdom too. The king had gone to Cestius Gallus at Antioch, and had left one of his companions, a man named Noarus, a relative of King Sohemus, to manage affairs. Seventy men came from Batanea, the most eminent of their fellow citizens for birth and good sense, and asked for a body of troops, so that if any disturbance broke out in their region too they would have a guard strong enough to hold back those who rose up. Noarus sent out some of the king’s heavy infantry by night and killed every one of them. He dared to do this without Agrippa’s consent, and out of boundless love of money he chose to commit this impiety against his own countrymen, and so ruined the kingdom. He went on treating the nation cruelly and lawlessly until Agrippa learned of it. Agrippa shrank from putting him to death, out of regard for Sohemus, but he removed him from his regency. Meanwhile the rebels seized a fortress called Cypros, above Jericho, cut the throats of the garrison, and threw its defenses to the ground. In the same days the mass of the Jews at Machaerus were urging the Roman garrison to abandon the fortress and hand it over to them. The Romans, fearing that it would be taken from them by force, agreed to withdraw under a truce. When they had received pledges, they handed over the fortress, and the people of Machaerus secured it with a garrison and held it. [g]

At Alexandria there had always been strife between the native people and the Jews, ever since Alexander, who had found the Jews most eager allies against the Egyptians, gave them, as a reward for their help, the right to live in the city on equal terms with the Greeks. His successors kept up this honor, and even set aside a quarter of their own for them, so that they might keep their way of life purer by mixing less with foreigners, and allowed them to be styled Macedonians. When the Romans took possession of Egypt, neither the first Caesar nor any of those after him would allow the honors given to the Jews by Alexander to be reduced. But there were constant clashes between them and the Greeks, and though the governors punished many on both sides every day, the strife only grew sharper. Now, when disorder had broken out elsewhere too, it flared up more fiercely there. The Alexandrians were holding an assembly about an embassy they meant to send to Nero, and many Jews streamed into the amphitheater along with the Greeks. As soon as their opponents saw them, they shouted that they were enemies and spies, then leaped up and laid hands on them. The rest fled and scattered, but three men were seized and dragged off to be burned alive. At this the whole Jewish community rose to defend them. At first they threw stones at the Greeks; then they snatched up torches and rushed to the amphitheater, threatening to burn the people in it to the last man. And they would have done it, if Tiberius Alexander, the governor of the city, had not checked their fury. He did not begin by bringing them to their senses with arms; he sent the leading men among them to urge them to stop and not to provoke the Roman army against themselves. But the rebels laughed at his appeal and abused Tiberius. [i]

When he saw that the revolutionaries would not stop short of some great disaster, he let loose on them the two Roman legions stationed in the city, and with them two thousand soldiers who happened to have come from Libya, to the ruin of the Jews. He gave them leave not only to kill but to plunder the Jews’ property and burn their houses. The soldiers rushed into the quarter called Delta, where the Jews lived together, and carried out their orders, though not without bloodshed of their own. The Jews massed together and put their best-armed men in front, and held out for a very long time; but once they gave way, they were destroyed without restraint. Their destruction took every form. Some were caught in the open, others were driven into their houses, and the Romans plundered the houses first and then set fire to them. They had no pity for infants and no respect for the old, but went on killing through every age, until the whole place was flooded with blood and fifty thousand corpses lay in heaps. Not even the rest would have been left alive if they had not turned to begging for mercy. Alexander took pity on them and ordered the Romans to withdraw. The soldiers, trained to obey, stopped killing at a nod; but the populace of Alexandria, in the excess of its hatred, was hard to call off, and could scarcely be dragged away from the bodies. [m]

Such was the disaster that befell the Jews at Alexandria. Cestius now decided that he could no longer keep still while the Jews everywhere were at war. He took from Antioch the Twelfth Legion at full strength, two thousand picked men from each of the other legions, six cohorts of infantry and four squadrons of cavalry, and besides these the allied forces of the kings. Antiochus sent two thousand horsemen and three thousand foot soldiers, all of them archers; Agrippa sent the same number of foot and nearly two thousand horsemen; and Sohemus followed with four thousand, a third of them cavalry and most of them archers. With these he advanced to Ptolemais. Great numbers of auxiliaries were also gathered from the cities. They were inferior to the soldiers in experience, but in eagerness and in hatred of the Jews they made up for what they lacked in skill. Agrippa himself was with Cestius too, to guide him on the road and advise him on what was best to do. Cestius took part of his force and hurried against Chabulon, a strong city of Galilee called “of men,” which marks the border between Ptolemais and our nation. He found it empty of men, for the people had fled to the mountains, but full of goods of every kind. He let the soldiers plunder them and set fire to the town, although he admired its beauty, for its houses were built like those of Tyre, Sidon and Berytus. Then he overran the countryside, plundered everything in his path, burned the surrounding villages, and returned to Ptolemais. But while the Syrians, and especially the men of Berytus, were still busy plundering, the Jews took heart again, for they knew that Cestius had withdrawn. They fell unexpectedly on those left behind and killed about two thousand of them. [n]

Cestius set out from Ptolemais and went himself to Caesarea, but he sent part of his army ahead to Joppa, with orders to hold the city if they could seize it, but if the citizens learned of their approach, to wait for him and the rest of the army. They hurried on, some by sea and some by land, and attacking from both sides took the city easily. The inhabitants had no time even to flee, still less to prepare for a fight, and the soldiers fell on them and killed them all with their families, then plundered the city and burned it. The number of the slain was eight thousand four hundred. In the same way Cestius sent a strong body of horsemen into the district of Narbatene, which borders on Caesarea. They ravaged the land, killed a great many of its people, plundered their property and burned their villages.

Into Galilee Cestius sent Caesennius Gallus, the commander of the Twelfth Legion, and gave him as large a force as he thought would be enough to subdue that nation. Sepphoris, the strongest city of Galilee, welcomed him with cheers, and following its wise lead the other cities stayed quiet. But all the rebels and robbers fled to the mountain in the very middle of Galilee, which lies opposite Sepphoris and is called Asamon. Gallus led his force against them. As long as they held the higher ground, they easily beat off the Romans as they came up, and killed about two hundred of them. But when the Romans had gone around and reached the heights above them, they were soon defeated. Lightly armed as they were, they could not stand against heavy infantry hand to hand, nor, once routed, could they escape the cavalry. Only a few hid themselves in the rough country; more than two thousand were killed. [q]