John of Gischala’s Plots

While Josephus was governing the affairs of Galilee in this way, a treacherous man rose up against him. He came from Gischala, the son of Levi, and his name was John. He was the most cunning and the most deceitful of all the men who had made a name for themselves by such wickedness. At first he was poor, and for a long time his poverty held his wickedness in check. He was ready to lie and clever at getting his lies believed. He counted deceit a virtue and used it even against those dearest to him. He put on a show of humanity, yet where there was hope of gain he was the most murderous of men. He always craved great things, and he fed his hopes on petty crimes. At first he was a robber who worked alone; then he found companions for his daring, few at the start, but more and more as he went on. He took care to take on no one who could easily be caught. He chose men who excelled in strength of body, firmness of mind and experience of war, until he had put together a band of four hundred men. Most of them were fugitives from the territory of Tyre and its villages. With them he plundered the whole of Galilee and harried the common people, who were already in suspense over the coming war. [a]

He was already eager for command and reaching for greater things, but lack of money held him back. When he saw that Josephus was much taken with his energy, he first persuaded him to entrust him with rebuilding the wall of his native town, and in that work he made a great deal of money out of the rich. Next he staged a most cunning piece of theater. He claimed that all the Jews living in Syria were careful not to use oil that had not passed through the hands of their own people, and he asked leave to send oil to them at the border. He bought four jars of oil, about twenty-five gallons, for one Tyrian coin worth four Attic drachmae, and sold every half jar for the same price. Galilee is above all an olive country, and it had just had a good crop. So by sending large quantities to people who were short of it, with the trade all to himself, he amassed an immense sum of money, and at once he turned that money against the man who had given him the business. He reckoned that if he could bring Josephus down, he would rule Galilee himself. So he ordered the robbers under his command to press their raids harder, so that with many in the country stirring up trouble, he might either ambush the general somewhere as he came to the rescue and kill him, or, if Josephus ignored the robbers, slander him to the country people. Then he spread a rumor far and wide that Josephus was betraying the cause to the Romans, and he worked at many other such schemes to bring the man down. [b]

Around this time some young men from the village of Dabaritta, who belonged to the guards posted in the Great Plain, ambushed Ptolemy, the steward of Agrippa and Bernice, and took from him all the baggage he was carrying. It included many costly garments, a great number of silver cups, and six hundred gold coins. Unable to dispose of the plunder secretly, they brought it all to Josephus at Taricheae. He rebuked them for the violence they had done to the royal household and deposited what they had brought with Annaeus, the most powerful man in Taricheae, meaning to send it back to its owners at a suitable time. This brought him into the greatest danger. The men who had seized the goods were angry that they had received no share of what they had brought in, and at the same time they foresaw what Josephus meant to do: he would make the king and queen a present of their labor. So they ran through the villages by night and denounced Josephus to everyone as a traitor. They filled the neighboring cities with uproar too, so that by daybreak a hundred thousand armed men had come running together against him. The crowd gathered in the hippodrome at Taricheae and shouted out many things in its fury; some cried that they should stone the traitor, others that they should burn him. John stirred up the people, and with him a certain Jesus son of Sapphias, who was then chief magistrate of Tiberias. Josephus’s friends and bodyguards were so terrified by the crowd’s onslaught that all of them fled except four. He himself was asleep, and he woke and got up as the fire was already being brought against the house. The four who had stayed urged him to flee. But he was not dismayed, either at being left alone or at the numbers standing against him. He leapt out to them with his clothes torn, dust sprinkled on his head, his hands behind his back, and his own sword tied to his neck. At this sight those close to him, and especially the people of Taricheae, pitied him. But those from the countryside and the neighboring places, who found his rule a burden, reviled him and ordered him to produce the public money at once and confess his treacherous agreement. They assumed from the way he looked that he would deny nothing they suspected, and that he had done all this to win pity and so obtain pardon. But his self-abasement was the groundwork for a stratagem. He meant to set those who were angry with him quarreling among themselves, and to that end he would admit to everything they were angry about. Then, given leave to speak, he said: “I never meant either to send this money back to Agrippa or to make a profit from it myself. May I never count as my friend anyone who is your enemy, or count as profit what harms the common good. But I saw, men of Taricheae, that your city above all needs security and lacks the silver to build a wall. I was afraid, too, that the people of Tiberias and the other cities were lying in wait for this plunder. So I chose to keep the money quietly, so that I could put a wall around you. If you disapprove, I bring out what was brought to me and hand it over for you to plunder. If I have not advised you well, punish your benefactor.” [e]

At this the people of Taricheae cheered him, but those from Tiberias and the rest abused him and threatened him. Then both sides let Josephus alone and fell to quarreling with each other. Now, confident in those who had come over to him, for the people of Taricheae numbered about forty thousand, he spoke more freely to the whole crowd. He reproached them sharply for their rashness and told them that out of the money now in hand he would wall Taricheae, and would secure the other cities in the same way. They would not lack money, he said, if only they were agreed on whom it was to be raised against, and were not provoked against the man who raised it. [i]

Then the rest of the crowd that had been deceived went away, though still enraged. But two thousand of them rushed at him in arms, and since he had already got into his house ahead of them, they stood outside threatening him. Josephus then used a second trick on them. He climbed onto the roof, quieted their uproar with his right hand, and said that he did not know what they wanted, for he could not hear them for their confused shouting. He would do everything they demanded, he said, if they would send some men in to him to talk it over quietly. Hearing this, the leading men went in with their magistrates. He dragged them into the innermost part of the house, shut the outer door, and had them flogged until the inward parts of every one of them were laid bare. Meanwhile the crowd stood around the house, thinking that those who had gone in were pleading their case at length. Then he suddenly threw the doors open and let the men out covered in blood. This so terrified those who had been threatening him that they threw away their weapons and fled.

This made John’s envy all the sharper, and he devised a second plot against Josephus. He pretended to be ill and begged Josephus by letter to let him use the hot baths at Tiberias for his cure. Josephus, who did not yet suspect him of plotting, wrote to the officials of the city to give John lodging and whatever he needed. John enjoyed these favors, and two days later he set about the business he had come for. He corrupted some with lies and others with money, and persuaded them to revolt from Josephus. Silas, whom Josephus had appointed to guard the city, learned of this and wrote to him at once about the plot. As soon as Josephus received the letter, he marched hard through the night and was at Tiberias by dawn. The rest of the people came out to meet him. John suspected that the visit was aimed at him, but he sent one of his friends all the same, pretending to be ill and saying that he was confined to bed and so had failed to pay his respects. Josephus gathered the people of Tiberias in the stadium and was trying to speak to them about the reports he had received, when John secretly sent in armed men with orders to kill him. The people saw them drawing their swords and cried out. At the shout Josephus turned around, saw the steel already at his throat, and leapt down to the shore; he had been standing to address the people on a mound about nine feet high. He jumped into a boat that lay moored nearby and escaped with two of his bodyguards to the middle of the lake. [j]

His soldiers quickly snatched up their weapons and marched against the plotters. But Josephus was afraid that a civil war, stirred up by the envy of a few, would destroy the city. So he sent word to his men to look only to their own safety, and neither to kill anyone nor to call the guilty to account. They obeyed his order and kept quiet. But when the people of the surrounding country learned of the plot and of the man who had contrived it, they gathered against John. But he got away before them to Gischala, his native town. The Galileans came streaming to Josephus city by city. They had become many tens of thousands of armed men, and they shouted that they had come against John, the common plotter, and would burn him together with the native town that had taken him in. Josephus told them he welcomed their goodwill, but he held back their fury, for he chose to master his enemies by good sense rather than by killing them. He obtained the names of those in each city who had joined John’s revolt, which their own fellow townsmen were eager to point out. Then he had heralds proclaim that he would plunder the property of anyone who had not left John within five days, and burn their houses along with their families. At once three thousand deserted John; they came to Josephus and threw down their weapons at his feet. With those who remained, about two thousand fugitives from Syria, John turned again from open attempts to secret plots. So he secretly sent messengers to Jerusalem to accuse Josephus of having too great a power, saying that he would soon come as tyrant of the capital unless he was stopped first. The people knew this beforehand and paid no attention. But the powerful men, out of envy, and some of the magistrates, secretly sent John money to hire mercenaries and make war on Josephus. They also voted among themselves to recall him from his command. Yet they did not think the decree would be enough. So they sent two thousand five hundred armed men and four men of rank, Joesdrus son of Nomicus, Ananias son of Sadduk, and Simon and Judas the sons of Jonathan, all of them very able speakers, to turn the people’s goodwill away from Josephus. If he came of his own accord, they were to let him give an account of himself; if he insisted on staying, they were to treat him as an enemy. Josephus’s friends had written to him that an army was coming, but they could not tell him beforehand why, since his enemies had laid their plans in secret. So, because he had taken no precautions, four cities went over to his opponents as soon as they arrived: Sepphoris, Gabara, Gischala and Tiberias. But he quickly won these back without fighting. He got the better of the four leaders by stratagems and sent them back to Jerusalem, together with the strongest of their soldiers. The people were furious with them and rushed to kill them, together with those who had sent them, and would have done it if they had not run away in time. [k]

After this, fear of Josephus kept John penned within the walls of Gischala. A few days later Tiberias revolted again, for the people inside had invited King Agrippa in. He did not arrive on the day appointed, but a few Roman horsemen appeared that same day, and the people of Tiberias proclaimed Josephus banished. News of the revolt reached Taricheae at once. Josephus had sent all his soldiers out to gather grain, and he could neither bring himself to march out alone against the rebels nor bear to stay where he was, for he feared that if he delayed, the king’s troops would get into the city first. Nor would he be able to act on the following day, since the sabbath was coming on. So he devised a way to get round the rebels by a trick. First he ordered the gates of Taricheae shut, so that no one could carry word of his plan to the people it was aimed at. Then he gathered all the boats on the lake. Three hundred and thirty were found, and he put no more than four sailors in each. He made for Tiberias with all speed. He kept far enough from the city that it was not easy to see the boats were empty, and ordered them to ride there offshore, while he himself, with only seven of his bodyguards, and those unarmed, went in close enough to be seen. His opponents, still reviling him from the walls, saw him, and in their alarm they thought all the boats were full of soldiers. They threw down their weapons, waved the branches of suppliants, and begged him to spare the city. [n]

Josephus threatened them fiercely and reproached them. They had been the first to take up the war against Rome, he said, and now they were using up their strength beforehand in civil strife and doing what their enemies wanted most. Then too, they were in a hurry to seize the man who looked after their safety, and were not ashamed to shut their city against the very man who had walled it. Still, he said he would receive any who came to plead their defense, and through whom he could make the city secure. At once ten of the most powerful men of Tiberias came down. He took them aboard one of the fishing boats and had them carried farther out. Then he ordered fifty others, the most prominent members of their council, to come forward, as if he wanted pledges of good faith from them too. After that, inventing one fresh pretext after another, he called out more and more of them, as though to make terms. He ordered the helmsmen of the boats as they filled to sail quickly to Taricheae and lock the men up in the prison there. In the end he had seized their entire council, six hundred men, and about two thousand of the common people, and carried them off in the boats to Taricheae. [p]

The rest shouted that a certain Clitus was the chief author of the revolt and urged Josephus to vent his anger on him. Josephus had resolved to kill no one, but he ordered Levi, one of his guards, to go ashore and cut off both of Clitus’s hands. Levi was afraid to go out alone among a crowd of enemies and said he would not. Clitus saw Josephus in the boat, furious and ready to leap out and carry out the punishment himself, and from the shore he begged him to leave him one of his hands. Josephus agreed, on condition that Clitus cut off the other himself. So Clitus drew his sword with his right hand and cut off his left, such was the terror Josephus had driven him to. So with empty boats and seven bodyguards Josephus took the people captive and brought Tiberias back to his side. A few days later he found that it had joined the people of Sepphoris in revolt, and he gave his soldiers leave to plunder it. But he gathered up all the plunder and gave it back to the townspeople, and he did the same for the people of Sepphoris. For he had subdued them too, and he wanted to teach them a lesson by the plundering, and then win back their goodwill by returning their property. [q]