Josephus in the Cave

The Romans now searched for Josephus, both out of their own anger and because their general was very eager to have him; for if he were taken, the greatest part of the war would be over. They searched among the dead and in the hidden corners of the city. But while the city was being taken, Josephus had been helped by some divine assistance. He stole away through the middle of the enemy and leaped down into a deep pit, which opened at one side into a wide cave that could not be seen from above. There he came upon forty men of rank in hiding, with provisions enough to last them for a good many days. By day he lay hidden from the enemy, who had occupied every place. By night he came up, looked for a way to slip off, and studied the sentries. But every place was guarded on all sides on his account, so that there was no getting out unseen, and he went back down into the cave. In this way he stayed hidden for two days. On the third day a woman who had been with them was captured, and he was betrayed. At once Vespasian eagerly sent two tribunes, Paulinus and Gallicanus, with orders to give Josephus their right hands as a pledge of his life and to urge him to come up. [a]

They came and urged him, and gave pledges for his safety, but they could not persuade him. His suspicions came from what a man who had done so much against the Romans could expect to suffer, not from the natural mildness of those who were inviting him, and he feared he was being called up to be punished. At last Vespasian sent a third tribune, Nicanor, who was known to Josephus and had long been his friend. Nicanor came forward and spoke at length of the natural kindness of the Romans toward those they have once conquered. He told him that his courage had made the commanders admire him rather than hate him, and that the general was eager to have him brought up, not to punish him — for he could do that even if Josephus did not come out — but because he had chosen to save a brave man. He added that if Vespasian had meant to trap him, he would not have sent a friend, putting the fairest thing, friendship, as a cover over the vilest, faithlessness; nor would Nicanor himself have agreed to come in order to deceive a friend.

While Josephus was still wavering, even with Nicanor, the soldiers in their anger rushed to set fire to the cave, but their commander held them back, being eager to take the man alive. Nicanor kept pressing him, and Josephus heard the threats of the enemy crowd. Then the memory came back to him of the dreams he had had in the night, through which God had told him beforehand of the disasters coming on the Jews and of what would happen to the Roman emperors. He was skilled at interpreting dreams and at working out the meaning of what the Deity says ambiguously, and he knew the prophecies of the sacred books, being a priest himself and the descendant of priests. At that very hour he was seized by inspiration. Calling up the dreadful images of his recent dreams, he offered a silent prayer to God: “Since it seems good to you, who created the Jewish nation, to bring it low, and all its fortune has passed over to the Romans, and since you have chosen my soul to foretell what is to come, I give my hands to the Romans willingly, and I consent to live. But I call you to witness that I go, not as a traitor, but as your servant.” [b]

When he had said this, he gave in to Nicanor. But when the Jews who had taken refuge with him understood that he was yielding to those who invited him, they crowded around him and shouted: “The laws of our fathers may well groan aloud — the laws God laid down for the Jews, the God who created souls that despise death! Do you love life so much, Josephus? Can you bear to look on the light as a slave? How quickly you have forgotten yourself! How many you have persuaded to die for liberty! Your name for courage was false, then, and your name for wisdom was false too, if you hope to be saved by the men you fought so hard, and are willing to be saved by them even if their offer is genuine. But if the good fortune of the Romans has made you forget yourself, we must take care for the glory of our fathers. We will lend you a right hand and a sword. If you die willingly, you will die as general of the Jews; if unwillingly, as a traitor.” As they said this they raised their swords against him and threatened to kill him if he gave himself up to the Romans.

Josephus was afraid of their attack, and he believed it would be a betrayal of God’s commands if he died before delivering his message. So in his straits he began to reason with them like a philosopher: “Why, my comrades, are we so bent on shedding our own blood? Why do we set the dearest of companions, body and soul, at war with each other? Someone says I have changed. The Romans, at least, know the truth of that. It is a fine thing to die in war — but by the law of war, that is, at the hands of the conquerors. If I were shrinking from the sword of the Romans, I would truly deserve to die by my own sword and my own hand. But if they are moved to spare an enemy, how much more rightly should we be moved to spare ourselves? It is foolish to do to ourselves the very thing we are quarreling with them about. It is a fine thing to die for liberty, I say so too — but fighting, and at the hands of those who are taking it away. As it is, they are neither meeting us in battle nor killing us. The man who will not die when he must is a coward, and so, equally, is the man who will die when he need not. [c]

“What is it we fear, that we will not go up to the Romans? Death? Then shall we bring on ourselves, for certain, the death we only suspect our enemies will inflict? ‘Slavery,’ someone will say. As if we were perfectly free now! ‘It is noble to kill oneself,’ someone will say. No, it is utterly ignoble. I would count that helmsman the worst of cowards who, for fear of a storm, deliberately sank his ship before the gale struck. Suicide is foreign to the nature that all living things share, and it is impiety toward God who created us. No animal dies by design or by its own act, for in all of them the will to live is a strong law of nature. That is why we count as enemies those who openly take our life from us, and punish those who take it by treachery. Do you not think God is angry when a man treats his gift with contempt? From him we received our being, and we should leave it to him to take it back. All men’s bodies are mortal and made of perishable matter, but the soul is forever immortal, a portion of God dwelling in our bodies. If a man destroys or mishandles a deposit entrusted to him by another man, he is thought wicked and faithless. If, then, someone casts out of his own body the deposit God entrusted to him, does he imagine that the one he wrongs does not notice? It is held to be just to punish runaway slaves, even when the masters they run from are wicked. Shall we run away from God, the best of masters, and think we commit no impiety?

“Do you not know that those who depart this life by the law of nature, paying back the loan they received from God when the Lender wishes to reclaim it, win everlasting fame? Their houses and families are secure. Their souls remain pure and obedient and are given the holiest place in heaven, from which, as the ages turn, they come to dwell again in pure bodies. But the souls of those whose hands have raged against themselves are received by a darker Hades, and God, their father, punishes the descendants for the outrage of the fathers. That is why this act is hated by God and punished by our wisest lawgiver. Our laws order that the bodies of those who kill themselves be cast out unburied until sunset, though we hold it right to bury even our enemies. Among other peoples the law orders that the right hands of such dead men be cut off, since those hands made war on themselves; for they reasoned that as the body is alien to the soul, so the hand is alien to the body. So, my comrades, it is right to think justly, and not to add to our human calamities impiety toward our Creator. If we choose to be saved, let us be saved. There is no shame in being saved by those to whom we have shown our courage by so many deeds. If we choose to die, it is a fine thing to die at the hands of those who have conquered us. But I will not cross over into the ranks of the enemy to become a traitor to myself. I would be far more foolish than those who desert to the enemy: they do it to save themselves, and I would be doing it for destruction — my own destruction at that. Yet I pray that the Romans may prove treacherous. If they kill me after giving me their right hand, I will die cheerfully, carrying away with me the faithlessness of liars as a comfort greater than victory.”

Josephus said many things like this to turn them from killing themselves. But despair had stopped their ears, since they had long ago devoted themselves to death, and they grew furious with him. They ran at him from every side with drawn swords, reviling him as a coward, and each looked ready to strike him at any moment. But he called one by name, fixed another with a general’s look, took a third by the right hand, and shamed a fourth with entreaty. Torn by every kind of feeling in his extremity, he kept every blade from the kill, turning again and again on whoever came at him, like a wild beast surrounded on all sides. Even in their final calamity some still revered their general: their right hands went slack and their swords slipped, and many who were bringing their blades down on him let them fall of their own accord.

Yet in his helplessness he did not run out of resource. Trusting in God’s protecting care, he staked his life on a plan. “Since you are resolved to die,” he said, “come, let us leave our killing of one another to the lot. Let the one on whom the lot falls be killed by the one who draws after him, and so fortune will make its way through us all, and none of us will lie dead by his own right hand. For it would be unjust if, when the rest are gone, someone changed his mind and saved himself.” When he said this, they trusted him, and once he had persuaded them he drew lots with them. Each man who drew the lot offered his throat to the one who came after him, believing that their general too would die at once; for they thought death with Josephus sweeter than life. But he was left — whether we should say by fortune or by the providence of God — with one other man. He was anxious neither to be condemned by the lot nor, if he were left to the last, to stain his right hand with the blood of a countryman, and he persuaded this man too, on a pledge of good faith, to live. [g]

So Josephus escaped both the war with the Romans and the war with his own people, and he was led by Nicanor to Vespasian. All the Romans ran together to see him. As the crowd pressed in around the general there was a confused uproar: some rejoiced that he had been taken, some threatened him, some forced their way in to see him up close. Those farther off shouted for their enemy to be punished, while those near him remembered his deeds and were amazed at the change in his fortunes. There was not one of the commanders, however angry with him he had been before, who did not soften at the sight of him. Titus above all was moved, in a special way, by Josephus’s endurance in his misfortunes and by pity for his youth. As he remembered the man who had lately been fighting and saw him now lying in his enemies’ hands, he could reflect on how great the power of fortune is, how swiftly the scales of war turn, and that nothing human is secure. So he brought a great many others to share his pity for Josephus, and it was he who had the largest share in winning him his life from his father. Vespasian, however, ordered him to be guarded with every precaution, intending to send him on to Nero at once. [h]

When Josephus heard this, he said that he wished to speak with Vespasian alone. Vespasian sent everyone away except his son Titus and two of his friends, and Josephus said: “You think, Vespasian, that in Josephus you have taken nothing more than a prisoner. But I come to you as a messenger of greater things. Had I not been sent ahead by God, I knew well enough the law of the Jews, and how generals ought to die. Are you sending me to Nero? Why? Will the men who succeed Nero before it comes to you last? You, Vespasian, are Caesar and emperor — you and this son of yours. Bind me more securely now and keep me for yourself. For you, Caesar, are master not only of me but of land and sea and the whole human race. And I ask to be kept under closer guard, for punishment, if I am speaking rashly even in the name of God.” When he said this, Vespasian at first seemed not to believe him and suspected that Josephus was inventing it as a trick to save his life. But little by little he was brought to believe it, for God was already rousing him toward the empire and foreshowing the scepter by other signs. He found Josephus truthful in other matters too. One of the two friends present at that private meeting said he wondered how Josephus had not foretold their capture to the people of Jotapata, nor his own captivity to himself — unless all this was nonsense to fend off the anger against him. Josephus replied that he had in fact foretold to the people of Jotapata that they would be taken after forty-seven days, and that he himself would be captured alive by the Romans. Vespasian questioned the prisoners privately about these predictions, and when he found them true, he began to believe what concerned himself. He did not release Josephus from guard and chains, but he gave him clothing and other valuable gifts, and he went on treating him with kindness and attention, Titus doing much to add to the honor shown him. [j]