The Last Battles in Galilee

Tiberias, too, came close to being plundered by the Galileans, and this is how it happened. The leading men of its council wrote to the king, asking him to come to them and take over their city. The king promised to come, and wrote letters in reply, which he gave to one of his chamberlains, a man named Crispus, a Jew by birth, to carry to Tiberias. The Galileans recognized this man as he was carrying the letters, seized him and brought him to me. As soon as the whole crowd heard of it, they were furious and took up their arms. The next day great numbers of them gathered from every quarter and came to the town of Asochis, where I was then staying. They raised a great outcry, calling Tiberias a traitor and a friend of the king, and demanded my permission to go down and wipe it out completely; for they hated the people of Tiberias as much as they hated the people of Sepphoris.

When I heard this, I was at a loss how to rescue Tiberias from the rage of the Galileans. I could not deny that the people of Tiberias had written to invite the king, for his letters to them in reply proved the truth of it. So after thinking it over for a long time, I said to them, “I know as well as you do that the people of Tiberias have done wrong, and I will not stop you from plundering their city. Still, things of this weight ought to be done with judgment. The people of Tiberias are not the only ones who have betrayed our liberty; so have many of the most esteemed men in Galilee. Wait, then, until I have found out exactly who is to blame, and then you will have them all in your power, along with any others you can bring in yourselves.” With these words I won the crowd over. Their anger subsided and they dispersed. I gave orders that the man sent by the king be put in chains. A few days later, pretending that some urgent business of my own was taking me out of the kingdom, I called Crispus in secret and told him to make the soldier who guarded him drunk and to escape to the king, for he would not be pursued. He followed my advice and got away. So Tiberias, on the point of being destroyed a second time, escaped so sharp a danger through my generalship and the care I took for it. [a]

About this time Justus son of Pistus slipped away to the king without my knowledge, and I will explain why he did so. When the war of the Jews against the Romans began, the people of Tiberias had resolved to obey the king and not to revolt from the Romans. But Justus persuaded them to take up arms, for he was eager for revolution himself and hoped to rule both the Galileans and his own city. He did not get what he hoped for. The Galileans hated the people of Tiberias, out of anger at what they had suffered at his hands before the war, and they would not put up with Justus as their commander. I myself, entrusted by the commonwealth of Jerusalem with the charge of Galilee, often grew so angry with Justus that I came close to killing him, for I could not bear his wickedness. He was afraid that my anger might one day be carried through, and so he went off to the king, thinking he would live more safely with him. [b]

The people of Sepphoris, having escaped their first danger beyond all expectation, sent to Cestius Gallus, asking him to come quickly and take over their city, or else to send a force that would check the enemy’s raids on them. In the end they persuaded Gallus to send them a force of cavalry and infantry, which arrived by night and was let into the city. When the country around was being ravaged by the Roman army, I took the soldiers I had with me and came to the village of Garis. There I pitched a fortified camp some distance from Sepphoris, about two and a half miles away, and by night I advanced on the city and attacked its walls. I sent a good number of my soldiers up on ladders and became master of most of the city. Soon afterward, though, our ignorance of the ground forced us to withdraw, after we had killed two Roman horsemen and ten foot soldiers and a few of the people of Sepphoris, and had lost only one man of our own. Later there was a battle on the plain against the cavalry. We held out bravely for a long time but were beaten, for when the Romans surrounded us, my men took fright and fell back. In that battle one of the men entrusted with guarding my person was killed; his name was Justus, and he had once held the same post with the king. About this time the king’s forces arrived, cavalry and infantry, under Sulla, the commander of his bodyguard. Sulla pitched his camp just over half a mile from Julias and set guards on the roads, the one leading to Seleucia and the one leading to the fortress of Gamala, to cut off the inhabitants from supplies from the Galileans. [d]

When I learned of this, I sent two thousand heavily armed men under a commander named Jeremiah. They pitched camp about six hundred feet from Julias, near the Jordan River, and did nothing more than skirmish until I came to them myself with three thousand soldiers. The next day I set an ambush in a ravine not far from the enemy’s camp and challenged the king’s troops to battle, ordering my own soldiers to turn their backs until they had drawn the enemy out. And so it happened. Sulla, supposing that our men were really running away, came out and was about to pursue them, when the men in ambush fell on them from behind and threw them all into great confusion. At once I wheeled sharply about with my force, met the king’s troops and put them to flight. I would have carried the day if some divine power had not stood in my way. The horse I was fighting on plunged into a marshy spot and brought me down to the ground with it. I broke the joints of my wrist and was carried to a village called Capernaum. When my men heard of this, they were afraid I had suffered something worse; they gave up any further pursuit and came back in great anxiety for me. So I sent for physicians and was treated, and I stayed there that day with a fever; and on the physicians’ advice I was carried that night to Tarichaeae. [h]

When Sulla and his men learned what had happened to me, they took heart again. Finding that the watch in our camp was carelessly kept, they placed a body of horsemen in ambush by night across the Jordan, and when day came they challenged us to battle. Our men accepted and advanced into the plain, and the horsemen appeared from their ambush, threw them into confusion and put them to flight, killing six of our men. Yet they did not carry the victory through to the end; for when they heard that some heavily armed men had sailed from Tarichaeae to Julias, they took fright and withdrew.

Not long afterward Vespasian arrived at Tyre, and King Agrippa with him. The Tyrians began to abuse the king, calling him an enemy of the Tyrians and of the Romans; for they said that Philip, the commander of his army, had betrayed the royal palace and the Roman forces in Jerusalem, and had done it at his orders. When Vespasian heard this, he rebuked the Tyrians for insulting a man who was both a king and a friend of the Romans, but he advised the king to send Philip to Rome to give an account of his conduct to Nero. Philip was sent, but he never came into Nero’s presence, for he found him in his last extremity because of the disorders and the civil war that had broken out, and so he returned to the king. When Vespasian came to Ptolemais, the leading men of the Decapolis of Syria raised an outcry against Justus of Tiberias, because he had set fire to their villages. So Vespasian handed him over to the king to be punished by the king’s subjects; but the king only put him in chains, and concealed this from Vespasian, as I have related above. The people of Sepphoris went out to meet Vespasian and greeted him, and they received a force with Placidus as its commander. They went up with these troops, and I followed them, until Vespasian arrived in Galilee. How his arrival came about, how he fought his first battle with me near the village of Garis, how I withdrew from there to Jotapata and what I did during its siege, how I was taken alive and put in chains and how I was set free, and all that I did in the Jewish war and during the siege of Jerusalem, I have related accurately in my books on the Jewish War. But I think it necessary now to add an account of those things in my life that I did not record in my history of the Jewish war. [k]

When the siege of Jotapata was over and I was in the hands of the Romans, I was kept under guard with every care, for Vespasian treated me with great honor in most things. At his command I married a virgin, a native of the country, from among the women taken captive at Caesarea. She did not stay with me long, but left me when I had been released from my chains and had gone with Vespasian to Alexandria. At Alexandria I married another wife. From there I was sent with Titus to the siege of Jerusalem, and I was often in danger of death. The Jews were eager to get me into their hands to punish me, and the Romans, whenever they were beaten, thought it was because of my treachery, and kept up a continual outcry to the emperor, demanding that I be punished as a traitor to them too. But Titus Caesar knew well the fortunes of war, and by saying nothing he put a stop to the soldiers’ attacks on me. When the city of Jerusalem had been taken by storm, Titus Caesar often urged me to take whatever I wanted from the ruins of my country, saying that he gave me leave. But now that my country had fallen, I had nothing of greater value to take and keep as a comfort in my misfortunes. So I asked Titus for the freedom of some freeborn people, and I received sacred books as a gift from Titus. Not long afterward I asked for the life of my brother, along with fifty friends, and was not refused. I also went into the temple with Titus’s permission, where a great crowd of captive women and children had been shut up, and I set free all whom I recognized as my friends and acquaintances, about a hundred and ninety in number. I let them go without their paying any ransom, and restored them to their former condition. Again, I was sent by Titus Caesar with Cerealius and a thousand horsemen to a village called Tekoa, to see beforehand whether the place was fit for a camp. On my way back I saw many captives crucified, and recognized three of them as former acquaintances of mine. I was grieved to the heart, and went to Titus in tears and told him. He immediately ordered them taken down and given the most careful treatment. Two of them died under the physicians’ care, but the third survived. [n]