Tiberias, Gischala and Gamala

There were three factions in that city. The first was made up of respectable men, and its head was Julius Capellus. He and all his companions — Herod son of Miarus, Herod son of Gamalus, and Compsus son of Compsus (his brother Crispus, who had once been prefect under the great king, happened to be on his own estates beyond the Jordan) — all these men, I say, advised at that time that the city should stand by its loyalty to the Romans and to the king. Pistus did not agree with that decision, led on by his son Justus; for he was by nature somewhat unbalanced. The second faction was made up of the most obscure people, and it was set on war. [a]

Justus son of Pistus, the head of the third party, pretended to be undecided about the war, but in fact he was eager for revolution, thinking the change would win him power. So he came forward into the middle of the people and tried to teach the crowd that their city had always been the capital of Galilee — at least in the days of Herod the tetrarch, its founder, who had wanted the city of Sepphoris to be subject to Tiberias. They had not lost that first place even under King Agrippa the father, and had kept it right up to the time when Felix was procurator of Judea. But now, he said, they had had the misfortune to be handed over to the younger Agrippa as a present from Nero. At once Sepphoris, because it had submitted to the Romans, had become the capital of Galilee, and the royal bank and the archives had been taken away from them.

He said this, and a great deal more against King Agrippa, to provoke the people to revolt. Now, he added, was the time to take up arms, gain the Galileans as allies — they would follow Tiberias’s lead willingly, because of the hatred they felt for the people of Sepphoris for keeping their loyalty to the Romans — and turn on Sepphoris with a strong force to take revenge. With these words he stirred up the crowd. He was skilled at swaying the people, and at getting the better of opponents who gave sounder advice, by trickery and by deceit with words. He was not without Greek education either, and relying on it he even undertook to write a history of these events, as though by this account of his he could get the better of the truth. What a worthless life this man led, and how he and his brother were all but the cause of our ruin, I will show as my account goes on. At that time Justus persuaded the citizens to take up arms, and forced many to do so against their will. Then he went out with all of them and set fire to the villages belonging to Gadara and Hippos, which lay on the borders between Tiberias and the territory of Scythopolis.

That was the state of things in Tiberias. At Gischala matters stood like this. John son of Levi saw that some of the citizens were highly elated at the revolt from the Romans, and he tried to restrain them and urged them to keep faith. But for all his efforts he could not; for the neighboring peoples — the people of Gadara, the Baraganaeans and the Tyrians — gathered a large force, fell on Gischala, took it by storm, set it on fire, razed it to the ground, and went back home. This so enraged John that he armed all his men, fought the peoples I have named, and rebuilt Gischala better than before, fortifying it with walls for its future safety. [f]

Gamala, however, remained loyal to the Romans, for the following reason. Philip son of Jacimus, King Agrippa’s prefect, had been rescued against all expectation when the royal palace in Jerusalem was under siege. But in making his escape he fell into another danger, of being killed by Menahem and the robbers with him. Some Babylonians, relatives of his who were in Jerusalem, prevented the robbers from carrying it out. So Philip stayed there four days, and on the fifth he fled, wearing a wig so that he would not be recognized. When he reached one of his own villages, which lay on the borders of the fortress of Gamala, he sent to some of those under his command, ordering them to come to him. [g]

But God prevented him from carrying out this plan, and that for his own good; for if it had not been prevented, he would certainly have perished. A fever suddenly seized him, and he wrote letters to Agrippa and Berenice and gave them to one of his freedmen to take to Varus. At that time Varus was running the kingdom, having been appointed by the king and his sister, for they had gone to Berytus to meet Cestius. When Varus received Philip’s letters and learned that he had come through safely, he was greatly annoyed, thinking he would seem useless to the king and his sister from then on, now that Philip had arrived. So he brought the man carrying the letters out before the crowd, accused him of forging them, and said that he was lying when he reported that Philip was in Jerusalem fighting with the Jews against the Romans; and he put him to death.

When the freedman did not return, Philip could not tell why, and he sent a second man with letters, to come back and tell him what had happened to the first and why he was so slow. When this man arrived, Varus brought a false charge against him too and killed him. For the Syrians in Caesarea had puffed him up with great ambitions. They said that Agrippa would be put to death by the Romans for the offenses the Jews had committed, and that Varus would take over the rule, since he was of royal descent; and Varus was, by everyone’s admission, of a royal family, a descendant of Sohaemus, who had ruled as tetrarch in the region of Lebanon. Swollen with pride on this account, Varus kept the letters to himself, contriving that the king should never read them, and guarded all the roads out, so that no one could slip away and tell the king what was going on. And to please the Syrians in Caesarea, he killed many of the Jews.

He also decided to take up arms, together with the Trachonites in Batanea, and attack the Babylonian Jews in Ecbatana, as they are called. So he summoned twelve of the most respected Jews in Caesarea and ordered them to go to Ecbatana and say to their countrymen who lived there:

“Varus has heard that you intend to march against the king. He does not believe it, and he has sent us to persuade you to lay down your arms; that will be the proof that he was right not to believe those who spoke against you.”

He also told them to send seventy of their leading men to answer the charge brought against them. When the twelve came to their countrymen at Ecbatana and found that they had no thought at all of revolt, they persuaded them to send the seventy as well. Suspecting nothing of what was going to happen, they sent them, and the seventy went down to Caesarea with the twelve envoys. Varus met them with the king’s troops, killed them all along with the envoys, and set out against the Jews of Ecbatana. But one of the seventy escaped and got there first to warn them. They took up their arms and withdrew with their wives and children to the fortress of Gamala, leaving behind villages full of good things and holding many tens of thousands of cattle.

When Philip learned of this, he too came to the fortress of Gamala. On his arrival the people shouted for him to take command and make war on Varus and the Syrians of Caesarea, for word had spread that they had killed the king. But Philip held back their eagerness. He reminded them of the king’s kindnesses to them, described how great the power of the Romans was, and told them it was not to their advantage to go to war with them; and in the end he persuaded them. Meanwhile the king learned that Varus meant to kill the Jews of Caesarea — many tens of thousands of them, with their wives and children — in a single day. He summoned Varus to him and sent Aequus Modius to replace him, as I have related elsewhere. Philip kept the fortress of Gamala and the country around it, which remained loyal to the Romans.

As soon as I had come into Galilee and learned these things from those who reported them, I wrote to the sanhedrin in Jerusalem about them and asked what they wanted me to do. They urged me to stay, and to keep my fellow envoys with me, if they were willing, and take charge of Galilee. But my fellow envoys had grown rich from the tithes paid to them, which as priests they received as their due, and they decided to return home. When I asked them to stay until we had put affairs in order, they agreed. So I set out with them from the city of Sepphoris and came to a village called Bethmaus, about half a mile from Tiberias. From there I sent to the council of Tiberias and the leading men of the people and asked them to come to me. [j]

When they arrived, with Justus among them, I told them that I had been sent to them by the commonwealth of Jerusalem as an envoy with these men, to persuade them to have the house pulled down that Herod the tetrarch had built, which had figures of animals in it, since our laws forbid making anything of the kind; and I urged them to let us do it as quickly as possible. For a long time Capellus and the leading men refused to allow it, but under our pressure they agreed. Then Jesus son of Sapphias — whom I have mentioned as the leader of the faction of the sailors and the poor — got ahead of us. He took some Galileans with him and set fire to the whole palace, expecting to get a great deal of money from it because he had seen that some of the roofs were gilded. They plundered a great deal, which was done against our wishes; for after our meeting with Capellus and the leading men of Tiberias we had withdrawn from Bethmaus into Upper Galilee. Then Jesus and his followers killed all the Greeks living in Tiberias, and everyone who had been their enemy before the war.