The War Begins

Josephus again, after relating a great many things about the disaster that overtook the whole Jewish nation, reports word for word, among many other things, that countless numbers of those held in honor among the Jews were whipped and then crucified in Jerusalem itself by Florus. He happened to be governor of Judea when the war began to blaze up, in the twelfth year of Nero’s reign. [a] Next he says that a terrible upheaval took hold of all Syria because of the Jews’ revolt: everywhere the people of that nation were destroyed without mercy by the inhabitants of each city, as if they were enemies, “so that one could see cities full of unburied bodies, old men lying dead together with infants, and women without even a covering for their shame; the whole province full of indescribable calamities, and the dread of what was threatened greater than the deeds actually dared at any time.” So Josephus, word for word. Such was the state of the Jews. [b]