Page:Selections. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray (1919).djvu/128

 of the city, but at night he would come up and look for some loophole for escape and reconnoitre the sentries; but, finding every spot guarded on his account and no means of eluding detection, he descended again into the cave. So for two days he continued in hiding. On the third, his secret was betrayed by a woman of the party, who was captured, whereupon Vespasian at once in eager haste despatched two tribunes, Paulinus and Gallicanus, with orders to offer Josephus security and to exhort him to come up.

Josephus Parleys with the Roman Officers

So they came and urged him, giving pledges that his life would not be endangered. Their persuasion, however, was unavailing. His suspicions were based not on the natural clemency of those who invited him, but on the penalties which so active an opponent was likely to incur; and the presentiment that he was being summoned to punishment persisted, until Vespasian sent a third tribune,[1] Nicanor, known to, and formerly an intimate associate of, Josephus. He, on his arrival, dwelt on the innate generosity of the Romans to those whom they had once subdued, assuring him that his valour made him an object rather of admiration, than of hatred, to the commanding officers, and that the general was anxious to bring him up from his retreat, not for punishment—that he could inflict though he refused to come forth—but from a desire to save a brave man. He added that Vespasian, had he intended to entrap him, would never have sent a friend as his emissary, using the noblest of relationships as a cloak for the basest—friendship as a mask for perfidy; nor would he