Page:Selections. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray (1919).djvu/18

 Josephus in civil strife and in avoiding plots against his life. He was suspected, perhaps justly, of harbouring designs of betraying the country to Rome; he may have hoped to stave off war by some form of compromise. At length John succeeded in inducing the Jerusalem leaders to supersede Josephus, and an embassy was sent to relieve him of his command. He, however, refused to accept the order, and obtained letters from the capital reinstating him. Meanwhile, Vespasian was advancing upon Galilee from Antioch. On the fall of Gadara Josephus was at first inclined to surrender and wrote to Jerusalem for instructions, but finally resolved to stand a siege in the fortified town of Jotapata.

Of the forty-seven days' siege of Jotapata and the various machinations and counter-machinations of the belligerents Josephus has given us a graphic account in the third book of the Jewish War. The story of its fall (July,  67) and of the sequel—the capture of the general, after a narrow escape, through a ruse, from death at the hands of his compatriots, and his prophecy of Vespasian's rise to power—will be found in the text.

"By the end of  67," I quote from what I have written elsewhere, "the whole of northern Palestine was in the hands of the Romans. Only Jerusalem, where a bloody civil war was raging, remained to be taken. But its capture was delayed by the events of  68, which drew the attention of the generals to the west. News came first of the death of Nero, which took place in June, and then, in rapid succession, of the accession of Galba, Otho and Vitellius. In July,   69, Vespasian's legions took the law into their own hands, and proclaimed him emperor. One of his first acts as emperor was to liberate Josephus, whose prophecy had now come true.  [Josephus] now accompanied the emperor to Alexandria,