Page:Selections. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray (1919).djvu/21

 between the author and his friend, Agrippa; two specimens of the king's letters, in rather slipshod Greek, are quoted.

Books I and II give a rapid sketch (expanded in the Ant.) of Jewish history from the capture of Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes (168 ) down to the defeat of Cestius Gallus in 66 and the preparations for the war. Book III narrates the coming of Vespasian and Titus, the siege of Jotapata and the fighting in Galilee; Book IV the close of the Galilæan campaign, the factions in Jerusalem, the advance of Vespasian upon the city and his return to Rome on being elected emperor by his army; Book V describes the city and Temple, the investment by Titus and the capture of the first and second walls; Book VI the horrors of the famine, the taking of the fortress of Antonia, followed by the burning of the Temple and the capture and destruction of the city; Book VII the return of Titus to Rome, the triumphal procession and the capture of the last strongholds of the Jewish fanatics.

(ii) The Jewish Antiquities. In this, his magnum opus, Josephus undertook to write the history of his nation from the creation to the outbreak of the Jewish War. He tells us of his misgivings in entering on so large a task, the toil which it involved, and how it was only through the encouragement of his patron Epaphroditus (to whom Ant., the Life and the Apion treatise are all dedicated) that it was finally completed in the thirteenth year of Domitian's reign and the fifty-sixth of his own life, 93-94 (Ant. I. 6 ff.; XX. 267). The work towards the close shows some marks of weariness. The title ([Greek: Ioudaïkê Archaiologia]) and the division into twenty books were doubtless derived from the great Roman history ([Greek: Rômaïkê Archaiologia]) of Dionysius of Halicarnassus.