Page:Selections. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray (1919).djvu/70

 He told them that his bodily sufferings were now so great that death could not be far off. Death could be borne, and came to all as a welcome guest; but what grieved him most was the thought that he would lack the lamentations and miss the mourning usually accorded to a king. He was not blind to the feelings of the Jews, and knew what relief and intense delight his death would bring them, because, even in his lifetime, they were always ready to rebel and to treat his projects with contumely. "It is therefore your task," he proceeded, "to resolve to afford me some alleviation of this particular pain. If you do not refuse your consent to my wishes, I shall receive a great funeral, such as no king ever had before me, and a heartfelt national lamentation for my sport and delectation. When, therefore, you see that I have given up the ghost, let the troops be drawn up round the hippodrome, still unaware of my death—the news must not be published to the world till you have done this—and the order given to shoot down the prisoners within with their javelins. If you kill them all in this manner, you will without fail do me a double favour. You will execute my dying injunctions; you will also get me the honour of a memorable mourning."

Such was the charge which, with tears and supplication and appeals to the loyalty due to a kinsman and their faith in God, he laid upon them, and bade them preserve him from dishonour. And they promised not to fail him.

From these final injunctions even a friendly critic of the king's former actions, who attributed his treatment