Page:Selections. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray (1919).djvu/81

 day, the Jews still persisting in their entreaties, he placed an armed force under cover and came in person to the judgement-seat; this had been set up in the race-course, where he had the soldiers concealed in ambush. When the Jews once more presented their petition, at a given signal he had a cordon of soldiers round them and threatened to punish them with instant death if they did not desist from their uproar and depart to their homes. Thereupon they flung themselves on their faces and bared their necks and said that they would gladly welcome death rather than venture to transgress the wise ordinances of their laws. Pilate marvelled at their obstinacy in the observance of their laws, and forthwith had the images taken back from Jerusalem to Cæsarea.

On another occasion he expended the consecrated funds on the construction of (an aqueduct for) conveying water to Jerusalem, bringing it from a distance of two hundred furlongs. The Jews were dissatisfied with his action in this matter, and many thousands of them assembled and raised an outcry against him, requiring him to abandon his project; some, as is the way of a mob, even proceeded to rail at and insult the man. Pilate thereupon dressed a large body of soldiers in Jewish garb, under which they carried clubs, and stationed them where they could surround the Jews, whom he then ordered to retire. When these began to revile him, he gave the soldiers the prearranged signal; and they laid about them with a severity much greater than Pilate had ordered, punishing indiscriminately those who had taken part in the riot and those who had not.. B.J. has "400 (v.l. 300) furlongs."]