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"It is an admitted truth," he writes, "that attendant spirits have protected certain men, to wit, Socrates, Plotinus, Synesius, Dion, Flavius Josephus, and myself. All of these have enjoyed prosperous lives except Socrates and me, and I, as I have said before, was at one time offered many and favourable opportunities for the achievement of happiness.
It is well-nigh certain that Josephus did not study the writings of any of these chroniclers and historians at first hand, for he shows no acquaintance with the substance of their works.
"It is Josephus Peabody," answered the boy's voice, and Letitia gasped, for she remembered seeing that very name on the genealogical tree which hung in her great-aunt Peggy's front entry, although she could not quite remember where it came in, whether it was on a main branch or a twig. "Are the Injuns after you?" inquired Great-great-grandmother Letitia.
The history starts, accordingly, with the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, and, save that he expatiates without any sense of proportion on the exploits of Herod the Great, Josephus is generally faithful to his program in the introductory portion of the work.
When the Jew had stated his business, Phadrig looked at him with sleepy eyes with a strange expression in them which, for some reason or other, held his visitor's usually shifty gaze fixed, and said in a slow, gentle voice: "It is very kind of you, Mr Josephus, to bring me all these nice little commissions.
No doubt the Hellenistic historians paid more attention to the Jews from the moment when they came within the orbit of the Roman Empire; but while in the Antiquities Josephus refers several times to the statements of two or three of the Greco-Roman writers, in the Wars he quotes no authority. From this it may be inferred that in the earlier work he is following but one guide.
To which of their histories is such external testimony given as that of Tacitus to Josephus, in spite of the contempt felt by the polished Roman towards the whole Jewish race?
"We will care for the honor of our country," they said. At the same time they offered a sword and "a hand that shall use it against thee." Josephus then proposed that they should all die together, but by the hands of one another, instead of suicide. Lots were cast. He who drew the first offered his neck to him who stood next and so forward.
Other editions and translations have followed. The spuriousness of the work has now been established, and of modern scholars Wellhausen is almost alone in ascribing to it any independent historical worth. In the Spanish period of Jewish culture the real as well as the spurious Josephus was read by many of his race, and some hard things were said of him.
He read of the hanging gardens of Babylon, first made by Queen Semiramis, third or fourth from Nimrod, and magnificently renewed by Nabuchodonosor, according to Josephus: "from whence, overlooking Babylon, and all the region about it, he found no circumscription to the eye of his ambition; till, over-delighted with the bravery of this Paradise, in his melancholy metamorphosis he found the folly of that delight, and a proper punishment in the contrary habitation in wild plantations and wanderings of the fields."
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