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If such fables, instead of forming excrescences here and there on the history of Josephus, which may be cut off without injury to the main record, were so interwoven with the history as to be part and parcel of it, so that no history would remain if they were all taken away, then we should reject Josephus as a teller of fables, and not a writer of history.
Tacitus, Sallust, Livy, Dion Cassius, Pliny, and Caesar reveal incidentally much that we wish to know, the last giving us the liveliest idea of the military habits and tactics of the Romans. Gibbon gives some important facts. The subject of ancient machines is treated by Folard's Commentary attached to his translation of Polybius. Josephus describes with great vividness the siege of Jerusalem.
In the case of Jackson the circumstance was forgotten, while Johnson too often dwelt upon it and made capital out of it. Under date of the 23rd of May, 1919, the Hon. Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, writes me the following letter, which I violate no confidence in reproducing in this connection: MY DEAR MARSE HENRY:
Haley; but "different men, different minds." "Ye'd oughter come over to our graduation exercises, Janice," said Marty, with a grin. "We're goin' to do ourselves proud. Hi tunket! that Adams is so green that I wonder Walky's old Josephus ain't bit him yet, thinkin' he was a wisp of grass." "Now Marty!" said his mother, admonishingly. "Fact," said her son.
Josephus witnesseth us that it came from the Earthly Paradise and compassed the castle around and ran on through the forest as far as the house of a worshipful hermit, and there lost the course and had peace in the earth. All along the valley thereof was great plenty of everything continually, and nought was ever lacking in the rich castle that Perceval had won.
But, save that it was written in Aramaic, we cannot tell the form of the original history, since it has entirely disappeared. Josephus says in the preface to the extant Greek books that he translated into Greek the account he had already written. But he certainly did much more than translate.
And Josephus, who weakly sought a refuge for himself after defeat, resembles rather the prophets whom Jeremiah denounced: "They speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord. They say still unto them that despise me, The Lord hath said, Ye shall have peace; and they say unto everyone that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you."
It is apparent at the same time that Josephus had a better acquaintance with the historical literature about Herod than when he wrote the Wars, and that he compared his various authorities and exercised some judgment in composing his picture.
The latter was then living, as Josephus relates, in open adultery with Drusilla, who had been married to Azis, and brought away from her husband by the help of Simon a Magician; and this circumstance probably gave occasion to Paul to dwell upon temperance, or continence as the word might be rendered, among other subjects, when he made Felix tremble.
Josephus continues the Biblical narrative in less detail in the fifth book, which covers the period of Joshua and the Judges and the first part of Samuel.
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