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This was the beginning of greater calamities; for the robbers perpetually contrived to catch some of Ananias's servants; and when they had taken them alive, they would not let them go, till they thereby recovered some of their own Sicarii. And as they were again become no small number, they grew bold, and were a great affliction to the whole country.

Also they have suffered the distresses of disorder so intensely that peace in any form is most welcome to them. Titus approacheth reluctantly. He had rather deliver Jerusalem than besiege it. I am of the loved and dethroned Maccabaean line acceptable to every faction of Jewry, from the Essenes to the Sicarii.

And then it was that the sicarii, as they were called, who were robbers, grew numerous. They also came frequently upon the villages belonging to their enemies, with their weapons, and plundered them, and set them on fire.

We found the three scoundrels in the place where the driver had told me we should see them. I gave them a searching glance, and thought they looked like true Sicarii, ready to kill anyone for a little money. They started in a quarter of an hour, and half an hour later we set out, with a peasant to guide us, and so struck into a cross road.

Characteristic is his account of the turbulent condition of Palestine in the time of Felix: "Bands of Sicarii springing up in the chaos caused by the tyranny infested the country, and another body of abandoned men, less villainous in their actions, but more wicked in their designs, deluded the people under pretense of divine inspiration, and persuaded them to rise.

Open not the door, Jesus! Saddoc cried again. There are Sicarii who kill men in the daytime, mingling themselves among the multitude with daggers hidden in their garments, their mission being to stab those that disobey the law in any fraction. We're Essenes, and have not sent blood offerings to the Temple. Open not the door.

Sicarii or Zealots travel in search of heretics through the cities of Samaria and Judea. Open not the door! Men are for ever fooled, Saddoc continued, and will never cease to open their doors to those who stand in need of meat and drink. It will be safer, Jesus, to bid him away. Tell him rather that we'll let down a basket of meat and drink from the balcony to him.

"On the third day, when those infuriated hyenas appeared to have spent their diabolical rage; after they had thrust a red-hot iron into his eyes and left him with sightless sockets; the poor martyr, the prey of delirium, cried out that he was hungry, and one of those sicarii cut a piece of flesh from Piera's thigh and was infamous enough to carry it to his mouth.

In the beginning of the reign of Nero, 55 A.D., an Egyptian Jew, who claimed to be listened to as a prophet, raised the minds of his countrymen into a ferment of religious zeal by preaching about the sufferings of their brethren in Judæa; and he was able to get together a body of men, called in reproach the Sicarii, or ruffians, whose numbers are variously stated at four thousand and thirty thousand, whom he led out of Egypt to free the holy city from the bondage of the heathen.

The next toast was The Jewish Sicarii. Upon which I made the following explanation to the company: "Gentlemen, I am sure it will interest you all to hear that the assassins, ancient as they were, had a race of predecessors in the very same country.