United States or Latvia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This is what he says 'They tooled with small scymetars not much different from the Persian acinacæ, but more curved, and for all the world most like the Roman sickles or sicæ. It is perfectly magnificent, gentlemen, to hear the sequel of their history. Perhaps the only case on record where a regular army of murderers was assembled, a justus exercitus, was in the case of these Sicarii.
It was a country made for defense, a country of rugged mountains and natural fastnesses, and inhabited by a hardy and warlike population, which, for half a century, had been in constant insurrection. Thence had come the founders of the Zealots and the still more violent band of the Sicarii, and each town in the region had its popular leader.
Now as soon as Albinus was come to the city of Jerusalem, he used all his endeavors and care that the country might be kept in peace, and this by destroying many of the Sicarii.
"Once they called her Queen of the Essenes; now she is a hunted fugitive, waiting to be massacred by Simon, or John, or Eleazer, or Zealots, or Sicarii, or any other of the holy cut-throats who inhabit this Holy City," answered Nehushta bitterly. Ithiel raised his hands as though in thankfulness, then said: "Hush! hush! Here the very birds are spies.
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.
The tribune had for some unknown reason settled in his mind that the Apostle was a well-known 'Egyptian, who had headed a band of 'Sicarii' or 'dagger-men, of whose bloody doings Josephus tells us. How the Jews should have been trying to murder such a man Lysias does not seem to have considered.
The Sicarii, those murderers that do so grievously afflict the whole province, these too ply their bloody business at the hands of Herod and Annas. For no sooner have the pirates been caught than they give over to Herod and Annas their booty except a small stipend. Then are these murderers turned loose to get yet more booty for the accursed bloodsuckers called priests and kings.
Their Greek brethren turned against them, and handed six hundred of them up to Lupus, the governor of Egypt, to be punished; and their countryman Josephus brands them all with the name of Sicarii. They tried to hide themselves in Thebes and other cities less under the eyes of the Roman governor.
Word Of The Day