In the year 689 from the founding of the City, in the consulship of Marcus Tullius Cicero and Gaius Antonius, Pompey, on receiving the news that Mithridates had been killed, attacked Coele Syria and Phoenicia in war; he first subdued the Ituraeans and the Arabs, and took their city, which they call Petra.1
1 Anno ab urbe condita DCLXXXVIIII M. Tullio Cicerone et C. Antonio consulibus Pompeius occisi Mithridatis nuntio accepto Syriam Coelen et Phoenicen bello adgressus, Ituraeos primum Arabasque perdomuit urbemque eorum, quam Petram nominant, cepit;
1Cicero and Antonius were consuls in 63 BC, which is 691 on the usual reckoning; Orosius’s year-numbers for these decades run two years low.
From there he sent Gabinius with an army against the Jews, over whom Aristobulus, having driven out his brother Hyrcanus, was ruling as the first king to come from the priesthood, and against Jerusalem, their city. He himself followed at once; and, received into the city by the elders but repulsed by the common people from the wall of the temple, he set himself to storm it.2
2 hinc ad Iudaeos, quibus Aristobulus expulso fratre Hyrcano primus ex sacerdote rex praeerat, atque ad Hierosolymam urbem eorum Gabinium cum exercitu mittit. ipse continuo subsecutus et a patribus urbe susceptus sed a plebe muro templi repulsus expugnationem eius intendit.
2The first Hasmonean ruler to take the title of king was Aristobulus I (104–103 BC); Orosius transfers the distinction to his namesake Aristobulus II.
This place, fortified not only by the nature of the ground but also by an enormous wall and a very great ditch, he stormed with difficulty in the third month, compelling the legions to relieve one another day and night without rest. Thirteen thousand Jews are said to have been slain there; the rest of the multitude gave themselves up to his protection.
3 id non solum natura loci, uerum etiam ingenti muro fossaque maxima munitum, cum alias aliis legiones dies noctesque succedere sine requie cogeret, uix tertio mense expugnauit. tredecim milia ibi Iudaeorum caesa narrantur, cetera multitudo in fidem uenit.
Pompey ordered the walls of the city to be overthrown and levelled with the ground; and having beheaded a number of the chief men of the Jews, he restored Hyrcanus to the priesthood and led Aristobulus captive to Rome. Pompey himself related before an assembly that he had waged this war in the East against twenty-two kings.
4 Pompeius muros ciuitatis euerti aequarique solo imperauit et, cum aliquantos principes Iudaeorum securi percussisset, Hyrcanum sacerdotio restituit, Aristobulum captiuum Romam duxit. hoc bellum orientis cum uiginti et duobus regibus sese gessisse ipse Pompeius pro contione narrauit.
Meanwhile, in those same days, the conspiracy of Catiline against his country was formed and betrayed in the City, and was extinguished by civil war in Etruria; at Rome the accomplices of the conspiracy were put to death.
5 Interea coniuratio Catilinae aduersus patriam per eosdem dies in urbe habita et prodita, in Etruria uero ciuili bello extincta est; Romae conscii coniurationis occisi sunt.
But since this history is well enough known to all, through Cicero’s conduct of the affair and Sallust’s description of it, it is enough that it has now been briefly touched on by us.
6 sed hanc historiam agente Cicerone et describente Sallustio satis omnibus notam nunc a nobis breuiter fuisse perstrictam sat est.
A rising also, begun among the Paeligni by the Marcelli, father and son, was betrayed by Lucius Vettius and, once Catiline’s conspiracy had been laid bare, was put down as if its root had been cut away; and punishment was exacted for both, by Bibulus among the Paeligni and by Cicero among the Bruttii.
7 motus etiam in Paelignis ortus a Marcellis patre et filio per L. Vettium proditus patefacta Catilinae coniuratione quasi succisa radice compressus est, et de utroque per Bibulum in Paelignis, per Ciceronem in Bruttiis uindicatum est.