We have been describing the evidence of hostile and unfriendly men, who seek to injure us with such artifice, that even when injuring us they may not appear to have been acting iniquitously, and yet that we who are injured by them cannot resist with safety to ourselves; for, my good men, it does not contribute to the honour of the emperor to abrogate the laws, to disturb the national customs of a people, to insult those who live in the same country, and to teach those who dwell in other cities to disregard unanimity and tranquillity.
Section 53
Since, therefore, the attempt which was being made to violate the law appeared to him to be prospering, while he was destroying the synagogues, and not leaving even their name, he proceeded onwards to another exploit, namely, the utter destruction of our constitution, that when all those things to which alone our life was anchored were cut away, namely, our national customs and our lawful political rights and social privileges, we might be exposed to the very extremity of calamity, without having any stay left to which we could cling for safety,
Section 54
for a few days afterwards he issued a notice in which he called us all foreigners and aliens, without giving us an opportunity of being heard in our own defence, but condemning us without a trial; and what command can be more full of tyranny than this? He himself being everything—accuser, enemy, witness, judge, and executioner, added then to the two former appellations a third also, allowing any one who was inclined to proceed to exterminate the Jews as prisoners of war.
Section 55
So when the people had received this license, what did they do? There are five districts in the city, named after the first five letters of the written alphabet, of these two are called the quarters of the Jews, because the chief portion of the Jews lives in them. There are also a few scattered Jews, but only a very few, living in some of the other districts. What then did they do? They drove the Jews entirely out of four quarters, and crammed them all into a very small portion of one;
Section 56
and by reason of their numbers they were dispersed over the sea-shore, and desert places, and among the tombs, being deprived of all their property; while the populace, overrunning their desolate houses, turned to plunder, and divided the booty among themselves as if they had obtained it in war. And as no one hindered them, they broke open even the workshops of the Jews, which were all shut up because of their mourning for Drusilla, She was the sister of the emperor, and at her death her brother ordered that divine honours should be raid to her. and carried off all that they found there, and bore it openly through the middle of the market-place as if they had only been making use of their own property.
Section 57
And the cessation of business to which they were compelled to submit was even a worse evil than the plunder to which they were exposed, as the consequence was that those who had lent money lost what they had lent, and as no one was permitted, neither farmer, nor captain of a ship, nor merchant, nor artisan, to employ himself in his usual manner, so that poverty was brought on them from two sides at once, both from rapine, as when license was thus given to plunder them they were stripped of everything in one day, and also from the circumstance of their no longer being able to earn money by their customary occupations.
Section 58
And though these were evils sufficiently intolerable, yet nevertheless they appear actually trifling when compared with those which were subsequently inflicted on them, for poverty indeed is a bitter evil, especially when it is caused by the machinations of one’s enemies, still it is less than insult and personal ill treatment even of the slightest character.
Section 59
But now the evils which were heaped upon our people were so excessive and inordinate, that if a person were desirous to use appropriate language, he would never call them insults or assaults, but, as it appears to me, he would actually be wholly at a loss for suitable expressions, on account of the enormity of the cruelties now newly invented against them, so that if the treatment which men experience from enemies who have subdued them in war, however implacable they may be by nature, were to be compared with that to which the Jews were subjected, it would appear most merciful.
Section 60
Enemies, indeed, plunder their conquered foes of their money, and lead away multitudes in captivity, having incurred the same risk of losing all that they had if they themselves had been defeated. Not but that in all such cases there are very many persons for whom their relations and friends put down a ransom, and who are thus emancipated from captivity, inasmuch as though their She was the sister of the emperor, and at her death her brother ordered that divine honours should be raid to her. enemies could not be worked upon by compassion, they could by love of money. But what is the use of going on in this way, some one will say, for as long as men escape from danger it signifies but little in what way their preservation is brought to pass?
Section 61
Moreover, it has often happened that enemies have granted to those who have fallen in battle the honour of funeral rites, those who were gentle and humane burying them at their own expense, and those who have carried on their enmity even against the dead giving up their bodies to their friends under a truce, in order that they might not be deprived of the last honour of all, the customary ceremonies of sepulture.
Section 62
This, then, is the conduct of enemies in time of war; let us now see what was done by those who a little while before had been friends in time of peace. For after plundering them of everything, and driving them from their homes, and expelling them by main force from most of the quarters of the city, our people, as if they were blockaded and hemmed in by a circle of besieging enemies, being oppressed by a terrible scarcity and want of necessary things, and seeing their wives and their children dying before their eyes by an unnatural famine
Section 63
(for every other place was full of prosperity and abundance, as the river had irrigated the corn lands plentifully with its inundations, and as all the champaign country, which is devoted to the purposes of bearing wheat, was this year supplying a most abundant over-crop of corn with very unusual fertility),
Section 64
being no longer able to support their want, some, though they had never been used to do so before, came to the houses of their friends and relations to beg them to contribute such food as was absolutely necessary as a charity; others, who from their high and free-born spirit could not endure the condition of beggars, as being a slavish state unbecoming the dignity of a freeman, came down into the market with no other object than, miserable men that they were, to buy food for their families and for themselves.