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[273]
When matters were in this state, Aristobulus, king Agrippa's brother,
and Heleias the Great, and the other principal men of that family with
them, went in unto Petronius, and besought him, that since he saw the resolution
of the multitude, he would not make any alteration, and thereby drive them
to despair; but would write to Caius, that the Jews had an insuperable
aversion to the reception of the statue, and how they continued with him,
and left of the tillage off their ground: that they were not willing to
go to war with him, because they were not able to do it, but were ready
to die with pleasure, rather than suffer their laws to be transgressed:
and how, upon the land's continuing unsown, robberies would grow up, on
the inability they would be under of paying their tributes; and that Caius
might be thereby moved to pity, and not order any barbarous action to be
done to them, nor think of destroying the nation: that if he continues
inflexible in his former opinion to bring a war upon them, he may then
set about it himself. And thus did Aristobulus, and the rest with him,
supplicate Petronius. So Petronius,
partly on account of the pressing instances which Aristobulus and the rest
with him made, and because of the great consequence of what they desired,
and the earnestness wherewith they made their supplication, — partly on
account of the firmness of the opposition made by the Jews, which he saw,
while he thought it a terrible thing for him to be such a slave to the
madness of Caius, as to slay so many ten thousand men, only because of
their religious disposition towards God, and after that to pass his life
in expectation of punishment; Petronius, I say, thought it much better
to send to Caius, and to let him know how intolerable it was to him to
bear the anger he might have against him for not serving him sooner, in
obedience to his epistle, for that perhaps he might persuade him; and that
if this mad resolution continued, he might then begin the war against them;
nay, that in case he should turn his hatred against himself, it was fit
for virtuous persons even to die for the sake of such vast multitudes of
men. Accordingly, he determined to hearken to the petitioners in this matter.
Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
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