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A VERY sad calamity now befell the Jews that were in Mesopotamia,
and especially those that dwelt in Babylonia. Inferior it was to none of
the calamities which had gone before, and came together with a great slaughter
of them, and that greater than any upon record before; concerning all which
I shall speak accurately, and shall explain the occasions whence these
miseries came upon them. There was a city of Babylonia called Neerda; not
only a ver populous one, but one that had a good and a large territory
about it, and, besides its other advantages, full of men also. It was,
besides, not easily to be assaulted by enemies, from the river Euphrates
encompassing it all round, and from the wails that were built about it.
There was also the city Nisibis, situate on the same current of the river.
For which reason the Jews, depending on the natural strength of these places,
deposited in them that half shekel which every one, by the custom of our
country, offers unto God, as well as they did other things devoted to him;
for they made use of these cities as a treasury, whence, at a proper time,
they were transmitted to Jerusalem; and many ten thousand men undertook
the carriage of those donations, out of fear of the ravages of the Parthians,
to whom the Babylonians were then subject. Now there were two men, Asineus
and Anileus, of the city Neerda by birth, and brethren to one another.
They were destitute of a father, and their mother put them to learn the
art of weaving curtains, it not being esteemed ,disgrace among them for
men to be weavers of cloth. Now he that taught them that art, and was set
over them, complained that they came too late to their work, and punished
them with stripes; but they took this just punishment as an affront, and
carried off all the weapons which were kept in that house, which were not
a few, and went into a certain place where was a partition of the rivers,
and was a place naturally very fit for the feeding of cattle, and for preserving
such fruits as were usually laid up against winter. The poorest sort of
the young men also resorted to them, whom they armed with the weapons they
had gotten, and became their captains; and nothing hindered them from being
their leaders into mischief; for as soon as they were become invincible,
and had built them a citadel, they sent to such as fed cattle, and ordered
them to pay them so much tribute out of them as might be sufficient for
their maintenance, proposing also that they would be their friends, if
they would submit to them, and that they would defend them from all their
other enemies on every side, but that they would kill the cattle of those
that refused to obey them. So they hearkened to their proposals, (for they
could do nothing else,) and sent them as many sheep as were required of
them; whereby their forces grew greater, and they became lords over all
they pleased, because they marched suddenly, and did them a mischief, insomuch
that every body who had to do with them chose to pay them respect; and
they became formidable to such as came to assault them, till the report
about them came to the ears of the king of Parthia himself.
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