This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
View text chunked by:
[318]
But when the governor of Babylonia understood this, and had a mind
to put a stop to them before they grew greater, and before greater mischiefs
should arise from them, he got together as great an army as he could, both
of Parthians and Babylonians, and marched against them, thinking to attack
them and destroy them before any one should carry them the news that he
had got an army together. He then encamped at a lake, and lay still; but
on the next day (it was the sabbath, which is among the Jews a day of rest
from all sorts of work) he supposed that the enemy would not dare to fight
him thereon, but that he would take them and carry them away prisoners,
without fighting. He therefore proceeded gradually, and thought to fall
upon them on the sudden. Now Asineus was sitting with the rest, and their
weapons lay by them; upon which he said, "Sirs, I hear a neighing
of horses; not of such as are feeding, but such as have men on their backs;
I also hear such a noise of their bridles, that I am afraid that some enemies
are coming upon us to encompass us round. However, let somebody go to look
about, and make report of what reality there is in the present state of
things; and may what I have said prove a false alarm." And when he
had said this, some of them went out to spy out what was the matter; and
they came again immediately, and said to him, that "neither hast thou
been mistaken in telling us what our enemies were doing, nor will those
enemies permit us to be injurious to people any longer. We are caught by
their intrigues like brute beasts, and there is a large body of cavalry
marching upon us, while we are destitute of hands to defend ourselves withal,
because we are restrained from doing it by the prohibition of our law,
which obliges us to rest [on this day]." But Asiueus did not by any
means agree with the opinion of his spy as to what was to be done, but
thought it more agreeable to the law to pluck up their spirits in this
necessity they were fallen into, and break their law by avenging themselves,
although they should die in the action, than by doing nothing to please
their enemies in submitting to be slain by them. Accordingly, he took up
his weapons, and infused courage into those that were with him to act as
courageously as himself. So they fell upon their enemies, and slew a great
many of them, because they despised them and came as to a certain victory,
and put the rest to flight.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.