This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
View text chunked by:
[265]
Nay, he found by experience that the Jews fell more heavily upon
him than did the Parthians, and created him troubles perpetually, and this
ever since he was gotten sixty furlongs from the city; these sometimes
brought it to a sort of a regular battle. Now in the place where Herod
beat them, and killed a great number of them, there he afterward built
a citadel, in memory of the great actions he did there, and adorned it
with the most costly palaces, and erected very strong fortifications, and
called it, from his own name, Herodium. Now as they were in their flight,
many joined themselves to him every day; and at a place called Thressa
of Idumea his brother Joseph met him, and advised him to ease himself of
a great number of his followers, because Masada would not contain so great
a multitude, which were above nine thousand. Herod complied with this advice,
and sent away the most cumbersome part of his retinue, that they might
go into Idumea, and gave them provisions for their journey; but he got
safe to the fortress with his nearest relations, and retained with him
only the stoutest of his followers; and there it was that he left eight
hundred of his men as a guard for the women, and provisions sufficient
for a siege; but he made haste himself to Petra of Arabia.
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.