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[305]
Florus was more provoked at this, and called out aloud to the soldiers
to plunder that which was called the Upper Market-place, and to slay such
as they met with. So the soldiers, taking this exhortation of their commander
in a sense agreeable to their desire of gain, did not only plunder the
place they were sent to, but forcing themselves into every house, they
slew its inhabitants; so the citizens fled along the narrow lanes, and
the soldiers slew those that they caught, and no method of plunder was
omitted; they also caught many of the quiet people, and brought them before
Florus, whom he first chastised with stripes, and then crucified. Accordingly,
the whole number of those that were destroyed that day, with their wives
and children, (for they did not spare even the infants themselves,) was
about three thousand and six hundred. And what made this calamity the heavier
was this new method of Roman barbarity; for Florus ventured then to do
what no one had done before, that is, to have men of the equestrian order
whipped 1
and nailed to the cross before his tribunal; who, although they were by
birth Jews, yet were they of Roman dignity notwithstanding.
1 Here we have examples of native Jews who were of the equestrian order among the Romans, and so ought never to have been whipped or crucified, according to the Roman laws. See almost the like case in St. Paul himself, Acts 22:25-29.
Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
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