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[538]
This success of Simon excited the zealots afresh; and though they
were afraid to fight him openly in a fair battle, yet did they lay ambushes
in the passes, and seized upon his wife, with a considerable number of
her attendants; whereupon they came back to the city rejoicing, as if they
had taken Simon himself captive, and were in present expectation that he
would lay down his arms, and make supplication to them for his wife; but
instead of indulging any merciful affection, he grew very angry at them
for seizing his beloved wife; so he came to the wall of Jerusalem, and,
like wild beasts when they are wounded, and cannot overtake those that
wounded them, he vented his spleen upon all persons that he met with. Accordingly,
he caught all those that were come out of the city gates, either to gather
herbs or sticks, who were unarmed and in years; he then tormented them
and destroyed them, out of the immense rage he was in, and was almost ready
to taste the very flesh of their dead bodies. He also cut off the hands
of a great many, and sent them into the city to astonish his enemies, and
in order to make the people fall into a sedition, and desert those that
had been the authors of his wife's seizure. He also enjoined them to tell
the people that Simon swore by the God of the universe, who sees all things,
that unless they will restore him his wife, he will break down their wall,
and inflict the like punishment upon all the citizens, without sparing
any age, and without making any distinction between the guilty and the
innocent. These threatenings so greatly affrighted, not the people only,
but the zealots themselves also, that they sent his wife back to him; when
he became a little milder, and left off his perpetual blood-shedding.
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