Note 3 — Chapter II · THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM.

Let us take the opportunity of stating our opinion that Josephus’s testimony may generally be relied upon. It was for a long time the fashion to hold up his exaggerations to ridicule. Thus, when he spoke of the height of the wall as being such as to make the head reel, travellers remembered the fifty feet of wall or so at the present day and laughed. But Captain Warren has found that the wall was in parts as much as 200 feet high. Surely a man may be excused for feeling giddy at looking down a depth of 200 feet. Whenever Josephus speaks from personal knowledge, he appears to us to be accurate and trustworthy. There is nothing on which he could speak with greater authority, which would sooner have been discovered, than a misstatement as regards the Roman army.