Note 14 — Chapter X · The Fall of Onias

—page 64. Onias is not brought forward as a historical character, but as the representative of a class of Jews who were equally treacherous in their dealings with their patriotic countrymen and with the Romans. He appears as one of the marplots of the history—the personification of hatred and malice—from this council of war until the final catastrophe, when he dies by the hand of Jubal. The speech which the writer puts in his mouth was, however, undoubtedly suggested by the remarkable oration, recorded by Josephus (Bk. II., ch. xvi.), which Agrippa (the same mentioned in the Acts) addressed to the Jews, in the gallery adjoining the Temple and in the presence of his sister Bernice, who was above in the palace of the Asmoneans, and in which he sought to dissuade the people from going to war with their oppressors. In this speech of Agrippa we have “an authentic account of the extent and strength of the Roman empire when the Jewish war began,” from which becomes the more apparent the madness that hurried the Jews to their final destruction.