Note 38 — Chapter XXXV · The Lapse of Years

—page 280. Jubal appears in this strange manner, after two years had been passed in the dungeon, and rehearses the story of the war. The attack of Vespasian fell first upon Galilee, which lay in his way to Jerusalem. The moderate party had placed Joseph, the son of Matthias—better known as the author of “Jewish Antiquities,” and by his Roman name, Flavius Josephus, which he later assumed, as the client of Vespasian in command in Galilee. His account given in “The Jewish War” proves that the horrors of the conflict in Galilee were not overdrawn by Jubal. Josephus, who was undoubtedly possessed of military genius of no mean order, was driven at last to stake the fate of Galilee on the defense of Jotapata. Before it Vespasian was wounded, but the hill-fortress was finally stormed. The story of the marvelous escape of the Jewish leader and of his recapture is related by himself. He was thereafter attached to the suite of Vespasian “in a character between a prisoner and a companion; and, after acting throughout the war as a mediator between his countrymen and the Romans, he was rewarded with a grant of land in Judea, together with a pension and the Roman franchise.” Some of the most interesting features in Dr. Croly’s romance would seem to have been suggested by experiences in the life of Josephus. The horrors of the war were indescribable. Toward the close of the Galilean campaign, Trajan was despatched by Vespasian to seize Joppa, the only port held by the Jews. “Here the unfortunate inhabitants took to their ships, which were dashed to pieces by a storm, and the few survivors killed by the Romans as they gained the land. At the other captured cities (Tiberias, Taricheia, Gamala, Itabyrium, and Gischala) all the elder inhabitants were massacred and the younger sold as slaves. Never was a war marked by greater atrocities on both sides than that which now desolated the Holy Land.”