therefore, Justus undertook to write about these facts, and about
the Jewish war, that he might appear to have been an industrious
man, he falsified in what he related about me, and could not
speak truth even about his own country; whence it is that, being
belied by him, I am under a necessity to make my defense; and so
I shall say what I have concealed till now. And let no one wonder
that I have not told the world these things a great while ago.
For although it be necessary for an historian to write the truth,
yet is such a one not bound severely to animadvert on the
wickedness of certain men; not out of any favor to them, but out
of an author's own moderation. How then comes it to pass, O
Justus! thou most sagacious of writers, (that I may address
myself to him as if he were here present,) for so thou boastest
of thyself, that I and the Galileans have been the authors of
that sedition which thy country engaged in, both against the
Romans and against the king [Agrippa, junior] For before ever I
was appointed governor of Galilee by the community of Jerusalem,
both thou and all the people of Tiberias had not only taken up
arms, but had made war with Decapolis of Syria. Accordingly, thou
hadst ordered their villages to be burnt, and a domestic servant
of thine fell in the battle. Nor is it I only who say this; but
so it is written in the Commentaries of Vespasian, the emperor;
as also how the inhabitants of Decapolis came clamoring to
Vespasian at Ptolemais, and desired that thou, who wast the
author [of that war], mightest be brought to punishment. And thou
hadst certainly been punished at the command of Vespasian, had
not king Agrippa, who had power given him to have thee put to
death, at the earnest entreaty of his sister Bernice, changed the
punishment from death into a long imprisonment. Thy political
administration of affairs afterward doth also clearly discover