twice afterward put thee in bonds, and as often obliged thee to
run away from thy country, and, when he had once ordered thee to
be put to death, he granted thee a pardon at the earnest desire
of Bernice? And when (after so many of thy wicked pranks) he made
thee his secretary, he caught thee falsifying his epistles, and
drove thee away from his sight. But I shall not inquire
accurately into these matters of scandal against thee. Yet cannot
I but wonder at thy impudence, when thou hast the assurance to
say, that thou hast better related these affairs [of the war]
than have all the others that have written about them, whilst
thou didst not know what was done in Galilee; for thou wast then
at Berytus with the king; nor didst thou know how much the Romans
suffered at the siege of Jotapata, or what miseries they brought
upon us; nor couldst thou learn by inquiry what I did during that
siege myself; for all those that might afford such information
were quite destroyed in that siege. But perhaps thou wilt say,
thou hast written of what was done against the people of
Jerusalem exactly. But how should that be? for neither wast thou
concerned in that war, nor hast thou read the commentaries of
Caesar; of which we have evident proof, because thou hast
contradicted those commentaries of Caesar in thy history. But if
thou art so hardy as to affirm, that thou hast written that
history better than all the rest, why didst thou not publish thy
history while the emperors Vespasian and Titus, the generals in
that war, as well as king Agrippa and his family, who were men
very well skilled in the learning of the Greeks, were all alive?
for thou hast had it written these twenty years, and then
mightest thou have had the testimony of thy accuracy. But now
when these men are no longer with us, and thou thinkest thou
canst not be contradicted, thou venturest to publish it. But then