and gave command that a servant of mine, who was a eunuch, and my
accuser, should be punished. He also made that country I had in
Judea tax free, which is a mark of the greatest honor to him who
hath it; nay, Domitia, the wife of Caesar, continued to do me
kindnesses. And this is the account of the actions of my whole
life; and let others judge of my character by them as they
please. But to thee, O Epaphroditus, (28) thou most excellent of
men! do I dedicate all this treatise of our Antiquities; and so,
for the present, I here conclude the whole.

Autobiography Footnotes

(1) We may hence correct the error of the Latin copy of the
second book Against Apion, sect. 8, (for the Greek is there
lost,) which says, there were then only four tribes or courses of
the priests, instead of twenty-four. Nor is this testimony to be
disregarded, as if Josephus there contradicted what he had
affirmed here; because even the account there given better agrees
to twenty-four than to four courses, while he says that each of
those courses contained above 5000 men, which, multiplied by only
four, will make not more than 20,000 priests; whereas the number
120,000, as multiplied by 24, seems much the most probable, they
being about one-tenth of the whole people, even after the
captivity. See Ezra 2:36-39; Nehemiah 7:39-42; 1 Esdras 5:24, 25,
with Ezra 2;64; Nehemiah 7:66; 1 Esdras 5:41. Nor will this
common reading or notion of but four courses of priests, agree
with Josephus's own further assertion elsewhere, Antiq. B. VII.
ch. 14. sect. 7, that David's partition of the priests into
twenty-four courses had continued to that day.