Vespasian and Titus, as witnesses for me, for to them I presented
those books first of all, and after them to many of the Romans
who had been in the war. I also sold them to many of our own men
who understood the Greek philosophy; among whom were Julius
Archelaus, Herod [king of Chalcis], a person of great gravity,
and king Agrippa himself, a person that deserved the greatest
admiration. Now all these men bore their testimony to me, that I
had the strictest regard to truth; who yet would not have
dissembled the matter, nor been silent, if I, out of ignorance,
or out of favor to any side, either had given false colors to
actions, or omitted any of them.

10. There have been indeed some bad men, who have attempted to
calumniate my history, and took it to be a kind of scholastic
performance for the exercise of young men. A strange sort of
accusation and calumny this! since every one that undertakes to
deliver the history of actions truly ought to know them
accurately himself in the first place, as either having been
concerned in them himself, or been informed of them by such as
knew them. Now both these methods of knowledge I may very
properly pretend to in the composition of both my works; for, as
I said, I have translated the Antiquities out of our sacred
books; which I easily could do, since I was a priest by my birth,
and have studied that philosophy which is contained in those
writings: and for the History of the War, I wrote it as having
been an actor myself in many of its transactions, an eye-witness
in the greatest part of the rest, and was not unacquainted with
any thing whatsoever that was either said or done in it. How
impudent then must those deserve to be esteemed that undertake to
contradict me about the true state of those affairs! who,