direction of Providence; insomuch that in one hour's time above
twenty thousand Jews were killed, and all Cesarea was emptied of
its Jewish inhabitants; for Florus caught such as ran away, and
sent them in bonds to the galleys. Upon which stroke that the
Jews received at Cesarea, the whole nation was greatly enraged;
so they divided themselves into several parties, and laid waste
the villages of the Syrians, and their neighboring cities,
Philadelphia, and Sebonitis, and Gerasa, and Pella, and
Scythopolis, and after them Gadara, and Hippos; and falling upon
Gaulonitis, some cities they destroyed there, and some they set
on fire, and then went to Kedasa, belonging to the Tyrians, and
to Ptolemais, and to Gaba, and to Cesarea; nor was either Sebaste
[Samaria] or Askelon able to oppose the violence with which they
were attacked; and when they had burnt these to the ground; they
entirely demolished Anthedon and Gaza; many also of the villages
that were about every one of those cities were plundered, and an
immense slaughter was made of the men who were caught in them.

2. However, the Syrians were even with the Jews in the multitude
of the men whom they slew; for they killed those whom they caught
in their cities, and that not only out of the hatred they bare
them, as formerly, but to prevent the danger under which they
were from them; so that the disorders in all Syria were terrible,
and every city was divided into two armies, encamped one against
another, and the preservation of the one party was in the
destruction of the other; so the day time was spent in shedding
of blood, and the night in fear, which was of the two the more
terrible; for when the Syrians thought they had ruined the Jews,
they had the Judaizers in suspicion also; and as each side did
not care to slay those whom they only suspected on the other, so