The Jewish War: Second half of Book 2

[cahn]

Last week: Lots of discussion of various contemporary Roman emperors and their families: Claudius, Agrippina, Nero, Britannicus. Quinctilius Varus and Arminius make an appearance as well. Also Josephus wants to tell you ALL about the Essenes, and none of us knows why but maybe we will find out sometime in the future?? (ugh, I haven't finished replying to comments yet on this either, sorry! -- hopefully will get to that tomorrow)

This week: The Jewish war starts! It's a mess. We do finally meet our hero Josephus, who is just the most heroic, clever, and brave guy. (Probably devilishly handsome too, although this is admittedly not in the text.)

Next week: where shall we read to in Book 3? ETA: All of book 3 for this week!

Comments

[cahn]

and another for an ex-Jewish pow to present a Roman governor this way.

Ah, that didn't register for me. Interesting.

[cenozoicsynapsid]

The notes say that Albinus (the other bad governor) dies in the civil war between Otho and Vitellius "which may explain J's hostility" (note to 2.272) and that Florus (note to 2.531) was "no longer important in Roman society" when J was writing, but doesn't say why.

The Oxford Classical Dictionary doesn't say what happened to him either. I have no idea what evidence was behind the translators making this claim.

[cahn]

Oh, ha, I must have missed those notes. Thank you!