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

[(Anonymous)]

Verres saw the writing on the wall during Cicero's prosecution of him in the Senate--- this is one of the situations where the fact that the trial is even taking place is a really bad sign--- and went into exile at Marseille, France. He was perhaps later proscribed (put on a death list and his property marked for confiscation) by Marc Anthony, but this is apparently not entirely certain.

[cahn]

Ah, thank you!! That all makes a lot of sense.