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]

OK, I might do a mix of some recap and some random thoughts:

- (259) These [criminals] were cheats and impostors, peddlng revolution and political change under the guise of divine inspiration. Knowing what comes later on... I... that's very bold of you to say, Josephus! (Josephus: But what if I were actually divinely inspired!)

- Lots of disturbances. Eventually the procurator Gessius Florus shows up and is awful. Cestius Gallus, the governor of Syria, is called in to decide who's at fault, Florus or the Jews. Agrippa gives a big speech about how it would be dumb to fight the Romans, who have a lot more resources than the Jews do. This does not work as well as might be hoped. Lots of terrible things start happening, including a massacre of Jews in Caesarea and Syrian and Jews killing each other, including the horrible story about Scythopolis, and lots of other pogroms in most (but not all) Syrian cities. Then a lot of fighting, which I admit I did not pay really close attention to.

- (363) Not satisfied with an empire extending to the Euphrates in the east, [etc] ... they have sought a new world beyond the ocean and carried their arms as far as the Britons, a people previously unknown to history. I mean, obviously I knew that the Romans were in Britain, but I just like this description of them!

- (556) After this catastrophic defeat of Cestius many of the prominent Jews left the city like men swimming away from a sinking ship. The note interestingly says, "Josephys portrays this as the moment when many loyal Jews despaired of preventing the surge of anti-Roman sentiment and escaped to join the Roman side. It is striking that he himself stayed and became a leader of the revolt." Hm!

- John the Essene is mentioned in (567) -- the only mention of Essenes I've seen so far since the big digression on it.

- We finally get Josephus in (568)! Thanks selenak for telling me that it was customary for authors to refer to themselves in the third person (although I think maybe you were talking about Voltaire at the time?)

- (601) ...undaunted by his personal isolation or the numbers opposing him, [Josephus] strode out and presented himself to them with his clothes ripped, his head covered in ash, his hands held behind his back, and his own sword hanging from his neck. What a guy! Also lots of other good stories about how clever he was, and how inspiring to his men, and so on...