he is not even now allowed to live with them, for after this demonstration of his fortitude, his character is tried two years more, and if he appears to be worthy, they then admit him into the society.  But before he is allowed to touch their common food, he is obliged to swear to them awful oaths that in the first place he will show piety toward God and then that he will observe justice toward men, and that he will do no harm to any one either voluntarily or at the command of others, and that he will always hate the wicked, and help the righteous, and that he will show fidelity to all men and especially to those in authority, that he will be a lover of truth and denounce those who tell lies, and that he will keep his hands clean from theft, and his soul from unlawful gain.  Moreover he swears to communicate their doctrines to no one otherwise than he received them himself, and that he will abstain from robbery, and that he will faithfully preserve the books of their sect and the names of the angels.

[Sidenote:  Jos.  Jew.  War, ii, 8:8a, 9a-c] Those who are caught in any heinous sins they cast out of their society; and he who is thus expelled often dies miserably.  And in the judgments they pronounce they are most exacting and just, nor do they pass sentence by the votes of a court having less than one hundred members, and what is determined by them is unalterable.  What they most of all honor, after God himself, is the name of their legislator [Moses], whom, if any one blasphemes, he is punished by death.  They also think it a good thing to obey their elders and the majority.  They are stricter than any others of the Jews in resting from their labors on the seventh day, for they not only prepare their food the day before, that they may not be obliged to kindle a fire on that day, but they will not venture to move any vessel out of its place.

[Sidenote:  Jos.  Jew.  War, ii, 8:10b, c, 11b] They are also long-lived, insomuch that most of them live over a hundred years because of the simplicity of their diet and as a result of their regular course of life.  They despise the miseries of life and are above pain because of their noble thoughts.  And as for death, if it come with glory, they regard it as better than immortality.  They think also, like the Greeks, that the good have their habitation beyond the ocean in a region that is never oppressed by storms of rain or of snow, or with heat, and that this place is refreshed by the gentle breath of the west wind that is continually blowing from the ocean; while they allot to the bad a dark and cold den which is never free from unceasing punishment.

[Sidenote:  Jos.  Jew.  War, ii, 8:12] There are also those among them who undertake to foretell things to come by reading the holy books, by using several different forms of purifications and by being constantly familiar with discourses of the prophets; and it is only seldom that they fail in their predictions.