In my twenty-sixth year I took a voyage to Rome.  My object was to plead before Caesar the cause of certain excellent priests whom Felix, then procurator of Judaea, had put in bonds on a trivial pretext.  I was desirous to procure deliverance for them, not only because they were of my own friends, but because I heard that they sustained their piety towards God under their afflictions, and that they simply subsisted on figs and nuts.

Our voyage was an adventurous one, for the ship was wrecked in the Adriatic Sea, and we that were in it, being about six hundred in number, swam all night for our lives.  I and about eighty others were saved by a ship of Cyrene.  When I had thus escaped, and was come to Puteoli, I became acquainted with an actor named Alityrus, much beloved by Nero, but a Jew by birth.  Through his interest I became known to Poppaea, Caesar’s wife, and having, through her, procured the liberty of the priests, besides receiving from her many presents, I returned to Jerusalem.

Now I perceived that many innovations were begun, and that many were cherishing hopes of a revolt from the Romans.

II.—­The Prelude to the Great Crisis

So I retired to the inner court of the Temple.  Yet I went out of the Temple again, after Menahem and the chief members of the band of robbers were put to death, and abode among the high-priests and the chief of the Pharisees.  But no small fear seized upon us when we saw the people in arms, while we were not able to restrain the seditious.  We hoped that Gessius Floras would speedily arrive with great forces.  But on his arrival he was defeated with great loss.

The disgrace that fell upon him became the calamity of our whole nation, for it elevated the hopes of conquering the Romans on the part of those who desired war.  But another cause of the revolt arose in Syria from the cruel treatment of the Jews in many cities, where they showed not the least disposition towards rebellion.  About 13,000 were treacherously slain in Scythopolis, and the Jews in Damascus underwent many miseries; but of these events accounts are given in the books of the Jewish War.

I was now sent, together with two other priests, Joazar and Judas, by the principal men of Jerusalem, to Galilee, to persuade the ill men there to lay down their arms, and to teach them that it were better for us all to wait to see what the Romans would do.  I came into Galilee, and found the people of Sepphoris in no small agony about their country, by reason that the Galileans had resolved to plunder it, because of their friendship with the Romans, and because they had made a league with Cestius Gallus, the president of Syria.  But I quieted their fears.  Yet I found the people of Tiberias ready to take arms, for there were three factions in that city.

The first faction, with Julius Capellus for the head, was composed of men of worth and gravity, and advised the city to continue in allegiance to the Romans; the second faction, consisting of the most ignoble persons, was determined for war.  But as for Justus, the head of the third faction, though he pretended to be doubtful about war, yet he was really desirous of innovation, as supposing that he should gain power by the change of affairs.