I was now about thirty years of age, in which time of life it is difficult to escape from the calumnies of the envious.  Yet did I preserve every woman free from injury; I despised and refused presents; nor would I take the tithes due to me as a priest.  When I twice took Sepphoris by force, and Tiberias four times, and Gadara once, and when I had subdued and captured John, who had laid treacherous snares for me, I did not punish with death either him or others.  And on this account I suppose it was that God, Who is never unacquainted with those that do as they ought to do, delivered me still out of the hands of my enemies, and afterwards preserved me when I fell into many perils.

At this time, when my abode was at Cana, a village of Galilee, John came to Tiberias and stirred a revolt against me, so that my life was in danger.  I escaped only by fleeing down the lake in a ship to Taricheae, whence I proceeded to Sepphoris.  John returned to Gischala, where he continued to cultivate bitter hatred against me.  Through the machinations of himself and Simon, a chief man in Gadara, all Galilee was filled with rumours that their country was about to be betrayed by me to the Romans.

Hereby I again incurred extreme peril, but I took a bold course.  Dressed in a black garment, with my sword hung at my neck, I went to face, in the hippodrome, a multitude of the citizens of Taricheae, and addressed them in such terms that, though some wished to kill me, these were overcome by the rest.

Although the multitude returned to their homes, yet the robbers and other authors of the tumult, afraid lest I might punish them, took six hundred armed men and came to burn the house where I abode.  Thinking it ignoble to run away, I resolved to expose myself to danger; so I shut myself up in an upper room, and asked that one of them should be sent up to me, by whom I would send out to them money from the spoils I had taken.

When they had sent in one of their boldest, I had him whipped severely, and commanded one of his hands to be cut off and hung about his neck.  In this case he was put out, and those who had sent him, affrighted at the supposition that I had more armed men about me than they had, immediately fled.

I dealt in like manner with Clitus, a young man of Tiberias, who was the author of a fresh sedition in that city.  Since I thought it not agreeable to piety to put one of my own people to death, I called to Clitus himself, and said to him, “Since thou deservest to lose both thy hands for thine ingratitude to me, be thou thine own executioner, lest by refusal to do so thou undergo a worse punishment.”

When he earnestly begged me to spare one of his hands, it was with difficulty that I granted it.  So, in order to prevent the loss of both his hands, he willingly took his sword and cut off his own left hand; and this put an end to the sedition.

IV.—­The Failure of His Foes