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VESPASIAN.
upwards of a hundred praetorians to be put to death. If we
overlook his personal character, which was contemptible, things
did not at first go on as badly as had been anticipated. Peace,
however, was soon (a.d. 70) disturbed again; for the legions in
Moesia thought it a great insult that an emperor had been set on
thethroneWithouttheirconsent. Theyhadbeendestined to come
to the assistance of Otho, and now rose against VitelIius. They
were roused and stimulated by the ambitious and enterprising
Antonius Primus. At the same time, VitelIius was informed
that the Syrian legions under T. Flavius Vespasianus, and the
Parthian legions under the command of Mucianus, refused
obedience to him. Those armies, however, were far away, and
had enough to do in the East, the one against the Jews, the
other against the Parthians; and could not go to Italy without
exposing those parts of the empire to the invasion of the Par-
thians. Similar consequences might have followed the with-
drawal of the troops from the Rhine and the Danube ; and it is
an unaccountable phenomenon that it was possible for the
Romans to remove their troops from those frontiers, without
any attempt being made by the Germans to cross the livers and
invade the Roman dominion. There are, it is true, some traces
of treaties having been concluded with the Germans; but the
mystery is, that those treaties were kept. As far as the country
in our neighbourhood is concerned, we know little of the period
subsequent to the reign of Caligula ; but peaceful relations seem to
have been established; and the Germans appear to have had
no inclination to undertake a war. Although it was not till a
later time that a ditch, with an earthen wall surmounted by
palisades, was drawn from the river Sieg to the Altmiihl, yet
the country between the Upper Rhine and the Danube must
have been under the dominion of Rome as early as the time of
Vitellius.
T. Flavius Vespasianus, with all his faults, was the true
restorer of the state, a fact which has never yet been sufficiently
acknowledged. He did indeed things which are a stain on his
character that can never be wiped off; but if we take him as
he was, and consider what could be expected, we shall find
great excuses for his faults. In the reign of Vitellius, he was
engaged in the Jewish war; the Jews had risen as eaιly as the
reign of Claudius, in consequence of ill usage and usurpation.
The war which thus arose, ended with the destruction of
JOSEPHUS.
205
Jerusalem. There are few wars which so much deserve the
attention of posterity as this ; and I should very much like to
relate to you its history, on account of its fearful greatness, but
our limited time does not allow me to follow my inclination.
The history of the Jewish war can be made profitable only by
a careful study in detail of the state of parties among the Jews,
of their sentiments and the like—and these things belong to a
history of the Jews rather than to Koman history. I refer
those who wish to make themselves acquainted with it, to the
work of Josephus, which, with all its offences against the cor-
rectness of the Greek idiom, is one of the most interesting
histories that have come down to us from antiquity. The
writings of Josephus deserve to be recommended to the study
of every scholar and theologian; his history of the Jewish war
is, next to Caesar’s Commentaries, the most instructive work
wre possess, especially in regard to the tactics of the Eomans
and the art of besieging. Josephus was a Pharisee, and al-
though he was unquestionably a better man than the majority
of that sect, which is so severely characterised in the Gospels,
yet the Pharisaic element was in him. Hence he is often
untrue, and his Archaeology abounds in distortions of historical
facts and in falsifications, which arise from his inordinate
national pride. In his account of the Jewish war, he displays
many of the peculiarities of an oriental writer, and wherever
he deals in numbers, he shews his oriental love of exaggeration;
some of his numbers are manifestly impossible, and you must
not allow yourselves to be misled by them. PIis oriental na-
ture is visible everywhere, notwithstanding his Greek education.
It is remarkable how well he writes Greek, if we except some
standing errors which constantly recur. His name in our
manuscripts is Flavius Josephus, but his full name, which he
undoubtedly derived from the emperor who made him his
prisoner, and afterwards emancipated him and gave him the
Eoman franchise, was Titus Flavius Josephus.
When the insurrection against Vitellius broke out, Vespasian
was engaged w'th a powerful army in Judaea, where the Jews
offered a desperate and heroic resistance. He was descended
from an obscure family ; and as he himself possessed no vanity,
no one took the trouble to invent illustrious ancestors for him,
although Flavii occur in the early history of the republic. His
grandfather, however, had somewhat risen from his obscurity.