My readers will learn with pleasure, that the author of these cruelties soon met from the hands of justice the punishment which he deserved. On the accession of Caligula, the Jews prepared for him an address, in which they expressed their attachment to his person and government, and their readiness to offer him all the homage which was consistent with the nature and purity of their laws. This address they were allowed to transmit only through the hands of the governor, who affected greatly to approve of it; and he promised to forward it without delay to the emperor. But he had the baseness to detain it; and thus, observes Philo, he left Cæsar to conclude, that the Jews were the only people in the empire, who were not his friends and well wishers. Soon after this Agrippa arrived in Alexandria, where he learnt the real state of the case; and as he stood high in favour with Caligule, he took upon him to send him a copy of the address that had been long since entrusted to Flaccus. The emperor, no

μοσυνην και ζηλον αβίωτου βίου. They were instigated and directed by Apion, Helicon, and some others, who were not Egyptians by birth; but the greater part were natives of Alexandria; and Philo thus briefly characterizes' them, σπέρματα πονηρα προκοδείλων και ασπιδών των εγχωρίων αναμεμαγμένοι του τον όμου και θυμον εν ταις ψυχαίς.

doubt more from dislike of the præfect, than from a regard to justice and to the Jews, dispatched a centurion to convey him to Rome. The commission was executed with all possible expedition. Flaccus appeared before Cæsar to answer for his conduct. At his trial many aggravating circumstances concurred to embitter the sense of of his guilt and degradation. Lampo and Isiodorus, two men who were his instigators and pretended friends in Egypt, stood forth as his bitterest accusers. He was condemned and banished to Andros, an island in the Egean Sea, where he pined away by remorse, want, and solitude, till, some time after, he was put to death by a person whom Caligula had dispatched from Rome for that purpose.

In a book entitled De Virtutibus, and of which I shall presently give a brief view, Philo again speaks of a dreadful persecution, which the Jews underwent in Egypt a year or two, it is supposed, after the recal of Flaccus. "The populace of Alexandria,” says he, "perceiving that Caligula hated the Jews, and thinking it a fit opportunity to shew their long cherished animosities, fell upon us, and filled every place with violence and tumult, Regarding us, as already devoted by the emperor to extreme suffering, and as captives taken in war, they assailed us with the most savage, fury, attacking and plundering our houses, and

dragging away the inhabitants with their wives and children. They seized our goods and treasures, not as thieves in the night, concealing themselves, under the covert of darkness, for fear of detection, but they exhibited in the light of day, to those whom they chanced to meet, the fruits of their rapine, as if they had purchased them of the lawful owners. Many in parties combined to plunder, and afterwards, in the market place, divided the spoils in the presence of those who came to own their goods, and who received only reproach and derision. In consequence of this hard treatment, the rich on a sudden, and without any injustice on their part, became poor; and those who had been hitherto surrounded with the elegances, wanted even the necessaries of life, were forced from their homes and their families, and compelled, like vagabonds, to spend their days and nights under the open air, scorched by the meridian sun, and chilled by the midnight damps."

But these hardships were still more tolerable than the following-" Thousands of men, with their wives and children, were driven like flocks from the city at large, and forced into one small corner as into a fold. These, in heaps, their ene-~ mies expected to waste in a few days by famine; the suddenness of the insurrection against them having prevented them from providing necessa

ries, or to be trampled to death, or to be suffocated by an exhausted or vitiated air, from so great a multitude being confined in so small a space. Such as survived, being unable to endure so great a confinement, and anxious to breathe fresh and salutary air, withdrew into desert places, or concealed themselves in monuments, or dispersed along distant shores. They who remained in the different parts of the city, or who, being ignorant of the calamities which befel the Jews, had just returned from the country, encountered the most dreadful sufferings. Some were stoned, and others were beaten with clubs or broken tiles, till they were crushed to death. Such of our enemies as had leisure from accustomed idleness, or the want of employment, encompassed the Jews thus penned, as with a wall, and watched lest any should escape unperceived. Thus circumstanced, not a few, in their attempt to get away, lest they and their families should perish with hunger, were detected, and instantly exposed to every species of indignity and torments."

Another body of the populace waited about the harbour for the entrance of such vessels as the Jews employed for the purposes of commerce. Those which came within their reach they seized, stripped of their cargo in the presence of their owners, whom they bound up and burnt alive, using

pieces of timber torn from the ship, to answer this end. 66 Many also were burnt in the midst of the city and the miseries which these endured, were still more terrible. In the absence of wood, fuel or straw was collected, into which, when blown into flames, they threw the unhappy victims. These were oftener suffocated than burnt, the fuel having only supplied a transient blaze, which was succeeded by a cloud of smoke. Many remained half consumed, and yet alive: and these they bound with cords or wrapped in nets, and then dragged by the heel along the streets, trampling upon them alternately with their feet, till they were torn to pieces, not a limb, nor a single vestige of the human form, remaining to receive the decent office of interment *."

This last persecution, as given in a different book, and as the name of the governor is not mentioned in it, is thought by learned men, not to be the same with that, of which Flaccus was the immediate author, and which took place in the first and second years of Caligula, but another succeeding it in the last of that emperor. But there is sufficient evidence to prove, that this is a mistake: the sufferings related in the book against Flaccus, and those stated in the book De

P. 1009, 1010, or Vol. II, p. 562, &c.