Legatio Ad Gaium

And they replied, "You know the principal and primary cause of all; for that indeed is universally known to all men. He desires to be considered a god; and he conceives that the Jews alone are likely to be disobedient; and that therefore he cannot possibly inflict a greater evil or injury upon them than by defacing and insulting the holy dignity of their temple; for report prevails that it is the most beautiful of all the temples in the world, inasmuch as it is continually receiving fresh accessions of ornament and has been for an infinite period of time, a never-ending and boundless expense being lavished on it. And as he is a very contentious and quarrelsome man, he thinks of appropriating this edifice wholly to himself.

And he is excited now on this subject to a much greater degree than before by a letter which Capito has sent to him. "Capito is the collector of the imperial revenues in Judaea, and on some account or other he is very hostile to the nations of the country; for having come thither a poor man, and having amassed enormous riches of every imaginable description by plunder and extortion, he has now become afraid lest some accusation may be brought against him, and on this account he has contrived a design by which he may repel any such impeachment, namely, by calumniating those whom he has injured;

and a circumstance which we will now mention, has given him some pretext for carrying out his design. "There is a city called Jamnia; one of the most populous cities in all Judaea, which is inhabited by a promiscuous multitude, the greatest number of whom are Jews; but there are also some persons of other tribes from the neighbouring nations who have settled there to their own destruction, who are in a manner sojourners among the original native citizens, and who cause them a great deal of trouble, and who do them a great deal of injury, as they are continually violating some of the ancestral national customs of the Jews.

These men hearing from travellers who visit the city how exceedingly eager and earnest Caius is about his own deification, and how disposed he is to look unfavourably upon the whole race of Judaea, thinking that they have now an admirable opportunity for attacking them themselves, have erected an extemporaneous altar of the most