[73] Having broken into everything like a burglar and left no side of Jewish life untouched by a hostility carried to the highest pitch, Flaccus devised another monstrous and unparalleled line of attack worthy of this perpetrator of enormities and inventor of novel iniquities.
[74] Our Senate had been appointed to take charge of Jewish affairs by our saviour and benefactor Augustus, after the death of the ethnarch, orders to that effect having been given to Magius Maximus when he was about to take office for the second time as Governor of Alexandria and the country. Of this Senate the members who were found in their houses, thirty-eight in number, were arrested by Flaccus, who having ordered them to be straightway put in bonds marshalled a fine procession through the middle of the market of these elderly men trussed and pinioned, some with thongs and others with iron chains, and then taken into the theatre, a spectacle most pitiable and incongruous with the occasion.
[75] Then as they stood with their enemies seated in front to signalize their disgrace he ordered them all to be stripped and lacerated with scourges which are commonly used for the degradation of the vilest malefactors, so that in consequence of the flogging some had to be carried out on stretchers and died at once, while others lay sick for a long time despairing of recovery.
[76] The great lengths of malevolence to which the plan was carried have been fully proved in other ways, but all the same they will be shown still more clearly by the following statement. Three members of the Senate, Euodus, Trypho and Andro, had become penniless, having been robbed in a single inroad of all that they had in their houses; and that they had been so treated was known to Flaccus, who had been so informed when on an earlier occasion he sent for our magistrates, ostensibly to reconcile them with the rest of the city.
[77] Nevertheless, though he knew quite well that they had been deprived of their property, he beat them before the eyes of their despoilers. Thus, while they suffered a twofold misfortune, poverty and the outrage to their persons, the others had a twofold pleasure, enjoying the possession of the wealth which was not their own and sating themselves with gloating on the dishonour of those from whom that wealth was taken.
[78] One point in the deeds committed at this time I mention only with hesitation, lest by being considered an insignificant matter it may detract from the magnitude of these horrors. Yet even if it is a small thing it is an evidence of no small malignancy. There are differences between the scourges used in the city, and these differences are regulated by the social standing of the persons to be beaten. The Egyptians actually are scourged with a different kind of lash and by a different set of people, the Alexandrians with a flat blade, and the persons who wield them also are Alexandrians.
[79] This custom was also observed in the case of our people by the predecessors of Flaccus and by Flaccus himself in his first years of office. For it is surely possible when inflicting degradation on others to find some little thing to sustain their dignity, or when wantonly maltreating them, to find some accompaniment to counteract the wantonness, if one allows the nature of the case to be determined on its own merits and does not import some personal feeling of malice which removes and dislodges all ingredients of the milder type.
[80] Surely then it was the height of harshness that when commoners among the Alexandrian Jews, if they appeared to have done things worthy of stripes, were beaten with whips more suggestive of freemen and citizens, the magistrates, the Senate, whose very name implies age and honour, in this respect fared worse than their inferiors and were treated like Egyptians of the meanest rank and guilty of the greatest iniquities.
[81] I leave out of account the point that if they had committed a host of crimes he ought to have postponed the punishments in respect for the season, for rulers who conduct their government as they should and do not pretend to honour but do really honour their benefactors make a practice of not punishing any condemned person until these notable celebrations in honour of the birthdays of the illustrious Augustan house are over.
[82] Instead he made them an occasion for illegality and for punishing those who had done no wrong, whom he could have punished at a later time if he wished. But he hurried and pressed on the matter to conciliate the mob, who were opposed to the Jews, thinking that this would help to bring them to make his policy their own.
[83] I have known cases when on the eve of a holiday of this kind, people who have been crucified have been taken down and their bodies delivered to their kinsfolk, because it was thought well to give them burial and allow them the ordinary rites. For it was meet that the dead also should have the advantage of some kind treatment upon the birthday of an emperor and also that the sanctity of the festival should be maintained.
[84] But Flaccus gave no orders to take down those who had died on the cross. Instead he ordered the crucifixion of the living, to whom the season offered a short-lived though not permanent reprieve in order to postpone the punishment though not to remit it altogether. And he did this after maltreating them with the lash in the middle of the theatre and torturing them with fire and the sword.
[85] The show had been arranged in parts. The first spectacle lasting from dawn till the third or fourth hour consisted of Jews being scourged, hung up, bound to the wheel, brutally mauled and haled for their death march through the middle of the orchestra. After this splendid exhibition came dancers and mimes and flute players and all the other amusements of theatrical competitions.