The cheering occupations of rural life were to be henceforth pursued on a scale more fitting my rank. I was the first chieftain of my tribe, the man by whose wisdom multitudes were to be guided, and by whose benevolence multitudes were to be sustained. I felt that mingled sense of rank and responsibility which with the vain, the ignorant, or the vicious is the strongest temptation to excess, but with the honorable and intelligent constitutes the most pleasurable and the most elevated state of the human mind.
Yet what are the fortunes of man but a ship launched on an element whose essence is restlessness? The very wind, without which we can not move, gathers to a storm and we are undone! The tyranny of our conquerors had for a few months been paralyzed by the destruction of Rome. But the governor of Judea was not to be long withheld, where plunder allured the most furious rapacity that perhaps ever hungered in the heart of man. I was in the midst of our harvest, surrounded with the fruitage of the year and enjoying the sights and sounds of patriarchal life, when I received the formidable summons to present myself again before Florus. Imprisonment and torture were in the command. He had heard of my opulence, and I knew how little his insolent cupidity would regard the pardon under which I had returned. I determined to retire into the mountains and defy him.
But the Roman plunderer had the activity of his countrymen. On the very night of my receiving the summons I was roused from sleep by the outcries of the retainers, who in that season of heat lay in the open air round the palace. I started from my bed, only to see with astonishment the courtyards filled with cavalry, galloping in pursuit of the few peasants who still fought for their lord. There was no time to be lost; the torches were already in the hands of the soldiery, and I must be taken or burned alive. Constantius was instantly at my side. I ordered the trumpet to be sounded on the hills and we rushed out together, spear in hand. The Romans, alarmed by resistance where they had counted upon capture without a blow, fell back. The interval was fatal to them. Their retreat was intercepted by the whole body of the peasantry, at length effectually roused. The scythe and reaping-hook were deadly weapons to horsemen cooped up between walls, and in midnight. No efforts of mine could stop the havoc, when once the fury of my people was roused. A few escaped, who had broken wildly away in the first onset. The rest were left to cover the avenues with the first sanguinary offerings of the final war of Judea.