Pseudo-Hegesippus: On the ruin of the city of Jerusalem

Hegesippus (d. 180)

HEGESIPPUS, TRANSLATED FROM LATIN INTO ENGLISH

[Translated by Wade Blocker, wblocker@nmol.com]

BOOK II OF HEGESIPPUS BEGINS HERE

[p. 128]

I. Herod having been buried the judgments of the people were drawn out as they customarily are against the dead: he was oppressive and intolerable to them; a tyrant not a king he enforced an unjust rule against the citizens; an assassin of his own family members, a plunderer of the people, who left behind nothing for anybody; taxes increased, everything taken away, foreigners enriched, the Jews impoverished; who brought an enemy into the temple, who defiled all things sacred by sacrilege. He rewarded those who were unworthy, while tortures were not lacking for the living, after the release from captivity Judea endured more evils in a few years under the rule of Herod than it sustained in the captivity itself under a barbarous enemy, when the kings of the Babylonians ruled them. Beneath them exile was more tolerable than living at home under Herod, [p. 129] released to their homeland by the former, driven into exile by the latter. More savage than Darius, more haughty than Artaxerxes, more rapacious than the Medians. To have hoped for an end to their…

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• More works by Hegesippus

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