And in the time of Nero, while Felix was procurator of Judaea, Josephus again, in these very words, writes thus concerning the sedition of the priests against one another, in the twentieth book of the Antiquities:
«And there was kindled also among the chief priests a sedition against the priests and the leading men of the multitude of Jerusalem; and each of them, having made for himself a band of the most reckless and revolutionary of men, was a leader. And clashing together, they reviled one another and threw stones. And there was not even one to rebuke them; but, as in a city without a governor, these things were done with license.»
Such shamelessness and audacity seized the high priests that they dared to send servants to the threshing-floors to seize the tithes owed to the priests; and it came to pass that the poorer priests perished of want. Thus the violence of the factions prevailed over all justice.
Again the same writer relates that about the same time in Jerusalem there sprang up a kind of bandits who, as he says, by day and even in the midst of the city would murder those they met.
For especially at the feasts they would mingle with the crowd, concealing small daggers in their garments, and with these they stabbed their adversaries; then, when the men had fallen, the very murderers became part of those expressing indignation. Thus, through the credit they enjoyed, they remained altogether undiscovered.
First of all the high priest Jonathan was slaughtered by them, and after him many were slain day by day; and the fear was harder to bear than the calamities themselves, for everyone, as in war, was hourly expecting death.