While the teaching of our Saviour and his Church were flourishing day by day and advancing to ever greater progress, the calamity of the Jews was reaching its height in successive woes. For now, as the Emperor was entering upon his eighteenth year, an uprising of the Jews broke out once more and destroyed a vast multitude of them.
For in Alexandria and the rest of Egypt, and further in Cyrene, as though stirred up by some terrible and seditious spirit, they were impelled to rise in revolt against the Greeks who dwelt among them; and, having greatly increased the sedition, in the following year they joined a war of no small magnitude, while Lupus at that time governed all Egypt.
And indeed in the first engagement it happened that they prevailed over the Greeks, who fled to Alexandria and there captured and killed the Jews in the city. But the Jews in Cyrene, failing of their help, continued to plunder the country of Egypt and to ravage its districts under their leader Lucuas. Against them the Emperor sent Marcius Turbo with a force both of infantry and of ships, and also of cavalry.
He waged the war against them through many battles and over no short time, and slew many tens of thousands of Jews, not only those from Cyrene but also those from Egypt who had rallied to Lucuas, their king.
But the Emperor, suspecting that the Jews in Mesopotamia would likewise attack the inhabitants there, ordered Lusius Quietus to clear them out of the province. He drew up his forces and slew a vast multitude of those there, and for this exploit was appointed governor of Judaea by the Emperor. These things have also been recorded in these very words by those Greeks who committed to writing the events of these same times.