Introduction
In many ways, the Life of Josephus is not an edifying or enjoyable read. It has been accused by some of extreme sloppiness, both of literary composition and of factual accuracy and consistency, and at times even of outright mendacity.Footnote 1 It raises questions of taste, too. In the modern world, extremes of self-praise are often seen as crass, at least by those of us who are not real estate moguls who become presidents. While it is true that standards differed in Graeco-Roman antiquity, a cultural context in which trumpeting one's own virtues was not taboo, the Life seems to go beyond contemporary standards, containing tendencies of autopanegyric which would make even Cicero blush.Footnote 2 These grounds for distaste, together with the Life's brevity and conventional status as a decidedly minor work, have meant that it has received rather less scholarly attention than the other works of Josephus. Nonetheless, much of the scholarship which it has inspired has been interesting. That research has certainly made it clear that this text, for all its faults and lapses, speaks to far more than just the inflated self-image of one rather conceited man.
Uniquely among Josephus’ works, the Life is entirely missing a preface. However, the final sections of the last book of the Jewish Antiquities contain a sentence which could effectively function as a prologue to the work (AJ 20.266–7):
Perhaps it will not strike my readers as invidious or inappropriate to give an account of my family history and the events of my life while people still live who can either dispute or support my claims. When I have done this I shall bring my Antiquities to its conclusion, comprising as it does twenty books and sixty thousand lines.
The very last sentence of the Life (V 430) refers back to the dedicatee of the Antiquities, Epaphroditus, and claims that Josephus is, at that point, reaching the end of his account of ‘our antiquities’ (ἀρχαιολογία). These factors suggest that the Life was originally a part of the Antiquities, a sort of appendix in which Josephus, having surveyed the whole history of his people, adds an account of his own life and achievements. Thus, in terms of date, it seems that we can confidently assign the Life to the same year as the Antiquities, in other words the thirteenth year of the reign of Domitian, or 93–4 ce.Footnote 3
The probable status of the Life as a constituent part of the Antiquities should influence the way that we read it. The academic convention of treating the Antiquities and the Life as separate works (to which this book contributes by giving them separate chapters) does violence to the integrity of what was originally a unitary work. Although I follow convention here in separating the Life from the magnum opus, I will endeavour, in what follows, to be attentive to the connections and shared preoccupations which unify the two texts.
While the text itself emphasizes that it is an account of the whole of Josephus’ life, in fact it very heavily focuses on one short period, the six months between Josephus assuming his command in Galilee during the early stages of the Jewish Revolt and the arrival of Vespasian in the area in 67 ce. Such distorted proportions may surprise modern readers, who might expect autobiographies to offer more even coverage, but it was not uncommon for ancient biographies to concentrate on the period of the subject's public life, which was unusually short in Josephus’ case.
The work begins by establishing the dignity and prestige of Josephus’ lineage, and proceeds to describe his youth and (particularly) his education (V 1–12). At chapter 13, he enters public life. There, we find the account of the embassy to Rome (13–16) which was discussed in Chapter 1.Footnote 4 Following his return to his homeland, the real focus of the work emerges, the Galilean command. After a brief account of the early phase of the Revolt and Josephus’ activities in Jerusalem at that time (17–27), he takes up the mission entrusted to him by the Jerusalem κοινόν (‘council’), the elite-led self-appointed ‘rebel government’ of 66–7, and heads to Galilee. The stated mission with which he is entrusted is initially to attempt to win the obedience of the more rebelliously inclined elements in the region: Josephus claims that the elite rebel leaders were playing a double game, and that they were secretly hoping for peace with Rome, but in order to maintain their authority they had to pretend to favour revolt, all the while attempting to rein in the more extreme tendencies of the rebels (28–9). At this moment the narrative pauses, and Josephus briefly drops out of autobiographical mode to sketch the complex political situation in Galilee which he encountered on his arrival, with multiple opposing factions in each city and outbreaks of violence between Jews and non-Jews in various locales (30–61).
This contextual digression ends at chapter 62, and the account of Josephus’ conduct of his mission begins there (62–188). The early sections of the account focus on his struggles with various oppositional factions who did not respect or recognize his authority. By a variety of ruses, and by winning the affection of the common Galileans, he is able to outfox his numerous opponents, avoid plots and dangers which threaten his life, and come out on top. His opponents prominently include John of Gischala, one of the principal rebel ‘tyrants’ of the Jewish War, whose rabble-rousing career began in Galilee during Josephus’ command.
Close to the mid-point of the narrative, a major new threat to Josephus’ authority emerges: the villainous John, exploiting his contacts in Jerusalem and the susceptibility of the Jerusalem leaders to bribery, manages to convince the κοινόν that Josephus should be stripped of his powers. Much of the following section concerns the various ruses by which Josephus is able to avoid the snares of the envoys sent from Jerusalem to accomplish this, and to retain power, ultimately having his commission reaffirmed (189–406). Towards the end of this section, there occurs a lengthy digression on Justus of Tiberias’ lost history of the Revolt, which tries to refute that account and to undermine Justus in a number of ways (336–68). Then, at 407, Vespasian and his Roman army arrive in the region, and Josephus declares that he need not narrate any more about his Galilean career, since it has been satisfactorily covered in the earlier Jewish War. The book concludes with a brief section which discusses his fate as a Roman prisoner, his post-Revolt life in Rome, the honours shown to him by the Flavian emperors, and his private and familial affairs (407–30).
Modern readers have no hesitation in assigning a genre to this work, the genre of autobiography. However, it is not clear that ‘autobiography’ was conceptualized as a distinct genre in antiquity. The Life of Josephus is, as its very title suggests, a βίος, a Graeco-Roman-style biography. Like all βίοι, we should expect its focus to be on the ἦθος, the character, of the subject, and on illustrating his virtues through action – and indeed those expectations are largely met.Footnote 5 The work includes many of the standard features of a Graeco-Roman life (a genre which was itself strongly shaped by rhetorical conventions for encomium and invective): sections on ancestry and education; a particular focus on public life, while also including private and domestic details; and the prominence of named and identified virtues in the discussion of the subject's conduct.Footnote 6 Josephus’ procedure is closer to a Plutarchian than a Suetonian biography, in that his public career (chiefly the command in Galilee) is treated chronologically rather than under thematic headings.Footnote 7
Comparison with other examples of autobiographical βίοι is impossible because of the lack of surviving comparanda. Although a number of texts from the Greek world, such as Xenophon's Anabasis and Isocrates’ Antidosis, have marked autobiographical dimensions, it may have been the case that full-blown politically focused autobiographical βίοι really began in Rome in the Late Republic and Early Principate. Sulla's twenty-two-book autobiography was fundamentally influential, and later figures like Augustus, Suetonius Paullinus, and Agrippina the Younger also produced memoirs.Footnote 8 So, although we cannot compare the Life with any surviving prior example of Roman ‘autobiography’, we can identify a tradition to which it seems to belong. In terms of comparable texts which do survive, attention is sometimes drawn to Tacitus’ Agricola, composed a few years after the Life.Footnote 9 The Agricola shares some general features with the Life, including its disproportionate focus on a short period of its subject's life, and even some striking close parallels. For instance, when Tacitus, at the moment when Agricola arrives in Britain to take up the governorship (which is the main focus of the work), breaks off to provide a geographical, ethnographic, and historical digression on the Britons, we recall that this is what Josephus does for Galilee on his arrival in the region.Footnote 10 There is no reason to suspect a direct literary relationship, but the similarities between these two texts may tell us things about tastes and trends in life-writing in Rome at the turn of the second century.
This little life: the Life of Josephus
As we saw at the beginning of this chapter, at the end of the Antiquities Josephus suggests that it would be appropriate for him to inform his readers of ‘my lineage and the events of my life’ (AJ 20.266). At the end of the Life, he also makes some remarks which may indicate something of the purpose of the work: ‘These are the events of my life; let others judge my character however they wish from them’ (V 430). Thus Josephus himself presents the Life as an informative addition to his great work, covering his whole life and family history, and providing his readers with material upon which to base an assessment of the author's character.
These are simple enough statements of purpose. However, as often with Josephus, some scholars have suspected other suppressed agendas at play. In particular, towards the end of his work, Josephus mentions that, in his lost history of the Revolt, Justus of Tiberias had included harsh criticisms of Josephus’ conduct in Galilee, and also impugned the reliability of the Jewish War (V 336–67). Taking their cue from this, some readers have concluded that the entire Life is self-apologia masquerading as autobiography and can entirely be explained as a response to Justus’ attacks.Footnote 11 Such readings (which are not generally popular nowadays) tend to become all-consuming, to see Justus as the interpretative key that explains almost every feature of the Life. Any moment when Josephus celebrates any aspect of his own conduct or virtues should be mirror-read as revealing some of Justus’ criticisms. When Josephus boasts that he was immune to bribery, this is because Justus must have accused him of accepting bribes; since Josephus claims that King Agrippa approved of the reliability of the Jewish War, Justus must have stated that the monarch was unimpressed with that work; when Josephus claims that he did not abuse his power to violate the chastity of any woman, this shows us that Justus had accused him of rampantly sexually assaulting the women of Galilee. An early article by Tessa Rajak (who later changed her mind on this subject) even goes so far as to assume that criticisms of Josephus which are discussed in the text and attributed to specified groups or individuals within the narrative probably also go back to the lost diatribe of our author's Tiberian rival.Footnote 12
Of course, given the loss of Justus’ work, we cannot prove that he did not make any of these many accusations. However, this itself points to a problem with this approach to the Life's relationship to Justus: this sort of reading lacks any form of control whatsoever. As Rajak later noticed, Josephus himself explicitly limits his engagement with Justus to a digression towards the end of the work (336–67), and at the beginning of this digression he appears to signal that it is only here that he is turning to address Justus’ claims.Footnote 13 Thus the only criticisms of Josephus which we can confidently attribute to Justus are those outlined in this digression. The chief claims seem to have been that Josephus was responsible for forcing Justus’ hometown to rebel against Rome and the king (340), and that Justus’ history was superior in terms of accuracy to that of Josephus (357). Additionally, Life 357 seems to indicate that Justus criticized Josephus’ conduct at Jotapata and challenged his literary account of that siege (although, curiously, Josephus opts not to discuss Jotapata in the Life). Attribution to Justus of any criticism of Josephus beyond these is ultimately speculative, as is the practice of assuming that the ‘real’ purpose of the Life was to answer his criticisms.
In my view, it is not completely unlikely that the publication of literary works which criticized Josephus, including that of Justus, may have shaped some of the contents of the Life. An autobiography is a natural place to respond to such critiques, and Josephus must surely have been conscious of them as he wrote. However, such apologetic concerns do not seem to be key to understanding the Life as a whole. I agree with Steve Mason that we need no explanation for the text's existence beyond what Josephus offers us, and the fact that, having completed the surely laborious task of writing the Antiquities, Josephus may simply have felt that a celebration of his own life and career was merited.Footnote 14 Clearly his life was interesting enough to warrant an autobiographical treatment.
But even with all this being said, it still seems that Justus’ criticisms rankled Josephus. Josephus mentions in the Life that there had been other critics of both his conduct and his history besides Justus (336), and yet Justus is the only one of these critics who is singled out for a lengthy personalized rebuttal. Some scholars have discerned a possible reason for this particular animosity: like repels like and, if Josephus’ portrait of Justus is read carefully, it soon becomes clear that he was remarkably similar to Josephus in numerous respects.Footnote 15 Like Josephus, Justus was Jewish. Like Josephus, he boasted a fairly comprehensive Greek education. Like Josephus, he came from a leading family, one of the elite clans of Tiberias. Like Josephus, he was involved in the early stages of the Revolt, including, apparently, opposing Rome (or at least the king). Like Josephus, he subsequently fled to the ‘other side’ (in Justus’ case to King Agrippa) and worked closely with the former enemy.Footnote 16 Like Josephus, he wrote a Greek-language history of these events in which he himself had played such a large role. As a Greek-educated Jewish participant in the Revolt who saw the war from both sides, Justus could even invoke many of the very same criteria by which Josephus had established his authority to write the Jewish War.
Extensive parallelism is evident in the Life itself. There may be some merit in reading Josephus’ constructed portrait of Justus as a distorted mirror of the author's constructed self. This is seen in Josephus’ invective against Justus in the digression, which seems largely based on mirroring. As we have seen, Justus had accused Josephus of forcing the citizens of Tiberias to revolt against their inclinations; Josephus’ response is simply to blame Justus for the revolt of Tiberias (42, 340–4). Similarly, Justus had critiqued the reliability of the Jewish War: Josephus responds by presenting Justus’ own history as a barrage of ill-informed lies and hearsay (357–60).
But it is in Josephus’ depiction of Justus’ conduct in Galilee as a participant in the Revolt that this mirroring becomes particularly interesting. On a number of occasions, we see Justus being vituperated for essentially the same conduct for which, elsewhere, Josephus praises himself. Thus, at the beginning of the Galilee account, we are told that Justus, the leader of one of three factions in Tiberias, was dishonest about his intentions: he publicly pretended to be undecided about how to respond to the rebellion, while privately he was hell-bent on revolt against Rome because he believed that he would be able to obtain power from that course of action (36). Reprehensible behaviour, clearly. However, Josephus has admitted by this point that he was himself in Galilee under false pretences, pretending to be an advocate of revolution while secretly looking to control the populace on behalf of his covertly pro-Roman bosses in Jerusalem (22, 28–9). The mirroring between these two attitudes and courses of action is very noticeable. Throughout, when Josephus lies and deploys stratagems, it is praiseworthy; when Justus does the same, it is a sign of his despicable character.Footnote 17 One is reminded here of Quintilian's remarks on how cunning orators can, in panegyric and invective, exploit the close resemblance of some vices to some virtues; in his handling of Justus, his Tiberian bête noire and alter ego, the Wario to his Mario, Josephus shows himself to be a master of this technique.Footnote 18
Alongside its handling of and relationship to Justus, perhaps the most frequently discussed aspect of the Life in scholarship is its tendency to include apparent factual contradictions with the Jewish War. Some scholars have attempted to decide which of the two accounts of Josephus’ Galilean command, the Life or Jewish War 2, is likely to be the most historically reliable (generally preferring the Life).Footnote 19 Tessa Rajak has sounded a salutary note of caution about this. She notes that the two works are fundamentally different. The Jewish War has grander objectives and can only afford to devote a small amount of attention to affairs in Galilee in this period, which it must present as simply one aspect of a larger picture. The Life, by contrast, has the space to drill deeper, and can take as its central focus Josephus’ own virtues and conduct. Given these differences, we should expect variations in what is reported.Footnote 20
Rajak is quite right to emphasize that many of the supposed ‘contradictions’ which earlier scholarship had identified disappear when considered from this perspective, emerging more as differences of emphasis than as instances of factual contradiction or misinformation. For instance, perhaps the most notorious of these discrepancies involves the nature of the mission of Josephus itself. In the War, we are told that he was sent to Galilee to prepare it for war with Rome (BJ 2.562–76). However, as we have seen, in the Life he is sent on what is fundamentally a mission of peace rather than war; he was sent there (secretly) to control the wilder elements of the population, to encourage them to obey the ‘responsible’ Jerusalem authorities, and to prevent further rebellion or στάσις (V 28–9). However, Rajak notes that later in the Life Josephus claims that, when in post, he received a second commission from the Jerusalem κοινόν to protect Galilee (V 62). Thus the two accounts do not really contradict each other: the briefer account in the War is merely compressed for narrative convenience, with Josephus stating the terms of his second commission as if they were his original orders, perhaps simply because he does not have space in the War to dive too deeply into the local minutiae of this period. Similarly, in the War he claims that John of Gischala was always a troublemaker (BJ 2.585–9), whereas in the Life he ‘admits’ that John started out favouring peace with Rome (V 43–5). Again, compression may be suspected here: Josephus ‘fast-forwards’ John's attitude in the tighter confines of the War narrative, skipping his pro-peace phase and moving straight to the position he would adopt at a later point. Rajak is right to note that many (though importantly not all) of the apparent contradictions between the Life and the War actually disappear when those claims are considered in the context of the scope and purpose of the work concerned.Footnote 21 The lesson, perhaps, is that, before we rush to accuse Josephus of shameless mendacity, we should always pause first to ask if other explanations for puzzling features of his works can be suggested.
Perhaps more interesting than the question of when or if Josephus lies in the Life is the question of the role that lying, deception, and rhetoric play in the narrative itself. They are absolutely everywhere. Both Josephus and his many enemies and rivals are constantly trying to deceive each other. The Life depicts Galilee in this chaotic period in almost Tacitean terms, as a highly rhetoricized culture where nothing is as it seems and nobody will openly say what they mean. Everybody plays this game, but of course the hero, Josephus, is the ultimate player.
The best illustration of this important feature of the Life concerns an exchange of letters between Josephus and the delegates of the Jerusalem κοινόν who have come to remove him from his post as a result of John's scheming. When the delegates arrive, they learn that Josephus is wildly popular with the Galileans and so, although they are intent on either arresting or killing him, they cannot be open about this objective (216). They write to Josephus, telling him that they have come not to remove him from office but to honour him and punish John of Gischala for plotting against him; they request that Josephus should come to see them in a small village, and they ask that he only bring a few attendants as the village is too small to accommodate a full escort (216–17). Josephus comments (219):
This is what they wrote to me, expecting one of two responses: either I would come without my guards and thus be in their power, or I would arrive with a large escort, in which case they would denounce me as an enemy of the revolution.
But Josephus is far too crafty to fall for this double-talking ruse. He learns of the delegates’ true intentions by getting the soldier who brings the letter drunk and wheedling the truth out of him (220–5). Next, he concocts a manipulation of his own. He writes back in ostensibly friendly terms that he is delighted that the delegation has arrived, but that he simply cannot oblige their request. He is currently with the army, standing guard against the depredations of the Roman tribune Placidus. Thus he indicates that he cannot do as the delegation asks, since that would involve him neglecting his commission from the κοινόν to protect Galilee (a very effective way of pulling rank on the delegates). However, so as not to appear obstructionist, he invites the delegates instead to come to him, at a location which he has dictated, and with his loyal army on hand (226–7). This masterful game-playing by the crafty Josephus leaves the delegates with no option but to write back ordering him to come to them within three days without a military escort (228–9). Unable to keep up with Josephus’ adroit manoeuvres, the delegates are forced to make plain the intentions which they would have preferred to conceal; in so doing, they abandon their careful rhetorical façade and forfeit the game. Throughout the Life, through both manipulative rhetoric and clever stratagems, we see Josephus wrong-footing and outmanoeuvring his enemies again and again, consistently proving himself a master of deception, rhetoric, and guile.
So what of the connections that link this text to the Antiquities, the work to which it was originally attached? Here we should remind ourselves of one of Josephus’ stated aims in writing the larger work (AJ 1.14–15):
Overall, anyone who reads this work will learn above all that people who zealously attend to the will of God and do not dare to transgress excellent established laws will meet with unbelievable success in all things, and will be blessed with happiness by the deity. Conversely, for those who deviate from accurately following his laws, the possible becomes impossible, and whatever good thing they envision and try to achieve will result in unmitigated catastrophe.
Once this passage has been recalled, it becomes clear that the life of Josephus, as presented in the Life of Josephus, conforms perfectly to this pattern. Josephus is eager to celebrate his own virtues, in terms both of general ethics and of his clear adherence to Torah, throughout the Life.Footnote 22 Conversely, his rivals and enemies are morally abominable. And the result of all this? Josephus’ enemies are repeatedly outwitted and frustrated in their aims, while Josephus triumphs again and again. On a number of occasions (typically in episodes which involve his life being in danger), Josephus emphasizes that he was saved by divine providence or intervention (15–16; 83; 208–9; 425). Thus, his life exemplifies in microcosm the grand theological principle underpinning the Antiquities on a much larger scale regarding the connection between virtue, adherence to tradition, and divine favour. He makes himself an exemplum of the underlying theological thesis of his magnum opus.Footnote 23
The structuring of the work emphasizes this strongly. Steve Mason has identified concentric arrangement of narrative threads throughout the work.Footnote 24 For our purposes here, the key point is that, as Mason recognized, all of these concentrically arranged plot threads centre on a fulcrum, a mid-point in the narrative which is thus structurally marked as extremely significant. Josephus tells us that, soon after learning that the Jerusalem delegates were coming to strip him of his powers, he contemplates abandoning his command and leaving Galilee. However, he is dissuaded from this course of action by two factors, the pleas of the Galileans, who love and admire him as their leader, and a remarkable dream-vision which he experiences (V 208–9):
That night I had a wondrous dream. I went to bed, upset and disturbed by what I had learned from the letter. I dreamed that there stood before me a presence which said ‘Cease, man, from grieving in your heart, and cast off all fear. That which causes you to suffer now will promote you to greatness and success in all things. Fortune will be with you, not only in these present difficulties, but in many more besides. So do not be concerned. Remember that you must even do battle with the Romans.’
Readers familiar with the Jewish War will surely be struck by this scene, as almost the inverse of the famous ‘visions’ which Josephus claims that he later experienced at Jotapata, visions which convinced him to abandon his Galilean command in the most extreme way possible, by going over to Vespasian (BJ 3.350–2). In the Life, this divinely sent vision confirms our hero in his resolve, and he determines to resist the efforts of the delegation and remain in charge. Thus, right at the heart of the Life is a claim that God communicated directly with Josephus, and indeed repeated throughout is the claim that God favoured and protected him. There may have been a place for this type of claim in Roman-style autobiography more broadly: Sulla's memoir famously asserted that its subject was close to, and protected by, the goddess Ma-Bellona and other deities.Footnote 25 But it is also appropriate in the broader context of the Antiquities, of which the Life was a constituent part, illustrating once again that God has a special care for the interests of virtuous and pious Jews.
Indeed, one aspect of the Antiquities which was not mentioned in Chapter 3 is the prominence of biographical elements in that work. In common with many Graeco-Roman historians, especially of the period of the Principate, Josephus partly resorts to ‘biostructuring’ in his sweeping history of the Jewish people.Footnote 26 Many sections of the narrative focus on outstanding individual characters who become paradigms for their age: the patriarchs, Moses, Joshua, Ruth, Samuel, Saul, David, Solomon, the rulers of the divided kingdoms, Daniel, Esther and Mordecai, the Hasmonaeans, and Herod all dominate the narratives of their associated periods of history. Thus, although the Life is microcosm and the Antiquities is macrocosm, we can see that that macrocosm is largely constructed out of an accumulation of biographical microcosms like the Life. Bearing this in mind, one possible way of reading the connection between these texts becomes apparent. Josephus turns himself into the spirit of the age, becoming for his times what Moses, David, and Herod were for theirs: the single paradigmatic example of an entire era of Jewish history.Footnote 27
