Give War a Chance by P. J. O'Rourke

Author:P. J. O'Rourke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 1992-03-16T05:00:00+00:00

These and many other treasons, peculations, and self-seekings Josephus recounts with enthusiasm. He is broad-minded in his shamelessness. He lards every description of Rome and Romans with fawning praise. Then he extols the rebels for their courage and claims himself to be a champion of the Jews. It’s worth noting that after the war he retired to an apartment in the Imperial Palace and spent the rest of his life writing best-sellers about his experiences.

Reason dictates we should hate this man. But it’s hard to get angry at Josephus. What, after all, did he do? A few soldiers were tricked into suicide. Some demoralizing claptrap was shouted at a beleaguered army. A wife was distressed. (She survived, incidently, and Josephus divorced her for a Roman heiress.) And sundry other crimes were committed, all of which pale by comparison to what the good men did. For it was the loyal, the idealistic and the brave who did the real damage. The devout and patriotic leaders of Jerusalem sacrificed tens of thousands of lives to the cause of freedom. Vespa-sian and Titus sacrificed tens of thousands more to the cause of civil order. Even Agrippa II, the Roman client king of Judea who did all he could to prevent the war, ended by supervising the destruction of half a dozen of his cities and the sale of their inhabitants into slavery. How much better for everyone if all the principal figures of the region had been slithering filth like Josephus.

The Jewish War is a moral oxymoron. It doesn’t help us under-stand the Middle East or know what to do there. But it does lend a fullness and a depth to our incomprehension. And it provides us with a vast crowd of historical company in our impotence and confusion.

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