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460 GREEK LITERATURE.
Titus. It was admitted into the Palatine library, and its author was honored with a statue at Rome. It commences with the capture of Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes, in B.C. 170, runs rapidly over the events before Josephus’s own time, and then gives a detailed account of the fatal war with Rome. 2. The Jewish Antiquities (‘Iou5ai«^ ‘Apxaioo-yia in twenty books, completed about A.D. 93. The work extends from the creation of the world to A.D. 66, the twelfth year of Nero, in which the Jews were goaded to rebellion by Gessius Florus. 3. His own life, in one book. This is an appendage to the Antiquities. 4. A treatise on the antiquity of the~ Jews, or Kara ‘AmWos, in two books. It is in answer to such as impugned the antiquity of the Jewish nation on the ground of the silence of Greek writers respecting it. The title "Against Apion" is rather a misnomer, and is applicable only to a portion of the second book ($ lr-13). This treatise exhibits considerable learning. 5. Els Ma/c-Kafiaiovs, % irepl avroKpdropos Xoyiffpov. Probably spurious, though referred to as a work of Josephus by Eusebius, St. Jerome, Philostorgius, and others. It is an extremely declamatory account of the martyrdom of Eleazar (an aged priest), and of seven youths and their mother, in the persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes. Its title has reference to the zeal for God’s law displayed by the sufferers in the spirit of the Maccabees.1
The invaluable but posthumous edition of Josephus, by Hudson, containing all the works, in Greek and Latin, came out at Oxford in 1720, 2 vols. fol. The Latin version was new ; the text was founded on a most careful and extensive collation of MSS., and the edition was farther enriched by notes and indices. Havercamp’s edition, Amsterdam, 1726, 2 vols. fol., is more convenient for the reader than creditable to the editor. That of OberthUr, in 3 vols. 8vo, Leipzig, 1782-1785, contains only the Greek text, most carefully edited, and the edition remains, unfortunately, incomplete. Another was edited by Richter, Leipzig, 1826, as part of a Bibliotheca Patrum. The latest edition, with probably the best text, is that of Dindorf, 2 vols. large 8vo thus far, in Didot’s Bibliotheca Grceca, Paris, 1845-7. It contains, also, the fragments relative to Jewish history contained in Photius, and fragments by C. Muller, hitherto unedited, of Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Polysenus, Dexippus, and Eusebius.
XL plutarchus (nxourapxos),* the biographer and philosopher, was born at Chaeronea, in Bceotia. The year of his birth is not known, but we learn from Plutarch himself that he was studying philosophy under Ammonius at the time when Nero was making his progress through Greece, in A.D. 66, from which we may assume that he was a youth or a young man at the time. He spent some time at Rome, and in other parts of Italy ;3 but he tells, us that he did not learn the Latin language in Italy, because he was occupied with public commissions, and in giving lectures on philosophy, and it was late in life before he busied himself with Roman literature. He was lecturing at Rome during the reign of Domitian; but the statement of Suidas, that Plutarch was the preceptor of Trajan, ought to be rejected. Plutarch spent the later years of his life at Chaeronea, where he discharged various magisterial offices, and held a priesthood. The time of his’death is unknown. The work which has immortalized Plutarch’s name is his Parallel Lives (Bioi Uapd\7}oi) of
1 Elder, I. c. 2 Long; Smith, Diet. Biogr., s.v. 3 Vit. Demosth.,3