Ch. 13

Josephus’ Water Trick

Vespasianus quidem non multo1 post, exhaustis puteis, ipsa2 sibi necessitate traditum3 iri civitatem sperabat. Josephus autem, ut hanc eius4 spem frangeret, iussit quam5 plurimos per murorum primas immersa6 undis atque humida vestimenta suspendere, ut omnes repente aqua perfluerent. ex quo moeror7 simul Romanis ac timor erat, cum tantum8 aquae viderent eos ludibrio9 consumere, quos potu10 indigere credebant. Denique dux11 belli etiam ipse, quia penuria civitatem posse capere desperasset, iterum consilium ad vim atque arma convertit : Judaeis12 quoque id maxime cupientibus, quod nec se nec civitatem salvam fore13 credebant, et priusquam14 fame, vel siti perirent, mortem bello optabant.

  1. multo post: multo is ablative degree of difference, not much after ↩

  2. ipsa …. necessitate: necessitas, -tatis is feminine (as all -tas, -tatis 3rd declension adjectives are), so take ipsa and necessitate together ↩

  3. traditum iri civitatem sperabat: jump to sperabat as your main verb, which starts off indirect statement. The traditum iri is a super rare construction (PPP + iri) where the iri acts as a passive infinitive of eo, making this a future passive infinitive, would be handed over. I’m fairly confident we won’t ever see this again ↩

  4. eius spem: the eius refers to Vespasian ↩

  5. quam plurimos: quam + superlative is as ……as possible ↩

  6. immersa undis atque humida vestimenta: clothes wet and having been immersed in water. A bit redundant, but hey, that’s life sometimes ↩

  7. moeror: take this as the subject, meaning grief ↩

  8. tantum aquae: literally “so much of water” so much water ↩

  9. ludibrio: in mockery, ablative of manner ↩

  10. potu indigere: indigere + ablative of separation is to lack ↩

  11. dux belli: Vespasian ↩

  12. Judaeis quoque id maxime cupientibus,: you should absolutely know what this is… And the id is for the Romans to take the city. Although contradictory, Josephus goes on to explain the reasoning behind the Jews’ desire here ↩

  13. fore: future infinitive of sum, often found in indirect statement as it is here. A very good word to know! ↩

  14. et priusquam ….. optabant.: Take the ending phrase first, mortem bello optabant, then the remaining parts. While certainly a brutal sentence to read, this kind of desperation is all too common in sieges ↩

All material is taken, with gratitude, from The Latin Library as well as my own work, available under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license CC BY-SA 4.0