the_cave

Or a source that Josephus shared. But yes, it must be one of those possibilities. I would be a little more impressed that it was Josephus directly if there were Tacitean parallels besides the omens.

Also note...that these parallels are from War. But the TF is in Antiquities, so if there are parallels with the TF in Tacitus, then this suggests that the passage is not Tacitean.

spin

Sounds like a load of hogwash to me. You should look at the version in Suetonius, Vespasian 4.

Both Tacitus and Suetonius refer to the east and that there was an opinion or a conviction in the east (T: "of many", S: "that grew prevalent"), a rather generic persuasion that is not restricted to the Jews. Both use the words profecti rerum potirentur with Iudaea

T: profectique Iudaea rerum potirentur;
S: Iudaea profecti rerum potirentur.

Both Tacitus and Suetonius are somehow dependent and their shared material doesn't come from Josephus.

The word of such a prophecy probably got carried back by many Romans and was common knowledge, then perhaps incorporated in city records.

(And I'm not in any sense arguing against the likelihood that Tacitus knew Greek.)


spin

Ben C Smith

I have that passage too, of course.

That is a very good point. It does look as if Suetonius and Tacitus share something that is not from Josephus (either that or Suetonius had read Tacitus). I am not sure I had ever noticed those exact words in common. Thanks.

Classicists have suggested the memoirs of Vespasian, BTW.

(Where did Tacitus get his list of temple prodigies?)

Josephus claims that he is the one who told Vespasian to his face that he was the predicted ruler, and then Tacitus claims that the one predicted by the prophecy was Vespasian. That material seems to have come from Josephus one way or another, whether through his work or through memory of his spoken word.

Suetonius mentions Josephus by name in Vespasian 5.6.

Maybe. But I really have to wonder whether it is even possible that Tacitus missed the works of Josephus. Josephus wrote in Rome, after all, only two or three decades before Tacitus; he wrote for Romans, and on a topic that at least somewhat interested Tacitus. Suetonius, roughly contemporaneous with Tacitus, knew his name. Does it not seem as if Tacitus would practically have had to have gone out of his way to avoid Josephus?

Ben.