The Destruction of the Jews — The Folio Society | Flavius Josephus | 1971 | First Printing with Garrick Palmer Engravings | Very Good

In the summer of AD 70, the Roman army broke into Jerusalem, and a man who had once fought against them stood in the Roman lines and watched the Temple burn.

Flavius Josephus was born Yosef ben Matityahu, a priest of Jerusalem, and when the Jews rose against Rome in AD 66 he commanded the rebel forces in Galilee. Besieged and captured, he talked his way into the favour of the Roman general Vespasian, prophesied that he would become emperor, and was proved right. He spent the rest of the war at the side of Vespasian's son Titus, and afterwards, living in Rome on an imperial pension, he wrote this: the history of the revolt, the siege of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple and the last stand at Masada.

It is the only full account we have of those years, written by a man who saw almost all of it, and it remains one of the most gripping and harrowing histories ever written. Josephus is partisan, self-serving and sometimes unreliable, and he is also an extraordinary storyteller with a soldier's eye for detail. Without him, almost everything we know about the fall of Jerusalem would be lost.

This Folio Society edition of 1971 uses G. A. Williamson's lucid translation, with his introduction, maps by K. C. Jordan, and wood engravings by Garrick Palmer printed in black and rose. Palmer's engravings are dramatic and unsettling in exactly the right way, none more so than the frontispiece of the dead on the Temple steps. The book is bound in red cloth with a menorah device on the front board and a cream cloth spine lettered in gilt, with decorated endpapers, and comes in its black Folio slipcase.

Condition: Very Good. The red boards are bright and the front device crisp, with a small faint mark low on the front board. The cream spine is lightly toned, as is usual with this edition, and the gilt is clear. The text and engravings are clean throughout. The slipcase shows wear to the edges, with rubbing and some loss of the black paper covering along the spine edges.

About this edition: this is the first Folio printing of 1971. Garrick Palmer's engravings make it one of the most striking Folio editions of a classical historian, and a fine addition to any shelf of ancient or biblical history.

Extra photographs available on request. Just get in touch and we will be happy to help.

Wrapped in good heavy paper — we don't skimp on that — and packed into a sturdy box so nothing shifts on the way to you, wherever in the world that happens to be. Kat packs and checks every parcel herself, and she is not easily pleased. The unwrapping ought to be half the pleasure.

The Novel Relics Team