17. Extremely Lethal Flatulence
As Josephus continued his narrative of what happened after a Roman soldier mooned and farted at a religious crowd in Jerusalem: “At this, the whole multitude had indignation, and made a clamor to Cumanus [the provincial Roman procurator], that he would punish the soldier; while the rasher part of the youth, and such as were naturally the most tumultuous, fell to fighting, and caught up stones, and threw them at the soldiers“. It was the start of a bout of widespread violence and a weird chain of events that led to mass death. Things escalated quickly, as the Romans, never known for a light touch when it came to disturbances in their provinces, came down hard on the Jews.
Josephus went on to describe what happened next, when the Roman procurator heard of the Jerusalem riot: “Cumanus was afraid lest all the people should make an assault upon him, and sent to call for more men, who, when they came in great numbers into the cloisters, the Jews were in a very great consternation. Being beaten out of the temple, they ran into the city; and the violence with which they crowded to get out was so great, that they trod upon each other, and squeezed one another, till ten thousand of them were killed, insomuch that this feast became the cause for mourning to the whole nation, and every family lamented“.
