The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

2. Josephus and Epaphroditus
The discovery that the opponent attacked by Josephus in Contra Apionem 1.25 and 46 ff.
is none other than Justus, helps us to determine more exactly the time frame of this entire
writing. Until now we knew only that it was composed after the Antiquities to which Josephus
refers in section 1. Now it has been revealed in addition, that the writing of Justus of Tiberias
about the Jewish war is assumed to be known in Josephus’ text, and since Justus’ work
appeared after the death of Agrippa which occurred in the year 100 (Life 359), then the
polemics in Contra Apionem also must have been produced at the same time as the Life, i.e. later
than the year 100 – but admittedly only slightly later; because apparently Justus had only
awaited Agrippa’s death in order to publish his writing that had been completed 20 years
earlier, and Josephus would have responded immediately to this. At any rate, since the writing
against Apion was not composed until after the year 100, we thus finally [24] also have crucial
information for evaluating the personality of Epaphroditus, to whom the Antiquities (1.8 and
Life 430) and similarly the writing Contra Apionem (1.1; 2.1 and 296) were dedicated.
This Epaphroditus is almost universally equated with Nero’s famous freedman who
accompanied his imperial master in the flight from Rome and helped him commit suicide. He
had held the position of a libellis under Nero and again under Domitian, however the latter
condemned him to death, by which we draw the definite conclusion that this Epaphroditus had
died before the year 96. Since the Antiquities had already been produced by 93/94, it was
possible to equate the Epaphroditus named in the Antiquities with Nero’s freedman, and the
writing Contra Apionem, which remained undated, presented no obstacle to this. Admittedly,
the closing words of the Life (430) should have caused concern, since they could not have been
written until after Agrippa’s death. But we did see in the first chapter how lightly many
dismissed the chronology of this work. Stein (in Pauly-Wissowa 5.2711), one of the few scholars
who did not do so, believed that a later addition could be identified in the long attack against
Justus of Tiberias (Life 336 - 367) in which Agrippa’s death is mentioned; this is in fact correct,
as we shall see, but the entire Life itself is directed against Justus, after all (Life 40; cf. page 34).
Nonetheless we must also continue to exercise caution in this line of thinking. Since the Life
has not reached us as an independent writing, but represents only the later expansion of an
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