223
THE STORY OF VERONICA.
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, in the consulate of Albanus and Nerva, St. John the Forerunner began to preach the baptism of repentance, and to baptize, according to the prophetic utterance, and there went forth to him all the Jewish region. And, moreover, our Lord Jesus Christ wrought the beginning of salvation; being baptized by the same John the Forerunner when he came to be about thirty years old, and doing miracles. He was baptized in the Jordan, a river of Palestine, on the 6th of the month Audynæus or January, at the tenth hour of the night, in the consulship of Rufus and Rubellio. From that time also John the Baptist was manifest to men. And Herod the king, the brother of Philip, who was tetrarch or king of the region of Trachonitis, beheaded him in the city of Sebaste, on the 8th before the calends of June, in the consulship of Flacco and Rufinus, because of Herodias his wife; for John said to him, "It is not lawful for thee to have the wife of thy brother," as in the divine Scriptures these things are recorded. This same king Herod, the second brother of Philip, being grieved because of John, went away from the
