Antonia was now assaulted on its western side; but the business was difficult, and the struggle was long. The mounds which the Romans cast up were undermined by the Jews and destroyed. The mines, however, weakened the outer wall of the castle, and that fell also. The Romans were filled with hope; but the Jews had foreseen the event, and had run up another wall behind. The courage of the Romans was damped by the sight of this second wall. But a few days after, they scaled it by a night surprise, and at the same time forced their way into Antonia through the mine under the wall. The Jews, in a panic, rushed away into the Temple, where they were able to defend themselves as in a fortress. But fighting now took place daily, until at length the northern cloisters of the Temple were burnt down, the inner Temple was assaulted, and eventually the whole fabric was reduced to ashes. The Jews were now crowded in the Upper City, and confined to that. Titus held a parley with them across the bridge above the Xystus--that is, at Wilson’s Arch--offering them terms. But they declined his conditions, and so the siege had to go on. The Ophel quarter was now plundered and burnt; and then a grand effort was made against the Upper City. Mounds were thrown up, and the assault was delivered simultaneously from several points--on the west, by Herod’s palace, on the north-west part of the town a little east of the tower Phasaelus, and on the north-east at the Xystus, which extended from Wilson’s Arch southward. The strong city at last fell, and its walls and buildings were razed to the ground. We know that it rose again from its ashes, and has had an eventful history since; but it is not our purpose to follow its fortunes farther. In seeking to understand the descriptions given by Josephus, writers have been much puzzled by his mention of a ravine “called the Kedron ravine.” It could not well be the Kedron Valley itself, or it would hardly be spoken of in this way; besides which, we are told that the eastern portion of Agrippa’s wall joined the old wall at the ravine called Kedron. This would be too indefinite a note of place if the wall and the ravine ran parallel with one another. Moreover, the north-east angle of the Temple cloisters was built over the said ravine, and the depth was frightful (Wars, vi. 3, 2). The depth was frightful at the angle, rather than at the eastern side. There could be no right understanding of the references, until Sir Charles Warren’s labours showed that a deep valley crosses the Haram north of the Golden Gate, and contains within it the Birket Israil. It was only a “so-called ravine” to Josephus, because the western portion had been filled up by Pompey, and the eastern mouth was cut across by the Wall of Agrippa. Warren’s discovery of this ravine, and demonstration of its depth, is a glorious instance of the value of excavation work in questions of Jerusalem topography.