Acra, we are informed by Josephus, was “in the shape of a moon when she is horned;”[40] and though he gives no intimation to that effect, I suppose the horns must have been to the northward, for I do not see how it is possible that they could have been otherwise. On the west they certainly could not have been, nor on the south, nor on the east; and there remains only the position which I have given them. The northern wall of Acra, sometimes called “the second wall,” commenced at the gate Gennath, (i. e. “gate of the gardens,”) and then making a curve,[41] terminated at the castle of Antonia.[42] I have placed the gate Gennath about five hundred feet from the tower Hippicus, and have carried the wall, in the first place at right angles across the valley of the Cheesemongers, and then placing a tower at the angle, have there commenced the course over towards Antonia. My reasons for this arrangement are as follows. When Titus had set down with his army before Jerusalem, and came to select a spot for his assaults, he determined to commence at the tomb of John the High Priest, because the outer wall (marked here by the zigzag lines) was weakest at that place; and here, too, he could pass at once to the “old” or “third wall,” without the necessity of first taking the second;[43] which expectation “of an easy passage to the third wall” would not have been reasonable, had the gate Gennath and the branching of the northern wall of Acra been nearer to the tower of Hippicus than I have placed them. And when the Romans had taken this outer wall, and the Jews were driven to their next line of defences, they immediately commenced a line of fortification, which seems to have been from the second wall to the tower of Hippicus; for which reason, as well as because it is a more rational way of carrying a wall across a valley, I have made this angle in the outer wall of Acra.