Titus, with all his staff, hastened to save what he could. He exhorted the soldiers to spare the building. He stood in the Holy of Holies itself, and beat back the soldiers who were pressing to the work of destruction. But in vain: one of the soldiers threw a torch upon the gateway of the sanctuary, and in a moment the fate of the building was sealed. And while the flames mounted higher the carnage of the poor wretches within went on. None was spared; ten thousand were killed that were found there—children, old men, priests and profane persons, all alike; six thousand fled to the roof of the royal cloister, that glorious building which crowned the Temple wall to the south, stretching from “Robinson’s Arch” to the valley of the Kedron. The Romans fired that too, and the whole of the multitude perished together. “One would have thought that the hill itself, on which the Temple stood, was seething hot, full of fire in every part; that the blood was larger in quantity than the fire; and those that were slain more in number than those that slew them, for the ground nowhere appeared visible for the dead bodies that lay on it; but the soldiers went over heaps of these bodies as they ran from such as fled from them.”[17] Footnote 17: Joseph. vi. v. 1. The really guilty among the Jews, the fighting men, had cut their way through the Romans and fled to the upper city. A few priests either hid themselves in secret chambers or crouched upon the top of the wall. On the fifth day they surrendered, being starving. Titus ordered them to execution. And so the Temple of Herod fell. The Roman army flocked into the ruins of the Temple which it had cost them so many lives to take; sacrifices were offered, and Titus was saluted as Imperator. An immense spoil was found there, not only from the sacred vessels of gold, but from the treasury, in which vast sums had been accumulated. The upper town, Zion, still held out. Titus demanded a parley. Standing on that bridge, the ruined stones of which were found by Captain Warren lying eighty feet below the surface of the ground, he for the last time offered terms to the insurgents. He explained that they could no longer entertain any hope, even the slightest, of safety, and renewed his offers of clemency to those who should yield.