=5. A Mediator sent: Terms proposed.=――Titus, throughout the war, was consistently disinclined for unnecessary slaughter. When the first wall was taken he had hinted at capitulation, and had offered to distinguish between the people and the garrison in his punishments. He had reviewed his splendid troops in full view of the famine-threatened city, in the hope of inducing them to surrender, and he had sent back mutilated prisoners of war to arouse a wholesome dread of his severity. It was all in vain; all idea of compromise was scouted, and when a breach was made in the second wall the defenders lined it with their living bodies, and for three dreadful days actually barred the conqueror’s progress. But this wall, too, was taken, and then Titus, at his wits’ end, sent Josephus as an envoy to see if it were possible to come to any terms, short of slaughter, with his countrymen. The case was desperate; Romans were without the city, and rioters within. ‘In hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, in want of all things,’ they were enduring ‘the siege and straitness of their enemy.’ And now came a messenger to them with proposals of peace. Josephus――he is the historian of it all――gives us an account of this interview with curious frankness. He retails his own eloquence at full length, and expresses his astonishment at the indignant refusal of any party of the people to even listen to it. Perhaps there was some mutual astonishment on the occasion. If Titus was sincere in wanting to come to terms, Josephus was certainly an oddly chosen ambassador. The sight of that fluent traitor, who had fallen so comfortably on his feet, must have been enough, in truth, to make the most peaceable citizen clutch at his sword. His mission, of course, failed. Josephus went back to his Roman patron, and his people went back to their impossible defence. A forlorn hope is sometimes better than an accomplished desire. Not one of that heroic garrison, for all their misery, would have changed places with Josephus.