Pouring into the alleys, sword in hand, they massacred indiscriminately
all whom they met and burnt over their heads the houses of those who had
taken refuge within. Often in the course of their raids, on entering the
houses for loot, they would find whole families of dead bodies and the
rooms filled with the victims of the famine, and then, shuddering at the
sight, would retire empty-handed. Yet, while they pitied those who had
thus perished, they had no similar feelings for the living, but, running
every one through that fell in their way, they choked the alleys with
corpses and deluged the whole city with blood, insomuch that the flames
of many of the burning buildings were extinguished by the gory stream.
Towards evening they ceased slaughtering, but when night fell the fire
gained the mastery, and the dawn of the eighth day of the month Gorpiæus
[Sidenote: September] broke upon Jerusalem in flames; a city which had
suffered such calamities in the siege, that, had she from her first
foundation enjoyed an equal share of blessings, she would have been
thought wholly enviable; and undeserving, moreover, of these great
misfortunes on all other grounds, save that she produced so evil a
generation as that which caused her overthrow.
* * * * *
Of all the strong defences of the city those which chiefly aroused the
admiration of Titus, on his entry, were the towers, which the tyrants,
in their infatuation, had abandoned. Indeed, when he beheld their solid
lofty mass, the magnitude of each block of stone and the accuracy of the
joinings, and saw how great was their breadth, how vast their height,
“We have indeed,” he exclaimed, “had God on our side in the battle. God
it was who ejected the Jews from these strongholds; for what power have
human hands or engines against these towers?” He made many similar
observations to his friends on that occasion, and also liberated all who
had been imprisoned by the tyrants and left in the forts. And when, at a
later period, he demolished the rest of the city and razed the walls, he
left these towers as a memorial of his attendant fortune, to whose
co-operation he owed his conquest of defences which defied
assault.—_B.J._ VI. 8. 5-9. 1 (403-413).
Footnote 326:
Some MSS read “unusually” (ἀήθως for ἀληθῶς).
(52) The Spoils from the Temple in the Triumphal Procession in Rome
The Jewish spoils—the table of shew-bread, incense-cups and
trumpets—as borne in the procession still figure on the Arch of
Titus in Rome; a representation _e.g._ in Driver’s _Exodus_ (_Camb.
Bible_), p. 273.
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