A short respite of four years, under Porcius Festus and Albinus (60 to 64 A. D.), preceded the fatal selection of Gessius Florus, the last procurator. During this time the Temple was finished,[336] and Agrippa II. rebuilt the Hasmonæan palace. This gave great offence to the priests, because it had a view of the inner Temple; and they built a screen on the cloister wall which Festus ordered them to remove. Agrippa had been given authority over the Temple by Claudius, and refused to expend its treasure on a projected rebuilding of the eastern cloister, though he did not object to the paving of the city. Under Albinus,[337] James the “brother of Jesus who was called Christ” was stoned to death by an illegal order of the Sanhedrin, according to the famous passage in Josephus, and Agrippa was obliged to depose the high-priest Ananus, because of the wrath of Albinus, whose consent had not been given to this third execution at the “House of Stoning.” It was probably after this persecution, about 64 A. D., that the surviving disciples left Jerusalem. James the Great was alive at Jerusalem in 58 A. D., so that there is no difficulty as to his martyrdom about 62 A. D. But it is remarkable that, on the occasion of Paul’s last visit to Jerusalem, Peter is not mentioned, though he was still one of the “pillars” in 52 A. D. He had perhaps died in the interval, and the belief in his later martyrdom at Rome is not supported by any statement in the New Testament. The diminished band of the Apostles withdrew before the time of the great revolt, and found peace at the little village of Pella beyond Jordan, escaping the miseries of the final siege, the “beginning of sorrows” when false Messiahs, such as Eleazar and the Egyptian prophet, appeared, and when there were “wars and rumours of wars” throughout Palestine. Within the time of the first generation they saw the end of their world. “For the days shall come upon thee that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground and thy children within thee, and they shall not leave one stone upon another, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”[338]