REFERENCES 1 _The Xystos_ 2 _The Council House_ 3 _The Pool Strouthios_ 4 _The Tower Hippicus_ 5 _The Tower Phasaelus_ 6 _The Tower Mariamne_ 7 _The Bridge_ 8 _The Double Gate_ 9 _The Triple Gate_ 10 _The Shushan Gate_ 11 _The Gate Tadi_ G = Gate] The Romans were first seen three days before the Passover, when Titus camped on Skopos; but the siege is only reckoned by Josephus as beginning after the feast, on Abib 23. It lasted for 134 days, or more than four months, and ended in the heat of summer some time in August.[344] The details are important, as illustrating the topography of the city, and can be easily understood by the light of our previous studies: some of the places mentioned appear, however, to have been built after the time of Herod the Great. Thus, in addition to the two palaces of the upper city, we now find in the lower city two others built by the royal family of Adiabene during their residence in Jerusalem. The first of these was the palace of Queen Helena in “the middle of Akra,” and the other that of her son Monobasus near Siloam. The sons and brothers of Izates--Helena’s eldest son--were in Jerusalem during the siege, but gave themselves up to Titus after the fall of the Temple.[345] We also learn that there was a monument of John Hyrcanus in the west part of the lower city, and one of Alexander Jannæus, probably east of the Temple. We hear for the first time of the pools Strouthios and Amygdalon, and of the Serpent’s Pool outside the city, as also of Herod’s monuments and the tomb of Ananus, with other places that have been already mentioned. But the fortifications remained much in the same condition in which they had been left by Agrippa I. nearly thirty years before the siege. [Sidenote: THE RECONNAISSANCE]