The description of Jerusalem at the time of its fall, given by Tacitus,[350] is brief, but so like the longer accounts of Josephus as to have been supposed to be founded on them; it contains, however, details which seem original. He says that “there were other walls beneath the royal palace, besides the tower of Antonia, with its top particularly conspicuous.... The temple was like a citadel, having walls of its own.... The cloisters wherewith the temple was enclosed were an excellent fortification. They had a fountain of water that ran perpetually, and the mountains were hollowed underground; they had, moreover, pools and cisterns for the preservation of rain water.... Moreover, the covetous temper that prevailed in the time of Claudius gave the Jews an opportunity of purchasing with money leave to fortify Jerusalem. So they built walls in time of peace.” The estimate of population by Tacitus is, however, not much less exaggerated than the incredible calculations of Josephus; but the latter gives a very fair idea of the proportion between the actual combatants and of their respective numbers. On the fifteenth day of the siege, after the corner of a tower was shaken by the battering ram of the 15th legion, and a sally from the “secret gate” near Hippicus had been repulsed, the wall of Agrippa was taken, in spite of the destruction of three siege towers. The defenders apparently found the line of defence too extended for their numbers, and many--grown weary of fighting and watching--had retired to the inner city to sleep. The Romans demolished the rampart, and wasted the north quarter of the town, which had already been partly destroyed by Cestius Gallus. The camp of Titus was moved within Agrippa’s wall to a place on the north-west of the second wall known as the “Camp of the Assyrians,” in memory of the attack made on Hezekiah in 703 B. C., when the Assyrian leaders stood outside the wall by the “Conduit of the Upper Pool.” Simon therefore endeavoured to prevent the building of new banks by sallies from Hippicus on this side, at the gate by which “the water was brought in” to that tower by the ancient conduit of Ahaz, as it is still brought in to the citadel even now. On the twentieth day of the siege the second wall was breached, and the Romans broke in on the north at “a place where were the merchants of wool, the braziers, the market for cloth, and where the narrow streets led obliquely to the wall.” They were, however, driven out again, and the wall was not finally taken till three days later, when a truce was called to see if the Jews would submit. As no overtures were made by the defenders, the new banks against the upper city and Antonia were begun on the twenty-eighth day, and finished on the thirty-seventh day of the siege, when the struggle again became desperate.[351]