side of the city, and turned north near a hamlet called the “House of Erebinthi,”[362] and thus reached Herod’s monuments near the present Mâmilla pool, and its original starting-place farther north-east. This work is said to have been completed in three days. [Sidenote: THE TEMPLE TAKEN] Meanwhile, the banks were repaired, and were ready by the sixty-sixth day of the siege, when the summer sun was beating down mercilessly on besiegers and besieged. Four days later the Syrian soldier Sabinus attempted to lead a forlorn hope against Antonia. “His complexion was black, his flesh was lean and spare and well knit, but there was a certain heroic soul that dwelt in this small body.” He perished in the attempt, but two nights later, about 3 a.m., the standard-bearer of the 5th legion, with two cavalry-men and a trumpeter, surprised the citadel, clambered up the ruins of the breach, and slew the sentries. The Romans poured in, and the “top of the hill”--or scarp of Antonia--being occupied, the key of the Temple fortress was in their hands. Yet the inner Temple resisted still for thirty-five days, till the fatal ninth of Ab,[363] the day on which, according to the rabbis, the Holy House had been ruined by the Babylonians, and the day also on which Bêther fell sixty-five years later. The daily sacrifice had ceased three weeks before, also on a day of evil memory on which Antiochus Epiphanes had burned the scroll of the Law. The formal siege of the inner courts entailed the clearance of the Antonia courtyard, and the erection of four banks on the north side, one at the north-west corner of the Priests’ Court, a second at Moked, and two others outside the Court of the Women. The outer cloisters were set on fire, and burned fiercely in the dry season, especially because the gilding that adorned the roofs was spread over a wax covering of the timbers. The great gatehouse was battered, the golden gates were set on fire. The bodies of the defenders were piled round the altar, and the blood--not of bulls or goats, but of men--ran down the steps. Yet the survivors still fought from the roof of the Temple itself, hurling the leaden spikes which kept birds from nesting on the Holy House upon the Romans below, until the fire reached them, and a few submitted and were spared, except the priests, whom Titus ordered to be slain.