The word _akra_ is Greek, and means “a citadel.” Josephus never applies the term to the fortress north of the Temple, which he calls the _phrourion_. In the First Book of Maccabees we read that the Greeks “built up the city of David with a great and strong wall and mighty towers, and it became a citadel (_akra_) for them.”[188] In another passage[189] we learn that this “city of David” was Jerusalem; and again[190] that this citadel was “in Jerusalem.” Jonathan, the brother of Judas Maccabæus, “piled up a great mound between the Akra and the city, to separate it from the city”[191]; and, as already noted, the “hill of the temple” lay “alongside the Akra,” which was finally taken by Simon, the elder brother of Judas.[192] The statements of Josephus are very clear on this subject. He says that this citadel was in the “lower part of the city,”[193] yet was “high and overlooked the Temple.” It moreover “lay over against the Temple,” and commanded the approach to it. Jonathan, he says, “built another wall to exclude the market from the Akra,” and this wall was “in the midst of the city.”[194] Simon took the “Akra of Jerusalem” and destroyed it, and the Jews then “levelled the mountain, and in that work spent both day and night without intermission, which cost them three whole years before it was removed, and brought quite to a level with the plain of the rest of the city. After which the Temple was the highest of all the buildings, now that the Akra, as well as the mountain on which it stood, was demolished.” Again he says that Simon “demolished the Akra,” and that the “hill which was called Akra and defended the lower city was gibbous” in shape; “and over against this was a third ridge, naturally lower than the Akra, and at first divided from the other by a flat valley. But in the times when the Hasmonæans ruled, they filled up the valley, deciding to join the Temple to the city; and, having levelled the mound of the Akra, they made it flatter, so that the Temple might be above the same.”[195]