Stones and darts were powerless against a machine of this kind. But Simon’s fertile brain had devised a plan for defeating its operations. Liquid bitumen, in immense quantities, was flung upon the pluteus, and when all the ground beneath it and around it was flowing with the liquid, lighted torches were thrown down. In a flash the interior of the pluteus as well as the air above and around became a flaming fire. With terrible howlings the miserable Romans, their hair, beard, and garments alight, rushed forth into the open, only to be shot dead by the Jewish archers. What Simon had done once he was likely to do again. Titus, therefore, when informed of this incident gave orders to keep the plutei in reserve and to push forward the battering-rams. One of these, by reason of its hugeness, excited the wonder, if not the fears, of the Zealots. It was a wheeled tower, consisting of several stages, the topmost one rising high above the city wall. Through an opening in the lower story there projected the gigantic brazen head of a ram, forming the forepart of a wooden beam, 120 feet in length, a beam poised upon ropes, and of a weight so great as to require the united strength of two hundred men to put it in motion. The different stages in the tower were for the use of archers, whose business it was to clear the enemy from that part of the wall directly facing the ram. A little turret at the top of the structure afforded a coign of vantage for a sentinel to observe and report to those below the doings of the besieged. This structure, which was under the charge of Rufus, bore the Greek name of Nico, or the Conqueror, for although its powers had not yet been tested, it was confidently believed that no wall, however strong, could long withstand the repeated shocks of the ram. As soon as this heavy machine was brought within striking distance of the wall, two hundred brawny legionaries, grasping a multiplicity of ropes, began slowly to draw the gigantic beam as far back as it would go; then, at a given signal, every man simultaneously relinquished his hold, and the released beam, darting forward with lightning speed, came with terrific impact full tilt against the wall. At that mighty stroke the masonry shivered from parapet to foundation. But more appalling than the shock itself was the thunder-boom accompanying it. The sound ran through the length and breadth of the city, terrifying Vashti in her distant home on Mount Zion; it was echoed and re-echoed from all the hills around; it filled the breasts of even the most stouthearted of the Zealots with fear; while from every quarter of Bezetha there came shrieks of terror from women and children, for all who were not near the spot made sure that the wall had fallen in, and that the enemy were entering the breach. Again that terrifying boom! and yet again!