Now a similar bank was facing Zion, and two days later, at eventide, just when the Romans had retired to their camp, leaving the customary force to guard this bank, the gates of Zion opened, and from each issued a crowd of Zealots, every one carrying either a lighted torch or a vessel flaming with combustibles, and every one under a _cherem_ or curse, not to return till he had seen the Roman engines and the Roman bank in a blaze. Coming forth, not by hundreds, but by thousands, they poured down the craggy descent like a flood, wave upon wave, and swept up to the embankment; some, fighting like fiends, impaled themselves upon the points of the Roman spears, and so died; others, equally brave but more fortunate, broke through the guard, scaled the embankment, and, running hither and thither, set the engines alight, and finished the work of destruction by firing the embankment itself, so that by the time Titus and the rest of the army came up, the huge platform of earth and timber was a roaring sea of unquenchable flame! Now, for the first time during the siege, the spirit of despair fell upon Titus. He began to think with the murmuring and superstitious legionaries that the fiery comet which, in the shape of a sword, shed a red gleam nightly over Jerusalem, was directing its malignant influence not against the Jews but against the Romans. His mood was shown by the letter directed jointly to his father Vespasian and the Roman Senate; the dispatch omitted the customary formula: “I rejoice if all is well with you and your children; with myself and the army all is well.” All was _not_ well with him and the army. The tactics of Simon and John had caused the entire disappearance of his battering-train. Was there no other course left him than to order the Greek engineers of Cæsarea to construct a new set of military machines, an order that would require several weeks for its fulfillment? Many and various were the suggestions put forth at the council held in the tent of Titus. The plan of massing the whole strength of the legions against a selected part of the wall, and of continuing the assault night and day with testudo and scaling-ladder, regardless of the loss of life, till the place should be finally stormed, was rejected as impracticable, as was also the proposition to tunnel a way through the rock into the heart of the city. Tiberius Alexander rose to speak. “By all means send to Cæsarea for new engines,” said he. “In the meantime we’ll turn the siege into a blockade, and make famine our chief weapon. Food within the city is already running short, even among the Zealots themselves, so much so that, if the stories of deserters be true, these same Zealots are robbing the people of their bread, and torturing those whom they suspect of concealing it.