Josephus received the privilege of setting free from among the prisoners all his former friends, of whom he must have possessed a remarkable number, seeing that, after setting aside his father and mother, he contrived to liberate nearly two hundred more of the throng. There were two faces, however, he looked for in vain. “What hath become of Simeon ben Gamaliel?” he asked. “Slain at the taking of Zion,” was the reply. “And Johanan ben Zacchai?” That rabbi, it appeared, was now at Jamnia in southern Judæa, having escaped from the holy city in a very singular manner.[35] Feigning to be dead, he was placed in a coffin, which the Zealot sentinels at the gate permitted to be carried forth for burial within his father’s sepulcher in the glen of Cedron. When once outside the city Johanan made his way to the Roman lines; and being permitted to pass by the good will of Crispus before whom he happened to be brought, he retired to Jamnia. And here, in subsequent years, he established the celebrated rabbinical school whose teaching was destined ultimately to develop into that strange system of Jewish scholasticism known as the Talmud. Titus ordered the city to be razed to the ground with the exception of the three great towers--Hippicus, Phasaelus, and Mariamne. These were spared partly for the accommodation of a garrison to be stationed there with a view of preventing any attempt at rebuilding by the Jews, but mainly to demonstrate to posterity what kind of a city it was that Roman valor had subdued. Terentius Rufus was appointed to superintend this work of demolition, and his first care was to remove Crispus to the splendid apartments in the tower Hippicus, as being more conducive to the patient’s recovery than the close and squalid quarters of the castellum, in which he had hitherto lain. It was a matter of vexation to Titus that Simon the Black and John of Giscala were not to be found among the captive multitude. It turned out that the two Zealot chiefs had taken refuge in the catacombs beneath the city, and though the dauntless Simon contrived for a while to elude pursuit, John, reduced by stress of famine, came forth from his hiding-place to meet, by a singular leniency on the part of the conqueror, with the sentence of perpetual imprisonment. And now, the Roman troops, having done the work they had set out to do, broke up their camp and commenced a slow and stately march to Cæsarea-by-the-sea, leading with them a long train of melancholy captives, the remnants of a once great nation, together with the spoils of the temple.