“Let him who had father or mother, son or daughter, killed in the day of Florus come forward.” Immediately hundreds of men pushed their way to the front. “Behold the men who killed them!” cried Simon, pointing with his sword to the fortress. This lie, for such it was--the garrison having taken no part whatever in the massacre--had a telling effect upon the crowd, filling them with new fire and new fury. Led on by Simon in person, they rushed forward with the scaling-ladders and planted them against the walls, though it was only to be driven back again. For many hours the battle raged; nineteen times repulsed, they returned with spirit unabated to the attack; at the twentieth assault, which took place towards the close of the day, the Jews succeeded in effecting an entrance. “Leave not one alive!” was their cry. “Did they spare us and our little ones?” The little garrison, faced by overwhelming numbers, bravely maintained the honor of the Roman name; with never a thought of asking for quarter, they fought doggedly on, “each stepping where his comrade fell,” till the blade glimmered in the grasp of the last man. The standard that on the loftiest tower had so long flaunted before Jewish eyes the hateful letters S.P.Q.R., was hauled down and torn to shreds. Thus fell, after two days’ hard fighting, the great fortress of Antonia, an event that gave little pleasure to the victor of Masada, when he heard the people saying that night, “Manahem hath slain his thousands, but Simon his ten thousands!” * * * * * “To the Prætorium!” was the cry of the multitude next morning. Manahem resumed his command; and, mounted on a prancing horse and followed by shouting crowds, he advanced to the open space fronting Gabbatha, and in a loud voice called for the surrender of the palace. The reply to this was an arrow, which, as intended, went clean through the crest of Manahem’s helmet. “Your heart next time,” said Metilius, “if you again propose treason to a Roman.” Manahem, swearing by Urim and by Thummim that the defenders of the Prætorium should meet with the same fate as those of Masada and Antonia, moved off to a quarter, whence, shielded from the missiles of the enemy, he could direct the operations of the siege. The most pitiable object in the Prætorium at this time was Ananias. He had ventured to look forth from a window, and the crowd, recognizing him, yelled out their fierce hatred of the Sadducean hierarch, loudest among the shouters being priests themselves, whose words soon showed the cause of their fury. “Who sent his servants round to collect the priests’ tithes, and bludgeoned those that would not pay? Who but Ananias?” “Who, when he had got the tithes, kept them to spend upon the harlot Asenath, so that many priests died for want? Who but Ananias?” Before his terrified gaze they paraded the gory head of the Antonian commandant fixed upon the point of a lofty pike.